One of the benefits of agroforestry and plantation forestry is the ability of tree crops to capture and store carbon in their above-ground biomass. Although they must be renovated (cut…
There are three fundamental rules of financial planning: (1) save continuously, (2) invest in a diversified portfolio of assets and (3) exercise patience via a long-term strategy. This common-sense advice…
The agro-industrial farms of Mato Grosso are among the most efficient on the planet; they benefit from abundant rainfall and a long rainy season, which allows them to plant and…
The creation of protected areas and Indigenous reserves offers the best hope for conserving the biodiversity of the Amazon; however, the management of the human modified landscapes will determine whether…
Undesignated public land One of the objectives of the ZEE process was to assist the nations of the Pan Amazon to allocate their public lands among different constituencies and stakeholder…
WESTERN PROVINCE, Kenya — In the 44 years Naomi Rita Sitati has lived in Bukirimo village in western Kenya, she has known only one system of farming, which her community…
Ecuador The territorial planning framework in Ecuador is known as the Plan de Desarrollo y Ordenamiento Territorial (PDOT). It is one component in an ambitious effort to articulate a Plan…
Teeming with tropical rainforest, the Amazon Basin is a vital defense against global warming. Yet deforestation combined with extreme weather are behind the region's worst drought in fifty years. Forest clearance to make…
Land-use maps and their explicit recommendations are most relevant on pioneer landscapes that are in the flux of change. Recommendations can provide sound information and support an expanding agricultural production…
Regulating land tenure is not the only power available to the state for influencing how people use land. Land-use planning and land-use zoning are two closely related mechanisms that Pan…
The sharecropping system that defined land tenure in the Ecuadorian highlands prior to agrarian reform was known as the ‘huasipungo’, a Quechua word that describes the relationship between landlords and…
The agrarian reform process in Peru began in 1964. Originally a cautious effort targeting the more egregious examples of peasant exploitation, it was dramatically expanded by a left-wing military government…
Regularizing land tenure on landscapes where private property predominates is more challenging than on landscapes occupied by communal landholdings. In part, this is due to their greater number, but the…
Dr. Sakib Burza says his fondest memories are climbing the majestic pine trees in the Kashmir Valley where he spent most of his childhood with his family. On a normal…
BUÍQUE, Pernambuco, Brazil — In the Brazilian backlands, the jurema is a most willful tree: When you think it's dead, it sprouts again. You can cut it, tear it down,…
The political movement that brought Evo Morales to power incorporated a latent conflict between highland and lowland Indigenous communities. The lowland nations are intent on recuperating their ancestral territories, which…
Bolivia was a leader in the agrarian reform movement in South America. A defining moment in its modern history was the national revolution of 1952, which started as an uprising…
Research published in the journal Humanities and Social Sciences Communications finds that just in the United States, trillions of dollars are wasted on things that do not improve the quality…
SYDNEY — As the world struggles to contain plastic pollution, eco-friendly alternatives to plastics have garnered attention in recent years. One example: Polyhydroxyalkanoates (PHAs), a naturally occurring bio-based polymer, have…
The need to fast-track the regularização of smallholder titles motivated the Terra Legal programme, which sent teams of surveyors to selected municipalities to accelerate the process for landholdings established prior…
The third pillar of the institutional mission of the Instituto Nacional de Colonização y Reforma Agraria (INCRA) encompasses both administrative and legal aspects of land tenure and, as such, is…
The dream of agrivoltaics is to generate your electricity and eat your edamame too. But a recent study in Agroforestry Systems shows that agrivoltaics — growing food beneath solar panels…
In 2016, Finland became the first country in the world to adopt a national circular economy road map, with the ambition to become a world leader in moving away from…
Rural real estate markets in the Pan Amazon are regulated by institutions that are a legacy of the agrarian reform movements that played a prominent role in domestic politics during…
The adage ‘possession is nine-tenths of the law’ is not legally true, but the concept reigns supreme on frontier landscapes in the Pan Amazon. Land grabbers and peasant pioneers share…
Ever since tires were invented, they have rolled into our lives and changed the way we live. From cushioning wheels, one of humanity’s greatest inventions, to moving us around safely,…
New roads open wilderness landscapes to development, and commodity markets drive the expansion of the agricultural frontier. These two causes of deforestation are at the centre of deforestation policy discussions.…
LAMJUNG DISTRICT, Nepal — When the dark, heavy clouds loom over the lush hills of Ghanpokhara, Ratna Gurung knows it's time to bring in the sun-dried foxtail millet. Before the…
There is only limited potential for finance to change agricultural practices in the Andean Amazon, because landscapes are largely populated by smallholders who are notoriously risk-adverse in how they manage…
The agricultural producers of the Amazon have access to radically different levels of credit depending upon national policies, the willingness of each country’s financial services industry to engage rural populations…