The Puna region, located in NW Argentina, is a dry highland with many endemic species and significant traditional cultural heritage. The Puna was a pilot region for the Land Degradation Assessment in Drylands project (LADA-FAO) which aimed at assessing desertification status in different land use…

WOCAT – The World Overview of Conservation Approaches and Technologies with its unique methodology and global Sustainable Land Management (SLM) database - can help promote scaling out of SLM and thus contribute to land degradation neutrality. This paper focuses primarily on three Land Degradation…

Highlights Remote sensing productivity indicators identified improvements in areas with sustainable land management. At least 10 years from the intervention establishment were needed for the impact to be detected. The impacts of some sustainable land management practices were not detected,…

GLTN and IFAD invites you to One Day Training on Impact Evaluation of Land Tenure and Governance Interventions scheduled for 24th March 2019 in Washington DC, USA. This training follows the successful development of a Guideline for Impact Assessment of Land Tenure and Governance Interventions; which…

Countries committed under the Paris Agreement to a broad goal of limiting global temperature rise to under 2 degrees C (3.6 degrees F), ideally 1.5 degrees C (2.7 degrees F). The latest report from the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) makes it clear that half a degree of warming…

While the modern agricultural system has helped stave off famines and feed the world’s 7 billion residents, the way we eat and produce food is posing a threat to future populations’ food security. With an expected increase in population to 10 billion in 2050, ensuring food security is more important…

Take these eight steps to make soils more resilient to drought, produce more food and store emissions, urge Cornelia Rumpel and colleagues.

Food production is a major cause of energy use and GHG emissions, and therefore diet change is an important behavioural strategy for reducing associated environmental impacts. However, a severe obstacle to diet change may be consumers’ underestimation of the environmental impacts of different types…

Soil organic matter can release carbon dioxide to the atmosphere as the climate warms. Organic matter sorbed to reactive (iron- and aluminium-bearing) soil minerals is an important mechanism for long-term carbon storage. However, the global distribution of mineral-stored carbon across climate zones…

The draft report ‘A Global Pact for the Environment: Legal Foundations’ compiles studies from experts in international environmental law from around the world, and outlines the reasons that a Global Pact would constitute an important milestone in the evolution of international environmental law and…

'Women as Environmental Stewards’ presents case studies from Armenia, Belize, China, Colombia, the Gambia, India, Mauritius, Morocco, Paraguay, Peru, Turkey, Uganda and Viet Nam that show how, when women are empowered and have equal opportunities to contribute to sustainable development, it leads to…

A new report from the EAT-Lancet Commission for Food, Planet, and Health offers first-ever scientific targets for global diets and sustainable food production. It provides a customizable, universal guideline for healthy eating and a consensus on the urgency of food system change. Using an approach…

This 3-week Intergovernmental Science-Policy Platform on Biodiversity and Ecosystem Services (IPBES) web conference, which will be held from 14 January until 4 February, is an open forum that will bring together governments, experts, and other stakeholders to review and further explore knowledge…

The European Commission (EC), the European Space Agency (ESA) and the Network of European Regions Using Space Technologies (NEREUS) have launched a new report consisting of 99 stories from European public authorities that showcases how they benefit from Copernicus, the European Union’s Earth…

Who are the world’s poor? This paper presents a new global profile of multidimensional poverty using three specifications of multidimensional poverty. The paper draws comparisons with the global monetary poverty profile and with the new World Bank measure of combined monetary and non-monetary…

Most emissions of nitrous oxide (N2O) are linked to the use of nitrogen (N) fertiliser in agriculture, highlighting a need for agricultural management practices that reduce emissions while maintaining agronomic productivity. A new study has assessed the long-term impact of conventional tillage (CT —…

The report titled, ‘Atlas of Migration in Northern Central America,’ was launched on 11 December 2018, in Marrakech, Morocco, on the sidelines of the Intergovernmental Conference on the Global Compact for Migration. It seeks to contribute to the design of public policies, programmes and efforts to…

As TRANSrisk is coming to its end, a series of scientific publications have been and will be issued. These publications summarise TRANSrisk outcomes by either examining the uncertainties underlying various strategies for a low-carbon future, or presenting innovative methodologies and tools that…

In recent decades there have been numerous global and regional targets and initiatives to halt and reverse land degradation. The land degradation neutrality (LDN) target, embedded in the United Nations Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs), provides a framework for countries to avoid or reduce…

The OECD Development Centre’s Social Institutions and Gender Index (SIGI) is a cross-country measure of discrimination against women in social institutions (formal and informal laws, social norms, and practices) across 180 countries. Discriminatory social institutions intersect across all stages of…

More than 3.2 billion people, or 2 in every 5 people, are impacted by land degradation today and up to 143 million people could move within their countries by 2050 to escape water scarcity and falling crop productivity due to the slow onset impacts of climate change.

If you’re looking to live eco-friendly, you must take into account the water footprint of your food. (Water footprint is the amount of water needed to make specific goods and services). Unfortunately, most people don’t know about the HUGE amounts of water needed to make their food. If you’re one of…

In many countries around the world, migration has become a defining issue of the current age. In 2017, there were an estimated 258 million people living in a country other than that of their birth. This is a significant increase on the figure from the turn of the century, which was estimated at 173…

ECLAC and FAO’s new Atlas of Migration in Northern Central America shows that the majority of migrants from the countries of the Northern Triangle -Guatemala, Honduras and El Salvador- come from rural areas. The report, which analyzes the main characteristics of migration in the subregion, was…

The European Commission does not have a clear picture of the challenges presented by the growing threats of desertification and land degradation in the EU, according to a new report by the European Court of Auditors. The steps taken so far by the Commission and Member States to combat…