With case study evidence from Bangladesh, Cambodia, Indonesia and Pakistan, and citing global studies and surveys, this report argues that agro-ecology – or ecological agriculture – offers tools that can help the poorest communities to develop new, affordable, dynamic, lowcarbon and locally-adaptable models of agricultural development to meet these multiple challenges, and recent research shows that agro-ecology is highly productive and holds great promise for the roughly 500 million food-insecure households around the world.