All publications and documents

Dryland peoples and areas face significant challenges from environmental change, demographic and socioeconomic trends, and the added threat of climate change. The marginalization of dryland zones have resulted from persistent misconceptions and a history of highly inappropriate policies, creating under-investment, poverty, social exclusion and environmental degradation. Women play an…

Ending poverty and addressing climate change are the two defining issues of our time. Both are essential to achieving sustainable global development. But they cannot be considered in isolation. This report brings together these two overarching objectives and explores how they can be more easily achieved if considered together. It demonstrates the urgency of efforts to reduce poverty and the…

This volume deals with land degradation, which is occurring in almost all terrestrial biomes and agro-ecologies, in both low and high income countries and is stretching to about 30% of the total global land area. About three billion people reside in these degraded lands. However, the impact of land degradation is especially severe on livelihoods of the poor who heavily depend on natural resources…

Landlocked developing countries (LLDCs) are disadvantaged in a myriad of ways and they have special needs which require special attention. Challenges such as undiversified economies, vulnerability to climate change and climate variability, land degradation and desertification, among others, are undermining the economic potential of many LLDCs. This has been exacerbated by weak export base of…

In developing countries the agriculture sector absorbs about 22 percent of the total damage and losses caused by natural hazards. The study aims to help fill the current knowledge gap on the nature and magnitude of impacts of disasters triggered by natural hazards on the agriculture sector and its subsectors (crops, livestock, fisheries and forestry) in developing countries. Quantifying the full…

Poverty often begins with poor nutrition and health, especially in early childhood: the poor become trapped in vicious circles of hunger, poor nutrition, ill health, low productivity and poverty. Economic growth, especially agricultural development, has been essential for driving down poverty rates.Social protection encompasses initiatives that provide cash or in-kind transfers to the poor,…