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This is the fifth document in a series of case studies by member countries of the Thematic Working Group on Agriculture, Food Security and Land Use (TWG), under the NDC-Partnership. The aim is to present what countries are doing to tackle climate change and implement their Nationally Determined Contributions (NDCs).

This policy brief is intended to inform decision-makers of nine transformational actions to sustain dryland production systems under the impact of climate change. It highlights the relevance of the local context for interventions and the importance of traditional and tested adaptive agrosilvopastoral strategies for building resilience. In addition, it emphasizes the potential for scaling up and using complementary technologies over wider areas. In particular, the roles of both women and men should not be neglected in terms of maintaining, creating and restoring dryland sustainable landscape.

With climate change impacts already felt in the world’s drylands, there is an urgent need for action, at various scales and initiated by different stakeholders, to ensure the sustainability of food production and livelihoods in these regions in the coming decades. There is also the need to rapidly establish baselines, assess and start monitoring progress on sustainability, emerging as result of the action taken.To aid in this effort, this paper provides a short list of expected transformations (under each of the three sustainability pillars) for guiding the planning and implementation of policy, governance and practice-level actions. Gender and indigenous people’s [...]

On top of a decade of exacerbated disaster loss, exceptional global heat, retreating ice and rising sea levels, humanity and our food security face a range of new and unprecedented hazards, such as megafires, extreme weather events, desert locust swarms of magnitudes previously unseen, and the COVID-19 pandemic. Agriculture underpins the livelihoods of over 2.5 billion people – most of them in low-income developing countries – and remains a key driver of development. At no other point in history has agriculture been faced with such an array of familiar and unfamiliar risks, interacting in a hyperconnected world and a precipitously [...]

In many developing countries the adoption of climate sustainable practices is hindered by resource and risk barriers. This paper assesses the interactions between participation in Malawi’s largest public works programme, the Malawi Social Action Fund (MASAF), and three widely promoted climate-smart agriculture (CSA) practices. The underlying hypotheses to be tested are: (a) that participation in the MASAF programme reduce both the budget and the risk constraints to the adoption of sustainable management practices; and (b) the joint treatment effect of MASAF and CSA increases household farms’ productivity and welfare. Drawing on three waves of national panel household survey data, we [...]

Progress towards Zero Hunger must be protected from the dual challenges of pandemics and climate change. The frequency of infectious disease outbreaks – including the emergence of novel viruses and zoonotic diseases – is expected to continue rising as livestock, food security, economies, and global health are increasingly threatened by a destabilizing climate. At the same time, malnutrition is unacceptably high across all regions of the world. In 2019, nearly one in ten people in the world were exposed to severe levels of food insecurity.The 13th Global Forum for Food and Agriculture (GFFA) in 2021 is seeking recommendations, guided by [...]

This brief provides an overview of Climate Services (CS) and how they can be used to assess risk and optimize adaptation decision-making in the agriculture sectors.1 It highlights entry points to integrate CS across all elements of adaptation planning while acknowledging the challenges and limitations of using CS, particularly in the least Developed Countries (LDCs). The brief also discusses key considerations in using climate services for planning and provides technical guidance on dealing with the uncertainty and confidence of climate projections.

Most flowering plants, including wild species and many food crops, are pollinated by animals and are vital, therefore, for biological production and the maintenance of biodiversity. Pollinators benefit from diverse natural habitats for forage and nesting, especially when these are limited in plant production systems. Landscape and forest management practices can help ensure the continued availability of pollinators and thereby increase resilience and the productivity of forestry and agriculture. The extent of forests and other natural habitats in a landscape plays a role in determining the species composition of pollinators. Agricultural landscapes adjoining fragmented forests and natural areas benefit from [...]

FAO completed its first assessment of the world’s forest resources in 1948. At that time, its major objective was to collect information on available timber supply to satisfy post-war reconstruction demand. Since then, the Global Forest Resources Assessment (FRA) has evolved into a comprehensive evaluation of forest resources and their condition, management and uses, covering all the thematic elements of sustainable forest management.This, the latest of these assessments, examines the status of, and trends in, forest resources over the period 1990–2020, drawing on the efforts of hundreds of experts worldwide. The production of FRA 2020 also involved collaboration among many [...]

This narrative provides useful insights when working with indigenous peoples. It offers an overview of some of the work done by the FAO Indigenous Peoples Unit and provides an historical background since the adoption of the Indigenous peoples ́ policy. It also explains the ongoing work-programme jointly designed by Indigenous peoples and FAO staff, describing its seven pillars and two thematic areas. The narrative introduces essential concepts such as indigenous peoples ́ food systems, FPIC, Interculturality and Biocentric restoration among others.