Manual for researchers in Southeast Asia involved in the economic evaluation of tropical forest land use options. It was developed initially to serve as an aid to Cambodian researchers in the execution of an EEPSEA-financed study of non-timber forest values in Ratanakiri Province, Cambodia. The aim of the manual is to provide non-specialists with a basic theoretical background to economic valuation of the environment and with a practical methodology for an economic evaluation of alternative tropical forest land uses.

Intensive farming has been adopted to produce large amounts of food grains and cash crops but environment is being deteriorated at alarming rate also. Increased use of fertilizers, pesticides, chemical growth regulators, machinery and poor management practices are accelerating environmental pollution, soil degradation, global warming, climatic change and food deterioration. Conservation agriculture offers a sustainable solution for all these problems most often. This review focuses the use of fertilizers in conservation agriculture and their impact on weed management.

This paper investigates the impact of climate variability on maize yield in the Limpopo Basin of South Africa using the Generalized Maximum Entropy (GME) estimator and Maximum Entropy Leuven Estimator (MELE). Maize constitutes about 70 percent of grain production and covers about 60 percent of the cropping area in South Africa. It is a summer crop, mostly grown in semiarid regions of the country, and is highly susceptible to changes in precipitation and temperature.

This report analyses the current status of the land-use sector under the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change and its Kyoto Protocol, and formulates options for how various incentives and systems could be harmonised under a future climate treaty. It argues that the land-use sector serves key environmental and social functions and supports the livelihoods of around a half of the world’s population. However, it is argued that the climate regime fails to formulate a coherent vision or set of incentives for mitigation and adaptation from the sector.

This report details the proceedings of a workshop for indigenous livestock breeding communities that took place in Nairobi, Kenya, October 2003. The workshop sought to raise awareness among indigenous livestock keepers on their rights over animal genetic resources.The workshop showcased the significance of traditional knowledge and social systems for upholding farm animal genetic diversity.

The global food system will experience an unprecedented combination of pressures over the next 40 years. Global population size will increase and competition for land, water and energy will intensify, while the effects of climate change will become increasingly apparent. Over this period, globalisation will continue, exposing the food system to novel economic and political pressures.This final report of the Foresight Global Food and Farming Futures Project argues that decisive action needs to take place now. The report identifies five considerable challenges ahead:

This IPCC technical paper extensively and thoroughly examines the potential consequences of climate change on the world’s freshwater resources and the communities that depend on them. Its objective is to improve understanding of how water-related issues are linked to climate change and adaptation and mitigation responses. The methodology splits sections into observed and projected effects with error margins and a stress on uncertainty presented as necessary context.

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:

Will intensifying the road network around market areas produce greater economic returns and less environmental damage than extending the road network into new areas?Rural roads promote economic development but also facilitate deforestation. To explore the trade-offs between development and environmental damage posed by road building, Chomitz and Gray develop and estimate a spatially explicit model of land use.

Examining the assumption that private property rights create incentives for the management of resources, this paper argues that private property rights and current wildlife conservation and management laws and policies in Kenya fail to provide the solution to wildlife biodiversity erosion.

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.

This contributory chapter of Working Group III to the Fourth Assessment Report of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) outlines the status of climate change mitigation in agriculture and its implications on development, production and consumption trends. It presents regional and global trends in greenhouse gas emissions, as well as future global trends.