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Ever since she was a child, Maha has fought for the rights of others. Her older sister Mai was born with a case of severe Cerebral Palsy, a group of neurological disorders that affect movement and muscle tone, and from a young age Maha cared for her like a second [...]

The WeCaN initiative held its first Global Gathering from 24 - 26 May, bringing together 20 members from across the world to meet in person for the first time. The workshop had one main aim: validating the WeCaN advocacy strategy and setting out a path for action over the next [...]

The Dryland Sustainable Landscapes Impact Program (DSL-IP), led by the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations (FAO) and financed with support from the Global Environmental Facility (GEF), organized its first Regional Workshop in Southern Africa on 22-26 May, bringing together over 100 experts in forestry, agriculture and environmental [...]

Equality for women has always been a passion for Alima Sagito Saeed. After finishing school, she went straight to university to study development and has worked in the field ever since, with one aim: to improve gender equality and create better lives for women in her home country of Ghana. Alima [...]

The FAO Dryland team’s MEV-CAM initiative kicked off its expansion into Latin America with a four-day training course on process documentation methods, its first-ever workshop held virtually. Eleven participants from six Latin American countries with Monitoring & Evaluation, technical and communications backgrounds attended the training, gaining valuable insight into the use [...]

FAO has launched a new e-learning course that will inspire practitioners to champion transformational dryland forest management strategies, spearheaded by the Committee on Forestry’s Working Group on Dryland Forests and Agrosilvopastoral Systems (COFO WG).  The Transforming Dryland Forests and Agrosilvopastoral Systems: An approach to sustaining and developing food production in drylands under [...]

Traditionally women play a vital role in the forest sector, often carrying out the lion’s share of foraging for food in forests and firewood collection. Now, women entrepreneurs are using technology to elevate women’s role in forestry, improve their livelihoods and empower communities of rural women. However, one of the challenges [...]

When Fiorella Herrera found a dead dolphin on a beach in 2013, it changed the course of her life forever. She knew there could be several reasons for it: the most likely being that it had been trapped in an illegal net and dragged ashore, or poisoned by mercury released [...]

The Committee on Forestry (COFO) Working Group on Dryland Forests and Agrosilvopastoral Systems (WG) has announced the dates of the first Drylands Summer School, in collaboration with the International Year of Rangelands and Pastoralists (IYRP) 2026. At the 26th Session of the Committee on Forestry in 2022, the COFO WG was [...]

“At ten years old I went to school by chance. My father disagreed with the education opportunity proposed by a Catholic mission nearby my village, and he considered me useless. He recommended marrying me off as soon as possible.”  This was the harsh reality for Jane Meriwas. Eventually, she attended [...]