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More than three billion people live in agricultural areas with high to very high levels of water shortages and scarcity, and almost half of them face severe constraints. Furthermore, available freshwater resources per person have declined by more than 20 percent over the past two decades globally, underscoring the importance of producing more with less, especially in the agriculture sector, the…

What does it mean for a food and agriculture company to be aligned with the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs)? Despite growing corporate sustainability efforts, the answer to this question remains unclear. Companies, investors, consumers, and citizens continue to face challenges in understanding what it means for a company or an investment to be considered “sustainable” or not. The lack…

Climate change and individual eventshave a large environmental effect as well. Negative environmental effects include impacts on the land such as droughts, wildfires in forest and peatlandareas, land degradation, sand and dust storms, and desertification. Air pollutionis linked to the use of fossil fuels. In freshwater systems,floods and water stress, andin marine systemsa variety of impacts…

At the United Nations (UN) Sustainable Development Summit on 25-26 September 2015, world leaders adopted the global framework ‘Transforming our World: The 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development’, which included 17 global Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) and 169 targets. The 2030 Agenda builds on the Millennium Development Goals and aims to eradicate poverty, leaving no one behind, and to…

More than 32 million of the world’s poorest people face being pulled back into extreme poverty because of COVID-19, leading UN economists said on Thursday, highlighting data showing that the pandemic is likely to cause the worst economic crisis in decades among least developed countries (LDCs). COVID-19 could see over 200 million more pushed into extreme poverty, new UN development report finds …

There is increasing attention on the importance of biodiversity for food security and nutrition, especially above-ground biodiversity such as plants and animals. However, less attention is being paid to the biodiversity beneath our feet, soil biodiversity, which drives many processes that produce food or purify soil and water. This summary for policy makers presents the key findings of the main…