PAMACC News: Mining, one of the main causes of the degradation of rivers and forests in the Amazon, can now be monitored remotely by journalists, scientists, and other concerned citizens. Today, the Pulitzer Center in partnership with Earthrise Media launches the Amazon Mining Watch, a platform powered by an algorithm that analyzes satellite imagery to detect gold mines and other open-pit mining activities in the world's largest rainforest. In its beta version, the platform performs 326 million analyses of high-resolution images every 4 months, covering the entire Amazon region, which encompasses nine countries or 6.7 million square kilometers. The algorithm has identified an area with characteristics of mining activity the size of 6.8 thousand square kilometers. To get an idea of the size of the environmental impact, this area is equivalent to about four times the entire city of New York. The Amazon Mining Watch platform is a partnership between the Pulitzer Center's Rainforest Investigations Network (RIN) and Earthrise Media. The two nonprofit organizations had already collaborated to investigate the alarming criminal expansion of gold mining operations in Brazil and Venezuela and, from this experience, they decided to expand their methodology to the entire Amazon region. The AI model recognizes mining zones using topographical features, and therefore it is not possible to determine when using the platform which mining sites are legal and which are illegal. It is also important to point out that because it is an automatic detection method using satellite images, there are false positives. The main goal of Amazon Mining Watch is to encourage journalists, researchers, and activists to use the data as a springboard to further investigate the results, thus contributing to contextualizing the AI findings How the algorithm was developed Earthrise Media, an organization dedicated to supporting communicators and organizations in the use of geospatial analysis, enlisted high school students in the United States for "identification marathons" of looking at mines through satellite images of the Amazon. This human effort eventually "trained" the AI model to recognize the characteristics of an open-pit mine, making it possible for computers to distinguish between mining areas and other land uses, such as agriculture. This statistical and computational model, known as an artificial neural network, was trained to look at patches the size of 44 by 44 pixels, an equivalent of 440m by 440m on the ground. It did this by looking at thousands of Sentinel 2 satellite images from the last four months. In this way, every four months, Amazon Mining Watch will be able to update its analysis of the status of mining on Amazon. The code behind the platform as well as the data generated is open to the public and can be downloaded for other uses. Reporting from the analysis The Rainforest Investigations Network (RIN) was created in 2020 by the Pulitzer Center to support investigative journalists in the three main rainforest regions: the Amazon, the Congo Basin, and Southeast Asia. In its two years of operation, the network has awarded 25 fellowships to…

NAIROBI, Kenya (PAMACC News) – AGRA has announced the opening of applications for the second cohort for the Centre for African Leaders in Agriculture (CALA)’s Advanced Leadership Programme. Designed for rising stars and established executives from across Africa’s agriculture sector in government, the private sector, and civil society, the programme is the continent’s premier leadership programme tailored for developing leaders to advance sustainable agriculture sector priorities. The programme’s application window, which is open from April 19 to June 3 2022, will result in the selection of 80 top applicants from eight focus countries – Ethiopia, Ghana, Kenya, Malawi, Nigeria, Rwanda, Tanzania and Uganda. “In these times of crisis, leadership has never been more important in mitigating crisis, and strengthening resilience. CALA will help leaders develop the skills they need to take the continent through tough times and work for prosperous food systems,” said AGRA President, Dr. Agnes Kalibata. The Centre’s highly competitive Advanced Leadership Programme is a 16-month learning journey that emphasizes collaborative and practical experience focused on supporting leaders to advance their professional skills and contribute to flagship programs to achieve progress toward agriculture transformation. CALA is an AGRA-led initiative and is delivered in collaboration with implementing partners including the African Management Institute (AMI), CALA’s lead implementation and learning partner, and USAID’s Policy LINK. Policy LINK has led the design and rollout of the leadership programme’s coaching component “At AMI we believe leadership is fundamental to the success of any organisation, whether it’s a business, civil society organization, or government,” said Rebecca Harrison, CEO and Co-founder of AMI. “We know that to drive transformation, leaders must be highly-skilled in cross-sector collaboration, be able to lead high-functioning teams, and be positioned to adjust to change and future challenges. We’ve tailored CALA’s learning approach to meet the unique needs of Africa’s ambitious leaders in agriculture and put them in a position to practically apply what they are learning, to take advantage of their limited time. The results we’re already seeing in the CALA Advanced Leadership Programme are heartening and we’re excited to bring on the next cohort.” During the programme, cohort members participate in virtual learning sessions with sector peers and benefit from CALA’s unique approach to on-the-job and executive and group coaching, which emphasizes local knowledge and individual learning styles. “We are fortunate to call upon the talents of an accomplished cadre representing Africa's professional coaching community,” said Steve Smith, Chief of Party of the USAID Policy LINK program, which is leading the CALA coaching program. “Through them, our executive and team coaching utilizes a variety of leadership tools and methodologies geared toward enabling each leader to reflect, learn, and grow.” Among the programme’s offerings are four Leadership Forums with experts from across the continent and globe. Participants will also have access to CALA’s comprehensive library of online leadership courses and derive lessons and best practices from case studies of ‘Game-changers’ spurring Agricultural transformation in Africa and the global south. By the end of the programme, within CALA’s unique Action…

