"To end hunger and prevent the recurrence of famine and starvation, we need to take the following steps: invest in public health, child nutrition, education, women’s and girls’ social status, and other components of human capital; reform public institutions and create innovative funding and partnership arrangements; change government policies at all levels to be both pro-poor and pro-growth; increase funding for scientific and technological research to boost agricultural production and efficiency; and develop specific policies and institutions to deal with environmental degradation caused

Contrairement aux prévisions communément admises quant à l’aggravation du déclin économique de l’Afrique, une récente étude présente une vision alternative plus positive de l’avenir de ce continent. De nouveaux engagements politiques, une gestion du programme de développement sous égide africaine ainsi que l’accroissement de l’intérêt et des investissements dans les petites exploitations agricoles ont le potentiel d’arrêter, voire d’inverser la tendance spiroïdale de la famine, de la pauvreté, de la dégradation environnementale, des maladies et des guerres civiles.

This book synthesizes IFPRI's recent work on the role of gender in household decisionmaking in developing countries, provides evidence on how reducing gender gaps can contribute to improved food security, health, and nutrition in developing countries, and gives examples of interventions that actually work to reduce gender disparities. It is an accessible, easy-to-read synthesis of the gender research that IFPRI has undertaken in the 1990s.

Thailand has experienced rapid deforestation especially since the 1960s. While large areas of forestlands were designated as national forest reserves, many forests were actually converted into farmlands. This article focuses on the institutional and administrative aspects of the national forest reserve system, the core institution of forest conservation in Thailand, and examines the institutional structure, historical process mostly since the 1960s, and procedures of the national forest reserve system and related policies at both in national and local levels.

The Rocky Mountains of the western United States contain many economically important natural resources. Increasing development of these resources has lead to land degradation, which often requires restoration efforts. A common type of disturbance in this region is mineral extraction and these activities often occur in zones of vegetation dominated by shrubs. These mined lands have proven to be particularly challenging to restore to native shrub cover.

Agricultural management has its roots in the manipulation of the system to optimise conditions for crop production. It is now widely recognised that this could result in land degradation with subsequent serious impact on crop productivity if the nutrient losses to the agricultural system are not replaced. A nutrient budget is an account of gains and losses of nutrients in an agricultural system, a tool that could be used to develop sound nutrient management and sustainable agriculture.

Two well-known ancient sites in southern Anatolia were selected to investigate and quantify the impact of historical land degradation on the Mediterranean coast of Turkey. These sites are the Luwian settlements of Kelenderis (modern Aydıncık) and nearby Nagidos (Bozyazı), both in Mersin Province and both occupied since around 4000 BP. Changes in local climatic conditions over this period have produced variations in the rates of fluvial transport of sediment/soil from the hinterland into the relevant deltaic regions, thus influencing rates of coastal progradation and aggradation.

Expert judgements are potentially a valuable source of information in land degradation assessment, especially in areas where data paucity impedes the use of quantitative models. However, expert opinions are also much disputed because they are not tested for consistency, abstain from formal documentation, while their quantitative interpretation is inherently unidentifiable. This paper evaluates and formalizes the use of expert judgements to conduct a nationwide water erosion hazard assessment in Ethiopia.

Reliable techniques for predicting N mineralisation dynamics in soil are required for sustainable management of land resources. The concept of potentially mineralisable N (N ₀) and its determination procedures were re-appraised in this study. Leaching soil before incubation removed considerable amounts of soluble organic N. But the leached soils had higher rates of net N mineralisation than the unleached controls during a subsequent 2-week incubation, suggesting that using the total amount of leached- (organic + inorganic) N for calculating N ₀ may not be warranted.

Growing processing tomatoes represents one of the most intensive forms of land use in terms of water consumption and nutrient inputs. During the last decade in many European countries and in the United States, Integrated Crop Management guidelines have also been applied for fertilisation and reducing nitrogen inputs to crops has become compulsory. A large number of Best Management Practices, rules and tools have been developed to steer farmers toward sustainable farming practices.

World population is increasing, particularly in the developing countries. Groundwater reserves are being depleted; lands are being degraded. The required increase in food production must come principally from new supplies of water for irrigated lands. If irrigated lands fail to produce the required food, increased destruction of resources and degradation of the environment from increasing slash and burn agriculture is anticipated. Various countries and international agencies have recognized the possibility of future food shortage.

Apart from a decrease in total perennial plant cover, degradation of North-African arid lands is not easy to qualify. Yet, simple and comprehensive yardsticks are necessary to assess degradation. We assigned components of competitive ability (C), stress tolerance (S) and ruderality (R) to 15 common perennials of Presaharian Tunisia. We used for that purpose phyto-ecological studies, data about life-form, grazing value and demography and circumstantial data.