Land tenure, or access and rights to land, is essential to sustain people’s livelihoods. This paper looks at how farm households perceive land tenure (in)security in relation to food (in)security, and how these perceptions evolve throughout different policy periods in Laos. The paper highlights the centrality of farmers’ strategies in configuring the dynamic relationships between tenure (in)security and food (in)security, by demonstrating how farmers’ perceived and de facto land tenure insecurity shapes their decisions to diversify livelihood options to ensure food security.

Water is an essential resource for all life, but is extremely difficult to manage productively, sustainably and equitably. Good water governance has been a major theme of multiple international conferences for at least two decades (Woodhouse and Muller 2017). Without good governance, we cannot achieve poverty reduction, food security, environmental sustainability, equity and other global development goals or respond effectively to the ravages of climate change. Achieving many of the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) depends on the availability of water to users.

Water is central for a variety of livelihoods, development, economic growth, and food production. It is also very important in the large deltas of South and Southeast Asia. Yet, water is turning into a scare resource and global climate change is making its availability more unpredictable. Commercial interests and infrastructure development are also competing for water resources, sometimes at the expense of local smallholders.

Groundwater is the single largest source of water for irrigation and domestic use in India. Climate change further exacerbates the threat of depletion, reducing food security and increasing the vulnerabilities of resource users. Governance is complicated by externalities associated with its attributes as an invisible and fluid resource which create problems of rivalry and exclusion. Based on theory-based case studies for evaluation of selected World Bank projects, we analyse challenges for groundwater governance and identify factors that contribute to depletion.

The North Central Province (NCP) is situated in the Dry Zone of Sri Lanka. Average annual rainfall in the province is less than 1,750 mm, of which very little occurs between May and September (dry season). An estimated 12,00016,000 irrigation tanks, mainly situated in villages, have been constructed since 300 BC to store surface runoff to support dry-season rice cultivation, which is practiced in addition to rain-fed rice production.

Adaptation to climate change is a vital response to enhance the resilience of these smallholder agricultural livelihoods, more so because of their adverse effect on the food security of the nation. Lack of education and technical skills, poverty, and risks inherent to agricultural investments as well as little access to financial capital are the main reasons for low investments in adaptive capacity enhancements.

The Middle East and North Africa (MENA) is a vast area covering 20 countries from western Asia to North Africa, with nearly 9,000,000 Km2 and 303 million hectares of total rangelands. Rangelands play an essential role in supporting people’s livelihoods and food security. Mobile pastoralism is the most viable and resilient form of production and land use in the fragile drylands of MENA. However, the region’s governments have considered nomadic pastoralism backwards mainly because it was challenging to deliver mobile services.

The challenges to agroecological transitions are not the same for all farmers and implementation of agroecological practices in different locations could yield different results. With this consideration, this study was conducted in Aba-Garima watershed in northwestern Ethiopia to characterize the structure and activities of farming households and assess factors influencing the implementation and sustainability of agroecological practices. Data were collected from 218 households, 16 key informants, and 12 focus group discussions.

This article investigates water security in Nepal from the perspective of the water-energy-agriculture (food) nexus, focusing on pathways to water security that originate in actions and policies related to other sectors. It identifies promoting development of Nepal’s hydropower potential to provide energy for pumping as way to improve water security in agriculture.

A river basin – the breadbasket of millions – battered by floods just a few months earlier, slowly dries up; struck by climate change, over-abstraction of water and degradation of soils and land. As the river flow and reservoir levels fall, hydropower production declines. Farmers start to rely more heavily on groundwater, but access to energy for their irrigation wells is expensive. Many, especially women, are without access and a voice; others pump too much and ratchet up the water stress of the whole basin. Soils turn to dust, crops wilt, livestock and wildlife perish.

In combination with political, cultural, and economic factors, issues related to environmental resources and the management of land have played a crucial role in driving conflict in Mindanao. Climatic stressors and shocks are altering food, land, and water systems, and driving important socioeconomic challenges for food security and the stability of rural livelihoods across the Philippines.

There is increasing recognition of the role of Indigenous and local knowledge systems in sustainable land use and conservation practices. However, the evidence base remains fragmented, while local knowledge remains marginalised in many national biodiversity strategies and development plans. This applies to the Tonga people of Zambia and Zimbabwe.