The Voluntary Guidelines on the Responsible Governance of Tenure of Land, Fisheries and Forests in the Context of National Food Security promote secure tenure rights and equitable access to land, fisheries and forests as a means of eradicating hunger and poverty, supporting sustainable development and enhancing the environment. The project was designed to contribute to existing development goals in the three target countries – Liberia, Mongolia and Sierra Leone, reinforcing land and tenure policy and improving governance of tenure. This is of particular benefit to landless people and small-scale farmers, in particular women who head rural households, often the poorest section of society.

Mangroves provide a wide array of benefits to coastal communities, as well as being valuable in terms of climate change mitigation. As fisheries resources dwindle, the livelihoods of many fishing communities in Asia are becoming unsustainable. At the same time, mangrove resources are being degraded by the associated impacts on fish stocks, both within mangrove areas and in the adjacent sea areas. The objective of the project was to develop a mechanism that would enable investors to responsibly promote mangrove conservation and restoration, carbon emission reduction and sustainable development through the provision of funding to local communities in the three project countries of Pakistan, Thailand and Viet Nam.

Over the last 25 years criteria and indicators for sustainable forest management (C&I for SFM) have become a vital tool for developing a common understanding of the key components of sustainable forest management. They have been adopted and widely applied particularly for international and national reporting and for forest certification. They have undoubtedly helped to define SFM, providing a framework for discussion, and have stimulated improved monitoring. However, their use in policy and practice is limited, for a range of reasons.
The project was designed to take stock of the status and use of forest indicators globally, and to consider how the full potential of criteria and indicators for sustainable forest management could be mobilized to promote and demonstrate sustainability of forest management, including through a possible global set of SFM indicators.

The production and productivity of most staple crops in Sierra Leone is affected by several factors, including floods, pest and disease infestation, rainfall fluctuations and post-harvest losses, resulting in lower food availability. Against this background, it was necessary to establish a well structured food security and nutrition National Early Warning System (NEWS) to ensure the timely prediction of food availability and access by the population, and facilitate a concerted response when access to food fell below the recommended levels, with high risk of acute and chronic malnutrition. It was also necessary to increase capacity in the country to monitor the trends of food and nutrition security at both national and district level.

Rapid population growth in Kenya has led to increased demand and competition for land and the goods and services associated with it.
With research showing that effective control of land has great influence on people’s capacity to construct livelihoods, overcome poverty and malnutrition and improve food and nutrition security, the project was implemented to support the Government of Kenya in its efforts to provide more equitable access to land resources for communities in two pilot areas of the country, Tana River and Turkana counties.
This was to be achieved using existing national and global guidelines designed to contribute to eradicating hunger and poverty.