Enhancing Sustainable Agriculture blog posts

Laos’ rivers sustain millions of people as sources of food and water; they also provide some of Laos’ most popular tourist attractions. Policy makers in the Nam Xong river basin are getting a clearer understanding of how potential directions and decisions could affect the future of their region thanks to a modelling project sponsored by WLE. 

Agriculture can be a means to landscape restoration, but this capability is often overlooked. A recent session at COP22 in Morocco begins to explore the ways that agricultural landscape restoration can play an integral role in mitigating climate change.

The intensification of agriculture has had devastating environmental consequences; however, as the earth's population increases, productivity must increase as well. As a recent WLE-funded paper argues, agroecological intensification (AEI) provides a promising way forward for both agricultural productivity and ecosystem health.

Building a dam can provide tremendous amounts of energy and desperately-needed water for agriculture; at the same time, dams have significant impacts on ecosystems and livelihoods. A new tool from SERVIR-Mekong can help decision-makers understand the impacts of dam construction.

Smallholder farms and large industrial farms are equally damaging to their ecosystems if they are monocropped. That said, shifting away form monocropping isn't only beneficial for ecosystems: it has economic rewards as well.

In June, WLE-Mekong published a series of maps identifying a massive range of dams across the major rivers of the Greater Mekong Subregion. In this interview excerpt, the second in a series of two, Thrive discusses how strong partnerships led to the creation of these maps and continues to identify hot spots and spaces for new research.

In June, WLE-Mekong published a series of maps identifying a massive range of dams across the major rivers of the Greater Mekong Subregion. In this interview excerpt, the first in a series of two, WLE-Mekong's Kim Geheb points out hot spots and opportunities arising from these maps.

Ecosystem services and manmade "grey" infrastructure need not be in conflict: in fact, sustainable development requires them to work together. This story from the Xe Bang Fai river in Laos demonstrates potential opportunities for synergy between built and "green" infrastructure.

A recent research publication covering two similar catchments in upland Laos and upland Vietnam found a striking different hydrological situation in each place. What accounts for the difference, and what are the implications for forest management policy?

Ecomodernism embraces agricultural intensification as one of the primary means of decoupling humanity from the environment. However, ecomodernism relies on some problematic assumptions about the division between humanity and nature and the nature of human use of rural spaces.

Acquatic biomonitoring is a powerful tool for assessing the health of river systems. On a recent trip to Myanmar, IWMI researchers explored the viability of biomonitoring for evaluating the health of the Ayeyarwady and Thanlwin rivers.

Landscape restoration is in urgent need of private capital, as identified at the GLF—The Investment Case meeting in London. What are the barriers to business investment in landscape restoration, and how might organizations like CGIAR play a role in overcoming those barriers?