All land of the Republic of Belarus can be classified by categories (7 categories), types of lands (14 types), land users, forms of ownership and types of rights to land plots. The total area of land in the Republic of Belarus is 20760 thousand hectares, including agricultural land occupies 9103.0 thousand hectares (43.8%) of the total area of the republic; settlements, horticultural associations, dacha cooperatives – 849.0 thousand hectares (4.1%); industry, transport, communications, energy, defence and other purposes – 622.2 thousand hectares (3.0%); environmental, health, recreational, historical and cultural purposes – 868.7 thousand hectares (4.2%); forest fund – 8656.4 thousand hectares (41.7%); water fund – 37.3 thousand hectares (0.2%); reserve land – 623.4 thousand hectares (3.0%). The basis of the land resources used in the agro-industrial complex of the republic is arable land, meadows and land under permanent crops, which in general occupy 8387.1 thousand hectares, or 40.4% of the total area of land. The state owns 20683.6 thousand hectares (99.63%) of land, private property – 76.4 thousand hectares (0.37%) of the total area of all lands of the republic. In terms of environmental stability, the territory of the republic belongs to medium-stable territories, the coefficient of environmental stability is 0.63, and in terms of the degree of anthropogenic load – to territories with a relatively low anthropogenic load, the coefficient of anthropogenic load is 2.79.

Loss of the territory biological diversity is one of the most serious challenges for sustainable development of Ukraine. Solution of that problem is the essential constituent of the national ecological policy, which is focused on introduction of the ecosystem approach in all spheres of social and economic development, including protection of biological diversity. The goal of the article is to study some aspects of protection of the biological diversity of rural areas by means of ecosystem renaturalization by transforming degraded and marginal arable lands into forests, grassland and wetlands. The research proposes an organizational mechanism of increase and expansion of the territories with natural lands, which includes planning of land use, landscape and ecological zoning, territorial organization, evaluation of ecosystem benefits, land users’ motivation. The researchers stress on the necessity to create ecological networks and agroforestry. Such structural organization of rural area supports a balanced combination of the “human-land-ecosystem” system due to protecting the main ecosystem functions, i.e., provision of regulating and habitat services. While determining the directions of use of the land plots with degraded and marginal arable lands, the obligatory condition is to justify the benefits from those ecosystem services. To regulate the environmental land relations, it is recommended to introduce conservation easement.