People in southern Africa are facing escalating levels of risk, uncertainty and consequently vulnerability as a result of multiple interacting stressors, including HIV/AIDS, poverty, food insecurity, weak governance, climate change and land degradation, to name but a few. Vulnerability or livelihood insecurity emerges when poor people as individuals or social units have to face harmful threats or shocks with inadequate capacity to respond effectively. In such situations, people often have no choice but to turn to their immediate environment for support.

There have been major shifts/changes in land use patterns in Rwanda over the past twelve years. A few striking observations include: As a percentage of total farmland, cultivated land increased. The increase in cultivated land occurred at the expense of pasture and fallow and woodlot. The share of pasture and fallow decreased from 22% in 1990 to 14% in 2002 and woodlot decreased from 11% in 1990 to 7% in 2002. This trend of increasing cultivated land is apparent from the mid-eighties to today.

Cloud forest in the Central Highlands of Guatemala provides important ecosystem services for the Q’eqchi’ Maya but has been disappearing at an increasing rate in recent decades. This research documents changes in cloud forest cover, explores some contributing factors to deforestation, and considers forest preservation and food security implications for Q’eqchi’ communities. We used a transdisciplinary framework that synthesized remote sensing/GIS analysis of land cover change, focus group dialogs, and surveys.

Tourism is one of the most rapidly growing economic sectors in the world, especially indeveloping countries; growth rates in international tourist arrivals and receipts in these countries are roughly double the world average. In Zambia, the tourism sector has grown steadily in recent years; international tourist arrivals from 1990 to 2005 grew at an average annual rate of 9.7%, and tourism receipts grew at 10.2%, compared to average growth rates for developing countries of 6.6% and 9.9%, respectively.

Meat production in South Africa is on an increasing trend. In South Africa rising wealth, urbanisation and a growing middle class means South Africans are eating more processed and high-protein foods, especially meat and dairy products. These foods are more land- and water-intensive than fruit, vegetable and grain crops, and further stress existing resources. Traditional agricultural farms cannot keep up with the increasing demand for animal products and these farms are being replaced with concentrated animal feeding operations.

This paper explores the concept of homegardens and their potential functions as strategic elements in land-use planning, and adaptation and mitigation to climate change in Sri Lanka.

A multi-scale study has been undertaken to explore the relationships between climate, water resources, land use and diffuse pollution in order to assess the significance of projected future changes in climate and the uncertainty inherent in these projections. Two climate simulations from the GCM–RCM Perturbed Physics Ensemble developed by the UK Met Office Hadley Centre, broadly representing the extremes of future climate simulations, were downscaled and applied to a grid-based dynamic national water balance and nitrate model for Scotland.

This project was initiated to promote conservation agriculture (CA) in Tanzania so as to improve the food security and rural livelihood of small- and medium-scale farmers through the scaling-up of CA as a sustainable land management (SLM) tool as well as increasing the numbers of SLM-CA farmer field schools (FFS) in communities. The project had two phases from 2004 to 2010. It was funded by a Government of Germany trust fund and implemented by the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations (FAO) and the Ministry of Agriculture in Tanzania.

Agriculture production in developing countries must be increased to meet food demand for a growing population. Earlier literature suggests that sustainable land management could increase food production without degrading soil and water resources. Improved agronomic practices include organic fertilization, minimum soil disturbance, and incorporation of residues, terraces, water harvesting and conservation, and agroforestry. These practices can also deliver co-benefits in the form of reduced greenhouse gas emissions and enhanced carbon storage in soils and biomass.

This paper evaluates the future impact of soil degradation on national food security and land occupation in Ethiopia. It applies a spatial optimization model that maximizes national agricultural revenues under alternative scenarios of soil conservation, land accessibility and technology. The constraints in the model determine whether people remain on their original site, migrate within their ethnically defined areas or are allowed a transregional migration.

Decades of research have led to substantially improved understanding of the nature of food insecurity. A combination of economic growth and targeted programs resulted in a steady fall (until the food crisis of 2007/08) in the percentage of the world’s population suffering from undernutrition (from 20% in 1990/92 to 16% in 2006). Yet over a billion people still face both chronic and/or transitory food insecurity due to long-standing problems of inadequate income, low-productivity in agricultural production and marketing, and related problems of poor health and absence of clean water.

In Cameroon and elsewhere in the Congo Basin, the majority of rural households and a large proportion of urban households depend on plant and animal products from the forests to meet their nutritional, energy, cultural and medicinal needs. This paper explores the likely impacts of climate-induced changes on the provisioning of forest ecosystem goods and services and its effect on the economic and social well-being of the society, including the national economy and the livelihoods of forest-dependent people.