All publications and documents

This booklet provides an overview of the characteristics and main activities of the projects that are being implemented as part of the second project portfolio of the Benefit-sharing Fund (BSF) of the International Treaty on Plant Genetic Resources for Food and Agriculture.The aim of this booklet is to give a general overview of the second project portfolio, as well as to share achievements, best…

Delaying climate policies avoids or reduces expenditures on new pollution control technologies in the near term. But this short-term advantage must be set against the disadvantages, which are the costs of delay. The costs of delay are driven by fundamental elements of climate science and economics. Because the lifetime of CO2 in the atmosphere is very long, if a mitigation policy is delayed, it…

Square Meal grew from a conversation between organisations about the future of farming and food in England, and this is the focus of this initiative. Food and farming policy is central to many of the most pressing social, environmental and economic challenges facing UK and global society today and for the future. But these are currently being ignored or addressed in separate and conflicting ways…

Land use for food production is important, but can put unnecessary pressure on natural systems. In this way, our diets are contributing to the continual worsening of a broad range of environmental problems, not just climate change – for example increasing levels of pollution and loss of biodiversity. Because many of these issues are broadly proportional to how much land we use, and how…

The world faces an escalating challenge to meet accelerating demand (driven by both increasing population and per-capita income growth) for sustainable, nutritious food in the face of multiple constraints – climate change, human population pressure, local and global resource scarcity, and ecosystem preservation (Freibauer et al., 2011). About one billion people in the world live in conditions of…

Land degradation and desertification threaten fertile land and the benefits human society derives from it throughout the world. On a global scale, around 10 - 20% of drylands and 24% of the world’s productive lands are degraded. The consequences are alarming: food insecurity, poverty, reduced availability of clean water, and increased vulnerability of affected areas to climate change. It is…