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Empowering small-scale fisheries: the Voluntary Guidelines for Securing Sustainable Small-Scale Fisheries in the Context of Food Security and Poverty Eradication. Short animated video that wants to trigger awareness and discussion about key challenges faced by small-scale fishing communities, despite their critical contribution to nutrition, food security, national economies and poverty alleviation. It introduces ways to address those challenges, as well as the Voluntary Guidelines for Securing Sustainable Small-Scale Fisheries in the Context of Food Security and Poverty Eradication (SSF Guidelines) as an important tool in this context. It is suggested to use this video to have discussions with various stakeholders on [...]

Bioeconomycomprises the parts of the economy that use renewable biological resources (plants, animals, micro-organisms, etc.) to replace fossil fuels, and produce food, animal feed, and other biobasedproducts. Its cross-cutting nature offers a unique opportunity to comprehensively address interconnected societal challenges such as food security, natural resource scarcity, fossil-resource dependence and climate change, while achieving sustainable economic development. As bioeconomyplays an increa singly important role in many countries and regions, it is crucial to establish guidelines that enable it to be developed in a sustainable way. Find more Project Highlights here.

The publication consolidates a variety of sources of information into a single coherent review in order to provide a quick and general understanding of the status of fisheries and aquaculture in the Pacific Islands region. It is an update of the 2011 FAO publication ‘Fisheries of the Pacific Islands: Regional and national information’ by Robert Gillett and the 2010 FAO online fishery and aquaculture country profiles for the 14 independent Pacific Island countries. The 400-page book consists of two main parts: a regional overview, and the updated fisheries and aquaculture country profiles for the 14 independent Pacific Island countries:  The regional chapter describes the region’s two main categories of fishery resources: oceanic [...]

This discussion is an opportunity to systematically identify practices that have demonstrated their effectiveness in supporting the livelihoods of the communities and to classify them in such a way that they can be upscaled or replicated elsewhere. This is especially crucial for areas with similar agro-ecological characteristics. It is expected that some of these practices will then support projects aimed at addressing water scarcity in agriculture, with an objective roadmap comprising recommended practices/ technologies and the required supporting policies, as relevant. The purpose of this discussion is thus to call for participants’ contributions to the following questions. 1. Sustainability and replicability of [...]

Agroecology has been gaining interest in recent years among governments, research and civil society organizations worldwide and many actors present it as a strategic pathway to transition to sustainable food and agriculture systems for achieving food security and nutrition. Following the First International Symposium on Agroecology for Food Security and Nutrition, held in Rome in 2014, FAO organized a series of regional multistakeholder seminars in Latin America and the Caribbean, sub-Saharan Africa, Asia and the Pacific, China, Europe and Central Asia, and the Near East and North Africa from 2015 to 2017. These seminars provided many opportunities for exchange and debate and revealed that while the scientific [...]

The main objective of this report is to provide a regional synthesis of the current climate change mitigation and adaptation commitments in the agriculture sectors of the Southern Europe, Eastern Europe and Central Asia (SEECA) region, as set forth in the Nationally Determined Contributions (NDCs), and to identify opportunities for enhancing mitigation and adaptation ambitions, capturing their synergies and leveraging climate finance and international support options in the region. This analysis builds on FAO’s previous regional analysis and enhances its methodology and findings. It aims to guide FAO – and policy makers and practitioners in the region – committed to [...]

The Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations (FAO) is conducting a comprehensive study across regions to assess the benefit from applying disaster risk reduction (DRR) good practices in agriculture. The study identify practices that help to reduce the vulnerability of households and communities to natural hazards. The study uses a systematic approach to quantify, on a case-by-case basis, how much damage and loss can be reduced in the agriculture sector through the implementation o f DRR good practices at farm level, compared with usual practices. The approach compares the performance under hazard and non-hazard conditions, including various types [...]

This study provides a rationale for building linkages between social protection and sustainable forestry in developing countries through: the development of a conceptual framework for understanding the two-way relationship between social protection instruments and forestry policies; a review of evidence of the role of forestry policies in reducing vulnerabilities and fostering livelihoods among forest-dependent people; a review of the evidence of the impact of social protection instruments on th e resilience of forest-dependent people and on the promotion of sustainable forest management; and a discussion of ways of developing linkages between social protection and forestry policies.

This study reviewed the achievements, and also the shortcomings, of 12 watershed management projects technically supported by FAO over the past decade, with a view to learning from experience. Unlike sectoral development approaches, watershed management involves examining the interactions among various natural processes and land uses and managing land, water and the wider ecosystem of the watershed in an integrated way. Watershed management is best carried out as a stepwise multistakeholder process. The review identified a sequence of steps that watershed management projects or programmes should ideally follow. The approach has demonstrated its effectiveness for responding to global challenges of [...]

These guidelines, now available in French, support preparation of policies, plans and actions to create and sustainably manage urban green spaces. Networking, collaboration, communication, resource mobilization, monitoring and community engagement are key.