Implementing Ecosystem and Ecosystem Services (EES) projects in Fragile and Conflict-affected Settings (FCS) poses both operational challenges and the risk of inadvertently aggravating socio-political dynamics. The intertwined relationship between human, ecological, and economic systems makes these projects sensitive to conflict dynamics related to land access, environmental degradation, and livelihoods. Changes in ecosystems can be exploited by groups like political elites or armed entities, as observed in numerous case studies.

As part of the "ClimBeR: Building Systemic Resilience Against Climate Variability and Extremes" initiative, the Zambia spotlight developed a case study on "Water Access and Management in Community-based Water Tenure" in two rural communities of Zambia.

Participatory rangeland management (PRM) is a community-led process for improving the management and governance of rangelands, supported by facilitators and technical advisors. This animated film describes the process, and in particular the use of the 'four legs' goat, to understand the four main pillars of PRM.
These are: 1. Establishment and governance of the rangeland unit, 2. Management of the rangeland unit, 3. Using a landscape approach, and 4. Relations with government and customary institutions.

Sustainable water management requires evidence-based information on the current and future states of water resources. This study presents a comprehensive modelling framework that integrates the fully distributed mesoscale Hydrologic Model (mHM) and climate change scenarios with the Water Accounting Plus (WA+) tool to anticipate future water resource challenges and provide mitigation measures in the transboundary Volta River basin (VRB) in West Africa. The mHM model is forced with a large ensemble of climate change projection data from CORDEX-Africa.

A governance perspective that connects actors at multiple levels in forest restoration is largely missing and much needed to expedite the translation of national restoration targets into long-lasting outcomes. An explicit focus on the interactions across governance levels, and how these influence ecological processes at different spatial levels, can overcome the general tendency to focus on forest restoration either from the top-down or bottom-up and help improve the quality of forest restoration.

Mapping stakeholders and their potential roles for prevention and reduction of food waste (FW) supports a coherent, coordinated and complementary approach to quantification, causes identification and scaling up of feasible solutions for significant returns on investment. State and nonstate stakeholders were mapped in selected municipalities: Colombo metropolitan area (Colombo, Sri Jayewardenepura-Kotte, Negombo, Kaduwela and Moratuwa municipal council areas), Jaffna, Kandy, Batticoloa, Kurunegala and Galle.

The CORIGAP project was implemented in six main rice granaries in South and Southeast Asia. The project introduced several country-specific sustainable best management practices, including nutrient management, pest management, water management, and several postharvest technologies, among other specific practices. This chapter introduces each country and its respective challenges to rice production. It outlines cultivation practices, historical developments, and their impacts on opportunities for the development of the rice sector.

The 2021 United Nations Food Systems Summit (UNFSS) presented the opportunity to apply an agri-food systems approach to Africa’s existing agricultural and food security efforts. The dialogues provided platforms for governments, businesses, communities and civil society to identify pathways towards resilient and inclusive agri-food systems and to reflect on the benefits of the approach and propose strategies for its mainstreaming.

Study region: Lake Tana sub-basin of the Upper Blue Nile River Basin, Ethiopia. Study focus: Groundwater use for small-scale irrigation is increasing in the Lake Tana sub-basin. However, the abstraction amount and its impact are not well understood. In this study, a new methodological approach was utilized to estimate the irrigation water abstraction amount, which is based on groundwater level monitoring before, during, and at the end of the irrigation season (2021/2022).

Presentation on the implications of the challenges faced in the 21st century for sustainable rangeland restoration in dry areas. In addition to the limiting and successful factors that affected large-scale rehabilitation efforts. The presentation was performed by Mounir Louhaichi as a guest lecture on Exploring World Agriculture to students at the College of Agricultural Sciences at Oregon State University.

This policy brief — produced under the CGIAR Initiative on Asian Mega-Deltas (AMD) — emphasizes the urgent need for promoting inclusive governance in Bangladesh's agri-food systems to enhance resilience in the face of escalating climate risks. Although Bangladesh is transitioning toward climate-resilient agri-food systems, this shift faces challenges. There is notable variation among policies and interventions pertaining to food, water and environmental systems in their acknowledgment of socio-ecological interdependencies and representation of marginalized communities.

In what is proclaimed as the ‘fourth industrial revolution’, digital innovation is thought to have the potential to provide solutions to key challenges facing food production and consumption together with the support of sustainability of the underpinning support of land, and water systems. Nowhere is this more the case in less-industrialised countries, which largely have agrarian based economies.