The island nation of Cabo Verde is facing record levels of food insecurity due to drought, the COVID-19 pandemic and the conflict in Ukraine, affecting some 181,000 people, or 32 per cent of the country, the World Food Programme (WFP) reported on Thursday. 

Recent hard-won gains in food security and nutrition are at risk, the UN agency said, forcing the government this week to declare a social and economic emergency. 

Known as the rice basket of the country, the delta now sees houses tumbling into rivers and livelihoods lost

When a riverbank subsided and gave way, Tran Van Bi’s house collapsed into a river in Vietnam’s Mekong Delta four years ago. Everything his family had accumulated over 32 years was gone in an instant.

In photos: Cape of floods

City residents battle cold and rain as a heavy storm hits Cape Town

The Kuilsriver gushes along Covid informal settlement in Mfuleni, Cape Town, flooding the bordering houses. Photo: Ashraf Hendricks

• Much of the landscape of Indonesia’s East Kalimantan province has been transformed, its formerly vast forests razed for logging, monocrop agriculture and open-cast coal mining.
• A recently published study analyzes how waves of extractive industries have affected the inhabitants of one village in the province
• The cumulative impacts of these industries were found to be severe, but also to vary depending on multiple factors including ethnicity, gender, wealth and age.

So little money has been allocated to cleaning up the legacy of the South African mining industry that it will take another 70 years to clean up just a fraction of the country’s more than 6,000 abandoned mines.

There are roughly 6,100 “derelict or ownerless” mines scattered across South Africa, many of which can expose people and the environment to significant harm due to pollution of the air, water and soil.

The state of Pernambuco and 4 other states in the northeastern region of Brazil have been devastated by heavy rains since the beginning of this week. Some municipalities of the Metropolitan Region of Recife, as well as some municipalities of the Zona da Mata were extremely affected, mainly the populations living in poverty, victims of the environmental racism that divides the territory leaving the most dangerous areas for black and non-white populations.

• A new report identifies the main threats to biodiversity in Sri Lanka — river diversion, habitat loss, pollution, invasive species, overexploitation, and climate change — as well as updates the catalog of the island’s wealth of plant and animal life.
• The 6th National Report to the Convention on Biological Diversity is the most comprehensive analysis yet of the country’s biodiversity, with more than 100 experts from different fields contributing to the effort.
• It identifies five protected area clusters and recommends systematic interventions to li

• At the COP26 climate summit, U.K.

• Fires have swept through large swaths of peatland forest in the western part of Indonesia’s Sumatra Island since the start of the year, an area that usually sees much smaller, controlled fires.
• Environmental activists say they suspect the fires might be linked to palm oil companies with plantations in and around the burned areas.
• They warn the burning could get worse in the coming months, with the dry season in this part of Sumatra expected to peak only in August.

JAKARTA — Fires in areas of carbon-intense peatland forest on the

MOGADISHU — 

At a news conference in Mogadishu, Somalia’s special envoy for humanitarian issues on Monday said more than six million Somalis were affected by the record drought.

Abdurahman Abdishakur Warsameh said the number of people suffering was quickly approaching half of Somalia’s population.

Warsameh said the drought has hit 72 of Somalia’s 84 districts and that six of them were already facing famine-like conditions with extreme food insecurity.

People living in southern Angola are experiencing the worst drought in 40 years, with many crossing the border into Namibia in search of resources and relief after consecutive years of below-average rainfall affecting their crops.

The International Federation of the Red Cross (IFRC) says the Angolan provinces of Huila, Cunene and Namibe are hardest hit, with nearly 1.6 million people facing crisis or emergency levels of food insecurity during the six-month period ending in March.

The latest flood disaster comes just six weeks after parts of KwaZulu-Natal were struck by devastating flooding in which more than 400 people died. At least 80 people are still missing. More than 40,000 homes were destroyed. Dozens of roads, bridges and water and electricity infrastructure were damaged and much of it has not been repaired or restored.