Local Voices Global Choices is an interagency initiative supported by Action aid, British Red Cross, Christian Aid, Global Network of CSOs for Disaster Risk Reduction (DRR), International federation of the Red Cross, Oxfam, Practical Action, ProVention Consortium, Save the Children, and Tearfund.This report contains a number of case studies from around the world, which highlight what can be achieved when local voices are respected and different actors come together to form strategic partnerships to work collaboratively to reduce disaster risks. Case studies analysed include:

Across vast areas of the world, human activity has degraded once fertile and productive land. Deforestation, overgrazing, continuous farming and poor irrigation practices have affected almost 2 billion hectares worldwide, threatening the health and livelihoods of over one billion people. In this edition of New Agriculturist, a collection of articles explores some of the approaches and policies that can help to successfully rehabilitate degraded land.

This report presents an overview of the campaign “Disaster risk reduction begins at school” and the lessons learned from good practice in different countries affected by various natural and man-made disasters. Children are the most vulnerable age group during any disaster, especially those attending school, as school buildings are often destroyed. In keeping with the Hyogo Protocol and achieving the MDGs, the UN/ISDR secretariat and its partners made disaster risk education and safer school facilities the two critical themes of the 2006-2007 World Disaster Reduction Campaign.

Small communities are often the most severely affected, yet the least equipped to cope with the impacts of climate change.In recognition of this, the UNDP-GEF Community-Based Adaptation (CBA) project pilots the community component of the GEF Strategic Priority on Adaptation, building the resilience of communities and the ecosystems upon which they rely in the face of climate change impacts. Key features of the programme include:

This article analyses possible domestic emissions trading systems (ETS) for six developing countries: Brazil, China, India, Kazakhstan, Mexico, and South Korea. It also analyses the prospects of linking the developing countries to existing trading systems, in order to establish a harmonised international carbon market. It notes that the outlook of ETS differs from country to country. Brazil has established a stock exchange for voluntary carbon units which may precede a domestic trading scheme.

Despite increasing evidence that households do not always function as one, policies regarding land and property rights are often formulated at the household level, assuming the primary adult male is the landowner.

Because land policy reform has typically focused on changing household, rather than individual, rights to land, many of the data are collected at the household rather than the individual level. As a result of a combination of these factors, securing women’s land rights has remained a largely unaddressed issue by policymakers.

This guide, aimed at climate change negotiators, gives synopsis of the key elements in the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC)’s Biennial Assessment (BA) of climate finance flows. It also provides an overview of recommendations of the UNFCCC’s Standing Committee on Finance (SCF) to the Conference of Parties. The guide also provides some views on how the identified recommendations can support future international negotiations.

This article focuses on cooperative adaptation strategies at the community, water user association, district, and national levels along the Khojabakirgansai, a small transboundary tributary of the Syr Darya in Kyrgyzstan and Tajikistan. Data were collected in the basin through in-depth expert interviews, site visits, and household surveys, and were triangulated with climate change data from the available literature. Basin inhabitants cooperate on extreme events that are exacerbated by climate change, including water scarcity, droughts, and flash floods.

This report is part of the United Nations Development Programme’s Global Environment Facility’s (UNDP-GEF) efforts to codify and share lessons learnt from how scarce public resources can be used to catalyse larger private financial flows for renewable energy. It provides an overview of UNDP-GEF projects in 14 developing countries which are supporting the development of national renewable energy policies based around feed-in tariffs and related instruments.

This paper discusses how the adoption of agroforestry for ecosystem and livelihood improvement in Central Asian countries can be enhanced.