NAGAPATTINAM, India (Thomson Reuters Foundation) - Last year farmer Veeramani leased a modest plot of land from his village temple in southern India to grow rice. He borrowed 40,000 rupees ($625) to prepare the field before the rains.

Then the rains failed. Veeramani, 31, was so distressed he suffered a massive heart attack on his field and died, leaving behind his wife, Kavita, and two young daughters. He also left a sizeable debt that Kavita was not aware of.

Deadline: 

11/08/2017

Region: 

Africa

The next  inclusive nomination session for funding from the Prince Albert II of Monaco Foundation opened online on  July 3 2017  and will end on August 11 2017.

Burned-out homes in this dry landscape have become a symbol of the tensions around Tuesday's presidential election as Kenyans prepare for the possibility of yet more deadly violence.

For more than a year now, farms and homes in Laikipia County have been under siege.

Knowledge of animals, insects, agricultural techniques and weather patterns is honed from interaction with nature passed down through generations

For years, thousands of acres of land in Kerio Valley have been washed away by rain water from the highlands, this trend is set to be reversed thanks to the adoption of vetipher grass. For years, thousands of acres of land in Kerio Valley have been washed away by rain water from the highlands, creating huge gullies that have rendered the once fertile farms in Elgeyo Marakwet County waste lands

Climate change, soil degradation and rising wealth are shrinking the amount of usable land in Africa. But the number of people who need it is rising fast.

By Jeffrey Gettleman

LAIKIPIA, Kenya — The two elders, wearing weather-beaten cowboy hats with the strings cinched under their chins, stood at the edge of an empty farm, covering their mouths in disbelief.

Satellites are mechanical reporters of the Amazon deforestation process. By documenting the degradation and gaps created by the clear-cutting process over the years, they deliver the verdict: two-thirds of the Amazon’s deforested area has been turned into pastures.

Water use for food production today largely occurs on the expense of ecosystems. About 40 percent of the water used for irrigation are unsustainable withdrawals that violate so-called environmental flows of rivers, a new study shows for the first time. If these volumes were to be re-allocated to the ecosystems, crop yields would drop by at least 10% on half of all irrigated land, especially in Central and South Asia. 

Environmental groups have been pressing the government to stop the trade, citing its serious impact on coastal ecosystems and surrounding land

PHNOM PENH (Reuters) - Cambodia has banned all sand exports on environmental grounds, the Ministry of Mines and Energy said on Wednesday, officially ending the sale of sand to Singapore which has for years used it to reclaim land along its coasts.

Joint FAO-Arab League event hears climate change poses serious risk to water availability

4 July 2017, Rome - Arab states must continue to seek innovations to overcome water scarcity in the face of climate change, said UN Food and Agriculture Organization Director-General José Graziano da Silva at an event co-hosted by the Arab League on the sidelines of FAO's biennial Conference.   

Developing countries have been promised $100bn per year by 2020, with no sign of it arriving some are taking matters into their own hands

Developing countries, tired of waiting for help from rich countries to arrive and already facing mounting climate crises, are starting their own funds to deal with an uncertain future.

The Amazon basin faces irreversible environmental disturbance on an enormous scale due to hydroelectric dam development. Hundreds of existing and planned dams in both the Amazonian lowlands and the Andean headwaters are already impacting, and will continue affecting, waterways, floodplains and the estuary by disrupting sediment and nutrient flows.

This is the message of a new study, published in Nature, which quantified the impacts of dams on the hydrology and geography of each of the Amazon’s 19 major sub-basins.