Climate change is amplifying the risk of extreme weather disasters by increasing the destructive power of storms and floods. At the same time, rising seas, shifting rainfall patterns, drought and other slow-onset changes are eroding people’s land, natural resources and security, and magnifying existing vulnerabilities.

This Climate-Fragility profile is envisaged as a first component of a Climate-Fragility Risk Assessment process. It summarizes the key challenges the Lake Chad region is experiencing as a consequence of the interplay between climate change and fragility.

The core of this successful climate change adaptation project is the quarterly climate change preparedness workshops conducted every 3 months. These provide a platform for reporting back to the larger community, to share new ideas with fellow farmers and scientists, and to plan next steps. Through a case study of Rooibos tea growers, this paper documents a community-based climate change adaptation project in the Suid Bokkeveld district of South Africa.

Modern urbanism is called to face current challenges ranging from intensive demographic growth, economic and social stagnation to resources salvation and climate changes. Under the broader scope of sustainability, we argue that the transition to a holistic perspective of smart and regenerative planning and design is the way to face and yet to prevent these urban challenges. In doing so, we adopt systematic thinking to study the complexity of urban metabolisms at an urban place scale, emphasizing the ongoing coevolution of social-cultural-technological and ecological processes.

Understanding Soil Degradation Processes (SDPs) is a fundamental issue for humankind. Soil degradation involves complex processes that are influenced by a multifaceted ensemble of socioeconomic and ecological factors at vastly different spatial scales. Desertification risk (the ultimate outcome of soil degradation, seen as an irreversible process of natural resource destruction) and socioeconomic trends have been recently analyzed assuming “resilience thinking” as an appropriate interpretative paradigm.

In the context of current agrarian reform efforts in South Africa, this paper analyses the livelihood trajectories of ‘emergent’ farmers in Eastern Cape Province. We apply a rural livelihoods framework to 60 emergent cattle farmers to understand the different capitals they have drawn upon in transitioning to their current class positions and associated vulnerability. The analysis shows that, for the majority of farmers, no real ‘transition’ from subsistence farming has occurred.

Land degradation, especially soil erosion, is a societal issue that affects vineyards worldwide, but there are no current investigations that inform specifically about soil erosion rates in Chinese vineyards. In this review, we analyze this problem and the need to avoid irreversible damage to soil and their use from a regional point of view. Information about soil erosion in vineyards has often failed to reach farmers, and we can affirm that to this time, soil erosion in Chinese vineyards has been more of a scientific hypothesis than an agronomic or environmental concern.

Natural disasters are projected to increase in number and severity, in part due to climate change. At the same time a growing number of disaster risk reduction (DRR) and climate change adaptation measures are being implemented by governmental and non-governmental organizations, and substantial post-disaster donations are frequently pledged. At the same time there has been increasing demand for transparency and accountability, and thus evidence of those measures having a positive effect.

This publication supports processes related to rural communities’ resilience in implementing land restoration of the Great Green Wall Programme on the ground. It serves a dual purpose of consolidating biophysical operations and socio-economic assessments, and is mainly built on five-year interventions and practical experiences gathered through Action Against Desertification. The first part of the publication is a practical manual expressly created for stakeholders, partners, non-governmental organizations and community-based organizations.

Resilience-building planning in drylands requires a participatory, integrated approach that incorporates issues of scale (often large scale) and the interconnectedness of dryland ecological and social systems. In an often political environment that supports small, “manageable” administrative units and the decentralisation of power and resources to them, planning at large scale is particularly challenging; development agents in particular may find it difficult to work across administrative boundaries and/or collaboratively.

Productive land is a critical natural asset for rural communities in developing nations, providing them with a wide range of ecosystem resources, such as water, fertile soils, plant and genetic diversity – on which they depend daily for survival. For many communities, the land is also an integral part of their cultural identity, helping to maintain social cohesion and stability, in addition to building resilience to socio-ecological shocks and risks such as those caused by climate change. But land is a vulnerable resource that must be managed and restored to ensure a sustainable future.

Growing external pressures from human activities and climate change can exacerbate desertification, compromising the livelihoods of more than 25% of the world’s population. The dryland mosaic is defined by land covers that do not behave similarly, and the identification of their recurring or irregular changes over time is crucial, especially in areas susceptible to become desertified.