Dear Colleagues,

Climate change, environmental degradation, and irrational land use pose significant threats to the Earth’s ecosystem and sustainable human development. Specifically, the rapid growth of the global population, the accelerated process of urbanization, and the demands of economic development place enormous pressure on scarce land resources. The global commons (primarily including the Antarctic, Arctic, and high seas) as a crucial component of global land are pivotal for future resource utilization and development. However, these natural resource-rich areas face severe challenges, including resource overexploitation, fragile ecological environments, escalating pollution levels, and heightened security threats. In the absence of an effective governance system, human-induced destruction of public resources and disorderly land development activities continue to be exacerbated. It is therefore imperative to improve the effectiveness of global commons governance in order to address existing issues scientifically while ensuring that public resources are utilized sustainably to promote global sustainability.

In the realm of global commons governance, research primarily focuses on designing and structuring the system for governing global commons. However, there are few studies solving current land-use problems in global commons, improving land-use efficiency, revitalizing multi-value of natural resources, and ultimately promoting sustainable global land use. The development of an internationally centered model for governing natural resources is therefore required to address these issues and promote global sustainability. The primary objective of this Special Issue is to enhance systematic research on global commons governance and sustainable development by exploring novel studies on global commons governance and sustainable land use. High-quality research on the following topics is welcome: policy changes in global commons governance, valuation of global natural resources, vegetation cover changes in global commons, interest relations among governance subjects in global commons, environmental benefits of governance, multi-purpose land utilization, global spatial planning, regional land consolidation, and other issues related to governance of the global commons and sustainable land use. We also welcome articles from interdisciplinary areas that are critical to the governance of the global commons and sustainable land development, such as the relationship between governance of the global commons and climate change, carbon neutrality, and its integration with global sustainable development.

The manuscripts can be case studies, empirical studies, modeling, or review studies. The core arguments should focus on the following topics:

1. Land use sustainability;
2. Global commons governance policy changes;
3. Assessment of the natural resources of the global commons;
4. Sustainable use of global commons;
5. Effect of global commons governance;
6. Global commons governance path;
7. Multi-purpose land utilization;
8. Spatial planning and optimum land use;
9. Sustainable land-use change towards carbon neutrality;
10. Global commons governance and climate change.

Prof. Dr. Fangzhou Xia
Prof. Dr. Hualin Xie
Prof. Dr. Xiaoshun Li
Dr. Ling Li
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 100 words) can be sent to the Editorial Office for announcement on this website.

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-blind 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.

• land use sustainability
• global commons
• spatial planning and governance
• global nature resources
• carbon neutrality
• climate change