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New funding of more than $14bn pledged for planting across almost a dozen countries in region bordering Sahara. The ambitious initiative known as the Great Green Wall received a boost this week with a pledge of $14.3bn in new funding from the African Development Bank, France and the World Bank to plant an 8,000km long and 15km wide mosaic of trees, grasslands, vegetation and plants across…

Thomas Sankara, Burkina Faso’s folk-hero president, once marshalled a nation to halt the spread of the Sahara. Decades after his brutal death, a pan-African project of epic scale and ambition is aiming to reverse the creeping desertification that threatens to engulf a vast region, accelerating climate change, migration and conflict. Advertising Burkina Faso, a landlocked…

When a team of international scientists set out to count every tree in a large swathe of west Africa using AI, satellite images and one of the world’s most powerful supercomputers, their expectations were modest. Previously, the area had registered as having little or no tree cover. The biggest surprise, says Martin Brandt, assistant professor of geography at the University of…

The 2021 edition of the One Planet Summit was organized by the Government of France in partnership with the UN and the World Bank. Leaders highlighted job creation, heritage preservation, and climate change mitigation as benefits of protecting biodiversity. The gathering yielded a list of "action commitments for biodiversity," including the launch of a High-Ambition Coalition for…

A wind energy generation plant located in Loiyangalani in northwestern Kenya. The plant is set to be the biggest in Africa, generating 300 MW. This renewable energy project was supported by the African Development Bank. Credit: Isaiah Esipisu/IPS BONN, Germany, Jan 13 2021 (IPS) - 2021 is going to be critical, not only for curbing the rapidly spreading COVID-19 pandemic, but also for…

Billions are at risk of missing out on the digital leap forward, as growing disparities challenge the social fabric. In the medium-term, the global economy will be threatened by the knock-on effects of the coronavirus crisis, while geopolitical stability will be critically fragile over the next 5 to 10 years. Environmental risks continue to threaten: they remain top risks by…