Combating Desertification and Drought

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.

From El Nino Drought to Floods, Zimbabwe’s Double Trouble

By Jeffrey Moyo
Dairai Churu, 53, sits with his chin cupped in his palms next to mounds of rubble from his destroyed makeshift home in the Caledonia informal settlement approximately 30 kilometers east of Harare, thanks to the floods that have inundated Zimbabwe since the end of last year.

Humankind’s Ability to Feed Itself, Now in Jeopardy

By IPS World Desk
Mankind’s future ability to feed itself is in jeopardy due to intensifying pressures on natural resources, mounting inequality, and the fallout from a changing climate, warns a new United Nations’ report.

Shrinking and Darkening, the Plight of Kashmir’s Dying Lakes

By Umar Shah
Mudasir Ahmad says that two decades ago, his father made a prophecy that the lake would vanish after the fish in its waters started dying. Three years ago, he found dead fish floating on the surface, making him worried about its fate.

Worst Drought in Decades Drives Food Price Spike in East Africa

By IPS World Desk
The most severe drought in decades, which has struck parts of Ethiopia and is exacerbated by a particularly strong El Niño effect, has led to successive failed harvests and widespread livestock deaths in some areas, and humanitarian needs have tripled since the beginning of 2015, the United Nations warns.

Ravaging Drought Deepens in Kenya

By Miriam Gathigah
Experts warn that Kenya is in the grip of the worst drought in recent history as government estimates show the number of people who are acutely food insecure has risen to 2.7 million, up from two million in January.

How a Spring Revival Scheme in India’s Sikkim Is Defeating Droughts

By Athar Parvaiz
Bina Sharma, a member of the Melli Dhara Gram Panchayat Unit in the southern part of India’s northeastern Himalayan state of Sikkim, is a relieved woman.

Kenyans Turn to Wild Fruits and Insects as Drought Looms

By Miriam Gathigah
Too hungry to play, hundreds of starving children in Tiaty Constituency of Baringo County instead sit by the fire, watching the pot boil, in the hope that it is only a matter of minutes before their next meal.

Farmer Field Schools Help Women Lead on Climate Change

By Sally Nyakanyanga
Discussions around climate change have largely ignored how men and women are affected by climate change differently, instead choosing to highlight the extreme and unpredictable weather patterns or decreases in agricultural productivity.

Drought Could Cost Sri Lanka Billions

By Amantha Perera
The warnings are stark, the instructions, for a change, clear. Sri Lanka is heading into one of its worst droughts in recent history, and according some estimates the worst in 30 years. The reservoirs are running on empty, at 30 percent or less capacity. Only 12 percent of the island’s power generation is currently from hydropower and 85 percent comes from thermal, with a staggering 41 percent from coal.

Native Seeds Sustain Brazil’s Semi-Arid Northeast

By Mario Osava
In his 76 years of life, Raimundo Pinheiro de Melo has endured a number of droughts in Brazil’s semi-arid Northeast region. And he remembers every one of them since 1958. “The worst one was in 1982 and 1983, the only time that the river dried up,” said Pinheiro do Melo, who has lived near the river since 1962. “The one in 1993 was also very bad,” he told IPS, because neither Bolsa Familia nor Networking in Brazil’s Semi-Arid Region (ASA) existed yet, which contribute to a less traumatic coexistence with droughts like the current one, which has dragged on for five years.
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