Access to water and sanitation is one of the major challenges faced by populations affected by conflict or natural disasters. The following technical manuals developed by the Oxfam Public Health Engineering Team aim to enable the provision of a reliable water supply for populations affected by conflict or natural disaster. Descriptions are given of the individual water treatment procedure followed by step by step instructions for implementation using Oxfam water kits/equipment including safety procedures and other considerations. Procedures include:

Across vast areas of the world, human activity has degraded once fertile and productive land. Deforestation, overgrazing, continuous farming and poor irrigation practices have affected almost 2 billion hectares worldwide, threatening the health and livelihoods of over one billion people. In this edition of New Agriculturist, a collection of articles explores some of the approaches and policies that can help to successfully rehabilitate degraded land.

This report analyses the impact of climate change and land degradation on agriculture and related sectors in Viet Nam. It intends to guide the project based on the design of the Country Strategic Opportunities Paper (COSOP) priorities and to identify supplementary financing for International Fund for Agricultural Development (IFAD) projects from the UNFCCC and other carbon related financing mechanisms. It is explained that the harmful effects of climate change are already being experienced in Viet Nam, and farming communities have begun to respond by:

Approximately 85% of Malawi’s population live in rural areas and depend in some way on forests for their livelihoods. Recent government policies have highlighted how forest resources could do more to help reduce poverty through the development of small and medium forest enterprises (SMFEs).

Part of a series of development reports, this paper highlights the key challenges facing the Middle East and North Africa Region (MENA). In particular, it aims to show how water is integrated into the wider economic policies of the countries of the region and for that reason, it brings water issues to non-water specialists, addressing a multi-sectoral audience. It is argued that despite its diversity of landscapes and climates - from the snowy peaks of the Atlas mountains to the empty quarter of the Arabian peninsula - most of the region’s countries cannot meet current water demand.

In Vietnam, forest area under the management of local people has expanded from almost nothing in the early 1990s to nearly 3.5 million hectares (27% of the national forest area) in 2006. This study looks at the extent to which such tenure reform has worked in practice and how it has affected local people’s livelihoods and well being. The study finds that:

Following from the Comprehensive Assessment of Water Management in Agriculture project, this book examines the relationships and linkages between land use and water management and social systems. Given that agriculture is the largest economic sector in many developing countries, this volume provides innovative ideas for the prevention of land degradation and for improving the sustainability of food production in the developing world.

The IUCN protected area management categories are a global framework, recognised by the Convention on Biological Diversity, for categorising the variety of protected area management types. The following guidelines provide direction, descriptions, principles and advice in the application of the IUCN protected area management categories in particular biomes and management approaches.The document is broken into different sections focusing on key discussions on IUCN protected area management, which are included below.

Divided into three parts, this collaborative work looks at the varied challenges brought about as a result of corruption in the water sector. It also looks at recent research conducted and provides an overview of the water sector corruption challenges in country profiles across the globe. Corruption in the water sector puts the lives and livelihoods of billions of people at risk. The onset of climate change and the increasing stress on water supply around the world make the fight against corruption in water more urgent than ever.

This policy paper sets out the relevance of social and environmental standards for small-scale timber growers. It focuses on the development of the National Forest Standards currently being developed by the South African Government . The paper points out that the significance of small-scale timber growers in South Africa is likely to grow: Approximately one third of its timber production in the near future may be derived from small growers.  A key concern for growers is access to markets, especially where growers are not members of out-grower schemes or marketing cooperatives.

In context of the recent emergence of the debate on rights-based approaches (RBA) to conservation, this paper provides a collaborative piece of work on the constitution of RBA’s and some of the key issues surrounding them. It also looks at some examples from countries where there is a need for RBA’s.

Forestry education in recent years has largely failed to adequately respond to the dynamics in forestry practice, the demands of the job market and the challenges of new global forestry paradigms.