Central Africa is home to the second largest continuous block of rainforest on the planet after the Amazon Basin. The area hosts a wealth of biodiversity and provides vital regional and global ecological services.

Recent studies show how the Congo Basin forests help to generate rainfall both locally and on a sub-continental scale. Destruction of these extensive forests could severely disrupt this process.

Implementing a U.N.-backed scheme to slow forest loss in the Democratic Republic of Congo will be difficult, a new study says, until the government addresses corruption, a lack of state authority in some regions, and intermittent fighting between rebels and government forces in the country’s east.

Climate change is hitting the Congo Basin region hard and while communities there and in other parts of Africa struggle to adapt to rising temperatures and changing rainfall patterns, scientists are trying to help — using radio to spread the word.

More than 1,900 insect species form part of the traditional diets of at least 2 billion people, providing a nutritious food source high in protein, vitamin, fiber and mineral content, scientists have said.

Governments must ensure food security is top of the development agenda as global population expands from 7 billion to a projected 9 billion people by 2050, the chair of the Committee on World Food Security (CFS) told Forests News at a conference in Rome.