Coffee is the drink of choice for millions of us. But the world’s second-most traded commodity originates in Ethiopia – and its home is under threat. Ethiopia isn’t all dusty deserts – far from it. The country also contains rugged highlands and lush, tropical forests. Coffea arabica grows here in its original, wild form. The […]
Readers of this blog site will know that open data is data that can be freely used, re-used and redistributed – it’s legally open and technically open. Readers of this blog may not know that the $8.3 billion Climate Investment Funds (CIF), are providing scaled-up financing through the Multilateral Development Banks (MDBs) to initiate transformational […]
Selilah stares out over a landscape she has inhabited for 70 years. In the valley below, deep gullies scar the slopes where rains have carried away the soil. Living with three of her four sons, she is struggling to make ends meet in this part of Sidama Zone, Ethiopia, where, she says, there used to […]
In 2012, Brazil revised a key instrument of its environmental legislation – the Forest Code. When implemented, the Forest Code has the potential to enable Brazil to optimize the use of its vast territory, safeguarding areas for the conservation of native vegetation and agricultural use on private property. Food production with environmental conservation based on […]
Last year, fires burned 2 million hectares of peatlands in Indonesia, creating an acrid haze that affected several neighbouring Southeast Asian countries. As nations met in Paris late last year to agree a deal to limit global greenhouse gas emissions, the huge carbon pool stored in the peatlands was going up in smoke at an […]
Conservationists spend a lot of time talking about monitoring the impacts of our work. Historically, we’ve done a great job of monitoring ecological outcomes, but unfortunately the same is not true for measuring human well-being outcomes. As much as we might not want to admit it, we know little of the ways and mechanisms through […]
Before it was on the shelves of Whole Foods, quinoa was being abandoned in most parts of the Andes as an unwanted “food of the poor.” However, the Lake Titicaca region of Peru endured as a hotspot of quinoa cultivation and diversity. Why? According to the Food and Argiculture Organization of the United Nations, quinoa […]
It has taken a long time to admit it, but after two decades farming and sustainability projects, I realized landscape sustainability is no longer just a technical, scientific or even political problem. It has evolved into a so-called wicked problem of governance and economics. Not evil wicked, but wicked as an on-going social problem with […]
Increasing intensity of human land-use makes ecological communities progressively more similar to one another, leading to an overall loss of diversity. Ecological metrics used to quantify diversity loss could provide helpful conservation benchmarks. How does one estimate biological diversity? Answering this seemingly simple question has occupied many an ecologist’s time. With the rapid rate of […]
As world leaders meet in Paris to tackle carbon emissions, here in the Amazon we are watching forests burning unchecked, releasing carbon into the atmosphere, destroying sensitive ecosystems and making breathing difficult. There are forests fires in the Amazon every year, but 2015 is exceptional. We’ve been investigating the issue in the rainforest around Santarém, […]
When visiting the volcanic islands of São Tomé and Príncipe off the coast of West Africa, one is immediately struck by how unusual these tropical islands are. The steep, volcanic mountains seem to be swathed in impenetrable, story-book jungle. But, as ecologists know, first impressions can be deceiving. When São Tomé and Príncipe were discovered […]
Climate change is a well-established reality in Kenya, with evidence continuing to mount in recent years. Over 70 per cent of natural disasters are related to extreme weather and climate: recurrent droughts, floods, mudslides, crop failure, loss of livestock, and unpredictable erratic rainfall patterns. Vast areas of farmlands in Kenya have been degraded and no […]
E.F. Schumacher, an economist who founded Practical Action, wanted to help expand aid programs through technology. Fueled by the idea of developing and promoting appropriate technology to reach a greater segment of the underprivileged population of the world, he published an article in The Observer, on August 29, 1965 titled “How to help them help themselves.” […]
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=e-K1tatsBNk “I have been able to buy clothes, feed and educate my kids. I have I have even started building an extension to my house,” Yolanda says proudly. Yolanda is one of several producers around Quito in Ecuador, supplying goldenberries to Terrafertil – a climate positive business supported by the European Investment Bank via the […]
The scale of the global land grab is staggering. While international actors have made excellent progress establishing complaint boards, issuing principles for responsible investment, and securing commitments from multinational corporations, these protections do not chart a clear course of action that communities can follow to protect their lands and natural resources before an investor arrives seeking land. The problem is […]
