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The first edition of the World Reference Base for Soil Resources (WRB) was released at the 16th World Congress of Soil Science at Montpellier in 1998. At the same event, it was also endorsed and adopted as the system for soil correlation and international communication of the International Union of Soil Sciences (IUSS). The second edition of the WRB was released at the 18th World Congress at…

The world urgently needs to improve the way it produces and consumes food. In the coming decades, agriculture—which employs two billion people today—must provide enough food for a growing population and be an engine of inclusive economic and social development. However, the environmental impacts of agriculture are large and growing, creating risks for future food production. Today, we use roughly…

While it is clear that lifestyles based on less materialistic pursuits benefit the natural environment, it remains unclear how they may contribute to quality of life. Building forth on recent psychological and other related fields of research, this paper combines primary and secondary qualitative data to suggest how voluntary simplicity contributes to subjective wellbeing. Policy makers looking…

This edition of FAO’s State of the World’s Forests (SOFO 2014) analyses data on the socioeconomic benefits of forests, showing that well managed forests have tremendous potential to contribute to sustainable development and to promote food security: goals that are at the heart of FAO’s mandate. Forests are widely known as the world’s largest repository of terrestrial biodiversity…

The first years of the twenty-first century will be remembered for a global land rush of nearly unprecedented scale. An estimated 500 million acres, an area eight times the size of Britain, was reported bought or leased across the developing world between 2000 and 2011, often at the expense of local food security and land rights. When the price of food spiked in 2008, pushing the number of hungry…

FAO’s Strategic Framework focuses on five Strategic Objectives, streamlining its priorities, results and resource allocation to accelerate the eradication of hunger, malnutrition, poverty, and the sustainable use of natural resources. Success relies on strong partnership and the mobilization of voluntary contributions in addition to FAO’s own resources. FAO now presents 11 Corporate Areas for…