This book explores four central propositions on climate-smart and multifunctional landscape approaches: A) Current landscapes are a suboptimal member of a set of locally feasible landscape configurations; B) Actors and interactions can nudge landscapes towards better managed trade-offs within the set of feasible configurations, through engagement, investment and interventions; C) Climate is one of many boundary conditions for landscape functioning; D) Theories of change must be built within theories of place for effective location-specific engagement.

This paper explores the ways in which the interlinked challenges of climate change and desertification are managed in Malawi. The authors examine the synergy and conflict between local autonomous adaptation strategies and national adaptation policies, which are in accordance with international commitments to the United Nations Convention to Combat Desertification (UNCCD), and the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC).

Adaptation to climate change involves changes in agricultural management practices in response to changes in climate conditions. It often involves a combination of various individual responses at the farm-level and assumes that farmers have access to alternative practices and technologies available in the region.

This paper argues that REDD+ will not stop forest destruction developing countries and the underlying causes of deforestation remain untouched. The paper suggests that because REDD+ is embedded in the logic that environmental destruction in one location can be ‘compensated’ in another, it acts to reinforce the underlying drivers of deforestation and climate change. It also gives forest destroyers a way to legitimise their actions as environmentally ‘friendly’ or ‘carbon neutral’.

This report aims to improve the knowledge base for scaling-up investments in land management technologies that sequester soil carbon for increased productivity under changing climate conditions. The report presents the following key messages.

This paper outlines options for rural communities to participate in climate change mitigation and adaptation activities in the forest sector in Nepal. It looks at the various institutional barriers that would need to be overcome, as well as the existing institutional opportunities, particularly in relation to tenure rights, both for mitigation (Clean Development Mechanism projects and REDD+) as well as for adaptation action.

The paper reviews research showing that soils contain more carbon than atmosphere and all plant life combined, noting that increasing carbon storage in soils is relatively simple compared to approaches to use geoengineering to avert climate change.

The Global Environment Facility (GEF) and the UN Development Programme (UNDP) have published this annual report on joint projects financed during 2011 on ecosystems and biodiversity preservation, green development strategies, and sustainable use of water and ocean resources, among other topics. The GEF financed and supported 323 UNDP projects in 2011.

Localization—the growing economic and political power of cities, provinces, and other sub-national entities—will be one of the most important new trends in the 21st century. Together with accelerating globalization of the world economy, localization could revolutionize prospects for human development or it could lead to chaos and increased human suffering.Improved communications, transportation and falling trade barriers are not only making the world smaller they are also fueling the desire and providing the means for local communities to shape their own future.

Intensive farming has been adopted to produce large amounts of food grains and cash crops but environment is being deteriorated at alarming rate also. Increased use of fertilizers, pesticides, chemical growth regulators, machinery and poor management practices are accelerating environmental pollution, soil degradation, global warming, climatic change and food deterioration. Conservation agriculture offers a sustainable solution for all these problems most often. This review focuses the use of fertilizers in conservation agriculture and their impact on weed management.

This paper investigates the impact of climate variability on maize yield in the Limpopo Basin of South Africa using the Generalized Maximum Entropy (GME) estimator and Maximum Entropy Leuven Estimator (MELE). Maize constitutes about 70 percent of grain production and covers about 60 percent of the cropping area in South Africa. It is a summer crop, mostly grown in semiarid regions of the country, and is highly susceptible to changes in precipitation and temperature.

This report analyses the current status of the land-use sector under the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change and its Kyoto Protocol, and formulates options for how various incentives and systems could be harmonised under a future climate treaty. It argues that the land-use sector serves key environmental and social functions and supports the livelihoods of around a half of the world’s population. However, it is argued that the climate regime fails to formulate a coherent vision or set of incentives for mitigation and adaptation from the sector.