Already a hotspot for tropical forests and biodiversity, in recent decades the Lower Mekong Region (LMR) has also become a hotspot for deforestation. Between 1990-2015, the region lost about 4.7 million hectares of forest, as a result of logging, mining, and expansion of unsustainable agriculture and infrastructure. Countries have faced challenges incentivising sustainable wood supply chains and effective forest governance, while the increasing international demand for wood products and regional trade has only fueled illegal forest exploitation.    Since March 2020, the UN-REDD Programme’s Sustainable Forest Trade in the Lower Mekong Region (SFT-LMR) initiative has been working with national governments and regional and local partners across five countries in the region to fight the trade of illegal forest...

"This year, we’ve seen the worst drought ever. Usually, the rivers run dry here in this southern part of Zambia by July, but this year, they were empty already by May. The little water we have left is just enough for us- the people and the cattle. We have no water to raise any crops." - Juliette Machona, a villager living in Choma, Zambia   Juliette is 35 years old, with four kids. When she finished secondary school in Zambia, her parents couldn’t afford to send her to university, which cost USD $2,000 per year, given that the country’s minimum wage is about...

A medida que la covid-19 se sigue cobrando vidas y desestabilizando las economías de todo el mundo, es casi inimaginable pensar en las pandemias que pueden venir después de esta. Pero es precisamente lo que tenemos que hacer si queremos reducir el riesgo de futuras enfermedades que volverían a devastar vidas, perjudicar las economías y cambiar el mundo tal como lo conocemos. Al menos el 60% de las enfermedades infecciosas emergentes son de origen zoonótico, lo que significa que son causadas por patógenos que se transmiten entre humanos y otros vertebrados, en la mayoría de los casos, fauna silvestre. Cada vez hay más pruebas de...

As COVID-19 continues to take lives and disrupt economies across the world, it is almost unfathomable to think about pandemics that may come after this one. But today, on World Zoonoses Day, we need to do exactly that if we are to reduce the risks of future diseases that may once again devastate lives, damage economies, and change the world as we know it. At least 60% of emerging infectious diseases are of zoonotic origin, meaning they are caused by pathogens that are shared between humans and other vertebrates – in most cases, wildlife. There is growing evidence that human actions to...

More than 30% of the world’s land area is covered by forests. FAO’s Global Forest Resources Assessment 2020 found that despite a slowing of the rate of deforestation in the last decade, some 10 million hectares are still being lost each year through conversion to agriculture and other land uses. Although large-scale commercial agricultural production is the greatest culprit, local subsistence agriculture also plays a role in forest degradation and deforestation. As such, halting deforestation will require the complete transformation of agri-food systems towards more sustainable practices. The connections between food production and forestry were explored during the high-level panel, “Forests...