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In this study, we have used qualitative data from land-use conflicts for a development-related infrastructure project based on the case of Chotiari reservoir in Pakistan. Our results primarily highlight the networks of stakeholders involved in making the decisions for this project and their opposition to the desires of the local population, leading to significant tensions and conflicts due to the superposition of land-use expectations in the project area. Through this research, we have identified the key groups of actors and their logics, links and behaviors in terms of multi-level governance (from community level to international level) and territorial governance, thus revealing the positions of stakeholders and their relative social power. We show how public authorities have disregarded international rules and laws in undertaking a development project, and caused great damage to local populations and environmental resources. This article aims to provide useful information and insights for recommendations to help prevent and resolve land-use conflicts, principally on the basis of an analysis of proximity relations.

Highlights • We emphasize the end of the boom-and-bust development pattern in the Brazilian Amazon. • Deforestation and socioeconomic development follow an inverted U-shape relationship. • Household incomes are greater in stabilized areas than in areas undergoing deforestation. • Environmental governance efforts fostered the emergence of EKC. Abstract Socioeconomic development in the Brazilian Amazon is currently reaching national averages although deforestation activity has been declining for a decade. As a consequence, recent studies rejected the widely agreed boom-and-bust development hypothesis that deforestation first generates an economic boom, which is then followed by a collapse as forest resources are depleted. Here, we confirm these studies that there is no boom-bust cycle and suggest that a new pattern of relationship between deforestation and socioeconomic development has emerged following an environmental Kuznets curve (EKC). In this scenario, environmental degradation increases in the early stages of economic development and decreases in later stages as the economy develops and wellbeing increases. To validate this assumption, we conducted the first sub-municipal analysis of socioeconomic development and deforestation in the Brazilian Amazon for the 2000–2010 period. Our results confirm the emergence of an EKC relationship with a turning point beyond which socioeconomic growth does not appear anymore to be a driver of deforestation. We also emphasize that areas subjected to active deforestation in 2010 present lower socio-Author manuscript version economic indicators than stabilized areas, pointing to the precarious socioeconomic situation of areas still undergoing active deforestation. We put these results in perspective by considering Brazilian efforts to ensure a transition in environmental governance with the objective of promoting land use sustainability through control of deforestation at the same time as supporting socioeconomic development. International audience

Abstract The Mediterranean (macro-)region is characterized by its unique bio-physical, socio-political, and cultural conditions when considered at the global scale. Nonetheless, at the same time this is an extremely heterogeneous and diverse region, as is reflected in the heterogeneous and dynamic mosaic of farm and land systems developed along a long history throughout which they have tightly adapted to the frequent scarcity and irregularity of natural resources. Such long-scale trajectory of adaptation has resulted in a wide range of traditional rural and peri-urban landscapes hosting a rich biodiversity and bearing multiple social and cultural values. Throughout recent history, and especially over the past two decades, Mediterranean farm and land use systems have been undergoing multiple transition processes, resulting in many current landscapes gradually becoming more homogeneous and intensified, whilst others are being abandoned. It has now become self-evident that both trajectories of change are evolving at unequal rates and scales across the region. This process too frequently leads to the degradation of the valuable cultural, social, territorial and natural capital of the region. This demands urgent and innovative initiatives, either private, public or mixed, that are effective to reverse current trends of degradation, and move towards higher degrees of sustainability and resilience. The aim of this Special Issue is to synthesize and critically review key elements current research on farm and land system dynamics in the Mediterranean region, and to discuss land use management and governance frameworks in place at multiple spatial-temporal scales and institutional levels to foster increased sustainability and resilience. Papers in this SI address historic and envisaged future changes in the region, focusing on the complexity of interactions at the farm and landscape levels. Furthermore, papers in the SI also address the role and interactions with non-farming-related land uses (i.e. urban and/or conservation). The SI covers key contexts, conceptual frameworks, challenges, approaches, methods and alternatives in place to provide with a picture of the current situation and, more importantly, of likely potential pathways for the future improvements. The need for further integration across scales, methods and approaches is finally acknowledged.

International audience; The main objective of this study was to characterize the spatial structure of periurban agriculture for the purpose of operational urban development, avoiding the use of cumbersome and costly surveys when the public action sphere is extended to a region or a country. On the basis of Partial Least Squares-Path Modeling (PLS-PM), the approach developed here uses data freely available in France and makes it possible to analyze complex re-lationships between the socio-economic structure of farms, demography, landscape structure, and landscape management and function. The results are used to identify spatial units of periurban farmland (USAP). Aggre-gated at the municipal level, they reveal municipalities under the influence of an urban pole whose agricultural areas have a greater possibility of developing short marketing chains towards the city and that could conse-quently justify public support for local supply options.

