"Biodiversity provides essential components of healthy environments and sustainable livelihoods.

"With half the world’s population living in cities and towns, many poor urban dwellers face problems gaining access to adequate supplies of nutritionally balanced food.

"Agriculture is the main source of livelihood of the majority of people affected by HIV and AIDS globally, and it is being progressively undermined by the disease.

"Agriculture is the main source of livelihood of the majority of people affected by HIV and AIDS globally, and it is being progressively undermined by the disease.

"...At the moment, a lack of integration and coordination characterizes the relationship between the agriculture and health sectors. Traditionally, agricultural and health policies address specific goals within those sectors.

"Research, invention, and adoption of agrotechnology have played an important role in improving human nutrition and health.

This brief describes two case studies as follows: "Sub-Saharan Africa, with the highest fertility rate in the world, faces increasing demographic pressure on its natural resource base....

According to the authors, "Both national and international economic environments have changed substantially in the past decade and a half.

According to the authors, Cassava serves as a staple food for 200 million Africans, second only to maize in its calorie contribution.

The author describes a successful case study as follows: "Dairy production in Kenya has grown at 2.8 percent per year over the past two decades, resulting in per capita production levels double those found anywhere else on the continent.

"On December 1-3, 2003, the New Partnership for Africa's Development (NEPAD), Capacity Building International, Germany (InWent), the Technical Center for Agricultural and Rural Cooperation (CTA), and the International Food Policy Research Institut

During the first half of the 20th century, African farmers transformed maize from a minor imported foodcrop into the continent's principal staple food.

African farmers and agricultural policymakers have achieved a series of significant successes in agricultural development, although these successes are still inadequate in number and scale to counter Sub-Saharan Africa's daunting demographic chall

Past successes in African agriculture can point the way to promising avenues for achieving similar success in the future.

The authors describe the case study as follows: "Kenyan horticultural exports have grown at over 6 percent per year for the past 30 years.

One of the pillars of rural development in francophone Africa, the cotton sector serves as a principal motor of economic development, generating benefits to farmers, rural communities, private traders, cotton companies, and national governments...

This brief considers the benefits and costs of alternative tenure and institutional arrangements and the impact of existing legal and policy frameworks on the sustainability and equity of pastoral production systems under three categories of lando

Who are the landed poor? That is the question asked at the beginning of this brief.

This brief defines property rights and collective action and discusses the links to sustainability of natural resource management and agricultural systems and to poverty reduction, as well as the implications for policy and practice.