South Africa is presently experiencing one of the worst droughts in 45 years, with the lowest ever rainfall since 1904. In 2015, South Africa received only an average of 403 mm, which is merely 66% of the annual average rainfall. This matter has to be urgently addressed, with food sources under…

We need to move from the ‘food versus fuel’ debate to a ‘food and fuel’ debate. There is no question: food comes first. But biofuels should not be simply seen as a threat or as a magical solution. Like anything else, they can do good or bad. (Graziano da Silva FAO). Radical shift in agriculture…

Original Research Article published in the latest Journal of Arid Environments

Case studies from WRI’s Restoration Diagnostic show that land restoration in Latin America and the Caribbean has been done before. Successes from Brazil, Panama and Costa Rica offer lessons on how to get degraded land back into productive use.

A Method for Developing Forest Landscape Restoration Strategies by Rapidly Assessing the status of Key Success Factors

Reorienting land degradation towards sustainable land management: Linking sustainable livelihoods with ecosystem services in rangeland systems

The Global Atlas for Renewable Energy, for example, is a free online resource assessment tool to help policy makers and investors appreciate the extent of the renewable energy potential at their disposal in any given area.

An expansion of drylands would lead to reduced carbon sequestration and enhanced regional warming, resulting in warming trends over the present drylands that are double those over humid regions.

Its preservation is essential for food security and our sustainable future. Today, 33 percent of land is moderately to highly degraded due to the erosion, salinization, compaction, acidification and chemical pollution of soils.

Global environmental change is rapidly altering the dynamics of terrestrial vegetation, with consequences for the functioning of the Earth system and provision of ecosystem services.

Here the authors present a conceptual framework for legacy effects at short-term (days to months), medium-term (years to decades), and long-term (centuries to millennia) timescales, which reveals the ubiquity of such effects in drylands across research disciplines.

More than 20 per cent of all cultivated land, 30 per cent of forests and 10 per cent of grasslands are undergoing degradation. The global food system has profound implications for the environment, and producing more food than is consumed only exacerbates the pressures.

The connectivity framework has practical implications for land management, especially with respect to decision making concerning the scale and location of agricultural production or habitat restoration in the world's drylands.

17 Case Studies of soil threats are included in RECARE to study the various conditions that occur across Europe and to find appropriate responses using an innovative approach combining scientific and local knowledge.

Desertification in drylands is an important problem world-wide, but the concept is ambiguous in terms of specific processes, conditions, and solutions.

Recognizing the value of bringing climate-change science to practitioners, the USDA recently established a network of regional climate hubs. These hubs are designed to provide information on, and tools for, climate-change mitigation and adaptation strategies to farmers, ranchers, and natural…

The key to managing conflict and cooperation over water.

A set of guidelines has been developed to reduce soil erosion by planting vegetation in desertification hotspots.

Five example programs demonstrate successful integration of these three practices into K-12 ecological research activities, an application that will benefit not only future ecologists but also students who enter other careers as ecologically literate citizens.

The value of rangelands depends on both their ability to supply ecosystem services and society’s demand for such services. Societal demand for ecosystem services provided by rangelands has diversified in the past decades, transitioning from demand primarily for provisioning services to now commonly…

Water resource management needs to be improved to meet the growing demand for drinking water and for water used in the agricultural and energy sectors.

It highlights several important technological and cultural advances that may transform drylands research and improve the links between research, management, and knowledge in dryland landscapes. Second, it highlights several cultural advances that promote interactive environments for sharing…

Like the baboon, or that woman who made flour so long ago, we depend ultimately on Nature. We can dream that we are managing our world and its ecosystems, but in reality it is Nature that manages us.

The assessment reveals that shifts in ecological state do not cause permanent soil properties changes, but that at a landscape scale they can limit production, affecting local livelihoods. The framework proposed provided local farmers with relevant information and facilitated communication with…

“Every second, one person is displaced by disaster,” the Oslo-based Norwegian Refugee Council (NRC) reports. “In 2015 only, more than 19.2 million people fled disasters in 113 countries. “Disasters displace three to ten times more people than conflict and war worldwide.”