L’université de Stellenbosch, en Afrique du Sud, a annoncé que ses chercheurs avaient mis au point un nouveau système de fi ltrage de l’eau. Elle faisait allusion à un fi ltre jetable de haute technologie qui ressemble à un sachet de thé et rend potable l’eau très polluée. Il s’agit d’un fi ltre à eau facile d’emploi
et respectueux de l’environnement qui s’installe dans le goulot d’une bouteille. Selon l’université, cette invention doit permettre aux communautés vulnérables, par exemple celles qui vivent à proximité de cours d’eau pollués, d’accéder facilement à l’eau potable.

Research Report no. 4 of the CPWF project: Improving on-farm agricultural water productivity in the Karkheh river basin (PN8).

The current study attempts to examine whether large-scale agricultural investment of this type benefits the poor and how this investment can be implemented to increase benefits for the poor. It is arguable whether the poor need more land to grow crops to meet their food security requirements or need to benefit from large-scale agricultural investment in Cambodia. Although the poor households are capable of operating small plots of a few hectares each, they generally lack capital and the means to work large chunks of new land with forests or degrade forests.

FIRST PARAGRAPH OF OVERVIEW: This paper is part of a study “Policy Analysis for the Development of Land Policy for Socio- Economic Development.” Land policy relates to the institutional arrangements through which the Government of Vietnam defines which individuals and groups have access to rights in land and the circumstances that apply to gaining and retaining that access.

ABSTRACTED FROM THE INTRODUCTION: This is a study of the rice economy in Myanmar. It seeks to identify barriers and bottlenecks that are hindering growth and depressing value in a sector that must play a central role in alleviating the extreme poverty that currently afflicts an expanding proportion of rural households.

INTRODUCTION: Over the last 30 years, the context of development in Cambodian has undergone dramatic changes. A succession of deep transformations, characterized by a complete restructuring of institutional and socio-economic environment, has resulted in a singular situation. Cambodian society remains largely agrarian, with land being the corner stone of the production system for a large majority of the population.

The socio-economic changes of the last decades have resulted in changes in traditional land uses with consequent abandonment of large farmland areas in the Mediterranean region. We assessed the response of species richness and composition, and species functional traits to decreasing land use intensity in a Montado system, an agro-pastoral system characteristic of the Alentejo, Southern Portugal. Additionally, we investigated whether plant functional types can be established based on the response to decreasing land use intensity in these systems.

Numerous agro-environmental indicators have been developed to assess the impact of farming systems on biodiversity. They can be combined into logistic models for predicting the presence of species of ecological interest. In general, several models are available for a given species and their practical value depends on their accuracy and the cost of measurement of their input variables.

Indonesia has available over 20 million ha of tidal lowlands. In their natural state these are generally waterlogged areas that may be regularly inundated for prolonged periods. Almost 4 million ha of these tidal lowlands have been reclaimed, partly by spontaneous settlers and partly by the government.

In rural areas, land use and cover change is often the cumulative result of individual farmer decisions. The goal was to construct a spatial typology of farming systems and assess their influence on the extent and spatial distribution of deforestation, forest re-growth, and agriculture expansion in southern Chile between 1999 and 2007. We present a farm typology and its spatial rendering through the combination of farm-cadastral information and land cover and change data. Using multivariate statistical methods, four types were identified.

The Grain-to-Green Program (GTGP) was initiated in China in 2000 to address environmental degradation. In northern China, the central goal of the program is to entice sustainable transitions in resource uses through subsidizing cropland afforestation and grassland exclosure. This study, based on a household survey in Shabianzi, an agropastoral community in the Mu Us Sandy Land, examines farmers' responses to and the environmental outcome of the GTGP.