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…

In a recent review, FAO identified that 41 out of 54 countries in Africa included at least one policy or measure on more sustainable use of bioenergy in their Intended Nationally Determined Contributions (INDCs). Considering the critical role of sustainable bioenergy in sub-Saharan Africa, FAO’s…

Twenty-seven policy briefs were authored for the Global Preparatory Meeting for Review of SDG 7. IRENA released two reports, on renewable energy market analysis for Southeast Asia and prospects for the EU. A joint report by Bloomberg New Energy Finance and Facebook looks at options for bridging the…

A study just published by the Joint Research Centre (JRC) in Nature Climate Change shows that soils can be a net sink of greenhouse gases through increased storage of organic carbon.

A Special Issue on Soil Organic Carbon and its influence on agricultural and environmental effects is open for contributions in Agronomy (E. Lugato). A Special issue on “Soil Erosion by Water” is open in Water MDPI. Another Special issue on the workshops of soil erosion modelling (Ispra, Seoul) is…

Land Degradation & Development Volume 29, Issue 4 Pages i - i, 861 - 1302, April 2018 RESEARCH ARTICLES

Results from a long-running field experiment suggest that a major group of plants could thrive as the level of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere increases.

Copper (Cu) distribution in soil is influenced by climatic, geological and pedological factors. Apart from geological sources and industrial pollution, other anthropogenic sources, related to the agricultural activity, may increase copper levels in soils, especially in permanent crops such as olive…

This infographic shows the interactions and key questions around the relationship triangle of water, energy and food security, like: What are energy efficient water-treatment technologies? How does watershed management help hydropower? What technologies make irrigation more water efficient? et al.

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 LDN Country Profiles provide evidence-based arguments that contribute to making the case for investing in measures to avoid, reduce and reverse land degradation. These profiles demonstrate the importance and multiple benefits of taking actions to achieve Land Degradation Neutrality. The country…

Representing nearly 41% of the land above sea level, arid zones are home to more than two billion people who suffer from the ongoing degradation of the land and soil that provide them sustenance. Owing to desertification and droughts, nearly twelve million hectares of land are no longer arable each…

Soil organic matter (SOM) supports the Earth's ability to sustain terrestrial ecosystems, provide food and fiber, and retains the largest pool of actively cycling carbon. Over 75% of the soil organic carbon (SOC) in the top meter of soil is directly affected by human land use. Large land areas have…

Agroforestry (AF) has the potential to restore degraded lands, provide a broader range of ecosystem goods and services such as carbon (C) sequestration and high biodiversity, and increase soil fertility and ecosystem stability through additional C input from trees, erosion prevention, and…

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

Sustainable Energy for All’s Energizing Finance series is the first and only in-depth attempt to capture multiple years of data on investment for the two key areas of energy access: electrification and clean cooking. It focuses on public and private finance commitments in 20 developing countries –…

Centre for Land Tenure Studies (CLTS) Working Paper on land tenure reforms and land markets in Africa

Drylands may be resilient to environmental changes because the many species with intermediate relative abundances could take over ecosystem functioning if the environment becomes suboptimal for dominant species.

This research investigates the human impact on land-cover dynamics in arid agro-ecosystems. Using remote sensing and ancillary datasets combined with classification and regression tree (CART) models, we mapped land-cover class distributions over 22 years (1988–2009) to characterize agricultural…

Deserts may be difficult to define, but they play an active role in the evolution of our global climate and society at large, and their future is of the utmost importance.

Soil damage, climate change, water and energy availability are all challenges for farming.

"Europe is now generating four times more wind power and 70 times more solar power as in 2005. This is good news, but a clear, forward-looking investment strategy is also necessary across the fossil fuel power sector to meet our long-term challenge to cut CO2 emissions. Europe is committed to…

WRI worked with experts at Mars to analyze the company’s footprint and develop sustainability targets for land, water and climate. These targets, currently under review with the company’s leadership, take into account the latest science on the global carbon budget, water stress and other ecological…

The authors identified seven compound risks that make climate change a serious threat. These complex, systemic risks emerge when climate change interacts with other stressors and pressures such as increasing demand for resources, environmental degradation, unequal economic development, population…

The benefits of pulses to soil mean that they can also help combat land degradation. Healthy soil not only makes food more nutritious it also helps keep carbon out of the atmosphere by storing it underground. Pulses include peas, beans, chickpeas and lentils. They are particularly popular in South…