Burundi’s economy is dominated by small-scale agriculture practiced on the slopes of hills and mountains. The burgeoning population and an overwhelming reliance on natural resources by 90 percent of the population have both caused aggravated environmental degradation. The recent World Bank Country Environment Analysis estimates that each year, almost 38 million tons of soil is lost and land degradation cost 4% of the country’s GDP. Soil erosion worsens Burundi’s socioeconomic situation, and particularly affects the poorest.

Sahelian Africa is significantly affected by rainfall variability. Its populations are among the poorest and most threatened by climatic changeability and land degradation, as they depend heavily on healthy ecosystems to sustain their livelihoods. Increasing pressures on food, fodder, and fuelwood have a significant impact on the environment; and frequent droughts and poorly managed land and water resources contribute to expanding soil erosion. The Great Green Wall for the Sahara and the Sahel Initiative emerged in 2007 to address climate change, land degradation, and desertification.

The five Central Asian countries (Kazakhstan, Kyrgyz Republic, Tajikistan, Turkmenistan, and Uzbekistan) are among the Europe and Central Asia Region’s most vulnerable to climate change; building resilience is thus a priority for poverty reduction and shared prosperity in Central Asia. Such impacts are already being felt and are expected to intensify, with the agriculture, energy, and water sectors most at risk.

Desertification in arid and semiarid areas of Northwest China is a major current environmental issue for the country, caused by the interaction of a naturally dry climate, recurrent periods of prolonged droughts, anthropogenic factors over long periods of time, and specific topographic and geographic conditions. Among the anthropogenic factors are poor land management, inadequate farming techniques and over-cultivation, overgrazing and the removal of natural vegetation; misuse of water resources; and poor environmental and ecosystem management.

This project aims to improve sustainable natural resource management and promote livelihood diversification in selected Tunisian oases.

Tunisia has significant regional and social disparities, especially between the coastal and inland areas. Its oases have always been agricultural production and trade centers that link remote regions together. They cover about 41,710 hectares of the country’s area and are home to around 950,000 people.

When development impacts a broad landscape and causes the loss of multiple ecosystem services, decisions about which of these impacts to offset must be made. We use industrial oil-palm developments in Kalimantan and quantify the potential for restoration to offset oil-palm impacts on carbon storage and biodiversity. We developed a unique backcasting approach combined with a spatial conservation prioritisation framework to identify priority areas for restoration offsetting.

The protection and revival of degraded and deforested land is the need of the hour. In order to tackle the issues that arise as a consequence of degradation and deforestation, principles of forest landscape restoration are being globally promoted. The Bonn Challenge is a global effort to bring 150 million hectares of deforested and degraded land into restoration by 2020 and 350 million hectares by 2030. The government of India made a Bonn Challenge pledge to bring under restoration 13 million hectares of degraded land by 2020 and an additional 8 million hectares by 2030.

Biodiversity is inherent in forest landscape restoration. As global initiatives like the Bonn Challenge and New York Declaration on Forests inspire nations to pursue sustainable landscapes and economic growth, on the ground, biodiversity binds people and nature to their shared future. Restoring ‘forward’ to meet current and future landscape challenges requires novel approaches and nature-based solutions. Restoration has the potential to generate billions in economic returns and to mitigate many of the effects of humaninduced climate change.

Financing forest restoration with the private sector – Does it work? 

Constructive critique. This book provides a critical, evidence-based analysis of REDD+ implementation so far, without losing sight of the urgent need to reduce forest-based emissions to prevent catastrophic climate change.

REDD+ as envisioned has not been tested at scale. Results-based payment, the novel feature of REDD+, has gone untested. International funding (both public and private) remains scarce, and demand through carbon markets is lacking.

This collection of 12 stories from women and men in nine countries in different parts of Africa shines a light on the efforts of communities, some of them decades-long, in restoring degraded forests and landscapes. The stories are not generated through any rigorous scientific process, but are nonetheless illustrative of the opportunities communities create as they solve their own problems, and of the many entry points we have for supporting and accelerating community effort.

The residents of the Ganges and Mekong River deltas face serious challenges from rising sea levels, saltwater intrusion, pollution from upstream sources, growing populations, and infrastructure that no longer works as planned. In both deltas, scientists working for nearly two decades with communities, local governments and nongovernmental organizations (NGOs) have demonstrated the potential to overcome these challenges and substantially improve people’s livelihoods.