For more than 40 years, Earth has been sending out distress signals. We have responded through staging processions on Earth days, holding seminars, passing environmental laws and forging a few international treaties, like in the 1992 Earth Summit in Rio de Janiero.
International investors have recently shown a fast-growing interest in land in developing countries. The IIED, the FAO and IFAD drew attention to the phenomenon of large-scale real estate purchases. In this article, two of the study's authors bemoan that international media coverage has since emphasised the risks involved-without much regard for opprtunities.
Endangered lemur species found only in Madagascar are being slaughtered and served up in local restaurants as poachers take advantage of a security vacuum on the island after a coup earlier this year.
Zimbabwe is on the brink of having 100,000 infections of cholera, a preventable disease that has already killed 4,283 people there and remains a serious threat, the Zimbabwean Red Cross and its partners said on Tuesday.
A network of "super-reefs" off east Africa are unusually resilient to climate change and could provide important lessons for coral conservation in other parts of the world, researchers said on Friday.
Experts say the planet has lost about a fifth of its corals and warn that many of the remaining reefs could die in the next 20 to 40 years, unless greenhouse gas emissions are reduced.
Up to 250,000 children are at risk of malnutrition and disease in southern Madagascar as a political crisis and tropical cyclones exacerbate severe food shortages, the UN children agency said.
UNICEF said that the rains had failed again in the Indian Ocean island's southern region, devastating the last harvest and reducing the amount of safe water available for human consumption.
Madagascar's vanilla producers expect that a double hit from destructive cyclones and a deadly political crisis will cut output of the food flavouring and hurt buyers' confidence during the 2009-2010 season.
Three tropical cyclones have torn across the Indian Ocean island since January damaging crops while producers fear that a power struggle will prompt importers to buy from elsewhere.
mauritius Outsourcing agriculture Soaring food prices and lack of land have forced Mauritius, a food-importing country, to launch an ambitious initiative. The island nation is growing its food in other African countries where land remains fallow and labour cheap.
