“Groundwater is the hidden water resource,” says Dr Andrew Ross, an honorary research fellow at the Australian National University’s Fenner School of Environment and Society. “It accounts for more than 99 percent of liquid freshwater on Earth, half of all drinking water and a quarter of the water used for irrigation, serving 38 percent of the world’s irrigated land.”

This report is a part of the EU DeSIRA project titled “Five Great Forests of Mesoamerica: A regional initiative for climate, biodiversity, and people” led by the Wildlife Conservation Society (WCS). It presents the findings of an assessment and prioritization exercise aimed at promoting sustainable livelihood alternatives among the communities of Central Belize River Valley.

Citizen Science (CS) is increasingly being integrated into advanced scientific approaches to address complex problems and produce real-time evidence-based information for decision-making. The CS approach has also been used as a tool to foster community-based monitoring and learning, particularly on the sustainability of productive landscapes/watersheds.

The influence of climate and weather-based advisories in planning and managing agricultural systems under highly variable conditions was evaluated to understand the potential benefits and challenges associated with the use of probabilistic climate and weather information.

Iron and zinc malnutrition is a global humanitarian concern that mostly affects newborns, children, and women in low- and middle-income countries where plant-based diets are regularly consumed. This kind of malnutrition has the potential to result in a number of immediate and long-term implications, including stunted growth, an elevated risk of infectious diseases, and poor development, all of which may ultimately cause children to not develop to the fullest extent possible.

Rwanda has made remarkable economic progress during the past two decades, and its annual GDP growth rate reached more than 7 percent during the 2009 to 2019 period (NISR 2021). The rapid economic growth has been pro-poor, and the poverty rate fell from 58.9 percent in 2000/01 to 38.2 percent in 2016/17 (NISR 2018). The country has also emerged as a leader among sub-Saharan African countries in promoting innovation, gender equality, and an enabling business environment for development.

The Gender and Climate Empowerment Index for climate-resilient agriculture is based on four major measurable indicator domains—political, economic, agricultural, and social. Empowerment in relation to climate change relates to degree of vulnerability and ability to respond, recover from and adapt to climate change. In a context of growing climatic risks, appropriate technological solutions together with an empowering social environment are a prerequisite for ensuring food and livelihood security (Hariharan et al., 2020).

On 6 February 2022, the African Union’s (AU's) Climate Change and Resilient Development Strategy and Action Plan (2022-2032) was endorsed at the 35th Ordinary Session of the AU’s Assembly of African Heads of State and Government. This is Africa’s first collective climate change action plan and Strategy that details specific suggested actions the continent needs to urgently achieve to respond to climate change. Subsequently, on the 19-20 June 2023, the AU hosted a Strategic Climate Investment Partnership Roundtable in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia.

G20 policymakers should strengthen the enabling environment for innovation in agriculture and food systems to unlock public funds to support researchers in developing their innovations. One way to implement this is through increased public funding for innovative agricultural research and development (R&D) efforts such as the Centre of Excellence in Science, Technology, and Innovation (CoE-STI) of the African Union Development Agency – New Partnership for Africa’s Development (AUDA-NEPAD) and CGIAR Accelerate for Impact Platform (A4IP).

Increased reliance on fertilizers and pesticides in rice production has proven unsustainable and ineffective due to soil depletion and pesticide-induced pest outbreaks, rising fertilizer costs, and the negative effects of pesticide and fertilizer use on human health and the environment. The integrated rice-fish system offers a large range of environmental, economic, and social benefits by improving diversification, intensification, profitability, and sustainability through the complementary utilization of land and water uses.

This Ethiopia food system profile is composed of three main blocks of information: (a) system drivers; (b) system components; and (c) system outcomes.

Thermophilic composting is a promising soil and waste management approach involving diverse micro and macro-organisms, including eukaryotes. Due to sub-optimal amounts of nutrients in manure, supplemental feedstock materials such as Lantana camara, and Tithonia diversifolia twigs are used in composting. These materials have, however, been reported to have antimicrobial activity in in-vitro experiments. Furthermore, the phytochemical analysis has shown differences in their complexities, thus possibly requiring various periods to break down.