Kenya grapples with climate change challenges, experiencing erratic weather patterns, prolonged droughts, and floods that significantly limit agricultural productivity and natural resources availability. This not only exacerbates food insecurity but also heightens the potential for conflicts. The Arid and Semi-Arid Lands (ASALs), especially in northern counties like Turkana, are particularly vulnerable, experiencing a surge in climate-induced food shortages compounded by escalating conflict risks.

When Russia invaded Ukraine in February 2022, sparking fears of a global food crisis, IFPRI responded rapidly to the need for information and policy advice to address the crisis. From the first moments of the conflict, a new IFPRI blog series provided critical information and insights into the impacts on food security, caused by rising food, fertilizer, and fuel prices and trade disruptions, for vulnerable countries and regions.

This decade has been marked by multiple, often overlapping, crises. The COVID-19 pandemic, natural disasters, and the ongoing war in Ukraine have all threatened the fabric of our global food systems. But opportunities can be found amid crises, and the world’s food systems have demonstrated surprising resilience. With new evidence on what works, now is the time to rethink how we address food crises.

Food, land, and water systems face daunting challenges in the future, and the body of research exploring these challenges is growing rapidly. This note is part of a series developed by the CGIAR Foresight Initiative to summarize what we know today about the future of various aspects of food systems. The goal of these notes is to serve as a quick reference, point to further information, and help guide future research and decisions.
Key messages

In common with many nations undergoing a nutrition transition, micronutrient deficiencies, undernutrition and overnutrition coexist in The Gambia. Addressing these challenges simultaneously would require transformational changes in the country's food system. However, the evidence base that would enable informed decision-making in the Gambian food system has been scant, despite several sources of routinely-collected data being available.

This report is based on 10 research projects carried out in 18 sites in seven countries: Cambodia, Indonesia, Lao PDR, Myanmar, Nepal, Thailand and Viet Nam. The studies formed the basis of ten informational briefs from the research sites published together with the report (available here: https://www.recoftc.org/publications/0000432). Each study documented the legal frameworks and customary practices that affect indigenous women’s rights to access and manage forest resources and create restrictions on those rights.

Land ownership has long been argued to enhance farm productivity by improving tenure security. But would this hold for female and male owners alike? The relationship between land ownership and productivity has been investigated relatively little from a gender perspective in most regions, with work on Asia being especially sparse. Even less explored are gender differences in the likelihood of landowners self-cultivating as vs. leasing out their land.

Las mujeres del mundo rural están mucho más expuestas que las del urbano a la sobrecarga que las tradiciones de división sexual del trabajo les han impuesto. Su papel en la reproducción social es invisibilizado por la subvaloración “del trabajo reproductivo, productivo y para el autoconsumo” (Fao, 2017, p. 1) y por su baja posibilidad de participación política institucional.

RESUMEN EJECUTIVO

The case study explores the intersect between customary tenure systems and gender roles in two villages in Phongsali district in the north of Laos. The country has a diverse population of ethnic communities who depend on forests and other natural resources for their livelihoods. These communities play an important role for conserving complex landscapes. However, their traditional land tenure practices are insufficiently documented and therefore poorly understood, and even more so the gender relations in customary systems.

The case study explores the intersect between customary tenure systems and gender roles in two villages in Phongsali district in the north of Laos. The country has a diverse population of ethnic communities who depend on forests and other natural resources for their livelihoods. These communities play an important role for conserving complex landscapes. However, their traditional land tenure practices are insufficiently documented and therefore poorly understood, and even more so the gender relations in customary systems.