This manual aims to provide practical guidance to Government staff at central and local level in promoting,facilitating and regulating responsible land-based investments and is meant to be used along with the Introductory Guide for Communities, Governments and Investors. It has been written for all three RGIL countries,hoping that it will also be useful for other countries.

Thailand is undergoing an important development in its forestry laws. When the Community Forest Act B.E. 2562 was passed in 2019, Thailand had for the first time an official umbrella law to recognize community forestry. Subordinate laws still need to be developed to further clarify the Act for its implementation. 

ncreasing flood risks in Thailand are leading to new challenges for flood management and subsequently for livelihoods, which are still significantly agricultural. Policy makers prefer building flood protection infrastructure over utilizing non-structural measures like urban planning regulations to mitigate risks. We argue that unplanned urbanization intensifies flood risks and livelihood vulnerability and may even create new poverty patterns in peri-urban areas.

The Global Climate Risk Index 2020 analyses to what extent countries and regions have been affected by impacts of weather-related loss events (storms, floods, heatwaves etc.). The most recent data available— for 2018 and from 1999 to 2018 —were taken into account. The countries and territories affected most in 2018 were Japan, the Philippines as well as  Germany. For the period from 1999 to 2018 Puerto Rico, Myanmar and Haiti rank highest.

Indigenous knowledge of local environments is crucial for developing innovative and contextual climate change adaptation strategies. Although the significance of community-led efforts based on this knowledge has been well acknowledged, they have not been effectively incorporated into mainstream development processes. The mountainous region of Ladakh presents a novel case of water storage in the form of ice reservoirs as an adaptive strategy against intensified water scarcity.

The discussion on the relation between human mobility and climate change has moved beyond linear and exceptional terms. Building on these debates, this article, and the Special Issue on Climate Mobilities: Migration, im/mobilities and mobilities regimes in a changing climate that it introduces, conceptualises this relation in terms of climate mobilities.

Land degradation neutrality (LDN) has been defined by the Parties to the Convention as: A state whereby the amount and quality of land resources, necessary to support ecosystem functions and services and enhance food security, remains stable or increases within specified temporal and spatial scales and ecosystems. The present report is an overview of the status of land degradation neutrality (LDN) in the region including a national overview for the 17 programme countries.

We cannot live without healthy soil and land. It is on these resources that we produce most of our food and build our homes. We need them to provide clean water and precious plant nutrients, to conserve biological diversity and to cope with climate change. And they form the basis for the livelihoods of millions of people. But despite such known facts, these valuable resources are in a dire state. A third of all soils world-wide are already degraded, and each year, further huge expanses of fertile land go lost.