Water quality plays a substantial role in maximizing fish productivity. Despite the efforts made by government to improve fish production, there are general complaints about the small size of fish produced in aquaculture systems. This study was conducted in order to assess the effect of water quality on aquaculture productivity in Ibanda District, Uganda. The specific objectives were to examine the status of water quality parameters (temperature, turbidity, pH, alkalinity, Ammonia content, hardness, Carbon dioxide content, and Iron content) and assess their effect on fish pond productivity. Using data from fish farmers and water samples taken from 25 restocked fish ponds in ten sub-counties, the study revealed that of the eight water quality parameters examined only four (average turbidity, alkalinity, hardness, and Carbon dioxide content) were within the acceptable ranges, while Ammonia content, temperature, pH, and Iron content were slightly outside the recommended ranges. In addition, the study revealed that water quality parameters such as temperature, pH, and Ammonia Carbon dioxide, and Iron content had a significant effect on the weight and size of both tilapia and catfish. The study concluded that certain water quality parameters have a detrimental effect on fish farming. There is a need to educate fish farmers on how to maintain water quality at suitable levels in order to improve fish farm productivity in Ibanda district.

The review aimed at understanding landscape diversity in the face of global population pressure, agricultural land shortages, food insecurity, and climate insecurity. We used published literature to determine whether landscape diversity improves resilience to climate change. Literature searches were performed using the Science Direct database, Google Scholar search engine, and the professional network ResearchGate using keywords. Land degradation, soil resilience, and natural resources from 2000 to 2019. 120 publications were searched, including journal articles, reports, and book chapters. Of these, 68 were considered more relevant and all were read and considered in writing this review. Climate change, food insecurity, and land degradation have been established to be major challenges for developing countries leading to the loss of genetic diversity. Our results show that the loss of proper habitat may allow fast-growing invaders to occupy the remaining limited resources. Therefore, alien species may accelerate invasion under human-induced land-use changes during times of global change. The time lag between range expansion and habitat loss has been thwarted. A golden window to prevent the spread of alien species established in the habitat.

Worldwide, information is needed about the social landscape management as there is no known studies that have documented how climate-smart landscape approaches improve soil and water status. In Sub-Saharan Africa, effective social landscape governance necessitates a certain amount of social capital, including trust and agreed-upon standards. Climate-smart landscapes are key to successful soil and water management but little effort have been made to critically improve effective soil and water resources. The study was guided by the specific objectives, which include examining equitable climate-smart landscapes and finding out the major challenges facing the implementation of climate-smart landscapes. Using "landscape governance" AND "climate smart landscape," 31 papers (31) were obtained from the Web of Science (WOS) and twenty-nine (27) from the Scopus databases using search engines from (1992-2022). On equitable climate-smart landscapes, it was found that multi-stakeholder participation in landscape management is an iterative and changing process that can assist in addressing and resolving disputes as well as facilitating fair negotiation procedures for underrepresented and minority groups. Proper planning and the implementation of a comprehensive planning framework that links various planning activities and decision-making processes are required for landscape approaches to be successful. The major challenges included policies and institutions, financial difficulties in the conservation of natural resources, and socio-economic issues. The novelty from this study is to inform policy makers on climate-smart landscape approaches to ease soil and water management.

Climate Smart Agriculture (CSA) is a global strategy for enhancing food productivity amidst climate change uncertainties in the 21st century. CSA improves farmers’ incomes, reduces greenhouse emissions, and farming systems become resilient to climate change. Despite the vital role that CSA plays in the development of the agricultural industry and the economy, the extent to which CSA is related to sustainable agriculture (SA) is not well documented. Is CSA the same as SA? If they are the same, do CSA practices impose mitigation requirements for developing countries like Uganda? Studies or research on CSA and SA unfortunately have certain shortcomings. Lack of this knowledge makes it difficult to plan investments and develop policies that will increase farmers’ resilience to climate change and variability to improve SA. This study is aimed at assessing how CSA links to SA and whether the two contribute to climate change mitigation requirements. It was found that CSA and SA are also related in a way that the latter leads to lowering greenhouse gas emissions hence mitigating climate change. CSA and SA share a common principal goal of achieving food security. It was concluded that developing countries are the worst affected by the negative impacts of climate change and don’t have the adaptive capacity to respond to climate change effects.

Climate change and variability pose a major challenge facing the agricultural sector around the world and trends are feared to intensify by 2050. This is likely to complicate agricultural decisions affecting local communities who depend on the sector for their livelihood. Seasonal changes in weather patterns are projected to reduce food production due to the reduction in average yields of common food crops. With the majority of smallholder farmers in Uganda depending on agriculture for survival, building their adaptive capacity to climate change is vital to ensure household food and income security. This study aimed at establishing the smallholder farmers’ perceptions of climate change and their initiatives to cope with and manage the associated risks. A sample of 126 farming households were randomly selected from three Sub counties in Isingiro District and studied using field observations and questionnaires. Key informant interviews were also conducted with three extension workers. The collected data was analysed using Stata 14 and Excel. The findings revealed that there was increasing awareness of the climate change and variability challenge among smallholder farmers with the increasing need to take on adaptation strategies. The results showed that the major perceived changes were, increased intensity and frequency of droughts (98%), increase in daytime temperatures (92.7%), decrease in rainfall intensity (92.1%) and changes in rainfall distribution patterns (90%). It also showed that different initiatives had been taken by farmers to cope with the changes like changing planting dates (92.1%), growing crop variety mixtures (73.8%) and practising soil and water conservation (62.7%). Based on the findings of this study, smallholder farmers greatly perceived climate change and variability with negative impacts imposed on their farming operations. Although farmers have tried to adapt, there is still a need to support their coping strategies through appropriate policies. This will facilitate increased adoption of adaptation measures, thereby reducing the negative consequences of climate change in future