This report takes place within the framework of the regional project “Maximize the production of goods and services of Mediterranean forest ecosystems in the context of global changes” (2012-2016) financed by the French Global Environment Facility together with the German Cooperation (GIZ), the French Ministry of Agriculture, Agrifood and Forestry, and the European Union, in 5 North African (Algeria, Morocco, Tunisia) and the Middle East countries (Lebanon, Turkey).

Scientific and policy interest in the biological diversity of agriculture (agrobiodiversity) is expanding amid global socioeconomic and environmental changes and sustainability interests. The majority of global agrobiodiversity is produced in smallholder food-growing.

This paper consists of a review of existing literature relating to Incorporated Land Groups in Papua New Guinea (PNG), followed by a case study of two urban incorporated land groups (ILGs) in the city of Lae. The paper is an attempt at assessing the sustainability of ILGs in the country. The challenges facing the ILGs have heightened public fears that the land groups may not be sustainable.

The production of soy is one of the most important economic activities in the Brazilian Amazon, though the expansion of this industry has come at the cost of huge swaths of forest. Since 2006, the private firms that buy and trade soybeans globally have assumed a key role in ensuring that soy producers comply with forest protection policies, including the Soy Moratorium and public policies banning the use of illegally deforested land.

Uganda discovered commercial quantities of oil in the country in 2006 and ever since, there has been increased activity in the exploration of oil and gas. The exploration activities are being undertaken in the Albertine Graben in mostly the districts of Hoima, Buliisa, and Nwoya by international oil companies contracted by the government. Currently, there are three licensed companies namely, Tullow Uganda operations Ltd , Total E&P and CNOOC Uganda Ltd operating in the districts of Hoima, Buliisa and Nwoya within the Albertine Graben.

To meet carbon emissions targets, more than 30 countries have committed to boosting production of renewable resources from biological materials andconvert them into products such as food, animal feedand bioenergy. In a post-fossil-fuel world, an increasingproportion of chemicals, plastics, textiles, fuels and electricity will have to come from biomass, which takesup land. To maintain current consumption trends theworld will also need to produce 50–70 percent more foodby 2050, increasingly under drought conditions and onpoor soils.

This document, titled Closing the Enforcement Gap: Groundtruthing of Environmental Violations in Sarguja, Chhattisgarh,is the second in the series of community led groundtruthing exercises carried out by the Centre for Policy Research (CPR)-Namati Environmental Justice Program in partnership with Janabhivyakti and Hasdeo Arand Bachao Sangharsh Samiti (HABSS).

With around one third of the world’s arable land degraded, estimated annual losses of 6.3 to 10.6 USD trillion, and a projected need to increase food production from land by 70 per cent by 2050, we simply cannot afford to neglect the loss of potential production from careless land management. Whenever land is not producing at its potential,it is an under-performing asset that requires investments to ensure the future supply chains that many industries depend upon.

Agricultural production systems are a vital lifeline of the rural farming community in Central Asia. However, shrinking natural resource base, increased land degradation and severe irrigation water scarcity render current crop production practices not sustainable as these perform below their potential. Though there is considerable scope for improving productivity through bridging the yield gaps and introducing sustainable land management practices. However crop productivity and production pattern varies across scales, mostly driven by irrigation water availability, markets, and

The overall aim of the project is to identify physical and institutional interventions to improve water management using an integrated approach across scales (from farm to main canal levels) and encompassing water quantity–quality interactions. The project’s geographical focus is the Nile Delta in Egypt.
The project was originally planned for four years. Due to a policy change announced by the Australian Government in reducing the aid investment in the Middle East and North Africa, including Egypt, the duration of the project was reduced to three years.

In this context, RECOFTC and USAID Adapt Asia-Pacific have developed a framework for better understanding and assessing climate change vulnerabilities in a context of multiple competing interests in a CF landscape. The pilot site for developing this approach was a women-led Community Forestry User Group (CFUG) in the Terai of Nepal; the Bishnupur community forest. The context in Bishnupur reflects challenges associated with the ecologically fragile Chure Forest, but also one of growing opportunities for economic development due to the close proximity of the Indian border.

This report is part of the USAID Climate Change Adaptation Project Preparation Facility for Asia and The Pacific project and details efforts to establish a long-term demonstration site in Nepal to identify CF-CCA interventions through participatory approaches, develop proposals for priority interventions, access external finance for a minimum of one intervention, and then implement the intervention(s) through the women-led CFUG.