With three months to go until the next international climate negotiations, many developing countries are working hard to live up to the promises made in the Paris Agreement. But many institutions in developing countries face challenges in accessing and effectively deploying international climate finance. Representatives of two groups from Africa -- the Senegal-based Centre de Suivi Ecologique and Kenya's National Environmental Management Authority -- got together in July to help each other tackle some of these challenges.
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Giving farmers legal rights to land and natural resources has helped improve degraded landscapes in Ethiopia, Niger and Tanzania. In turn, it's also helped boost food security, alleviate poverty and curb climate change.
China's overseas investment grew from $1 billion in 2004 to more than $30 billion in 2014. In many cases, it's come at a cost to Africa's forests and the people who rely on them.
Nigel Sizer looks back on the past five years as director of WRI's Forests program. Starting next month, he'll take up his new role as president of the Rainforest Alliance.
New data on Global Forest Watch shows that in some of the world's most heavily forested nations, more than 90 percent of tree cover loss is happening in natural forests rather than plantations. That's a problem since natural forests, especially those in the tropics, provide much greater climate, biodiversity and water benefits over planted lands.
AFR100: Africa Restoring 100 Million Hectares of Deforested and Degraded Land by 2030
This infographic shows the activities of AFR100 (the African Restoration Initiative), a country-led effort to bring 100 million hectares of land in Africa into restoration by 2030.
Wanjira Mathai, daughter of Nobel laureate Wangari Maathai and co-chair of the Global Restoration Council, discusses the new landscape restoration initiative AFR100 and the power of restoration to address a range of issues, including health, environment, energy security and the empowerment of women.
In Paris today, a coalition of more than a dozen African countries, nine financing organizations and 10 technical partners announced a new initiative called the African Restoration Initiative (AFR100), with the goal of restoring 100 million hectares of degraded and deforested land in Africa by 2030.
African countries launched AFR100 (African Forest Landscape Restoration Initiative), a pan-African, country-led effort to restore 100 million hectares (386 thousand square miles) of degraded and deforested landscapes by 2030.
Africa is home to some of the fastest-growing economies on the planet, but the lack of affordable, reliable energy could challenge continued economic and social development. Distributed power generation could be part of the solution.