How the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations (FAO) in Tanzania is helping people cope with climate change. Water management, sustainable land-use, innovative soil farming practices, are just some of the ways one village is fighting dry conditions.

Papua New Guinea is embarking on its first national forest inventory (NFI) under the arrangements for reducing emissions from deforestation and forest degradation (REDD)+. The inventory will include not only activities for measuring timber volume and estimating carbon stocks and greenhouse gas emissions but also, significantly, a protocol for the first survey of the nation’s forest biodiversity.

The combined inventory will make it possible to assess the trade-offs between protecting biodiversity and reducing emissions, in order to promote sustainable forest management and improve local forest community livelihoods.

The data produced by Papua New Guinea’s NFI will be instrumental in developing sound government policies to sustainably manage the nation’s biodiverse forest heritage, on which most of the nation’s population depends, for the benefit of present and future generations.

Honduras, in Central America is home to some eight million people. Agriculture is the main source of income for many families. The country is also highly susceptible to adverse natural events such as hurricanes and droughts. Measures to mitigate the impact of these shocks are focused on strengthening the adaptation capacity of households. Lempira and El Paraíso are two departments where a success story of sustainable agriculture is in place. The Quesungual system – which has received strong community backing – has increased food production and stabilized food security. It has helped rehabilitate entire agro-ecosystems and stem soil erosion.

A look at how our Soils help to combat climate change in their role of sequestering CO2, and how our collective habits can damage this benefit with potentially devastating consequences.

This video explains the climate-smart agriculture approach including its objectives and why it is needed.

Climate change will hit farmers, herders and fishers the hardest. The Climate-smart agriculture approach promotes the development of the technical, policy and investment conditions to achieve sustainable agricultural development for food security under a changing climate. It seeks to: increase sustainably agricultural productivity and incomes, help adapt and build resilience to climate change impacts and wherever possible, reduces and/or removes greenhouse gases.

To make climate-smart agriculture a reality we need to: expand the evidence base; improve policies; empower local institutions; and combine new financing options. Let’s make sure our agriculture is productive and sustainable for generations to come.