A wealth of publicly available satellite data and open-source models allowed researchers to measure carbon stocks in a watershed in India, despite a paucity of on-the-ground data. They found that despite rapid urbanization over the last 20 years, carbon stocks remained relatively stable – possibly due to successful reforestation activities. The research points to how nature-positive solutions can be designed and measured at scale. The research also lays the foundation for global studies to promote a deeper understanding of ecosystem services and sustainable land management.

Land degradation is a severe environmental problem in the northern and northwestern Ethiopian highlands. As a response to increasing land degradation, rehabilitation of degraded grazing lands through exclosures (exclusion of farmers and domestic animals) has been undertaken. This study aimed to evaluate the effectiveness of 11 and 8-year exclosures in improving degraded landscapes in the Karita-Wuha and Dengora watersheds. It was assumed that the conditions on communal grazing lands at the time of the investigation corresponded to those at the establishment of exclosures.

Overcoming future sustainable development challenges will require significant transformations in food, land, and water systems. However, the challenges faced by countries are varied and complex. Produced by IWMI, the Policy Pathways podcast will examine the policy coherence of food, land, and water systems in six of the CGIAR’s National Policies and Strategies Initiative countries.

Agriculture consumes the largest share of freshwater globally; therefore, distinguishing between rainfed and irrigated croplands is essential for agricultural water management and food security. In this study, a framework incorporating the Budyko model was used to differentiate between rainfed and irrigated cropland areas in Africa for eight remote sensing landcover products and a high-confidence cropland map (HCCM). The HCCM was generated for calibration and validation of the crop partitioning framework as an alternative to individual cropland masks which exhibit high disagreement.

Confronting sustainable development challenges requires system transformation in Food, Land, and Water! Policy Pathways invites policymakers and sustainable development stakeholders to share their expertise on the policy solutions that can advance system transformation across the globe. CGIAR Research Initiative on National Policies and Strategies has produced a series of policy coherence reports focused on India, Colombia, Nigeria, Kenya, Egypt, and Laos.

Egypt’s quota of Nile River water has been constant since the 1950s, despite the continual agricultural land expansion. To facilitate land reclamation, Egypt has reallocated Nile water from downstream users, mostly smallholders in the ‘old lands’ of the Delta. As water demands have grown, more attention has gone to the reuse of waste/drainage water as a reliable source for irrigated agriculture in the “old lands”.

A bibliometric study on mapping the rice cropping systems in VMD is crucial for understanding the trend of EO-based rice mapping and how remote sensing technologies are essential to address the food security issue in the region. This article presents an overview of Earth observation (EO)-based rice mapping strategies since 1979, prioritizing the scope of data, approaches, and techniques derived from 3700 research articles worldwide and contrasting them with the Vietnamese Mekong Delta (VMD).

Soil and water conservation have been traditionally part of farming practices for thousands of years. Despite massive efforts to implement modern soil and water conservation practices (SWCPs) in the Ethiopian Highlands, soil erosion increased after the 1970s when social and political events led to a remarkable change in land use. This review aims to critically analyze the impact of conservation practices on soil loss and crop yield and highlight research and modeling gaps.

Ethiopia's highland mixed crop-livestock farming system is one of the country's primary agricultural systems, where crop and livestock production is integrated. However, Ethiopia's mixed farming system, which is dominated by resource-poor smallholder farmers, is frequently confronted with feed shortages and land degradation in the form of soil erosion and nutrient depletion, resulting in low agricultural production. Assuring sustainable agricultural output (both from crop and livestock sub-sector) in the mixed crop-livestock system is becoming a key challenge.

Irrigation expansion is critical for agricultural and rural development, food and nutrition security, and climate change adaptation in Sub-Saharan Africa (SSA). Lack of accessible energy for irrigation development due to limited off- and on-grid infrastructure and the resulting dependence on costly fuel-based irrigation have been key inhibiting factors for irrigation expansion in the region. Off-grid solar-powered irrigation pumps (SIPs) can overcome many of the energy access and other challenges in the region, but their uptake has been slow.

Antibiotics have revolutionised medicine in the last century and enabled the prevention of bacterial infections that were previously deemed untreatable. However, in parallel, bacteria have increasingly developed resistance to antibiotics through various mechanisms. When resistant bacteria find their way into terrestrial and aquatic environments, animal and human exposures increase, e.g., via polluted soil, food, and water, and health risks multiply.

The cascading effects of biodiversity decline on human well-being present a pressing challenge for sustainable development. Conservation efforts often prioritize safeguarding specific species, habitats, or intact ecosystems but overlook biodiversity’s fundamental role in providing Nature’s Contributions to People (NCP) in human-modified landscapes.