Meant well doesn’t always mean done well. The Sustainable Development Goals are all set to undermine themselves, Stephan Klasen maintains. The worst aspect is that people, who really ought to be at the focus, threaten to fall by the wayside in this technocratic maze of hundreds of goals, targets, and indicators.

It is widely accepted among economists and policy-makers that secure and well-defined land property rights are integral to poverty alleviation and economic prosperity. But how do legal systems, land tenure and economic development really relate to one another? Our author demonstrates the links using her latest research results from 146 countries.

Fishery plays a crucial role in poverty and hunger alleviation. It is therefore all the more important to secure the long-term conservation of fish stocks as a natural resource and to ensure fair access to them.

German Development Cooperation has developed an approach for the sustainable production of charcoal that has proved to have a considerable impact in Northern Madagascar. Since both environmental and socioeconomic aspects are addressed in a very effective way, this approach has high potential referring to global challenges such as land degradation, rural poverty and climate change.

The Future Agricultures Consortium was established in 2005 with support from the UK Department for International Development (DFID) as a learning alliance of leading African and UK-based research organisations. The Consortium provides independent analysis and advice for improving agricultural policy-making. The aim is to encourage critical debate and policy dialogue on the future of agriculture in Africa, elaborating the practical and policy challenges of establishing and sustaining pro-poor agricultural growth.

In 1978, the rural reform began in China, and since then farmers, including the poor ones, have benefited from a steady growth in income and gradually strengthened food security. This article explains how China achieved food security in the past three decades, how the reform process has affected poverty reduction and what aims are established to deal with extreme poverty and child malnutrition for the period of 2011–2020.

Access to modern renewable energy services are a key input to poverty eradication and in ensuring food security. Biogas is a renewable energy option suited to provide clean, modern and decentralised sources of energy. Portable systems, such as FlexiBiogas, offer a lot of advantages over traditional fixed dome systems.

How can the private sector contribute to the fight against hunger, poverty and malnutrition in the remote areas of sub-Saharan Africa? This article looks at a model that has been applied in Kenya and Tanzania, addressing the right tools, skills and knowledge to make smallholder production a success.

Tropical forage grasses and legumes as key components of sustainable crop-livestock systems in Latin America and the Caribbean have major implications for improving food security, alleviating poverty, restoring degraded lands and mitigating climate change. Climate-smart tropical forage crops can improve the livestock productivity of smallholder farming systems and break the cycle of poverty and resource degradation.

Supporting smallholder farmers is one of the best ways to fight poverty and ensure food security. Such support involving the active participation of smallholder farmers in Zambia has demonstrated a significant increase in farmers’ engagement in general and an improvement in milk production, resulting in nutritional food security both at household and national level and income for the poor farmers.

Protecting land is vital to achieving food security and reducing poverty. This is the insight on which the global WOCAT network was built two decades ago. WOCAT’s early focus on soil and water conservation has expanded into a tried and tested facility for decision support in all aspects of sustainable land management for every kind of land manager. There is a special focus on providing sustainable benefits for the rural poor, both efficiently and cost-effectively.

The number of woodfuel consumers in Africa is projected to increase from around 2.5 billion in 2004 to 2.7 billion by 2030, with sub-Saharan Africa accounting for the highest increase. Rwanda and Kenya are two good examples of countries in which woodfuel plays a key role in energy provision, poverty alleviation and economic development.