Green Futures Articles

Japan’s Association of Shinto Shrines has pledged to source all timber from sustainably managed woodland. 

Halophytes could prove a profitable solution to salinified cropland

Millions of people living in coastal communities face additional food stress from the intrusion of salt into agricultural soils, due to poor irrigation, tidal flooding and rising sea levels. Faced with such a challenge, many talk of using genetic modification to create a new strain of salt-tolerant crops.

But a very different approach is starting to reap rewards in the southern Indian state of Tamil Nadu. Here, research is focused on commercialising existing plants which naturally have a high salt tolerance.

Constitutional reform grants Kenyans the “right to a clean and healthy environment”.

Environmental rights have been explicitly recognised as part of the constitutional relationship between Kenya’s Government and its people for the first time. Adopted last year following a referendum, the new constitution grants every person “the right to a clean and healthy environment, which includes the right to have the environment protected for the benefit of present and future generations through legislative and other measures”.

Local lawyers have welcomed the step. Maurice Makoloo, Director of the Institute for Law and Environmental Governance, Nairobi, says that the new legal provisions would have a “profound effect” on prospects for environmental litigation. Specifically, says Makoloo, they will alleviate procedural barriers to court hearings, and improve public access to information about the environment. “These new rights elevate discourse on environmental issues to a higher level”, he adds.

Tree-planting programme attracts investment in south Ethiopia

The promise of potential income is driving a reforestation programme in Ethiopia, after the Government granted ownership of the land to cooperative groups. Locals have planted cash crops such as Spanish apple seeds for orchards and fast-growing Australian eucalyptus for wood and fuel – alongside native species – in an attempt to replace lost forests in the southern state of Oromia.

Oromia had been the site of an intensive forestation programme in the late 1980s as part of the communist junta’s regime. The scheme obliged locals to plant trees in exchange for food – a top-down approach to land management that caused many locals to see reforestation as a punishment, as opposed to an opportunity. Mass deforestation in the region for short-term economic gain followed the overthrow of
the regime.