Nairobi River Basin is a complex of several parallel rivers that flow through the City of Nairobi and empty into a larger river and flow to the Indian Ocean. The rivers are polluted with garbage, industrial liquid effluence, agro-chemicals, petro-chemicals among others. This situation has occasioned spread of water-borne diseases, loss of sustainable livelihoods, loss of biodiversity, reduced availability and access to safe potable water, and the insidious effects of toxic substances and heavy metal poisoning which affects human productivity.

The Lao Land and Forest Allocation Policy (LFAP) was intended to provide clearer property rights for swidden farmers living in mountainous areas. These lands are legally defined as “State” forests but are under various forms of customary tenure. The policy involves demarcating village territorial boundaries, ecological zoning of lands within village territories, and finally allocating a limited number of individual land parcels to specific households for farming.

This article examines the transition from shifting cultivation to rubber production for a study area in northern Laos PDR using an agent-based model of land-cover change. A primary objective of the model was to assess changes in household-level inequality with the transition from shifting cultivation to rubber adoption. A secondary objective was to develop explanations for the rate of rubber adoption in the study area.

ABSTRACTED FROM THE OPENING PARAGRAPHS, AND THE BOOK BLURB: The decentralization of control over the vast forests of the world is moving at a rapid pace, with both positive and negative ramifications for people and forests themselves. Th[is] chapter examines LFA from the decentralized forest management perspective. In particular, it examines the process by which the policy was implemented and considers whether it helped build sustainable forest management at the community level. [It] first reviews the history of LFA and the major actors involved.

Đổi Mới, the name given to the economic reforms initiated in 1986 in Vietnam, has renewed the party-state’s ambitious scheme of industrialization and has intensified the process of urbanization in Vietnam. A large area of land has been converted for these purposes, with various effects on both the state and society. This article sheds light on how land conversion has resulted in farmers’ resistance and in what way and to what extent it has transformed their livelihoods in the transitional context of contemporary Vietnam.

Continuing population and consumption growth will mean that the global demand for food will increase for at least another 40 years. Growing competition for land, water, and energy, in addition to the overexploitation of fisheries, will affect our ability to produce food, as will the urgent requirement to reduce the impact of the food system on the environment. The effects of climate change are a further threat. But the world can produce more food and can ensure that it is used more efficiently and equitably.

Property rights to land represent the key institutional asset on which rural people build their livelihoods. In fact, in many countries, landlessness is the best predictor of poverty. The nature of farmers’ property rights to land substantially impacts their willingness and ability to adopt productivity-enhancing inputs and investments.

Climate change is a significant and growing threat to food security—already affecting vulnerable populations in many developing countries, and expected to affect ever more people in more places, unless action is taken beginning today. Current scenarios for business-as-usual farming under climate change project growing food security challenges by 2050. Worst hit will be underdeveloped regions of the world where food insecurity is already a problem and populations are vulnerable to shocks (Rosegrant et al. 2014).

This event, hosted at ODI in London, was convened to discuss the use of new technologies to map and document land rights, and their impact on land registration and administration, and provide updates on recent activities of Forum membe

Previous studies have combined climate, crop and economic models to examine the impact of climate change on agricultural production and food security, but results have varied widely due to differences in models, scenarios and input data. Recent work has examined (and narrowed) these differences through systematic model intercomparison using a high-emissions pathway to highlight the differences. This paper extends that analysis to explore a range of plausible socioeconomic scenarios and emission pathways.

There has been considerable discussion over the past thirty years on how to define “sustainable agriculture.” During most of this period, sustainability was exclusively considered an environmental issue and was therefore measured as such. The 2030 Agenda requires that all sectors, including agriculture, be considered from the point of view of the three dimensions of sustainability: economic, social and environmental.