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Climate change will upend the 21st century world order. It will redefine how we live and work, and change the systems of production, trade, economics, and finance. Yet, the world is woefully underprepared for climate change’s cascading impacts. COVID-19 has only underscored the inadequacy of our responses to global crises and heightened the urgency of this call to action. 21st century diplomacy…

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…

South-East Asia has long experienced severe droughts. However, this second edition of Ready for the Dry Years reveals that the severity of two drought events during 2015-2016 and 2018-2020 exceed anything recorded in the past two decades, since the major El Niño of 1997-1998. Evidence presented in the Report shows that this could be set to continue as the climate warms. There is a direct…