For the first time in the modern history of the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC), a Congolese nongovernmental organization will co-manage a protected area in the country. “It is an honor,” Dominique Bikaba, founder of the NGO Strong Roots, told Mongabay by phone. Strong Roots has been entrusted with the management of Itombwe Nature Reserve (RNI), located in South Kivu province in the northeast DRC. Under a public-private partnership Strong Roots will manage the reserve for the next 10 years. The Congolese Wildlife Authority (ICCN), the national authority responsible for natural parks, will retain oversight of the park. “I think the government chose us, because they have observed the work we have done in the biodiversity corridor and the way we have put local communities at the center of conservation,” Bikaba said. Strong Roots has spent about a decade securing land for communities and wildlife to create a 1-million-hectare (2.5-million-acre) corridor through community forestry concessions. This corridor spans the area between Kahuzi-Biega National Park and Itombwe Nature Reserve. To date, Strong Roots has secured 23 community forest concessions in the area, covering nearly 600,000 hectares (1.5 million acres) of land. “Itombwe is made up of seven chiefdoms, and we are already working with four of them in the corridor,” Bikaba said. “So we have a very good knowledge of the reserve; we know its problems and its needs.” Bikaba is a member of an Indigenous community in the area that was evicted to make way for another protected area. So,…This article was originally published on Mongabay

Several years of severe drought are forcing people to leave their homes in Angola to search for water and food in neighboring Namibia. “There is real hunger and thirst here; that’s why the village has become depopulated,” Nghikembua (not his real name), who lives in Cunene Province in southern Angola, told Amnesty International in 2021. Nghikembua said nearly all the able-bodied people of his village have left, leaving behind only the elderly, like himself, “Those who still had some strength left felt forced to leave the village for Namibia.” More than 1.8 million people live in Cunene and nearly 75% of the population is rural and depends on pastoralism and subsistence farming. “Southern Angola has experienced repeated severe droughts, extreme heat and environmental degradation for quite a number of years, leaving families without water, crops, or livestock,” said Victor Nyamori, an Amnesty International researcher and migration lawyer who collected the testimonies for the recently published report featuring Nghikembua. Approximately 30% of the area has been degraded by desertification, according to the Amnesty International report, leaving many subsistence communities without livelihoods. “Namibia has also suffered from drought, but the state has responded much better and has put solutions in place to prevent the population from falling into food insecurity and to ensure access to water,” Nyamori told Mongabay in a phone call. Between 2023 and 2024, a strong El Niño event brought the most severe drought in more than a century to the region. Namibia responded to the drought by expanding…This article was originally published on Mongabay

Fifteen countries from Africa, Asia, Latin America and Europe adopted the Mombasa Declaration on June 17, 2026. Together, they committed to advance global fisheries transparency and strengthen efforts to combat illegal, unreported and unregulated (IUU) fishing. The declaration was adopted during the 11th meeting of the international Our Ocean Conference, held in Mombasa, Kenya. Africa had the most countries signing on: Cameroon, The Gambia, Ghana, Guinea, Liberia, the Republic of the Congo and Somalia. “In my country, our very existence depends on fish,” said Emelia Arthur, Ghana’s Minister of Fisheries and Aquaculture, in a statement shared with Mongabay. “Sixty percent of our animal protein comes from fish, and ten percent of our population depends on the fisheries value chain for livelihood. Fisheries are a matter of culture and national security for us. I’m happy that Ghana is among the first countries to sign the Mombasa Declaration,” she added. Countries hope that by working together to harmonize regulations and share information on vessels operating in their territorial waters, they will become more effective in their fight against IUU fishing. “Illegal fishing perpetrators are getting more and more sophisticated in the way they are evading from one country’s laws and regulations by moving to another one,” Cephas Asare told Mongabay in a phone call. Asare is the West Africa regional manager for the Environmental Justice Foundation (EJF), a British NGO working to combat illegal fishing. “This needs to end. That is why we need to address the issue together, to be more…This article was originally published on Mongabay