The People, Land Management and Environmental Change (PLEC) project is a largely farmer-driven demonstration project consisting of five ecosystem clusters and spread over eight countries: Ghana, Guinea, Kenya, Uganda, Tanzania, China, Papua New Guinea and Brazil. PLEC was initiated in 1992 by the United Nations University (UNU) as an international...

The Trans-Himalayan region encompasses a number of countries situated in the midland and highland areas of the Himalayas, Karakoram, and in a broad sense also in Hindu Kush and Pamir. The mountains are characterized by a very low level of human development, with full exploitation or overexploitation of the natural...

An estimated 500 million small farmers – men and women – produce most of the developing world’s food. Yet their families suffer more hunger than even the urban poor, have higher rates of poverty and enjoy less access to basic social services. Meeting international commitments to halve hunger and poverty...

Nets for Social Safety is a first –of –its-kind study, specially commissioned by the ICSF, to focus on the growth and changing composition of social security provisions in the fisheries sector of Kerala, a small coastal State in southwest India. John Kurien and Antonyto Paul, the authors of the study,...

The tribal societies of north-eastern India have wet rice cultivation as a land use activity, alongwith shifting agriculture (locally called `Jhum'), and the 'home gardens', which is an imitationof a forest but with economically important species. Wet rice cultivation is done at valleybottoms and sometimes on small terraces constructed at...

During her visit to Indonesia, Assistant Director-General and FAO Regional Representative for Asia and the Pacific, Kundhavi Kadiresan, met with Indonesia’s Minister of Agriculture, Amran Sulaiman, in order to exchange views on the growing collaboration between FAO and the Government of Indonesia.

The thirteen papers presented in this publication review fish stocks and fisheries of mountainous areas of Asia: Himalayas (Bhutan, Nepal, northern states of India within the Himalayas), Western Ghats (India), Karakoram-Hindu Kush (Pakistan, Afghanistan), Pamir (Tajikistan), Tien Shan (Kyrgyzstan, Kazakhstan), Altai (Kazakhstan, Mongolia, China), high altitude lakes of Mongolia and...

Smallholder poultry production (i.e. family poultry) is an appropriate system that makes the best use of locally available resources. Family flocks are important providers of eggs and meat as well as being valued in religious and cultural life. There are three production systems for family poultry - free range, backyard...

In the last two decades prior to 1990’s a serious and severely damaging fish disease has been spreading through countries of the Asia Pacific region with dangerous consequences. Not only is this disease- now officially termed Epizootic Ulcerative Syndrome (EUS)- a scientific puzzle, it is also a worrisome social problem....

The topic of land use planning has featured on a number of occasions in this series of Natural Resource Economics Discussion Papers. Within the wider topic of land use planning, the issue of rural smallholdings has received attention in Discussion Papers Nos. 3, 5 and 8. This ninth Discussion Paper...

In New Zealand, as in other industrialized western countries, important changes in community values are taking place. There is increasing interest in the quality of life. The expansion of cities which took place post World War II often resulted in a deterioration of urban living conditions. As people became dissatisfied...