This Guidance document is developed in the framework of SO3-OO2 and aims to assist FAO Members in incorporating decent rural employment (DRE) interventions across different agricultural sub-sectors. The Guidance document is mainly designed for policy makers and staff responsible for strategic planning and programme development in the ministries responsible for agriculture and planning. It also addresses other public and private institutions involved in strategic planning for agricultural and rural development such as employers, producers and workers' organizations.

Increased investment in agriculture and food systems—from both the private and public sectors—is critical to enhance food security and nutrition, reduce poverty, and adapt to climate change. To generate sustainable benefits, this investment must be responsible. What role should investment incentives play in encouraging such investment? This Guide helps to answer that question. Specifically, the Guide provides policymakers and government technical staff with guidance on how investment incentives can be used (and how they should not be used) to enhance responsible investment in agriculture and food systems. The Guide provides an overview of responsible investment in agriculture and food systems; examines common types of incentives; offers general considerations on how incentives can be used; and discusses how to plan for, design, monitor, and evaluate investment incentives for responsible investment in agriculture and food systems.

The International Development Law Organization (IDLO) and the Center for International Forestry Research (CIFOR) assessed the legal frameworks for major natural resource sectors in Zambia, Tanzania and Mozambique to analyze whether, and to what extent they enable sustainable investments. National development plans in each country, and their crosscutting laws on land and the environment incorporate principles of sustainable development. However, sector-specific laws governing forestry, agriculture, mining and energy reflect these principles to varying degrees. Relying significantly on natural resources, these countries have witnessed consistent GDP growth in recent years. Despite their resource wealth and increased investments, poverty and resource degradation persist. Rural populations remain disproportionately affected, with limited access to basic services and increased vulnerability to the impacts of deforestation and climate change. This Synthesis report outlines four key insights on issues identified by the legal assessments that can either hinder or enable sustainable land use investments. These consist of: Reframing investment incentives and focusing on smallholder interests;Protecting customary land rights and ensuring consultation and consent:Establishing clear and effective regulations, strengthening enforcement capacity and supporting decentralization andRaising awareness, guaranteeing participation and promoting freedom of information. The report demonstrates that landscapes governance embodying the rule of law and adherence to social and environmental safeguards can create enabling conditions for sustainable investments. Equity, responsive legal and policy reforms, improved enforcement capacity, strengthened participatory mechanisms and other rule of law considerations are critical to planning and managing investments so that they contribute to sustainable development.

Guided by the Global Action Plan of the United Nations Decade of Family Farming 2019-2028, this publication looks into ways that legislation can best support policy processes aimed at advancing family farming’s contribution to the attainment of the Sustainable Development Goals. The publication aims to present some of the laws and regulations relevant to family farming to determine the features that can most positively benefit family farmers while providing information and experiences from different parts of the globe for decision-makers and practitioners. The objective not being to provide prescriptions for how to regulate family farming, but rather to present different options to decision-makers, thereby facilitating their appreciation of the complexity of existing legislative and regulatory frameworks that underpin family farming and empowering them for the design of supportive approaches best suited to their respective national context. With the multisectorality of family farming at its core and mindful of family farmers’ overwhelming contribution to nutritiously and sustainably feed the world, this publication analyses legislative processes in 12 different areas that are conducive to the agri-food systems transformation for a better production, better environment, better nutrition and better life for all, leaving no one behind.

1. The book is the result of a well-coordinated four-year international joint research that had studied 7 countries such as Bhutan, China, Ghana etc.and looks at the diversified development paradigms and paths under globalization and challenges 2. This book will be a single repository on the evolution of globalization and development paradigms with a balanced stock of diversified concepts, ideologies and rigorous empirics

Over the past few years, large-scale land acquisitions in Africa have stoked controversy, making headlines in media reports across the world. Land that only a short time ago seemed of little outside interest is now being sought by international investors to the tune of hundreds of thousands of hectares. Private-sector expectations of higher world food and commodity prices and government concerns about longer-term national food and energy security have both made land a more attractive asset. Dubbed 'land grabs' in the media, large-scale land acquisitions have become one of the most talked about and contentious topics amongst those studying, working in or writing about Africa. Some commentators have welcomed this trend as a bearer of new livelihood opportunities. Others have countered by pointing to negative social impacts, including loss of local land rights, threats to local food security and the risk that large-scale investments may marginalize family farming. Lorenzo Cotula, a leading expert in the field, casts a critical eye over the most reliable evidence on this hotly contested topic, examining the implications of land deals in Africa both for its people and for world agriculture and food security.

Food security is one of the twenty-first century’s key global challenges, and lessons learned from India have particular significance worldwide. Not only does India account for approximately one quarter of the world’s under-nourished persons, it also provides a worrying case of how rapid economic growth may not provide an assumed panacea to food security. This book takes on this challenge. It explains how India’s chronic food security problem is a function of a distinctive interaction of economic, political and environmental processes. It contends that under-nutrition and hunger are lagging components of human development in India precisely because the interfaces between these aspects of the food security problem have not been adequately understood in policy-making communities. Only through an integrative approach spanning the social and environmental sciences, are the fuller dimensions of this problem revealed. A well-rounded appreciation of the problem is required, informed by the FAO’s conception of food security as encompassing availability (production), access (distribution) and utilisation (nutritional content), as well as by Amartya Sen’s notions of entitlements and capabilities.

This sourcebook appraises these instruments and considers their nature and objectives, their potential benefits and challenges and the approaches used to implement them. It also examines the practices that have led to both successful and unsuccessful outcomes. The publication provides a comprehensive review of the potential of these tools to enhance value addition, deliver jobs, increase exports and provide markets for new and existing producers in the targeted territories. It notes, however, that implementation of these tools poses a number of challenges. For example, planners and practitioners sometimes use them interchangeably, thus ignoring the specificities of the investments, policies and processes required, and their expected outcomes. The sourcebook concludes that these tools have potential for catalytic impact, but planners need to make sound choices that respect demonstrated principles and follow good practices for effective design and implementation.