Combating Desertification and Drought

Kenya Is Doing Its Part to Battle Drought, We Must Too

By Siddharth Chatterjee and Aida Mengistu
After three years of drought and failed harvests, Kenya is in the grip of a national crisis. All eyes are on neighbouring Somalia and South Sudan – where the needs are indeed greater and more acute – but we must not forget the nearly 3 million Kenyans whose lives have been blighted by these extreme conditions.

Indigenous Women: The Frontline Protectors of the Environment

By Tharanga Yakupitiyage
Indigenous women, while experiencing the first and worst effects of climate change globally, are often in the frontline in struggles to protect the environment.

New Generation Rallies to Climate Cause in Trinidad

By Jewel Fraser
As two environmental activist groups in Trinidad and Tobago powered by young volunteers prepare to ramp up their climate change and sustainability activism, they are also contemplating their own sustainability and how they can become viable over the long-term.

Bamboo Gaining Traction in Caribbean as Climate Savior

By Desmond Brown
Keen to tap its natural resources as a way to boost its struggling economy, Guyana struck a multi-million-dollar deal with Norway in 2009.

“Imagine a World Where the Worst-Case Scenarios Have Been Realized”

By Desmond Brown
The tiny island-nation of Antigua and Barbuda has made an impassioned plea for support from the international community to deal with the devastating impacts of climate change.

The Unbearable Cost of Drought in Africa

By Baher Kamal
Nearly 50 per cent of all emergency multilateral food assistance to Africa is due to natural disasters, with advancing droughts significantly threatening both livelihoods and economic growth, warns the African Union through its ground-breaking extreme weather insurance mechanism designed to help the continent’s countries resist and recover from the ravages of drought.

Developing Nations Call for New Trust Fund on Forest Protection

By an IPS Correspondent
The Group of 77 is calling for the creation of a new and dedicated Trust Fund for the implementation of the UN’s strategic plan on forests for the period 2017-2030.

World Must Act Now on Lake Chad Basin Crisis: FAO DG Graziano da Silva

By Eva Donelli
Food assistance is a priority and the only way to prevent the crisis from worsening in the Lake Chad Basin, is to support food production according to José Graziano da Silva, Director-General of the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations.

UN Strengthens Kenya’s Resilience to Disaster

By Miriam Gathigah
Kenya’s lack of capacity to cope with wide-scale disaster has seen thousands of households continue to live precarious lives, especially in light of erratic and drastically changing weather patterns.

Climate Change Solutions Can’t Wait for U.S. Leadership

By Desmond Brown
From tourism-dependent nations like Barbados to those rich with natural resources like Guyana, climate change poses one of the biggest challenges for the countries of the Caribbean.

Indonesian Farmers Weather Climate Change with Conservation Agriculture

By Kanis Dursin
Fifty-two-year-old farmer Theresia Loda was effusive when asked how conservation agriculture has changed her economic situation.

How a Devastating Hurricane Led to St. Vincent’s First Sustainability School

By Kenton X. Chance
In the 1980s, an institution for troubled Danish youth and a vocational school for Vincentians was built in Richmond Vale, an agricultural district on the northwestern tip of St. Vincent.

Sri Lanka’s Small Tea Farmers Turn Sustainable Land Managers

By Stella Paul
As the mercury rises higher, Kamakandalagi Leelavathi delves deeper into the lush green mass of the tea bushes. The past few afternoons there have been thunderstorms. So the 55-year-old tea picker in Uda Houpe tea garden of Sri Lanka’s Hatton region is rushing to complete her day’s task before the rain comes: harvesting 22 kgs of tea leaves.

Caribbean Faces Forecast for Prolonged Drought

By Desmond Brown
The Caribbean Drought & Precipitation Monitoring Network (CDPMN) is warning countries in the region that the same abnormal climate conditions they have experienced over the last few years, which resulted in some of the worst drought in two decades, could continue this year.

Asia’s Water Politics Near the Boiling Point

By Manipadma Jena
In Asia, it likely will not be straightforward water wars.

Three Times as Many Mobile Phones as Toilets in Africa

By Busani Bafana
Though key to good health and economic wellbeing, water and sanitation remain less of a development priority in Africa, where high costs and poor policy implementation constrain getting clean water and flush toilets to millions.

Caribbean Stakes Future on Climate-Smart Agriculture

By Desmond Brown
As Caribbean Community (CARICOM) countries continue to build on the momentum of the 2015 Paris Climate Agreement and the 22nd Conference of the Parties (COP22) of the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) in Marrakech in 2016, special emphasis is being placed on agriculture as outlined in their Intended Nationally Determined Contributions (INDCs).

Climate Change Making Kenya’s Droughts More Severe

By Lyndal Rowlands
The Super El Nino of 2015 to 2016 wrought droughts and floods around the world, yet it is its sister La Nina that is now fuelling drought and hunger in East Africa.

Another Somalian Famine

By Jomo Kwame Sundaram
Last month, the United Nations declared another famine threat in Somalia due to yet another drought in the Horn of Africa. Important lessons must be drawn from the Somalia famine of 2010-2012, which probably killed about 258,000 people, half of whom were under-five. This was the greatest tragedy in terms of famine deaths in the 21st century, and in recent decades since the Ethiopian famine of the late 1980s.

Global Harvests Robust, Yet 37 Countries Need Food Aid

By IPS World Desk
Global food supply conditions are robust, but access to food has been dramatically reduced in areas suffering from civil conflicts, while drought conditions are worsening food security across swathes of East Africa, according to the United Nations.

Caribbean Awaits Trump Moves on Climate Funding, Paris Deal

By Kenton X. Chance
Caribbean leaders worry that with climate change sceptic Donald Trump in the White House, it will be more difficult for small island developing states facing the brunt of climate change to secure the financing necessary to adapt to and mitigate against it.
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