Carbon labels for food are a new strategy of industrialised countries to reduce climate change-relevant gas emissions in agriculture. However, not every label includes the measurement of all emissions and may disadvantage and even exclude exporting farmers from developing countries. Policy-makers should reconsider this approach or at least focus on fair and non-discriminatory labels.

Twenty-seven nations are classified as ‘water scarce’, a further 16 as ‘water stressed’. This situation, coupled with the fact that many surface and groundwater systems are shared between two or more states, has led governments to develop sustainable water management strategies. This implies a real commitment by all water users – households, farmers, and industrialists – to use available supplies in ways that reap sustainable and equitable benefits for all.

In January 2011 the South African Institute of International Affairs (SAIIA) launched an online knowledge resource offering researchers and opinion leaders easy access to research and information on Africa. The Africa Portal will establish a forum to share important insights on Africa with policymakers and the general public, explained SAIIA.

Last year Angola earned 48 billion US dollars from petroleum. Yet the country that was once Africa’s largest agricultural producer is reduced to importing food. Now the government and private investors want to develop the agricultural sector, in the hope that Angola could become a new Brazil. But will there still be room for small-scale farmers?

Rural development and urbanisation are often seen as competing, but in most cases are intimately linked. It is essential that policies re? ect and support the many positive links between rural and urban areas, enterprises and people. This in turn requires a better understanding of urbanisation processes and the role of small towns.

Since the 2008 food price crisis, foreign investors have been acquiring more and more land in poor countries for producing foodstuffs and biofuels for their own use. Such investments have the potential to promote rural development and food security worldwide. By the same token, however, there is the danger of countless small farmers losing their land, of food insecurity increasing in many places, and of social and ecological systems collapsing through pure "land grabbing".

Dar es Salaam is one of the fastest growing cities in sub-Saharan Africa. In its rapidly expanding peri-urban fringe poor migrants from distant rural areas settle down on plots they can afford that provide access to urban markets. They engage in commercial poultry farming establishing sustainable livelihoods and improving food security in the city.

In many developing countries, supermarkets are growing fast. This growth entails a change in the food chain that supplies fresh foods from farmers and processed foods via agroprocessors. Farmers who wish to participate in the food chain have to adapt to the supermarkets' requirements. It is the task of governments to improve infrastructures, and access to support services and financial services.

Despite ambitious desertification control programmes, the area of desertified land has expanded continuously since the establishment of the People's Republic of China, with increasingly serious impacts on important industrial and settlement areas. Only in the new millennium is a reversal of this trend in sight.

Negotiations to establish a set of Voluntary Guidelines on the human right to food, held under the auspices of FAO, were successfully completed in autumn 2004, with all 174 FAO member countries signing the final document. However, the negotiations proved to be far from straightforward, as many countries were anxious about the legally binding nature of the Guidelines.

The Voluntary Guidelines on the human right to food provide a further instrument of international law in the fight against world hunger.The Guidelines promise to be a powerful new weapon in combating malnutrition.They forge an alliance between development policy and human rights in the struggle for the right to food. The «human rights approach» has become the new watchword in the fight against hunger.

The early development strategies of both China and India were urban- and industry-focused, discounting the importance of rural development. Despite sweeping reforms in both countries, the urban bias and subsequent spatial disparities still exist today. In order to reduce poverty and increase growth, developing countries need to correct these spatial disparities through a set of policies that take advantage of the synergies and linkages between rural and urban areas.