Stories written by Joyce Chimbi

International Women’s Day, 2024
Inside Women Dominated Seaweed Farms in Kenya’s Indian Ocean Waters

Nearly two kilometers into the Indian Ocean from the Mwazaro beach coastline in Lunga Lunga Sub-County, Kwale County, women can be spotted seated in the shallow ocean waters or tying strings to erected poles parallel to the waves. It is a captivating sight to see rows of seaweed farms in the Indian Ocean.

Call for Scaled Up Funding for Much-Needed, Successful Joint Program in Nigeria

Nigeria is home to 15 percent of the world’s out-of-school children. More than 7.6 million girls are not in school, and only nine percent of the poorest girls in the country are in secondary school. The Boko Haram insurgency and other armed groups fuel the out-of-school crisis in northeast Nigeria, disrupting the education of nearly two million school-age children.

Coastal Indigenous and Minority Women Driving Kenya’s Blue Forest Conservation Efforts

Tsunza Peninsula is a natural wonder that sits just inside the many inlets of Mombasa Island on the border between Mombasa and Kwale Counties—a little-known spectacle of lagoons, islands, and thick mangroves in Kinango Sub-County, Kwale County, on Kenya’s coastal region. 

Road to COP29: Highest Climate Ambitions Needed to Decarbonize World

The road to COP29 has begun in earnest in the backdrop of a global climate report indicating that not only was 2023 the warmest year in a 174-year climate record, it was the warmest by far. Record-breaking temperatures, combined with El Niño, pushed vulnerable and poor nations in the Global South to the frontlines of extreme and severe weather events.

New Era: Unlocking Africa’s Agriculture Potential Through CGIAR TAAT Model

As hunger and food insecurity deepen, Africa is confronting an unprecedented food crisis. Estimates show that nearly 282 million people on the continent, or 20 percent of the population, are undernourished. Numerous challenges across the African continent threaten the race to achieve food security; research and innovative strategies are urgently needed to transform current systems as they are inadequate to address the food crisis.

IFAD’s Record-Breaking Pledges: Lifeline for Rural Communities Cornered by Climate, Hunger

The world is not on track to end hunger and poverty as a future of growing food insecurity and climate challenges beckon. Small-scale farmers are the backbone of food production, producing one-third of the world’s food and up to 70 percent of the food consumed in Africa and Asia, yet they are often cut off from the services they need to pull themselves out of poverty and food insecurity.

COP28: Deal to ‘Transition Away’ From Fossil Fuels Agreed

It was an extraordinary COP Summit in a year characterized by record-breaking temperatures combined with El Niño, producing a climatic carnage in Africa—deaths from fatal floods in the Democratic Republic of the Congo, Kenya, and Libya, where floods wiped out a quarter of a city. Deadly cyclones in Malawi, Madagascar, Mauritius, Mozambique, and Zimbabwe; a severe drought in Kenya, Niger, Somalia, Ethiopia, Mauritania, and Djibouti; and a months-long winter heatwave in southern African countries—the need for COP28 to deliver the highest ambition on all items.

‘Stop Wars and Step Up ‘Measly’ Contributions’ to Climate Finance—Jeffrey D. Sachs

The United State's contribution to the Loss and Damage Fund equals nine minutes of Pentagon spending, says Jeffrey D. Sachs, a world-renowned economist, bestselling author, innovative educator, and global leader in sustainable development.

Africa’s Negotiators Urged to Leverage on African Science at COP28 High Table

African scientists and researchers are concerned that the data shows that the continent is being cornered by the spiraling effects of climate change, that the real impact of climate devastation is yet to unfold, and that the region is on the cusp of more severe and catastrophic consequences.

Farm to Fork: COP28 Provides RoadMap to Fix Africa’s Broken Food Systems – IFAD

In the absence of sufficient urgency to curb greenhouse gas emissions, it is becoming too hot to farm in Africa. Confronted by extreme, intense, and frequent climate events such as record-breaking prolonged dry spells, current agriculture and farming systems are ill equipped to adapt to or alleviate climate change.

