Understanding the perception of environmental resources by the users is an important element in planning its sustainable use and management. Pastoralist communities manage their vast grazing territories and exploit resource variability through strategic mobility. However, the knowledge on which pastoralists’ resource management is based and their perception of the grazing areas has received limited attention.

Esta publicação representa a continuidade do trabalho iniciado por Magda Zanoni, no Ministério do Desenvolvimento Agrário (MDA), no sentido de discutir os riscos das plantas transgênicas para a saúde e o meio ambiente. Em sua atuação no MDA e como representante do Ministério na CTNBio, Magda dedicou esforços para chamar a atenção à importância desse debate.

Novas intervenções na cadeia de fornecimento no setor de carne bovina no Brasil oferecem a promessa de reduzir o desmatamento vindo da expansão da agricultura comercial, à medida que multinacionais tem concordado em desistir de comprar de fazendas com desmatamento recente. Analisamos os acordos de desmatamento zero assinados pelos principais frigoríficos no Estado do Pará, na Amazônia Brasileira, usando dados de propriedades componentes das cadeias de fornecimento de carne bovina.

Em Moçambique há um forte apoio à agricultura sustentável: métodos como sistemas agroflorestais e agricultura de conservação são promovidos cada vez mais pelo Ministério da Agricultura, a sociedade civil, organizações de camponeses e agências de desenvolvimento. Resultados de investigações sugerem que essas práticas aumentam a produtividade, são mais resilientes e economicamente acessíveis. Apesar disso, a adoção pelos pequenos produtores permanece baixa.

The sustainable management of soils is crucial to achieving the Sustainable Development Goals. This is evidenced by the analysis of the role soils play across the proposed agenda. However, some key aspects have not been sufficiently considered so far. Moreover, the SDGs will place increased demand on soils. Further advocacy is therefore needed to ensure that important soil and land related issues remain in the final declaration of the post-2015 agenda.

Is it right to attach financial values to nature and to incorporate that valuation into the post-2015 agenda? Will such valuation help to protect species diversity and ecosystems? Or does it not rather harbour the risk that we cheerfully go on destroying nature since other aspects of the national accounts can be seen as compensation? Civil society is split on this issue. Our author points out why.

This book exposes the key land use and environmental problems facing Kenya today due to lack of an appropriate national land use policy. The publication details how the air is increasingly being polluted, the water systems are diminishing in quantity and deteriorating in quality. The desertification process threatens the land and its cover. The soils are being eroded leading to siltation of the ocean and lakes. The forests are being depleted with impunity thus destroying the water catchments.

Illegal and irregular allocations of public land were a common feature of the Moi regime and perhaps it’s most pervasive corrupt practice. The Ndung’u Report as well as various reports of the Public Investment Committee details numerous cases of public land illegal allocated to individuals and companies in total disregard of the law and public interest. Most allocations were made to politically correct individuals without justification and resulted in individuals being unjustly enriched at great cost to the people of Kenya.

Many incidents of elephant killings have recently taken place in Tanzania as well as in other African countries. Such events are usually presented as results of the rising global demand for ivory. As we show in this case study, however, not all violence against elephants is driven by the ivory trade. This article presents an event that occurred in West Kilimanjaro in 2009 when numerous villagers chased a herd of elephants over a cliff, killing six of them. Using a ‘web of relations’ approach, we seek to uncover the underlying as well as the immediate factors that led to this incident.

This publication presents the scientific background of the SHARP tool. The Self‑evaluation and Holistic Assessment of climate Resilience of farmers and Pastoralists (SHARP) tool was developed over two years with the participation of over 150 academics, practitioners and civil society. SHARP was also field tested in Angola, Burkina Faso, Mali, Senegal and Uganda with farmers and pastoralists. It has been recognized that there is a need to both provide a rigorous assessment of the resilience of farmers and pastoralists, while also incorporating the views and needs of those people.

ACES is a three-year (2014 -2017) research project that is being implemented in Mozambique with the main purpose being to contribute to poverty alleviation in Mozambique by co-producing new knowledge of the dynamic links between land use change, Ecosystem Services (ES) and the wellbeing of the rural poor and thereby meet the demand from policy makers and practitioners for ways to better manage Mozambique’s woodlands (Dewees et al. 2008; Wiggins et al. 2012).