Soils are fundamental pillars of sustainable
development. They are essential for food security, support human well-being,
and provide further ecosystem services, such as carbon storage.
They are not only essential but also severely
threatened, suffering a continuous decline in quality and being taken over by
urban sprawl.
Even though soils are managed and owned
locally, their degradation is a key global issue, as their functions transcend
national boundaries.
Therefore, we urgently need to upscale
actions towards sustainable soil management.
The First Global Soil Week will provide a
platform to initiate follow-up actions on land and soil-related...
Below is a summary of my PhD thesis, defended successfully on 29th November, 2012 at Ghent University, Belgium.
In response to the increasing land degradation in arid and semi-arid environments in Sub-Saharan Africa, numerous approaches to their restoration have been developed. Very few of these have been successful beyond the project implementation period. In some parts of Eastern Africa however, rangeland enclosures and community-based conservation are increasingly being adopted in pastoral areas under transition and in the livestock-wildlife interface, respectively. The two approaches represent restoration initiatives at site (enclosure)...
Green Africa Foundation in
conjunction with its partners, namely, Kenya Forestry Services (KFS), Kenya
Wildlife Services (KWS), United Nation Environment Programme (UNEP) and Rotary
club of Nairobi has organized the second tree planting campaign dubbed “Plant
age campaign”. In this campaign we are calling Kenyans from all walks of life,
to plant trees equivalent to their age as way of helping our beloved country
attain 10% forest cover as articulated in vision 2030.
This campaign will run
through out the entire short rains season, October to December 2012.
Green Africa Foundation
through its Green Africa villages tree seedling production...
In
a world fractured by the effects of environmental degradation, political
turmoil, and economic crises, it is easy to forget that cultures of peace
depend on good governance and equitable management of our natural resources.
Sustainable development from the grass-roots up can only happen if these three
core issues are addressed. Furthermore, the connection between environmental
challenges and local conflicts cannot be assessed separately. They must be
understood and acted upon not just by academics, but by as many different kinds
of people as possible – bustling city-dwellers, hard-working villagers and
farmers, children, poets,...
Stephen
Njoroge is sipping a mango juice, dressed in a blue school uniform like any
other boy his age. Mango trees are his favourite — but as an environmentalist,
Njoroge loves trees of all varieties. And at just 12 years, he has planted over
10,000 of them — and made it to the UN history books. Last Friday, his efforts
to create a sustainable future for Kenya were honoured at the UN International
Day of Peace. Kenya’s most eminent conservationist, the late Prof. Wangari Maathai, once said
tree planting was “her little thing”. Three years ago, Njoroge decided to
make it his big thing — and has been working to keep Kenya’s forests healthy
ever...
Research co-authored by Bournemouth University (BU)
Professor Adrian Newton and published in the journal Science shows that ecological restoration in areas of
environmental degradation can help reverse global biodiversity losses, as well
as promoting recovery of ecosystem services.
However the research also showed that measures of
biodiversity and ecosystem services are higher in pristine land, freshwater and
marine systems than in restored systems.
Examples of ecosystem services include improved water
quality and increased carbon storage, services which benefit human well-being.
The research was carried out by an international...
Rob Torcellini bought a $700 greenhouse kit to grow more vegetables in his backyard. Then he added fish to get rid of a mosquito problem and before long he was a committed aquaponic gardener.
Now his 10 by 12 foot greenhouse is filled with not only vegetables, but fish. And the best part is: the poo from that fish is what fertilizes his garden.
Fish poo as fertilizer
“The fish excrete ammonia through their gils as their waste and that ammonia travels in the water and gets pumped into the growbeds," explains Torcellini, "and there's a naturally occurring bacteria that converts the ammonia into nitrites and then the nitrates and then the nitrates...
Current species losses are just the tip of the iceberg.
Helen Thompson
12 July 2012
The vast majority of species extinctions in the Brazilian Amazon are yet to come, predicts a paper published in Science*.
Deforestation has declined to record lows in recent years, and just over 50% of Brazil’s rainforest now falls under some form of protected status. But the effects of habitat loss take time to manifest. “Cutting down trees doesn’t kill a bird directly. It takes a lot of time for those birds to actually die. They’re all crammed into the habitat that’s left. Then gradually you’ll have this increased mortality,” says Robert...
A Kenya Meat Commission processing plant. Photo/FILE
Northern Kenya is set to reap from the ongoing construction of abattoirs
and tanneries around the country that are expected to provide ready
market for livestock, hides and skins. The slaughterhouses will give a big boost to farmers around
Isiolo, Marsabit, Turkana and Garissa, Wajir, Samburu, Laikipia and
Moyale. The Ministry of Livestock Development has earmarked
KES1.35 billion for the construction of up to five slaughterhouses to
beef up export earnings from livestock products. “These facilities will help traders to shift from selling live
animals to processed meat products...
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