Sustainable food systems require mechanisms that assure consumers about the sustainability of agricultural production. Building on the existing literature on the impact of sustainability standards, this study is the first to assess the effectiveness of participatory guarantee systems (PGS) for the certification of organic produce. The study uses representative farm-level...

Flash droughts are abrupt and rapid intensification of droughts that affect agriculture, water, and ecosystems and are commonplace in South Asia. Despite their potential impact, flash drought evolution characteristics and underlying mechanisms in South Asia remain underexplored. We use a multivariate approach to analyze the onset speed, frequency, severity, duration,...

The Japanese tenure rights system is primarily responsible for the sustainability of small-scale fisheries. The TBTI Global Book Series, Life Above Water (Jentoft 2019), has resonated with the public and received a great response in Japan. In a remarkable display of collaboration, dozens of researchers, government officials, and fishers have worked...

Millions have found livelihood due to co-management practices that protect aquatic resources, contributing to the sustainable development of small-scale fisheries in Vietnam.  Vietnam’s 3,260-km coastline spans 28 provinces and cities, supporting thousands of fishing villages and millions of families. About five million people work in the fisheries sector, directly or indirectly,...

The absence of tenure security threatens the traditional livelihoods of the fixed bag-net fishworkers in India’s eastern state of West Bengal. Conflicts over use of natural resources are common in coastal areas globally. Fluid environmental frontiers, historical marginalization of fisher communities, and overlapping tenure systems coded in formal law or customary...

The Government of Indonesia and FAO have recognized the need for thorough analysis and modelling of Indonesia’s food systems to support food systems transformation efforts in the country. This is needed to provide a better understanding of the governance context in food systems, including the political economy dynamics influencing performance,...

The bad smell of pig waste undermines the health of your animals and your own health and can create tensions with your neighbours. Washing the dung and urine into waterways also pollutes the environment. By using deep bedding sprayed with good microorganisms you can avoid all of this. You can...

Often called the Land of Rivers, Bangladesh boasts a remarkable riverine landscape that has nurtured a flourishing fisheries sector. With about 230 rivers crisscrossing it, the country is one of the world’s largest deltas along with the world’s largest flooded wetland. The fisheries industry is a vital pillarof the national...

Climate change and variability affect virtually everyone and every region of the world but the effects are nowhere more prominent than among rural marginalized communities that rely heavily on agriculture and fishing for a living and they face numerous livelihood challenges including risk posed by variability of climate. Using phenomenological...

The past 75 years in Sri Lanka have seen a shift in tenure rights in small-scale fisheries, heralding a new era.  Tenure rights have a strong influence on access, use, management and conservation of aquatic resources. The Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations (FAO) defines tenure rights in fishing...

As the number of enterprises on a farm increases, it becomes harder to keep track of the cost of inputs and the revenues earned. Keep detailed records to see how your farm evolves over time. By comparing different farms of similar size with fellow farmers, you can decide if changing...

On KIARA’s current work KIARA still does advocacy. The Indonesian government is focusing on the Blue Economy, with emphasis on massive expansion of production from marine resources, affecting the community. We have also been working on the climate crisis, especially as it relates to the sinking and drowning villages in...

Vietnam’s largest deltaic region, the Mekong Delta offers great potential for rice production and aquaculture. With an area of 747,000 hectares in 2022, it is the country’s largest shrimp-producing area. The shrimp-rice area covers nearly 190,000 hectares, accounting for 26.8 per cent of the total shrimp farming area in the...

Brussels, Belgium — Access Agriculture is proud to announce the launch of its upgraded, new-look video platform (www.accessagriculture.org) with improved functionality and navigation that allows visitors a more engaging way to explore its incredible array of over 4,000 quality farmer-to-farmer training videos across 100 languages.

Every corner along Japan’s long coast has a fishing port. Where there are fishing ports, there are fishing communities working diverse small-scale and coastal fisheries daily. Its beautiful coastal landscape is Japan’s identity. It is no exaggeration to say that the Fisheries Co-operative Association (FCA) system has supported such an...

As small-scale fishers in China increasingly lose the sea areas that have supported their livelihood, it is necessary to protect fishery tenure rights. The Blue Economy has contributed to the economic development in China in the past decades. This has also resulted in over-exploitation of marine resources and damage to the...

W ildfires have raged across the mountains of the Hindu Kush Himalaya this year. The Indian state of Uttarakhand lost over 1,500 hectares of forest while Nepal saw hundreds of forest fires in March and over a thousand in April. As frightening and destructive as these fires have been, for over 10,000 years, everywhere from the Central...

On a rainy day in August, when the availability of fisheries resources is high in the Teesta river here, Bimal Das returned from a four-hour fishing trip with only three kg of fish. While sorting the fish from the ice slabs, a dejected Das contemplated quitting fishing to looking for...

The International Year of Artisanal Fisheries and Aquaculture 2022 (IYAFA) was celebrated worldwide. It provided a global platform to highlight the importance of small-scale fisheries and artisanal aquaculture, their role in sustainable development and the myriad of ways they ensure food security and poverty alleviation in dependent coastal and rural...

Born and raised amidst the lush landscapes of the mountain provinces of the Philipines, Daniel Jason Maches and Jaymar Garcia, two Indigenous youth, have always been connected to the land. They’ve witnessed their parents tend to the earth, cultivating crops that sustained their families for generations.