Towards sustainable intensification:
stories of real-world sciencewater, land and ecosystems research highlights
Phase 1

Since its inception in 2012, the CGIAR Research Program on Water, Land and Ecosystem (WLE) has developed scientific evidence and solutions for sustainably intensifying agriculture.

For WLE, sustainable intensification means more than minimizing agriculture’s environmental footprint; it means making sure that agriculture benefits both the planet and its people, providing global populations with food and nutritional security, resilience and livelihoods.

WLE researchers and their partners work across scales, disciplines and sectors to find sustainable, viable ways to transform agriculture, locally and at scale. Discover how the resulting solutions can lead to real-world change by exploring the briefs and stories below to.

New briefs on sustainable intensification

Achieving resilient food systems requires identifying incentives for sustainable farming, developing new policies and institutions, as well as working with diverse stakeholders to test and scale integrated solutions.

The program’s findings so far are summarized in a new series of briefs, Towards sustainable intensification: Insights and solutions.

The series aims to guide and support decision and policy makers, investors and others working to achieve sustainable intensification of agriculture. Each brief is focused on a topic of strategic relevance and provides analysis of and recommendations on how to place sustainability at the heart of agri-food systems.

in 2015 wle: field tested 62 technologies and natural resource management practices, helped 125,000 farmers to apply new technologies or management practices, supported improved technologies or management practices on 2.5 million hectares