For cities to be sustainable, they need to simultaneously address the vulnerability of people, places and sectors that may be affected by a changing climate; mitigate their greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions; and ensure adequate access to basic urban services such as water, food and energy to their growing populations. 

This first progress report for the five-year Sida programme provides a comprehensive review of programme activities, progress towards outcomes, risks encountered and lessons learned in the first 18 months – from 1 October 2013 to 31 March 2015. It also discusses adjustments required to Year 2 implementation as a result of these findings.

This Topic Guide addresses the threat that climate change poses to food security and poverty reduction achievements. The peer-reviewed guide explains how programming around climate-smart agriculture can help adapt and build resilience to climate change – at the same time stimulating economic growth and poverty reduction in the agricultural sector.

The new India’s Right to Food Campaign website was launched in March 2014 at the campaign’s fifth convention. It is an action-oriented website, with lots of action-oriented material on the right to food in India including primers, articles, survey reports, court orders, campaign tools and much more As explained in its foundation statement, the right to food campaign is an informal network of individuals and organisations committed to the realisation of the right to food in India.

Lesotho regularly features in the African and international media as a country blighted by drought, hunger and food insecurity. Much of the discussion about the causes and remedies for food insecurity, including within Lesotho itself, focuses on the rural population and the precipitous decline in domestic food production in recent decades. This report argues that the rural bias of both donors and government ignores the fact that poverty and food insecurity are increasingly important urban issues as well.

Constrained access to land is increasingly recognized as a problem impeding rural household welfare in densely populated areas of Africa. This study utilizes household and parcel level data from rural Kenya to explore the linkage between land access and food security. We find that a 10% increase in operated land size would increase household total food consumption per capita, cereal consumption per capita, non-cereal consumption, and home produced food consumption by 2.6%, 2.1%, 2.7% and 5.4%, respectively.

The recent phenomenon of large-scale acquisition of land for a variety of investment purposes has raised deep concerns over the food security, livelihood and socio-economic development of communities in many regions of the developing world. This study set out to investigate the food security outcomes of land acquisitions in northern Sierra Leone.

Food aid is a critical component of the global food system, particularly when emergency situations arise. For the first time, we evaluate the water footprint of food aid. To do this, we draw on food aid data from theWorld Food Programme and virtual water content estimates from WaterStat. We find that the total water footprint of food aid was 10 km3 in 2005, which represents approximately 0.5% of the water footprint of food trade and 2.0% of the water footprint of land grabbing (i.e., water appropriation associated with large agricultural land deals).

India and China are two similar developing countries with huge populations, rapid economic growth and limited natural resources, therefore facing the massive pressure of ensuring food security. In this paper, we will discuss the food security situations in these two countries by studying the historical changes of food supply-demand balance with the concept of agricultural land requirements for food (LRF) from 1963–2009. LRF of a country is a function of population, per capita consumption/diet, cropping yield and cropping intensity.

This paper examines the spatial and temporal trajectories of Seattle’s industrial land use restructuring and the shifting riskscape in Seattle, WA, a commonly recognized urban model of sustainability. Drawing on the perspective of sustainability as a conflicted process, this research explored the intersections of urban industrial and nonindustrial land use planning, gentrification, and environmental injustice.

Ein Jahr bevor die Frist zur Erreichung der Millenniums-Entwicklungsziele im Jahr 2015 abläuft, bietet der Welthunger-Index (WHI) einen facettenreichen Überblick über die Verbreitung des Hungers und trägt neue Erkenntnisse darüber in die weltweite Debatte, wie Hunger und Mangelernährung verringert werden können. Betrachtet man die Entwicklungsländer als Gruppe, so hat sich die Hungersituation dort seit 1990 verbessert. Dem WHI 2014 zufolge ist seitdem ein Rückgang um 39 Prozent zu verzeichnen.