Articles 17 and 18 of the United Nations (UN) Framework Convention on Tobacco Control address the environmental sustainability of tobacco as a contested agricultural crop. They require regulatory land-use policies to be introduced and designed to enhance a sustainability transition to diversified farming practices and/or alternative livelihoods.

Mapping and quantifying land degradation status is important for identifying vulnerable areas and to design sustainable landscape management. This study maps and quantifies land degradation status in the north Gojjam sub-basin of the Upper Blue Nile River (Abbay) using GIS and remote sensing integrated with multicriteria analysis (MCA). This is accomplished using a combination of biological, physical, and chemical land degradation indicators to generate a comprehensive land degradation assessment.

International agricultural policies to address hunger and malnutrition in the tropics and sub-tropics have typically been based on approaches to the intensification of farming systems effective in industrialised economies where the social, economic, and environmental conditions and the infrastructure are very different to those in Africa. The consequence of this short-sightedness has been that agricultural productivity, dependent on ecosystem services from natural capital, has declined in Africa due to ecological and environmental collapse.