More than three times as much carbon is stored in soils across the world as it is in the atmosphere, making them one of the most important global carbon sinks. Therefore, processes impacting on the soil in which carbon is released, such as deforestation or agricultural activities, significantly contribute to climate change. The debate on the reduction of greenhouse gas emissions from agricultural activities and their consideration in the international climate negotiations has brought soils as carbon reservoirs more to the public eye.

Tropical forage grasses and legumes as key components of sustainable crop-livestock systems in Latin America and the Caribbean have major implications for improving food security, alleviating poverty, restoring degraded lands and mitigating climate change. Climate-smart tropical forage crops can improve the livestock productivity of smallholder farming systems and break the cycle of poverty and resource degradation.

China has a longstanding tradition of using biogas for decentralised energy supply. Already, there are nearly 42 million household digesters in the rural areas, a figure set to double by 2020. But the country has even more ambitious plans. In order to achieve its own climate targets and raise the share of renewables in overall energy supply to 15 per cent by 2020, it wants to set up 16,000 middle- and large-scale biogas plants. However, implementation isn’t quite so easy.

German Development Cooperation has developed an approach for the sustainable production of charcoal that has proved to have a considerable impact in Northern Madagascar. Since both environmental and socioeconomic aspects are addressed in a very effective way, this approach has high potential referring to global challenges such as land degradation, rural poverty and climate change.

In the debate on climate change, it is frequently argued that the number of “climate refugees” is going to grow world-wide. So far, however, only little evidence has been provided of links between climate change, environmental changes and migration. The transdisciplinary research project “micle”– migration, climate & environment – has examined this link in selected areas of the Sahel zone.

El modelo agrícola dominante, basado en un uso abusivo y destructor de los recursos naturales, nos va a llevar a un apuro sanitario, social, ecológico, climático, económico y cultural.

Le modèle agricole dominant, basé sur un usage abusif et destructeur des ressources naturelles, nous conduit dans une impasse sanitaire, sociale, écologique, climatique, économique et culturelle.

The dominant agricultural model, based on the abusive and destructive use of natural resources, leads us into a health, social, ecological, climatic, economic and cultural impasse.

In the North as in the South a regulatory arsenal limits the rights of peasants to exchange and reproduce their seeds. The privatization of seeds, the first link in the food chain, and the growing control over them by multinational companies seeking to increase their monopoly by imposing hybrid seeds and GMOs poses a threat to global sovereignty and food security.

This paper evaluates the possible impacts of climate change and land use change and its combined effects on erosion and deposition in the Mae Nam Nan sub-catchment, Thailand. Soil loss models were employed to estimate soil loss and net soil loss under direct impact (climate change), indirect impact (land use change) and full range of impact (climate and land use change) to generate results at a 10 year interval between 2020 and 2040.

A research paper by Jochen Hinkel and Timo Menniken on institutional adaptation to the effects of climate change in management of transboundary river basins, published in 2007 by Institute of Environmental Systems Research, University of Osnabrueck.

Focuses on the impacts of climate change on reindeer husbandry in the Arctic and local adaptation techniques that could be useful and cooperation for others that need to be developed and shared.

Highlights the plight of Pacific Islanders due to rising sea levels and storm surges and the message they brought to the UN Climate Change Conference in Bali.