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Climate-smart agriculture (CSA) is a comprehensive system that requires thorough consideration of local climate, natural environment, market demand, economic and cultural environment. FAO introduced CSA at the Hague Conference on Agricultural, Food Security and Climate Change in 2010 and has been strongly supporting it since then. The development of CSA in China contributes to reaching its carbon peak by 2030 and carbon neutrality in China by 2060.This publication introduces China's CSA development and provides policy proposals. It contains four sections: the background and development status of China's CSA; practices and achievements of China's CSA, including analysing case studies such as [...]

The impacts of the COVID-19 pandemic and government policies to limit its spread are multi-faceted and complex. Market linkages transmit these impacts through economies, from directly affected actors to others in both the urban and rural spheres. Economic contexts, including the structure of local economies, shape the transmission of impacts on rural men and women. Because of this, the pandemic, lockdowns, and mitigation policies influence outcomes in complex ways. In most cases, the magnitudes and even the signs of impacts cannot be determined ex ante. In this study, we use multiple local economy-wide impact evaluation (LEWIE) models to estimate the [...]

The Climate Risk Toolbox (CRTB) was developed to support climate-resilient project design. The tool is an open-access resource, hosted on the Hand-in-Hand Geospatial platform, allowing users to obtain a climate risk screening and report containing climate resilient measures, crucial to strengthen project formulation at early stages. The CRTB complies with requirements of international financial institutions and can be used by development practitioners for high-level screening at an early stage of planning processes or project design.This manual is a comprehensive guidance material to support users in navigating the online tool, including all the technical specifications behind the tool. This guidance document [...]

If the world is to transition towards agrifood systems that are more sustainable and equitable, small-scale production systems will be key to progress. Large parts of the world depend on small-scale systems for maintaining food security and nutrition (Lowder, Sánchez and Bertini, 2021; Herrero et al., 2017). Despite this centrality, neither small-scale production systems nor small-scale producers have received due recognition under predominant agrifood systems paradigms.This paper analyzes the diversity of small-scale producers and demonstrates how understanding small-scale production can have consequences for how policies and investments are directed and how they impact small-scale producer livelihoods. The diverse roles and [...]

Regional Overview present the regional food security and nutrition situation, including trends of undernourishment, food insecurity and all forms of malnutrition, together with other indicators that could help the understanding of the causes of hunger and malnutrition. This edition offers a regional overview of the socioeconomic state of the region; national and regional data and trends regarding the costs and affordability of healthy diets; the possible drivers behind the high cost of healthy diets and their unaffordability; and introduces policies and investments around the region that aim to reduce the cost of nutritious foods and improve the affordability of healthy [...]

Legislating for an ecosystem approach to fisheries (EAF) is complex, due to the holistic nature of EAF involving multiple factors that underpin the social, economic, environmental, and institutional aspects of fisheries sustainability. These factors include ecosystems integration, risks, inter-sectoral collaboration, research, participatory processes, monitoring, control, surveillance, and enforcement, among others. To assess how the EAF is being implemented through national policy and legal frameworks, FAO developed A diagnostic tool for implementing an ecosystem approach to fisheries through national policy and legal frameworks. The present legal report on the EAF used the diagnostic tool to assess the alignment of selected policy and [...]

This report provides an overview of the potential use of wood residues as feedstock for bioenergy production as part of the transition towards a sustainable and circular forest bioeconomy. While data and examples are abundant from developed countries, a specific focus will be put on the role and potential of wood residue-based energy in developing countries. The study is structured around the following four main objectives, each corresponding to a chapter: - define key terms and concepts related to wood residues and bioenergy value chains (Chapter 2); - characterize the status and trends in renewable energy, modern bioenergy and the forest-based bioeconomy and [...]

Produced jointly by the secretariats of the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations (FAO) and the United Nations Convention to Combat Desertification (UNCCD), with contributions from multiple stakeholders, this technical guide addresses the integration of the Voluntary Guidelines on the Responsible Governance of Tenure of Land, Fisheries, and Forests in the Context of National Food Security (VGGT) within the implementation of the UNCCD and Land Degradation Neutrality (LDN), thus opening a new chapter in ongoing efforts to combat desertification, land degradation, and drought. The guide outlines the practical applications of the VGGT – an internationally recognized framework on the [...]

This document presents the methodology used to build the EX-Ante Carbon Balance Tool version 9 (EX-ACT). It describes in detail the main logic behind the tool, the tool structure, and the underlying equations and parameters used to calculate the carbon balance. EX-ACT is a land-use-based accounting system developed by the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations (FAO) to evaluate the effects of the interventions in agriculture on greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions and carbon stock changes expressed as carbon balance. The carbon balance comprises changes in GHG emissions and carbon stock changes in the five quantifiable carbon pools: above-ground [...]

The ongoing COVID-19 pandemic has jeopardized the stability of agrifood systems and the welfare of the rural households that are actively engaged in the different components of these systems, particularly in developing countries. Efforts are underway to redress the negative impacts of the pandemic through investments to ‘build back better’. These efforts represent an enormous opportunity to make significant and lasting contribution to the longer-term resilience and sustainability of agrifood systems in the context of climate change. The objective of this report is to provide an overview of the current opportunities for harnessing short-term response and recovery efforts to address longer-term [...]