Land & Water

News

15/11/2017
Small Island Developing States (SIDS) have it rough in many ways. They are perhaps best known for their vulnerability to climate change, as a result of high poverty, rural populations, dependence on traditional agriculture, tourism-based economies and other factors. These same characteristics make land degradation an equally worrisome issue, creating knock-on...
07/11/2017
New interview series highlights the impacts of climate change on small-scale irrigation in Gambia, and what farmers in the region are doing to combat them.
In the framework of the project “Adapting small-scale irrigation to climate change in West and Central Africa”, farmers from Gambia talk about the devastating impacts of climate change on their farming activities and crops, leading to crop failure and food insecurity. They also describe the measures they adopted to build...
22/09/2017
Sustainable land, soil and water management will play a growing role in ending and reversing land degradation, and increasing food production, after over 100 countries endorsed many FAO-led initiatives at the 13th conference of the parties to the UN Convention to Combat Drought and Desertification (UNCCD). At the meeting in Ordos,...
14/09/2017
An FAO partnership with Google is helping collect and analyse land degradation data
08/09/2017
Thematic workshop - CIHEAM Bari, Bari, Italy - 28-31 August 2017
The development of the water sector is crucially important to cope with water scarcity and with increasing food demand, particularly in countries where agriculture plays an important role both in economic and social development accounting up to 60 percent of total labour force. Notwithstanding the importance of the sector, productivity...
06/09/2017
One-third of planet’s land is degraded, hitting food production and damaging livelihoods
Ordos, China, 6 September 2017 – Land-resource planning is crucial to restore the one third of land already degraded and prevent further degradation, but existing and new tools should be more widely used to help agriculture feed growing populations, according to new FAO research. Land resource planning for sustainable...
01/09/2017
The thirteenth session of the UNCCD Conference of the Parties (COP 13) will be held at Ordos International Convention and Exhibition Center, Ordos, Inner Mongolia, China from 6-16 September 2017. Its high-level segment is scheduled...
30/08/2017
Thirty-two countries participate in training workshops to increase monitoring capacities towards achieving sustainable water use
A series of three technical workshops on monitoring SDG Target 6.4 on sustainable water were held in June and July in three venues in Guatemala, Morocco and FAO headquarters. The workshops gathered 62 participants...
30/08/2017
A regional initiative benefits communities across Latin America and the Caribbean
As the international community gathers this week in Stockholm for World Water Week, we profile a cooperative effort by FAO and the Mexican Agency for International Development Cooperation to make water more accessible to vulnerable and water-scarce rural communities in a number of countries in Latin America and the Caribbean....
27/08/2017
Agriculture, which accounts for 70 percent of water withdrawals worldwide, plays a major role in water pollution. Farms discharge large quantities of agrochemicals, organic matter, drug residues, sediments and saline drainage into water bodies.  Diagnosis, prediction and monitoring are key requirements for the management of agricultural practices that mitigate these harmful...