All publications and documents

The publication presents updated and new analyses of land, labor, and total productivity trends in African agriculture. It brings together analyses of a unique mix of data sources and evaluations of public policies and development projects to recommend ways to increase agricultural productivity in Africa. The good news is that agricultural productivity in Africa increased at a moderate…

This background report investigates two key challenges in scaling up investments in ecosystem restoration (ESR) — financing and coordination — and provides recommendations on how they might be addressed. Scaling up ESR investments features a significant increase in inputs, labour and the capacity for restoration and rehabilitation of ecosystems and their services, meaning ESR projects become…

Ecosystem restoration has the potential to combine the global policy agendas of biodiversity protection, climate mitigation, and food security Restoration of degraded ecosystems poses an opportunity to reverse the process of land degradation by undertaking mosaic, wide-scale or landscape scale efforts to re-establish the natural state (ecological restoration) and regain productivity …

Despite continuous positive economic growth at an average of 5% per year, Africa needs accelerated economic development if it is to cope with the increasing demands for food, water and energy challenged by a rapidly growing population, rapid urbanisation and climate change. The pressure on African countries to boost productivity and accelerate growth is now higher than ever, and is being further…

We face a global food crisis of many dimensions. Food prices for the poor are rising and volatile. About a billion people are chronically hungry. Most shocking of all, 1 in 3 children under the age of five are seriously malnourished and will grow up physically and mentally stunted. At the same time, some two billion people are overweight or obese. Furthermore, we have to feed a growing…

In this report, the Economics of Land Degradation (ELD) Initiative outlines opportunities and benefits for the private sector in directly and indirectly investing in sustainable land management. These come through improved yields of goods like food, fibre, and timber, new business opportunities and novel markets, and creating and ensuring social “licences to operate”. It builds on the previous…