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Climate change may have contributed to the suicides of nearly 60,000 Indian farmers and farm workers over the past three decades, new research suggests. According to a study from the University of California, Berkeley, crop failures caused by drought and low rainfall during India’s agricultural growing season are pushing farmers into poverty and triggering suicides. […]

The biological pest management strategy Push-Pull can help achieve the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) by contributing to ending poverty and hunger. This is the message of a guest article on IISD’s SDG Knowledge Hub, published by Zeyaur Khan, Programme Leader for Push-Pull at the International Centre of Insect Physiology and Ecology (ICIPE) in Kenya, and

When indigenous peoples’ rights to their lands are protected, they are the best guardians of the world’s forests and biodiversity. However, indigenous peoples are facing acute challenges due to the loss of their lands and the violation of their rights. This is the message of Victoria Tauli-Corpuz, the United Nations Special Rapporteur on the rights

Global food prices have reached their highest level since January 2015, the UN Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) said on Thursday. The FAO Food Price Index, which measures monthly changes in international prices of a basket of food commodities, averaged 179.1 points in July, up 2.3 percent from June. Global food prices rose for the

August 2 marks Earth Overshoot Day this year – the day humanity has used up the natural resources Earth can regenerate in a year, according to data from Global Footprint Network, an international sustainability think tank. The date is calculated each year by contrasting the world’s demand on nature (ecological footprint) with the biocapacity –

The world has made little progress on sanitation and drinking water, leaving 2.1 billion people without access to safe, readily available water at home and 4.5 billion people without safely managed sanitation. According to a report released on July 12th by UNICEF and the World Health Organisation (WHO) this threatens to expose the world’s poorest

The UK is sleepwalking into a post-Brexit future of insecure, unsafe and expensive food supplies, leading academics have warned. According to a report published on Monday by food policy specialists from three British universities, the UK is unprepared for the most complex ever change to its food system. “Supplies could be reduced, prices could become

Global food prices are projected to remain low over the next decade as demand growth for food commodities is expected to slow down and biofuel policies have less impact on markets than in the past. This is the key message of the OECD-FAO Agricultural Outlook 2017 – 2026 published on Monday. The report provides ten-year

The number of undernourished people in the world has increased again, the Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) of the United Nations warned on Monday. At the opening of the agency’s biennial conference in Rome, FAO Director-General José Graziano da Silva told member states that conflict and climate change are the main contributing factors behind the

The world’s food security is increasingly reliant on a small number of global trade chokepoints which are exposed to disruptive hazards, a new Chatham House report has found. The UK-based think-tank has identified 14 trade chokepoints of global strategic importance – maritime straits, major port hubs and inland transport networks – through which over half