Global environmental governance (GEG) is one of the world’s major attempts to address climate change issues through mitigation and adaptation strategies. Despite a significant improvement in GEG’s structural, human, and financial capital, the global commons are decaying at an unprecedented pace. Among the global commons, land has the largest share in GEG. Land use change, which is rooted in increasing populations and urbanization, has a significant role in greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions. As a response, land governance and, consequently, good land governance, have arisen as normative concepts emerging from a series of success factors (notably economic development, environmental conservation, and social justice) to achieve greater sustainability. However, global land governance has shown little success in helping GEG due to the lack of intellectual and flexible thinking over governing the land sector. Consequently, reforming land governance “in a smart way” is one of the most critical actions that could contribute to achieving GEG goals. Hence, we propose a smart land governance (SLG) system that will be well addressed, understood, and modeled in a systemic and dynamic way. A smart system may be smart enough to adapt to different contexts and intellectual responses in a timely fashion. Accordingly, SLG is able to promote shared growth and solve many land sector problems by considering all principles of good land governance. Therefore, in order to enhance adaptive land governance systems, efficient land administration and management are required. This study’s outcomes will raise the comprehension of the problems of land management, providing an excellent framework to help land planners and policy-makers, as well as the development of strategic principles with respect to the principal multidimensional components of SLG.

The present study attempted to examine the impact of inhabitants’ perceptions and local community participation on supporting sustainable tourism development. The goal of the current study was to determine how local community involvement and local views affected the development of a sustainable tourism industry. Inhabitants’ positive/negative perceptions and local community participation had direct but differential effects on supporting sustainable tourism development. Findings revealed that positive perceptions of residents affected their support for tourism development at twice the rate than their negative perceptions did, which indicated their higher readiness for participating in the tourism development process. Moreover, findings showed that using 16 latent variables to form a structural model and a path analysis method was good enough in terms of covering the research questions and analyzing the dataset.

Little is known about the board structures and processes adopted by agricultural cooperatives, particularly in Eastern European countries. We address this substantial knowledge gap by focusing on Estonian agricultural cooperatives. Using survey results from a sample of 23 Estonian agricultural cooperatives, we identify board structures and processes, measure organizational health, and compare our findings to similar studies in other countries. We find both similarities and differences between sample cooperatives and their counterparts in other countries. Estonian agricultural cooperatives tend to perform better than those without a board. However, more research at the member level is needed in order to draw definite conclusions. Member preference heterogeneity emerges as a potential future threat to organizational health and, thus, demands the attention of cooperative leaders in Estonia. We conclude that there exists considerable room for improvement through the introduction of a more flexible legal framework and the adoption of professional board governance processes, which includes director orientation training, inclusion of additional financial expertise and board evaluation routines.

Farm income is a policy-relevant proxy for farm households' viability. Volatile income levels reduce the well-being of farmers and decrease their incentives to produce, invest, and innovate. This article provides a comprehensive analysis of the associations between agricultural subsidies, farm characteristics, and the stability of farm income, along with their relative importance, by applying a linear fixed-effects model to the Estonian Farm Accountancy Data Network (FADN) sample. Building on previous analyses, we show that a significant portion of agricultural subsidies in gross farm income is positively associated with income instability. Our estimates suggest that financial immobility is positively correlated with income stability. This indicates that farm-specific grants can provide opportunities to invest while also alleviating budget constraints for indebted farms. After controlling for various farm characteristics, we find that income becomes more stable as farmers age, while income volatility associated with agricultural production is positively linked to rising land prices.

Land-tenure security is integral to local communities’ socioeconomic development. It has been a center of debate in academia and for legislators and advocates to implement reforms to enhance efficient and sustainable development in land management. Yet, knowledge gaps remain in how various contract-farming regimes contribute to land-improvement investment and technical efficiency. This study used a data set of 650 farm households collected through a two-stage stratified sampling to investigate the influence of three contract-farming regimes: long-term, medium-term, and short-term contracts, on the land-improvement investment, productivity, and technical efficiency of contract farmers in Punjab, Pakistan. The study used multivariate probit and ordinary least square regression models to examine the posit relationships. The findings highlight that farmers with long-term land contracts have higher per hectare yield, income and profit than those with medium-term and short-term contracts. The results confirm that farmers with medium- and long-term contracts tend to invest more in land-improvement measures, i.e., organic and green manure. Further, the study findings demonstrate that long-term land tenures are more effective when farmers make decisions regarding the on-farm infrastructure, like tube-well installation, tractor ownership, and holding farm logistics. Last, the study results confirm that long-term contracts are more robust regarding technical efficiency. Moreover, the findings support the Marshallian inefficiency hypothesis and extend the literature on contract farming, land-improvement investment, and land use policy, and offer coherent policy actions for stakeholders to improve farmers’ productivity, technical efficiency, and income.

Collaboration in cooperatives helps farmers strengthen their economic position in dynamic agri-food markets. Unlike other types of businesses, agricultural cooperatives are user-owned, user-controlled, and user-benefitting enterprises. Their dual nature as business enterprises and social groups of members complicates performance evaluation. This study attempts to bridge the gap by developing a micro-level conceptual framework for benchmarking agricultural cooperatives. Based on a systematic literature review of 77 empirical studies published in 1987–2025 and thematic analysis, the authors propose an eight-dimensional conceptual framework encompassing competitive, financial, educational, efficiency, environmental, governance, operational, and social performance indicators. The review reveals that existing research prioritises financial indicators while overlooking cooperative-specific characteristics arising from their dualistic nature. The conceptual framework offers a structured conceptual basis for assessing the performance of agricultural cooperatives across sectors and countries. Although applying the framework is beyond the scope of this paper, the authors highlight prospective indicators for future empirical work and practical implementation.