African farmers currently face a crisis. Droughts and unpredictable weather, in combination with decreasing soil fertility and pests, have caused crop failure on many of the continent’s drylands.

But there are solutions—namely, low-cost farmer innovations. Chris Reij, a Sustainable Land Management Specialist with Free University Amsterdam and a Senior Fellow at the World Resources Institute, is leading the charge in this area. Reij facilitates the “African Re-greening Initiatives,” a movement that supports collaboration among partners working at the local level to help African farmers adapt to climate change and develop productive, sustainable farming systems.

Reij has received much acclaim for helping develop innovative solutions to Africa’s forests and food crises. His work has been covered by The New Yorker, The Nation, and the New York Times, just to name a few. Today, July 12th, Reij will appear on PBS NewsHour.

I recently sat down with Reij to talk about one of the most promising trends in African agriculture: farmer-managed re-greening.

The World Resources Institute (WRI) and our corporate partners are using a new twist on an old tool to spark innovations for a green economy—a “SWOT tool” adapted for corporate sustainability.

SWOT analysis is a framework companies have used for almost 50 years to evaluate strengths, weaknesses, opportunities, and threats (SWOT). In partnership with companies in WRI’s Next Practice Collaborative, we have developed a guide based on this familiar framework to help corporations find, evaluate, and act on new risks and opportunities as environmental challenges shape tomorrow’s markets.

We are excited to invite companies to help road test this new tool. Those who do will help shape the final version, have the opportunity to be featured as a case study, and can connect with other companies to share insights on the big trends they see around the corner.

With more than 75 percent of the world’s coral species and twice the number of reef fish found anywhere else in the world, the Coral Triangle is the center of the world’s marine biodiversity. Stretching from central Southeast Asia to the edge of the western Pacific, 130 million people in the Coral Triangle region depend on marine resources for food and livelihoods. In this way, the region’s coral reefs and associated fisheries are vital to people and national economies, but they’re also severely threatened by overexploitation.

Recognizing the critical role that coral reefs play in people’s lives and the regional economy, the governments of the six countries that make up the Coral Triangle—Indonesia, Malaysia, Papua New Guinea, the Philippines, Solomon Islands, and Timor-Leste—came together in 2009 to form the largest marine governance initiative in the world, the Coral Triangle Initiative on Coral Reefs, Fisheries and Food Security (CTI-CFF). Their common goal is to manage their valuable marine resources so that they can continue to provide benefits to people in the future.

Reefs at Risk Revisited in the Coral Triangle

In support of this ongoing initiative, the World Resources Institute and the USAID-funded Coral Triangle Support Partnership have just released a new report, Reefs at Risk Revisited in the Coral Triangle. The report provides both a region-wide and country-level perspective on the risks to reef ecosystems.

This post is part of WRI’s “Extreme Weather Watch” series, which explores the link between climate change and extreme events. Read our other posts in this series.

While many Americans set up camp to watch fireworks on July 4th, those in the Western U.S. were not as lucky. Firefighters didn’t get a holiday reprieve as they battled ongoing forest fires in Colorado. Plus, at least 40 cities in the state as well as many in neighboring states cancelled their fireworks shows due to the high risk of sparking new fires.

Disappointed fireworks fans were the least of the region’s worries, though. Colorado is experiencing its worst wildfire season in a decade, with half a dozen lives lost, more than 600 homes consumed, and more than 270 square miles (more than 10 times the size of Manhattan) burned so far. And the state isn’t alone: Wildfires have already struck across 137 square miles of Wyoming and 380 square miles of Montana as well.

Several news accounts have blamed the Colorado fires on lightning. While that may have been the trigger, much research suggests that this summer’s widespread destruction is not an anomaly, but rather part of an ominous, ongoing trend.