This chapter examines processes of land grabbing in Laos, where the government has granted 4 percent of the national territory to foreign and domestic plantation, mining, and hydropower investors. A major portion of this land has been developed through the coercive dispossession of peasant land. However, the development of land concessions has not been a frictionless process as peasants have become increasingly frustrated with the expropriation of their land and have found various ways to voice their concerns within the country’s constrained political environment While the Lao government has made significant reforms to land-related policies in recent years, we show how these changes are driven by dynamic social and political relationships amongst state agencies, foreign investors, and peasant communities.

This study investigated the performance of cocoa trees within an irrigated cocoa plantation situated in the semi-arid region of Bahia, Brazil. Two treatments were compared: “full sun,” where cocoa trees were not shaded, and “shade,” where trees were covered with a shading net absorbing 30 % of the radiation. The findings highlight the potential of dendrometers to quantify this effect what can be used in future to optimize management practices. By doing so, more effective strategies can be developed to enhance cocoa yield and overall productivity in semi-arid regions.

The breakdown of plant material fuels soil functioning and biodiversity. Currently, process understanding of global decomposition patterns and the drivers of such patterns are hampered by the lack of coherent large-scale datasets. The authors buried 36,000 individual litterbags (tea bags) worldwide and found an overall negative correlation between initial mass-loss rates and stabilization factors of plant-derived carbon, using the Tea Bag Index (TBI). Learn more.