Economic liberalisation, improved transport and communication systems, and the global demand for energy, minerals and agricultural commodities have fostered natural resource investment in many lower- and middle-income countries.

Over the past few years, agribusiness, investment funds and government agencies have been acquiring long-term rights over large areas of land in Africa. Together with applicable national and international law, contracts define the terms of an investment project, and the way risks, costs and benefits are distributed.

Ecosystem services have been disturbed to such an extent that, unless remedial action is taken urgently, reaching both the UN Convention on Biological Diversity (CBD) target of slowing biodiversity loss by 2010 and the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs) by 2015 could prove impossible (MA, 2005a). This report looks at the reasons behind this crisis, pinpointing governance as the crucial factor to get right.

How can Web 2.0 applications be integrated with participatory development approaches? How can they facilitate and contribute to people’s participation and decision-making? What are the challenges and barriers to people’s participation? How do we address factors such as access, equity, control, and oversight? Can Web 2.0 applications challenge fundamental social inequalities? This special issue aims to publish a collection of articles, which provide working examples from practice.

As new mechanisms for ‘reducing emissions from deforestation and forest degradation’ (REDD) are being negotiated in international climate change talks, resource tenure must be given greater attention.

Despite widely voiced concerns about some of the negative implications of protected areas, and growing pressures to ensure that they fulfil social as well as ecological objectives, no standard methods exist to assess social impacts.

Approximately 17 per cent of global greenhouse gas emissions are caused by land-use change and, in particular, the destruction of tropical forests. Reducing land-use change and forest degradation has been shown as a cost-effective way of slowing carbon emissions compared to other mitigation strategies such as curbing emissions from power stations.

The concept of local food is appealing to many consumers. But it is difficult to define what actually constitutes local food. Given the globalised nature of agricultural markets, bread baked in a small village bakery in England may be made from grain grown in Canada. Similarly, many of the inputs to a West Country dairy farm selling local ice cream may come from outside the UK.

 This special issue focuses on recent approaches to climate change adaptation which are community-based and participatory. It highlights innovative participatory methods to help communities analyse the causes and effects of climate change, integrate scientific and community knowledge, and plan appropriate adaptation measures. Although CBA is a relatively new field, lessons and challenges are beginning to emerge, including the need to bring together disaster risk reduction, livelihoods, and climate change adaptation work, issues around the type and quality of participation in CBA, and the need for policies and institutions that support it.

As a policy research organisation,the International Institute for Environment and Development has evolved key concepts, theories and ways of working in sustainable development since 1973. The big idea we explore here is investing in locally controlled forestry.

Across Africa, young people are seen as a ‘lost generation’: frustrated, excluded and marginalised from decision-making processes. This special issue of Participatory Learning and Action shows how this is changing. Young people in Africa are challenging the norms and structures that exclude them, engaging with the state and demanding accountability.

This publication, produced in collaboration with WWF Southern Africa, looks at how community-based natural resource management (CBNRM) can inform and contribute to climate change adaptation at the community level, specifically to community-based adaptation (CBA) to climate change. It provides a framework for analysing the two approaches at conceptual and practical levels.