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The second phase of the Sustainable Management of Marginal Drylands (SUMAMAD-2) project began in 2009 following a preparatory meeting on the project held on 3–6 June 2008 in Amman and the Dana Biosphere Reserve, Jordan, and was hosted by the Royal Society for the Conservation of Nature (RSCN). The extended SUMAMAD-2 to other world regions included South America (Bolivia) and Africa (Burkina Faso…

A recent wave of large-scale land acquisitions and other commercial investment in agriculture has raised concerns that small-scale producers are being marginalized. Worldwide, around 500 million small farms support almost two billion people – nearly one-third of the global population. What role can public policy play in ensuring that commercial investment and agricultural markets benefit…

The five components of the toolkit - Land, Extractive Industries, Renewable Resources, Strengthening Capacity & Resource-Rich Economies - all aim to demonstrate how well-managed natural resources can prevent conflict or contribute to peace and sustainable development in war-torn nations. The linkages between natural resources and violent conflict are a critical challenge faced by many…

The word desertification has a Latin origin: -fication, which means the action of doing (or creating) comes from fieri, the passive form of the verb facere, to do, while desert is derived from both the adjective desertus, meaning uninhabited, and the noun desertum, a desert area. Quoting Budge, El-Baz (1988) wrote: The word desert originated as an ancient Egyptian hieroglyph…

Adaptation is a positive response to the prospect of climate change. This stakeholder report presents the key findings of the first comprehensive evaluation of climate change adaptation options in New Zealand for land-based sectors. The report integrates research and new analysis from a supporting technical report to present the state of adaptation knowledge in New Zealand. Many adaptation…

The Cancun Agreements use the term slow onset events to describe including sea level rise, increasing temperatures, ocean acidification, glacial retreat and related impacts, salinisation, land and forest degradation, loss of biodiversity and desertification. Calling these longer-term slow onset hazards ‘events’ is a bit of a misnomer. Slow onset hazards unfold gradually over time and more akin to…