Thrive Blog | Water, Land and Ecosystems

Blog Post
August 21, 2017
The Power of Rubbish: Making Money from Waste
Sanitation services and waste collection have long been a financial burden for the public sector. A new series of business models shows how this trend cannot only be reversed, but how recycling and reusing waste can be a lucrative endeavor.
- Justin Dupré-Harbord
Stockholm World Water Week 2017
Blog Post
July 23, 2017
Maybe the future of rural youth isn't in agriculture
What if the prevailing narrative that youth migration is responsible for the deterioration of rural agricultural livelihoods needs to be rethought?
- Fraser Sugden
Blog Post
July 06, 2017
Linking up the SDGs: the key to food and nutrition security
With growing populations and the worst food crisis since World War II, implementing the SDGs in a way that takes advantage of overlaps while accounting for conflicting interests is more important now than ever before.
Blog Post
July 04, 2017
Groundwater over-abstraction in the MENA region: 5 problems and some solutions
Can innovative policies and regulations reverse the trend of groundwater depletion? A three-year USAID-funded project implemented by IWMI, WLE and national partners across the Middle East-North Africa region investigated just that. Highlighted here are five problems that prevent the MENA region from properly addressing groundwater issues, as well as some potential solutions.
- Alvar Closas
- Christopher Patacsil
Global Forum for Innovations in Agriculture (GFIA)
4 comments
Blog Post
June 27, 2017
How do we make farming cool when temperatures are hot?
Ahead of the 11th International Conference on Community-Based Adaptation (CBA11), Daphne Nansambu looks at an aging agricultural population in Uganda and considers why so many youth are migrating away from farming, as well as what can be done to keep them in the sector.
- Daphne Stella Nansambu
Blog Post
June 02, 2017
Never provoke a peatland
Almost 80 percent of the island of Borneo was covered with this old growth rainforest in 1973. Today, only 28 percent remains. A new Atlas of Deforestation and Industrial Plantations to map and reduce deforestation rates.
- Madeline Dahm

Big Questions

A debate space featuring perspectives from different sectors. Join the conversation!

Big Question
May 25, 2016
How can the media galvanize more effective responses to social and environmental challenges?
Currently, much of the mainstream media coverage, particularly when it comes to environmental issues limits itself to focusing on political rhetoric and disaster reportage while underlying structural changes taking place due to climate change and other factors, largely go ignored.
- Nitasha Nair
5 responses
Big Question
February 24, 2016
What should we be asking to understand gender dynamics in irrigation?
How many of us want to address gender in our work, but when it comes down to the specifics, aren’t quite sure how? Join the discussion- help us develop a series of collaborative questions to investigate gender in agricultural water management projects.
- Sophie Theis
- Ruth Meinzen-Dick
4 responses
Big Question
November 16, 2015
What would it take to strengthen women's land rights?
The evidence base is growing: strengthening women’s land rights contributes to women’s empowerment and household welfare. But it isn’t that simple - there are always vested interests to protect the status quo along with the additional issues of navigating gender norms. How can we improve women's land tenure? Join the discussion
- Ruth Meinzen-Dick
8 responses
Big Question
August 20, 2015
Sustainable intensification of agriculture: oxymoron or real deal?
The strain on agricultural resources will continue to rise in conjunction with food demand and population growth. Will sustainable intensification be the right answer we're looking for? Is it even feasible? Join the discussion.
- Water Land Ecosystems
6 responses
Big Question
April 21, 2015
Can Africa afford to save its soils?
In celebration of the International Year of Soils, we asked a number of experts: Can poor farmers afford to invest in restoring degraded soils? Read their responses.
- Deborah Bossio
6 responses
Big Question
November 26, 2014
Can large-scale land initiatives fulfill their promises?
New month-long online discussion begins: Large-scale land interventions are on the rise. Whether through restoration projects such as the new 20x20 initiative and the Bonn Challenge, or foreign direct investment in huge swaths of land, investors are seeing big opportunities in large land projects. But can they fulfil their promises?
- Water Land Ecosystems
11 responses

Thrive Podcast

Featuring discussions on how people work with water, land and ecosystems to make a sustainable food future. Subscribe on iTunes.

Blog Post
July 18, 2017
Trouble for tapioca: Cassava in Vietnam
Cassava, or Tapioca as it is more popularly known, is a very important staple crop in Vietnam, as well as most of Southeast Asia. This robust crop is facing some serious threats, in the form of pests, depleted soils, and unsustainable farming practices.
- Georgina Smith
Blog Post
March 10, 2016
You, me and the SDGs: the new sustainability agenda
In this episode of Thrive Podcast, filmmaker Doug Varchol asks a few of the over 3,000 attendees of the Global Landscapes Forum (a major parallel event of COP21) what they think about these newly minted SDGs and whether they have begun incorporating them into their work.
- Douglas Varchol
Blog Post
December 22, 2015
Reporting from Paris: Youth solve pressing landscape challenges
One of the highlights of this year's Global Landscapes Forum in Paris was the Dragons Den session, hosted by the Youth in Landscapes Initiative. Eavesdropping from the workshop to the final pitches was Andrew Johnstone.
- Andrew Johnstone
Global Landscapes Forum 2015
Blog Post
November 29, 2015
A social science approach to agricultural dilemmas
Why are many apparently simple, technical solutions to agricultural problems not widely adopted? Why don't people change their behaviour when provided with information that ought to be useful? In this episode of the Thrive podcast, Katherine Snyder from CIAT, shares her views on silver bullet solutions to dilemmas in agricultural development.
- Jeremy Cherfas
Blog Post
November 10, 2015
Water rights re-examined
On this Thrive podcast, we discuss water rights with Tim Williams and Alan Nicol of IWMI. What are the consequences of leaving water out of large-scale land acquisition agreements? And what about another type of human right: the right to water for crops?
- Jeremy Cherfas
Blog Post
October 04, 2015
Preparing for hotter, colder, wetter and drier
Hovering over almost all of the discussions at Stockholm World Water Week was the question of climate change, and one of the few aspects of climate change we can be absolutely certain about is that things are going to become more variable. Claudia Ringler and Jeremy Bird join us on this episode of Thrive Podcast.
- Jeremy Cherfas
Stockholm World Water Week 2015: Water for Development