Blog for People, Food and Nature

January 28, 2016

Digital tablets: palliative care for survey ailments

Alex Smajgl Mekong Regional Futures Institute John Ward

There are a number of common pains and ailments experienced by practitioners conducting livelihood surveys, particularly in remote communities. Editor’s Note: This post was originally published on the Thrive Blog. It is cross-posted here with permission. Unplanned delays in questionnaire design and piloting, variations in interviewing techniques and enumerator behaviours, re ...
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January 20, 2016

Lifecycle carbon accounting is the missing piece in the push for landscape restoration

Noah Deich Center for Carbon Renewal

The landscape restoration field ended 2015 with significant forward momentum. At COP21 in Paris, governments announced major efforts to stem the tide of climate change, such as the the 4 per 1000  soil carbon initiative, the Great Green Wall afforestation project, and advances in ongoing projects like the Bonn Challenge. China and India were among […] ...
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January 18, 2016

Trendy and sustainable, quinoa and chia research in Egypt

Christine Arlt SEKEM Initiative

Chia and quinoa seem to be predestined for Egypt. Chia and quinoa are dry and salt-tolerant crops. Both of them have a great potential to improve food security in regions that do not have enough water resources. “In march 2015 I visited the SEKEM Initiative Farm for the first time and gained awareness of the huge challenges […] ...
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January 16, 2016

CAMBiando cardamom and conservation in Guatemala

Lee Gross EcoAgriculture Partners

Heralded as the ‘place of many trees,’ Guatemala was my third stop in the evaluation of the biodiversity impacts of the CAMBio project in Central America. From dry pine-oak forest in the Western highlands to dense, moist rainforest in the Northern lowlands, the country accounts for a large expanse of Central America’s forest lands. In […] ...
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January 13, 2016

Palm Oil – the long road of the RSPO standard toward impact

Helga Rainer Arcus Foundation Denis Ruysschaert

Tropical forests are declining at about 1% a year, mainly due to industrial agricultural production. Sustainability standards have fallen short and need to engage local actors much more effectively to slow this deforestation. Editor’s Note: This article is based on a chapter of the new book State of the Apes: Industrial Agriculture and Ape Conservation, […] ...
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January 7, 2016

The Cameroon Pilot: Model Forests as a Vehicle of Sustainable Development in Africa

Mariteuw Chimère Diaw African Model Forest Network

Having multiple goals for a Sustainable World means our management plans must generate multiple outcomes. Looking across the multiple Sustainable Development Goals and their targets, it is clear that many of the objectives outlined by the Post-Development Agenda are connected to each other. For example, you cannot effectively eradicate extreme poverty without improving access t ...
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January 2, 2016

More than just the land: a discussion of rural women’s equality

Rachel Friedman University of Queensland

The starting point was logical: land. But, as with many of the complex and thorny issues discussed at the Global Landscapes Forum, addressing gender, natural resources, and rural livelihoods involves thinking outside that box. We started at square one: in rural areas of developing countries, women own less land, under less secure tenure. While the […] ...
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