Contamination of land by persistent organic pollutants has significant implications for human health and for future development potential. Bioremediation is an effective method for reducing the concentrations of such contaminants to below harmful levels, but the presence of co‐contaminants may…

FAO report calls for a more pro-active and long-term planning to become more resilient against droughts

Desertification is a form of land degradation in drylands. It results from unsustainable land management practices and climatic factors. Thirteen EU Member States, not only in the Mediterranean region, but also in Central and Eastern Europe, have declared that they are affected by desertification.…

This year’s theme for the World Day to Combat Desertification focuses on sustainable land management (SLM) as a way to regenerate economies, create jobs and revitalize communities. Under the slogan “Land has true value – Invest in it”. Over the years, IUCN has focused its efforts on advocating for…

Images of thousands of African youth drowning in the Mediterranean, propelled by poverty or conflict at home and lured by the hope of jobs abroad, have fed a misleading narrative that migration from Africa harms rather than helps the continent. The latest edition of the UNCTAD flagship Economic…

This report provides a new perspective to the nature of urban sprawl and its causes and environmental, social and economic consequences. This perspective, which is based on the multi-dimensionality of urban sprawl, sets the foundations for the construction of new indicators to measure the various…

In March this year, an unusual sand and dust storm nicknamed ‘Mars on Earth or Orange Snow[1]’ transported and deposited dust that transformed European landscapes into a surreal orange-tinted scenery. An even more drastic dust storm swept over India recently and left behind a trail of casualties.[2]…

The Landscapes Portal is an online GIS platform with a number of features for visualisation, data management and spatial modelling

The Expert Review of the First Order Draft of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) Special Report on Climate Change and Land (SRCCL) will take place from 11 June to 5 August 2018. Expert Reviewers can register at https://www.ipcc.ch/apps/comments/srccl/fod/ until 29 July 2018.

With a growing population with changing demands, competition for the global land resource is increasing. We need to feed a projected population of 9–10 billion by 2050, rising to approximately 12 billion by 2100. At the same time, we need to reduce the climate impact of agriculture, forestry and…

The publication is devoted to the deserts of the world and desertification as a global phenomenon of land degradation. Encyclopedia contains more than 1000 articles, which describe the deserts of the world; Large lakes and transit rivers crossing the deserts; general terms on climate, vegetation,…

Land is a limited resource. There are different – synergistic or competing – options how land can be used. Any use does impact our soil, sediment and water system to which the land is linked. A good understanding of these complex linkages is essential in order to steward land to a more sustainable…

This paper explores the linking of disaster risk reduction, climate change, and the sustainable development goals in Paris agreements and reveals that no reason exists for climate change to be separated from wider disaster risk reduction and sustainable development processes.

Transformation is picking up speed in the power sector, but urgent action is required in heating, cooling and transport This year’s Renewables 2018 Global Status Report GSR reveals two realities: one in which a revolution in the power sector is driving rapid change towards a renewable energy future,…

A new report by the International Renewable Energy Agency (IRENA), the International Energy Agency (IEA), and the Renewable Energy Policy Network for the 21st Century (REN21), Renewable Energy Policies in a Time of Transition, is an unprecedented collaboration that sheds new light on the policy…

Communities across the world are becoming more interested in eating a healthy, nutritious, and low-footprint diet. But there remains a big disconnect between consumers, producers, and the impact current production and consumption patterns have on the environment and climate. What can you do? The…

Climate-compatible development (CCD) is being operationalised across the developing world through projects that integrate development, adaptation and mitigation using community-based approaches—community-based CCD (CB-CCD). By incorporating and considering local people’s concerns, these projects are…

This paper proposes a selective review of the classical economics-based literature on climate change and migration, focusing on the extent to which agriculture might be considered a key mediating channel linking climate change to migration. Overall, climate change is expected to have large and…

ISRIC, the international centre for world soil information, is a pioneer when it comes to Data Management. ISRIC has worked on compiling and harmonising data on soils for over 50 years. It makes the data available in a FAIR manner and supports open data where possible. ISRIC is therefore a real WUR…

The European Pollutant Release and Transfer Register (E-PRTR) ensures public access to information on pollutant releases to the environment from Europe’s largest facilities. Updated E-PRTR data have recently been published by the EEA, including information on pollutant releases to the environment…

Land degradation is becoming a serious environmental issue threatening fertile agricultural soils and other natural resources. There are many driving forces behind land degradation. The expansion of artificial surfaces due to various economic activities, such as housing, industry, and transport…

Land use has important consequences for the environment, public health, economic productivity, inequality and social segregation. Land use policies are often complex and require co-ordination across all levels of government as well as across policy sectors. Not surprisingly, land use decisions can…

The cultivation of bioenergy plants at fertile, arable lands increasingly results in new land use conflicts with food production and cannot be considered as sustainable, therefore. Marginal lands have been frequently considered as potential alternative for producing bioenergy from biomass. However,…

The World Bank is pleased to release the 2018 Atlas of Sustainable Development Goals . With over 180 maps and charts, the new publication shows the progress societies are making towards the 17 SDGs . It’s filled with annotated data visualizations, which can be reproducibly built from source code and…

Researchers have proposed a global roadmap for decarbonisation over the coming decades. The roadmap is based on the idea of a simple heuristic, described by the researchers as ‘carbon law’, of halving carbon dioxide (CO2) emissions every decade from 2020 to 2050. The researchers say that, if…