Land Protection

Traditionally, biodiversity conservation gap analyses have been focused on governmental protected areas (PAs). However, an increasing number of social initiatives in conservation (SICs) are promoting a new perspective for analysis. SICs include all of the efforts that society implements to conserve biodiversity, such as land protection, from private reserves to community zoning plans some of which have generated community-protected areas. This is the first attempt to analyze the status of conservation in Latin America when some of these social initiatives are included. The analyses were focused on amphibians because they are one of the most threatened groups worldwide. Mexico is not an exception, where more than 60% of its amphibians are endemic. We used a niche model approach to map the potential and real geographical distribution (extracting the transformed areas) of the endemic amphibians. Based on remnant distribution, all the species have suffered some degree of loss, but 36 species have lost more than 50% of their potential distribution. For 50 micro-endemic species we could not model their potential distribution range due to the small number of records per species, therefore the analyses were performed using these records directly. We then evaluated the efficiency of the existing set of governmental protected areas and established the contribution of social initiatives (private and community) for land protection for amphibian conservation. We found that most of the species have some proportion of their potential ecological niche distribution protected, but 20% are not protected at all within governmental PAs. 73% of endemic and 26% of micro-endemic amphibians are represented within SICs. However, 30 micro-endemic species are not represented within either governmental PAs or SICs. This study shows how the role of land conservation through social initiatives is therefore becoming a crucial element for an important number of species not protected by governmental PAs.

Research on the Total Area, Structure and Quality of China's Cultivated Land The Unsuccessful Cultivated Land Protection System Free Trade of Property Rights of Land is an Effective Land-Saving System - On Property Rights of Land Transaction System Reform Literature Review on Food Security Analysis on the Causes and Results of the Great Famine of China (1959 - 1961) Retrospect and Prospect of China's Food Trade China's Grain Distribution International Food Security and Food Trade Measurement of Food Security - Food Gap Domestic Solutions to China's Food Shortage International Solutions to China's Food Shortage.

Foreword Preface Acknowledgements List of Tables List of figures List of Boxes PART 1 The Context 1. Central Asia's Bio-Physical Context: Key Features, Challenges, Responses and Opportunities Daniel Masseli and Inam-ur-Rahim 2. Better land stewardship: an economic and environmental imperative if there is to be sustainable development Victor Squires 3. Evolution of land use in nomadic culture in Central Asia with special reference to Kyrgyzstan and Kazakhstan R.M. Rahimon PART 2 Land stewardship: from concept to practice 4. Land stewardship in practice - An example from the Eastern Pamirs of Tajikistan Kim Andre Vanselow, Tobias Kraudzun and Cyrus Samimi 5. Better land stewardship to avert poverty and land degradation in Afghanistan M.H. Emadi 6. Extensive Livestock Production: Afghanistan's Kuchi herders, risks to and strategies for their survival Michael Jacobs and Catherine A. Schloeder 7. Constraints and barriers to better land stewardship: analysis of PRAs in Tajikistan Barno Kurbanova PART 3 Protecting Rural livelihoods: the key to land stewardship 8. Rural livelihoods in Tajikistan: what factors and policies influence the income and well-being of rural families Zvi Lerman 9. Livestock management problems and policies in Tajikistan: implications for land stewardship David Sedik 10. Rangeland-based livestock: a vital sub sector under threat in Tajikistan Paul J.H. Strong and Victor Squires PART 4 Creating the enabling environment 11. Pastoral Tenure in Central Asia: theme and variation in the five former Soviet republics Sarah Robinson, Stefan Michel, Christoph Wiedemann, Yerlan Zhumabayev and Navinder Singh 12. Governance and the role of institutions in sustainable development Victor Squires 13. Land Tenure Reform in Tajikistan: Implications For Land Stewardship and Social Sustainability: A Case study Nargis HalimovaPART 5 Land protection 14. Engaging with land users the first steps on a long road Hua Limin and Zhang Degang 15. Fostering community-based stewardship of wildlife in Central Asia: transforming snow leopards from pests into valued assets Rodney Jackson 16. Participatory Management of Desert Rangelands to Improve Food Security and Sustain the Natural Resource Base in Uzbekistan M. Shaumarov, K.N. Toderich, E.V. Shuyskaya, S. Ismail, T. Radjabov & Osamu Kozan PART 6 Where to from here? 17. International perspectives on legislative and administrative reforms as an aid to better land stewardship in Central Asia Ian Hannam 18. Conclusions and a way forward John E. Leake Glossary of terms List of abbreviations and acronyms Index

Threats to riverine landscapes are often the result of system‐wide river management policy, located far from where the threats appear, or both. As a result, the rationale for land protection to achieve floodplain conservation and restoration has shifted to require that lands must also have multiple and systemic threat abatement benefits. The Mississippi River Flood of 2011 highlighted the need for increased floodplain complexes along the Mississippi River to provide both systemic threat abatement and conservation benefits. We used spatial analysis, landowner outreach, and market assessment to examine ways to enhance land protection in the Atchafalaya River Basin Floodway, the largest river basin swamp North America and the site of two employed floodway locations during the 2011 flood. We identified six Priority Conservation Areas (77,084 ha) in the floodway that are largely privately owned (mean 78.2 ± 6.4%), with forest dominated by Taxodium distichum (baldcypress) and hydrologic and water quality characteristics considered most suitable for baldcypress regeneration (31.2 ± 2.4% and 10.2 ± 3.0% of area, respectively). Landowners expressed high (80%) interest in land protection programs and found the range of property values derived from market analyzes (minimal protection—$346 USD/ha; additional protections—up to $2,223 USD/ha) to be reasonable. We seek to: (1) enhance current land protection in the Atchafalaya River Basin and (2) provide a model for using land protection to increase the number of floodplains for both systemic threat abatement and conservation benefits.

