By: Susan Reidy

Date: 27 January 2017

Source: World Grain 

Date: 20 January 2017

Source: FAO 

FAO Director-General calls for better water management and improved access for small farmers

The pacific island of Papua New Guinea is one of the world's most resource rich countries, hosting nearly 7 percent of global biodiversity and important reserves of gold, copper and hydrocarbons.

Knowledgebase.land compiles a bimonthly news round up focusing on African land related news. The articles reviewed below are a taster of what you can access via the website. We provide a selection of carefully curated links to a wide range of publications reporting on the important issues of the day. In this issue we focus on continental developments as well as links to key news stories from South Africa and Namibia.

The majority of small-scale farmers have no legal access to water

Self-declared state wants to shift much of its population to the coast as grazing land fails

It is often said that climate change will hurt the world’s poorest people first. Nowhere is that potentially truer than in Somaliland, an unrecognised state in the Horn of Africa sandwiched between an expanding desert and the Red Sea.

A prolonged drought has killed 70 per cent of the area’s livestock in the past three years, devastating the region’s pastoralist economy and forcing tens of thousands of families to flee their grazing land for urban camps, according to authorities.

Climate change is leading to higher average temperatures and greater rainfall variability, with a pronounced effect on agricultural productivity and the suitability of major crops in Ethiopia. Farming households with tenure security are more likely to choose to access credit and to invest in their land by planting trees and longer-term crops, and by reducing soil erosion—for example, via terracing. Such investments can help farmers mitigate risks related to heavy precipitation, such as soil run-off or crop failure.

True resilience relies on connecting the dots. Connecting the dots between nature, climate and energy. Connecting the dots between land-use, energy and agriculture, between livelihoods, natural resources, economic growth, social development and conservation, between people and the impacts climate change has on their lives.

By: David Humphreys

Date: 13 January 2017

Source: Chinadialogue

By: Lou del Bello

Date: 12 January 2017

Source: IRIN

Living in the Kenyan slum of Mukuru is hard enough, but when it rains it’s downright miserable. Streets flood, sewage overflows, homes are inundated. 

After each bout of torrential rain, Nairobi’s largest informal settlement is left a little shabbier, a little poorer, the community more insecure.

By: Mike Gaworecki

Date: December 20th 2016

Source: Mongabay.com

There’s already ample evidence of the ways environmental degradation can contribute to the spread of infectious diseases, and now a recent study provides an example of how the disruptions to an ecosystem caused by deforestation and other land-use change can help spread a bacterial pathogen.