The International Union of Soil Sciences (IUSS), the Latin American Soil Science Society (SLCS) and the Brazilian Soil Science Society (SBCS), have sent invitations to the 21st World Congress of Soil Science. The congress will be held in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil, August 12-17, 2018 .

Restoration of degraded land can create vast bioenergy crop potential, without constraining food crops or other land use options. This presents an important opportunity for African countries to develop modern, sustainable bioenergy from rapidly growing wood crops at the same time as pursuing…

Interested in the real facts about migration? The World Migration Report 2018 is here: evidence-based, accurate and up-to-date information on who migrates, why and when

Restoration has never been more important, with almost a third of the world’s land surface degraded. But what exactly is restoration? And how do we know if it works? Madelon Lohbeck continues our Special Feature series on Functional traits in agroecology. Read the full article, Trait-based…

Land Degradation & Development is an international journal which seeks to promote rational study of the recognition, monitoring, control and rehabilitation of degradation in terrestrial environments

Changes in climate, in conjunction with other drivers of mobility, shape human migration. While there is an increasing focus on the adaptive potential of migration, the health impacts of climate-related migration, including planned relocation and forced displacement, have not been thoroughly…

Bottom–up estimates from long-term field experiments and modelling are the most commonly used approaches to estimate the carbon (C) sequestration potential of the agricultural sector. However, when data are required at European level, important margins of uncertainty still exist due to the…

A new U.N. World Food Programme (WFP) tool is highlighting the true cost of food by presenting variation in the cost of food around the world. The tool, called Counting the Beans, includes a data-driven, open-access online interface to help both experts and the general public quantify the relative…

A November 2017 report from Eurostat is the first monitoring exercise under the EU's mandate to monitor progress towards the SDGs in an EU context. A set of 100 indicators was developed to monitor the SDGs in the context of EU policies, and does not cover all aspects of the SDGs.

Three months after its official launch, the Land Degradation Neutrality (LDN) Fund has raised approximately 30% of its target capitalization of US$300 million. The LDN Fund, promoted by the UN Convention to Combat Desertification (UNCCD) and Mirova, an affiliate of Natixis Investment Managers, aims…

Eruptions of Popular Anger: The Economics of the Arab Spring and Its Aftermath sets out to answer three puzzles—the “Arab inequality” puzzle of civil uprisings in countries with low-to-moderate and stagnant economic inequality, the “unhappy development” paradox of increasing dissatisfaction at a…

Greater understanding of the forms and consequences of investment and disinvestment in the extractive industries is required as a result of capitalist expansion, recent declines in global commodity prices, and claims that extractive sector projects, especially in the global south, are poverty…

Conflict over the extraction of coal and gas resources has rapidly escalated in communities throughout the world. Using an environmental justice lens, this multidisciplinary book explores cases of land use conflict through the lived experiences of communities grappling with such disputes

Six negotiating rounds for the global compact on migration will take place at UN Headquarters, between February and July 2018. The co-facilitators intend to release the zero draft of the compact by early February, ahead of the first negotiations. The co-facilitators also issued a summary of the…

Fertile soils and productive land are limited—finite—resources. But there is an ever-growing demand for fertile land to feed a growing global population. Meeting this demand is becoming a massive global challenge due to two major factors. There is competition for productive land for other uses, such…

Ensuring food security, producing more with less resources and building the resilience of smallholder farmers are important towards creating a food-secure future

A new study in Nature Climate Change says that over a quarter of the world’s land will significantly dry up if the earth’s temperature rises by two degrees Celsius above pre-industrial levels in the next three decades, the upper limit for the global average temperature rise set by nations under the…

More than a quarter of the planet’s surface could become significantly drier if global temperatures rise 2C above pre-industrial levels, scientists predict. The study, which is one of the most detailed assessments to date of future aridity, suggests that many regions could face an increased threat…

We stand on it. We stamp on it. We call it dirt. Or worse. We treat this fundamental resource like it is infinite. What we do not realize is that fertile soil, which took hundreds of years to develop, could be washed away with just one heavy downpour.

What links climate change, poverty and migration? The Global Landscapes Forum addresses how land-use is central to global challenges that are more interconnected than many of us realize

New research shows massive gap in finance for restoration can be overcome with smart policies and innovative investments

Human activity and related land use change are the primary cause of accelerated soil erosion, which has substantial implications for nutrient and carbon cycling, land productivity and in turn, worldwide socio-economic conditions. In a recent published article in Nature Communications.

Managed carefully, soils are a reusable resource, but in a scale of human lifetimes they cannot be considered as a renewable resource. Land Degradation Neutrality is a new paradigm in environmental politics for avoiding, reducing and reversing land degradation in an integrated way.The response…

The UNCTAD Handbook of Statistics was first launched in 1967. Over the past 50 years, the series has evolved to incorporate new statistics and ensure that readers have access to the best possible information available. The 2017 edition of the UNCTAD Handbook of Statistics continues in this tradition…

Land-resource planning key to feeding growing world, preserving resources. One-third of planet’s land is degraded, hitting food production and damaging livelihoods