ICARDA has long-standing outreach programs in North Africa, the Nile Valley, and the Red Sea region (Fig 2). In its current strategic plan, the Center will extend its work to the drylands of Sub-Saharan Africa.

This will ensure more sustainable ecosystems and improved rural livelihoods. Emphasis is given to building on local knowledge by using existing data, social capital, research linkages, partnerships and proven methodologies and technologies in the region thereby ensuring the sustainability of the impacts achieved. The Initiative also draws from a wide pool of multi-disciplinary expertise from within and outside the region and targets the three major agro-ecosystems in the region – rainfed, irrigated and rangeland.

Gedaref State was previously known as the
food basket of Sudan. Over several decades
unsustainable agricultural practices that
combined near-monocropping with low nutrient
replenishment have led to significant degradation
of soils, which are no longer able to sustain farmer
livelihoods. This study found that adopting
an integrated sustainable land use and forest
restoration scenario could reverse the current
land degradation trend. The integration of Acacia
senegal with sorghum, Sudan’s primary staple

The living lab approach underlying LANDSUPPORT activities is aimed at involving policy and decision makers and potential users from the very beginning and throughout all project phases, ensuring that the delivered DSS tools can actually be used.
With this aim preparatory workshops bringing together policy makers in land management have been planned at EU/national/regional/local level. The outcomes of national and local workshops will feed into the EU workshop in order to ensure that local and national instances are brought forward at the EU level.

Land and Water Productivity: Technical report.

International Crops Research Institute for the Semi-Arid Tropics (ICRISAT) is implementing a project
supported by Sir Dorabji Tata Trust (SDTT) for the last ten years in the states of Madhya Pradesh and
Rajasthan and a project supported by Sir Ratan Tata Trust (SRTT) in four districts of Madhya Pradesh
and Jharkhand for improving livelihoods of small and marginal farmers through sustainable management
of natural resources. ICRISAT has adopted consortium approach in partnership with Non-Governmental

This visual-aided manual presents the state-of-the art methodological options for modeling human decision-making in general and in multi-agent system. The options include heuristic, rational, bounded rational and hybrid approaches. Assumptions, rationales and pseudo algorithms for each approach are briefly described. Depending on research goal, team capacity, preference and data availability researchers select one of the approaches to apply. However, it is important that they must understand the assumptions and rationales of the selected approach to realize the methodological limits.

This issue of Caravan chronicles ICARDA’s efforts in developing a research strategy and a need-based research program for the CAC region. In doing so, ICARDA played a major role in bringing together all partners, most importantly donors. The article on page 8 traces the history of this effort and provides an overview of the current status of collaboration.

SWAT modeling for soil erosion estimation

This report provides evidence of how increasingly
scarce resources can be conserved, and also
presents tools for policy-/decision-makers to
promote and secure future wealth and human wellbeing
through sustainable land management. It
emphasises taking long-term benefits into account
and focuses on practical solutions, as well as the
context in which sustainable land management
occurs. The report aims to ensure the returns of
sustainable land management (e.g., economic
growth, food security, sustainable livelihoods and

This report provides a brief summary of the discussions in and key findings of the Global Land
Outlook Writeshop that took place 11th - 13th of April 2016 in Amman, Jordan. The writeshop was
organized the CGIAR Research Program on Dryland Systems, in collaboration with the United
Nations Convention to Combat Desertification (UNCCD) and ICARDA.
The purpose of the writeshop was to bring working authors together to discuss and share
knowledge and lessons learned on successful examples of sustainable land management best

Land degradation is a serious problem, particularly on vulnerable agricultural lands to soil erosion, which
signifies the temporary or permanent decline in the productive capacity of the land (UN/FAO definition).
Erosion is one of the most common problems around the world. Sanders (2004) considers that erosion
and soil degradation issues have contributed to the decline of great civilizations in Egypt, China or
Greece. The annual costs of soil erosion in the US are estimated between US$ 30 billion and US$ 44