This report lays out a set of policy recommendations for the sustainable intensification of agriculture and reduction of food waste to create a resilient global food system. Based on a review of scientific evidence, it pinpoints seven actions that policymakers — including those attending the UN Conference on Sustainable Development (Rio+20) — should adopt to foster sustainable agriculture and efficient food supply chains.

Recommendations include integrating food security and sustainable agriculture into global and national policies;

intensifying agricultural production while reducing negative environmental impacts; and creating comprehensive, shared, integrated information systems.

This policy roadmap will require the reshaping of food production, distribution and consumption patterns, and empowering vulnerable populations to build a sustainable global food system.

Click here to watch a six-minute video detailing the report's key messages

This report provides a visual overview of the trends and factors shaping global food and agricultural systems, including their interactions with broader environmental and socioeconomic concerns. It presents a selection of indicators on food and agriculture by country, aiming to be a reference point for policymakers, donor agencies, researchers, analysts and the public. These indicators are based on the FAOSTAT statistical database, which includes survey data submitted by countries, supplemented by national data.

Four sections cover provide an exhaustive overview of key themes: the state of agricultural resources, including pressures from demographic and macroeconomic change; food insecurity and malnutrition; the role of trade in meeting demands for food and feed; and the sustainability of agriculture in the context climate change and the need to provide ecosystem services.

This report gives an overview of climate change impacts on forests as part of a process to prepare management guidelines, based on a review of the literature and a survey of forest managers. It reviews how changes such as temperature alterations and availability of water might impact growth changes, wildfires, pests and diseases. The authors identify what is needed to create an environment that would support forest managers' efforts in mitigation and adaptation.

The document concludes that, although some forest managers are already taking measures to combat climate change, there is a lack of proper monitoring to assess their effectiveness, efficiency and impacts. It highlights that these measures are designed in response to perceived risks rather than incentive schemes such as certification. And it provides a number of recommendations for forest managers to better prepare for climate change.

This report, which is part of the UN Foresight Initiative, describes the 21 most pressing emerging global environmental issues — those recognised as very important to well-being by the scientific community, but are not yet receiving enough attention from the policymakers. These cover a range of themes, from food security to biodiversity, energy and technology.

One of the most important cross-cutting issues identified in the report is the need to rethink international environmental governance. Other areas in need of improvement include the science–policy interface, and coping with incremental damage to the environment.

Improving food security in light of changing climate is also high on the list of priorities, with the report suggesting a need for more comprehensive early warning systems, support for smallholder farmers, efforts to reduce food waste and increasing agricultural efficiency. Other issues highlighted include managing the impacts of glacial retreat; improving ocean governance; accelerating the implementation of renewable energy systems; and considering the environmental implications of nuclear reactor decommissioning.

This report explains how acidification, warming and de-oxygenation are affecting the oceans, and encourages policymakers to mitigate these stressors and prepare appropriate policy statements ahead of Rio+20. It was written with the aim of raising awareness of ocean issues at the COP17 in Durban, South Africa.

The report provides definitions of ocean acidification, warming and de-oxygenation. It includes a guide to ocean impacts predicted to occur this century unless greenhouse gas emissions are substantially reduced, and how these impacts will, in turn, affect the climate via feedback mechanisms. It also outlines recommendations for mitigation, adaptation and research to improve understanding of these stressors.

This report examines the challenges of managing water resources for agricultural use — specifically in the context of food production — in the face of a changing climate. It provides an overview of climate change impacts in different parts of the world, details options for adaptation and mitigation, and offers practical recommendations on how developing countries can cope with these impacts.  

The report outlines methods to assess impacts on water and agriculture, and stresses that water and agricultural policies must be more closely aligned. It concludes with suggestions for action to help countries in carrying out such assessments and adapting agricultural water management. These include using methods such as decision analysis to improve predictions; developing and applying downscaling techniques to build capacity for better analyses and climate adaptation; and coordinating analyses of the level of investment required for different solutions.

