There is a general consensus among academics, politicians and social movements, that BRICS as ‘new donors’ are increasing both their quantitative and qualitative role in defining what is considered to be ‘the world economic order’.

This report highlights the potentially significant impacts on the hydrologic cycle and the importance of considering secondary effects, particularly with regard to water, resulting from the widespread adoption of global climate change mitigation measures. It is recommended that the implicit hydrologic dimensions of climate change mitigation should be more formally articulated within the international environmental conventions, and recognized within future UNFCCC negotiations on the CDM-AR provisions.

What factors motivate developing countries to prevent deforestation, which can cause serious environmental damage, such as flooding? Do democratic states take action more effectively than authoritarian states?

Forests potentially contribute to global climate change through their influence on the global carbon (C) cycle. They store large quantities of C in vegetation and soil, exchange C with the atmosphere through photosynthesis and respiration, are sources of atmospheric C when they are disturbed, become atmospheric C sinks during abandonment and regrowth after disturbance, and can be managed to alter their role in the C cycle. The world's forest contain about 830 Pg C (1015 g) in their vegetation and soil, with about 1.5 times as much in soil as in vegetation.

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 perspective document: 1 Provides examples of ‘no regrets’ approaches, applied in small island countries to cope with current climate variability and adapt to future climate change, at different levels ranging from communities, local administrations and national governments. 2 Demonstrates the need for a sound knowledge base and information system, as well as a better understanding of the relation between water resources, water and health, and climatic extremes.

This case study shows how the activities of a large foreign-invested mining company on land held by the Awajun community in the northern forests of Peru have led to a characteristic cycle of state permissiveness in granting mining concessions, thus leading to social conflict.

This paper seeks to analyse some of the problems of degradation persisting in the dryland regions with particular reference to Sub-Saharan Africa, and describe the processes that aim to tackle them.It identifies the threat to dryland regions as a complex mixture of degrading soils, continuous exposures to frequent droughts and political and economic marginalisation which is putting poor people living in the drylands at risk.

This paper discusses issues surrounding indigenous land rights, sharing an understanding and information about land tenure and titling within Latin America. The study focuses on examples from the country level, with the aim of influencing policy coherence and legislation.In particular, Chapter four of this document examines the implications of indigenous land tenure for natural resource management, using case studies from Colombia, Costa Rica, Panama and Peru.

This case study, conducted in north Afar pastoral settlements in Ethiopia, explores pastoral natural resource management as well as indigenous conflict management.Main findings of the study include:the pattern of natural resource management has shown dramatic changes in 4-5 decades time, eroding traditional strategies of pastoral resource management; and this is caused mainly by the encroachment of cultivation and human population pressuregrazing reserves once used to sustain pastoral livelihood during drought periods are no longer widely used by community.

Over the last 25 years civil disturbances, drought, population increases and global market pressures have all contributed in direct and indirect ways to a modification of Sub saharan African land cover. 

This paper is about land tenure relations among the matrilineal and patrilineal cultures in Malawi. Data from the National Agricultural and Livestock Census are used to characterize marriage systems and settlement and landholding patterns for local communities. Marriage systems correspond to customary land tenure patterns of matrilineal or patrilineal land holding. The differences between the two major ways of land holding represent a particular challenge for land reforms intending to unify rules for land tenure and land devolution.