Combating Desertification and Drought

Watering camels from a hand-dug well in Turkana. Credit: Anthony Morland/IRIN

KENYA: Insuring Pastoralists Against Increasing Risks

By Susan Anyangu-Amu
The droughts in the Turkana region were less severe when she was growing up, says Laura Letapalel, and pastoralists could still find some grass and water for their animals. Now, she laments, the droughts are longer and there is nothing to eat.
In addition to storing carbon, acacia trees like these will enrich the soil and produce gum arabica for sale by farmers. Credit: World Bank Carbon Finance Unit

MALI: Small Farmers in the Carbon Market

By IPS Correspondents
Mohamed Abd Khibé is a caretaker at the acacia nursery in Dialoubé village, part of a project to sequester carbon in trees while simultaneously improving farmers' livelihoods.
Global warming could usher in a new regime of larger, longer-burning fires, as well as fires in places that historically have been hard to ignite, like moist tropical forests. Credit: U.S. Department of Agriculture

ENVIRONMENT: Wildfires Spreading as Temperatures Rise

By Janet Larsen
Future firefighters have their work cut out for them. Perhaps nowhere does this hit home harder than in Australia, where in early 2009 a persistent drought, high winds, and record high temperatures set the stage for the worst wildfire in the country's history.

DEVELOPMENT: Climate Change Likely to Increase African Hunger Woes

By Julio Godoy
Africa, the continent already most affected by hunger and food scarcity, is likely to see its woes increased due to climate change and the changing rain patterns it provokes, experts and scientists say.
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CLIMATE CHANGE: The Rising Tide of Environmental Refugees

By Lester R. Brown
Our early twenty-first century civilisation is being squeezed between advancing deserts and rising seas.
Massimo Candelori, representative of U.N. Convention to Combat Desertification. Credit: Marcela Valente/IPS

Q&A: Desertification and Climate Change Go Hand in Hand

By Marcela Valente
"The entire social fabric of an area is compromised when soils are depleted," says Italian expert Massimo Candelori, whose fight against desertification is increasingly linked to global efforts to combat climate change.

CLIMATE CHANGE: Food Supply Hangs in the Balance

By Stephen Leahy
Rocketing food prices and hundreds of millions more starving people will be part of humanity's grim future without concerted action on climate change and new investments in agriculture, experts reported this week.

ENVIRONMENT: Synergies in Fight Against Desertification , Climate Change

By Marcela Valente
Climate change aggravates soil degradation, but sustainable use of land resources can, in turn, mitigate global warming, according to participants at the United Nations conference on desertification in the Argentine capital.

ENVIRONMENT: Could Food Shortages Bring Down Civilisation?

By Lester R. Brown
In early 2008, Saudi Arabia announced that, after being self-sufficient in wheat for over 20 years, the non-replenishable aquifer it had been pumping for irrigation was largely depleted.
Deforestation causes soil degradation: logging in Chiapas, Mexico. Credit: Mauricio Ramos/IPS

ENVIRONMENT: Desertification – a Macroeconomic Problem

By Sebastián Lacunza
Understanding desertification as a macroeconomic problem, with financial, productive, environmental and civil society aspects, is a major concern for Christian Mersmann, the managing director of the Global Mechanism of the United Nations Convention to Combat Desertification (UNCCD).

LATIN AMERICA: Desertification – an Invisible Cancer

By Marcela Valente
"Desertification is the cancer of the earth," Argentine geographer Elena Abraham told IPS. "It is a process of degradation that does not manifest itself in spectacular ways but furtively advances, and by the time it is visible there is nothing to be done, and people have to move away, in search of an alternative."

MALI: Technology Transfer So Slow "We’ll Have to Copy Like China"

By Isolda Agazzi
Cars and motorcycles are stuck because of the heavy rains that have drenched Mali’s capital for the past few days. It is late afternoon and the water, mud and damaged fruit from nearby stalls make the journey for those heading home to celebrate Ramadan even more treacherous.
Francisco Soares Oliveira in his field. His maize and bean crops were lost to this year's unusual floods. Credit: Mario Osava/IPS

BRAZIL: When the Arid Northeast Turns Green

By Mario Osava
The rain - usually much desired because it is so scarce - has come in excess this year, destroying many crops. But in this farming district in far north-eastern Brazil, the impact of the heavy rainfall was less marked than in the past, thanks to the diversification of crops and productive activities.
Eucalyptus plantation, the first phase in the controversial paper pulp industry. Credit: Photo Stock

BRAZIL: Courts – the Battleground for Fight Against Paper Mills

By Clarinha Glock
The battle against the wood pulp ndustry has intensified in the Brazilian courts, especially in those states where eucalyptus plantations have expanded the most: Bahia and Espírito Santo in the east and Rio Grande do Sul in the south.
Luc Gnacadja Credit:

Q&A: 'If You Feed the Land, It Will Feed You Back'

By IPS Correspondents
Luc Gnacadja, who took over as Executive Secretary of the United Nations Convention to Combat Desertification (UNCCD) last October, is a man with a mission - a mission that goes beyond explaining that his job is not to battle deserts.

ENVIRONMENT-CAMEROON: Operation Green Sahel Resumes

By Tamfu Hanson
"I have come to plant trees - that is why I have left my jacket and tie in Yaoundé" declared Cameroon's Minister of Forest and Wildlife, Elvis Ngolle Ngolle, as he launched the tree planting at a small village near the town of Kousseri, in the north of the country. In four minutes, the minister and his staff planted a hundred trees as a bulwark against rapidly encroaching desert.

ENVIRONMENT-BURKINA FASO: Winning People Over to Fight Deforestation

By IPS Correspondents
In the West African nation of Burkina Faso, millions of trees are planted every year to reverse desertification. However the growing socio-economic needs of local populations pose a constant threat to these efforts.

AUSTRALIA: Food At Risk From Bee Pest

By Stephen de Tarczynski
Australia’s food security is under threat from a tiny parasite with the potential to devastate the nation’s bee and pollination industries.
Shigeyuki Hiroki Credit:

G8 SUMMIT: Japan To Champion Africa's Cause

By IPS Correspondents
The state of the world economy will as usual top the agenda of the G8 summit of major western industrial nations. But Japanese Prime Minister Yasuo Fukuda, who will chair the high-level gathering, is keen to devote equal attention to climate change and the development of Africa.
A "hanging toilet", in Korogocho, where water supplies are inadequate for the demands of residents. Credit: APHRC

DEVELOPMENT-KENYA: Water Studies – But Where Are the Water Supplies?

By IPS Correspondents
The road leading to the informal settlement of Korogocho is narrow and winding. Here, in Nairobi's third largest slum, up to 150,000 people are crammed into an area of just over one square kilometre, their shanties made of cardboard, wood or metal.

ENVIRONMENT: Not Enough Done to Protect Biodiversity

By Julio Godoy
The UN conference on biodiversity opened in the former German capital Bonn this week in the face of new evidence that many countries, particularly the industrialised ones, are not complying with their declared goal of "substantially reducing the loss of biological diversity."
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