Despite six years of crisis in Syria, agriculture remains a key part of the economy. The sector still accounts for an estimated 26 percent of gross domestic product (GDP) and represents a critical safety net for the 6.7 million Syrians – including those internally displaced - who still remain in rural areas. However, agriculture and the livelihoods that depend on it have suffered massive loss. The Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations (FAO) has now conducted the first comprehensive nationwide assessment on the cost of the war to the agriculture sector.

This Climate-Fragility profile is envisaged as a first component of a Climate-Fragility Risk Assessment process. It summarizes the key challenges the Lake Chad region is experiencing as a consequence of the interplay between climate change and fragility.

Climate change in Afghanistan is not an uncertain, “potential” future risk but a very real, present threat— whose impacts have already been felt by millions of farmers and pastoralists across the country. In this report, it is shown how drought and flood risks have changed over the past thirty years, and what impact this has had on rural livelihoods and food security in the country. The aim is to inform national-level prioritisation of areas and livelihoods groups for climate change adaptation and disaster risk reduction programmes.

The Climate Change and International Security Resource Guide is produced for the Brussels Dialogue on Climate Diplomacy (BDCD) which consists of a series of informal meetings to exchange information and promote cooperation among European institutions and international organisations active in the nexus between climate change and international, national, human and environmental security.
 

Land is very important natural resource to the human being as it provides the basis for more than 95% of human food. On the broader context, land has many other functions, e.g. provision of biological habitats and physical and connective space; regulation of hydrology and climate; storage of minerals, raw materials and historical/pre-historical records; and as a buffer to control waste and pollution. Expanding human requirements and economic activities are placing ever increasing pressures on land resources, creating competition and conflicts and resulting in suboptimal use of land.

This detailed report summarises key findings from an extensive Regional Diagnostic Study (RDS) for South Asia. Despite intense analytical efforts at the sub-regional level, reliable downscaled data may not be available with current models. As well, the spatial scale of available downscaled climate products (Regional Climate Models) may preclude their use in local decision-making. Often, locally significant drivers such as land use-land cover change overwhelm the influence of climatic drivers.

The Cambodian government redistributed 1.2 million hectares, some revoked from economic land concessions (ELC), to more than 710,000 smallholders as private ownerships (2013-2014). The paper outlines key steps for granting new land concessions and improving the efficiency of existing ELCs (or similar large-scale state land licences). Cambodia’s excessive large-scale state land concessions have adversely affected the livelihoods and land tenure rights of local people, threatening the country’s rich biodiversity and restricting access to land especially for new farmer households.

In a context of a rapidly changing livability of towns and countryside, climate change and biodiversity decrease, this paper introduces a landscape-based planning approach to regional spatial policy challenges allowing a regime shift towards a future land system resilient to external pressures. The concept of nature-based solutions and transition theory are combined in this approach, in which co-created normative future visions serve as boundary concepts.

Sustainable forest management needs to address biodiversity conservation concerns. For that purpose, forest managers need models and indicators that may help evaluate the impact of management options on biodiversity under the uncertainty of climate change scenarios. In this research we explore the potential for designing mosaics of stand-level forest management models to address biodiversity conservation objectives on a broader landscape-level.

Environmental services of biodiversity, clean water, etc., have been considered byproducts of farming and grazing, but population pressures and a move from rural to peri-urban areas are changing land use practices, reducing these services and increasing land degradation. A range of ecosystem markets have been reversing this damage, but these are not widely institutionalized, so land managers do not see them as “real” in the way they do for traditional food and fiber products.

There is growing evidence that exposure to nature increases human well-being, including in urban areas. However, relatively few studies have linked subjective satisfaction to objective features of the environment. In this study we explore the links among objective environmental features (tree cover, water, and bird diversity) and subjective judgements of satisfaction. We surveyed residents of Ottawa, Canada (n = 1035) about their satisfaction with their local neighbourhoods.