Blog for People, Food and Nature

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…

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 i…

"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 t…

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 rep…

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 intersectio…

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…