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.

A sparse rain gauge network in dryland regions has been a major challenge for accessing high-quality observed data needed to understand variability and trends in climate. Gridded estimates of weather parameters produced through data assimilation algorithms that integrate satellite and irregularly distributed on-ground observations from multiple observing networks are a potential alternative. Questions remain about the application of such climate data sources for assessing climate variability and crop productivity. This study assessed the usefulness and limitations of gridded data from four different sources i.e. AgMERRA, CHIRPS, NASA Power, and TAMSAT in estimating climate impacts on crop productivity using Agricultural Production Systems Simulator (APSIM). The study used data for 11 locations from Africa and India. The agreement between these data sets and observed data both in the amount and distribution of rainfall was evaluated before and after bias correction statistically. A deviation of more than 100 mm per season was observed in 13%, 20%, 25%, and 40% of the seasons in CHIRPS, AgMERRA, NASA Power, and TAMSAT data sets respectively. The differences were reduced significantly when data sets were bias-corrected. The number of rainy days is better estimated by TAMSAT and CHIRPS with a deviation of 4% and 6% respectively while AgMERRA and NASA Power overestimated by 28% and 67% respectively. The influence of these differences on crop growth and productivity was estimated by simulating maize yields with APSIM. Simulated crop yields with all gridded data sets were poorly correlated with observed data. The normalized root-mean-square error (NRMSE) of maize yield simulated with observed and gridded data was <30% for two locations in the case of AgMERRA and CHIRPS and three locations in the case of NASA Power. The NRMSE was > 30% for all locations with TAMSAT data. When yields were simulated with data after bias correction using the linear scaling technique, results were slightly improved. The results of our study thus indicate that the gridded data sets are usefully applied for characterizing climate variability, i.e. trends and seasonality in rainfall, however their use in driving crop model simulations of smallholder farm level production should be carefully interpreted.

Climate is turning out to be a prominent issue of concern nowadays. Climate change is the changing statistical distribution of the patterns that continues over years typically decades or longer. This climate change amplifies the threats like hunger, malnutrition, diseases, and poverty, thus affecting the progress of the world. Agriculture is the most vulnerable sector affected by climate change as it is highly dependent on local climatic parameters, such as rainfall, temperature, and soil health. It is the major driver of climate change. There is a high need to prevent the agriculture sector from being a prey to this climate change. It is time for agriculture to be “climate smart” for sustainably achieving the productivity and incomes and reducing the greenhouse emissions, wherever possible and to be resilient to climate change. Climate-smart agriculture (CSA) is an integrated approach that can address several challenges interlinked with climate change. This concept now has a wide ownership among the national and international agencies, government, and civil societies with a strong focus. Though CSA has been gaining importance, its dissemination and uptake of climate-smart technologies, tools, and practices are still largely an ongoing and challenging process. The adaptation of climate-related knowledge, technologies, and practices based on regional requirements, promoting a coordinated learning by farmers, researchers, extension workers, and the wide dissemination of CSA practices, is possible through the extension to an extent. Extension and advisory services can bridge the knowledge gap by providing clarity on CSA components and its relevant issues. They also play a vital role in helping farmers to cope with the diverse impacts of climate change by creating awareness by using appropriate tools to make them aware about different adaptation and mitigation strategies. This chapter provides a detailed description of how this rural advisory services and extension systems aid in climate-smart agriculture. The novel extension approaches like the information and communication technology (ICT)-enabled extension services and climate information services help the farmers at grass root level. The promising innovative extension approaches that are required to be adopted for the changing climate are enlisted to achieve CSA.

This is the overarching message from the wealth of literature on food systems.1 Analysis by Bene and colleagues finds that this growing body of literature focuses on four main types of failures: food systems’ inability

(i) to produce greater quantities of food to feed a growing world population, (ii) to meet nutritional needs, and (iii) to benefit everyone equally and equitably, with both over- and underconsumption rife in current food systems, plus (iv) the negative impacts of food systems on the environment and natural resources.1
Last but far from least, climate change is increasingly having severe negative impacts on food systems, while food systems themselves are part of the problem through direct and indirect emissions.2 Our score for the global food system: cause for grave concern.