All publications and documents

The guiding vision of SAFA is that food and agriculture systems worldwide are characterized by four dimensions of sustainability: good governance, environmental integrity, economic resilience and social well-being. For each of these four dimensions of sustainability, SAFA outlines essential elements of sustainability based on international reference documents and conventions. The 21 themes and 58…

In a context of globalisation and socio-political upheavals in the Mediterranean, the development of Mediterranean agricultural trade is increasingly determined by the capacity of countries to develop modern infrastructure to facilitate exchanges and the movement of goods as well as to ensure better food security. Organised around the economic developments of Mediterranean agricultural trade …

In the past 50 years women's legal status has improved all over the world. But many laws still make it difficult for women to fully participate in economic life whether by getting jobs or starting businesses. Discriminatory rules bar women from certain jobs, restrict access to capital for women-owned firms and limit women's capacity to make legal decisions. Gender differences in laws affect both…

Secretariats -- the administrative arms of international treaties -- -would seem simply to do the bidding of member states. And yet, Sikina Jinnah argues in Post-Treaty Politics, secretariats can play an important role in world politics. On paper, secretariats collect information, communicate with state actors, and coordinate diplomatic activity. In practice, they do much more. As Jinnah shows,…

Climate change and increasing global food prices have accentuated the question of whether there will be enough food in the future to feed a growing world population. The latest contributions to the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) Fifth Assessment Report identify food insecurity as one of the key risks of climate change, potentially affecting all aspects of food security. Climate…

In the last twenty years, practitioners have come to appreciate that governance is often the weak link in addressing unsustainable use of forests and trees. Technical knowledge alone is insufficient, and no natural forest management, protected area, plantation, or agro-forestry project will succeed if the resources are poorly governed. The concept of “forest governance” is often difficult…