Land, air and water are the cornerstones of life on Earth. To sustain the vitality of our global ecosystem, we must understand the health of our natural assets and how to halt and repair damage done to them. The Intergovernmental Science-Policy Platform on Biodiversity and Ecosystem Services (IPBES)…

WOCATpedia.net is a wiki based knowledge platform related to the WOCAT (World Overview of Conservation Technologies and Approaches) network. This wiki focuses, similar as the WOCAT network, on issues related to Sustainable Land Management (SLM), as e.g. Food Security, Economics of Sustainable Land…

The negative impact of a lack of plant functional diversity on ecosystems is well-documented, and can be seen in action in most dryland ecosystems. However, the indirect effects of biotic interactions – activities of certain living organisms that can impact the survival of others – are still unknown…

This special site features a collection of recently published Open Access books on Environmental Sciences. Browse all the books to find your favorites and download the titles or chapters to your personal devices!

Sub-Saharan Africa will need to create 18 million jobs each year until 2035, to accommodate young labour market entrants. The AU-EU Summit of November 2017 identified it as a top priority for Africa and for development cooperation. The European Union has the desire and the instruments needed to…

As farmers, foresters and providers, women have a unique understanding of the ecosystems they live alongside. A pioneering radio programme in Malawi is tapping into this immense body of knowledge by creating a platform for women to engage in landscape restoration.

Cities are particularly vulnerable to climate risks due to their agglomeration of people, buildings and infrastructure. Differences in methodology, hazards considered, and climate models used limit the utility and comparability of climate studies on individual cities. Here we assess, for the first…

Regenerating Urban Land draws on the experience of eight case studies from around the world. The case studies outline various policy and financial instruments to attract private sector investment in urban regeneration of underutilized and unutilized areas and the requisite infrastructure…

Monitoring SDG 15 in an EU context focuses on progress made in improving the status of ecosystems, in decelerating land degradation and in preserving biodiversity.

FAO has developed e- learning courses for professionals working in food and nutrition security, social and economic development and sustainable management of natural resources.

The Regional Forum on Sustainable Development for the UNECE Region will be held on Thursday, 1 March, and Friday, 2 March 2018, at the International Conference Centre Geneva (CICG). About: The Regional Forum on Sustainable Development (RFSD) follows up on and reviews the implementation of the 2030…

Climate change is a potential threat to achieving food security, particularly in the most food insecure regions. However, interpreting climate change projections to better understand the potential impacts of a changing climate on food security outcomes is challenging. This paper addresses this…

Droughts of the twenty-first century are characterized by hotter temperatures, longer duration, and greater spatial extent, and are increasingly exacerbated by human demands for water. This situation increases the vulnerability of ecosystems to drought, including a rise in drought-driven tree…

The top 20 meat and dairy corporations emit more greenhouse gases (GHGs) than Germany, as our fact sheet shows. The authors note that commitments made by governments meeting in Bonn to keep global temperatures from rising above 1.5 degree or even 2 degrees will not be possible without addressing the…

The list of the world’s largest 500 companies by turnover contains a huge number of firms engaged in agriculture and food. And the trend continues towards a further concentration of power. Agrifood corporations are driving industrialization along the entire global value chain, from farm to plate…

The world’s soils store more carbon than the planet’s biomass and atmosphere combined. An increase of just 1% of the carbon stocks in the top metre of soils would be higher than the amount corresponding to the annual anthropogenic CO2 emissions from fossil fuel burning. Many innovations in…

On February 12th, 2018, EcoAgriculture Partners and the FAO Liaison Office for North America held the inaugural event of a new High-Level Speaker Series, Toward Sustainable Landscapes. Paula Caballero, Global Director of the Climate Program at World Resource Institute, opened the series with a brief…

A sustainable planet may not be attainable, and a fairer world may require us to temper our dreams. Justice, equity, sanitation and even clean water may be within the reach of all, but only if many of the planet’s seven billion humans give up the dream of high life satisfaction as well. To achieve…

Recent article published in the Journal of Migration and Development for people who are working on human migration and urban land usage and land cover change, might be interested in this study. As rural-urban human migration occurs in big cities, we often don't fully recognize their impact on the…

There are various climate risks that are caused or influenced by climate change. They are known to have a wide range of physical, economic, environmental and social impacts. Apart from damages to the physical environment, many climate risks (climate variability, extreme events and climate-related…

Agribusiness has a major role to play in transforming the agriculture sector in Africa. Increasing demand for high-value food products around the world, the production and export of these goods represents an opportunity to increase both income and employment. To capture the benefits of this trend…

Modeling variations in soil salinity in the oasis of Junggar Basin, China Ligang Ma, Shengtian Yang, Zibibula Simayi, Qing Gu, Jiadan Li, Xiaodong Yang and Jianli Ding Version of Record online: 15 FEB 2018 | DOI: 10.1002/ldr.2890 Carbon Balance as Affected by Biosolid Application in Reforestations…

A changing climate leads to changes in the frequency, intensity, spatial extent, duration and timing of weather and climate extremes, and can result in unprecedented extremes. These climate extremes have significant impacts on human and ecological systems, which are influenced by changes in climate…

Recent surveys of the literature devoted to climate change and migration emphasize the important diversity of outcomes and approaches of the empirical studies. In this paper, we carry out a meta-analysis in order to investigate the role of the various methodological choices of these empirical…

The European Court of Auditors (ECA) is conducting an audit on the EU’s strategic framework for combating desertification – where previously fertile land becomes increasingly dry and unproductive. The audit will examine whether the risk of desertification in the EU is being effectively and…