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Tanzania's dairy sector is poorly developed, creating reliance on imports for processed, value-added dairy products and threatening food security, particularly when supply chains are disrupted due to market volatility or armed conflicts. The Tanzanian Dairy Development Roadmap is a domestic development initiative that aims to achieve dairy self-sufficiency by 2030. Here, we model different outcomes of the roadmap, finding that adoption of high-yield cattle breeds is essential for reducing dairy import dependency. Avoided land use change resulting from fewer, higher yielding dairy cattle would lead to lower greenhouse gas emissions. Dairy producers' average incomes could increase despite capital expenditure and land allocation required for the adoption of high-yield breeds. Our findings demonstrate the importance of bottom-up development policies for sustainable food system transformations, which also support food sovereignty, increase incomes for smallholder farmers and contribute towards Tanzania's commitments to reduce greenhouse gas emissions.

Les changements économiques mondiaux et les interventions politiques conduisent les transitions des systèmes à marée montante (LFS) vers des utilisations alternatives des terres dans les hautes terres d'Asie du Sud-Est. Cette étude présente un examen systématique de l'impact de ces transitions sur les moyens de subsistance et les services écosystémiques dans la région. Plus de 17 000 études publiées entre 1950 et 2015 ont été réduites, en fonction de leur pertinence et de leur qualité, à 93 études pour une analyse plus approfondie. Notre analyse des transitions de l'utilisation des terres des systèmes de culture alternée à intensifiée a montré plusieurs résultats : plus de ménages avaient augmenté le revenu global, mais ces avantages ont entraîné des coûts importants tels que la réduction des pratiques coutumières, le bien-être socio-économique, les options de subsistance et les rendements de base. L'examen des effets des transitions sur les propriétés du sol a révélé des impacts négatifs sur le carbone organique du sol, la capacité d'échange cationique et le carbone hors sol. Pris ensemble, les facteurs immédiats et sous-jacents de la transition de l'EPA vers des utilisations alternatives des terres, en particulier l'intensification des cultures vivaces et annuelles de rente, ont entraîné une baisse significative de la sécurité préexistante des moyens de subsistance et des services écosystémiques soutenant cette sécurité. Nos résultats suggèrent que les politiques imposant des transitions d'utilisation des terres aux agriculteurs des hautes terres afin d'améliorer les moyens de subsistance et les environnements ont été malavisées ; dans le contexte d'utilisations variées des terres, l'agriculture itinérante peut soutenir les moyens de subsistance et les services écosystémiques qui aideront à amortir les impacts du changement climatique en Asie du Sud-Est. El cambio económico global y las intervenciones políticas están impulsando las transiciones de los sistemas de golondrina larga (EPA) a usos alternativos de la tierra en las tierras altas del sudeste asiático. Este estudio presenta una revisión sistemática de cómo estas transiciones impactan en los medios de vida y los servicios ecosistémicos en la región. Más de 17 000 estudios publicados entre 1950 y 2015 se redujeron, en función de la relevancia y la calidad, a 93 estudios para su posterior análisis. Nuestro análisis de las transiciones del uso de la tierra de los sistemas de cultivo sucios a los intensificados mostró varios resultados: más hogares habían aumentado los ingresos generales, pero estos beneficios tuvieron un costo significativo, como la reducción de las prácticas consuetudinarias, el bienestar socioeconómico, las opciones de medios de vida y los rendimientos de los productos básicos. El examen de los efectos de las transiciones en las propiedades del suelo reveló impactos negativos en el carbono orgánico del suelo, la capacidad de intercambio catiónico y el carbono sobre el suelo. En conjunto, los impulsores inmediatos y subyacentes de las transiciones de la EPA a los usos alternativos de la tierra, especialmente la intensificación de los cultivos comerciales perennes y anuales, condujeron a disminuciones significativas en la seguridad de los medios de vida preexistentes y los servicios ecosistémicos que respaldan esta seguridad. Nuestros resultados sugieren que las políticas que imponen transiciones en el uso de la tierra a los agricultores de las tierras altas para mejorar los medios de vida y los entornos han sido erróneas; en el contexto de los diversos usos de la tierra, la agricultura sucia puede apoyar los medios de vida y los servicios ecosistémicos que ayudarán a amortiguar los impactos del cambio climático en el sudeste asiático. Global economic change and policy interventions are driving transitions from long-fallow swidden (LFS) systems to alternative land uses in Southeast Asia's uplands. This study presents a systematic review of how these transitions impact upon livelihoods and ecosystem services in the region. Over 17 000 studies published between 1950 and 2015 were narrowed, based on relevance and quality, to 93 studies for further analysis. Our analysis of land-use transitions from swidden to intensified cropping systems showed several outcomes: more households had increased overall income, but these benefits came at significant cost such as reductions of customary practice, socio-economic wellbeing, livelihood options, and staple yields. Examining the effects of transitions on soil properties revealed negative impacts on soil organic carbon, cation-exchange capacity, and aboveground carbon. Taken together, the proximate and underlying drivers of the transitions from LFS to alternative land uses, especially intensified perennial and annual cash cropping, led to significant declines in pre-existing livelihood security and the ecosystem services supporting this security. Our results suggest that policies imposing land-use transitions on upland farmers so as to improve livelihoods and environments have been misguided; in the context of varied land uses, swidden agriculture can support livelihoods and ecosystem services that will help buffer the impacts of climate change in Southeast Asia. يقود التغيير الاقتصادي العالمي والتدخلات السياسية التحولات من أنظمة الأرياف الطويلة (LFS) إلى استخدامات بديلة للأراضي في مرتفعات جنوب شرق آسيا. تقدم هذه الدراسة مراجعة منهجية لكيفية تأثير هذه التحولات على سبل العيش وخدمات النظم الإيكولوجية في المنطقة. تم تضييق نطاق أكثر من 17000 دراسة نُشرت بين عامي 1950 و 2015، بناءً على الملاءمة والجودة، إلى 93 دراسة لمزيد من التحليل. أظهر تحليلنا للتحولات في استخدام الأراضي من أنظمة زراعة المحاصيل إلى أنظمة زراعة المحاصيل المكثفة العديد من النتائج: فقد زادت المزيد من الأسر من الدخل الإجمالي، لكن هذه الفوائد جاءت بتكلفة كبيرة مثل الحد من الممارسة العرفية، والرفاهية الاجتماعية والاقتصادية، وخيارات سبل العيش، والمحاصيل الأساسية. كشفت دراسة آثار التحولات على خصائص التربة عن آثار سلبية على الكربون العضوي في التربة، وقدرة تبادل الكاتيون، والكربون فوق الأرض. مجتمعة، أدت الدوافع القريبة والأساسية للانتقال من LFS إلى الاستخدامات البديلة للأراضي، وخاصة المحاصيل النقدية الدائمة والسنوية المكثفة، إلى انخفاض كبير في أمن سبل العيش الموجود مسبقًا وخدمات النظام الإيكولوجي التي تدعم هذا الأمن. تشير نتائجنا إلى أن السياسات التي تفرض تحولات في استخدام الأراضي على مزارعي المرتفعات من أجل تحسين سبل العيش والبيئات قد تم تضليلها ؛ في سياق الاستخدامات المتنوعة للأراضي، يمكن للزراعة العشوائية أن تدعم سبل العيش وخدمات النظم الإيكولوجية التي ستساعد في الحد من آثار تغير المناخ في جنوب شرق آسيا.

