Scaling up is not just about technology transfer but a critical understanding of the needs and visions of farmers as well. Despite the success of pilot projects for Integrated Natural Resource Management implemented in the study area, effect and uptake of the pilot tested innovations have been insignificant. This study assesses implications of adopting Innovative Platforms (IP) as a means of accelerating uptake and utilization of sustainable land management (SLM) technologies in the highlands of eastern Uganda.

Fostering collective action is necessary for scaling sustainable land management (SLM) innovations. This paper analyses the significance of social networks in SLM among agricultural rural communities in central Ethiopia and eastern Uganda. Social networks facilitate collective action important for small-scale resource-poor farmers, who tend to rely more on informal sources of information, as well as for women farmers, whose information needs are often not addressed by formal extension services.

The objective was to determine the influence of market access or lack of it, on farmer investment in soil and water conservation (SWC) technologies in the highlands of eastern Uganda. Linking farmers to better markets for their agricultural commodities would contribute to raising their incomes and motivate farmers’ adoption of conservation in SWC technologies. Areas of relatively high agricultural potential but remote from major markets face disincentives; when farmers are unable to transport produce to markets on time, they are left in the hands of middlemen who dictate low prices.

This newsletter issue provides details of the IDRC implementation of a project in Ethiopia and Uganda in scaling sustainable land management (SLM) innovations, for positive and timely outcomes for livelihoods, poverty reduction and environmental sustainability. Research evidence has shown that farmers in the region can increase their farm productivity by up to 5 times upon adoption of SLM innovations. In scaling-up, the project will pay particular attention to policy and institutional processes.

As part of the broader United Nations Development Programme and United Nations Environment Programme (UNDP/UNEP) Poverty-Environment Initiative (PEI), Phase 1 Project, the overall objective of this study is to develop a framework to assess the impact of land degradation and the benefits of SLM.

In 2015 we celebrated world leaders’ recognition of the foundational and strategic role that sustainable land management must play t o advance biodiversity conservation and climate resilience.

Interventions to strengthen forest conservation in tropical biomes face multiple challenges. Insecure land tenure and unequal benefit sharing within forest user groups are two of the most important. Using original household-level survey data from 130 villages in six countries, we assess how current wealth inequality relates to tenure security and benefit flows from forest use. We find that villages with higher wealth inequality report lower tenure security and more unequal flows from forest income and externally sourced income.

The standard System of National Accounts (SNA) omits the costs of the environmental inputs from nature and the environmental fixed asset degradation from the national/sub-national natural working landscapes. The United Nations Statistic Division (UNSD) is currently drafting the standardization of the Experimental Ecosystem Accounting (EEA), as part of the System of Environmental-Economic Accounting (SEEA).

Changing dietary preferences and population growth in South Asia have resulted in increasing demand for wheat and maize, along side high and sustained demand for rice. In the highly productive northwestern Indo-Gangetic Plains of South Asia, farmers utilize groundwater irrigation to assure that at least two of these crops are sequenced on the same field within the same year. Such double cropping has had a significant and positive influence on regional agricultural productivity. But in the risk-prone and food insecure lower Eastern Indo-Gangetic Plains (EIGP), cropping is less intensive.

Landscape governance relates to how rules and decision-making address overlapping claims and conflicting interests in the landscape. It also relates to how rules and decision-making encourage synergies among stakeholders and stimulate the sustainable management of the landscape. In order to achieve sustainable landscape development, it is crucial to understand how governance processes are organized, and how this influences the decisions and behaviour of actors in the landscape.

Brazil has become an agricultural powerhouse, producing roughly 30 % of the world’s soy and 15 % of its beef by 2013 – yet historically much of that growth has come at the expense of its native ecosystems. Since 1985, pastures and croplands have replaced nearly 65 Mha of forests and savannas in the legal Amazon. A growing body of work suggests that this paradigm of horizontal expansion of agriculture over ecosystems is outdated and brings negative social and environmental outcomes.

Madam Speaker and Honorable Members, the vision of my Ministry is “Sustainable Land Use, Land Tenure Security, Affordable, Decent Housing and Organized Urban Development”. The Mission is “To ensure sustainable land management, planned urban and rural development and decent housing for all”. The Mandate is “To ensure rational and sustainable use, effective management of land and orderly development of urban and rural areas as well as safe, planned and adequate housing for socio-economic development”.