During the last few years, the donor community has increased its efforts to reduce the large amounts of fish lost in the distribution chain in artisanal fishery, an endeavour that ought to be welcomed in principle. However, focusing on one single solution, the development of an expensive cool chain and the supply of fresh or frozen fish, represents a massive interference with the traditional processing and distribution channels, with women being the main losers. Our author calls for more foresight in international co-operation.

The demand to eradicate extreme poverty and hunger has been the centrepiece of the Millennium Development Goals; the first MDG stands for the inextricable link between poverty and people’s ability to access safe, nutritious and sufficient food. How will the objective of achieving global food and nutrition security be embedded in the SDGs? Will the SDGs be a further step towards this target?

Rural extension services are an extremely complex affair. This is due to the wide range of constellations in which farmers operate nowadays, and also to the large number of players who are active in advisory services, with their different tasks, values and mandates. With reference to Germany’s rural extension services, our author shows who is taking on which role and where conflicts might potentially arise.

The sustainable management of soils is crucial to achieving the Sustainable Development Goals. This is evidenced by the analysis of the role soils play across the proposed agenda. However, some key aspects have not been sufficiently considered so far. Moreover, the SDGs will place increased demand on soils. Further advocacy is therefore needed to ensure that important soil and land related issues remain in the final declaration of the post-2015 agenda.

As with other countries, agricultural extension and advisory services (EAS) in Malawi are provided by public, private, and non-profit organisations. While it has become commonplace to refer to this collection of actors as a system, this claim is only valid in the loosest of terms, as many of the component parts do not functionally interact with others in an operational sense, tending rather to function as independent sub-networks within larger national, and international spheres of exchange.

The Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) will amount to little unless backed by reliable indicators. Only with good metrics can the agenda be implemented and progress measured. Just like the SDGs themselves, the indicators are still in the discussion phase, with the Sustainable Development Solutions Network (SDSN) one of the many players in this process. They outline their recommendations in the following article, using rural development as an example to describe them.

The Sustainable Development Goals differ radically from the current Millennium Development Goals in many aspects. Our author demonstrates the challenges that departing from a donor-oriented development framework poses – particularly for the North, and also with a view to its own development.

Is it right to attach financial values to nature and to incorporate that valuation into the post-2015 agenda? Will such valuation help to protect species diversity and ecosystems? Or does it not rather harbour the risk that we cheerfully go on destroying nature since other aspects of the national accounts can be seen as compensation? Civil society is split on this issue. Our author points out why.

The land reform process in Cambodia is full of examples of injustice and human rights violations. Promises to improve the situation of the landless and land-poor citizens have remained unfulfilled. Development co-operation efforts have not changed this either.

A development policy opting exclusively for value chain development and the integration of producers in modern markets overlooks the reality for the majority of smallholders, our author maintains. Policy should pay greater attention to addressing the area most small-scale producers are active in: the informal sector.

This guidebook provides conceptual, legal and practical tools and resources to help civil society organizations guide communities through the process of documenting customary tenure at the local level. It also provides suggestions for how to build on the momentum generated by the documentation process to develop strategies and actions to defend, strengthen and promote customary rights at community, regional and national level. The guidebook was developed out of practical experience and conversations with local groups in Myanmar that have been documenting customary tenure.

FAO published its Voluntary Guidelines on the Responsible Governance of Tenure (VGGT) of Land, Fisheries and Forests in the Context of National Food Security in 2012. The purpose of these guidelines is to serve as reference and to provide guidance to improve the governance of tenure of land, fisheries and forest with the overarching goal of achieving food security for all and to support the progressive realization of the right to adequate food in the context of national food security.