Sustainable Food Security through Land Regeneration in a Changing Climate

The World Agroforestry Centre and World Vision along with many other partners are convening a Southern Africa Regional ‘Beating Famine Conference’ in Lilongwe, Malawi on 14-17 April, 2015. This will be a landmark event to emphasize the crisis of widespread land degradation in southern Africa in the face of climate change, and how this could impact food security in the region. The conference will highlight the impact of key agricultural and land management practices in addressing these challenges, particularly through such practices as conservation agriculture and agroforestry for landscape restoration. The conference will attract high-level policy makers and practical field experts, and make sure that proven grass-roots solutions combine with enabling institutions. The President of Malawi is expected to open the event, and world-class professionals will be speaking on food security challenges and practical opportunities for application across the region.

The conference will be a successor to the highly successful Beating Famine Conference that was held in Nairobi in April 2012. That meeting served as a catalyst for a great deal of tangible action and organizational collaboration across East Africa to address food security, resilience and livelihood issues and opportunities. Following the conference a number of NGOs incorporated land regeneration practices into their programs (particularly farmer-managed natural regeneration and evergreen agriculture) and governments examined their policies to find ways of creating enabling environments for uptake of these practices. Even better outcomes for this conference are expected, given the interest and participation from the AU, the African Climate Smart Agriculture Alliance, other international organizations, governments, donors and the NGO community.

For further information please visit the website www.beatingfamine.com