2014 went on record as the hottest year ever measured, a telling sign that climate change is already here. The agriculture sector is predicted to take the heaviest toll, with the hardest hit being smallholder farmers in developing countries, particularly in dry areas. With rising temperatures and greater stress on water resources, agricultural productivity is set to experience a substantial decline. Yet against these odds, we need to produce progressively more to feed a rapidly growing world population.

The dry areas face severe challenges to sustainable development. The biggest challenges – food insecurity, water scarcity, land degradation, and climate change – are closely inter-related. The effects of climate change will be felt globally, but the dry areas will be particularly hard hit. Climate change will exacerbate water scarcity, rainfall variability, and the decline in the natural resource base, and thus could have a profound impact on food security.

In 2007, ICARDA celebrated its thirtieth anniversary. The Center and its partners have worked together for three decades to improve the food security and livelihoods of the poor in dry and marginal areas. During this time, we have seen significant changes in the biophysical environment and in socio-economic circumstances. New farming technologies, new livelihood options, and better policies and institutions are speeding up agricultural development in the world's dry areas, and we are proud of the role we have played in this progress.

2013 has been a fruitful year for ICARDA marked by research accomplishments and a sense of gratitude. Our longstanding partner countries provided important support in making decentralization of the Center’s research a reality. This transition positions our research programs to more expressly target agroecosystem-based solutions, needed for wider impacts.

For ICARDA, 2012 has been a time of change and evolution. We have been busy tackling the many issues of dryland agriculture and global food production against a backdrop of focusing our efforts as a force for change for people living in the world's drylands and our areas of scientific expertise.

Poverty, food insecurity, natural resource degradation and climate change are global challenges; but they impact most severely on rural communities in dry areas. Addressing these challenges requires a combination of good science, integrated research-for-development approaches, and effective partnerships. As this report illustrates, all three elements are in place, resulting in new technologies and tangible benefits in more than 40 countries.

Global food production has increased by 20% in the past decade – but food insecurity and poverty remain widespread , while the natural resource base continues to decline. International research centers, which have helped drive previous improvements, must continue to deliver new technologies to support sustainable growth in agriculture; and to work with other partners to accelerate the dissemination of these technologies.

The world is witnessing a period in its history when the increasing socio-political upheavals are taking the lives of thousands, and destroying the natural wealth of our planet. Poverty and food insecurity are two key forces driving this destruction. These ongoing problems compound those already being posed by an increasing shortage of water, scarcity of productive land, an expanding population, and the threat of global warming.

The year 2002 marked ICARDA's 25th anniversary, and coincided with several honors and awards for the center's excellence in research. Research on developing high-yielding kabuli chickpea varieties that thrive in cool, wet winter conditions earned the 2002 King Baudouin Award of the Consultative Group on International Agricultural Research (CGIAR), jointly with the International Crops Research Institute for the Semi-Arid Tropics (ICRISAT), which focuses on desi chickpea.

2019 marks the 70th anniversary of People’s Republic of China, and 40th year anniversary of the United Nations and UNDP presence and partnership in China. The Special Edition report reflects on the remarkable changes that have taken place. It takes stock not only of the economic achievements often and widely reported, but, more importantly of the wider range of sustainable human development progress achieved by China.

Through the lenses of community development and social licence to operate, we consider the complex relationships between local communities and forest plantation and oil palm companies. We examine the practical challenges in implementing socially-sustainable community development (SSCD) by analyzing two corporate social investment community development projects located in West Kalimantan, Indonesia: Desa Makmur Peduli Api (integrated fire management) and Pertanian Ekologi Terpadu (ecological farming).

The constant declaration of new protected natural spaces that has taken place on a world scale in recent decades has caused changes in rural areas, where these spaces are often host to traditional activities that have acted over time as the area’s main sources of wealth. Among these activities, hunting has been one of the most affected. For this reason, the following study analyzes the incidence of one of the economic sectors linked to venatoria, hunting tourism, in two protected areas with an established hunting tradition: Sierra de San Pedro and Monfragüe.