Drought preparedness, East Asia, Eastern Europe, arid lands, capacity building, drylands, energy security, soil fertility
(-) drylands (60)
(-) capacity building (13)
(-) soil fertility (12)
(-) arid lands (6)
(-) East Asia (2)
(-) Drought preparedness (2)
(-) Eastern Europe (1)
Seeds of Inspiration: Sudan's First Flying Robot Farmer
Two Sudanese inventors use a drone to take on desertification and their rivals in a TV competition for entrepreneurs.
Integrating climate adaptation, water governance and conflict management policies in lake riparian zones: Insights from African drylands
As river basin authorities and national governments develop policies to achieve sustainable development outcomes, conflicting signals between existing policies are undermining cross-thematic integrative modes of policy planning. This raises fundamental questions over how coherent portfolios of…
Climate Variability Impacts on Land Use and Livelihoods in Drylands
This edited volume is devoted to the examination of the implications of the inevitable changes wrought by global change on the welfare and livelihoods of tens of millions of people who live in dryland regions. Global change is more than just climate change and the ramifications of changing trade…
Land degradation and climate change
The world's soils store more carbon than the planet's biomass and atmosphere combined. An increase of just 1% of the carbon stocks in the top metre of soils would be higher than the amount corresponding to the annual anthropogenic CO2 emissions from fossil fuel burning. Many innovations in…
FAO has developed e- learning courses for professionals working in food and nutrition security, social and economic development and sustainable management of natural resources.
How changes in biotic interactions impact dryland ecosystems
The negative impact of a lack of plant functional diversity on ecosystems is well-documented, and can be seen in action in most dryland ecosystems. However, the indirect effects of biotic interactions – activities of certain living organisms that can impact the survival of others – are still unknown…
1,000 sand dams! An Excellent milestone
Over the past 16 years, Excellent Development has been working with partners across Kenya, Mozambique, Zimbabwe, Tanzania, Sudan, Chad, Swaziland and India. Our main focus has been to enable the building of sand dams in these arid and semi-arid lands to provide access to clean water and all its…
Just Published! Soil quality – A critical review
Sampling and analysis or visual examination of soil to assess its status and use potential is widely practiced from plot to national scales. However, the choice of relevant soil attributes and interpretation of measurements are not straightforward, because of the complexity and site-specificity of…
Pocket Guide for Capacity Building for Climate Change
For over a decade, the European Capacity Building Initiative(ecbi) has adopted a two-pronged strategy to create a more level playing field for developing country in the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC): training for new negotiators; and opportunities for senior negotiators from…
The role of organic amendments in drylands restoration
Dryland areas are being seriously affected by degradation processes. The use of organic amendments in ecosystem restoration is an effective technique for accelerating soil regeneration processes in degraded drylands. This recovery is a result of the rapid increment of organic matter and clay…
A closed-loop, drought-independent agriculture method that could be placed across a variety of harsh climates
The population is estimated to reach nine billion by 2050, putting huge strains on food outputs. Combine this with climate change and desertification – leading to smaller amounts of arable land for crop production – and existing irrigation practices that over-extract groundwater and you begin to see…
The Global Soil Biodiversity Atlas is now available as a website! Each chapter can be viewed and downloaded individually
The Global Soil Biodiversity Atlas was published in 2016 by the European Commission Joint Research Centre and the Global Soil Biodiversity Initiative. More than 120 scientists from around the world contributed to bringing the most current soil ecology and biodiversity knowledge into accessible…
Drought Adaptation and Resilience in Developing Countries
Drought is one of the most damaging natural hazards. Various studies rank it first among all natural hazards by seriousness of impacts such as the loss of life and livelihoods, economic losses and the adverse social and ecosystem effects. In many instances, drought can be a major factor in local…
Assessment and quantification of marginal lands for biomass production in Europe using soil quality indicators
The cultivation of bioenergy plants at fertile, arable lands increasingly results in new land use conflicts with food production and cannot be considered as sustainable, therefore. Marginal lands have been frequently considered as potential alternative for producing bioenergy from biomass. However…
Deserts and Desertification. Encyclopedia
The publication is devoted to the deserts of the world and desertification as a global phenomenon of land degradation. Encyclopedia contains more than 1000 articles, which describe the deserts of the world; Large lakes and transit rivers crossing the deserts; general terms on climate, vegetation…
Soil Biodiversity and Soil Organic Carbon: keeping drylands alive
This year's theme for the World Day to Combat Desertification focuses on sustainable land management (SLM) as a way to regenerate economies, create jobs and revitalize communities. Under the slogan "Land has true value – Invest in it". Over the years, IUCN has focused its efforts on advocating for…
Article Just published : A framework for Scaling Sustainable Land Management options
Improvements in land use and management are needed at a global scale to tackle inter‐connected global challenges of population growth, poverty, migration, climate change, biodiversity loss, and degrading land and water resources. There are hundreds of technical options for improving the…
Just published: Recovering degraded land in arid zones
Representing nearly 41% of the land above sea level, arid zones are home to more than two billion people who suffer from the ongoing degradation of the land and soil that provide them sustenance. Owing to desertification and droughts, nearly twelve million hectares of land are no longer arable each…
New article: European long‐term field experiments: knowledge gained about alternative management practices
Alternative management practices such as no‐tillage compared to conventional tillage are expected to recover or increase soil quality and productivity, even though all of these aspects are rarely studied together. Long‐term field experiments (LTEs) enable analysis of alternative management practices…