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.

Agri-food systems face multiple challenges. They must deal with prevailing structural weaknesses, partly deepened by the disruptions from the COVID-19 pandemic, civil conflicts, and climate change. Addressing structural weaknesses – such as inequitable access to healthy and nutritious food for all, loss of livelihoods and incomes, and increasing environmental shocks – requires not only technological, but also institutional innovations, as well as economic and policy responses.

Energy plays a key role in human activities, driving economies and societies worldwide. Notably, 85 percent of the 800 million people without energy access live in fragile states. With the growing climate crisis and the need to move away from fossil fuels, investments in renewable energy are increasing, especially in Africa due to its vast renewable energy potential. However, there are challenges in introducing renewable energy projects in Fragile and Conflict-affected States (FCS).

In the recent campaign leading up to the presidential election of July 9, 2023 in Uzbekistan, the incumbent president pledged to ensure the implementation of water-saving technologies across all irrigated lands by 2030. This ambitious initiative aims to revolutionize the country’s agricultural sector by replacing old water-intensive irrigation practices with a mix of modern innovative technologies, such as drip irrigation or laser land leveling.

The drivers of deforestation and land use change in the Peruvian Amazon and Andes are complex and interconnected, shaped by various factors, including agricultural expansion, wood extraction, mining, infrastructure development, climate change, and socio-economic factors. This review highlights the multifaceted nature of these drivers and their impacts on the environment and local communities. Addressing these issues requires a comprehensive approach that accounts for both direct and underlying drivers and the unique context of each region.

This chapter explores the impact of tariff increases on female unemployment and the agricultural sector in Malawi. Combining a standard general equilibrium model with a top-down behavioural microsimulation, the author finds that a move towards trade restrictions would destroy over 1 million jobs in the country, affecting primarily women across the labour market but more markedly in agriculture.

The convergence of the biodiversity and climate crises, widening of wealth inequality, and most recently the COVID-19 pandemic underscore the urgent need to mobilize change to secure sustainable futures. Centres of tropical biodiversity are a major focus of conservation efforts, delivered in predominantly site-level interventions often incorporating alternative-livelihood provision or poverty-alleviation components. Yet, a focus on site-level intervention is ill-equipped to address the disproportionate role of (often distant) wealth in biodiversity collapse.

Indonesia, the most mangrove-rich nation in the world, has proposed the most globally ambitious mangrove rehabilitation target (600,000 ha) of any nation, to be achieved by 2024 to support multiple Sustainable Development Goals (SDG 1–3, 6, 13 and 14). Yet, mangrove restoration and rehabilitation across the world have often suffered low success rates and been applied at small scales. Here, we identify 193,367 ha (estimated costs at US$0.29–1.74 billion) that have the potential to align with the national mangrove rehabilitation programme.

This country brief is part of the outputs for Work Package 5 of the CGIAR Initiative on Agroecology. The focus of Work Package 5 is understanding and then influencing individual and collective agency and behavior among food system actors (FSAs) to drive inclusive and equitable agroecological transformation. Through learning from past experiences relevant to agroecological transformation, this country brief aims to inform the development of the Agroecological Living Landscapes (ALL) and the approach to the Agroecology Initiative’s (AE-I's) activities in Kenya.