Help countries to compile better data and increase transparency – Google partnership

Spotlights inequalities and challenges faced by women; identifies gaps and opportunities for gender equality in the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development

The new UNCCD reporting process has been launched. To accommodate the highly technical nature of the new reporting process and enhance national capacity to generate, analyze, interpret and use Earth observation data, UNCCD has developed a series of online tutorials on how to use the available…

Using the framework of the National Adaptation Plans (NAP)process, this brief provides an overview of the key issues to consider and main entry points for gender mainstreaming in the development of NAPs for the agriculture sectors.

Trends.Earth (formerly the Land Degradation Monitoring Toolbox) is a platform for monitoring land change using earth observations in an innovative desktop and cloud-based system. The three sub-indicators for monitoring achievement of Land Degradation Neutrality (LDN, Sustainable Development Goal…

Investing in agriculture is widely recognised as one of the most effective ways to alleviate poverty, improve food security and reduce hunger and malnutrition. Paradoxically, both overseas development aid and domestic investment in agriculture have been declining since the 1990s. The total share of…

Sand and Dust Storms (SDS) are extreme meteorological phenomena that generate significant amounts of airborne mineral dust particles. SDS play a significant role in different aspects of weather, climate and atmospheric chemistry and represent a serious hazard for life, health, property, environment…

Drought is a complex and recurring natural disaster that occurs throughout the world and often has negative impacts on many sectors of society. Drought monitoring is challenging given the complex spatio-temporal dimensions of drought and its severity. Traditionally, drought monitoring has relied…

At a major Bonn Challenge event in Brazil in March, Lina Pohl, El Salvador’s minister of environment and natural resources, joined Brazil in urging the international community to support a decade of landscape restoration. Now, international momentum is building in support of the initiative, a…

The way we produce and consume food is changing, and fast. Producers must leverage modern farming techniques, factories must revolutionise the way they plan, and produce supply chains must be completely overhauled to account for years like 2018, which saw the Beast from the East give way to the…

The trick to boosting crops in drought-prone, food-insecure areas of West Africa could be a ubiquitous native shrub that persists in the toughest of growing conditions. Growing these shrubs side-by-side with the food crop millet increased millet production by more than 900 percent, according to a…

“The Business Case for Investing in Soil Health” shows how companies around the world are beginning to address the issue and identifies the next steps for scaling-up action and investment in soil health. Soil health is a pressing global issue that sits at the heart of three UN conventions (UNCBD,…

Land and other natural resources in many developing countries remain a fundamental part of people’s cultural identity, social relations, livelihood strategies and economic well-being. However, great setbacks are still experienced in terms of tenure security, natural resources governance and…

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…

"Supporting regional cooperation and integration in Africa- What works and why?" A new study by Fredrik Soderbaum and Therese Brolin looks at “What works and why?” in supporting regional cooperation and integration in Africa. Quoting several papers by ECDPM, the study recommends donors to expand…

The Sixth Global Forum on Gender Statistics discussed ways to improve the collection, production, dissemination and use of data on gender to support progress on the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs), in particular SDG 5 (Achieve gender equality and empower all women and girls). The UN Statistics…

Opportunities for growth and development, even in regions vulnerable to drought, will open up if water is sufficiently available.

Land and soil are limited natural resources essential to all human life. One of the major environmental challenges facing Europe is an increasing demand for development, which threatens these ecosystem services, such as water recycling and purification, carbon storage, and food and fuel — as well as…

UNCCD Library Book of the month: Soil Atlas 2015: Facts and figures about earth, land and fields (March 17 2015)

Genetic diversity a hidden tool in coping with climate change (FAO). Knowledge of agricultural genetic resources needs to grow more quickly because of the critical role they have to play in feeding the world as climate change advances faster than expected.(January 19th 2015)

A new report released 11 November by the United Nations International Fund for Agricultural Development (IFAD) reveals that drylands, which cover some 40 per cent of the earth’s land surface, are critical in order to buffer the negative impacts of climate change, land degradation, and drought.…

Around the world, 26.7 million hectares of agricultural land have been transferred into the hands of foreign investors since the year 2000. This means that these investors possess approximately 2 per cent of the arable land worldwide, or roughly the equivalent to the total area covered by United…

This publication is a collection of articles written by economists, sociologists, and gender specialists and practitioners from twelve post-Soviet countries in Eastern Europe, South Caucasus and Central Asia. It is unique in its effort to review and analyze the issues that are at the intersection of…

FAO recognizes the potential of rural women and men in achieving food security and nutrition and is committed to overcoming gender inequality, in line with the pledge to “leave no one behind”, which is at the heart of the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) and the 2030 Agenda. The publication…

The number of documented international land investments (aka land-grabbing) has been on the rise since 2000. Investors, whether private or governmental, are particularly interested in large-scale tracts of land located in the less-developed countries of the Global South. Inevitably, such investments…