Set against the backdrop of escalating food prices
and worsening food insecurity, the issue of land
becomes more relevant and urgent. The facts and figures
speak of a great irony. More than half a billion people
in Asia suffer from hunger and food insecurity, and too
often these are the small food producers, who comprise
farm laborers, tenants and small farmers. The region is
home to 75% of the world’s farming households, 80%
of which are resource-poor, and lack access to productive
land.

Unprecedented pressures on land and its governance have been created. As evident around the globe, where land governance is deficient, high levels of corruption often flourish. Under such a system, land distribution is unequal, tenure is insecure, and natural resources are poorly managed.

Baseline Research Report 

What rural dwellers in the Global South experience as land grabbing, tends to be seen in the Global North as ‘agricultural investment’. The World Bank has been at the forefront of a drive to legitimate these investments, convening to win support for a code of conduct based on Responsible Agricultural Investment (RAI) principles. Many key civil society groups reject the proposal for a code of conduct, objecting to the top-down process by which it was formulated and arguing that it was more likely to legitimate than prevent land grabbing.

Climate change is increasingly being recognised as a global crisis, but responses to it have so far been overly focused on scientific and economic solutions. How then do we move towards morepeople-centred, gender-aware climate change policies and processes? How do we respond to the different needs and concerns of women and men, and also challenge the gender inequalities that mean women are more likely to lose out than men in the face of climate change? This In Brief sets out why it is vital to address the gender dimensions of climate change.

Climate change is increasingly being recognised as a global crisis, but responses to it have so far been overly focused on scientific and economic solutions. How then do we move towards more people-centred, gender-aware climate change policies and processes? How do we both respond to the different needs and concerns of women and men and challenge the gender inequalities that mean women are more likely to lose out than men in the face of climate change? This report sets out why it is vital to address the gender dimensions of climate change.

This short briefing provides information for investors and lenders on the importance to develop a due diligence ‘risk framework’ to identify, mitigate and prevent the adverse impacts of their investment decisions. It provides links to additional resources on the topic.

The purpose of this paper is to summarize the challenges and the practical successes that a selected number of countries are experiencing in moving towards 'climate-smart' agriculture while also meeting the food requirements of a growing population, broader economic development and green growth objectives. It complements papers prepared in 2010 on technologies and policy instruments, research, and farmers' perspectives.

Los contenidos relacionados con la Seguridad y Soberanía Alimentaria están cada vez más presentes en las agendas académicas, políticas y sociales del desarrollo rural en Sudamérica. Sin embargo, no se trata de un tema nuevo. Por el contrario, como puede verse en el presente texto, su tratamiento es fácilmente rastreable en documentos de investigación y propuestas de organizaciones y movimientos sociales, de gobiernos y de Organizaciones no Gubernamentales (ONG).

Rising food prices, increasing climate instability and food riots have sparked profound political changes around the world and put agriculture high on the international agenda. What kind of agriculture is best suited to respond to those challenges, however, is the subject of profound disagreement. Too much of the current policy debate on food security, climate change and agriculture assumes that industrial agriculture and related biotechnology are the only options for feeding a growing global population.