SADC is moving to support its member countries to tap into benefits from the reducing emissions from deforestation and forest degradation (REDD) framework.

Uganda has lost more than two million hectares of forest since 1990, mostly converted to farmland by a growing population of smallholders.

Protecting the Nosivolo River’s biodiversity has involved transforming the livelihoods of local people.

A Clean Development Mechanism project – Ethiopia’s first – is restoring the environment and sustaining livelihoods along with it.

A group of women break into song, praising the benefits of living in harmony with nature.

They spent the better part of their lives destroying the forest, but Kochito Gabre and his cohort are now its guardians.

By Stephen Leahy
NAGOYA, Japan, Oct 22 (IPS) – Damming a river may bring electric power, but it often comes at the price of high-quality food fisheries, experts say. When dams are proposed for power, flood control or irrigation, the often devastating impacts on fisheries in rivers and lakes are ignored or discounted.

“It is very difficult [...]

By Hilaire Avril

A worker at the African Centre for Biosafety's Imingcangathelo Project in Alice, South Africa, shows the pelargonium plant. / www.biosafetyafrica.org.za

PARIS, Sep 7 (IPS) – The United Nations declared 2010 the Year of Biodiversity. But 17 years after the Convention on Biological Diversity was adopted at the Earth Summit in Rio de Janeiro, [...]

By Arnaud Bébien

Overfishing on Lake Victoria has diminished stocks of a valuable alien species, the Nile perch. / Arnaud Bébien/IPS

MWANZA, Tanzania, Aug 30 (IPS) – Coordinated conservation measures to arrest the steep decline of stocks of Nile perch in Lake Victoria are showing encouraging results – for fish, if not for fishing communities around [...]

By Miriam Mannak

Claims about a certain flood-resistant type of rice being genetically modified have been refuted. / Miriam Mannak/IPS

CAPE TOWN, Aug 27 (IPS) – Civil society organisations have reacted with outrage to claims that the international campaign against genetically modified (GM) crops is partly responsible for food shortages and food insecurity in Africa.

"Food insecurity [...]

By Isolda Agazzi

Dick Nyeko: "I don't buy it that developing countries can't comply with international trade standards." / Isolda Agazzi/IPS

GENEVA, Jun 21 (IPS) – Sanitary and phyto-sanitary measures are a headache for African fish exporters but aid for trade may help small-scale fisherpersons to meet these standards.

Fish products from African, Caribbean and Pacific countries [...]

By Julio Godoy

German Warship FGS Emden patrolling the Indian Ocean. / EU NAVFOR

BERLIN, Jun 16 (IPS) – Modern German justice had never handled a case of piracy until Jun 11, when 10 Somali seafarers, including children, were presented at a tribunal in the city port of Hamburg, some 300 km west from Berlin, on [...]

By Stephen Leahy
NAIROBI, May 31 (IPS) – Developing countries rich in plants and animals but poor in financial and technical resources refused to make binding commitments to halt the unraveling of the planet's biological infrastructure at the close of a major meeting Friday at the U.N.'s African headquarters in Nairobi.

For their part, rich countries balked [...]

By Stephen Leahy
NAIROBI, May 27 (IPS) – Women provide up to 90 percent of the rural poor's food and produce up to 80 percent of food in most developing countries, and yet they are almost completely ignored when policy decisions are made about agriculture and biodiversity.

That's about to change thanks to a United Nations agreement [...]

By Stephen Leahy
NAIROBI, May 24 (IPS) – Scientists announced the creation of first self-replicating synthetic life form last Friday, and a few hours later, a United Nations science advisory body meeting here urged countries to take a strong precautionary approach to avoid release of such entities into the environment.

Acting as the world's guardian on biodiversity, [...]