In celebration of the International Year of Soils, we asked a number of experts: Can poor farmers afford to invest in restoring degraded soils? Read their responses.
The Tana-Nairobi Water Fund is a public-private scheme uniting big business, utilities, conservation groups, government, researchers and farmers. It aims to increase farm productivity upstream, while improving water supply and cutting costs of hydropower and clean water for users downstream, and is designed to generate US$21.5 million in long-term benefits to Kenyan citizens, including farmers and businesses.
Something interesting is happening in Kenya – something that, if successful, could reverberate through Africa and transform the continent’s landscape management. Formerly all-powerful state agencies are handing over day-to-day control of key resources like forests, rivers and wildlife to local communities.
We’d like to present you with a summary of what’s been in scientific and popular literature this month on the theme of Ecosystem Services and Resilience.
New month-long online discussion begins: Large-scale land interventions are on the rise. Whether through restoration projects such as the new 20x20 initiative and the Bonn Challenge, or foreign direct investment in huge swaths of land, investors are seeing big opportunities in large land projects. But can they fulfil their promises?
Constantly monitoring where and when problems occur allows health professionals to predict potential trouble spots and target their interventions. It is perhaps surprising then, that other challenges to our wellbeing do not always receive such close attention. Take soils for example.
Mongolian herders are maintaining the centuries old practice of moving from season to season to find new grasslands for their livestock, the primary source of their nomadic livelihood. Right now it is time to move to their winter camps and enter the most critical period of the year – the months of extremely cold weather.
How can we best protect forests for the myriad ecosystem services they provide – capturing and storing carbon, protecting river systems and soils, maintaining biodiversity and ensuring access to bushmeat? The presumption is that the local forest dwellers and users have to be kept out. But that increasingly looks like exactly the wrong approach.
Managing a landscape begins much like a dance. But in integrated landscape management there are far more than two partners, and it is an ongoing challenge to balance different objectives and coordinate interests into one coherent set of activities.
Voluntary sustainability standards focus on farm-scale best management practices, but landscape-scale changes matter more for biodiversity conservation (e.g. reducing habitat fragmentation).
in 2009, CPWF redefined its objective “to increase the resilience of social and ecological systems through better water management for food production.” Why did it matter at that time, and why does it still matter today for water, food and ecosystems?
As the CPWF comes to an end, it is appropriate to take stock and reflect on its ten-year legacy. For me, it is also a time to reflect on the personal transformation that I have undergone in my perceptions and views of CPWF since becoming familiar with the program and its activities.
