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Water security is a prerequisite to achieve food security. Water harvesting offers under-exploited opportunities for the drylands and the predominantly rainfed farming systems of the developing world. The principle is simple: capture potentially damaging rainfall runoff and translate this into plant growth or water supply. This makes clear sense where rainfall is limited, uneven or unreliable…

The FAO Statistical Yearbook presents a visual synthesis of the major trends and factors shaping the global food and agricultural landscape and their interplay with broader environmental, social and economic dimensions. It aims to be a unique reference point on the state of world food and agriculture for policy-makers, donor agencies, researchers and analysts, as well as the general public.

Under the current challenges of food security, climate change adaptation and mitigation, further provision of ecosystem services and sustainable intensification of agriculture, soil information becomes fundamental to guide wise policies and decisions. This document reviews the present availability of soil information from legacy maps and reports and from ongoing Digital Soil Mapping reports…

The fourth conference on "Desertification and Land Degradation" held in June 2012 brought together scientists concerned with global and regional environmental problems, assessment and monitoring of drylands and desertlike land conditions and on strategies for combating desertification and for preventing land degradation.

This conference fifth in the series of UNESCO Chair of Eremology, Ghent University has among its objectives taking stock of not only the current scientific knowledge, but also of the current strategies of drylands management and of drought affected areas and this at national, regional and community level.

The ELD Initiative is a global endeavour focused on land degradation and sustainable land management in an economic context.The ELD Initiative aims to provide a methodology for total economic valuation that is both locally applicable and globally relevant, and based on peer-reviewed research and viable economic strategies. Land degradation is a serious global concern, particularly in light of…