Beans, Beans, and the power of Genes

Agricultural growth and sex-disaggregated employment in Africa: Future perspectives under different investment scenarios

Literature is scanty on how public agricultural investments can help reducing the impact of future challenges such as climate change and population pressure on national economies. The objective of this study is to assess the medium and long-term effects of alternative agricultural research and development investment scenarios on male and…

Cocoa intensification scenarios and their predicted impact on CO2 emissions, biodiversity conservation, and rural livelihoods in the Guinea rain forest of West Africa

The Guinean rain forest (GRF) of West Africa, identified over 20 years ago as a global biodiversity hotspot, had reduced to 113,000 km2 at the start of the new millennium which was 18% of its original area. The principal driver of this environmental change has been the expansion of extensive…

Envisioning the future and learning from the past: adapting to a changing environment in northern Mali

In West Africa, rural livelihoods depending on natural resources develop coping and adapting strategies to face climate variability or change and economic or political changes. The former Lake Faguibine in northern Mali has experienced drastic ecological, social, and economic changes. Forests have emerged on the former lake and have become…

Agricultural intensification escalates future conservation costs

“The supposition that agricultural intensification results in land sparing for conservation has become central to policy formulations across the tropics. However, underlying assumptions remain uncertain and have been little explored in the context of conservation incentive schemes such as policies for Reducing Emissions from Deforestation and forest Degradation, conservation, sustainable…

Risk of increased food insecurity under stringent global climate change mitigation policy

Food insecurity can be directly exacerbated by climate change due to crop-production-related impacts of warmer and drier conditions that are expected in important agricultural regions1–3. However, efforts to mitigate climate change through comprehensive, economy-wide GHG emissions reductions may also negatively affect food security, due to indirect impacts on prices and…

Agricultural investments and hunger in Africa modeling potential contributions to SDG2 – Zero Hunger

We use IFPRI’s IMPACT framework of linked biophysical and structural economic models to examine developments in global agricultural production systems, climate change, and food security. Building on related work on how increased investment in agricultural research, resource management, and infrastructure can address the challenges of meeting future food demand, we…

Regional and National Rice Development Strategies for Food Security in West Africa