Despite six years of crisis in Syria, agriculture remains a key part of the economy. The sector still accounts for an estimated 26 percent of gross domestic product (GDP) and represents a critical safety net for the 6.7 million Syrians – including those internally displaced - who still remain in rural areas. However, agriculture and the livelihoods that depend on it have suffered massive loss. The Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations (FAO) has now conducted the first comprehensive nationwide assessment on the cost of the war to the agriculture sector.

Over the past 15 years Australia has been trialling conservation tenders and other market based instrument approaches to generate environmental outcomes, particularly on private lands. The best known of these is the BushTender auction for vegetation protection in Victoria, begun in the early 2000s. Subsequently, nearly 100 other tenders for biodiversity protection have been run in Australia with substantial variations in application and methodology generated by a mix of both intended design and case study differences.

This profile provides an overview of climate risk issues in Azerbaijan, including how climate change will potentially impact agriculture, water resources, human health, tourism, and coastal resources and infrastructure. The brief includes an overview and climate summary of Azerbaijan, as well as projected climate changes. Also included is information on sector impacts and vulnerabilities to climate change, the policy context and information regarding ongoing climate change projects in Azerbaijan.

The Thai government has ambitious plan to further promote the use of biodiesel. However, there has been insufficient consideration on the environmental effects of oil palm expansion in Thailand. This paper focuses on the effects of oil palm expansion on land use. We analysed the direct land use change (dLUC) and indirect land use change (iLUC) caused by the oil palm expansion and its effects on ecosystem services supply. Our analysis shows that between 2000 and 2009 dLUC related to oil palm expansion was more prevalent than iLUC.

This Strategic  Plan  to  be implemented  during  a  period  from  2017  to  2021  is  all  about  a  contribution  of  WWF  Mongolia  towards  successful  and  thriving  co-existence  of  human  beings  and  environment  in  Mongolia, particularly  in  two  areas,  namely  Altai  Sayan  and  Amur  Heilong  Ecoregions  those  have  been  named as important hubs and potentials for conservation.

The production of commodities such as palm oil and pulpwood is leading to large-scale land use change in the rural tropics to fulfil the demands of the increasing world population and overall living standard. On the one hand, such land use changes provide income to companies, smallholders and government actors. On the other hand, these can lead to land use conflicts and declines in forest cover, biodiversity, carbon stocks, and local food production.

Most stakeholder-based research concerning agri-environmental schemes (AES) derives from work engaging with farmers and land managers. Consequently, the voices and opinions of other actors involved in AES tends to be unrepresented in the wider literature. One group of actors that seem particularly overlooked in this respect are private (independent) farm advisors (i.e., the consultants contracted by farmers and land managers to advise-on AES and agronomic matters).

Through its two components: Land for Life Award and Awareness raising and Knowledge Support, the Land for Life programme will show-case and highlight how the existing local, national and regional efforts in rehabilitating and managing the land sustainably, bring multiple benefits to communities through increased land productivity, employment opportunities, greater resilience in the face of climate change and more.

The Cambodian government redistributed 1.2 million hectares, some revoked from economic land concessions (ELC), to more than 710,000 smallholders as private ownerships (2013-2014). The paper outlines key steps for granting new land concessions and improving the efficiency of existing ELCs (or similar large-scale state land licences). Cambodia’s excessive large-scale state land concessions have adversely affected the livelihoods and land tenure rights of local people, threatening the country’s rich biodiversity and restricting access to land especially for new farmer households.

Conservation initiatives to protect valued species communities in human-dominated landscapes face challenges linked to their potential costs. Conservation covenants on private land may represent a cost-effective alternative to land purchase, although many questions on the long-term monitoring and enforcement costs of covenants and the risk of violation or legal challenges remain unquantified. We explore the cost-effectiveness of conservation covenants, defined here as the fraction of the high-biodiversity landscape potentially protected via investment in covenants versus land purchase.

Inputs of land for raw material production and fabric manufacturing. Such land use has significant implications for biodiversity—the diversity of Earth’s species, which provide critical services such as pollination, water purification, and climate regulation.

Although land use is a major driver of biodiversity loss, there is no easily applicable method for incorporating land use impacts on biodiversity into life cycle assessment (LCA)—a widelyused tool for evaluating potential environmental impacts of a product system.

Colonisation by, and spread of, animal species from the temperate zone are rather uncommon observations in the tropics. The study provides the first reports of two snail species of the genus Zonitoides in Sabah, Borneo, namely Z. arboreus (Say, 1819) and Z. nitidus (O.F. Muller, 1774). The identification was aided using partial sequences of 28S rDNA, and the barcoding sequence of COI. So far, the two Zonitoides species were found in locations where the natural forest cover had been disturbed, and only in the montane forest at elevations between 1500 and 2000 m a.s.l..