AbstractAgriculture is the largest single source of environmental degradation, responsible for over 30% of global greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions, 70% of freshwater use and 80% of land conversion: it is the single largest driver of biodiversity loss (Foley JA, Science 309:570–574, 2005, Nature 478:337–342, 2011; IPBES. Global assessment report on biodiversity and ecosystem services of the Intergovernmental Science-Policy Platform on Biodiversity and Ecosystem Services. IPBES Secretariat, Bonn, 2019; Willett W et al. The Lancet 393:447–492, 2019). Agriculture also underpins poor human health, contributing to 11 million premature deaths annually. While too many still struggle from acute hunger, a growing number of individuals, including in low to middle-income countries (LMICs), struggle to access healthy foods. Greater consideration for, and integration of, biodiversity in agriculture is a key solution space for improving health, eliminating hunger and achieving nature-positive development objectives.This rapid evidence review documents the best available evidence of agriculture’s relationships with biodiversity, drawing on the contributions of leading biodiversity experts, and recommends actions that can be taken to move towards more biodiversity/nature-positive production through the delivery of integrated agricultural solutions for climate, biodiversity, nutrition and livelihoods. The analysis, which takes a whole-of-food-system approach, brings together a large body of evidence. It accounts for aspects not typically captured in a stand-alone primary piece of research and indicates where there are critical gaps.

