The United Nations Environment Programme (UN Environment) launched at the end of 2016 a decade-long (2016–2025) flagship programme on Climate, Ecosystems and Livelihoods (CEL), with the aim to assist developing countries in delivering the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) and climate targets while protecting their ecosystems and improving the livelihoods of their people. The CEL programme is a major initiative supported by China and other developing countries to promote long-term South-South cooperation, led by the United Nations Environment Programme International Ecosystem Management Partnership (UNEP-IEMP). This article presents the conceptual framework and implementation strategy of the CEL programme, which were proposed through consultations between UN Environment, Chinese and international experts. Within the conceptual framework, the CEL programme will 1) focus its work on the nexus of climate change, ecosystem services and sustainable livelihoods as the primary priority; 2) encourage cross-sectoral and multi-stakeholder cooperation, enhance interdisciplinary research, and strive for breakthroughs that cross disciplinary boundaries; 3) provide four types of services and products—monitoring and assessment, capacity building, technology demonstration, and science for policy through mainly South-South cooperation; and 4) have far-reaching impacts on delivering SDGs and climate targets in vulnerable developing countries. The CEL programme is going to be implemented in a strategic way through a set of related projects and initiatives. More particularly, it will 1) focus on fragile ecosystems like drylands, mountains, river basins and coastal zones in Asia, Africa and other key regions along the Belt and Road, in the early stage and expand to include some other regions at a later stage; 2) take a three-phase approach, including Phase I, Kick -off (2016–2018), Phase II, Development (2019–2021), and Phase III, Scaling-up (2022–2025); and 3) draw on the globally relevant knowledge, expertise and other resources of a substantial network of partners. So far, UNEP-IEMP has developed more than twenty projects and initiatives in the regions along the Belt and Road, especially in Africa and the Greater Mekong Subregion, which lay a solid foundation for the implementation of CEL programme in its first phase.

Africa is facing both challenges and opportunities in pursuing sustainability. The nexus approach of Climate, Ecosystems and Livelihoods (CEL) is a promising way to seize the “power of integration” for achieving sustainability of the African continent. Based on taking stock of the work of various organizations especially the United Nations Environment Programme International Ecosystem Management Partnership (UNEP-IEMP) in the Africa, this article explores the demands and opportunities for delivering the CEL approach in Africa and provides perspectives on how to promote it in the framework of China-Africa cooperation in future. It concludes that Africa is one of the focal regions in the delivery of the CEL nexus approach; UNEP-IEMP has launched several major initiatives that lay the foundation for delivering the nexus approach of CEL in Africa; however, more ambitious cooperation should be taken through a broad China-Africa partnership, based on existing institutions, networks and ongoing programmes in both Africa and China, to support future China-Africa cooperation on the nexus approach of CEL.

Food security and sustainable agricultural development are the hot issues of scientific research, especially after the population affected by hunger surprisingly increased in 2016. Long-lasting and recurrent famines caused by natural disasters and wars have afflicted Ethiopia. Unlike Ethiopia, which is still struggling to achieve food self-sufficiency, China managed to quickly become food self-sufficient at a rapid speed, despite the fact that it also faced the same challenges of famine over the last century. In the backdrop of differing environmental and socio-political challenges the two countries face, comparing the similarities and differences between the two countries will yield important lessons and insights for Ethiopia to follow to achieve food self-sufficiency. Here, the progress towards food security in Ethiopia and China is presented to quantitatively compare the gap of agricultural production between both countries. We found that food production in Ethiopia is heavily constrained by drought, soil degradation, climate change, out-dated agricultural production technologies, and poverty. According to these challenges, we examined corresponding responses in China to propose solutions for achieving food self-sufficiency in Ethiopia, given the realities of its unique national situation.

The significance of biodiversity conservation has transformed from a concern for conservation of endangered species and landscapes into an increasingly diverse yet comprehensive set of conservation, social and economic development goals. Community conservancy, a powerful extension of the PA system, has great potential to support biodiversity conservation, poverty eradication and conflict mitigation. Based on its policy environment and development characteristics, Kenya has implemented community conservation practices, and established over 160 conservancies across the country in the past decades. This paper reviews the development and experiences of community conservancies, discusses how they have been implemented in Kenya, and looks at the management paradigm, efficacy and challenges to help better understand the community conservancy approach. The development trajectory and lessons these conservancies have to offer can contribute to the sustainable utilization of natural resources and the enhancement of community wellbeing in Kenya and other countries alike.

