Findings suggest that all farms, as part of a diversified livelihood strategy, maintained similar levels of native tree and fruit species and supported important watershed service functions. However, findings verify conditions of poverty among coffee farmer households and strong economic pressures to abandon shade coffee for high input monoculture crops (e.g., chayote squash and beans) with potential loss to ecosystem services across the region. To conserve ecosystem services at multiple scales, a coordinated effort to support shade coffee farmers who practice diverse, low input agroecological management was evaluated through market and non-market approaches. In order to promote more sustainable landscape management in the region, a set of policy recommendations was developed for improving livelihoods and environmental conservation over the long-term.

This book takes a transdisciplinary approach and considers multisectoral actions, integrating health, agriculture and environmental sector issues to comprehensively explore the topic of sustainable diets. The team of international authors informs readers with arguments, challenges, perspectives, policies, actions and solutions on global topics that must be properly understood in order to be effectively addressed. They position issues of sustainable diets as central to the Earth's future. Presenting the latest findings, they: - Explore the transition to sustainable diets within the context of sustainable food systems, addressing the right to food, and linking food security and nutrition to sustainability. - Convey the urgency of coordinated action, and consider how to engage multiple sectors in dialogue and joint research to tackle the pressing problems that have taken us to the edge, and beyond, of the planet's limits to growth. - Review tools, methods and indicators for assessing sustainable diets. - Describe lessons learned from case studies on both traditional food systems and current dietary challenges. As an affiliated project of the One Planet Sustainable Food Systems Programme, this book provides a way forward for achieving global and local targets, including the Sustainable Development Goals and the United Nations Decade of Action on Nutrition commitments. This resource is essential reading for scientists, practitioners, and students in the fields of nutrition science, food science, environmental sciences, agricultural sciences, development studies, food studies, public health and food policy.

Enhancing social and economic development while preserving nature is one of the major challenges for humankind in the current century. The Millennium Ecosystem Assessment showed an alarming degradation of ecosystems and exacerbated poverty for many groups of people across the world due to unprecedented changes in ecosystems caused by human activities in the 20th century. Sustainable Rural Development is key to maintaining active local communities in rural and semi-natural areas, avoiding depopulation, and preserving high-ecological-value sites, including protected areas. Establishing protected areas is the most common strategy to preserve biodiversity around the world with the advantage of promoting the supply of ecosystem services. However, depending how it affects economic opportunities and the access to natural resources, it can either attract or repel human settlements. The convergence of development and conservation requires decision-making processes capable of aligning the needs and expectations of rural communities and the goals of biodiversity conservation. The articles compiled in this Special Issue (nine research papers and two review papers) make important contributions to this challenge from different approaches, disciplines and regions in the world.

Geographical indications represent a powerful way to foster sustainable food systems through territorial approaches and market linkages, especially for small-scale actors. In this perspective, and following the FAO publication methodologies of the origin-linked virtuous circle, local actors need to well define their geographical indication (GI) system and, more specifically, the product specifications as well as monitor and evaluate the impacts and readjust the system as necessary for the reproduction of local resources. These guidelines aim at providing a detailed and stepwise approach with specific tools to help practitioners in establishing their framework in relation with their objectives and local conditions, to help both the qualification though a prospective evaluation, and the reproduction of local resources though retrospective evaluation.

This final volume in the The Conservation Atlas of Tropical Forests covers the Americas. It provides an up-to-date overview of the status of rain forests in South America, Central America, and the Caribbean. Following the format of the two previous volumes The Conservation Atlas of Tropical Forests: Asia and the Pacific (1991) and The Conservation Atlas of Tropical Forests: Africa (1992), the atlas is divided into two parts. Part I introduces and discusses the complex interrelated issues in the regions that are involved in both deforestation as well as conservation of the tropical forests. Included are discussions on the history of the forests, agricultural colonization policies and deforestation, conservation polices for plants and wildlife, protected areas, and the future of the tropical forests. Part II is a detailed and well referenced country-by-country analysis of conservation status and trends. Four-colour maps have been compiled from satellite and radar imagery, aerial photography, and the latest information provided by forestry departments and development agencies.