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The COVID-19 pandemic is affecting all parts of society and livelihoods around the globe. It is though worth recognizing that disadvantaged segments of populations like rural young women and men will be impacted harder, nevertheless, when proactively engaged, they have demonstrated to be innovators in their own sectors to surmount the pandemic impact. As governments and development partners take steps to address the economic and social effects of COVID-19, they should not allow a reversal of the rural youth progress achieved in recent years in terms of inclusion in food systems, access to education, vocational education and training, and access to [...]

There are 476 million indigenous peoples around the world, constituting 6.2 percent of the global population and, according to different sources, representing more than 19 percent of the extreme poor. Indigenous peoples are not a homogenous group. They live in over 90 countries, in rural and urban areas, in forests, savannahs, mountains, and along the coasts, in low, middle- and high-income countries. However, they all share a history of discrimination and marginalization that in the context of COVID-19 – once again – challenges their existence. This document provides a series of recommendations to governments on how to face COVID-19 impacts [...]

The FAO Subregional Office for Eastern Africa is a technical hub which supports nine countries in Eastern Africa: Burundi, Djibouti, Eritrea, Ethiopia, Kenya, Rwanda, Somalia, South Sudan and Uganda. It has a core team of professionals with multidisciplinary expertise. It is responsible for developing, promoting, overseeing and implementing agreed strategies for addressing subregional food security, nutrition, agriculture and rural development priorities.COVID-19 hit the Eastern Africa subregion at a particularly critical time when the economies of a number of countries in the subregion were recovering from the impacts of recent droughts and severe flooding and dealing with the worst desert locust [...]

Key findings of this report show that much progress has been made towards the goal of ending hunger. Yet, many countries continue to face moderate to high degrees of undernourishment, especially where economies made least progress in transitioning towards high-productivity, modern agriculture and non-farm economic development and where policy stances have been weak in promoting agricultural development, reducing gender inequalities, and improving infrastructure and basic social services. The decline in undernourishment has come with a rise in the prevalence in overweight and obesity. The spread of this form of malnutrition has come with dietary shifts towards the consumption of more animal-sourced [...]

In recent decades, concerns have grown around the environmental impact of the Agriculture, Forestry and Other Land Use (AFOLU) sector, more specifically on the impact of agricultural activities on biodiversity. Since the introduction of the Aichi targets, released by the Convention on Biological Diversity (CBD) in 2010, the United Nations have been empowered with greater influence on decision-making impacting biodiversity. The Biodiversity Integrated Assessment and Computation Tool (B-INTACT) uniquely seeks to provide a thorough biodiversity assessment of project-level activities in the AFOLU sector, taking on both a quantitative and a qualitative approach. Revised 4 June 2020: The name of the tool [...]

Biodiversity loss is accelerating at an unprecedented rate across the planet putting a great number of species on the brink of extinction. A decline in the plants, animals and micro-organisms threatens food security, sustainable development and the supply of vital ecosystem services. In order to meet the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) of the 2030 Agenda, there is an urgent need to take action to halt biodiversity loss and consequently ecosystem degradation. Since the introduction of the Aichi targets, released by the Convention on Biological Diversity (CBD) in 2010, the United Nations have been empowered with greater influence on decision-making impacting biodiversity. [...]

Biodiversity loss is accelerating at an unprecedented rate across the planet putting a great number of species on the brink of extinction. A decline in the plants, animals and micro-organisms threatens food security, sustainable development and the supply of vital ecosystem services. In order to meet the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) of the 2030 Agenda, there is an urgent need to take action to halt biodiversity loss and consequently ecosystem degradation. Since the introduction of the Aichi targets, released by the Convention on Biological Diversity (CBD) in 2010, the United Nations have been empowered with greater influence on decision-making impacting biodiversity. [...]

Updates for many countries have made it possible to estimate hunger in the world with greater accuracy this year. In particular, newly accessible data enabled the revision of the entire series of undernourishment estimates for China back to 2000, resulting in a substantial downward shift of the series of the number of undernourished in the world. Nevertheless, the revision confirms the trend reported in past editions: the number of people affected by hunger globally has been slowly on the rise since 2014. The report also shows that the burden of malnutrition in all its forms continues to be a challenge. [...]

This brochure presents a series of knowledge platforms which make data and information on food and agriculture available, accessible and usable worldwide. This work contributes to the five priorities of FAO to achieve a world without hanger, malnutrition and poverty in a sustainable manner, with a focus on the exchange of knowledge, information and data as a key step towards achieving the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs).

The evaluation of FAO’s statistical work examines the relevance and the effectiveness of statistics in the era of “leave no one behind”. It appraises the progress made by FAO and the challenges faced in establishing functional statistical governance, providing quality statistics, and adopting sustainable capacity development at the global, regional and country level.The evaluation found that statistics remain core to FAO’s overall work. Members demand for data to support SDG indicator implementation and the use of statistics in policy-making has increased. FAO’s profile has been raised through its methodological work on the SDG indicators and outreach work on national standards.However, [...]