Women are an integral part of the agricultural sector in coastal Kenya. They play a key role in food production and food security and are, in many ways, the backbone of rural economies. As such, there’s a huge potential for women to play an important role in ensuring that agricultural practices are climate-smart, sustainable and support conservation efforts. In rural Kenya, women dominate subsistence agriculture activities and they contribute the lion’s share of the labour required for food production. Their work includes: collecting household fuel, fetching water, digging and weeding, transpo ..read more

October was very exciting and busy month for us here in Kwale, Kenya. We met new people, developed new solutions to ever emerging challenges and hosted WWF staff from across the globe. Staff gathered to learn and share experience about community based conservation work. Let me share some of these exciting moments with you. The Mijikenda Kaya forests The Mijikenda Kaya forest landscape is an area rich in biodiversity. It has significant sacred and cultural value and is also a World Heritage Site. WWF is working with partners to protect these important coastal forests through community-based ini ..read more

I’m sure you’ve heard some of the shocking stats about the plastic pollution choking our oceans: 90% of seabirds have fragments of plastic in their stomach; one in two sea turtles have ingested plastic; an estimated 8 million tonnes are dumped in our oceans every single year. Thanks to awareness raising campaigns such as Sky Ocean Rescue and programmes such as Blue Planet II, public concern about this issue has skyrocketed, and the issue is now among the top policy priorities of the UK Government. There is growing concern about the need to move away from our throwaway culture to a circular eco ..read more

Lately, we hear a lot about palm oil, and let’s face it, it’s usually negative and we might hear our ‘more environmentally informed’ friends tell us it’s basically the devil and we should avoid it at all costs if we care about the environment, the rainforests and the Orangutans. Well, here are ten things you should know about palm oil so you can make your own decisions about this ubiquitous ingredient with a bad reputation and the steps you can take to make a difference. Let’s start with the basics… 1. What is palm oil? It’s an edible vegetable oil that comes from the fruit of oil palm trees ..read more

Greenland is vast, remote and insanely beautiful. It is also one the most sparsely populated countries in the world, yet it is undergoing profound environmental, geopolitical and economic change. Earlier this year, we invited a group of UK parliamentarians who were visiting Greenland to drop in on the newest office in our global network. It opened in 2015 in the capital city Nuuk, establishing WWF as the first global conservation organisation to have an office in Greenland. James Gray MP, Chairman of the All-Party Parliamentary Group for the Polar Regions, led this expedition, and he kindly sh ..read more

Tomorrow thousands of people will go to Hyde Park to join The People’s Walk for Wildlife. The reason is to demonstrate support for action to reverse the collapse in nature going on all around us. From the rapid decline of once common birds and the disappearance of butterflies to the destruction of flower-rich meadows and pollution of our most beautiful rivers, we have in a short time seen a huge transformation in the environment that we all live in and depend upon. Having destroyed and degraded so much of what was once commonplace, many people believe it is time to start down the road to the r ..read more

During the months ahead Ministers will publish draft laws that will lay the foundations for a new farming policy – one that should pay farmers for public goods, including the recovery of wildlife. While enjoying massive public support, the policy will be under attack from those who’d rather we stick to business as usual. England’s ‘patchwork quilt’ of fields, hedges and woods is as much a part of our national identity as Buckingham Palace or Stonehenge. Yet as we glimpse through train and car windows our familiar green landscapes, all is far from well. Streams that thread through the countrysi ..read more

The first broad Environment bill for more than 20 years will soon be brought before the Westminster Parliament. It could be the first law in the world to contain the express legal duty to leave our environment in better shape than we found it. But what might such a new law include, and what should we all be urging Ministers and MPs across all the political parties in England, to seek to achieve in the months ahead? WWF has been working to answer those questions as a member of the Greener UK coalition of conservation and environment groups. Alongside the Wildlife Trusts, RSPB, National Trust, W ..read more

The Prime Minister has said that the Government will soon bring forward a new Environment Bill, the first in more than twenty years. At WWF we were delighted to see our calls for such a step heeded at the highest level. This is not only for what is needed here at home in aiding the recovery of nature but also because of the potential for the UK to show leadership in the face of what is a global crisis. That crisis has been well documented and is seen in among other things what is now an impending mass extinction of species, with the global picture reflected in UK trends. Take the State of Natu ..read more

Avoiding single use plastic in our daily lives can be hard work. Whether it’s at the supermarket, at work or out socialising, plastic is all around us. Individuals, businesses and governments all have an important role to play. The choices we make as consumers are greatly influenced by producer and retailer decisions, which in turn are influenced and regulated by government actions. Part of the solution lies with businesses, and many in Wales are making changes – innovating to cut down on plastic waste. Here are just a few examples. Green Man Festival Green Man Festival, held in the Brecon Bea ..read more