The Fourth Assessment Report of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) and other research, predict a significant future increase in the frequency and intensity of heavy rainfall events in many regions. This increase runoff and soil erosion, and reduce agricultural productivity, as well as increasing risks of flood damage to crops and infrastructure. Implementing adaptation measures and improved land management through erosion control and soil protection are among those that protect water and agriculture and limit their vulnerability.

Forests in Asia-Pacific are under threat. That's not a new story, though it becomes more important with every lost hectare and every family denied their means of survival. The big new question that journalists should be asking themselves, and their sources, is what climate change means for the forests of the region and the people who depend on them. This media brief provides an overview of REDD+ and things to watch as efforts to protect forests in the name of carbon gather momentum.

A single word can describe the history of forest management in the region: conflict. Too often this happens because local people are excluded from decision-making and the benefits of forest management. REDD+ is a proposed mechanism to make forests more valuable standing than destroyed. This media brief looks at the reasons for forest conflict and how REDD+ could impact this contested terrain.

Australia has long been a major exporter of the products of broadacre agriculture, a production system well suited to the economic and climatic conditions of the country. According to the conventional wisdom, Australia holds a comparative advantage in these products, among which wheat and livestock products predominate. However, the future validity of this proposition is sensitive to the projected impacts of climate change.

As part of international climate change policy, voluntary opt-in programs to reduce emissions in unregulated sectors or countries have spurred considerable discussion. Since any regulator will make errors in predicting baselines, adverse selection will reduce efficiency since participants will self-select into the program. In contrast, pure subsidies lead to full participation but require large financial transfers; this is a particular challenge across countries. A global social planner facing costless transfers would choose such a subsidy to maximize efficiency.

The purpose of this report is to examine development trends in the Southern Gobi Region (SGR) as they affect livestock and wildlife. It provides an overview of the environment and natural resources of the region, discusses existing relationships and interactions among humans, livestock, large herbivore wildlife, and the natural resources on which they are dependent. It then explores the impact that economic development of the region is likely to have if that development does not consider the needs of the current users.

Incentive-based programs to reduce deforestation are expected to play an increasinglyimportant role in global efforts to protect ecosystems and sequester carbon but theirenvironmental effectiveness is not clear. We investigate program effectiveness and slippage in the context of Mexico's national payments for hydrological services program, which pays private and communal landowners to maintain forest cover on enrolled lands. To measure program impacts, we use matched controls drawn from the program applicant pool to establish counterfactual deforestation rates in the absence of payments.

Al igual que el resto de los países centroamericanos, El Salvador es altamente vulnerable a los efectos climáticos. En años recientes este país ha visto aumentar el número y la intensidad de los  desastres naturales, con sus altas repercusiones sobre la economía del país. Un sector que es  fundamental como proveedor de empleos y como impulsor del crecimiento económico es el agropecuario, el cual es altamente dependiente del clima y sobre él se han contabilizado grandes pérdidas ante los efectos climáticos.

El presente estudio estudio muestra cómo el cambio climático ocasiona reducciones en la producción, los rendimientos y el valor de la tierra de los agricultores de Nicaragua. Además, se cuantifica el efecto directo de las variaciones en temperatura  y precipitación sobre la producción, rendimientos y el valor de la renta de la tierra. El documento analiza algunos de los efectos potenciales del cambio climático sobre el sector agropecuario de Nicaragua.

El cambio climático representa una seria amenaza para las sociedades centroamericanas por sus múltiplesimpactos previstos en la población y en los sectores productivos. En términos fiscales constituye un pasivo público contingente que afectará las finanzas públicas de los gobiernos por varias generaciones.

Tenure in Mystery collates information on land under conservation, forestry and mining in the Karamoja region. Whereas significant changes in the status of land tenure took place with the Parliamentary approval for degazettement of approximately 54% of the land area under wildlife conservation in 2002, little else happened to deliver this update to the beneficiary communities in the region. Instead enclaves of information emerged within the elite and political leadership, by means of which personal interests and rewards were being secured and protected.

This paper updates an analysis of returns from major productive land uses in New Zealand carried out in 2008. Trends in profitability over time are shown, and a preliminary investigation of the relationship between land-use change towards forestry (new land planting) and forestry profitability is described.