Environment

In Kenya, Smallholder Farmers Push Back Against Corporate Control of Agriculture

By Farai Shawn Matiashe
For the past two years, Samuel Ndungu, a smallholder farmer, has been growing organic food and supplying it to the local market in Githunguri, just outside Nairobi.

A Global Movement for Nutrition Is Needed Now More than Ever

By Afshan Khan
In my more than 30 years with the United Nations, I’ve seen enormous change, collaboration and progress towards improving human development. But I’ve also seen how history has a way of repeating itself to entrench some of the most intractable global challenges.

Climate Justice Denied by Delays

By Jomo Kwame Sundaram and Kuhaneetha Bai Kalaicelvan
Opinions have been divided over the annual UN climate conferences. While some see COP30 in Belém, Brazil, as confirming their irrelevance, others see it as a turning point in the struggle for climate justice.

End of Year Video 2025

Multiple shocks defined 2025: conflict, climate breakdown and shrinking democracy. Multilateral institutions were tested as never before.

Rescued from Fire: the World in 2025

By Farhana Haque Rahman
Our traditional “year-ender” usually kicks off with a grim litany of world disasters and crises over the past 12 months, highlights IPS partners and contributors and culminates in a more positive-sounding finale. This time I’d like to begin on a more personal note intended also as a metaphor.

Escalating Food Insecurity in Asia-Pacific Undermines Health, Economic Growth, and Stability

By Oritro Karim
2025 marked a notable year of progress in reducing global hunger; yet climate pressures, economic instability, and ongoing conflicts continue to push agri-food systems to their limits, undermining food availability. In a new report, UN agencies raise the alarm on how these factors are particularly pronounced in the Asia-Pacific region, which accounts for 40 percent of the world’s undernourished.

‘We Need a New Global Legal Framework That Rethinks Sovereignty in the Context of Climate Displacement’

By CIVICUS

 
CIVICUS discusses climate displacement and Tuvalu’s future with Kiali Molu, a former civil servant at Tuvalu’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs and currently a PhD candidate at the University of the South Pacific in Fiji and the University of Bergen in Norway. His research focuses on state sovereignty and climate change in the Pacific.

Farmers Can Now Measure and Benefit From Fruit Tree Carbon Trade

By Wilson Odhiambo
Farmers can now know and benefit from their contribution to climate change thanks to a formula that can be used to calculate the amount of carbon stored in fruit trees.

How the Environment Affects Us

By Gilles-Éric Séralini, Jérôme Douzelet and Gérald Jungers
Today, society is rightly concerned about the rising prevalence of autism among children worldwide; affecting up to 1% of children, it has a profound impact on families. Neuroinflammation and environmental origins are increasingly implicated. But what causes them?

Kenyan Court Restores Seed Freedom: Landmark Ruling Boost for Food Security and Sovereignty

By Jackson Okata
For years, smallholder farmers across Kenya have been engaged in a legal battle with the government over a law that criminalizes the practice of saving, sharing and exchanging indigenous seeds.

When Frontline Communities Lead: Lessons From Five Years of Just Climate Action

By Job Muriithi and Winny Nyawira
Efforts to combat climate change too often sideline the very communities hit hardest by the crisis and who have contributed the least to it. This injustice was the core idea of the Voices for Just Climate Action (VCA) program. Now that VCA has concluded after five years, Job Muriithi and Winny Nyanwira from Hivos reflect on its achievements and share recommendations for governments and donors to ensure fair and equitable climate action.

How Pacific Wisdom Is Shaping Global Climate Action

By Cecilia Russell
On the Pacific Islands, where the ocean horizon is both a lifeline and a warning, communities have long interpreted environmental change through traditional knowledge, lived experiences, stories, and practice. Their observations echo those across the Pacific region, where traditional knowledge remains central to understanding shifting environments and responsible stewardship.

Asia and the Pacific Preparing for a New Era of Disaster Risks

By the Economic and Social Commission for Asia and the Pacific (ESCAP)
Cyclones Ditwah and Senyar are indications of a shifting disaster riskscape, not anomalies. Both storms broke historical patterns: Ditwah tracked unusually south along Sri Lanka’s coast before looping into the Bay of Bengal, dumping over 375 mm of rain in 24 hours and triggering landslides.

Millions at Risk in 2026 as Aid Budgets Hit Historic Lows

By Oritro Karim
2025 has been an especially turbulent year for humanitarian aid operations as global aid budgets have experienced record declines in funding. As conflicts, environmental disasters, and economic crises intensify and disproportionately impact the world’s most vulnerable communities, the resources available in global emergency funds are falling far short of rapidly growing needs.

Will the Song “White Christmas” Become a Clarion Call for Climate Change Action?

By Philippe Benoit
As each Christmas approaches, one song permeates the airwaves across the United States and elsewhere: White Christmas. According to the Guiness Book of World Records, “White Christmas” is the #1 selling physical single of all times with over 50 million copies sold.

As Attacks on Women Defenders Intensify, so Must Our Support

By Reylynne Dela Paz
A global crackdown on civic freedoms is intensifying – and women are on the frontlines of the attack. CIVICUS’s 2025 People Power Under Attack report analyses the extent to which freedoms of association, expression and peaceful assembly are being respected or violated. The report reveals that people in 83 countries now live in conditions where their freedoms are routinely denied, compared to 67 in 2020. In 2020, 13 per cent of the world’s population lived in countries where civic freedoms were broadly respected; now it’s more like 7 per cent. Among the most documented violations in 2025 were detention of human rights defenders, journalists and protesters, and women human rights defenders (WHRDs) were among the most affected.

Venezuela Needs More Local Data To Understand the Impacts of Climate Change

By Margaret López
A group of 55 researchers gathered and analyzed 1,260 bibliographic references to compile the Second Academic Report on Climate Change in Venezuela. Their final conclusion is that more local studies are still needed to record the direct impacts across different Venezuelan regions and, in particular, to provide data to design the adaptation plans necessary to address climate change.

Sindh People’s Housing Redefines Post-Disaster Adaptation Success

By Cecilia Russell
By any comparison, the statistics for Sindh People's Housing for Flood Affectees (SPHF) are phenomenal. In 2022, photographs from the region showed people treading carefully through waist-deep water with their few belongings grasped firmly above their heads in an attempt to escape the flooding caused by 784 percent more than average monsoon rains.

‘Once Conversations about Democracy and Equality Begin, They Are Very Hard to Silence’

By CIVICUS
CIVICUS discusses restrictions on civic space in Thailand and the detention of activist and human rights lawyer Arnon Nampa with Akarachai Chaimaneekarakate, Advocacy Lead at Thai Lawyers for Human Rights (TLHR).

CIVICUS 2025 Report Reveals Widespread Attacks on Civic Freedoms Worldwide

By Oritro Karim
Over the course of 2025, global civic space conditions have deteriorated sharply, with most countries experiencing some degree of obstructed civil liberties. As authoritarian governments strengthen their hold and have even escalated the use of military force to suppress public dissent, civilians report facing increasing limitations of freedoms of association, peaceful assembly, petition and religion, as well as notable crackdowns on press freedoms.

International Funding for 30×30 Biodiversity Target Falls Billions Short of Global Goals

By Joyce Chimbi
A new study and interactive dashboard released today in Nairobi at the seventh session of the United Nations Environment Assembly (UNEA) finds that current international financial flows remain billions of dollars short of what is required to achieve the global biodiversity target of protecting and conserving at least 30 percent of the world’s land and ocean by 2030 (30x30).
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