Scotland’s soils contain over half of the UK’s soil carbon stock, making it important to know how to avoid soil carbon loss. The Scottish landscape is currently a net sink for carbon (mainly due to forestry). A recent report assesses current knowledge on soil carbon and land use in Scotland.

This report from the International Centre for Tropical Agriculture (CIAT) considers the relationships between land use, land degradation and sustainable development goals.

The University of Cambridge Conservation Research Institute have set up a blog to provide space for a conversation about the future of the British countryside.

The United Nations Convention to Combat Desertification (UNCCD) has published its first edition of the Global Land Outlook (GLO), addressing future challenges and opportunities for the management and restoration of land resources in the context of sustainable development.

This book considers the main links between global conservation of the environment and food production.

Initiated in 1999, the Grain-for-Green Program was set up primarily to reduce soil erosion and uses cash payments to incentivise people to replant trees on sloped crop and scrubland. This study examines the effects on bird and bee species in the scheme across the country. It finds that the program has not greatly benefited birds and bees due to the common practice of monoculture tree planting.

There is increasing evidence that human demands on natural systems are accelerating and could affect the stability and services provided by these systems. This paper aims to aid understanding of the temporal and spatial variability of human pressures on natural systems, which provides a foundation for environmental damage mitigation. Recent advances in remote sensing have allowed great development in mapping of human pressures, particularly in forested areas. Other pressures, such as roads and pasture lands, have by comparison been overlooked.

This paper in Science discusses the potential of yield increase incentives as a way of convincing farmers to save land to protect biodiversity rather than increasing farmland.   The increase of agricultural land is one of the leading causes of biodiversity loss and greenhouse gas emissions in tropical countries. This paper argues that increasing yields on existing agricultural land can provide farmers with the incentive to spare land for wildlife and nature.

In their two-part contribution to the Livestock debate on the website of Arc2020 (the agricultural and rural convention), the IPES representatives Olivier de Schutter, Hans Herren and Emile Frison discuss the environmental footprint of livestock, the need for livestock farming to be reintegrated into landscapes and the flaws in the current factory farming model; and they propose ways to address the challenges posed by industrial livestock systems.