Managing the impact of increased disasters due to climate change will only be possible if such efforts are led by local communities, say non-governmental organisations working in climate change.
Francis Mburu used to keep indigenous cattle in Entasopia village in the semi- arid Kajiado region, 160 kilometres southwest of Nairobi. However, increasing temperatures and frequent droughts in Kenya have made this difficult in recent years.
Women toil in the fields for most of their lives producing food and strengthening the largely agricultural economy of African countries, but when their fathers, husbands or older sons die, they are no longer welcome on land they may have tended for years.
Organisations working with indigenous peoples living in forests say the United Nations programme on Reducing Emissions from Deforestation and Forest Degradation in Developing Countries (REDD+) is just another way for big corporates to reap huge profits.
Civil society leaders in South Sudan are closely watching a legal battle unfolding in Sweden, as prosecutors investigate an oil company accused of involvement in massive human rights abuses here.
The European Union plan to save the Kyoto Protocol may meet its greatest obstacle in the developing world.
As Daniel Chakunkha and Mussa Abu talk on the side of a dirt path in Makunje village, Malawi, a steady stream of bicycles loaded with charcoal passes by. The men stand at the halfway mark between Mwanza, a small city in the country’s southwest, and Blantyre, Malawi’s commercial hub.
The Fourth High Level Forum on Aid Effectiveness (HLF4), starting in this port city on Tuesday, will examine why international donor assistance worth trillions of dollars spent over decades has failed to eradicate poverty.
For the past 10 years, Buruli ulcer has been eating Benjamin Essel’s leg. The skin above his ankle is totally gone, and a swollen, pulpy and reddish wound rises almost up to his knee and wraps around his calf. Even still, this is an improvement over recent years.
Flagging economic fortunes and a persistent AIDS pandemic have devastated Lesotho, leaving little hope it will ever be able to pull itself out of its bleak poverty trap. Three out of five of the tiny southern African kingdom’s children are living in dismal poverty. Every fourth child is orphaned.
Mosammet Monwara walks more than three km every alternate day to fetch water for her family of five in a heavy earthen pitcher.
The worst day of Olaniyi Emiola’s life was Mar. 17, 1998. At least it was for Olaniyi Emiola, 22, the spare motor parts trader. For Olaniyi Emiola, the armed robber, it was a lucky escape as another man with the same name had been wrongly sentenced to death for a crime he committed.
Nepal’s joint forest management system has taken such deep roots that the country’s prolonged political instability has had little effect on it.
Life in Bwaise – a slum on the outskirts of the capital of Uganda – has never been easy. But increasingly erratic rains over the last three years have brought constant floods to the former swampland. Residents who can afford to are moving out, leaving the poorest – often single mothers and grandmothers – behind.
Chungda Sherpa, a former herder from eastern Nepal, has a warning tale ahead of the United Nations climate change conference in Durban.
In Africa, where urbanisation will be one of the major developments over the next few decades, it will be key for cities to figure out how to handle rapid urban expansion and much-needed economic growth, while creating more environmentally-friendly cities and reducing their carbon footprint at the same time.
There is a new oil rush off the coast of West Africa. But there are fears that the sector is not sufficiently regulated, and watchdog groups are raising concerns about transparency and governance in the region.
The convergence of leading countries from the global South - China, India, Brazil and South Africa, among others - to assist the poorest countries in sub-Saharan Africa and elsewhere constitutes a new "dynamic" in the emerging global economic partnerships, says the United Nations Conference on Trade and Development.
Doctors in Mogadishu are warning that famine victims in internally displaced camps have become vulnerable to contagious diseases like cholera and measles, as conditions here are ripe for an outbreak. This comes as internally displaced persons complain that relief aid to some camps has dwindled or stopped.
Asian countries, home to about 60 percent of the world's population, will be hit hardest by changing weather patterns and a degrading environment, research indicates.
Malawi is experiencing a drug shortage as the country's international donors remain reluctant to release aid meant for the health sector.