Poverty Alleviation News

With just over 1,200 cases and ten deaths, it may appear that Madagascar has been spared the ravages of the COVID-19 pandemic. But in the deep south of the country,…

Dean Cycon spoke recently to students at Harvard Business School. A student asked him what his profit margin was at Dean’s Beans Organic Coffee, a company he founded in 1993…

The coronavirus has rocked the foundations of societies across the globe. Since the virus originated in wildlife, there has been public outcry demanding the closure wildlife meat markets. Neglected thus…

I am writing this from Bukit Lawang (North Sumatra, Indonesia) a prominent ecotourism town on the fringes of the Gunung Leuser National Park. The town is devoid of tourists amid…

LOS ASIENTOS, Panama — It was auction day in the town of Santiago, and ranchers from the region gathered to buy and sell cattle. A metallic clatter rang out from…

Impacts of the coronavirus pandemic on vulnerable communities in the Global South go far beyond the looming public health emergency.  The broader economic and environmental ramifications are of profound importance…

Eating chocolate shouldn’t mean fueling environmental and social destruction. But, as a stream of news stories and reports make abundantly clear, too often it does. Cocoa production in Ghana and Ivory Coast – the world’s biggest cocoa producers…

On Sept. 3, the Republic of Congo secured a stream of funding aimed at protecting forests and peatlands. The signatures of French President Emmanuel Macron and Congolese President Denis Sassou…

KOTA KINABALU, Malaysia — In July, I traveled most of the length of the proposed Pan Borneo Highway route with the goal of trying to understand the aims, possibilities and…

A global strategy aimed at stemming climate change-inducing carbon emissions from tropical forest loss would better accomplish its goals if implemented in the manner intended, according to recent research. The…

This is the sixth article in our six-part series “Traveling the Pan Borneo Highway.” Read Part One, Part Two, Part Three, Part Four and Part Five. KOTA BELUD, Malaysia — Road building is…

This is the fifth article in our six-part series “Traveling the Pan Borneo Highway.” Read Part One, Part Two, Part Three and Part Four. KOTA KINABALU, Malaysia — In March 2019, the…

This is the third article in our six-part series “Traveling the Pan Borneo Highway.” Read Part One and Part Two. KUALA LUMPUR, Malaysia — When Baru Bian was a boy,…

This is the first article in our six-part series “Traveling the Pan Borneo Highway.” MIRI, Malaysia — Tucked under the sweep of green that blankets parts of Malaysian Borneo is…

The climate crisis is bringing extreme storms, drought and temperatures to the High Plains, even as U.S. administrations from Clinton to Trump have withdrawn aid to reservations.

Scientists call it flood-retreat agriculture. As a swollen river blankets a dry plain and then recedes, it replenishes the thin soil with enough nutrients to sprout grass for cattle and…

The way humans have changed the forests of Central and South America may be making it impossible for subsistence hunters to continue their way of life, according to two conservation…

Day two of the World Agroforestry Congress was in full swing today as the 1,200 plus attendees streamed into workshops and swirled among some 600+ posters hanging in the halls…

Dean Cycon is an environmental and indigenous rights lawyer by training who's been involved in community development since 1976. He founded or co-founded numerous international development groups, including Coffee Kids…

New research finds that global warming has exacerbated global economic inequality, making already-wealthy nations even richer while slowing economic growth in poorer countries. According to the study, published in PNAS…

Life on this planet, in all its wide diversity, is disappearing more quickly now than it has at any time in human history, and some 1 million species of plants…

The elephant poaching epidemic continues to tear across the African continent. It’s even reached remote refuges in recent years, like the Luangwa Valley in Zambia, where poaching deaths began surging…

Deforestation can reduce communities’ access to clean drinking water, according to a recent study conducted in Malawi. A lot of prior research on how deforestation impacts water dynamics has shown…

The chief minister of the Malaysian state of Sabah has called on construction crews working on the multi-billion-dollar Pan Borneo Highway project to avoid breaking up the region’s forests and…

Agroforestry is an agricultural technique that combines trees with shrubs, crops and livestock in a system that produces food, supports biodiversity, builds soil horizons and water tables, and sequesters carbon from…

Giraffes have to search a wider area for food and water when people live nearby, according to a recent study. “Giraffes are huge browsing animals that live in African savanna…

Illegal gold mining is on the verge of wiping out an iconic wetland forest in the heart of Madagascar’s flagship national park, according to a new paper. Forest loss due…

It was an ambitious project from the start: to capture the Congo Basin rainforest in the pages of a book. Stretching across an area larger than Saudi Arabia, the world’s…

OUEZZANE, Morocco — Suisi Rheia was checking the olives on her tree in front of the community huilerie, or olive oil mill. It was already mid-November 2018, but some fruits…

ISFARA, Tajikistan — Ayubhudja Yahyehudjaev stands between rows of fruit trees in the hills above town, glad and proud that this agroforestry test garden of nearly 0.6 hectares (1.5 acres)…