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The Conference of the Parties (COP) of UNFCCC is a prime opportunity to communicate FAO’s work on climate change and to liaise with potential partners, at the numerous side events and parallel events organized around the COP. This booklet seeks to raise awareness on the impacts of climate change on food security and nutrition and advocate for the importance of having the agricultural sectors properly considered in climate change mechanisms, policies and finances.

This working paper provides an overview of the historic development and current status of implementation of land evaluation and land use planning concepts and tools for land resources/landscape management and proposes a way forward. The increasing and juxtaposed challenges of population growth and increasing demands on limited resources by diverse actors, land degradation, biodiversity loss and climate change, require a rational utilization of resources to sustain and enhance productivity and maintain resilient ecosystems.  

Throughout history, land has been considered a main source of wealth, social status and power. This publication analyses the impacts of legal pluralism on women's land rights in Mozambique arguing that despite Mozambique's progressive legal framework, efforts are still needed to fully achieve gender equitable and socially just outcomes on the ground. With a largely rural population, and limited knowledge of statutory law, customary rules that are discriminatory towards women tend to prevail over the gender sensitive statutory law, undermining women's land rights. Based on FAO field experiences in Mozambique, the document presents the realities of customary justice and challenges faced [...]

In the five years since the Voluntary Guidelines on the responsible Governance of Tenure (VGGT) was endorsed, the Guidelines have inspired policy and legal reforms in countries, from Gabon to Guatemala, making a real difference to people's lives. Communities, including pastoralists, rural women, fisher folk, rural workers and indigenous peoples are already using the VGGT to claim, secure and restore their legitimate rights to land, forests and fisheries.  FAO, together with relevant stakeholders and partners, and with financial support from the European Union, organized a technical thematic forum from 5 - 6 October 2017 to commemorate the 5th anniversary of the [...]

The FAO Governance of Tenure Technical Guides are part of FAO’s initiative to help develop capacities to improve tenure governance and thereby assist countries in applying the Voluntary Guidelines on the Responsible Governance of Tenure of Land, Fisheries and Forests in the Context of National Food Security. The FAO Governance of Tenure Technical Guides are prepared by technical specialists and can be used by a range of actors. They: translate principles of the Guidelines into practical mechanisms, processes and actions; give examples of good practice – what has worked, where, why and how; provide useful tools for activities such as the design of policy and reform processes, for the design of [...]

A technical guide on valuing land tenure rights in line with the Voluntary Guidelines on the Responsible Governance of Tenure of Land, Fisheries and Forests in the Context of National Food Security

This learning guide was developed in partnership between several divisions of the FAO and FIAN International. The methodology draws upon the one used in the People’s manual on the guidelines on governance of land, fisheries and forests: A guide for promotion, implementation, monitoring and evaluation, developed by the International Planning Committee for Food Sovereignty (IPC) and a set of publications, among which we would like to particularly acknowledge the relevance of Enhancing stakeholder participation in national forest programmes: a training manual (FAO, 2010). This learning guide incorporates some content from these publications when relevant. This learning guide was tested in 2015 in [...]

To respond to the diverse effects of climate change on food systems requires close dialogue and interaction between the research community and policy-makers. Strengthening this relationship will ensure that research findings are relevant to policy debates, and that policies are informed by up to date and rigorous analysis. This brief summarizes key findings from a multidisciplinary team of agronomists, livestock scientists, climatologists and economists for the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations (FAO) working in Malawi and Zambia. The findings presented here seek to spark a fruitful continued discussions on how policies can make use of these findings, [...]

Since the 1990s, rural transformations have helped millions of people to rise out of poverty while remaining in rural areas. This underscores an important fact: revitalizing rural economies helps create jobs for rural people, offering an alternative to those who might turn to migration in search of a better life.  However, these rural transformations have not happened everywhere.  For the countries that lag behind, The 2017 State of Food and Agriculture argues that it is not too late. By tapping into the potential of food systems and recognizing the role of small cities and towns in integrated rural-urban planning, inclusive transformations are [...]

Conservation agriculture (CA) aims to achieve sustainable and profitable agriculture and subsequently aimes at improved livelihoods of farmers through the application of the three CA principles: minimal soil disturbance, permanent soil cover and crop rotations. CA holds tremendous potential for all sizes of farms and agro-ecological systems, but its adoption is perhaps most urgently required by smallholder farmers, especially those facing acute labour shortages. It is a way to combine profitable agricultural production with environmental concerns and sustainability and it has been proven to work in a variety of agroecological zones and farming systems. It is been perceived by practitioners [...]