Riding Towards Sustainable Development, on Bamboo

In Ghana, a country burgeoning with traffic congestion, increasing economic growth, and a stark urban-rural divide, making frames of bicycles out of bamboo could be the key to promoting sustainable development. It also makes stronger, longer-lasting bikes.

Going Far, and Fast, on Electrofuels

A speeding ticket for driving an electric vehicle may seem at first a far-fetched possibility, but no. The director of Northern Lights Energy – a company specialising in promoting electric cars – was recently fined for driving 124 km per hour in a 90 km zone in Iceland in a Tesla Roadster vehicle.

Livelihoods Drying Up on Malawi’s Lake Chilwa

Fisherfolk and farmers living near Malawi’s second-largest water body, Lake Chilwa, are relocating en masse and scrambling for space around its shores as the lake has dried to dangerously low levels.

Surviving on a Meal a Day in Ghana’s Savannah Zone

In order to ensure that he and his family survive this year's failed harvest, Adams Seidu, like farmers in other rural communities in Ghana’s Northern Region, has implemented a strategy for survival. They are using what Seidu calls the "one-zero-one strategy" for children, and the "zero-zero-one strategy" for adults.

Q&A: Sustainability Now a Matter of Life and Death

Humanity is living beyond its means with the growing demand for food, medicines and other nature-based products, making sustainable consumption and conservation a matter of life and death. This is according to the world’s oldest and largest global environmental network, the International Union for Conservation of Nature.

Climate-Battered South Asia Looks to Rio+20 Formula

Far-flung South Asian communities, from the high Himalayan slopes to the Indian Ocean coasts, united in the face of extreme and uncertain weather, continue to hold on to the hope that the Rio+20 focus on disaster risk reduction (DRR) will positively influence national policies.

Trash Collectors Become Zimbabwe’s Unlikely Climate Change Ambassadors

Tomson Chikowero was ashamed of his job. He did not want anyone finding out what he did to earn a living, so he used to wake up early every morning and leave his home in Hatfield, a residential suburb in Zimbabwe’s capital city Harare, under the cover of darkness.

‘Dirty Snow’ Hastens Glacial Melt in Himalayas

Every morning, as Gian Pietro Verza walks up the lateral moraine of the Khumbu Glacier in this Himalayan country’s north-east to take measurements, the wind makes colourful prayer flags flutter noisily. That same wind carries soot particles that are causing the snow on the mountains to melt faster.

New Waste-to-Energy Facility Helps Barbados Toward Greener Economy

When it comes to pursuing a greener path to economic development, the tiny Caribbean island of Barbados is not about to allow its small size and limited resources to get in its way.

World Bank Approves Contentious Ethiopia-Kenya Electric Line

The World Bank has voted to approve funding credit for a major transmission line that would link Kenya to the controversial Gilgel Gibe III dam site in southern Ethiopia, pushing back against months of calls by local and international rights and environmental groups to keep out of the project.

Mapping out Climate Change Adaptation Plans on Kenya’s Airwaves

On a Wednesday morning in Mutitu-Andei township in Makueni County, one of Kenya’s driest areas, smallholder farmer Josephine Mutiso tunes into Radio Mang’elete 89.1 FM and listens as meteorological experts discuss the changes in rainfall patterns in the county.

MEXICO: Yearly Floods the New Reality for Rural Women

Year after year, women in rural areas of the southeastern Mexican state of Tabasco have to get ready for floods that threaten their homes, crops and livestock.

When Energy Begins to Flow Long Distance

With rising energy prices and stringent requirements for producing a higher proportion of energy from renewable sources in the near future, long-distance electricity cables are increasingly thought of as a viable option for providing electricity.  

Climate Change Drives Exodus to Jakarta

Another month of plying his ‘becak’ (trishaw) in the capital city and Sarjo will be coming back to this West Java district to harvest the rice ripening on his 1,400 sq m paddy.

Rural Women Are Leading the Way – Will the World Follow? – Part 1

Agriculture currently provides a livelihood for roughly 1.3 billion smallholder farmers and landless workers, of which nearly half – close to 560 million – are women.

Scientists Denounce Climate Change Denial, Censorship

Amid revelations of a well-funded U.S. organisation's plans to deliberately distort climate science, scientists and journalists at a major scientific conference called on the Canadian government to stop its muzzling of scientists.

NIGERIA: Fearing the Floods – Sleeping with One Eye Open

The women of Makoko, a low-lying slum close to the Lagos Lagoon along Nigeria’s Atlantic coast, always sleep with one eye open. Many live in fear that when they go to sleep at night they will wake to flooded homes and business.