Herdade do Freixo do Meio is an organic certified farm of 440 hectares located in the Alentejo region in the south of Portugal, a region characterized by the multifunctional agro-silvo-pastoral system of cork and holm oak trees, named montado. This farm employs about 20 people and produces cork…

Tamera, a farm of 154 ha, is located in the most arid region of Portugal (Alentejo). This area has shown significant trends of increasing erosion and desertification and climate change will most probably exacerbate these issues. Tamera has managed to counteract such trends of increasing erosion and…

Tamera’s ecology experts transformed an area at risk of desertification – and say they can do the same anywhere in the world

0.7% Is All We Have To Grow All Our Food

The environment provides the very foundation of sustainable development, our health, food security and our economies. Ecosystems provide clean water supply, clean air and secure food and ultimately both physical and mental wellbeing. Natural resources also provide livelihoods, jobs and revenues to…

When thinking of national security issues, rivers, lakes and glaciers are not usually what come to mind. But water stress is, in fact, an often-overlooked and increasing threat to national security for many countries. Water security is an important issue driving state stability and safety in many…

Despite budgetary challenges, cities and towns across Europe are taking action to put in place measures that will help them adapt to the impacts of climate change. A new European Environment Agency (EEA) report released today highlights the opportunities open to municipalities to share best…

ODI has conducted 50 case studies in order to draw a number of lessons on how to achieve the Sustainable Development Goals by 2030, which are put forth in a three-part series of blogs on the Development Progress project.

The Heidelberg Institute for International Conflict Research has published the Conflict Barometer 2016 covering global conflict dynamics.

“The challenge is: how do we enable refugees not to be perceived as a burden, but as a benefit and an opportunity for the host country?” . Almost all of Syria’s neighbours have high youth unemployment rates and limited public funds, so relaxing labour laws for refugees is a hard sell.

For thousands of years, parts of north-west Europe have enjoyed a climate around 5°C warmer than many other regions on the same latitude. But new scientific analysis suggests that that could change much sooner and much faster than thought possible. Climatologists who have looked again at the…

Climatic Change is dedicated to the totality of the problem of climatic variability and change - its descriptions, causes, implications and interactions among these. The purpose of the journal is to provide a means of exchange among those working in different disciplines on problems related to…

Enhancing the productivity of agriculture is vital for Sub-Saharan Africa's economic future and is one of the most important tools to end extreme poverty and boost shared prosperity in the region. How governments elect to spend public resources has significant development impact in this regard…

The voices of people who move in the context of environmental change are absent from the debate about how we addresses the issue.

With growing awareness of the economic costs of land degradation, political leaders are adopting ambitious targets to restore degraded forests and agricultural land. Building on the interest in forest landscape restoration generated by the Bonn Challenge, in 2014, countries adopted the New York…

This contribution traces the history of environmental rights over the past few decades, focusing on international and regional human rights instruments, as well as case law. It does so in the context of the environmental principles associated with environmental rights. It explores the meaning of a…

Soils have been the neglected environmental media for a long time. However, several food crises at the beginning of this century have brought a change in perspective of late. Since then, the indispensable value of soils for humans and for the conservation of the environment as a whole has been…

The latest issue of Land Degradation & Development is available on Wiley Online Library