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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 [...]

Accurate information is critical for natural resources to be managed sustainably. Developed by the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations (FAO), the System for Earth Observation Data Access, Processing, and Analysis for Land Monitoring (SEPAL) helps countries monitor and report on forests and land use. SEPAL offers users unparalleled access to satellite data, an easy-to-use interface, and powered by cloud-based supercomputers, paving the way for improved climate change mitigation plans and data-driven land-use policies.

In a year characterized by unprecedented disruption due to the COVID-19 pandemic, this publication records the steps the Codex Alimentarius has taken from July 2019 (CAC42) to September 2020 (CAC43) on the road to safe and quality food for everyone.Over the course of the year, some Codex committees were able to meet as scheduled to discuss updates to international food standards, guidelines and codes of practice. Those meetings able to complete their work include the six FAO/WHO Coordinating Committees covering all regions of the globe. Meetings were suddenly halted in March 2020 and since then Codex has been breaking new [...]

This book aims to strengthen the skills of professionals who use, manage data for the benefit of farmers and farmers organizations by exposing them to the topics of importance of data in the agriculture value chain and how new and existing technologies, products and services can leverage farm level and global data to improve yield, reduce loss, add value and increase profitability and resilience.

This action sheet is part of a series of action sheets developed under the seven key priority areas of the FAO COVID-19 Response and Recovery programme, the FAO umbrella programme designed to proactively and sustainably address the socio-economic impacts of the pandemic. Each action sheet includes a project proposal in support of countries most in need for which FAO is leveraging high-level political, financial and technical expertise. All action sheets are gathered on the Food Coalition web hub, where members of the Coalition - a multi-stakeholder global alliance for a unified global action in response to COVID-19 - can easily [...]

This action sheet is part of a series of action sheets developed under the seven key priority areas of the FAO COVID-19 Response and Recovery programme, the FAO umbrella programme designed to proactively and sustainably address the socio-economic impacts of the pandemic. Each action sheet includes a project proposal in support of countries most in need for which FAO is leveraging high-level political, financial, and technical expertise. All action sheets are gathered on the Food Coalition web hub, where members of the Coalition - a multi-stakeholder global alliance for unified global action in response to COVID-19 -  can easily access [...]

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.

The COVID-19 pandemic has impacted digital financial inclusion trends across the world in many and complex ways. In developing and emerging contexts, this crisis also holds the potential to propel an unprecedented acceleration in the process of financial digitization and turn out to be a game-changer for digital financial inclusion.The aim of this study is to illustrate the opportunities and risks associated with the surge in uptake and use of digital financial service, providing ideas on how to leverage the paradigm changes affecting the overall approach and perspective towards digital financial services – on the part of various stakeholders – [...]

This report presents insights and emerging lessons on food systems governance from the experience of nine cities that have developed urban food interventions – Baltimore, Belo Horizonte, Lima, Medellín, Nairobi, Quito, Seoul, Shanghai and Toronto – and draws on diverse sources of secondary information regarding the experiences of other cities throughout the world. It highlights entry points for the governance of urban food systems issues; common procedural and content-related considerations when addressing those issues; predominant governance models; and operational opportunities for future investment. Successful examples can encourage other local governments to adapt new approaches and innovate within their own context. Every [...]

This is a practical tool to help beekeepers, veterinarians and beekeeping advisory services to properly identify main honeybee diseases and to take the most appropriate actions in the apiary to control and/or prevent disease outbreaks. This publication follows the TECA publication Main bee diseases: good beekeeping practices (2018) which provided a more general overview of good beekeeping practices for bee diseases.This manual is a unique publication because, through its presentation of practical information, simple visuals, and understandable content, it helps beekeepers to correctly identify main honeybee diseases in a timely manner. More specifically, the manual creatively illustrates actions which facilitate [...]