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by - Entrepreneurs across Africa are growing businesses that revitalize degraded land and fight climate change, while turning a profit and creating jobs. Investors and lawmakers should pay attention.
Ethiopia
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by Molly Bergen - July 09, 2019Deforestation rates in the Congo Basin — historically lower than in the Amazon and southeast Asia — are on the rise. It's not just a problem for the 80 million people who rely on the forests for food and livelihoods; research shows the world's second-largest rainforest regulates weather patterns across Africa.
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A mapping platform to connect affordable, reliable and clean energy to sustainable development solutions for all.
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by Kitty van der Heijden, Eliza L. Swedenborg and Zablon Adane - October 16, 2017Ethiopia, the fastest growing global economy, aims to increase prosperity for its citizens. Climate change, conflicting water demands and watershed degradation could stand in its way. Sustainable water management will be essential to maintaining Ethiopia's progress.
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Supporting national governments with tools and resources to track progress toward meeting their national climate commitments and to strengthen climate action.
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by Chris Reij and Robert Winterbottom - February 15, 2017We can turn an India-sized patch of degraded land green again, but only if we learn from early successes in Niger, Ethiopia and Costa Rica.
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Ethiopia Rising is the story of the phenomenal environmental transformation of a nation told through the experience of one man, Aba Hawi, who mobilizes an entire community to regenerate the surrounding hillsides, and in doing so saved his village from certain extinction. For a generation brought up on Live-Aid with its images of a desperate nation, little has emerged in the mainstream media to correct this. Ethiopia Rising goes a long way to challenge these out-of-date perceptions.
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by Chris Reij - July 28, 2015A new documentary tells the story of how Ethiopia’s people restored vast areas of degraded land to productivity.
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by Mathilde Bouyé - July 24, 2015The Action Agenda approved in Addis Ababa last week offers the right vision for a global shift towards a low-carbon, inclusive global economy.
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by Kelly Levin, David Rich, Eliza Northrop and Kathleen Mogelgaard - June 11, 2015Ethiopia’s INDC sets an excellent example for developing countries to be ambitious in their post-2020 commitment design.
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by Robert Winterbottom - May 21, 2015Some farmers are combating climate change, boosting food security and improving their livelihoods by protecting and managing on-farm trees. A new report details how to spread this practice throughout the African drylands.
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by Aaron Minnick, Tesfay Woldemariam, Chris Reij, Fred Stolle, Florence Landsberg and James Anderson - October 21, 2014The New York Declaration on Forests issued at the UN Climate Summit last month includes a global pledge to restore 350 million hectares of deforested and degraded landscapes by 2030.
Several countries confirmed their commitment to restore millions of hectares of degraded land, with Ethiopia making one of the most significant pledges—setting a target to restore 15 million hectares of degraded and deforested land into productivity by 2025.
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by Kathleen Buckingham and Lars Laestadius - June 24, 2014Reflecting on World Forest Week 2014, where the Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) of the UN launched a Forest and Landscape Restoration Mechanism to help countries meet the Bonn Challenge to restore 150 million hectares of degraded and deforested lands by 2020, we need to further think about creating the rich landscapes that the world needs.
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by Jared Finnegan, Thomas Damassa, Kate DeAngelis and Kelly Levin - February 2014The World Resources Institute (WRI) is working through the Measurement and Performance Tracking (MAPT) project to help enhance national capacities in developing countries to measure greenhouse gas (GHG) emis
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Inspiring, enabling and mobilizing action to restore vitality to degraded landscapes and forests around the globe.
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Building the capacity of developing countries to effectively track progress toward meeting domestic climate, energy, and development goals.
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Advancing effective, equitable adaptation finance systems to build resilience in a changing climate
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by Chris Reij - June 27, 2013President Obama is in Africa this week to discuss development, investment, health, and, notably, food security. The trip comes on the heels of the president’s groundbreaking announcement of a U.S. Climate Action Plan. So it’s a fitting time for Obama and other global leaders to take notice of a strategy that addresses both climate change and food security in Africa—re-greening.
Re-greening—a process where African farmers manage and protect trees that grow on their farms, rather than cutting them down—is already beginning to transform the continent’s drylands. Supporting and scaling up the low-tech process can not only increase crop yields in drought-prone regions, it can mitigate climate change and reduce rural poverty.
The History of Re-greening in Africa’s Drylands
Re-greening in Africa first garnered international attention back in 2007, when the New York Times published a front page article entitled “In Niger, Trees and Crops Help Turn Back the Desert.” Lydia Polgreen, who was the NYT’s West Africa bureau chief in those days, had visited Niger and reported “at least 7.4 million newly tree-covered acres.” The NYT article revealed that this large-scale re-greening was not due to expensive tree-planting projects, but was the result of farmers protecting and managing young trees that regenerated on their cultivated land.
This re-greening did not happen everywhere. It was observed in particular in dryland regions with high population densities. Life in dryland areas presents many challenges, and farmers and decision makers are continuously searching for ways to restore their resilience and agricultural productivity.