Much of the native forest in the highlands of western Kenya has been converted to agricultural land in order to feed the growing population, and more land is being cleared. In tropical Africa, this land use change results in progressive soil degradation, as the period of cultivation increases. Both rates and variation in infiltration, soil carbon concentration and other soil parameters are influenced by management within agricultural systems, but they have rarely been well documented in East Africa.

This paper critically examines theories of accumulation, dispossession and exclusion for analyzing the agrarian transformations that result from contemporary large-scale land acquisitions across the Global South. Building upon Marx's primitive accumulation, Harvey's accumulation by dispossession and Hall et al.'s Powers of Exclusion, conceptual lenses are developed through which to examine how land grabs transform property and social relationships of resource-based production.

The project goal is to promote responsible, productive, and sustainable management of forest resources by local communities to meet their needs and to stimulate development. This is expected achieved by building the knowledge and capacity of FA and CF User Groups in sustainable forest management and on responsible utilization of forest resources and nation-wide networks of stakeholders.

The objective was to improve agricultural productivity and increase rural income and

The demand for agricultural products (food, feed, fibre, and biomass for other purposes) produced in Sub-Saharan Africa (SSA) will increase for the coming decades. In addition, the global climate change will largely impact on the agricultural sector in Sub-Saharan Africa. Major challenges for the agricultural sector in SSA are that agricultural production systems depend on resources that are for a large part non-renewable, and that the current agricultural practices in SSA are major contributors to environmental degradation.

This report presents results and conclusions from a Pilot exercise undertaken to assess the experience of
affected country Parties to the United Nations Convention to Combat Desertification (UNCCD) with
reporting on impact indicators under the Convention’s Performance Review and Assessment of the
Implementation System (PRAIS). The experiences and recommendations presented in this report should
be used to guide the 2012–2013 reporting and review process.

The second phase of the Sustainable Management of Marginal Drylands (SUMAMAD-2) project began in 2009 following a preparatory meeting on the project held on 3–6 June 2008 in Amman and the Dana Biosphere Reserve, Jordan, and was hosted by the Royal Society for the Conservation of Nature (RSCN). The extended SUMAMAD-2 to other world regions included South America (Bolivia) and Africa (Burkina Faso).

Humankind currently faces interconnected, worldwide challenges of feeding our rapidly growing population while simultaneously preserving our natural resource base, adapting to climate change, and creating or maintaining favourable living conditions for present and future generations. The world’s population is growing exponentially. It is expected to rise from seven to more than nine billion people in the next few decades.

This report presents the key findings on forest land use and land-use change between 1990 and 2005 from FAO’s 2010 Global Forest Resources Assessment Remote Sensing Survey. It is the first report of its kind to present systematic estimates of global forest land use and change. The ambitious goal of the Remote Sensing Survey was to use remote sensing data to obtain globally consistent estimates of forest area and changes in tree cover and forest land use between 1990 and 2005.