Leading Finnish expertise in ground stabilisation has been leveraged in a pioneering project to test a new method in Hanoi, Vietnam. The project will help increase the availability of land suitable for development in the growing city.

- Hanoi is a growing city, and demand for development sites is high. The land area stabilised in the pilot project is located in central Hanoi. When previously unusable land is made suitable for development in a cost-efficient way, it increases the land value, says Tommi Marjamäki, Ramboll's development director for infrastructure.

Land degradation in the Philippines is a serious environmental problem with long-term implications for the sustainability of agricultural production. Protection of the resource base has thus become a policy priority, whether in terms of improving crop management in the lowlands or more urgently, arresting soil erosion in the uplands. This review aims to compile and evaluate estimates of the costs of land degradation; then analyze the costs, benefits, and equity implications of priority measures to protect soil resources; and lastly, draw implications for policy.

The study was conducted to identify risk-efficient cropping schedules for corn farmers in Matalom, Leyte, Philippines using stochastic dominance analysis of simulated yields, given the El Nino Southern Oscillation (ENSO) forecasts during the cropping period. Actual weather data, with missing observations estimated using a weather generating software, were used in constructing weather data sets. These data, together with crop parameters and soil characteristics in the study site, were used as inputs to generate probability distributions of yields during different planting schedules.