This is a compilation of twenty seven articles focusing on the interactions, impacts and effects of the changing climate on the Amazon region. Each article examines a specific area, providing a multidisciplinary analysis of climate change impacts. Areas discussed include:

This document presents analysis of key issues relating to Community Forest Management (CFM) in Vietnam. CFM has emerged as an important mechanism for realizing multiple development goals. The first section focuses on issues that relate to the transfer of forest rights to local people through Forest Land Allocation (FLA), including: an overview of FLA in Vietnam, a case study highlighting tensions that can arise between conservation and food security and a discussion of customary land rights of ethnic minorities.

Results demonstrate that the effects of management on cropland can be beneficial for carbon and nutrient retention without risking (large) yield losses.

Nevertheless, effects on soil carbon are small compared with extant stocks in natural and semi-natural ecosystem types and managed forests.

While agricultural management can be targeted towards sustainable goals, from a climate change or carbon sink perspective avoiding deforestation or reforestation constitutes a far more effective overall strategy for maintaining and enhancing global carbon sinks.

In 2011, the Government of Nepal made its policy on climate change public. The policy envisions a country “spared from the adverse impacts of climate change, by considering climate justice, through the pursuit of environmental conservation, human development, and sustainable development [with] all contributing toward a prosperous society”. This objective of making Nepal and Nepali society more resilient to climate change is laudable, especially as emerging evidence suggests that Nepal and its people are likely to be very vulnerable to the impacts of climate change.

This paper reviews the impact of the Landcare Program on, farming households, communities, and the local environments in three sites in Mindanao, Philippines: Claveria in Misamis Oriental; Lantapan in Bukidnon; and Ned, Lake Sebu in South Cotabato. This paper reviews and synthesizes various studies conducted throughout the period from 1996 to 2004, during which the Landcare Program was established and matured. The key intervention studied is the landcare approach which consists basically of two components: conservation farming technologies and landcare processes and institutions.

Current estimates of climate change state that the world’s average temperature is due to increase by at least 2oC to 2.4oC over the next 50?100 years. Furthermore it is expected that by the end of the century a range of additional impacts will be felt: sea levels will rise by an estimated 60cm, resulting in flooding and the salinisation of fresh water aquifers, and snow and ice cover will decrease. Simultaneously, precipitation patterns will change so that some areas will receive large increases whilst other areas will become hotter and drier.

This perspective document, part of the 16-paper series on water and climate change adaptation, focuses on the impacts and adaptive strategies in arid and semi-arid regions. The series reflect the central topic of the 5th World Water Forum, ‘climate change and adaptation’, where it was presented and discussed. The following risks posed by climate change to the water sector in arid regions are identified.

This toolkit provides a practical guide on designing climate change mitigation activities. The toolkit aims to enhance synergies between climate change mitigation and biodiversity conservation policies.The first part of the toolkit gives an overview of possible climate change mitigation activities, especially in the land use, land use change and forestry sector.

Tackling the issue of land and resource tenure is one of the prerequisites for mechanisms such as REDD+ to have positive impacts not only on reducing emissions from the forestry sector but also in reducing poverty and achieving food security. These new guidelines by the Committee on World Food Security (CFS) outline principles and practices that governments can refer to when making laws and administering land, fisheries and forests rights.

Recent large-scale land acquisitions for agricultural production, also known as land grabbing, have attracted headline attention. However, water as both a target and driver of this phenomenon has been largely ignored in the debate. This special issue of Water Alternatives aims to fill this gap and to widen the perspective beyond the limited focus on agriculture-driven resource grabbing.

This report, published by the World Bank/REDD-net, examines the nature of Indonesia’s Reducing Emissions from Deforestation and Forest Degradation (REDD+) regulatory framework. The manner in which benefits from REDD+ should be distributed amongst actors from local to national level is a contested subject; the report describes the Indonesian Government’s draft rules for REDD+ investment, an alternative or complementary approach based upon the creation of a nationally managed revenue sharing system and the relationship between national and provincial rules.

This report focuses on the promotion of economic growth and improving ecosystem protection within Brazil’s rural landscape.