The IMF’s April 2025 Regional Economic Outlook for Sub-Saharan Africa presents a clear warning: regional growth is slowing, debt pressures are mounting, and donor assistance is declining. Yet the report outlines critical opportunities particularly in domestic revenue mobilization, structural reform, and private sector activation that can shape a more resilient …
Cities depend on a healthy natural environment that continuously provides a range of services or benefits to society and the economy. Managing the urban environment is, however, a complex task. Many urban cities in Africa are struggling to meet their infrastructure needs; maintain or provide adequate service delivery; and upgrade …
Africa is urbanizing late but fast. This brings many benefits but, as this report shows: thus far, urbanization in Africa, unique in a number of respects, is having deleterious and largely unchecked impacts on the natural environment; the degradation of natural assets and ecosystems within African cities carries tangible economic, …
Paying farmers for ecosystem services that they provide could be a novel way to achieve multiple goals of doubling the farm incomes, reduce rural–urban migration, reduce pressure on urban infrastructure, and at the same time, incentivise sustainable agrarian practices in India.
Urban waters remain widely impaired by excess nutrients, despite substantial management efforts. We present a comparison of urban watershed nitrogen (N) and phosphorus (P) budgets. Household actions of lawn fertilization and pet ownership were responsible for the majority of watershed N and P inputs, respectively. N and P exhibited contrasting …
The Draft National Biodiversity Offset Policy has been published for public comment, the Department of Environmental Affairs said. The draft policy was published in Government Gazette 40733 (Notice No. 276), in terms of the National Environmental Management Act, 1998 (Act No. 107 of 1998) (NEMA). The aim of the National …
Healthy ecosystems play an essential role in increasing the resilience of people to climate change. Climate change, however, can damage the ability of ecosystems to provide life-supporting services and to protect society from climate-related stressors. Adaptation to climate change therefore needs to strengthen the resilience of both communities and ecosystems. …
This report shows that improved wastewater management is as much about reducing pollution at the source, as removing contaminants from wastewater flows, reusing reclaimed water and recovering useful by-products The 2017 edition of the United Nations WWDR, the forth in a series of annual, theme-oriented reports, addresses an often overlooked …
To explain diversity in forests, niche theory must show how multiple plant species coexist while competing for the same resources. Although successional processes are widespread in forests, theoretical work has suggested that differentiation in successional strategy allows only a few species stably to coexist, including only a single shade tolerant. …
This document presents a framework for the use of science and technology for disaster risk reduction and resilient development for Pacific Island Countries. It aims to support the implementation of both the Sendai Framework for Disaster Risk Reduction and the Framework for Resilient Development (FRDP). To reduce risks and increase …
New WWF report shows EU protected areas at risk due to lack of proper implementation of EU laws, series of wrongdoings by member states, and legal actions started by the Commission. It also illustrates the importance of nature protection and sustainable development going hand in hand. The European Commission recently …
Sustainable land management practices can be enhanced by reconciling environmental and development objectives while incorporating climate resilience. A growing international consensus indicates a need to look at the bigger picture and not just treat sectors selectively and independently. The landscape approach looks at the broad picture in biophysical and human …
In our recent perspective article, we noted that most (approximately 60 percent) terrestrial large carnivore and large herbivore species are now threatened with extinction, and we offered a 13-point declaration designed to promote and guide actions to save these iconic mammalian megafauna (Ripple et al. 2016). Some may worry that …
The purpose of this study was to estimate the benefits and costs of reducing deforestation and forest degradation in different landscapes and management regimes in Nepal, and to provide associated opportunity costs of carbon that can be used as inputs for planning the implementation of REDD+ in Nepal. The annual …
Transforming the global supply chains for beef, palm oil, soy, and pulp and paper so that they are truly sustainable is a $200-billion-a-year investment opportunity, according to a new report by the World Economic Forum (WEF) and Tropical Forest Alliance 2020 (TFA 2020). It’s estimated that about 10 percent of …
This report is an indicator-based assessment of past and projected climate change and its impacts on ecosystems and society. It also looks at society’s vulnerability to these impacts and at the development of adaptation policies and the underlying knowledge base. This is the fourth ‘Climate change, impacts and vulnerability in …
Functional trait diversity is increasingly used to model future changes in community structure despite a poor understanding of community disassembly's effects on functional diversity. By tracking the functional diversity of the North American large mammal fauna through the End-Pleistocene megafaunal extinction and up to the present, I show that contrary …
While outlining strategies to increase availability of pulses at affordable prices, it is argued that increasing domestic production of pulses is the only option. Access to one or two protective irrigation sources during the growing season can lead to sizeable increases in pulse production. The har khet ko paani initiative …
Increasing demand for sustainable energy has led to research and development on the cultivation of diverse plant species for biomass production. To support the research and development required to domesticate and cultivate crops for bioenergy, we developed the Biofuel Ecophysiological Traits and Yields database (BETYdb). BETYdb is a centralized open-access …
Land degradation is occurring rapidly at a time of growing need for fertile soil and healthy ecosystems. Multi-scale solutions that ensure economic and environmental sustainability are needed. Scientific advances have been driven by UNU-INWEH which between 2012 and 2016 has been responsible for the scientific coordination of the global Initiative …
This paper argues that the 2015 UN Development Agenda, which promotes integration among all water and water-using sectors, offers a timely opportunity to view, value, and manage aquatic ecosystems as an integral part of water security planning.
