2.4 million people who live mostly on the 2,251 sand bars that dot the entire river system in Assam, are living at the mercy of nature for long, and are now fighting another battle to keep their Indian identity alive.

Kamal Khan’s life is as fragile as the char (sandbar) on which he lives. Unlike many char-dwellers, who shift to the riverbank or beyond when the river Brahmaputra erodes their land, Kamal moved to Balartari from Chenimari char along the river bank.

• The highly climate- and biodiversity-friendly agricultural practice of agroforestry is now practiced widely around the world, but its roots are deeply indigenous.
• Agroforestry is the practice of growing of trees, shrubs, herbs, and vegetables together in a group mimicking a forest, and its originators were indigenous peoples who realized that growing useful plants together created a system where each species benefited the others.
• Agroforestry is now estimated to cover one billion hectares globally and sequester over 45 gigatons of carbon from the

The Global Landscapes Forum (GLF) held in Bonn, Germany, aimed to rally behind a new approach to achieving a future that is more inclusive and sustainable than the present—through the establishment of secure and proper rights for all.

On June 22 and 23, experts, political leaders, nongovernment organizations, and indigenous peoples and communities gathered to deliberate on a methodology that emphasizes on rights for indigenous peoples and local communities in the management and perseveration of landscapes.

From the gases emitted through a car’s tailpipe to the tree biomass stored in the Amazon, carbon is no doubt the leading indicator of climate change today. But does a ton of carbon emitted by an aircraft 10 kilometers above the North Atlantic really equate to a ton of carbon stored in a mangrove forest in Indonesia – and, more importantly, can one really be ‘offset’ by another?

MONROVIA – One of the decisive moments in social justice advocacies for land rights in the recent history of Liberia came in 2011, when rural communities, wrote a letter of complaint against the Sime Darby Plantation Company to the Roundtable on Sustainable Palm Oil (RSPO).

As climate change and population growth bring more water scarcity, drought-hit villages are are adapting - but conflict over limited water is growing

KWAMUSI, South Africa (Thomson Reuters Foundation) - A At the height of the 2015 drought that parched South Africa's eastern KwaZulu-Natal province, Julie Mkhize had to pull carcasses of dead cows from the dried riverbed near her village, after the desperate animals perished seeking water.

Recent studies find that the prevention of irreversible climate catastrophes require the world’s population to commit to transformative change within the next decade. On 12–14 May, the Global Landscapes Forum Kyoto (GLF Kyoto) event entitled “Climate, Landscapes and Lifestyles: It is Not Too Late” focused on making this commitment a reality.

While gridlock is keeping the Taliban and the United States from reaching a political settlement to the war in Afghanistan, a lacklustre peace process represents just one of many issues confronting the country. 

Decades of civil wars and invasions have exacerbated the consequences of deforestation and desertification in Afghanistan, where environmental issues tend to take a backseat to counterinsurgency and counterterrorism. 

• A new modeling study finds that largely unrestricted “business-as-usual” Brazilian Amazon and Cerrado deforestation could result in the loss of an estimated 606,000 square kilometers of forest by 2050, leading to local temperature increases of up to 1.45 degrees Celsius, in addition to global rises in temperature.
• Under a Brazil Forest Code enforcement model, researchers predict deforestation would be limited to 79,000 square kilometers, with reforestation occurring over 110,000 square kilometers, leading to an average local increase of just 0.02 degrees Celsius.<

“Climate change is hitting hardest those who have done least to cause it, especially the world’s indigenous peoples from the Arctic to the tropics,” said renowned actor and activist Alec Baldwin speaking at the 18th Session of the United Nations Permanent Forum on Indigenous Issues in New York on 23 April 2019.

Abrupt climate change some 8,000 years ago led to a dramatic decline in early South American populations, suggests new UCL research.

The study, published in Scientific Reports, is the first to demonstrate how widespread the decline was and the scale at which population decline took place 8,000 to 6,000 years ago.