My heart aches for all those who have lost their loved ones from the tragedy facing Kenya today as the death toll nears 100. Heavy rains have lashed Kenya in recent weeks, causing widespread flooding that has displaced thousands, destroyed infrastructure, and devastated livelihoods.

Climate change poses an existential threat to ecosystems, with potentially far-reaching impacts on agriculture, forestry, wind and solar energy, and other land-based investments. These investments can also further exacerbate detrimental climate change impacts if they are not sustainably implemented. 

Photo: Farmers at the CuveWaters Green Village in Epyeshona, Northern Namibia, photo by ISOE Wikom, sourced from flickr, CC BY-NC-SA 2.0 DEED license

Dr. Leon Verstappen was the first Chair of the Board of Advisors for the Land Portal and played a central role in its transition from a small UN project into an independent foundation. 

This blog post is part of the series What to Read. 

Our latest What to Read digest said:

Fact one, some studies suggest that women are responsible for half of the world's food production, and in some developing nations they produce between 60 and 80 percent of the food. 

Our partners at Landesa and International Food Policy Research Institute responded and alerted us that these figures are greatly contested.

Photo by Albert Gonzalez Farran / UNAMID, women working in the farm, license (CC BY-NC-ND 2.0 DEED)

This digest has been updated on 11 March 2024. Our partners alerted us that one of the figures we used is highly contested. The full clarification is below. We have also included a fourth article to the digest, which was missing in the original post, that contests the 'myth' statistic.

CLARIFICATION

Background