Land Governance, Rural Livelihoods and Food Security

Dear Colleagues,

Socioeconomic, demographic, climatic, cultural and political drivers are reshaping rural landscapes worldwide, with direct implications for rural livelihoods and food security. Rising competition for land, water and other rural natural resources—for agriculture, settlement expansion, infrastructure, conservation and extractive uses—has accelerated the conversion of natural and semi-natural areas, altered ecosystem services and increased fragmentation and degradation. These dynamics affect rural landscape and household production possibilities, access to common resources, exposure to climate risks and the stability and affordability of food, particularly for vulnerable rural groups.

Spatial planning, land-use governance, related policy instruments and local citizens are therefore central to managing trade-offs in rural transformation between economic opportunities, service provision, infrastructure development and the sustainable use of land, water and ecosystems that underpin livelihoods and nutrition. Well-designed instruments can help secure equitable access to productive resources, reduce land-use conflicts, guide investments in rural infrastructure and market connectivity and safeguard critical ecosystem services, while supporting adaptation and mitigation in a low carbon development pathway. In addition, planning often operates in a fragile and opaque institutional context, shaped by place-based biophysical conditions, institutional capacity and policy coherence and the behaviour and bargaining power of diverse actors. Because land-use decisions have long-term and often irreversible effects on livelihood trajectories and food-system resilience, improving spatial planning systems today is particularly urgent in regions experiencing rapid economic and population change, intensifying climate hazards and a growing demand for food, housing, infrastructure and services.

Rural livelihoods and food security are central to rural transformation because they determine how households adapt to economic, social and environmental change. Transformation also brings challenges. Effective rural transformation therefore depends on policies that expand opportunities that rural people can secure stable livelihoods and reliable access to nutritious food. Rural transformation can alter livelihoods and food security by limiting available strategies, while displacement and resettlement may break social connections and lessen access to productive resources, increasing vulnerability to food insecurity. Rural transformation under these conditions tends to deepen inequalities, weaken household resilience and undermine long term food security unless communities retain meaningful rights over land and natural resources. In this Special Issue, we would like to invite you to submit regular research articles and reviews articles on one or more of the following topics of interest:

• Land-use and land-use management
• Land-use change
• Land systems
• Land governance and institutions
• Regulatory and policy issues
• Environmental and landscape issues
• Societal, local stakeholders and citizen issues
• Land grabbing and corruption
• Land market and land value transformation
• Land-use conflicts
• Climate change, climate resilience, adaptation strategies, sustainability incentives and food security
• Agrarian inequality, rural-urban relations and food security
• Sustainable development goals
• Land-use changes and circular-economy planning options
• Agri-food systems in the circular economy
• Politics of rural livelihoods and food security

We look forward to receiving your original research articles and reviews.

Prof. Dr. Štefan Bojnec
Guest Editor

Manuscript Submission Information

Manuscripts should be submitted online at www.mdpi.com by registering and logging in to this website. Once you are registered, click here to go to the submission form. Manuscripts can be submitted until the deadline. All submissions that pass pre-check are peer-reviewed. Accepted papers will be published continuously in the journal (as soon as accepted) and will be listed together on the special issue website. Research articles, review articles as well as short communications are invited. For planned papers, a title and short abstract (about 250 words) can be sent to the Editorial Office for assessment.

Submitted manuscripts should not have been published previously, nor be under consideration for publication elsewhere (except conference proceedings papers). All manuscripts are thoroughly refereed through a single-anonymized peer-review process. A guide for authors and other relevant information for submission of manuscripts is available on the Instructions for Authors page. Land is an international peer-reviewed open access monthly journal published by MDPI.

Please visit the Instructions for Authors page before submitting a manuscript. The Article Processing Charge (APC) for publication in this open access journal is 2600 CHF (Swiss Francs). Submitted papers should be well formatted and use good English. Authors may use MDPI's English editing service prior to publication or during author revisions.

• land-use management
• land governance
• land-use change
• land systems
• land-use policy
• land grabbing
• land-use conflicts
• spatial planning
• institutional change
• climate adaptation
• sustainable land management
• circular economy
• sustainable development goals
• rural livelihoods
• food sovereignty
• food security
• rural transformation
• agricultural diversification
• climate resilience and sustainable agriculture
• rural livelihoods diversification
• household vulnerability and resilience
• resource grabbing and land use conflicts
• climate smart agriculture
• vulnerability and inequality