The Republic of Congo will plant 1 million hectares of trees by 2020 to restore degraded forest and provide wood for paper and fuel, the president said on Friday.
President Denis Sassou N'Guesso made the announcement on the final day of a weeklong summit in the Congolese capital, aimed at tackling deforestation in the Amazon, Congo and Borneo-Mekong forest basins, the three largest in the world
The world's primary conservation body, the World Wildlife Fund (WWF), on January 7 called on British listed companies, SOCO and Dominion, to abandon their oil exploration plans in the Virunga National Park located in the Democratic Republic of Congo.
The WWF warned that these actions will undermine decades of work aimed at saving the park, which receives vital funding from the European Union.
Report reveals the need to reach target levels of coverage for life-saving interventions
India has the highest number of pneumonia-related deaths in the world
Only three countries reported coverage above the target level of 90 per cent for any vaccine
NEW DELHI: Pneumonia, which is the world's leading infectious killer among children, claims the lives of nearly 1.6 million children under five
Nations including Democratic Republic of Congo are making surprise progress toward taking part in a $200 million project for slowing deforestation from late 2010, World Bank experts said.
They also said Latin America, with forested nations around the Amazon, had strong incentives to take part since most of the continent's greenhouse gas emissions came from deforestation and shifts in land use,
Even as the number of deaths among children under the age of five globally has fallen from 12.4 million in 1990 to 8.1 million in 2009, India accounts for 21 per cent of such deaths.
Maternal mortality remains a major challenge to health systems worldwide. Reliable information about the rates and trends in maternal mortality is essential for resource mobilisation, and for planning and assessment of progress towards Millennium Development Goal 5 (MDG 5), the target for which is a 75% reduction in the maternal mortality ratio (MMR) from 1990 to 2015.
The apparent failure to reduce maternal mortality during 20 years of the Safe Motherhood movement has been one of the most deforming scars on the body of global health. Despite strong advocacy efforts, political leaders have either ignored the call or failed to make the health of women in pregnancy their priority.
Call it the great ape escape. UN peacekeepers have flown four young gorillas from a conflict zone where they were at risk of being poached. The gorillas were taken to a rehabilitation centre 200 kilometres north of Goma, Democratic Republic of the Congo, and will eventually be released into a nature reserve.
