Combating Desertification and Drought

Food Systems Worsen Diets, Health

By Jomo Kwame Sundaram
Corporate-dominated food systems are responsible for widespread but still spreading malnutrition and ill health. Poor diets worsen non-communicable diseases (NCDs), now costing over eight trillion dollars yearly!

This Year’s Three UN Summits Set the Stage for COP30 to Transform Food Systems

By Aditi Mukherji and Cargele Masso
This year has been a landmark one for climate and environment policy. Starting with the UN’s COP16 biodiversity talks in October, followed by the COP29 climate talks in November, and closing with the desertification COP16 in December, few years have offered such critical moments back-to-back.

2024 Is The Hottest Year Ever Recorded

By Oritro Karim
The World Meteorological Organization (WMO) warns that 2024 is on track to be the hottest year in recorded history, surpassing 2023. This can be attributed to heightened reliance on fossil fuels and the reluctance of industries worldwide to pivot to green energy practices. The rapid acceleration of global temperatures has alarmed scientists, with many expressing concern over the environmental, economic, and social implications of the worsening climate crisis.

Power Arrives but the River Dries Up for Brazil’s Amazonian Dwellers

By Mario Osava
The flow of the igarapé always dropped for three months every year, but now it has been dry for two years in a row, complains Maria Aparecida dos Anjos, looking at the trickle of water that when flooded reaches the stilts of her wooden house, 50 metres away and on a slope of more than 10 metres high.

A Most Heinous -Yet Unprosecuted- Crime: Inequality

By Baher Kamal
Planet Earth is drying up, relentlessly. Over three-quarters of all lands have become permanently drier in the last three decades. This is not jut a statistic but a stark scientific fact. But while such an ‘existential crisis’ affects nearly every region, guess where -and who- are the most hit? 

Interlinked Solutions Key to Tackling Biodiversity, Water, Food, Health and Climate Change, says IPBES

By Busani Bafana
Biological diversity is on the decline worldwide, and current approaches to address its loss have been piecemeal and ineffective in tackling the crisis facing nature—this is despite estimates that over half of global GDP (USD 58 trillion of economic activity in 2023) is generated in sectors that are moderately to highly dependent on nature, a new report by the Intergovernmental Platform on Biodiversity and Ecosystem Services (IPBES) finds.

UNCCD COP16 Spotlights Drought But Fails to Agree on a Legally Binding Protocol

By Stella Paul
The 16th meeting of the Conference of the Parties to the UN Convention to Combat Desertification (UNCCD COP 16) concluded early hours of Saturday with a renewed focus on building drought resilience globally. However, the COP also failed to agree on bringing a legally binding drought protocol. Like the biodiversity and climate change COPs held earlier in the year, COP16 also failed to finish in time and ended by postponing several key decisions to COP17 scheduled to be held in 2026.

In Zimbabwe, Women Are Leading the Battle Against Climate Change

By Farai Shawn Matiashe
When Susan Chinyengetere started to focus on farming in her home village in south-eastern Zimbabwe, she wondered if she could earn a living and raise her children. With climate catastrophes ravaging the country, her hesitation on rain-fed agriculture worsened. But two years later, the 32-year-old mother of two from Mafaure village in Masvingo, about 295 km from the capital Harare, is now a champion in farming.

UNCCD COP16 Raises Hopes for Ambitious Global Land Action

By Stella Paul
While many delegates at the 16th meeting of the Conference of the Parties to the UN Convention to Combat Desertification (UNCCD COP16) hope that this could be the convention’s own Paris moment—referring to the historic Paris agreement inked by UNFCCC signatories—however, this hedges heavily on the UN parties’ seriousness to combat drought, desertification and land degradation.

Courage, not Compromise? A Rallying Cry that Failed a Deadlocked COP Meeting

By Simone Galimberti
Courage and not compromise. That was the motto desperately launched by members of the civil society in the twilight of the negotiations of the Plastic Pollution Treaty in Busan, South Korea last week.

Arab Region Leaders, Experts Gather to Find Solutions to Water Scarcity, Sustainable Development

By Joyce Chimbi
The Arab region is among the most water-scarce areas globally, as nearly 392 million people live in countries facing water scarcity or absolute water scarcity. So dire is the situation that, of the 22 Arab countries, 19 fall below the annual threshold for water scarcity in renewable resources, defined as 1,000 cubic meters per person.

Forest Fires in the Amazon Threaten Earth’s Stability

By Oritro Karim
This year has been the worst for the Amazon rainforest in almost two decades. Although there has been a measured decline in deforestation when compared to 2023, forest fires have ravaged acres of critical ecosystems. For the first eight months of this year, the Amazon has seen routine forest fires, totalling to over 53,000 recorded instances.

Explainer: COP16—What’s It About and What Does It Need to Achieve?

By Cecilia Russell
‘Peace with Nature’ is the theme for the 16th meeting of the Conference of the Parties (COP16) to the Convention on Biological Diversity (CBD), which will take place in Cali, Colombia, between October 21 and November 1, 2024.

Micro-Dams, a Solution to Water Shortages in Rural Brazil

By Mario Osava
Water shortage is over, springs have emerged or become perennial, small ponds with fish have formed and pastures have become greener and more permanent, all thanks to the ‘barraginhas’, the Portuguese name given in Brazil to micro-dams that retain rainwater and infiltrate it into the soil.

UNICEF Director of Global Communication and Advocacy Naysán Sahba visits Zambia


 

 
In Zambia, over 6.5 million people need humanitarian assistance because of the drought. 3.5 million of them are children.

The World Bank Must Double Its Fund for the Poorest Nations like Mine to Tackle Hunger Crisis

By Simplex Chithyola Banda
After El Niño-induced floods and devastating drought, roughly two in five people in Malawi – a country of some 20 million people – are now facing the looming prospect of acute hunger by the end of the year.

Transforming African Food Systems from the Ground Up

By Inga Jacobs-Mata, Maya Rajasekharan, Namukolo Covic and Moses Odeke
All news is local, they say. The same is true of innovations—those many new technologies, policies, and practices that steadily stream from research to enhance our lives.

A River’s Contrasts and Inequalities in the Arid Lands of Brazil

By Mario Osava
Osmir da Silva Rubez refuses to join the drip system, and is the only one among the 51 families living in the Mandacaru Public Irrigation Project in Juazeiro, a municipality in the state of Bahia, in the Northeast region of Brazil, to maintain the furrows that carry water to their crops.

World Environment Day 2024

Ecosystems are being threatened all over the world. From forests to drylands. From farmlands to lakes.

Rising Temperatures Drive Human-Wildlife Conflict in Zimbabwe

By Ignatius Banda
Rising temperatures are being blamed for an increase in human-wildlife conflicts in Zimbabwe as animals such as snakes leave their natural habitat earlier than usual.

Drought and Unequal Water Rights Threaten Family Farms in Chile

By Orlando Milesi
Lack of water threatens the very existence of family farming in Chile, forcing farmers to adopt new techniques or to leave their land. The shortage is caused by a 15-year drought and exacerbated by the unequal distribution arising from the Water Code decreed in 1981 by the 1973-1990 dictatorship of General Augusto Pinochet, which turned water into a tradable commodity and gave its owners rights in perpetuity.
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