The paper analyzes the impacts of mining activities on sustainable land management in mining areas in the Republic of Serbia and Romania and discusses the main challenges related to the management of these issues in legislation and practice. Particular attention is paid to land disturbance, mine waste management and land reclamation, as well as access to land for mining purposes, the transfer of mining royalties and the partnerships of the mining industry, governments, communities and civil society for sustainable mining. Both governments are willing to provide the adequate role to mining in strengthening the national economies, but they face numerous constraints in this matter. Sustainable mining practices and consistent implementation of the mining for the closure planning approach, within an improved legislative framework and in cooperation with stakeholders at all levels, create conditions for the development of creative, profitable, environmentally-sound and socially-responsible management and reuse of mine lands.

Food security is becoming an increasingly important issue worldwide, and in this respect, urban agriculture has a substantial role. Nonetheless, pressure for agricultural land conversion and fragmentation is highest in peri-urban areas. In order to respond to these challenges, urban farmers use different adaptation strategies and business models, including product differentiation based on geographical indications (GIs). The paper considers land take (LT) issues in Futog, the settlement of the City of Novi Sad, registered as the GI of Futog cabbage, as an illustrative example which reflects the attitude of land use policy and planning in Serbia towards the specific conditions and requirements that growers of GIs have to meet. The purpose of this study is to identify the role of urban land use planning within LT processes and the implications this has on urban agriculture, accordingly. The supporting framework used for quantifying LT in the period 2000–2018 was CORINE Land Cover (CLC), specifically Urban Atlas (UA) datasets for two time series between 2012 and 2018. Since a significant part of agricultural land registered as a GI in Futog was planned for conversion into construction land, the authors conclude that current forms of land use planning in Serbia are not adequate to ensure the protection of either urban agriculture or GIs. Given that there is a clear correlation between GI products and their place of origin, this study recognized the necessary inclusion of all protected agricultural areas, as well as areas with GIs, into legislation binding for land use planning in Serbia, with limitations in terms of new LT.

At the global level, there is an awareness of the need to protect agricultural land from permanent physical loss through land-use change. Preservation of high-quality agricultural land is currently at the center of the international debates, including those of food safety. The main aim of this paper is to provide quantitative analysis of agricultural land-use change dynamics within the area of the Belgrade–Novi Sad highway corridor, as a distinct route that connects two largest cities in Serbia. The results in land-use change and the accompanying contextual aspects are observed between 1990 and 2018, i.e., within the four research periods: 1990–2000, 2000–2006, 2006–2012 and 2012–2018, using GIS-based analysis. The research methodology used Corine Land Cover and Urban Atlas data and revealed dynamics relating to the most influential land take directions during the ca. 30 years by the means of the land take indicator. The results were complemented with the qualitative content analysis of spatial and regulatory urban plans for the study area, as one of the land-use management instruments in Serbia. The findings indicate that the most intense agricultural land-use change to non-agricultural land occurred in the period 1990-2000 due to various drivers (vicinity of large cities, illegal construction, developed transport infrastructure), but also distinguish the role of spatial and urban planning documentation in promoting the new land take.