Brazil’s economy is teetering on the edge of collapse. The country’s political regime has been rocked by recent corruption scandals, and impeachment proceedings are encircling the nation’s leaders. And yet things couldn’t be much better for Brazil’s soybean farmers. At the beginning of the last decade, Brazil emerged as a major soybean exporter. Today, Brazil […]
Urban agriculture is widely promoted as the solution to the growing problem of urban food insecurity in South Africa and in Africa more broadly. It is said to provide livelihoods and social cohesion, and have environmental benefits. But it’s also promoted as having additional food security benefits. It is the primary, and usually the only, […]
Greater recognition of the benefits of urban forests is focusing efforts from all levels of government to defend and improve them. Perhaps the most iconic of these efforts is New York City’s Million Trees Program. Other initiatives of note include the City of Melbourne’s and the City of Sydney’s. Earlier this year, federal Environment Minister […]
It is widely acknowledged that reducing emissions from deforestation could bring about one-third of the greenhouse gas emission reductions we need by 2030 to stay on a 2-degrees trajectory. But protecting and managing forests wisely does not only make sense from a climate perspective. It is also smart for the economy. Forests are key economic […]
The world must move quickly to fulfill the promise of the climate change agreement reached in Paris four months ago and accelerate low-carbon growth, World Bank Group President Jim Yong Kim said on the opening day of the Spring Meetings. More than 190 countries came together last December to pledge to do their part to […]
In 2015, more than 500 million hectares of forests were held by indigenous peoples. Despite the increase in forest area designated for and owned by indigenous peoples in recent decades, governments still administer 60 percent of these forest areas while firms and private individuals administer 9 percent. Pressure exerted by indigenous peoples over the past […]
Rising temperatures and more extreme, unpredictable climate events are making sustainable livelihoods tough for many people living in semi-arid regions of the world. To adapt, local communities, and especially farmers, use different strategies and responses. Research in India and Africa shows that achieving sustained and equitable adaptation requires a number of things. It is critical […]
Internationally traded agricultural commodities – such as soy, beef and oil palm – are a multi-billion-dollar segment of the global economy and play a key role in driving development across the tropics. But production of these commodities is often linked to heavy social and environmental impacts. This is the case for most of the Latin […]
There is a lot of buzz in the global development community about the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs)—the pledges to cut poverty, hunger, and malnutrition while protecting the planet—signed by 193 countries. This commitment will guide global action over the next 15 years, promising to leave no one behind. But we already risk overlooking one important […]
In the shady recesses of unassuming forest patches in eastern Brazil, bird species are taking their final bows on the global evolutionary stage, and winking out. These are obscure birds with quaint names: Alagoas Foliage-Gleaner, Pernambuco Pygmy-Owl, Cryptic Treehunter. But their disappearance portends a turning point in a global biodiversity crisis. Bird extinctions are nothing […]
The Brazilian agribusiness and forest sectors, aware that the world economy is finding new ways to incorporate carbon into the value equation, have formed an unprecedented alliance, the Brazil Climate, Forest, and Agriculture Coalition (Coalizão Brasil Clima, Florestas e Agricultura). Established in December 2014, the initiative consists of more than 120 sectoral partners—businesses, civil society […]
The first ‘element’ in integrated landscape management laid out in the Little Sustainable Landscapes Book is ‘establishing a multi-stakeholder platform’. There has been a lot of discussion about how to organize and convene these platforms: how to make sure the right people are involved so that decisions will be considered legitimate and be impactful. But […]
We are living in the most explosive era of infrastructure expansion in human history. The G20 nations, when they met in Australia in 2014, argued for between US$60 trillion and US$70 trillion in new infrastructure investments by 2030, which would more than double the global total value of infrastructure. Some of the key players in […]
Scientists don’t necessarily spend all of their time at the lab bench. There are the intrepid, the brave, the field scientists. Those who don chest waders, snake gaiters, or snow shoes and venture out into the untamed wilderness, the carefully maintained nature preserve, or highly-trafficked urban park in pursuit of their science. When you are […]
Most of us would agree that human well-being depends to a large extent on healthy ecosystems and the services they provide. For example, fertile soil enables us to grow food crops, and nutrient cycling in watersheds is needed for water purification to ensure we have clean water to drink. But what role does biodiversity play […]