Voluntary, permanent land protection is a key conservation process in many countries. Concerns with the effectiveness of such decentralized processes exist due to the potential for (1) selection bias, that is, the protection of parcels whose land cover would have been conserved in the absence of protection, and (2) local spillover effects, that is, protection increasing the likelihood that adjacent parcels lose land cover due to additional conversion. We examine the validity of both concerns using a quasi‐experimental approach and a dataset of 220,187 parcels and 26 years of protection and land‐cover change in Massachusetts. We find that land acquisitions and conservation restrictions implemented by state, local, and nongovernmental actors reduced forest loss and conversion to developed uses without increasing either type of land‐cover change on adjacent parcels. Our results suggest that voluntary, permanent land protection can make significant contributions in protecting land cover in landscapes dominated by private ownership.

With the rapid progress of urbanization, the loss of cultivated land has attracted great attention worldwide, and economic compensation is one of the incentives commonly used by the governments to enhance farmers’ enthusiasm in protecting cultivated land. In recent years, although various economic compensation modes have been implemented by the Chinese government, such modes are still experimental and exploratory. Thus, designing and implementing a national economic compensation mode is urgent to effectively protect the quantity and quality of cultivated land. This study focuses on the mode of cultivated land protection fund (CLPF) in Chengdu, which is the earliest mode of the implementation of economic compensation in China in 2008. First, we analyzed the farmers’ satisfaction with the CLPF through a face-to-face interview with 296 farmers in Chengdu. Then, we used the path analysis method to identify the influencing factors of farmers’ satisfaction from the characteristics of farmers and the policy. Results show that the CLPF was generally supported by farmers. Nevertheless, room for improvement still exists. Particularly, farmers’ satisfaction was low in the design of the government’s supervision management of the CLPF. Farmers’ satisfaction with compensation standard, funding use requirement, and the government’s supervision management were remarkably affected by factors, including farmers’ educational level, cultivated land area, total annual agricultural income, farmers’ knowledge of the CLPF, farmers’ recognition of the value of the CLPF, and farmers’ perception of the changes in household economics. Particularly, the direct influence of farmers’ perception of the changes in household economics was the most important. Finally, we proposed the recommendations for constructing a national economic compensation mode for cultivated land protection. Our results have certain guiding significance for promoting the sustainable development of cultivated land protection policies by means of economic incentives in China and other countries.

This report has been prepared as one effort to assist the Albanian government in formulating a policy approach appropriate to the conditions and culture of their country. The goal of this report is to examine the approach to agricultural land protection in other parts of the world, for the lessons they can provide to Albania. There is little recent literature on the subject of agricultural land protection policies. Most of the articles found in the English-language literature are six to ten years old, and in turn often rely on other sources that are several years older still. Thus, this survey should be viewed as a somewhat dated catalog of policy approaches which have been used at various times in the respective jurisdictions rather than as a statement of the current policy structure of a particular jurisdiction.

In 2008, China’s total area of cultivated land was approximately 121.7 million ha, accounting for 7.8% of the world’s total cultivated land; cultivated land per capita was 0.09 ha, only accounting for 38.2% of the world average. China’s cultivated lands were reduced by 12.31 million ha in the period 1997–2008; that is, a loss of 1.03 million ha per year. Although China implements stringent cultivated land protection policies and in some areas has achieved much success, the rate of reduction of cultivated land through rapid urbanisation, agricultural structure adjustment and ecological restoration has proved uncontrollable. Proposed solutions to China’s cultivated land protection include: 1) learning from the successful experiences of other countries; 2) reforming cultivated land protection measures; and 3) paying more attention to improving the quality of its cultivated lands.

Spatial optimization approaches that were originally developed to help conservation organizations determine protection decisions over small spatial scales are now used to inform global or continental scale priority setting. However, the different decision contexts involved in large-scale resource allocation need to be considered. We present a continuous optimization approach in which a decision-maker allocates funding to regional offices. Local decision-makers then use these funds to implement habitat protection efforts with varying effectiveness when evaluated in terms of the funder's goals. We illustrate this continuous formulation by examining the relative priority that should be given to different counties in the coterminous United States (US) when acquiring land to establish new protected areas. If weighting all species equally, counties in the southwest US, where large areas can be bought cheaply, are priorities for protection. If focusing only on species of conservation concern, priorities shift to locations rich in such species, particularly near expanding exurban areas facing high rates of future habitat conversion (e.g., south-central Texas). Priorities for protection are sensitive to what is assumed about local ecological and decision-making processes. For example, decision-makers who doubt the efficacy of local land protection efforts should focus on a few key areas, while optimistic decision-makers should disperse funding more widely. Efforts to inform large-scale conservation priorities should reflect better the types of choice that decision-makers actually face when working over these scales. They also need to report the sensitivity of recommended priorities to what are often unstated assumptions about local processes affecting conservation outcomes.

Recently,multifunctional cultivated land(MCL) management has been a hot topic in the world.To get a deep understanding of the challenges such as the disorderly competition of cultivated land demand,marginalization of cultivated land and degradation of cultivated ecosystem,a comprehensive analytical framework was established based on the crux of mono-functional land use.From this point of view,it is vital to promote the transition of cultivated land protection towards the MCL management.However,there is no explanation framework of the connotation of the MCL.From the standpoints of positive and normative meanings,supply and demand meanings and the relationships among them,this paper established a comprehensive explanation framework through literature review.Finally,suggestions on promoting the transition such as establishing the spatial integration mode of the MCL based on main function differentiations,expanding the channels of cultivated land value enhancement and establishing the safeguard mechanism of integrated use of the MCL were proposed.