Combating Desertification and Drought

From Conflict to Climate Crusade, Refugees Lead the Charge in Kenya

By Jeffrey Moyo
For 18-year-old Lionel Ngukusenge, a refugee from Burundi, where he was forced into hiding because of a repressive regime, he has found another foe to contend with at the Kakuma refugee camp in Kenya: climate change.

Climate Change An Existential Threat To Humanity, Urges Action – ICJ

By Cecilia Russell
The case was “unlike any that have previously come before the court,” President of the International Court of Justice Judge Yuji Iwasawa said while reading the court's unanimous advisory opinion outlining the legal obligations of United Nations member states with regard to climate change.

Multi-Year Drought Gives Birth to Extremist Violence, Girls Most Vulnerable

By Manipadma Jena
While droughts creep in stealthily, their impacts are often more devastating and far-reaching than any other disaster. Inter-community conflict, extremist violence, and violence and injustice against vulnerable girls and women happen at the intersection of climate-induced droughts and drought-impoverished communities.

Mask Off – Recapping the 2025 World Bank Land Conference

By Andy Currier
Last week, at its annual Land Conference in Washington D.C., (May 5-8), the World Bank showed allegiance to the new US administration by dropping the pretense of promoting land reform for climate action and confirming that its land agenda is about boosting corporate profits.

A Natural Disaster that Has Affected More People Worldwide Than Any Other

By Danielle Nierenberg
Here’s a question: Over the past 40 years, what natural disaster has affected more people around the globe than any other?

Climate Groups Report 2025 Is Unlikely To Be Hotter Than 2024

By Oritro Karim
On March 19, the World Meteorological Organization (WMO) and the Copernicus Climate Change Service (C3S) issued a report on the State of Global Climate in 2024, detailing the numerous heightened natural disasters that were a consequence of human-induced climate change. With the past three years having been recorded as the three hottest years in human history, climate scientists are optimistic that 2025 will see slightly cooler global temperatures.

‘Act Before It Gets Worse’ – Experts Warn as Agrifood Problems in Global South Intensify

By Joyce Chimbi
As agrifood systems in the Global South buckle under the weight of climate change, biodiversity, and even pollution, experts such as Dr. Himanshu Pathak call for urgent innovative solutions, as, at the current pace, the problems of the Global South are going to intensify with escalating climate change.

Science-Backed Solutions Buoying Water Security in East Africa

By Busani Bafana
In East Africa, climate change has made water a lifeline and threat. In a region highly dependent on rainfall for growing crops, climate change is threatening water security but science-backed solutions are helping turn the tide.

In Central America’s Dry Corridor, Farmers Find Ways to Harvest Water and Food – VIDEO

By Edgardo Ayala
In Central America’s Dry Corridor, climatic conditions hinder water and food production because rainfall in this ecoregion—from May to December—is less predictable than in the rest of the isthmus.

Water and Food Security in Europe and Central Asia: A Shared Challenge for a Sustainable and Just Future

By Viorel Gutu
Degrading soil, air pollution, vanishing biodiversity, emerging plant and animal health issues and more are coming together in the current situation of multiple crisis. Ensuring water security is just one, among the many challenges individuals, countries, and the world faces. Yet, we shouldn’t forget that water makes up the largest percentage of our bodies and the same applies to animals, plants and the planet’s surface. The threat of water insecurity is, as we all see, not a petty problem, but one of the greatest challenges of our century.

Strengthening Indigenous Peoples and Local Communities’ Knowledge and Access Opens up Opportunities for Climate, Biodiversity and Desertification Action

By Michael Stanley-Jones
The central role Indigenous Peoples and local communities in addressing climate change, biodiversity loss and desertification has gained widespread recognition over the past decade. Indigenous Peoples’ close dependence on resources and ecosystems, exceptional tradition, and ancestral knowledge are invaluable assets for the sustainable management of our planet’s natural resources.

Food Security and Water, a Priority for Border Towns in Central America

By Edgardo Ayala
The hope of Salvadoran Cristian Castillo to harvest tomatoes in a municipality of the Central American Dry Corridor hung by a thread when his well, which he used to irrigate his crops, dried up. However, his enthusiasm returned when a regional project taught him how to harvest rainwater for when the rains begin in May.

Mexico’s New Economic Plan Lacks Energy

By Emilio Godoy
This January, Mexico has embarked on a new industrial path for the next six years, where the viability of its energy component faces fundamental challenges that put it at risk.

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.
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