This study examines the socioeconomic features that underpin the expansion of groundwater-dependent irrigation in Northern State, Sudan. Groundwater development in the region serves as an economic lifeline given the poor Nile-based irrigation infrastructure and future changes in Nile hydrology. Groundwater-dependent irrigation is found to be expanding in previously uncultivated regions increasingly distant from the Nile.

A three-year project was funded by the BMZ/GIZ to examine the benefits of integrating aquaculture and small scale irrigation by identifying improved water allocation and management strategies under current and future climate change scenarios. An integrated modeling approach was adopted to analyze the complex issues involved in the decision processes. A water budgeting approach was used in estimating and balancing the water resources available to farming communities (the supply aspect) and the water demand for agricultural use, including crops and fish farming, within a catchment.

Voluntary certification programs are one type of intervention used to incentivize the commodity agricultural sector in tropical forest landscapes to reduce deforestation and improve sustainability. These programs encourage supply-chain actors to produce and source products according to agreed standards. We review the cases of the Roundtable on Sustainable Palm Oil (RSPO) voluntary certification program in Indonesia, and the Sustainable Agriculture Network (SAN) voluntary certification program for cattle in Brazil.

Considering that agriculture remains a key sector in Ethiopia, commercialization of the sector necessitates improving participation of smallholder farmers in markets, hence improving their incomes and livelihoods. Promoting smallholder commercialization through cash crop production is one avenue of such efforts. The main argument for smallholder commercialization through cash crop production is that it can allow households to increase their income directly. Sesame in Ethiopia can be taken as a good example in this regard.

Grasslands are one of the world's most widespread vegetation types, covering nearly 20% of the land surface and represent a major source of production of agricultural products. However, grassland vegetation across the Mediterranean region is changing at an unanticipated rate. These changes are the result of climatic and socio-economic changes.

This paper describes an action research process undertaken with four African agricultural carbon projects—CARE’s Sustainable Agriculture in Changing Climate Initiative in Western Kenya; World Vision’s Assisted Natural Regeneration Project in Humbo, Ethiopia; Vi Agroforestry’s Western Kenya Agricultural Carbon Project; and ECOTRUST’s Trees for Global Benefits in Uganda—to explore their institutional changes as project managers and communities work to build local capacity for project management.

The current project has sought to assess i) the potential of agricultural biodiversity-focused PES to serve as a cost-effective and socially equitable domesticated diversity conservation incentive scheme, as well as ii) how economic incentive mechanisms such as PES can be designed to build on and complement local institutions of collective action. Results are presented from pilot Payment for Agrobiodiversity Conservation (PACS) schemes and framed field experiments implemented in the Bolivian and Peruvian Andes aimed at sustaining diversity within quinoa, a traditional Andean grain.