News

On the busy streets of Togo’s capital, Lomé, change is afoot amongst some of the city’s motorcycle taxi drivers.

They’re going electric. 

At a battery swapping station, drivers are quick to share their enthusiasm for their new e-motorcycles, replacements for the petrol-powered models they once rode. 

The Caribbean island of Barbuda still bears the battle scars of its most brutal encounter with climate change. In 2017, Hurricane Irma, a Category 5 leviathan of unprecedented power, roared across its pristine turquoise waters.

The island’s only storm shelter collapsed, with 300 people hiding inside. Around 95 per cent of Barbuda’s buildings were wrecked, including homes, schools and critical infrastructure.

The rhythmic sound of voices singing in harmony floats across Mozambique’s Limpopo River as several women stand ankle deep in the sticky mud along its banks.

In a well-rehearsed routine, one woman scoops up sediment with a hoe while another buries a fragile mangrove sapling in the void.

The joyous songs of the women obscure the difficulty of their job.

The monsoon season, which runs from June through September, has become a nervous time for the people of Nepal.

The climate crisis has supercharged the fallout from the annual rains, which are triggering an increasing number of floods and landslides, disasters that are especially devastating in a nation defined by its vertigo-inducing slopes.

Yemen and Somalia are working to make climate action a win-win, tackling the impacts of both conflicts and climate crisis, while also addressing some of the underlying causes of both.

Despite significant challenges, both countries are pushing for meaningful climate action addressing the most urgent vulnerabilities and some of the causes of unrest, while paving the way for more climate friendly development and growth.

In the Mpanda Commune in north-western Burundi, a long ribbon of rubber – about a metre high and two metres wide – snakes through a farmer’s field before disappearing into foliage.

A woman is sowing her crops alongside the structure, which is bulging with water and circles much of the commune.

Nairobi/Washington DC, 26 July 2022 - In a boost to climate change governance, the Global Environment Facility will provide $32 million in pooled, streamlined funding to help developing countries prepare national transparency reports required under the Paris Agreement.

As the sun sets in central Zambia, orange rays reflect across the Lukanga Swamp, a vast wetland spanning 2,600 km2.

A watery path cuts through the swamp’s reeds and purple water lilies, where dugout canoes pass daily, ferrying fishers to and from their floating camps. Among them is John Chisela, one of more than 6 million people who rely on the wetlands – and the surrounding forests – for food, firewood and income.

As the UN Climate Change Conference of the Parties (COP26) came to a close, news agencies and bloggers ploughed through the Glasgow Climate Pact to make sense of the commitments made to reducing greenhouse gas emissions.

Mauritania’s battle against encroaching desertification, which has damaged ecosystems and endangered species, has received a timely boost with the news that 200,000 hectares will be turned into a protected area to support biodiversity in the country.

The Green Climate Fund has approved a USD 21.7 million project to support the establishment of end-to-end climate information services and multi-hazard early warning systems (MHEWS) in Timor-Leste 1.03 million people in Timor-Leste (80% of the population) are expected to directly benefit

Nairobi, 8 October 2021 – A major new project developed by the UN Environment Programme (UNEP) will address the urg

Despite being responsible for only around 3 per cent of global carbon dioxide emissions, experts say that Africa will be the region hardest hit by climate change.

For generations, people have combed the sponge-like cloud forests around the city of Xalapa, Mexico for edible mushrooms. But a combination of deforestation and climate-change-related drought have devastated mushroom crops, an important source of income in a region beset by poverty.

Near Omar Gona’s house in Djibouti’s Tadjourah city stands a wall three metres high and five metres thick. What might be an eyesore for some is a godsend for the city because the wall holds back the monsoon rains that have decimated people’s lives here for decades.

The United Nations Environment Programme is working with San Salvador city and its surrounding coffee farms to create a natural defence against floods. Known as CityAdapt, the project is restoring 1,150 hectares of forests and coffee plantations to revive San Salvador’s ability to absorb rainfall.

For World Cities Day on 31st October, we follow the story of how the United Nations Environment Programme (UNEP) is working with San Salvador city and its surrounding coffee farms to create a ‘natural’ defence against floods.

The Mexican city of Xalapa is surrounded by ecosystems that not only harbor stunning flora and fauna, but also provide crucial services to the city and its 580,000 people.

With the launch of a major report by the Global Commission on Adaptation on 10 September 2019, we follow the story of an environmental hero from the Seychelles and their quest to adapt by harnessing the power of trees. #AdaptOurWorld

If you’re sweltering in Delhi or shivering in Detroit and want affordable, environmentally friendly cooling or heating, district energy may be your best bet.

Local handicrafts and specialties are helping build a climate-resistant future for Madagascar’s coastal communities.

“When I was younger, everything was normal, even the rain,” Vivienne Rakotoarisoa reminisces. “But nowadays everything is irregular. When we start planting, the rain doesn’t come anymore.”

How improved weather forecasting and observation is helping the Comoros face a changing climate.

The children playing in the school grounds in Diboini, a hilly central area of the Comoros’ main island, pay no attention to the gated area housing unremarkable-looking metal structures.

Ali Omar remembers a time when the practically bare patch of desert in northern Djibouti he calls home was a bustling seaside resort and the waters around it were teeming with fish. “Lots of people lived here and they had shops all along the seaside,” says 75-year-old Omar, recalling his hometown Khor Angar’s 1970s heyday, before it was hot year-round and the village had dwindled to just a few huts in the desert.

More and more countries, including Armenia and Mongolia, are receiving funding from the Green Climate Fund related to implementation of the results from their national technology needs assessments

Without knowing about the weather and why it was changing, the people in the village of Jappineh in The Gambia’s Lower River Region would plant the same seeds in the same soil and hope for the best.

As 63-year-old farmer Mahmoud Hamidoune shelters from the rain hammering down on the peaks of the southern tip of Anjouan island in the Comoros, he recalls a time when it got so cold that people would stay home, and heading up the mountain to farm was called ‘going to Paris’.