The Asian Development Bank has introduced significant changes in the way farmers and other stakeholders view and benefit from evolving approaches to sustainable land management (SLM) practices. Firmly embedded in SLM are the management and climate resilience of natural resources, which can be enhanced and scaled up by adopting a "landscape approach." This publication sets out how the landscape approach can contribute to overcoming major environmental and developmental challenges---focusing...

Climate change and declining water resources threaten food production systems worldwide, increasing the need for efficient agricultural processes. The Shanxi Province of the People's Republic of China has been experiencing declining groundwater tables since 1956. This publication provides examples of how the Asian Development Bank's development support met the rising challenges in water security, food production, and climate change faced by communities in the Shanxi Province. It describes ...

From cities to biofuels, competition for water is accelerating. Climate change threatens to intensify the onset and severity of the water crisis in several regions of the developing world: this is already happening throughout much of Asia, the Mediterranean, southwestern Australia, and the southwestern US. Along with water shortages, unsafe water becomes an increasingly widespread problem, too. As water crises trigger food and health crises, billions may slip further in...

Better water management will be crucial if we are to meet many of the key challenges of this century - feeding the worlds growing population and reducing poverty, meeting water and sanitation needs, protecting vital ecosystems, all while adapting to climate change. The approach known as Integrated Water Resources Management (IWRM) is widely recognized as the best way forward, but is poorly understood, even within the water sector. Since a core IWRM principle is that good water management m...

The Sanjiang Plain wetlands are among the most important wetlands in the People’s Republic of China with unique habitats, species, and ecology. There is a considerable body of literature devoted to various aspects of the Sanjiang Plain wetlands including their ecological values. Building on lessons from the Sanjiang Plain Wetlands Protection Project supported by the Asian Development Bank and the Global Environment Facility---and based on a comprehensive literature review and discussions w...

From one of the most prestigious nonprofit organizations devoted to environmental issues comes a clear, practical, and rational overview of the relationship between consumers and the environment.Paper or plastic? Bus or car? Old house or new? Cloth diapers or disposables? Some choices have a huge impact on the environment; others are of negligible importance. To those of us who care about our quality of life and what is happening to the earth, this is a vastly important issue. In t...

The State of the World's Land and Water Resources for Food and Agriculture is FAO's first flagship publication on the global status of land and water resources. It is an 'advocacy' report, to be published every three to five years, and targeted at senior level decision makers in agriculture as well as in other sectors. SOLAW is aimed at sensitizing its target audience on the status of land resources at global and regional levels and FAO's viewpoint on appropriate recommendations f...

From the bestselling author of Ethical Oil comes a provocative exploration of the shale gas rush. Levant explains what fracking is and explores what its enemies do not want you to know and why it has the potential to change our future.In Groundswell, Ezra Levant examines the fracking revolution. Fracking (from "fracturing") involves injecting millions of gallons of water mixed with sand and chemicals into a well deep underground to fracture shale ...

The exploding global consumption of meat is implicated in momentous but greatly underappreciated problems, and industrial livestock production is the driving force behind soaring demand.Following his previous ground-breaking book The Global Food Economy, Tony Weis explains clearly why the growth and industrialization of livestock production is a central part of the accelerating biophysical contradictions of industrial capitalist agriculture.The Ecological Hoofprint provides...

This document presents a summary of the first Status of the World's Soil Resources report, the goal of which is to make clear the essential connections between human well-being and the soil. The report provides a benchmark against which our collective progress to conserve this essential resource can be measured. The report synthesizes the work of some 200 soil scientists from 60 countries. It provides a global perspective on the current state of the soil, its role in providing ecosystem se...

Water is our planet’s most precious resource. It is required by every living thing, yet a huge proportion of the world’s population struggles to access clean water daily. Agriculture, aquaculture, industry, and energy all depend on it - yet its provision and safety engender widespread conflict; battles likely to intensify as threats to freshwater abundance and quality, such as climate change, urbanization, new forms of pollution, and the privatization of control, continue to grow.B...