Climate change presents multiple challenges and it cannot be addressed effectively in silos. Attention must be paid not only to specific agriculture sectors, but also to governance areas that are interconnected with agriculture, such as public spending and investment, social protection and rural development. Efforts should be coordinated with the engagement of civil society, including the legal profession, vulnerable groups and the private sector.

This Study addresses the principal expressions of the food and agriculture sector (crops and livestock agriculture, forestry and fisheries), looking at the critical cross-cutting issues and their integration into agriculture law. It provides a comprehensive overview of the legal and institutional issues to consider when working towards preparing the agriculture sector for the challenges of climate change.

The fifth edition of the UNEP Adaptation Gap Report looks at progress in planning for, financing and implementing adaptation – with a focus on nature-based solutions.

The UNEP Adaptation Gap Report 2020 finds that while nations have advanced in planning, huge gaps remain in finance for developing countries and bringing adaptation projects to the stage where they bring real protection against climate impacts such as droughts, floods and sea-level rise.

Public and private finance for adaptation must be stepped up urgently, along with faster implementation. Nature-based solutions – locally appropriate actions that address societal challenges, such as climate change, and provide human well-being and biodiversity benefits by protecting, sustainably managing and restoring natural or modified ecosystems – must also become a priority.

The research found that some farmers were responding to climate change mostly by adopting changes in farm management practices, and that the incentive for farmers to act was influenced by the policy environment, the institutional environment and investment by governments. Because planned and institutional measures are in the hands of various levels of government, the research reinforced the importance of coordination to develop a cohesive package of measures for farmers to address climate change at the farm level.

Understanding farmers’ adaptation strategies and decision-making processes is important for designing future policy interventions to ameliorate and prevent the adverse effects of extreme weather events on farming systems. This technical report presents the findings of an ACIAR project that examined the effects and potential benefits of responses to climate change in rice markets in China and Vietnam. The project provided a social sciences dimension to the study of climate change and its primary objectives were to identify those farmers most at risk from climate change and then to identify policy responses to assist their adaptation and adjustment.

This booklet narrates the stories of five female journalists from Pakistan who are working on environment- and climate-change-related issues. Women are being disproportionately and adversely impacted by climate change and female journalists are uniquely placed to understand and share their stories. However, these journalists are ‘missing in action’ from the media in sharing their experiences of environmental activism and climate action. The publication covers a range of challenges journalists face, from limitations on mobility and harassment, to gender-based discrimination in media houses. It highlights why environmental issues sometimes make headlines while remaining dormant at others.

Stress-tolerant rice varieties (STRVs) are bred to be high yielding and tolerant to climate shocks such as drought. In Nepal, several drought-tolerant STRVs have been released and widely adopted. This paper estimates the impacts of the adoption of STRVs on first- and higher-order household outcomes in a non-drought year. It controls for selection bias using correlated random effects models to eliminate unobserved plot and household-level heterogeneity. STRVs have a higher yield, a lower yield variance and a shorter growing duration than traditional landrace varieties. In addition, households apply more early-season chemical fertilizer and land preparation labour to plots planted to STRVs compared to landraces. This indicates that the first-order impacts of the adoption of STRVs induce behavioural changes that help to modernize agricultural practices. Finally, this study conducts a randomized experiment in which half of the sampled households provided additional detail on their agricultural inputs.

Land use is a central issue for the achievement of the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) and of the Paris Agreement on Climate Change. Plantations of all major tropical commodities are expanding quickly. This creates opportunities for development. It also raises concerns about the impacts of these plantations on the environment, landscapes and livelihoods. Natural rubber is a particularly interesting example to consider in the perspective of sustainable development of a commodity’s producing countries and value chains. This paper is a collaboration between the Forests, Trees and Agroforestry (FTA) research program of the CGIAR (FTA n.d.) and the International Rubber Study Group (IRSG) (IRSG n.d.). FTA works across a range of plantations, value chains and tree crop commodities, from timber, palm oil, cacao, coffee and tea to bamboo, rattan and rubber, among others. It has identified plantations, their development and sustainability as a research priority. IRSG is an intergovernmental organization and the primary source of statistical information related to rubber value chains, policy issues, innovation and technology. IRSG has a leading role in developing a comprehensive agenda for the sustainability of natural and synthetic rubber.

The health and environmental consequences of our dietary choices impose costs on society that are currently not reflected in the price of those foods or diets that contribute to these detrimental impacts. This paper provides updated estimates of two major cost items: the healthcare-related costs associated with unhealthy diets, and the climate-change costs associated with the emissions attributable to diets and food production. Results suggest that the health and climate-change costs of current diets are substantial and projected to increase up to 1.3-1.7 trillion USD annually by 2030.