AbstractGovernments have committed to conserving ≥17% of terrestrial and ≥10% of marine environments globally, especially “areas of particular importance for biodiversity” through “ecologically representative” Protected Area (PA) systems or other “area‐based conservation measures”, while individual countries have committed to conserve 3–50% of their land area. We estimate that PAs currently cover 14.6% of terrestrial and 2.8% of marine extent, but 59–68% of ecoregions, 77–78% of important sites for biodiversity, and 57% of 25,380 species have inadequate coverage. The existing 19.7 million km2 terrestrial PA network needs only 3.3 million km2 to be added to achieve 17% terrestrial coverage. However, it would require nearly doubling to achieve, cost‐efficiently, coverage targets for all countries, ecoregions, important sites, and species. Poorer countries have the largest relative shortfalls. Such extensive and rapid expansion of formal PAs is unlikely to be achievable. Greater focus is therefore needed on alternative approaches, including community‐ and privately managed sites and other effective area‐based conservation measures.

Climate-smart agriculture (CSA) is widely promoted as an approach for reorienting agricultural development under the realities of climate change. Prioritising research-for-development activities is crucial, given the need to utilise scarce resources as effectively as possible. However, no framework exists for assessing and comparing different CSA research investments. Several aspects make it challenging to prioritise CSA research, including its multi-dimensional nature (productivity, adaptation and mitigation), the uncertainty surrounding many climate impacts, and the scale and temporal dependencies that may affect the benefits and costs of CSA adoption. Here we propose a framework for prioritising agricultural research investments across scales and review different approaches to setting priorities among agricultural research projects. Many priority-setting case studies address the short- to medium-term and at relatively local scales. We suggest that a mix of actions that span spatial and temporal time scales is needed to be adaptive to a changing climate, address immediate problems and create enabling conditions for enduring change.

The Stockholm Convention on Persistent Organic Pollutants includes in its aims the minimisation of unintentional releases of polychlorinated dibenzo-dioxins and dibenzofurans (PCDD/PCDF) and dioxin like PCB (dl-PCB) to the environment. Development and implementation of policies to achieve this aim require accurate national inventories of releases of PCDD/PCDF/dl-PCB. To support this objective, the Conference of Parties established a process to review and update the UNEP Standardized Toolkit for Identification and Quantification of Dioxin and Furan Releases. An assessment of all emission inventories was that for many countries open burning of biomass and waste was identified as the major source of PCDD/PCDF releases. However, the experimental data underpinning the release estimates used were limited in number and, consequently, confidence in the accuracy of the emissions predictions was low. There has been significant progress in measurement technology since the last edition of the Toolkit in 2005. In this paper we reassess published emission factors for release of PCDD/PCDF and dl-PCB to land and air. In total, four types of biomass and 111 emission factors were assessed. It was found that there are no systematic differences in emission factors apparent between biomass types or fire classes. The data set is best described by a lognormal distribution. The geometric mean emission factors (EFs) for releases of PCDD/PCDF to air for the four biomass classes used in the Toolkit (sugarcane, cereal crops, forest and savannah/grass) are 1.6μg TEQ (t fuel)(-1), 0.49μg TEQ (t fuel)(-1), 1.0μg TEQ (t fuel)(-1) and 0.4μg TEQ (t fuel)(-1), respectively. Corresponding EFs for release of PCDD/PCDF to land are 3.0ng TEQ (kg ash)(-1), 1.1ng TEQ (kg ash)(-1), 1.1ng TEQ (kg ash)(-1) and 0.67ng TEQ (kg ash)(-1). There are now also sufficient published data available to evaluate EFs for dl-PCB release to air for sugarcane, forest and grass/savannah; these are 0.03μg TEQ (t fuel)(-1), 0.09μg TEQ (t fuel)(-1) and 0.01μg TEQ (t fuel)(-1), respectively. The average EF for dl-PCB release to land is 0.19ng TEQ (kg ash)(-1). Application of these EFs to national emissions of PCDD/PCDF for global estimates from open burning will lower previous estimates of PCDD/PCDF releases to air and to land by 85% and 90%, respectively. For some countries, the ranking of their major sources will be changed and open burning of biomass will become less significant than previously concluded.