Cities nowadays are the most significant source of environmental degradation threatening local and global ecosystems. Interestingly, many ancient settlements present excellent lessons and inspiration for addressing our current urban predicaments, given their environmental stewardship.
The government of Benin in 2013 decided upon a centralized land administration, with the purpose of recording the entire national territory in one land administration system to promote durable economic development by increasing legal certainty in real estate transactions.
Land is a critical factor of production for improving the living conditions of people everywhere. The search for tools (or approaches or strategies or methods) for ensuring that land challenges are resolved in ways that quickly respond to local realities is what led to the development of the fit-for-purpose land administration.
Cambodia has experienced rapid economic growth due partly to excessive natural resource extraction. Land conflicts have been pervasive between local communities and companies that invest in land and other natural resources. Despite substantial research into land conflict resolution, knowledge about how land is returned to wronged parties and what happens to the returned land is fragmented.
In South Africa, land tenure security is a challenge for 60% or more of the population who hold interests in land outside of the formal system of registered title. There is a need for the cadastral and land administration systems to be reshaped, and for new land tenure forms to be developed to record all land rights and interests so as to improve land tenure security for all.
Access to land for many people in Africa is insecure and continues to pose risks to poverty, hunger, forced evictions, and social conflicts. The delivery of land tenure in many cases has not been adequately addressed. Fit-for-purpose spatial frameworks need to be adapted to the context of a country based on simple, affordable, and incremental solutions toward addressing these challenges.
After the political change in Nepal of 1951, leapfrog land policy improvements have been recorded, however, the land reform initiatives have been short of full success. Despite a land administration system based on cadaster and land registries in place, 25% of the arable land with an estimated 10 million spatial units on the ground are informally occupied and are off-register.
Recent policies in China have encouraged rural-urban circular migration and an “amphibious” and flexible status of settlement, reacting against the recent risks of economic fluctuation in cities.
Strong national institutional arrangements in the geospatial information management are essential for successful implementation of sustainable land administration system. However, it is not only the existence of institutions but also their effectiveness that leads to the intended goals and reaching of objectives.
Suburban growth and its impacts on surface runoff were investigated using the soil conservation service curve number (SCS-CN) model, compared with the integrated advanced remote sensing and geographic information system (GIS)-based integrated approach, over South Kingston, Rhode Island, USA.
Diffuse water pollution from agriculture (DWPA) is one of the major factors causing water pollution in Lakes Palić and Ludaš, the two largest shallow lakes of the Pannonian Basin in Serbia. These two lakes are protected under national and international law.
Afforestation of former agricultural lands is a common practice in several countries. This is beneficial for avoiding diseases carry-over from previous forest generations and to expand forest areas. However, several biotic and abiotic risks have been reported in such stands, including a higher risk of Heterobasidion root rot after thinning.