All publications and documents

Food insecurity remains a critical issue worldwide. The current COVID-19 crisis has exposed how vulnerable the global food systems are and that urgent measures need to be taken, especially in the Global South. Despite increased recognition that women are among the most food insecure yet major contributors to local and global food security over the recent years, there has not been a systemic…

Global Futures is a landmark study using cutting-edge modelling to explore the global economic impacts of natural capital depletion. It warns of potential risks to the world’s economic prosperity if we don’t act urgently to halt nature loss. The study uses new economic and environmental modelling to calculate the costs of nature’s decline across 140 countries and all key…

Water is a critical resource, but ensuring its availability faces challenges from climate extremes and human intervention. In this Review, we evaluate the current and historical evolution of water resources, considering surface water and groundwater as a single, interconnected resource. Total water storage trends have varied across regions over the past century. Satellite data from the Gravity…

Risk management has reduced vulnerability to floods and droughts globally1,2, yet their impacts are still increasing3. An improved understanding of the causes of changing impacts is therefore needed, but has been hampered by a lack of empirical data4,5. On the basis of a global dataset of 45 pairs of events that occurred within the same area, we show that risk management generally reduces the…

The study focuses on existing land-based national and international labour market and relevant challenges leading to migration at national and international level, including geographical variety of distribution and dynamics of biophysical conditions and productive resources.

Land degradation, as a compound of processes that affect land resources worldwide, is notoriously difficult to assess. In Europe, the European Commission has been pressed by the Court of Auditors (ECA) to invest in better understanding land degradation and desertification within the European Union. In the World Atlas of Desertification (WAD), the convergence of evidence (CoE) has been put forward…