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For decades, coffee was Kenya's largest export, and it still supports the lives of 600,000 farmers there. But disease and low prices have wiped out nearly 60% of production. Coffee-growing families in the Mount Kenya region that could pay their children's school fees 20 years ago are now struggling to make ends meet. Francescah Munyi's mother is one of those farmers. That's partly…

BY EMMA MARRIS The move would safeguard biodiversity, slow extinctions, and help maintain a steady climate, a leading group of conservationists say. This week a United Nations working group responded to a joint statement posted online in December by some of the world’s largest conservation organizations calling for 30 percent of the planet to be managed for nature by 2030—and for half…

Forests cover 31 percent of the world’s total land area and store an estimated 296 gigatons of carbon in above- and below-ground biomass. About 1.6 billion people around the world depend on forests for their livelihoods, and some 300 million people worldwide live in forests. About 400 million years ago in the Devonian Period, forests are thought to have first emerged from…

Agriculture – the cultivation of plants and livestock – was a key part in the transition from hunting and gathering to sedentism that occurred at the end of the last Ice Age. The domestication of wild plants started in Western Asia around 12,000 to 11,000 years ago, while domesticated animals appeared around 10,000 years ago. Elsewhere in the world, agriculture developed…

Mountain environments cover 27 percent of the Earth’s land surface and are found in 53 countries across every continent. About 1 billion people live in mountain areas globally, making them key centers of biological and cultural diversity and home to a wide variety of languages, ethnic groups, religions and belief systems. However, mountain dwellers are disproportionately likely to…

Wetlands are ecosystems consisting of land covered either permanently or seasonally by water. They can include marshes, ponds, edges of lakes and seas, river deltas, and low-lying areas that are prone to flooding. Wetlands make up an estimated 4 to 6 percent of the Earth’s land area and are found in all ecosystems. Some wetlands, including swamps and marshes, are among…