The objective of the study is to provide methodological instruments to governments in Latin America to facilitate the identification of the vulnerability of the physical infrastructure of coastal marine areas to climate change and facilitate the identification of adaptation options. It sets out the main ideas covered, that takes the experiences, lessons learned and best practices in the beneficiary countries of the EUROCLIMA programme in order to estimate and reduce the vulnerability of coastal marine infrastructures in the face of climate change.

The report addresses a much debated issue – bioenergy and associated land use change, and how the climate change mitigation from use of bioenergy can be influenced by greenhouse gas emissions arising from land use change. The purpose of this background report is to supply a more detailed, fully referenced version for practitioners, and researchers, in support of the short version (IEA Bioenergy: ExCo:2010:03) which was aimed at policy advisors and policy makers.

Energy is central to nearly every major challenge and opportunity the world faces today. Be it for jobs, security, climate change, food production or increasing incomes, access to energy for all is essential. Sustainable energy is an opportunity too as it fuels lives, economies and the planet. Getting sustainable energy to all who want it represents one of the biggest development challenges of the 21st century.

The Kyoto Protocol negotiated in the mid-1990s to address climate change adaptation and mitigation will be replaced by a post-Kyoto agreement in 2012. The new agreement under negotiation needs to seal the policy gaps in adaptation and mitigation that were omitted or excluded from Kyoto on account of scientific uncertainties. Particular attention needs to be given to the potential of land in all its dimensions considering its high capacity to store carbon. Land stores twice as much organic carbon as vegetation and the atmosphere combined.

Land has many uses. It provides water, food and energy. It is used to create wealth and employment and grow economies. And it provides other, often less obvious and tangible, services such as conserving biodiversity, storing carbon, purifying and storing water. It even regulates the Earth’s climate, for instance, by absorbing the heat from the sun. All of its uses are undermined and destroyed when land is degraded. Degrading the land disrupts these functions and leads to severe food, water and energy shortages.

Human activities are the principal drivers of the processes of land degradation, desertification and climate change. Though highly complex and difficult to predict, interactions between climate change and land degradation are likely to affect a range of different ecosystem functions and the services they deliver, with consequent impacts on food production, livelihoods and human well-being. Society must therefore mitigate or reverse these stresses through innovative approaches.

As of 2017, SGP has awarded over 3,800 small grants to land degradation projects in over 120 countries, many of which are in regions with extreme levels of poverty and food insecurity across Africa and Latin America. Africa, in particular, is experiencing the highest population growth of the developing world, while being exposed and vulnerable to the rising impact from climate change.

Land provides crucial ecosystem services for human existence and human well-being, including provisioning, regulating, supporting and cultural services. Those services provide among others the production of fresh air, food, feed, fuel and fibre. They regulate the risks of natural hazards and climate change, offer cultural and spiritual values to our society, and support key ecological functions such as nutrient and water cycling, filtering and buffering, and are central to economic vitality.

As primeiras décadas do século XXI têm sido marcadas por uma corrida global por terras, desencadeada pelas crises agroalimentar, energética, climática e econômico-financeira. O objetivo deste artigo é analisar se os Estados Unidos estiveram na rota dessa corrida. Para tanto, examinamos dados do Departamento de Agricultura dos Estados Unidos (United States Department of Agriculture – USDA) e bibliografia especializada, e identificamos que a porção de terras em mãos estrangeiras dobrou entre 2004 e 2014.

A Land Portal Foundation se orgulha de apoiar pessoas interessadas na terra ao redor do mundo para nutrir um crescente ecossistema de informação que está informando e melhorando as decisões, políticas e práticas relacionadas à terra em todos os níveis.

Enfrentamos, hoje, as emergências duplas e interligadas das mudanças climáticas induzidas pelo ser humano e da perda de biodiversidade, ameaçando o bem-estar das gerações atuais e futuras. Uma vez que nosso futuro depende criticamente da biodiversidade e de um clima estável, é essencial que compreendamos como o declínio da natureza e as alterações climáticas estão conectados.