The Great Green Wall Initiative (GGWI) has an overall objective of fighting desert encroachment through proven practices of sustainable management of land, and the reinforcement and protection of natural resources and systems of production and transformation, while also ensuring socio-economic development of local communities through multi-purpose activity platforms. The activities described in the present study are designed to accomplish several goals: (1) generate wealth, (2) strengthen access to basic social services, (3) manage the transition to a green economy as a means of creating suitable conditions for the emergence of rural production centers, (4) integrate sustainable development in order to eradicate poverty and food insecurity, and (5) strengthen adaptation and resilience capacities of local populations. The present study was undertaken on the basis of a wide variety of available publications and documentation, including articles and scientific papers, thesis, meeting summaries and reports, concerning the implementation of the Great Green Wall Initiative/GGWI in Senegal.

Strengthening research efforts to understand the combined impacts of conservation and livelihoods in protected areas (PAs) will increase the collective contribution that PAs can make towards meeting global goals for sustainable development in the next decade. As an example of such efforts, in 2014 the Chinese Academy of Sciences (CAS), the Kenya Wildlife Service (KWS) and the United Nations Environment Programme (UN Environment) jointly initiated the “Sustainable Management of Protected Areas in East Africa” project. This paper provides a brief overview of the project’s research background, goals and research tasks. The study is based on a look at the PA management system in East Africa and a review of the literature on the impact of PAs in the region. Results show that East African nations have expanded the coverage of PAs and established a complex set of PA management systems over the past century. The mandate for PAs in East African nations has changed recently from protecting biodiversity to alleviating poverty and supporting livelihoods. However, a combination of human activities and ecological processes inside and outside of PAs may not only impact biodiversity and ecosystem function over the long term, but also pose a threat to the capacity of PAs to maintain livelihoods and alleviate poverty in the local communities around them. The state of existing research in the field suggests there is an enormous need for additional research, the purpose of which is to help PA managers and policy-makers in East Africa understand how to achieve win-win outcomes for both ecosystems and human well-being. Against this background, the CAS-KWS-UN Environment joint research project aims to understand the dynamic interactions between ecosystems and human well-being around PAs in East Africa and identify good practices for PA management to reconcile conservation targets with the livelihood demands of local communities. It is intended that this research be shared with interested parties throughout the developing world. Significant progress has been made in the implementation of the project, in terms of data collection, exchanges of researchers, and the completion of case studies. In the coming year, success stories and examples of failures of PA management in the region will be systematically summarized and shared among scientists, managers and decision makers worldwide. Given its blueprint for building a “Beautiful China”, China can both supplement and benefit from East African knowledge and experience of PA management. This joint research effort promotes Sino-African cooperation on PA research and management.

Crop calendar is an important tool providing relevant information on crops cycles in a specific area for effective agricultural management. Crop calendars vary in different areas given dissimilarities in agro-ecosystems' characteristics. This research used multi-temporal MODIS NDVI stratification to assess differences in practiced maize crop calendars in various areas of Rwanda. Four (4) sample NDVI strata dominated by agriculture were purposively chosen, and 433 local farmers were randomly selected from the strata for interviews. The collected information helped to know about their maize planting as well as harvesting dates in order to generate maize calendars per NDVI strata. The generated crop calendars were later classified using k-means unsupervised classification, and produced 4 groupings of practiced maize calendars irrespective of NDVI strata. ANOVA results revealed significant differences between both the generated maize crop calendars by NDVI strata and the practiced crop calendars irrespective of NDVI strata, at p = 0.05. Moreover, chi-square tests and t-tests revealed not only a significant relationship between maize calendars and number of crop growing seasons, but also a significant relationship between maize calendars and NDVI strata, at p = 0.05. Finally, findings of this research contrasted the present conviction that there exist a single general maize calendar all over the country. Instead, the results were in accordance with the fact that Rwanda agro-ecosystems differ from East to West in terms of, mainly, altitude and rainfall patterns variations.

Bush encroachment is widely distributed in arid and semi-arid regions, and it has a serious impact on livestock production, especially in Africa where livestock is a primary source for the livelihoods of many people. In this study, methods of supervised classification and decision tree classification, and indexes of a land use change significance index (Ci) and a single land use dynamic degree, were applied to remote sensing imagery of Ethiopia for 1986–2016. The results show the dynamic characteristics of grassland bush encroachment in low altitude areas (pastures <1500 m above sea level) of Ethiopia in the 30 year period studied. The results revealed several interesting features of this phenomenon. (1) The area of bush encroachment showed an increasing trend, with a maximum of 3.74×10³ km² in 2003, which represented 68.97% of the total area, and declined slightly from 2003∼2016. (2) Among classification types, the area of severe shrub grassland was the largest, accounting for 28.36–49.10% of the total area, while the area of moderate bush encroachment accounted for 9.77–16.68%, and slight bush encroachment accounted for 5.52–7.57%. (3) The expansion rate of shrubby grassland was 0.74% for the 30 year period, while the average annual expansion rate was 2.16% for the 8 years from 1995–2003. (4) Forest land and grassland were the two main land use types of shrub grassland transformation in low altitude areas and bush encroachment changed large amounts of forest land into grassland due to shrub grassland management. The results of this study provide basic data for revealing the impacts of development processes on subsequent bush encroachment and can inform better management for the sustainable development of grasslands in low altitude systems.

