Combating Desertification and Drought

OPINION: Now Is the Time to Tackle Malnutrition and Its Massive Human Costs

By José Graziano da Silva and Margaret Chan
The scourge of malnutrition affects the most vulnerable in society, and it hurts most in the earliest stages of life. Today, more than 800 million people are chronically hungry, about 11 percent of the global population.

A Fair Climate Treaty or None at All, Jamaica Warns

By Desmond Brown
As the clock counts down to the last major climate change meeting of the year, before countries must agree on a definitive new treaty in 2015, a senior United Nations official says members of the Alliance of Small Island Developing States (AOSIS) “need to be innovative and think outside the box” if they hope to make progress on key issues.

Responding to Climate Change from the Grassroots Up

By Desmond Brown
As concern mounts over food security, two community groups are on a drive to mobilise average people across Antigua and Barbuda to mitigate and adapt in the wake of global climate change, which is affecting local weather patterns and by extension, agricultural production.

Better Water Management Needed to Eradicate Poverty

By Torgny Holmgren
It demands repetition: water is a precondition for all life. It keeps us alive – literally – while being a prerequisite for or integral part of most of our daily activities. Think hospitals without water, think farms, energy producers, industries, schools and homes without our most needed resource. All sectors, without exception, are dependent on water.

Climate Negotiators “Sleepwalking” in Bonn

By Stephen Leahy
The 410,000 people who took to the streets for climate action in New York City during the U.N. Climate Summit would have been outraged by the 90-minute delay and same-old political posturing at the first day of a crucial round of climate treaty negotiations in Bonn at the World Congress Center.

Belize Fights to Save a Crucial Barrier Reef

By Aaron Humes
Home to the second longest barrier reef in the world and the largest in the Western Hemisphere, which provides jobs in fishing, tourism and other industries which feed the lifeblood of the economy, Belize has long been acutely aware of the need to protect its marine resources from both human and natural activities.

Warmer Days a Catastrophe in the Making for Kenya’s Pastoralists

By Miriam Gathigah
Seif Hassan is a pastoralist from Garissa, Northern Kenya, some 380 kilometres outside of the capital, Nairobi. He sells his animals at the Garissa livestock market where, during a good season, pastoralists can sell up to 5,000 animals per week and “it is a cash-making business.” 

OPINION: Innovation Needed to Help Family Farms Thrive

By Jomo Kwame Sundaram
Family farms have been contributing to food security and nutrition for centuries, if not millennia. But with changing demand for food as well as increasingly scarce natural resources and growing demographic pressures, family farms will need to innovate rapidly to thrive.

Bamboo Could Be a Savior for Climate Change, Biodiversity

By Desmond Brown
Bamboo Avenue is a two-and-a-half mile stretch of road in Jamaica’s St. Elizabeth parish. It is lined with giant bamboo plants which tower above the road and cross in the middle to form a shady tunnel. The avenue was established in the 17th century by the owners of the Holland Estate to provide shade for travelers and to protect the road from erosion.

High-Tech, High Yields: Caribbean Farmers Reap Benefits of ICT

By Jewel Fraser
Farmers in the Caribbean are being encouraged to make more use of farm apps and other forms of ICT in an effort to increase the knowledge available for making sound, profitable farming decisions.

Curbing Biodiversity Loss Needs Giant Leap Forward

By Thalif Deen
When political leaders from climate-threatened Small Island Developing States (SIDS) addressed the U.N. General Assembly last month, there was one recurring theme: the urgent need to protect the high seas and preserve the world's marine biodiversity.

Biodiversity, Climate Change Solutions Inextricably Linked

By Desmond Brown
The remarkable biodiversity of the countries of the Caribbean, already under stress from human impacts like land use, pollution, invasive species, and over-harvesting of commercially valuable species, now faces an additional threat from climate change.

Hotter Caribbean Poses Challenges for Livestock Farmers

By Jewel Fraser
Livestock farmers in the Caribbean are finding it increasingly difficult and expensive to rear healthy animals because of climate change, a situation that poses a significant threat to a region that is already too dependent on imports to feed its population.

Antigua Faces Climate Risks with Ambitious Renewables Target

By Desmond Brown
Ruth Spencer is a pioneer in the field of solar energy. She promotes renewable technologies to communities throughout her homeland of Antigua and Barbuda, playing a small but important part in helping the country achieve its goal of a 20-percent reduction in the use of fossil fuels by 2020.

New Global Declaration “Insufficient” to Tackle Deforestation

By Carey L. Biron
Heads of state, civil society groups and the leaders of some of the world’s largest companies this week urged their peers to sign on to a landmark new global agreement aimed at halting deforestation by 2030, even as others are warning the accord is too lax.

OPINION: A Roadmap to Living – and Thriving – in Harmony with Nature

By Braulio Ferreira de Souza Dias
In Nagoya, Japan, in 2010, the international community made a commitment to future generations by adopting the Strategic Plan for Biodiversity 2011–2020 and 20 Aichi Biodiversity Targets.

Outgunned by Rich Polluters, Africa to Bring United Front to Climate Talks

By Monde Kingsley Nfor
As climate change interest groups raise their voices across Africa to call for action at the COP20 climate meeting in December and the crucial COP21 in Paris in 2015, many worry that the continent may never have fair representation at the talks.

Climate-Smart Agriculture is Corporate Green-Washing, Warn NGOs

By Thalif Deen
On the sidelines of the U.N.'s heavily hyped Climate Summit, the newly-launched Global Alliance for Climate-Smart Agriculture announced plans to protect some 500 million farmers worldwide from climate change and "help achieve sustainable and equitable increases in agricultural productivity and incomes."

Climate Change an “Existential Threat” for the Caribbean

By Desmond Brown
When it comes to climate change, Prime Minister Ralph Gonsalves doesn’t mince words: he will tell you that it is a matter of life and death for Small Island Developing States (SIDS).

Will Governments Keep Their Promises on the Human Right to Water?

By Dilip Surkar
It was a dramatic moment at the United Nations when it voted in 2010 to affirm water and sanitation as a human right.

New Fund to Build on “Unprecedented Convergence” Around Land Rights

By Carey L. Biron
Starting next year, a new grant-making initiative will aim to fill what organisers say has been a longstanding gap in international coordination and funding around the recognition of community land rights.
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