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Forests play important provisioning and supporting roles in the livelihoods of rural households (Byron and Arnold, 1999, Sunderlin et al., 2005) and the majority of those who live in extreme poverty are reliant on forests for their livelihood. Products from non-cultivated ecosystems such as natural forests, woodlands, wetlands, lakes, rivers, and grasslands can be a significant income source for rural households providing energy, food, construction materials and medicines both for subsistence and cash uses. Beginning with seminal studies on environmental resource use (e.g. Cavendish, 2000) the contribution of forest and other environmental resources to household income accounts were found to [...]

The training guide Gender-Responsive Disaster Risk Reduction in the Agriculture Sector is intended primarily for policy-makers and practitioners, who have a good understanding of disasters but limited knowledge of gender issues, and work on DRR policies, plans, information systems, or other activities related to disaster-prone communities. Its main objective is to present theoretical and practical approaches to address gender issues in DRR strategies for the agriculture sector, illustrating some  stories on how gender issues cut across men’s and women’s experiences of disaster risk and can be addressed in DRR decision-making. This guide also provides an overview of a gender-responsive planning [...]

Mobile phones have been shown (though not uniformly) to positively contribute in various ways to rural development, from reducing information asymmetry, improving functional networks, to increasing access to services and finance. Yet a digital gender divide exists. When contrasted with the fact that women compromise 43% of the worlds’ agricultural labor force, this digital gender divide can inhibit rural development. There is substantial exploration of the digital gender divide in the literature. Yet the answers to questions regarding differential access and use of information and communication technologies are mostly inconclusive. This study tries identify the information needs of the rural [...]

The importance of agriculture to Mongolia’s economy, and to its rural economy in particular, makes sustainable agricultural development a national priority. The transition from collective socialism to a market economy in the 1990s nearly caused the collapse of the entire agriculture sector. Since privatization, the number of livestock animals, mainly sheep and goats, has increased dramatically, reaching 45.1 million in 2012. This growth in both livestock and crop production was enabled by several factors. Yet investment in research and extension remains very low. Without sufficient government backing for research and development, extension services and veterinarians, information about weather and prices [...]

Climate change plays an increasingly important role in the international debate on food security. While the key concern is on how climate change can impact world food security: how to meet the food needs of a world population reaching 9.5 billion people under climate uncertainty, the agrifood sector is also increasingly under scrutiny to increase its contribution to climate change mitigation efforts. This is not surprising since worldwide, the agrifood chain (including agriculture as well as food processing, distribution, retail and utilisation) contributes to over 20 percent of total GHG emissions (excluding land use emissions).

This document introduces RIMA-II, the technical evolution of the FAO Resilience Index Measurement and Analysis (RIMA) tool. RIMA was completely and deeply revised by the FAO Resilience Analysis and Policies (RAP) team; it was technically cleared by a restricted group of high-profile experts. RIMA-II will integrate the old version of RIMA with breakpoint and will guarantee extended analysis and new tools for measuring resilience.

This document introduces RIMA-II, the technical evolution of the FAO Resilience Index Measurement and Analysis (RIMA) tool. RIMA was completely and deeply revised by the FAO Resilience Analysis and Policies (RAP) team; it was technically cleared by a restricted group of high-profile experts. RIMA-II will integrate the old version of RIMA with breakpoint and will guarantee extended analysis and new tools for measuring resilience.

The LEAP (Livestock Environmental Assessment and Performance) Partnership is a multi-stakeholder initiative that is committed to improving the environmental performance of livestock supply chains, whilst ensuring its economic and social viability.  Farmers, consumers and other livestock stakeholders are increasingly in need of more information about the environmental performance and the sustainability of livestock supply chains. Although a wide range of environmental assessment methods have been developed, there is a need for comparative and standardized indicators in order to switch focus of dialogue with stakeholders from methodological issues to improvement measures.  LEAP develops comprehensive guidance and methodology for understanding the environmental performance of [...]

Strengthening of statistical systems for fishery in Central Africa There is a widely recognized need of strengthening statistical and information systems for fisheries in Central Africa in order to support the process of managing maritime fishing resources in a sustainable manner. To meet these needs, the project aims to strengthen national capacities of data collection on fisheries, to develop and implement databases as well as to develop an information exchange system on a sub-regional level which will be compatible with national information systems. Duration: 01/05/2014  - 01/11/2016

Households living in rural areas of developing countries rely on rain-fed agriculture for their livelihoods and, as such, are highly dependent on climatic conditions. This paper aims at presenting empirical evidence from Zambia to better understand the linkages between climatic shocks, livelihood diversification and welfare outcomes with the goal of highlighting potential policy entry points to incentivize the types of diversification aimed at improving food security and resilience to climate shocks. We also investigate the role of different institutions in shaping diversification decisions to shed some light into potential policy levers at institutional level. We analyze diversification of crops, livestock and income using nationally representative household data from [...]