In the forests of the Congo Basin, rising temperatures and erratic rainfall are adversely affecting wildlife resources. The availability of edible mushrooms and caterpillars has fallen by about 80%. This is according to a study published on 5 January 2021 by the Centre for International Forestry Research (CIFOR).

Fires have spread across the majority of the landscape in Angola and the Democratic Republic of the Congo.

Fires of this number are not uncommon at this time of year in Africa. During the agricultural season of clearing field and planting new ones, farmers set fire to the remains of old crop fields to rid them of the leftover grasses and scrub.

Forced evictions, an abundance of petroleum, wealth inequality, economic growth and slums surround the most expensive cities in Angola. Angola, a country, that rose economically after experiencing a three-decade civil war. But the fruits of that expansion have not been shared by most of the population.

The Congo Basin contains the world's second-largest rainforest, crucial for regulating the world's climate. Inside it, a plan to halt the forest's decline is bearing fruit.

With a gentle tug of his left hand, Patrick Wasa-Nziabo eases dozens of kernels from a sun-dried cob and into a large plastic bucket brimming with lemon-yellow corn at his bare feet.

Women in Botswana celebrate changes to the country’s land ownership law that now gives them the right to own land independently of their spouses, unlike before when they were treated as part of their husband’s property.

UNESCO’s World Heritage Centre vigilant on potential impacts of oil and gas exploration in Namibia and Botswana on the Tsodila and Okavango Delta World Heritage properties.

A Recent Victory

In September 2020, President Mokgweetsi Masisi amended the 2015 Land Policy to give married women in Botswana the right to own land. Previously, married women were only eligible to own land if their husbands did not. The policy excluded not only married women but widows and single mothers as well, which left millions of women affected.

The first ever global dataset that quantifies tenure insecurity puts Botswana in a category of countries with the highest land and property insecurity.In terms of the Prindex, a methodology for measuring tenure security for land and property around the globe, more than 30 percent of Botswana’s adults (18+ years of age) feel insecure about their land or property rights. In terms of the Prindex, which was developed by a London think tank, more than 30 percent represents extremely high levels of insecurity.

The Viana Administration will deliver plots of land for selfconstruction to some 18,000 families living in areas of risk or in very degraded houses. This measure aims to help rehousing families living in "terrible conditions of habitability".

Main photo: A man crosses a canal on a fallen tree following Cyclone Yaas in Digha, Purba Medinipur district in the eastern state of West Bengal, India, May 27, 2021. REUTERS/Rupak De Chowdhuri

More than 96,000 hectares (237,221 acres) of agricultural land has been inundated in parts of an eastern Indian state hit by a powerful storm this week, officials said on Friday, a year after the coastal region was ravaged by a super cyclone.