Climate change made extreme rainfall heavier and more likely to happen during several back-to-back storms earlier this year in Madagascar, Malawi and Mozambique, according to rapid attribution analysis by an international team of leading climate scientists. While the analysis shows that climate change made the eventsworse, the scientists were not able to quantify exactly how much climate change influenced the event due to a shortage of high quality weather observations available for this part of Africa. In early 2022, Southeast Africa was hit by three tropical cyclones and two tropical storms in just six weeks. Tropical Storm Ana, in late January, was followed by Tropical Cyclone Batsirai, which made landfall in Madagascar on 5 February. Over the next few weeks, the region was hit by Tropical Storm Dumako and Tropical Cyclones Emnati and Gombe. The consecutive storms left people with little time to react. Madagascar, Malawi and Mozambique were the worst-hit countries, with more than a million people affected by extreme rainfall and floods, and 230 reported deaths. To evaluate the role of climate change on the frequency and intensity of extreme rainfall during the storms, the scientists analysed weather observations and computer simulations to compare the climate as it is today, after about 1.2°C of global warming since the late 1800s, with the climate of the past, following peer-reviewed methods. The analysis focused on rainfall, which caused widespread flooding, over the wettest three-day periods in two regions: Madagascar, where cyclone Batsirai caused major damage, and an area over Malawi and Mozambique most affected by Tropical Storm Ana. In both cases, the results show that rainfall associated with the storms was made more intense by climate change and that episodes of extreme rainfall such as these have become more frequent. The finding is consistent with scientific understanding of how climate change, caused by human greenhouse gas emissions, influences heavy rainfall. As the atmosphere becomes warmer it accumulates more water, increasing the risk of downpours. With further greenhouse gas emissions and continued temperature increases such heavy rainfall episodes will become even more common. While the analysis shows that climate change made the events more intense and damaging, the precise contribution of climate change to the event could not be quantified, due to the absence of comprehensive historical records of rainfall in the region. Of 23 weather stations in the affected area in Mozambique, only four had relatively complete records going back to 1981. In Madagascar and Malawi there were no weather stations with suitable data for the study. In many other parts of the world where more comprehensive weather station data is available, scientists have been able to quantify the influence of climate change on particular extreme events. Increased investment in weather stations in Africa would enable a more precise estimate of the impact of rising greenhouse gas concentrations on the continent. The study was conducted by 22 researchers as part of the World Weather Attribution group, including scientists from universities and meteorological agencies in France, Madagascar, Mozambique, the Netherlands, New…

NAIROBI, Kenya (PAMACC News) - A new report by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) released on April 4, 2022 shows that accelerated international cooperation on finance to support low income countries is a critical enabler of a low-carbon and just transition. The report, Climate Change 2022: Mitigation of Climate Change points out that scaled-up public grants for adaptation and mitigation and funding for low-income and vulnerable regions, especially in Sub-Saharan Africa, may have the highest returns. According to Celine Guivarch, one of the lead authors, the report shows that reducing emissions at the speed and scale required to limit warming to two degrees or below implies deep economic changes that could increase inequality between and within countries. “But policies can be designed to avoid increasing or even decrease economic inequality and poverty. This entails broadening access to clean technologies and international finance. In applying just transition principles to integrate considerations of equity and justice into policies at all scales and enable accelerated mitigation action.” Key options according to the report include: Increased public finance flows from developed to developing countries beyond USD100 billion-a-year; shifting from a direct lending modality towards public guarantees to reduce risks and greatly leverage private flows at lower cost; local capital markets development; and, changing the enabling operational definitions. According to Brett Cohen, one of the coordinating lead authors, the report recognizes that mitigation must be region and context specific. So not all actions are applicable everywhere. Furthermore, it highlights the multiple sustainable development benefits from mitigation, as well as the trade-offs that need to be considered. Understanding and accounting for these will help to build the support base for mitigation action. He further noted that the report considers mitigation from a system point of view so as to maximise various interactions to optimize benefits. For instance, if we are to change to clean cooking at household level, it is best if this is achieved through renewable energy. Further, mitigation efforts need to look at how various sectors and agendas such as the sustainable development goals complement each other On the role of Africa in mitigation, Cohen believes that it is more important to ensure low emissions development trajectories, to ensure that development leapfrogs the high emissions historically found in developed countries. The report explores the concept of sustainable development pathways, demonstrating that all decisions taken along the development trajectory have implications for the emissions intensity for economies. The authors also found that agriculture, forestry, and other land use can provide large-scale emissions reductions and also remove and store carbon dioxide at scale. “Agriculture, forestry, and other land use contribute 22% of global emissions,” said Mercedes Bustamante the lead author: Forest conservation, nature-based solutions, options for developing countries. This sector, according to Bustamante, can not only provide large-scale reductions of emissions but can also remove and store CO2 at scale. She observed that the knowledge and experience of Indigenous Peoples and local communities are crucial for land-based mitigation. That mainstreaming these insights relies on…