A celebration of the World Day to combat Desertification and Drought - #2019WDCD; 17 June, 2019, FAO Headquarters, Rome, Italy

This report identifies 25 clean air measures that can positively impact human health, grop yields, climate change and socio-economic development, as well as contribute to achieving the Sustainable Development Goals. Implementing these measures could help 1 billion people breathe cleaner air by 2030…

More than 1 in 4 deaths of children under 5 years of age are attributable to unhealthy environments. Every year, environmental risks – such as indoor and outdoor air pollution, second-hand smoke, unsafe water, lack of sanitation, and inadequate hygiene – take the lives of 1.7 million children under…

In 2015, the United Nations adopted the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs), a set of 17 goals aimed to be the roadmap for society to move from the exploitation to the sustainable use of our planet’s resources and from inequality, poverty, and hunger to a proper education and good life for all. A…

Women and men have unequal opportunities to address land degradation. While adoption of Sustainable Development Goal target 15.3 leads the world to ‘strive towards land degradation neutrality (LDN)’ by 2030, gender concerns are sparsely considered in LDN programming to date.

The Stockholm Environment Institute (SEI) released a brief presenting a practical approach to prioritize action on SDG targets. The approach enables decision-makers to identify how interactions between different SDG targets shapes policy outcomes, and promises to help users generate shared…

Since 2009, UEBT annually measures consumer awareness of biodiversity, and how this affects purchasing decisions. Ten years of research, among 68,000 people from 16 countries, and among hundreds of leading companies, provides valuable insights that may guide companies and governments in their…

Desert dust whipped up by strong winds and volcanic aerosols alter the climate as the world warms

While aridity generally decreased in the drylands of Asia during 1948–2008, the change in aridity was opposite in the drylands of the American and African continents between 1948 and 1979 and 1980–2008. Specifically, drylands in the American continent showed a wetting tendency during 1948–1979 and a…

Around 244 million people – 2.8 per cent of the world’s population – were classed as migrants in 2015 by the UN. However, the UN has said it will not define climate migrants as refugees, a status that comes with more international support, citing concerns about watering down support programmes for…

Entrepreneurs are taking advantage of market opportunities and government incentives to restore and manage farmland and forests sustainably. From tree-based crops to organic fertilizers to timber alternatives, these businesses are breathing new life into unproductive land. The Land Accelerator is…

A definitive new global synthesis of the state of nature, ecosystems and nature's contributions to people — the first such report since the landmark Millennium Ecosystem Assessment published in 2005, and the first ever that is inter-governmental — will be presented to representatives of 132…

Biochar is a professional academic journal covering multidisciplines such as agronomy, environmental science, and materials science. It publishes innovative scientific papers on biochar preparation, soil improvement, greenhouse gas emissions, contaminated-environment remediation and water…

Forests are vitally important for sustaining life on Earth, and play a major role in the fight against climate change

Developed in collaboration between FAO and CIHEAM-Bari, WOCAT, ELD and University of Leeds. The course focuses on Sustainable Land Management (SLM) practices, and their place within the global development agenda, specifically in order to achieve SDG target 15.3, which aims "to achieve a land…

Several multilateral environmental agreements include ecosystem restoration. These include Convention on Biological Diversity (CBD)’s Aichi Biodiversity Targets 1431 and 15,32 the Sustainable Development Goals,33 and the United Nations Convention to Combat Desertification’s land degradation…

A new report developed by GIZ highlights success factors and 7 practical entry points for mainstreaming Ecosystem-based Adaptation (EbA) into policies and planning, based on 16 case studies from Mexico, Peru, South Africa, Philippines and Vietnam

A new study, The ecology and economics of restoration: when, what, where, and how to restore ecosystems, surveys the history of land restoration efforts and highlights best practices

Erosion by wind is one of the principal processes associated with land degradation in drylands and is a significant concern to land managers and policymakers globally. In the drylands of North America, millions of tons of soil are lost to wind erosion annually. Of the 60 million ha in the United…

The 2019 edition of the OECD Employment Outlook presents new evidence on changes in job stability, underemployment and the share of well-paid jobs, and discusses the policy implications of these changes with respect to how technology, globalisation, population ageing, and other megatrends are…

For the UN, these “green jobs,” play an important role in realising the vision of the future that practically all countries signed up to when they adopted the landmark Paris Agreement in December 2015, an international commitment to combat climate change, and significantly reduce human activity…

Desertification has become one of the greatest environmental concerns of our planet. Implementation of the action plans for arresting land degradation and for employing rehabilitation measures over a large spatial scale is not feasible due to the amount of time, effort and cost involved. However, if…

The Global Soil Partnership (GSP) of the Food and Agriculture Organization of the UN (FAO) has published the first in a series of region-specific policy briefs to support harmonized soil management approaches and contribute towards achieving the SDGs. Titled, ‘The Multi-faced Role of Soil in the…

Food+Tech Connect produced an entire editorial series celebrating entrepreneurs, farmers, and researchers who value biodiversity in food. The Future Market published a deep dive report on crop diversity and its direct impact on consumers and growers. The Crop Trust launched the Food Forever…

The Forest Europe Expert Group on Human Health and Well-being published a book that summarizes current knowledge on the health benefits of forests and integration of social aspects of forests into sustainable forest management (SFM). The publication presents evidence on the health benefits of…