Search

The Global Environment Facility Council has approved a $7.2 million project to deploy EarthRanger to support the management of 4.9 million hectares of terrestrial protected areas (PAs) in three African countries. The effort will help enhance real-time prevention and response to escalating threats of poaching, human-wildlife conflicts, and habitat loss.  

The Republic of the Congo has taken an important step towards a sustainable mining sector, with the launch of a $10.5-million project to reduce the use of mercury by the nation’s artisanal miners. Widely used in the artisanal and small-scale mining (ASGM) to extract gold from ore, mercury is associated with serious health problems amongst miners, including nervous, digestive, and immune system damage. Once released, mercury can travel far from its point of origin via the atmosphere, water bodies, and food chains, posing a risk to health globally.

Since 2019, the Global Environment Facility-funded planetGOLD program has supported countries in addressing mercury use in artisanal and small-scale gold mining (ASGM).

Doreen Robinson is Chief for Wildlife at the UN Environment Programme (UNEP) and coordinator of the new GEF Congo Basin Sustainable Landscapes Impact Program, a six-country initiative working to address environmental degradation in Central Africa’s forests.

Under the 7th GEF replenishment, GEF-7, Impact Programs (IPs) on Food Systems, Land Use and Restoration (FOLUR); Sustainable Forest Management (SFM); and Sustainable Cities are being developed to address the drivers of environmental degradation, and to support transformational change in these key systems.

One of the world’s most vital ecosystems is set to take a step closer to a sustainable future, with the announcement of a US$63-million programme to stabilize forest cover, peatlands, and wildlife populations across the Congo Basin.

Lowland and swamp forests, forest savannas, and the mighty Congo river make up the 500 million acres of the Congo Basin, the second largest tropical rainforest on the planet. When standing below the trees, the vaulted canopy of leaves blocks out most of the sunlight and traps moisture making a trek along the forest floor dark as night, and very wet.