Biodiversity

By Darius Barrolle, Senior Communications Specialist   Once again, entertainment-education has proven to be an effective tool for increasing knowledge and promoting best practices in forest and wildlife conservation. After only 3 months of broadcast, the “Forest Blessings” radio drama and call-in show series has captured the hearts and minds of over 4 million people,…

By David Goodman   Beneath the thick canopy of West Africa’s forests, there are dark secrets. In the sleepy Liberian town of Mano River Congo, Sierra Leone beckons across the broad river. A lone border guard sits in a ramshackle shelter—a converted Ebola treatment unit—and checks the occasional visitor who arrives by boat. The golden…

By Chaz Kyser   Transboundary agreements between Guinea and Liberia to better protect and manage their shared forests and wildlife proved beneficial for two forest elephants that decided they didn’t need visas or face masks to travel between the two West African countries.   The elephants, “threatened with extinction” according to the Convention on the…

By David Goodman   They are one of the shyest and most elusive inhabitants of West Africa. Now scientists have discovered that forest elephants play a key role in curbing global climate change. Unlike iconic savanna elephants that roam the plains of sub-Saharan Africa, African forest elephants are the smaller cousins that are found in…

By Nouhou Ndam   West Africa’s forests are rapidly disappearing, with only 10% left to shelter both wildlife and humans alike in what had been a massive forest complex stretching from Guinea to Cameroon and covering 680,000 square kilometers (km2). To halt and reverse the deforestation threatening the remaining forest cover (70,000 km2), including the…

By Chaz Kyser   As a company founded to create prosperity for African women, Ghana-based Global Mamas has striven to ensure that both the women it employs and those it partners with to make and sell its array of handcrafted products are treated equitably and positioned for success. However, there is always more to learn…

By Chidera Okeke, Global Mamas Community Outreach Specialist.   For the past 17 years, Global Mamas has progressed in its mission to create a life of prosperity for women across Ghana by creating and selling handmade fair trade products. The upsurge of the COVID-19 pandemic saw a derailment in the organization’s activities and threatened to…

By Edudzi Nyomi, WA BiCC Communications Specialist In the early weeks of self-isolation and physical distancing, a few curious friends asked my opinion about the supposed positive environmental effects of COVID-19 stemming from us staying at home. The question remains legitimate even as countries around the world—including Ghana, where I live—have substantially eased restrictions on…

“Forest Blessings,” a 24-episode radio drama series produced by the West Africa Biodiversity and Climate Change (WA BiCC) Program, has officially launched in the Mano River Union (MRU) countries of Liberia, Sierra Leone, and Côte d’Ivoire. The drama was created to raise awareness about forest conservation issues, including deforestation, forest degradation, and biodiversity loss. These…

By Mark Dahn   In Liberia, upland rice farming and shifting cultivation are practised by many rural farmers. The people of lower Sokpo Clan in Grand Cape Mount County near the Gola Forest National Park (GFNP) are known for practising this unsustainable farming method, which is a major threat to the park because the farmers…