This technical report examines methods for assessing the vulnerability of wetlands — particularly in the context of climate change — as part of a broader set of methodologies for wetland inventory, assessment and monitoring. It gives an overview of available approaches to assessing vulnerability, including the frameworks available to incorporate climate change risks into development planning and projects.

The report identifies challenges and information gaps that have emerged from vulnerability assessments, including "multiple vulnerabilities" a lack of reliable data or long-term monitoring, and differing perceptions of the need to address wetland vulnerability. It concludes that to provide the information needed for sound management vulnerability assessments will need a better understanding of the complexity of interactive pressures that affect wetlands, such as land use and pollution; to develop appropriate metrics to assess vulnerability to multiple pressures; and to bolster data on the sensitivity and adaptive capacity of wetlands.

This year's edition of the report focuses on the costs of food price volatility, as well as the dangers and opportunities that high food prices present to poor countries. It outlines how food price volatility affects food security, offers policy options to reduce volatility cost-effectively, and suggests how countries can manage cost increases when they cannot be avoided.

A key message of the report is that increases in food prices are set to continue. The authors pinpoint contributing factors such as climate change-related increases in the frequency of extreme weather events, and stronger linkages between energy and agricultural markets because of growing demand for biofuels.

One of the key points made in the report is that large countries were able to insulate themselves from the crisis, but small countries dependent on imports, especially in Africa, were hard hit. Others include the importance of safety-net mechanisms for alleviating the impacts of food insecurity and laying the foundations for development, and that high food prices offer incentives for improving food security in the long term by increasing investment in agriculture.

This report highlights advances in the use of climate information to predict and prepare for climate-related natural disasters. It draws together 17 case studies that capture the current state of knowledge within the humanitarian community, and identifies research innovations. It presents the challenges and opportunities that disaster risk managers face in using climate science with a three step approach: indentifying the problem, developing tools, and taking action.

The results show that effective partnerships are crucial and can help to build the information needed for effective response. They also suggest how the use of this information can be improved — for example by focusing on immediate opportunities for action in countries and regions more likely to benefit. Recommendations also include developing realistic expectations, in order to maintain trust in the information and those who provide it, and encouraging national meteorological services to tailor their information to the problem at hand.

This report aims to identify strategies that the agricultural sector can adopt to mitigate and adapt to climate change, ensure food security, and improve the livelihoods of poor smallholder producers.

Agriculture is the main source of livelihood for poor people in developing countries, and improving agricultural productivity is key to achieving food security and meeting most targets set as part of the Millennium Development Goals. In Sub-Saharan Africa, climate change is adding to existing development challenges, making it essential that mitigation, adaptation and rural development strategies are developed together.

By focusing on the example of smallholder farmers in Kenya, the authors suggest "triple win" agricultural practices that promise the greatest payoff in terms of increased resilience of the agriculture sector to climate change mitigation, adaptation, productivity and profitability. They include irrigation, soil and water conservation, integrated soil fertility management and improved livestock feeding.

This report aims at encouraging increased trans-boundary cooperation in water resource management in Afghanistan and Central Asia, through a bottom-up, basin-based approach that adheres to the principles of Integrated Water Resource Management (IWRM)

The largest river in the region, Amu Darya, is crucial for the 43 million people who live in the Aral Sea Basin — but river flow and water availability are becoming increasingly unreliable because of the impact of climate change and inefficient water management. This is a security threat heightened by an expected 50 per cent increase in the region's population by 2025, says the report.

It calls for countries that rely on the Amu Darya — Afghanistan, Kyrgyzstan, Tajikistan, Turkmenistan and Uzbekistan — to follow the IWRM approach to balancing competing demands for water, build trust and share practices at the local level by training experts from different countries in joint forums, and avoid multilateral agreements that involve management mechanisms too broad to be effective.

