Blog Posts: governance

Costa Rican coffee farmers are shifting to citrus trees as climate change and declining coffee prices challenge their profitability. Some prime coffee-growing areas will become unsuitable within a few decades.

In a study of corporate land deals with rural communities in Tanzania and Mozambique, women consistently received less in return for their land, and had a harder time once they were relocated—despite national commitments to gender equality.

India plans to generate 160 gigawatts of wind and solar power by 2022, creating 330,000 new jobs. For the country's rural poor, these clean energy positions offer a lucrative alternative to subsistence farming.

In Costa Rica, Liberia and Brazil advances in transparent, participatory governance are empowering citizens and ensuring better environmental and development outcomes.

With Fiji presiding over this COP, discussions were expected to focus on adaptation—the question of how we deal with climate impacts—even before a summer of storms rocked South Asia and the Caribbean. Climate Resilience Practice director Christina Chan explains what to expect from discussion of adaptation at COP.

Better data on land tenure would help Paraguayan beef exporters reach higher-value markets while protecting Indigenous Peoples from deforestation that threatens their way of living.

Tundu Lissu, a leading opposition member of the Tanzanian parliament and a former colleague who worked on community land rights, was injured in what may have been political violence. Peter Veit, who has known Lissu for decades, writes about his friend and the risks he ran by making a difference.

Irma is the latest in a series of devastating hurricanes in the Caribbean. Though many countries and territories have prioritized disaster risk management, extreme storms like this one can set vulnerable communities back for years.

Despite years of requests, Javanese villagers can't get the government to tell them the facts about their polluted river. Meanwhile, their fishing catches―and income―continue to decline.

The gold rush in Mongolia has left a toxic aftermath: contaminants from the mining process have leached into the water that poor communities rely on for drinking, bathing and raising livestock. Residents need the government to tell them if the water is safe to use.