Professor Kjell Havnevik is retiring from the Nordic Africa Institute (NAI) in 2015. For four decades, he has carried out research, taught and supervised students as well as participated in policy debates on different aspects of agriculture, the environment and African and international development policies. His output has been voluminous and is internationally recognised. His academic record includes research and teaching positions at universities and research institutes in Tanzania, Norway and Sweden as well as shorter assignments in several other countries.

Zero-deforestation commitments are emerging rapidly in Indonesia. They already encompass a large portion of crude palm oil production and almost all the pulp and paper (P&P) sector; typically, they reflect the values of the “no-deforestation, no-exploitation (social) and no-peat” policies.

These commitments depend on definitions of ‘forests’ for their identification and conservation, which in turn rely on methodologies such as High Conservation Value and High Carbon Stock.

Achieving sustainable food security (i.e., the basic right of people to produce and/or purchase the food they need, without harming the social and biophysical environment) is a major challenge in a world of rapid human population growth, large-scale changes in economic development and in the face of climate change.

In sub-Saharan Africa (SSA), production on smallholder farms is critical to the food security of the rural poor and contributes the majority of food production at the national level.

For cities to be sustainable, they need to simultaneously address the vulnerability of people, places and sectors that may be affected by a changing climate; mitigate their greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions; and ensure adequate access to basic urban services such as water, food and energy to their growing populations. 

Cocoa is increasingly recognized as a crop which is vulnerable to climate change. However, the extent to which current growing areas in Indonesia will be climatically unsuited to cultivation in the future is unknown. This uncertainty makes it difficult for smallholder farmers to plan production at a farm level and for multinational exporters, processors and manufacturers, to forecast yields at a value chain level.

The third in a collection of CIAT fundraising factsheets that provide overviews of the following cocoa in Indonesia issues:

This study aims at understanding the influence of policy frameworks on climate change adaptation in Uganda. It combines literature review on existing natural resource management policies, focus group discussions with farming communities and interviews with key informants across various policy implementation levels. Findings reveal that even when farmers are exposed to appropriate adaptation practices, adoption is still constrained by limited enforcement of policies and regulations.

Global reviews of the impacts of climate change on fisheries and aquaculture systems carried out in 2009 revealed a paucity and patchiness of information concerning climate impacts on the sector. Six follow-up regional case studies were then launched by the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations (FAO) in an attempt to start filling the gaps and to provide direction and initial steps in adaptation planning. Fisheries and aquaculture systems were selected across the globe to allow for diversity.

This first progress report for the five-year Sida programme provides a comprehensive review of programme activities, progress towards outcomes, risks encountered and lessons learned in the first 18 months – from 1 October 2013 to 31 March 2015. It also discusses adjustments required to Year 2 implementation as a result of these findings.

This book explores four central propositions on climate-smart and multifunctional landscape approaches: A) Current landscapes are a suboptimal member of a set of locally feasible landscape configurations; B) Actors and interactions can nudge landscapes towards better managed trade-offs within the set of feasible configurations, through engagement, investment and interventions; C) Climate is one of many boundary conditions for landscape functioning; D) Theories of change must be built within theories of place for effective location-specific engagement.

The paper reviews research showing that soils contain more carbon than atmosphere and all plant life combined, noting that increasing carbon storage in soils is relatively simple compared to approaches to use geoengineering to avert climate change.

Decisions on water allocation and infrastructure lie at the heart of development planning in semi-arid lands. On paper, the laws and policies of Burkina Faso accord equal entitlement to drinking water for the residents of cities and the residents of small towns and villages.

In practice, Ouagadougou’s status as economic and administrative capital gives it much greater power to plan for and mobilise investment for its own water supplies. The Ziga project (in two phases) has been designed to secure bulk water supply for Ouagadougou until 2030.

This Topic Guide addresses the threat that climate change poses to food security and poverty reduction achievements. The peer-reviewed guide explains how programming around climate-smart agriculture can help adapt and build resilience to climate change – at the same time stimulating economic growth and poverty reduction in the agricultural sector.