Environment

Women “Water Friends” Script a Success Story

By Stella Paul
Prema Bai, 58, bends her head and pushes hard her wheelchair on the village road. In the early afternoon, the village of Mamna appears almost deserted although it is home to 742 families and is located in Uttar Pradesh - India’s largest and most populated state. Thanks to a severe drought, every man and woman under 50 has fled Mamna in recent weeks, leaving behind the elderly and women with very young children. “They thought we were like cattle, a burden in this hard time because we only eat but yield no returns,” says Bai whose two sons and their wives also migrated to Agra -- a city 255 km away -- to work in a brick kiln.

African Staple Plantains at Risk of Same Diseases as Bananas

By Lyndal Rowlands and Palwesha Yusaf
Anna Gamusi, has been growing ‘matooke’ - plantains - for over 20 years. She originally learnt how to grow them in her home village of Busolwe in Eastern Uganda, but says that they are no longer grown there.

Tanzania Farmers, Pastoralists Launch Forum to Resolve Water Conflicts

By Kizito Makoye
At a remote village of Itunundu in Iringa, farmers and pastoralists recently met to discuss the best way to share land resources while charting out a strategy to prevent unnecessary fights among themselves. No one in the village ever imagined that this meeting would ever take place as the two groups had for long considered themselves enemies: they often clashed for water and pastures to feed their animals thus causing deaths and loss of property.

Central America Makes Uneven Progress in Clean Energy

By Diego Arguedas Ortiz
Over the last decade, Central America has managed to reduce its dependence on fossil fuels for the production of electric power, while expanding coverage. But the progress made by each country varies widely.

Asian Scientists Grapple with How to Foster Crop Pollination

By Sumon Dey
Pollinators, whose role is essential in a third of what the world eats, are at center stage after a landmark new United Nations report warned that many of the 20,000 species are threatened by human behaviour.

Garbage, Garbage Everywhere, but…

By Francesco Farnè
Imagine a river bursting its banks and flooding entire cities and towns. But when the river is made of malodorous garbage and is in Beirut, this is a stark and dramatic situation affecting the city’s 2.226 million people. It all started in July 2015, when the Lebanese administration closed the major landfill of the city. Since then, trash is being piled all over the streets of Jdeideh in Beirut’s northern suburbs. This river of garbage grew steadily, as reported in recent days by a wide section of news media, including Al Jazeera, CNN and Reuters. Thousands of kilometers away in Pakistan, a very similar situation is reported by Dawn.

Groundwater Governance in Andhra Pradesh

By Shyam Bahadur Khadka
India is the largest user of ground water in the world. But reliance of this overexploited resource has reached its limits in many parts of the country. Nowhere is this more evident than in the drought-prone districts of Rayalseema, uplands of Prakasam, Krishna, East-West Godavari, parts of Nellore, Vizianagaram and Srikakulam in the state of Andhra Pradesh (AP). Forty per cent of the state’s irrigation needs are met through groundwater. In the drought-prone Rayalseema region – which comprises Chittoor, Anantapur, Kurnool, Prakasam and Kadapa districts -- dependence on groundwater for irrigation is particularly high. The water crisis is also most severe in this region.

Mexico’s Chinampas – Wetlands Turned into Gardens – Fight Extinction

By Emilio Godoy
David Jiménez grows two kinds of lettuce and other fresh produce on his “chinampa” or artificial island just under one hectare in size in San Gregorio Atlapulco, on the south side of Mexico City.

Zika Epidemic Offers Sanitation a Chance in Brazil

By Mario Osava
Three decades of dengue fever epidemic did not manage to awaken a sense of urgency in Brazil regarding the need for improving and expanding basic sanitation. But the recent surge in cases of microcephaly in newborns, associated with the Zika virus, apparently has.

UNDP Pledges to Help Eradicate Poverty, Hunger By 2030

By Thalif Deen
The UN Development Programme (UNDP) celebrated its 50th anniversary this week with a pledge to help implement the UN’s post-2015 development agenda aimed at eliminating extreme poverty and hunger by 2030. When the agency was founded in 1966, one in every three people was living in poverty. But that number has changed to one in eight, according to UNDP figures.

