Food Tank and The Lexicon for Sustainability feature farming and resilience through The Food List, a cross-media messaging campaign that provides the vital tools needed for fixing the food system Farmers depend on just a handful of crop varieties, which can be more easily wiped out by pests, diseases, or climate change. According to the U.S. Department of Agriculture’s Farm ...

African leaders must prioritise sanitation from the highest decision making levels and support the proposed UN Sustainable Development Goal to ensure water and sanitation for all by 2030, said the international development agency, WaterAid in Dakar, Senegal at the AfricaSan 4 conference. The much-anticipated conference, which was postponed for eights months due to the Ebola outbreak, commenced on Tuesday, 25 ...

Foundations and international donors can play a greater role in providing assistance to scale-up ecological farming initiatives in Africa, according to a report released today by Greenpeace Africa. The report entitled Financing Ecological Farming in Africa – a Guide for International Donors spells out the crucial financial, technical, capacity and network-building support that donors can provide. Over recent years there ...

The two-week long Triple Conference of Parties (Triple COPs) to the UN Basel, Rotterdam and Stockholm (BRS) Conventions appeared to have failed in its objective of “translating science into action” as it closed in the early hours of 16 May (CW 6 May 2015). Many of the decisions up for adoption – which were supported by the vast majority of ...

Delegates from more than 90 countries took the unprecedented step of voting for a global ban on pentachlorophenol – a proven toxic pesticide and contaminant found in wildlife and human biomonitoring studies worldwide. The historic vote came at the combined meetings of the Basel, Rotterdam, and Stockholm Conventions – which usually make decisions by consensus – after India repeatedly blocked ...

The need to provide universal access to reproductive health and uphold the fundamental rights of women has been stressed as key in the prevention of obstetrics fistula among girls and women. This year’s International Day to End Obstetrics Fistula aims at restoring women’s dignity through actions targeted at ending obstetrics fistula. Obstetric fistula, which is a hole in the birth ...

Stakeholders working to reduce the burden of Tuberculosis under The Global Fund to Fight AIDS TB and Malaria grant to Nigeria have called on Gen. Muhammadu Buhari, the president-elect, to make TB control a priority when he assumes office as president. The call was made at the end of Quarter 1 2015 TB Grant Project Implementation review meeting held in ...

Billions of dollars mobilised under the Sustainable Energy for All (SE4All) initiative can halve energy poverty worldwide and more investment is being committed, but there is still a long way to go to meet the twin challenges of energy poverty and climate change. More than 90 million people have already gained access to sustainable energy under pledges made for the ...

This piece is on Nigeria’s preparedness and what we can all do to ensure that we all contribute to the Nigeria input to COP21 and beyond. COP 21 in Paris is expected to get the largest gathering of leaders, negotiators, heads of state, business, non-governmental organisations and other stakeholders. It is aimed at reaching a universal agreement to reduce emission and ...

Friends of the Earth Africa (FoEA) groups have decried the impact of extractive companies’ operations across the African region, cautioning that if communities are not adequately empowered to advocate for and defend their rights, more of them will be displaced leading to conflicts. The groups made the call recently during a solidarity mission to oil host communities in Bunyoro sub-region ...