International audience | Chapters: 1) Public goods and farming. 2) Pesticides and sustainable agriculture. 3) Nitrogen use efficiency by annual and perennial crops. 4) Microalgae for bioremediation of distillery effluent. 5) No-till direct seeding for energy-saving rice production in China. 6) Agricultural water poverty index for a sustainable world. 7) Participatory rural appraisal to solve irrigation issues. 8) Bioavailability of soil P for plant nutrition. 9) Animal manure for smallholder agriculture in South Africa. 10) Vermicompost and soil quality.

Chapters: 1) Public goods and farming. 2) Pesticides and sustainable agriculture. 3) Nitrogen use efficiency by annual and perennial crops. 4) Microalgae for bioremediation of distillery effluent. 5) No-till direct seeding for energy-saving rice production in China. 6) Agricultural water poverty index for a sustainable world. 7) Participatory rural appraisal to solve irrigation issues. 8) Bioavailability of soil P for plant nutrition. 9) Animal manure for smallholder agriculture in South Africa. 10) Vermicompost and soil quality.

Chapters: 1) Public goods and farming. 2) Pesticides and sustainable agriculture. 3) Nitrogen use efficiency by annual and perennial crops. 4) Microalgae for bioremediation of distillery effluent. 5) No-till direct seeding for energy-saving rice production in China. 6) Agricultural water poverty index for a sustainable world. 7) Participatory rural appraisal to solve irrigation issues. 8) Bioavailability of soil P for plant nutrition. 9) Animal manure for smallholder agriculture in South Africa. 10) Vermicompost and soil quality.

The food-water-energy nexus concept helps to produce an integrative solutions to secure the water-related ecosystem services sustainably. This study aims to quantify and map water provisioning and soil erosion regulating services from both demand and supply sides in a spatially explicit manner. It considers the Wabe River catchment of the Omo-Gibe Basin in tropical data-sparse region of East Africa as a case study and uses the Integrated Valuation of Ecosystem Services and Trade-offs (InVEST) annual and seasonal water yield and sediment delivery models. The water demands and biophysical parameters data were collected from primary and secondary sources and prepared according to the requirement of the models. The models output were validated after conducting sensitivity analysis of the input parameters. The result shows that the rainfall amount of the catchment is highly seasonal, which causes the surface water to vary according to the seasons. The high annual precipitation and low actual evapotranspiration of the catchment resulted high annual water yields. However, the people in the catchment did not satisfied their domestic water demand as result of inaccessibility and poor management of the rain water. The high net supply of water, especially in the rainy season, carries detached top soil via heavy rainfall in the upper catchment areas. Even though the existing land cover and management practices contribute to sediment retention, a large amount of sediment is exported to rivers, which jeopardizes the food and energy security. Thus, the management of water is essential for enhancing the security of the food-water-energy nexus in the catchment. The methods applied in this study can increase spatial understanding of the water-related ecosystem services especially in data–sparse catchments of the tropics, and lead to improvement of water management to enhance the security nexus.

Aside from the many services that soil provides, it also stores water and makes it available to crops, which is critical for food security. However, the necessity of further studies for overcoming the existing gap in relation to the role of soil in the water, energy, and food nexus system has been preoccupying the experts and specialists around the world for some time. In this sense, the balance between many key ecosystem components based on the Soil, water, energy, and food (SWEF) nexus framework is one of the key characteristics of holistic and accommodative watershed management systems. To the best of our knowledge, the watershed scale is used as a planning unit for the first time in the current study to construct a conceptual model for adaptive management of optimum land-use/cover allocation using SWEF. The method was then used for the Shazand Watershed, Iran. Numerous metrics, such as soil erosion, soil organic carbon (SOC), water and energy use, mass efficiency, and economic efficiency, were investigated. Finally, a compound indicator was used to generate the SWEF nexus index (SWEFNI) for various land-uses/crops for the node year 2014. SWFENI ranged from 0.19 (worst) for rangeland to 0.78 (best) for almond plantations, according to the findings. The study's present approach may be tested worldwide.