Fashion Forward: Protect Africa from ‘Fagia’ Amid Alarming Global Stocktake

Thousands of bales of cheap, poor-quality secondhand clothing arrive on boats and ships docking on Africa’s extensive 26,000-kilometer-long coastline, dotted with at least 100 ports and harbors. From Nigeria, Zimbabwe, Madagascar, Uganda, and Kenya, Africa’s ecosystems are chocking with cheap, air-polluting, and emissions-producing low-quality clothing as they often contain plastic-based fibers.

Greening Education: Education Paying Highest Cost for Ongoing Climate Crisis

It is a global catastrophe of astounding proportions that millions of children are on the run today, forcibly displaced from their homes. As conflict and climate change increasingly become the most pressing challenges facing the world now, the number of displaced children has doubled in the last decade alone, reaching a record high of 43.3 million children.

COP28 Hits: Key Wins as Africa-Focused Pledges, Deals Announced

A record-breaking drought is unfolding in the Horn of Africa, where millions of people are trapped in the world’s worst acute food insecurity emergency. Food insecurity and malnutrition in West and Central Africa are on track to reach a 10-year high as coastal countries edge even closer to the debilitating effects of climate change.

Emerging Climate Finance Infrastructure to Match Africa’s Green Bankable Solutions

Although long profiled as the face of climate change, a high-risk continent with a pipeline of unbankable green projects, there are areas where Africa is leading the world. The 1987 accidental discovery of the first deposit of natural hydrogen during a water drilling campaign in Bourakebougou village, Mali, is today proving that Africa can export viable green solutions.

Electrifying Cooking: Decarbonizing Africa’s Electricity Grid Towards Net Zero

Across the African continent, many first-born children in poor and vulnerable households do not go to school as they spend their school days collecting biomass fuel. The regional average of the amount of time spent collecting firewood is 2.1 hours, robbing women and girls in particular of hundreds of hours in a year and crippling their capacities to engage in learning and productive activities.

ECW’s Emergency Appeal for Crises Impacted Children Facing Double Tragedies

Across the globe, the number of crisis-affected school-aged children facing climate shocks amplified by climate change keeps rising. The Somalia region of Ethiopia is facing the worst drought in 40 years. Last year in Pakistan, unprecedented flooding damaged more than 26,000 schools. Tropical Cyclone Tej recently made landfall in Yemen, affecting thousands of people.

Right Here, Right Now: ECW’s USD 150 Million Climate Appeal to Save Children at Risk

A catastrophic surge in the frequency, intensity, and severity of extreme weather events has placed children on the frontlines of climate emergencies. Nearly half of the world’s children, or one billion, live in countries at extremely high risk from the effects of the climate crisis. Most of these children face multiple vulnerabilities.

Africa Will Not Cope with Climate Change Without a Just, Inclusive Energy Transition

A just transition should be viewed as an opportunity to rectify some of the wrongs where women are not prioritised in the energy mix, yet their experience of the impact of climate change is massive, says Thandile Chinyavanhu, a young South African-based climate and energy campaigner with Greenpeace Africa.

For Every Child, Every Right—Delivering Psychosocial Support for Crisis Impacted Children

As the global community marks World Children's Day, every child should be guaranteed their rights, including those in the Gaza Strip, where heavy bombardment and military operations by Israel have killed more than 11,000 people, 40 percent of them children.

Forced Labor: Exposing Dark Web of Fisheries Labor Abuses

It is a terrifying life experience, cut off from the world and trapped in forced labour aboard fishing vessels, often in high seas or seas beyond the territorial waters of any state. The fishers are isolated under hazardous and horrific working conditions under limited regulatory oversight. More than 128,000 fishers were trapped in forced labour aboard fishing vessels in 2021 alone.

Carbon Market Greenwashing Systems Deepen Inequalities in Global South – Experts

Somalia, Syria, DRC Congo, Afghanistan, Yemen, Chad, South Sudan, Central African Republic, Nigeria, and Ethiopia are the 10 countries at greatest risk of climate disaster globally despite collectively contributing just 0.28 percent of global CO2 emissions. A climate-induced humanitarian crisis continues to unfold across these countries and many others in the global South, including Kenya, which declared drought a national disaster in September 2021.

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