Establishing protected areas creates an opportunity to reduce deforestation. This study aims to inform the Congolese government’s efforts to promote forest and biodiversity conservation by assessing the effectiveness of the Yangambi Biosphere Reserve (YBR) in reducing deforestation. Group and individual interviews designed to understand the causes of pressure on forest cover in the Yangambi landscape complemented satellite imagery analyses. The results indicate that deforestation inside the YBR is not significantly different from outside the YBR.

This workshop provided a platform for indigenous peoples’ representatives to outline their priority needs to input into Third National Climate Change Action Plan (NCCAP, 2023-27) that is led by the Ministry of Environment and Forestry through the Climate Change Directorate. An accelerated programme of the finalisation has targeted the government launch of the NCCAP 2023-2027 at the Africa Climate Summit, in Kenya, in September 2023.

CONTEXT
Cereal-legume intercropping, a common practice among farmers in sub-Saharan Africa (SSA), is important for crop diversification, soil fertility improvement, household nutrition and climate adaptation. However, cereals often outcompete the intercropped legumes for growth resources resulting in low legume yields.
OBJECTIVE

Context
Crop productivity in sub-Saharan Africa cannot be substantially improved without simultaneously addressing short-term crop nutrient demand and long-term soil fertility. Integrated soil fertility management tackles both by the combined application of mineral fertilizers and organic resource inputs but few studies examined its‘ long-term effectiveness.
Objective

Farmers commonly split large, undulating crop fields, even those at similar elevation range or contour, into a patchwork of small sub-plots in plane areas of Nepal. Specifically, to ensure irrigation or rainwater throughout their cultivated rice or wheat growing areas, structures like bunds, dikes, and ditches are commonly built. These structures not only require significant labor hours to build but also incur loss of some portion of productive crop areas.

There is ample data and literature that shows how women’s experiences in low-paid, short-term migration vary from those of men, and that experiences are linked to women’s empowerment – captured by the interrelated dimensions of resources, agency, and achievements. While considerable attention is paid to understanding the generalized notion of women’s empowerment, it is also key to distinguish empowerment in specific realms, including economic empowerment, agriculture, health and nutrition, and migration.

The water-energy-food-ecosystem (WEFE) nexus is a cross-sectoral concept offering a holistic perspective of the interconnections among agriculture, energy production, water resources, and ecosystem health. However, most emerging nexus approaches have been narrowly focused on resource efficiency and technocratic ‘fixes’ that don’t adequately consider the impacts of resource use and development on diverse groups of resource users and managers.