On World Wetlands Day on February 2nd, Indonesia’s Geospatial Information Agency (BIG) will announce the winner of a competition to come up with the best method for mapping the nation’s peatlands. The winning team will be awarded a $1 million prize. For the rest of us, the competition could help…

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…

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…

By 2050 we would need to double global food production to keep up with the projected population increase. Meanwhile the land from which our food comes from is decreasing in quality. Land degradation is a major global concern as our demands for food, fodder, and fuel continue to accelerate. Drylands…

This book covers a much longer period (1995–2014) with better data and country coverage than previous reports. The focus of the book is on natural capital and human capital since information for produced capital and net foreign assets has been well established by other institutions. For the first…

Food-insecure households in many countries depend on international aid to alleviate acute shocks and chronic shortages. Some food security programmes (including Ethiopia’s Productive Safety Net Program–PSNP – which provides a case study for this article) have integrated aid in exchange for labour on…

As farmers, foresters and providers, women have a unique understanding of the ecosystems they live alongside. A pioneering radio programme in Malawi is tapping into this immense body of knowledge by creating a platform for women to engage in landscape restoration.

Regenerating Urban Land draws on the experience of eight case studies from around the world. The case studies outline various policy and financial instruments to attract private sector investment in urban regeneration of underutilized and unutilized areas and the requisite infrastructure…

Land, air and water are the cornerstones of life on Earth. To sustain the vitality of our global ecosystem, we must understand the health of our natural assets and how to halt and repair damage done to them. The Intergovernmental Science-Policy Platform on Biodiversity and Ecosystem Services (IPBES)…

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 goal of the project is to reduce food insecurity and improve livelihoods of poor people living in African drylands by restoring degraded land, and returning it to effective and sustainable tree, crop and livestock production, thereby increasing land profitability and landscape and livelihood…

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…

Asia hardest hit region, says report on the burden borne by poor farmers due to natural disasters

Worsening land degradation caused by human activities is undermining the well-being of two fifths of humanity, driving species extinctions and intensifying climate change. It is also a major contributor to mass human migration and increased conflict, according to the world’s first comprehensive…

Plastic pollution is a globally recognized problem, with an estimated 322 million metric tons produced in 2016, excluding plastic fiber production. When evaluating the risks three main sources of microplastics (MPs) should be considered; polymer nanoparticles manufactured for specific purposes like…

Dryland areas are being seriously affected by degradation processes. The use of organic amendments in ecosystem restoration is an effective technique for accelerating soil regeneration processes in degraded drylands. This recovery is a result of the rapid increment of organic matter and clay…

Publication to present project BRIDGES under the FAO-Turkish Forestry Partnership programme in support of efforts to combat land degradation and desertification in Eritrea, Mauritania and Sudan, contributing to Africa's Great Green Wall initiative.

Land Degradation & Development Volume 29, Issue 4 Pages i - i, 861 - 1302, April 2018 Special Issue Title: Restoration and Rehabilitation of Degraded Land in Arid and Semi‐Arid Environments Ecophysiological Indicators to Assess Drought Responses of Arid Zone Native Seedlings in Reconstructed Soils…

In a study published in the Proceedings of the Royal Society B, reviewed more than 400 studies of large-scale disturbances — logging, agriculture, oil spills, dam-building, mining, and aquatic nutrient pollution — and their aftermath. It’s the most comprehensive such review to date. The takeaways:…

"Land degradation is estimated to cost the global economy from $2 to $4.5 trillion a year, while economic benefits of restoration efforts are an estimated $84 billion a year, according to a report in Environmental Research Letters, and statistics from World Resources Institute. The purpose of the…

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…

Twenty-four million new jobs will be created globally by 2030 if the right policies to promote a greener economy are put in place, a new report by the International Labor Organization (ILO) says. Action to achieve the objectives of the Paris Agreement, to limit global temperature rise to below 2…

Study is the first to evaluate the effect of extreme heat on the probability of local work in rural Mexico, write Katrina Jessoe, Dale Manning and Edward Taylor

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…

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…