Erosion is severe in major agricultural sectors and areas of concentrated intense rainfall, such as southern Brazil, Argentina, India, eastern China, the Midwestern United States, Ethiopia, and Mediterranean Europe. To meet the world's food needs while protecting the environment, a more environmentally friendly agricultural model is needed. How much the adoption of introduced SWCP can contribute to food security is so, a puzzle that needs to be investigated today. Therefore, this research was conducted to evaluate the impact of soil and water conservation practices (SWCP) on food consumption score (FCS), and food intake in kilocalories at the household level by using 89 adopters and 161 non-adopter households. Cross-sectional data were produced from 250 samples by utilizing, a multistage sampling techniques. The causal effect of generated SWCP adoption data, were analyzed by propensity score matching model (PSM). Results gained by PSM show adoptions of introduced SWCP have an additional kilocalorie of 854.78. Concerning FCS, adopter households can obtain 7.28 scores of food frequency than their comparable groups. Since our study was limited to using analysis at the individual level and other food security indicators rather than calorie intake and FCS. Further study should be recommended concerning the impact of SWC on food security at the individual level by using multiple food security measure indicators.

Ecosystem restoration projects (ERPs) are effective for achieving sustainable development goals. However, a nexus perspective has not yet been effectively used to examine the regimes and interconnections between the sectors of agricultural production, ecosystem restoration, and the livelihoods of farmers, which may have constrained the efficacy of ERPs. In this study, the evolution of these different sectors in ecosystem restoration hotspot cases was investigated using a novel nexus perspective, and their interconnections and implications for ecosystem management were determined. Rapid urbanisation, reclamation, and ERPs have profoundly altered landscape patterns and caused significant ecological changes. Prior to 1999, extensive reclamation proved unsustainable because deforestation activities and cultivation on sloping cropland resulted in severe soil loss and ecosystem deterioration, despite providing significant increases in grain productivity and economic profits. Although revegetation practices after 1999 accelerated vegetation regeneration and enhanced soil retention and carbon sequestration, they also resulted in a decline in grain productivity and economic profits during the initial period of implementing ERPs (1999–2008). However, subsequent policy adjustments and the construction of terraced fields have mitigated cropland loss and maintained the grain supply. The nexus perspective was effective in identifying and coordinating relationships among the sectors, and timely policy interventions have transformed the relationships from trade-offs to synergies and provided win–win outcomes. However, the ongoing urbanisation continues to be a challenge for conserving ecosystems and ensuring food security; therefore, further optimised, and targeted strategies are required to balance contrasting goals and maximise co-benefits according to the environmental and socio-economic conditions.

To satisfy the growing demand for electricity, Ethiopia plans to increase its electricity production five-fold between 2010 and 2015, mainly through the construction of dams. A literature review shows that while dams can boost power and agricultural production, promote economic development, and facilitate flood control, they can also lead to environmental, ecological, and socioeconomic changes. Several case studies show that dams may alter the composition and density of vectors and intermediate host species, increase the incidence of malaria schistosomiasis and possibly lymphatic filariasis, and lead to eutrophication of reservoirs, soil erosion, and earthquakes. There is evidence that dams and commercial irrigation schemes can increase soil and water degradation, vulnerability to drought, and food insecurity in riverine and lacustrine areas downstream of dams. It appears that dams in Ethiopia are also vulnerable to high soil erosion rates and earthquakes. Consequently, the current and proposed large-scale dam construction program in Ethiopia requires in-depth research to improve our understanding of the unintended negative effects of projects and to guide the location, design, and implementation of appropriate preventive and remedial programs.

The Ecosystem Restoration Project (ERP) is a critical and urgent practice to achieve the land degradation neutrality (LDN) targets. However, an insufficient understanding of the balance between contrasting sectors of the food-water-ecosystem nexus results in ineffectiveness in supporting complex environmental management (CEM), leading to undesirable ERP failures. The Ordos Plateau case identified the nexus evolution and the non-linear interactions between sectors, which were expected to support adaptive strategy formulations for CEM and achieve win-win outcomes. Revegetation in drylands substantially boosted ecosystem restoration, alleviating soil erosion. However, the excessive reliance on returning cropland to woodland and grassland has caused a significant loss of arable and grazing land. During the initial period of ERPs, this exacerbated decline in grain and meat productivity. In addition, aggressive revegetation activities have also reduced runoff yield and depleted soil water resources. Water scarcity is recognized as the most challenging issue in dryland ecosystem restoration, heavily influencing the interactions between sectors and threatening the long-term sustainability of ERPs. To accommodate for regional water carrying capacity, ERPs should adopt and properly allocate the use of suitable plant species with a proven anti-drought capability and high survival ratios without additional human interventions. In addition, the evolution regimes, driving factors, critical thresholds, and complex feedbacks between the nexus sectors should be fully understood to address the water resources constraints and reconcile trade-offs. This would enable the prevention of ecosystem shifts to undesirable failures and inform timely and cost-effective CEM to achieve the LDN targets.