Blog for People, Food and Nature

The first Indigenous Peoples Forum held at the International Fund for Agricultural Development (IFAD) concluded yesterday, with goals of strengthening the participation of indigenous peoples in achieving poverty alleviation and sustainable development goals at local, national, and international levels. As this conversation on the role of indigenous people and traditional knowl ...

Increasing recognition of the importance of traditional knowledge in the management of land and natural resources has prompted various gatherings of indigenous peoples from around the world at high-level meetings and international conferences. Next week, the International Fund for Agricultural Development (IFAD) is hosting the first global meeting of the Indigenous Peoples For ...

World Wetlands Day was celebrated around the world this past Saturday. Started in 1997, the day is meant to both commemorate the February 2nd 1971 signing of the Ramsar Convention – an international treaty for the conservation and sustainable utilization of wetlands – and to raise awareness of sustainable wetlands use worldwide. Historically, wetlands have […] ...

From past discussions of climate-smart agricultural landscapes, it is clear that mitigating and adapting to climate change is not simply a matter of having the most comprehensive scientific understanding, but also of connecting that technical base to policy and decision-making. Comparable to the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), the United States Global Change R ...

Last week the Yale chapter of the International Society of Tropical Foresters webcast its annual conference, this year focused on Food and Forests: Cultivating Resilient Landscapes. This series of presentations and panel discussions provided a captivating window into the world of forestry expertise, which at times is challenged by increasing requests and requirements to colla ...

“Water, like its flow through the physical landscape, touches almost every sector of society and aspect of human life.” – State of Watershed Payments 2012 Last week the Landscapes Blog highlighted some work at the World Resources Institute on promoting ‘green infrastructure‘ to protect watershed health (plus, see this article from WRI Insights for ...

Food loss and waste has been a hot topic the past couple of weeks. A new report by the UK-based Institute of Mechanical Engineers, Global Food: Waste Not, Want Not, estimates that 30-50% of all food produced is wasted in harvesting, storage, transportation, retail, and consumption. One of the main messages of the report was not the […] ...

As noted yesterday on the Landscapes Blog, this week marks the first meeting of the Intergovernmental Platform on Biodiversity and Ecosystem Services (IPBES). Though biodiversity is the focal point, there is a host of other benefits from nature that are related, including climate regulation. We tackled the intersection of Reducing Emissions from Deforestation and Degradation ( ...

While last week the Landscapes Blog paid particular attention to the part a productive landscape plays in maintaining ecosystem services, this week actually marks the first meeting of the Intergovernmental Platform on Biodiversity & Ecosystem Services (IPBES) in Bonn, Germany. Established in April of last year, the IPBES serves a purpose similar to the Intergovernmental [&h ...

Natural ecosystems provide the many essential services people depend on, such as clean drinking water, protection from floods and droughts, and habitat for fisheries. Wednesday’s blog post focused on the importance of ecosystem services in Africa, while a recent post from Landscape Initiative Co-organizer World Resources Institute’s (WRI) blog explores the topic i ...