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Almost three-quarters of nations have some adaptation plans in place, but financing and implementation fall far short of what is needed Annual adaptation costs in developing countries are estimated at USD 70 billion. This figure is expected to reach USD 140-300 billion in 2030 and USD 280-500 billion in 2050. Nature-based solutions, critical for adaptation, need to receive more…

At the recent One Planet Summit for Biodiversity the Great Green Wall for the Sahel and Sahara Initiative (GGW) received $14 billion in additional funding pledges for the next ten years. This financial support will scale up efforts to restore degraded land, create green jobs, strengthen resilience and protect biodiversity. Among the financiers are the Government of France, who committed $14…

by Martin Frick, Deputy to the Special Envoy for the 2021 Food Systems Summit. On World Food Day last year, the UN Secretary-General announced a Food Systems Summit to take place in 2021. When he nominated Dr. Agnes Kalibata as his Special Envoy for this Summit in December 2019, no one expected that a pandemic would bring public life to an abrupt halt. Despite the crisis, a small…

Just five years ago, Sudan’s farmers harvested a mere 472,000 tons of wheat from about a quarter-million hectares of land. Today, the Sahel country is on the cusp of becoming a regional breadbasket. One of the reasons for Sudan’s agricultural turnaround is the Technologies for African Agricultural Transformation (TAAT) program, which is funded by the African Development Bank. Within…

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…