Amid climate change, biodiversity loss and food insecurity, there is the growing need to draw synergies between micro-scale environmental processes and practices, and macro-level ecosystem dynamics to facilitate conservation decision-making. Adopting this synergistic approach can improve crop yields and profitability more sustainably, enhance livelihoods and mitigate climate change.

Insects, the most diverse and abundant animal species on the planet, are critical in providing numerous ecosystem services which are significant to the United Nation’s Sustainable Development Goals (UN-SDGs). In addition to the UN-SDGs, the UN has declared the period 2021–2030 as the “Decade on Ecosystem Restoration.” Insects, because of the ecosystem services they provide, are critical indicators of restoration success.

This year's 2nd edition of the European Security and Defence Union journal is looking into climate change as global security and humanitarian challenge. Janani Vivekananda, Senior Adviser for Climate Change and Peacebuilding at adelphi, has contributed to the journal with a piece on the climate security crisis currently plaguing the Lake Chad basin. Lake Chad is a geophysical and ecological miracle.

Climate change is amplifying the risk of extreme weather disasters by increasing the destructive power of storms and floods. At the same time, rising seas, shifting rainfall patterns, drought and other slow-onset changes are eroding people’s land, natural resources and security, and magnifying existing vulnerabilities.

Despite six years of crisis in Syria, agriculture remains a key part of the economy. The sector still accounts for an estimated 26 percent of gross domestic product (GDP) and represents a critical safety net for the 6.7 million Syrians – including those internally displaced - who still remain in rural areas. However, agriculture and the livelihoods that depend on it have suffered massive loss. The Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations (FAO) has now conducted the first comprehensive nationwide assessment on the cost of the war to the agriculture sector.

This Climate-Fragility profile is envisaged as a first component of a Climate-Fragility Risk Assessment process. It summarizes the key challenges the Lake Chad region is experiencing as a consequence of the interplay between climate change and fragility.

Internal climate migrants are rapidly becoming the human face of climate change. According to this new World Bank report, without urgent global and national climate action, Sub-Saharan Africa, South Asia and Latin America could see more than 140 million people move within their countries’ borders by 2050.

The Climate Change and International Security Resource Guide is produced for the Brussels Dialogue on Climate Diplomacy (BDCD) which consists of a series of informal meetings to exchange information and promote cooperation among European institutions and international organisations active in the nexus between climate change and international, national, human and environmental security.
 

Conflict and climate change have pushed 124 million people in 51 countries into acute food security, a situation when the inability to consume adequate food represents an immediate danger to people’s lives and livelihoods. In 2017, the number of people affected by acute food insecurity increased by 11 million. These are the main findings of a publication titled, “Global Report on Food Crises,” released by the Food Security Information Network (FSIN).

Shortly after releasing a report on its climate change strategy in July 2017, the Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) of the United Nations presents a new report at COP23 - this time focusing on the organization's concrete work on climate change.

The report, “Forests, Trees and the Eradication of Poverty: Potential and Limitations,” shows that forests and trees support human well-being and are critical to end poverty. It finds that forest-poverty dynamics are affected by a range of social, economic, political, and environmental context factors, such as rural outmigration, gender norms, remittance flows, and elite capture. The report’s key messages are highlighted below. Forests and trees can help the poor face global changes such as climate change. Benefits from forests and trees to human well-being are unevenly distributed.

Land degradation is a pervasive, systemic phenomenon: it occurs in all parts of the terrestrial world and can take many forms. Combating land degradation and restoring degraded land is an urgent priority to protect the biodiversity and ecosystem services vital to all life on Earth and to ensure human well-being