Ecosystems are essential to human life, livelihoods and wellbeing. Many national policies and international agreements include goals to protect ecosystem services. A new guide – commissioned by the Ecosystem Services for Poverty Alleviation (ESPA) programme and written by Professor James Bullock of…

The Security Council today adopted a presidential statement that welcomed positive developments in several West African countries, but expressed its serious concern over the challenging security situation in the region and the Sahel.

The Expert Review of the First Order Draft of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) Special Report on Climate Change and Land (SRCCL) will take place from 11 June to 5 August 2018. Expert Reviewers can register at https://www.ipcc.ch/apps/comments/srccl/fod/ until 29 July 2018.

The Science-Policy Interface (SPI) of the United Nations Convention to Combat Desertification (UNCCD) wishes to invite you to participate in a survey on the potential contribution of Land Degradation Neutrality (LDN) to enhancing the well-being and livelihoods of people as well as the state of the…

Women and men have unequal opportunities to address land degradation. While adoption of Sustainable Development Goal target 15.3 leads the world to ‘strive towards land degradation neutrality (LDN)’ by 2030, gender concerns are sparsely considered in LDN programming to date.

As a partner to the Convention since 2011, IUCN supports progress towards policies and programmes that deliver Land Degradation Neutrality (LDN) through the application of nature-based solutions (NbS) – actions to protect, sustainably manage and restore ecosystems to address societal challenges.

Africa's Great Green Wall initiative is an ambitious effort to promote large-scale land restoration benefiting both people and the environment. The socio-economic impact of large-scale restoration interventions is assessed through household surveys of beneficiary rural communities. This study…

The International Organization for Migration (IOM) released data showing that 71% of migrants on Mediterranean routes to Europe experience “exploitation and practices which may amount to human trafficking.” IOM’s data analyze the scale of abuse, exploitation and trafficking experienced by migrants…

The world's commitment towards land degradation neutrality (LDN) became enshrined in various international agreements and decisions throughout the year 2015.The challenge now becomes one of addressing its operation, in order to achieve these new policy goals and targets by the year 2030.

Despite the recent slowdown of the global economy and the weakening of Africa’s economic performance with the attendant implications for inclusion and sustainability, the long term growth outlook for Africa remains promising. The region’s long-term fundamentals remain strong as the pace of growth…

Reported potentials for sequestration of carbon in soils of agricultural lands are overly optimistic because they assume that all degraded cropland and grassland can be subjected to best management practices. Two approaches for estimating this potential are presented.

Levels of carbon dioxide (C02) surged at “record-breaking speed” to new highs in 2016, the United Nations weather agency announced on Monday. Petteri Taalas, Secretary-General of the World Meteorological Organization (WMO), issued the warning in Geneva, at the launch of the organization's Greenhouse…

The eighth edition of UNEP's Emissions Gap Report, released ahead of the UN Climate Change Conference in in Bonn next month, warns that as things stand, even full implementation of current national pledges makes a temperature rise of at least 3 degrees Celsius by 2100 very likely.

Long on the margins of both scholarly and policy concerns, the countries of the West African Sahel have recently attracted world attention, primarily as a key battleground in the global 'war on terror'. This book moves beyond this narrow focus, providing a multidimensional and interdisciplinary…