Friends of the Earth’s report, ‘What’s your pension funding? How UK institutional investors finance the global land grab’, highlights the investments of UK institutional investors, such as British Airways Pension Fund, Legal & General and Standard Life, in companies accused of grabbing land, destroying the environment, and undermining sustainable livelihoods.

This briefing paper makes the case for proactive business engagement in respecting land rights and ensuring legal, fair and inclusive practices on land use, access to natural resources and equitable development opportunities. It outlines key challenges, provides an overview of existing instruments that can help companies address issues related to land, and points to practical entry points for improved business practices.

Households face many collective action situations, with members working together to produce livelihoods and allocate goods. But neither unitary nor bargaining models of the household provide frameworks to analyze the conditions under which households work collectively and when they fail to do so.

The International Food Policy Research Institute (IFPRI) business-asusual projections of agricultural supply and demand anticipate a rise in food prices of most cereals and meats, reversing long-established downward trends. Between 2005 and 2050, food prices for maize, rice, and wheat are projected to increase by 104, 79, and 88 percent, respectively, while those for beef, pork, and poultry will rise by 32, 70, and 77 percent, respectively.

The aim of this paper is to compute a more accurate orthometric height of Mount Kilimanjaro by utilizing the current most precise geoid model for Tanzania, TZG08, together with the 1999 and 2008 GPS campaigns ellipsoidal heights using GPS levelling method.

The result of the GPS levelling using TZG08 gravimetric geoid model and the Kil_1999 and KILI2008 GPS ellipsoidal heights is that the orthometric height of Mount Kilimanjaro is 5,894.94m. Therefore the orthometric height of Mount Kilimanjaro is practically the same as the 1952 official height of 5,895m. 

Mozambique is the 8th most vulnerable country to climate change and is one of the poorest countries in the world with a high dependency on foreign aid. The population is primarily rural and dependent on agriculture, with 60% living on the coastline. Droughts, flooding and cyclones affect particular regions of the country and these are projected to increase in frequency and severity.

I n order to safeguard long-term equitable and sustainable environmental management and governance, a clear and transparent relationship to land – whether an individual’s, a community’s, a government’s or a private investor’s – is essential. To this end, UNEP has begun to engage on land issues in Sudan, and will continue to do so through the next four year phase of programming, as part of supporting the people and the government of Darfur in rebuilding and redefining the social contract on natural resources and land.

This paper, which focuses on the Chinyanja Triangle (CT), an area inside the Zambezi River Basin, characterises three distinct farming subsystems across rainfall gradients, namely maize-beans-fish, sorghum-millet-livestock and the livestock-dominated subsystem. It presents the socioeconomic characteristics, historical drivers of change, resources use and management (water, land, forestry) and the institutional disincentives affecting agricultural production and productivity in the region.

Many analysts of grassroots conflicts in African emphasized one of the following factors to be the most important: ethnic divisions, competition over resources or competition between pastoralists and agriculturalists. The role of elites has been down played in such conflicts. This argument is being challenged by current evidence as shown by the Dinka-Mundari-Bari Conflict in Juba County in Southern Sudan. The data for this paper is derived mainly from a longitudinal study dating back to 1972 using observation and interviews as the main methods of data collection.

La Política Nacional de Desarrollo es el instrumento estratégico de largo plazo, vigente hasta el 2032, que le da respaldo político institucional a la operatividad del K’atun introducido mediante el Plan Nacional de Desarrollo K’atun: nuestra Guatemala 2032, adoptado en 2014. Esta política tiene por finalidad institucionalizar las acciones y procesos para el desarrollo, con una visión de largo plazo y permitirá dar seguimiento, así como evaluar las acciones de política y los impactos. El documento consta de tres Partes. La Parte 1 define el marco conceptual y normativo.

Nel 2012 la tempesta tropicale Isaac e l’uragano Sandy hanno martoriato Haiti, danneggiando i raccolti, facendo straripare i fiumi, alla­gando le strade e bloccando l’accesso alle comunità. Mentre i prezzi ali­mentari aumentavano e i debiti crescevano, gli haitiani poveri hanno adot­tato misure estreme. Alcuni sono emigrati. Altri hanno resistito riducendo il numero di pasti al giorno e svendendo le proprie terre o il bestiame. Ogni estate, gli haitiani temono lo scatenarsi della furia degli elementi.

The 2013 Global Hunger Index (GHI), which reflects data from the period 2008-2012, shows that global hunger has improved since 1990, falling by one-third. Despite the progress made, the level of hunger in the world remains “serious,” with 870 million people going hungry, according to estimates by the Food and Agriculture Organiza­tion of the United Nations.Across regions and countries, GHI scores vary considerably. South Asia and Africa south of the Sahara are home to the highest GHI scores.