A 9.1M earthquake occurred in Indian Ocean on 26 December 2004 and caused tsunami disaster that devastated many areas in Asian and African countries. Aceh Province, the closest areas from the epicenter, received huge impacts.
The recent Red Cross experience acting on forecasts in west Africa provides examples of how climate information can be linked to decisions and serve development in low-income regions, and how climate and weather forecasts may become useful to communities at risk from climatic events, provided that the obstacles thwarting these communities’ access to and use of forecasts are clearly identified a
Trees inside and outside forests contribute to food security in Africa in the face of climate variability and change. They also provide environmental and social benefits as part of farming livelihoods. Varied ecological and socio-economic conditions have given rise to specific forms of agroforestry in different parts of Africa.
Agroforestry is one of the most conspicuous land use systems across landscapes and agroecological zones in Africa. With food shortages and increased threats of climate change, interest in agroforestry is gathering for its potential to address various on-farm adaptation needs, and fulfill many roles in AFOLU-related mitigation pathways.
Agroforestry systems are complex assemblages of ecosystem components, each of which responds to climate. Whereas climate change impacts on crops grown in monocultures can reasonably well be projected with process-based crop models, robust models for complex agroforestry systems are not available.
The climate change research community’s shared socioeconomic pathways (SSPs) are a set of alternative global development scenarios focused on mitigation of and adaptation to climate change.
Ethnopharmacological relevance: Purgative enemas form an integral part of African traditional medicine. Besides possible benefits, serious health risks of rectal herbal therapy have been described in literature. To design appropriate health education programs, it is essential to understand traditional herbal practices and local perceptions of health and illness.
Ethnopharmacological relevance: Waterborne diseases such as diarrhoea are common world wide, including in Bizana, South Africa where the majority of rural dwellers depend largely on water from unprotected sources. The people from Bizana use medicinal plants as their first line of health care to cure and prevent diarrhoea.
Aims of the study: Commercially important indigenous medicinal plants of southern Africa are reviewed in the context of fundamental knowledge about their ethnobotany, phylogeny, genetics, taxonomy, biochemistry, chemical variation, reproductive biology and horticulture.