Extreme climate events exhibit an increasing spatio-temporal trend globally, and the increasing intensity and frequency may have severe impacts on the human society and natural ecosystems. This study analyzed the extreme temperature and precipitation variability from 1956 to 2016, and evaluated their potential effects on crop yield in Ethiopia. Relative extreme temperature indices exhibited a decreasing trend with low-temperature events, but a significantly upward trend with extreme high temperature events. The frequency of annual warm nights increased to a greater degree than that of cold days. The total annual wet-day precipitation decreased significantly at a rate of -46 mm/decade. Further, the succession of dry days gradually increased by 5.6 day/decade, while an opposite trend of wet days was found with a decline of 1.4 day/ decade. The correlation between annual precipitation and crop production was 0.422, indicating that extreme precipitation indices may have higher explanatory power than extreme temperature indices in the crop yield variations. Moreover, the extreme climate changes have induced significant adverse impacts on crops yield particularly in Ethiopia where no proper adaptation measures have been implemented.

Ethiopian coffee price is highly fluctuated and has significant effect on the economy of the country. Conducting a research on forecasting coffee price has theoretical and practical importance. This study aims at forecasting the coffee price in Ethiopia. We used daily closed price data of Ethiopian coffee recorded in the period 25 June 2008 to 5 January 2017 obtained from Ethiopia commodity exchange (ECX) market to analyse coffee prices fluctuation. Here, the nature of coffee price is non-stationary and we apply the Kalman filtering algorithm on a single linear state space model to estimate and forecast an optimal value of coffee price. The performance of the algorithm for estimating and forecasting the coffee price is evaluated by using root mean square error (RMSE). Based on the linear state space model and the Kalman filtering algorithm, the root mean square error (RMSE) is 0.000016375, which is small enough, and it indicates that the algorithm performs well.

Mauritania, located in the Western Sahara, is one of the least developed countries in the Sahara Desert. Its capital, Nouakchott, which is home to 23% of its population, suffers from soil erosion from the Sahara and salt-water intrusion from the Atlantic Ocean. The local environment is under pressure from the combined effects of climate and socio-economic factors, with desertification being recognized as the greatest threat to life. In this context, high-resolution remote sensing images of Nouakchott obtained during the winters of 1985, 1988, 2000, 2006, and 2010 are selected for interpretation and classification. Analysis of the types of desertification and land use reveals the temporal and spatial characteristics of five distinct time periods from 1985 to 2010. This study analyzes the current status of desertification in Nouakchott and suggests five preventive measures.

Communal rangelands provide diverse ecosystem services to millions of pastoralists and agro-pastoralists. Resettling destitute communities into hitherto uninhabited communal rangelands and forests, a common practice throughout Sub-Saharan Africa, is a threat to the sustainable use of range and forest land resources. In order to understand the effect of resettlement on a semi-arid woodland in northwestern Ethiopia, satellite imagery of 23 resettlement villages taken over a period of fourteen years, and woody vegetation floristic data for three old resettlements, three new resettlements, two refugee camps and one protected area were analyzed using ANOVA and canonical correspondence analysis (CCA). The normalized differential vegetation index (NDVI) and canopy cover around all village types decreased with disturbance gradients, while the magnitude of change varied according to the type of settlement. Limited canopy cover was observed in refugee camps and new resettlements, compared to old resettlements and protected areas. Woody vegetation height class showed a J shaped distribution in all sites except refugee camps (RC), indicating a decline in vegetation. CCA showed that variables like site type, altitude and disturbance gradient significantly affected the diversity of woody species at the different sites. Comparison of individual species responses to disturbances indicated that low fodder value invaders like Dichrostachys cinerea, and many Acacia species were increasing in proportion and coverage at the expense of some multipurpose species including Tamarindus indica, Diospyros mespiliformis, and Pterocarpus lucens. In the absence of regulated vegetation use, resettlements result in a decline in overall vegetation cover and a shift in floristic diversity in favor of invasive species.