Blog for People, Food and Nature

When it comes to climate change planning, we must remember that people live in the places where climate change mitigation happens. And those people have an obvious interest in the resilience of their natural and agricultural systems and their ability to adapt to a new climate regime. The graphic below, based on the recent article by […] ...

There is a definite role for agriculture to play in climate change mitigation, but still far too little information on the scale of its potential contribution. This was the overriding message from yesterday’s COP 19 side event Scaling up Climate Smart Agriculture: policies, development and mitigation potentials, hosted by the World Agroforestry Centre (ICRAF). The […] ...

In this infographic from Food Tank, the close relationship between livestock production and climate change is clearly illustrated. As the graphic notes, between 5 and 15% of New Zealand’s total emissions come from animal waste in livestock production! Deforestation for pasture expansion is also a major contributor to greenhouse gas emissions. Silvopastoralism and other te ...

By Sara J. Scherr, President, EcoAgriculture Partners The UNFCCC 19th Conference of Parties starts today, and so the world gathers to discuss how to avoid further escalation of the climate crisis (mitigation), and how to deal with the problems we face on an already warming planet (adaptation). What we have learned over the past decade […] ...

A report from the UN Conference on Trade and Development (UNCTAD), compiled from the work of over 50 experts and subtitled “Wake Up Before It Is Too Late,” found much of the blame for persistently high green house emissions goes to agriculture. But agriculture is also the source of many promising mitigation strategies. The authors, […] ...

What goes on below the ground in a landscape is just as significant as the vegetation and crops above. Particularly in relation to climate change, the state of a landscape’s soil can not only affect how much carbon is stored both below and above ground, but also the system’s ability to adapt to future climatic […] ...

A long-standing contention in climate change negotiations, and more broadly in discussions of solutions, is often the explicit separation of mitigation and adaptation. Contributing nearly 15% of human-induced emissions, the livestock sector draws particular attention from the mitigation side. While a recent FAO report,  building on the findings in Livestock’s Long Shadow ...

To influence climate policy trajectory, a clear and consistent message is needed. This toolkit from Farming First and the CGIAR provides resources for developing and disseminating these messages. The past few weeks on the Landscapes Blog have focused on different elements of food security – from the human right to adequate and nutritious food to fostering farmer innova ...

By EcoAgriculture Partners and Solutions from the Land What will be the defining features of agriculture over the next century? This year, the World Food Prize Borlaug Dialogue honed in on biotechnology, sustainability, and climate volatility as critical opportunities and challenges for reducing food insecurity and ending hunger. While much of the dialogue remained focused [&he ...

Moving from the wet, rice-producing regions of Madagascar to the dry sub-Saharan African mainland, today’s post discusses a range of options available to tackle land degradation and maintain long-term soil fertility. World Resources Institute’s annual World Resources Report is focused this year on ‘Creating a Sustainable Food Future.’ A fourth installm ...