Water is essential not only to survival but is also equally or even more important than nutrients in food production. Agriculture accounts for nearly 70% of the water consumption, with some estimates as high as 85% (Hanasaki et al., 2008a,b). Water scarcity will affect over 1.8 billion people by 2025 (WHO, 2007). This could have major impacts on health, particularly in rural areas, and thus also major impacts on farmer productivity. Althoug...

A central component in preventing loss of biodiversity and ecosystem services, such as provisioning of water, from expanding agricultural production is to limit the trade-off between economic growth and biodiversity by stimulating agricultural productivity and more efficient land use. Further enhancement of agricultural productivity (‘closing the yield gap’) is the key factor in reducing the need for land and, consequently, the rate of bio...

There is great potential to restore carbon in tropical agricultural soils through management practices that, in the right circumstances, can also increase productivity. Agroforestry can offer particularly large carbon gains, although it can increase water demand. Agricultural carbon sequestration policies will need to be tailored to particular circumstances to allow farmers to benefit.

The significance of wastewater and contents of wastewater vary greatly between and even within regions. In Africa for example, it is the impact on people’s health that is the major factor, in Europe, the input of nutrients into the coastal waters reducing productivity and creating anoxic dead zones.

Investment to improve basic access to a safe water source and sanitation (WHO scenario A) can have a significant return with the largest impact on health in particular averting diarrhoea cases and time saved (increasing productivity). Urbanized areas provide a large proportion of GDP, therefore the future development of developing countries is dependent on the productivity of growing urban areas.

The Arctic plays host to a vast array of biodiversity, including many globally significant populations. Included among these are more than half of the world´s shorebird species, 80% of the global goose populations, several million reindeer and caribou, and many unique mammals, such as the polar bear. During the short summer breeding season, 279 species of birds arrive from as far away as South Africa, Australia, New Zealand, and South America to ...

Arctic vegetation has undergone enormous change in the past, most notably in response to the glacial and interglacial periods of the Quaternary. Data from many sources and at several scales suggest that recent climate change is already affecting terrestrial Arctic ecosystems. Comparisons of historical and contemporary aerial photographs provide evidence that Arctic vegetation has already undergone significant shifts in recent decades, foreshadowi...

The Arctic plays host to a vast array of biodiversity, including many globally significant populations. Included among these are more than half of the world´s shorebird species, 80% of the global goose populations, several million reindeer and caribou, and many unique mammals, such as the polar bear. During the short summer breeding season, 279 species of birds arrive from as far away as South Africa, Australia, New Zealand, and South America to ...

The Arctic plays host to a vast array of biodiversity, including many globally significant populations. Included among these are more than half of the world´s shorebird species, 80% of the global goose populations, several million reindeer and caribou, and many unique mammals, such as the polar bear. During the short summer breeding season, 279 species of birds arrive from as far away as South Africa, Australia, New Zealand, and South America to ...

The Arctic plays host to a vast array of biodiversity, including many globally significant populations. Included among these are more than half of the world´s shorebird species, 80% of the global goose populations, several million reindeer and caribou, and many unique mammals, such as the polar bear. During the short summer breeding season, 279 species of birds arrive from as far away as South Africa, Australia, New Zealand, and South America to ...

Sustainability in the Latin American and Caribbean countries may be affected by climate change impacts. Costs associated with climate change can intensify budget constraints as countries attempt to reduce poverty and work towards meeting the Millennium Development Goals. Food security will be affected because of a decline in the productivity of staple grains, natural disasters and drought may reduce the time available for children’s education. It...

The national greenhouse gas intensity measures the quantity of GHG emissions in relation to the economic output of a country and is independent of the absolute quantity of GHG emitted. Other ways to represent GHG emissions are emissions per capita or in total per country. In both cases the picture changes completely. Countries with high absolute emissions may have relatively low intensities and vice versa, as with growing economic productivity e...

Nutrients are essential to life. In aquatic systems, nitrogen and phosphorus are the two nutrients that most commonly control the growth of aquatic plants, algae and bacteria. Nitrogen and phosphorus are considered to be the primary drivers of eutrophication of aquatic ecosystems, where increased nutrient concentrations lead to increased primary productivity. Some systems are naturally eutrophic, whereas others have become eutrophic as a result o...

A majority of the population in sub-Saharan African lives in rural areas, where income and employment depend almost entirely on rain-fed agriculture. This population is today at high risk. Sub-Saharan Africa already has a highly variable and unpredictable climate and is acutely vulnerable to floods and droughts. A third of the people in the region live in drought-prone areas, and floods are a recurrent threat in several countries. With climate ch...

There are two distinct regions in which coral reefs are primarily distributed: the Wider Caribbean (Atlantic Ocean) and the Indo-Pacific (from East Africa and the Red Sea to the Central Pacific Ocean). - The diversity of coral is far greater in the Indo-Pacific, particularly around Indonesia, the Philippines, and Papua New Guinea. Many other groups of marine fauna show similar patterns, with a much greater diversity in the Indo-Pacific region. ...