The paper investigates the links between size, subsidies and performance for Slovenian farms. Slovenian farms have always been small and highly subsidized. A literature review is carried out for the period before accession to the European Union (EU), and new calculations with farm-level data are performed for 2004-2006, the period of adjustment to the EU's Common Agricultural Policy. Our analysis reveals that both pre- and post-accession farms' performance measured in terms of technical efficiency is positively related to farm size in Slovenia. We find that small farms are less technically efficient but more allocatively efficient and profitable. The persistence of small farms in Slovenia may be associated with the provision of generous subsidies, which are negatively related to farms' technical efficiency but positively related to their profitability. The decline in the number of medium-size farms which has been observed since the accession to the EU may be explained by the fact that medium farms cumulate all disadvantages in terms of performance: they are too small to be economically efficient, but they are too large to be profitable. (C) 2012 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.

[Departement_IRSTEA]Territoires [TR1_IRSTEA]DTAM [Axe_IRSTEA]DTAM2-ACPUB [ADD1_IRSTEA]Adaptation des territoires au changement global; International audience; This article analyzes the variety of governance arrangements in the forest sector by examining the situation in ten European countries. At the national level, governance arrangements in the forest sector are analysed as a specific set of ideas, rules and relationships that shape and steer the decision-making process and determine (i) the policy framework, (ii) the forms of authority and power distribution, and (iii) the mediation pattern and network relationships. The study reveals that network governance, new policy instruments and ideational innovation have definitely emerged in the European forest sector, but, at its core, state forestry still dominates. That finding puts the shift from government to governance into perspective as well as the extent to which new forestry discourses are being put into practice. The article concludes that recent (gradual) changes in governance arrangements in the forest sector result from macro political trends, such as global and European discourses and guidelines on sustainability and good governance, on the one hand, and from the maintenance of the strategic key position of national states in European forest policies on the other.

Intensive agriculture and livestock breeding represent critical factors in the Lombardy region since the nitrate vulnerable zones are 62% of utilised agricultural plain area. The aim of reducing the environmental risk caused by agriculture activities (e.g. nitrogen losses into groundwater and atmosphere) can be only achieved through a critical and scientific analysis of livestock manure management in a whole-farm perspective. Keeping in mind this objective, the decision support system (DSS) ValorE was developed. It can be described as a tool able to evaluate from the environmental, technical, agronomic and economic points of view the main components of manure management (production, storage, treatment and land application) for a variety of livestock types (i.e., cattle, swine, poultry, sheep, goats and horses), under different scenarios adopted at farm and territorial scale. ValorE consists of three main components: data management subsystem, model management subsystem and two versions of user-interface, both for farm and territorial scale. Most of the inputs to the DSS comes from external databases, while a software tool developed in the .NET environment and implemented using object oriented programming (C# language), provides the logic to manage the scenario simulation of agronomic and environmental farm-scale models. Users and stakeholders can carry out comparative analysis, starting from the knowledge of the current perspective, in terms of manure management system at farm or territorial scale by interrogating the available databases. Moreover, they can generate different alternative scenarios thanks to different options for the manure handling and cropping system simulation. Then they can finally evaluate and compare different scenarios through multidisciplinary and synthetic indicators but also visualise spatial effects exploiting the coupled webGIS. ValorE is therefore an attempt to offer a comprehensive tool for improving both farm strategy and decision making process, which is particularly important in a very intensive agricultural area, with one of the highest livestock density in the world, as Lombardy. © 2014 Elsevier Ltd.

Abstract Feeding 9 billion people by 2050 on one hand, and preserving biodiversity on the other hand, are two shared policy goals at the global level. Yet while these goals are clear, they are to some extent in conflict, because agriculture is a major cause of biodiversity loss, and the path to achieve both of them is at the heart of a public controversy around ‘productive’ land use and biodiversity conservation. Over the years, the scientific, policy, civil society and agri-business communities have been engaged in producing evidence that can support a land sparing policy (separating intensive agricultural production from biodiversity conservation) or a land sharing policy (integrating the two in larger and more extensive landscapes). This paper contributes to this debate by analyzing land sparing and land sharing (LSS) as a socio-technical controversy. Through the analysis of large and small corpora of scientific, policy, corporate social responsibility and sustainability standards documents we explore the ethical underpinnings and social networks that support the opposing sides of this controversy. We explore these linkages in order to explain how the concept of land sparing achieved dominance in the scientific literature and how the concept has been taken up in international policy, business and civil society circles. We examine the convergences and divergences in alliances between actors in this controversy in order to map how specific actors have promoted the concept of land sparing as the best way to used land for biodiversity and food production.