Africa

This paper is a UNISDR contribution towards effective Drought Contingency Planning (DCP) for stakeholders and partners implementing drought risk reduction programmes in the Greater Horn of Africa (GHA). It attempts to convert findings, concepts and guidelines into a guidance document from critical gaps to bridge general drought preparedness, contingency planning and early response.

Over the past few years, agribusiness, investment funds and government agencies have been acquiring long-term rights over large areas of land in Africa. Together with applicable national and international law, contracts define the terms of an investment project, and the way risks, costs and benefits are distributed. Who has the authority to sign the contract and through what process greatly influences the extent to which people can have their voices heard.

This publication analyses the challenges, the potential and opportunities of African agribusiness in the current period of dramatic changes in global agro-industrial markets, and builds a case for agribusiness development as a path to Africa’s prosperity. Written by international experts, from agribusiness practitioners, to academic experts and UN technical agencies, the book fills what UNIDO perceived as a significant gap in knowledge concerning these issues.

More than twenty years have passed since community-based natural resource management (CBNRM) rose to prominence in different parts of Africa as a strategy for rural development, local empowerment, and conservation. Led by new ideas about the merits of decentralized, collective resource governance regimes, and creative field experiments such as Zimbabwe's CAMPFIRE, these community-based approaches evolved in a wide range of ecological, political, and social contexts across Africa.

To help shape a research programme proposed by the UK Department for International Development (DFID), this report seeks to highlight some of the critical issues facing water ecosystem services in Africa, South Asia and Latin America and makes recommendations on the research that is needed to fill the current gaps in knowledge and practice.

Genetically, chimpanzees and gorillas are man's closest relative in the animal kingdom. No one in the western world would thus ever dream of eating their flesh. In Central Africa, however, ape- and monkey-meat is a welcome change to the menu.

The working conference had as its principal theme to learn about the science of adaptation and mitigation, and related issues of biodiversity conservation issues in the context of United Nations' climate change negotiations.

The focus of the Windhoek conference was a sharing of experiences of how mapping and other participatory applications of geo-spatial information technology (GIT) can help empower indigenous peoples and rural communities to protect biodiversity and the natural resources on which they are reliant.