Groundwater Crisis Worsens Food Insecurity

By Ignatius Banda
Sijabuliso Nleya has been kept busy in the past few weeks digging up sand. He is not a sand poacher like scores of people who local district councils across the country say are digging along dry river beds for sand used in the construction of houses. "The situation is terrible," said Nleya, who owns a plot in Douglasdale, a small farming community on the outskirts of Bulawayo.

UNDP at 50 Seeks Broad Coalition Targeting Sustainable Development

By Helen Clark
Fifty years ago, one in every three people around the world was living in poverty. It was against that backdrop that the United Nations Development Programme, UNDP, was founded in 1966. Ever since, UNDP has been a leader in working for a more fair and prosperous world for all. We have worked with governments, civil society, the private sector, and philanthropy to empower people and build resilient nations.

World Leaders Agree to Save the Planet – Now It’s Time to Actually Do It!

By Andreas Sieber, Giselle Bernard and Ivo Bantel
The day, 12 December 2015 was historic. Following decades of negotiations, countries agreed to sign the first global, legally binding climate agreement.

Rice: Africa’s Ticket Out of Poverty

By Busani Bafana
Africa is eating more rice than other food staples, though it produces less than it needs. This is good news for the cereal's potential to help Sub Saharan Africa out of poverty according to researchers. Rice is the second most important source of calories in Sub-Saharan Africa, according to the Africa Rice Center (AfricaRice), a research organisation working to contribute to poverty alleviation and food security.

Latin America’s Indigenous Peoples Find an Ally in the Pope

By Emilio Godoy
“We want Pope Francis’ message to come true…We want the rights of indigenous people to be supported, respected and strengthened,” Yuam Pravia, a representative of the Misquito native people, said in this city in southern Mexico.

Radio rage in India

By Neeta Lal
It is 8 am in Anugondanahalli village about 70 kms from India's IT hub of Bengaluru, capital of the southern Indian state of Karnataka. A group of farmers are huddled around a radio set sipping hot tea and tuned in to Sarathi Jhalak, a local community radio station (CRS) broadcasting on FM 90.4. On air is a programme about climate change that has everybody hooked. Experts are sharing simple tips on how farmers can pro-actively minimise the impact of erratic weather on their crops.

CTBTO’s Verification System Thwarts Nuclear Tests

By Thalif Deen
The Vienna-based Comprehensive Nuclear-Test-Ban Treaty Organization (CTBTO) – a 24-hour international watchdog body – is known never to miss a beat. The Organization’s international monitoring and verification system has been tracking all nuclear explosions -– in the atmosphere, underwater and underground –- including all four nuclear tests by the Democratic Republic of Korea (DPRK) – the only country in the world to test nuclear weapons in the 21st century.

Women and Girls Imperative to Science & Technology Agenda

By Lakshmi Puri
Can you imagine an entire day without access to your mobile phone, laptop, or even to the internet? In our rapidly changing world, could you function without having technology at your fingertips?

Europe is disintegrating while its citizens watch indifferent

By Roberto Savio
We are witnessing the slow agony of the dream of European integration, disintegrating without a single demonstration occuring anywhere, among its 500 millions of citizens. It is clear that European institutions are in an existential crisis but the debate is only at intergovernmental level.

Small-scale Fishing Is About Much More than Just Subsistence in Chile

By Marianela Jarroud
“Fishing isn’t just for making a living, it’s also enjoyable,” said Pedro Pascual, a 70-year-old fisherman who has been taking his small boat out to sea off Chile’s Pacific coast in the early hours of the morning almost every day for the past 50 years, to support his family.

Women’s Empowerment Will Accelerate Kenya’s Economic Prosperity

By Ambassador Amina Mohamed and Siddharth Chatterjee
When President Barack Obama made his first visit to Kenya as US President in July 2015, one of the poignant messages he left was an exhortation for communities to shun cultures that degrade women and girls.
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