This report introduces the Climate and Regional Economics of Development (CRED) model — a climate vulnerability index that estimates the economic damage from climate change in nine world regions based on three measures: freshwater resources per capita, the share of population living in coastal areas, and the percentage of gross domestic product (GDP) of climate-sensitive economic sectors.

The report reviews the current literature of climate change vulnerability indices and describes the CRED climate model, including the data sources and methods used to create the index. It presents the results by region and compares them with the results of other indices. It concludes that although other indices contain more variables that produce more detailed results, they are more difficult to interpret. CRED indicators are quantifiable, can be updated when new information becomes available, and inform climate change policy by identifying regions and countries where intervention to prevent damages is crucial.

This paper reports the results of a systematic review of the impacts of climate change on crop productivity in Africa and South Asia. The study, funded by the UK Department for International Development (DFID), assessed eight food crops — rice, wheat, maize, sorghum, millet, cassava, yam, plantain and sugarcane — that make up more than 80 per cent of agricultural production in these regions. Its findings aim to inform DFID's policies, allocation of resources and other practices according to the need for a stronger focus on evidence-informed decision-making on agriculture in a changing climate. The report provides background information; a detailed account of the review protocol and methodology; the data extraction strategy; data collection; meta-analyses; a synthesis of results; and key findings for all crops organised by region. It recognises that climate change will worsen environmental conditions that already affect crops, such as heat, drought, salinity and submergence in water.

This report outlines the local, practical experiences and lessons learned from the action research project Climate Change Adaptation and Disaster Risk Reduction (CCA-DRR). The goal of the project was to help local people analyse their own vulnerability to the impacts of climate change and work collaboratively to explore better adaptation practices.

It ran from 2008 to 2010 in three areas of rural Bangladesh where natural hazards occur frequently: Sirajganj on the Jamuna River, which is vulnerable to floods; Naogaon in the north-west, vulnerable to drought; and Patuakhali on the coast, which is vulnerable to cyclones, sea-level rise and salinity intrusion.

The report includes an analysis of the strengths and weakness of activities that mobilise local communities to adapt to the impacts of climate change. It concludes with several recommendations for future policy and implementation, and highlights that local people are best placed to understand changes in their environment.

This report from the IPCC, provides a complete and comprehensive overview of the current knowledge and understanding of climate change. The report includes four separate documents that cover the physical science basis for climate change, projected impacts, adaptation and vulnerability of different populations, mitigation strategies, and a synthesis report for policymakers.

This report presents the findings of the WHO's flagship Vision 2030 study. Comprised of a series of summary and technical papers and fact sheets, the Vision 2030 report provides a comprehensive overview of current and projected climate change and its potential impacts on drinking-water and sanitation systems. The report also points to solutions to improve the resilience of infrastructure and services to predicted changes in rainfall.

This book, published by IWMI, evaluates the benefits, costs and impacts of water development over the past 50 years. The authors highlight challenges still facing poor countries today and outline some of the solutions people have adopted. The assessment is available as a summary, with specific policy recommendations, or in individual chapters covering topics ranging from integration and institutional reform to improvements in irrigation and groundwater use.

This report, published to mark World Water Day 2007, reviews the multiple dimensions of water scarcity including increasing demand, competition and conflict and climate change. The authors consider opportunities for improving the efficiency of water use, suggesting the need to increase investments in water, value environmental services and build awareness of water scarcity among the general public.

This report considers strategies to help the Greater Mekong Subregion in South-East Asia meet food demands in the face of climate change. The authors predict likely effects of climate change on agriculture in the region and make recommendations to cope with these, including improving water efficiency and promoting broad-based agricultural development to reduce poverty.

This report from the Chinese branch of the UN Development Programme investigates how China can reduce its heavy dependence on energy and resource consumption and move to a low-carbon economy. The authors suggest that the key lies in strengthening institutions, integrating policies, and enforcing implementation.