ABSTRACTED FROM EXECUTIVE SUMMARY: On December 30, 2018, Bangladesh held national elections. The election was not deemed fair by observers, and from the point of filing nomination papers to election campaigning, the opposition faced severe political obstacles. Their cadres were arrested, and rallies and campaign were attacked by the ruling party’s supporters. The government of Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina Wazed, which has been in power since 2009, employed the police as a political tool during the period under review.

The primary goal of the "Voluntary Guidelines for the Responsible Governance of Tenure of Land, Fisheries and Forests within the Scope of National Food Security" is to achieve food security for all and to support the progressive realization of the right to adequate food within the scope of national food security.

Bangladesh is the most densely populated country in the world. Its 144,000 square kilometres are home to an estimated 150 million people. About 45 percent (2004) of them live below the national poverty line and around 36 percent are living on US$ 1 per day. Agriculture contributes largely to the national economy, with 60 percent of employment provided by the agricultural sector (including crops, livestock, fisheries and forestry) in 1995/6. Rural poverty is highest but urban poverty is growing.

The country profile is a summary of key information that gives an overview of the water resources and water use at the national level. It can support water-related policy and decision makers in their planning and monitoring activities as well as inform researchers, media and the general public. Information in the report is organized by sections:

Environmental regulation is an important means of restraining enterprises and protecting the environment. Rationalization of environmental regulatory policies can promote high-quality regional economic development. The optimization and upgrading of the industrial structure has an intermediary effect on the impact of environmental regulations on the high-quality development of the regional economy.

Human activities and environmental deterioration have resulted in land use transition (LUT), which seriously affects the ecosystem service value (ESV) of its region. Therefore, relevant policy measures are urgently needed. Nevertheless, research on the relationships between LUTs and ESVs from the overall watershed scale is lacking. Thus, the geo-information Tupu method was applied to analyze the dynamic patterns of LUT based on land use data from 1990, 2000, 2010, and 2018 of the Yellow River Basin (YRB).

The amount of habitat in a landscape is an important metric for evaluating the effects of land cover on biodiversity, yet it fails to capture complex temporal dimensions of resource availability that could be consequential for species population dynamics. Here, we use a spatially-explicit predator–prey metapopulation model to test the effect of different spatiotemporal resource patterns on insect predators and their prey. We examined population responses in model landscapes that varied in both the amount and temporal variability of basal vegetation.

Soil organic carbon (SOC) is an important indicator of soil quality and directly determines soil fertility. Hence, understanding its spatial distribution and controlling factors is necessary for efficient and sustainable soil nutrient management. In this study, machine learning algorithms including artificial neural network (ANN), support vector machine (SVM), cubist regression, random forests (RF), and multiple linear regression (MLR) were chosen for advancing the prediction of SOC.

One of the main causes of tropical forest loss is conversion to agriculture, which is constantly increasing as a dominant land cover in the tropics. The loss of forests greatly affects biodiversity and ecosystem services. This paper assesses the economic return from increasing tree cover in agricultural landscapes in two tropical locations, West Java, Indonesia and eastern Bangladesh. Agroforestry systems are compared with subsistence seasonal food-crop-based agricultural systems.

It is undoubtedly a challenge for climate policy actors to identify reliable evidence to support sound decision-making processes for tackling climate issues effectively. Still, differentiating between fact and fiction, well-designed and invalid science, evidence- or interest-based arguments is precisely what determines the quality of climate policies.

This year's 2nd edition of the European Security and Defence Union journal is looking into climate change as global security and humanitarian challenge. Janani Vivekananda, Senior Adviser for Climate Change and Peacebuilding at adelphi, has contributed to the journal with a piece on the climate security crisis currently plaguing the Lake Chad basin. Lake Chad is a geophysical and ecological miracle.

Climate change is amplifying the risk of extreme weather disasters by increasing the destructive power of storms and floods. At the same time, rising seas, shifting rainfall patterns, drought and other slow-onset changes are eroding people’s land, natural resources and security, and magnifying existing vulnerabilities.