Two Sudanese inventors use a drone to take on desertification and their rivals in a TV competition for entrepreneurs.

In Zimbabwe, the bulk of rural communities and urban poor still get their energy supplies from the forests, leading to deforestation and land degradation. The Zimbabwe Environmental Law Association (ZELA) 2016 review on forest policies in the country found that fuel wood accounted for over 60…

FAO and WFP provided an update on the food security situation in countries affected by conflict to the UN Security Council. In half of the 16 countries monitored, more than one quarter of the population faces emergency or crisis levels of food insecurity. In most countries food security continues to…

The interrelations of human beings with ecosystems experience rising importance in sustainable land use planning and lead to the concept of socio-ecological system. Socio-Ecological Systems (SES) include both, a bio-geo-physical component and the related local to regional actors. Their system…

Soils are a double-edged climate sword. They are huge reservoirs of organic carbon and can act as a carbon sink. But they can also release CO2 into the atmosphere when used unsustainably. Forests are often called the lungs of the planet because of the way they "breathe" in carbon dioxide. The role…

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…

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…

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

Even though ecosystem-based adaptation (EbA) is recognised to hold considerable potential to strengthen climate adaption, it is still yet to be fully mainstreamed into development policy and practice. Valuation can provide convincing – and usually much-needed – evidence of the benefits of investing…

The resurgence of violent conflict in recent years has caused immense human suffering, at enormous social and economic cost. Violent conflicts today have become complex and protracted, involving more non-state groups and regional and international actors, often linked to global challenges from…

Erratic rains and rising cereals prices intensify hunger risks around Eastern Africa

Tropical forests are home to more than half of the world’s species and play an important role in offsetting global warming, but they are under threat due to global demand for land, energy, food and other resources. The scale of that threat can now be better understood through the findings of…

GBIF—the Global Biodiversity Information Facility—is an international network and research infrastructure funded by the world’s governments and aimed at providing anyone, anywhere, open access to data about all types of life on Earth.

The 2018 Global Report on Food Crises provides the latest estimates of severe hunger in the world. An estimated 124 million people in 51 countries are currently facing Crisis food insecurity or worse (the equivalent of IPC/CH Phase 3 or above). Conflict and insecurity continued to be the primary…

A recent article "Sampling bias in climate–conflict research" in Nature Climate Change has spurred a new chapter in the lively scholarly debate over the potential relationship between climate change and violent conflict. We agree with the article’s authors that there are several forms of sampling…

For over a decade, the European Capacity Building Initiative(ecbi) has adopted a two-pronged strategy to create a more level playing field for developing country in the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC): training for new negotiators; and opportunities for senior negotiators from…

The population is estimated to reach nine billion by 2050, putting huge strains on food outputs. Combine this with climate change and desertification – leading to smaller amounts of arable land for crop production – and existing irrigation practices that over-extract groundwater and you begin to see…

Adaptive water governance seeks to increase a social-ecological system’s adaptive capacity in the face of uncertainty and change. This is especially important in non-linear dryland systems that are already exposed to water scarcity and increasing degradation. Conservation of water ecosystem services…

The aim of this project is to state a mainly qualitative comparison between three cases of brownfields in Spain, looking for the identification of factors of success in the process of redevelopment of the affected area. The project embraces an Introduction and Pre-analysis of the brownfields…

Improvements in land use and management are needed at a global scale to tackle inter‐connected global challenges of population growth, poverty, migration, climate change, biodiversity loss, and degrading land and water resources. There are hundreds of technical options for improving the…

The report — Mechanized: Transforming Africa’s Agriculture Value Chains—summarizes the findings of a systematic analysis of what countries at the forefront of progress in mechanization have done right. It analyzes which policy decisions were taken and which interventions were implemented to…

The GIZ programme 'Soil protection and rehabilitation for food security', in collaboration with University of Leeds and ICRISAT has developed the new Massive Open Online Course (MOOC) 'Land Matters! Integrating soil degradation concerns and solutions into policy processes'. The registration for the…

The German Federal Foreign Office and adelphi co-organize the side event “Global Resilience Agenda: A Foreign Policy Perspective on the SDGs” on 17 July 2018 at the High Level Political Forum 2018, taking place in the German Permanent Mission in New York. The event seeks to deepen the understanding…

Both those who argue for and those who refute climate-conflict links draw on Darfur to support their case. New analysis of political bias behind the environmental narratives and their critiques adds much-needed nuance to our understanding of when drought is – and is not – relevant to the conflict.

This report explores the lack of governance as a structural driver of resource conflict in the region and identifies a mix of short- and long-term measures to increase the legitimacy of the Malian state.