Feature Papers for 'Land Socio-Economic and Political Issues' Section

Dear Colleagues,

Understanding land as a coupled human-environment system has become increasingly important in research and policy-making at local, regional, national, and international scales. Research on land systems and their socio-economic and political issues contributes to broader land management by linking land use to the social, economic, and environmental dimensions of sustainability. Recent advances in land science include understanding of human-environment relationships that underpin and drive land system dynamics. These advances led to the measurement and monitoring of land changes, application of geographic information systems, remote sensing, and modelling technologies, and the increased availability of datasets (e.g., time series data). Overall, these advances provide opportunities to offer new insights into land systems, the nature of change, and the consequences of policy and other interventions. This section of the Special Issue in Land will focus on the social, economic, political, legal, physical, and planning aspects of urban and rural land use, different land policies, and the nexus of human–land–environment tied with contemporary and historical land issues. This SI attempts to provide the exchange of ideas and information from a diverse range of disciplines and interest groups that must be combined to formulate effective land use policies. Understanding the drivers, trends, and impacts of different contemporary and historical land issues on social and natural processes helps reveal how changes in the land system impact the functioning of socio-economic systems as a whole as well as the tradeoff between these changes. By studying the interplay between social and economic systems that shape land use policies, land issues operate at the interface of the social and economic sciences. They require a high level of interdisciplinary collaboration across academic disciplines, which is reflected in this section of Land. The main contributions of this SI range from conceptual and theoretical interventions to policy-related analyses and from empirical case studies to cross-site comparisons, continental, and global analyses. The priority areas include contemporary and historical land issues, notably socio-economic relations, politics and dynamics of power, land governance, land tenure, access to the land, land market, land rights, and other relevant topics at regional and global levels. The ultimate goal of this SI is to guide governments, policymakers, and planners, and it is also a valuable resource for researchers.

The SI of the Section Feature Paper for: “Land Socio-Economic and Political Issues” welcomes contributions concerning the observation and changes in land systems. Innovative and transparent datasets and tools are essential features to foster land science. We welcome reviews and outstanding articles to this IS in order to improve the current knowledge regarding datasets and models for land systems and global change studies.

In this SI, we invite papers focusing on, but are not limited to, the following topics:

• Land management:
• Landscape planning, conservation, and management;
• Urban/rural planning and development;
• Land monitoring;
• Land and gender;
• Land tenure, including disputes and land grabs;
• Urban tenure security;
• Indigenous and community land rights.
• Land socio-economic:
• Land and investments;
• Livelihoods and food security;
• Land and sustainable development goals;
• Elements of land economics;
• Agricultural economics;
• Rural economics;
• Farm account/coasting;
• Supply chain, marketing, and consumption.
• Land politics:
• Global land grab;
• Competing political tendencies in governance of land grabbing;
• Land sovereignty;
• Human rights to land;
• Property regimes in land and natural resources;
• Land transaction and land governance;
• Land reform;
• Land conflict.

Prof. Dr. Hossein Azadi
Prof. Dr. Rando Värnik
Dr. Ants-Hannes Viira
Guest Editors

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.