Today is National Bison Day in the United States, observed annually on the first Saturday in November. The day honors an animal deeply revered by Tribal Nations — one that has sustained Indigenous peoples for generations, providing nutritious food, clothing, tools and materials for ceremonial and cultural practices. In 2016, the American bison was designated the national mammal of the United States. Before westward expansion and mass slaughter decimated their populations, an estimated 60 million bison roamed North America, with the largest herds concentrated across what is now the central United States. For generations, Native Americans throughout the Great Plains and other bison territories depended on the buffalo for virtually every aspect of life. The animal provided sustenance, supported tribal economies and held profound cultural and spiritual significance. But that relationship was violently disrupted. By 1889, commercial hunting and government-backed eradication efforts had brought bison to the brink of extinction. Their near disappearance devastated Indigenous communities, disrupted traditional ways of life and contributed to the degradation of grassland ecosystems. Today, Tribal Nations are helping lead the effort to reverse that history. Through conservation, herd restoration and Indigenous food sovereignty programs, tribes are bringing buffalo back to their lands — restoring...

Dodoma region, Tanzania – Theresia Abel Nyoka has received messages on her phone about M-Kilimo and e-Kilimo, digital services designed to help farmers, but she has never registered for either. “It is simply because we have not been given education. I do not know their importance or benefits,” she told Al Jazeera by phone from Paranga village in central Tanzania’s Dodoma region. M-Kilimo, a Ministry of Agriculture mobile service, provides market information and farming advice, allows farmers to advertise produce and enables them to ask agricultural extension workers for help. The broader e-Kilimo platform brings government agricultural services together through a website and smartphone app. Nyoka instead relies on a system she understands. She takes her produce to a warehouse operated through her Agricultural Marketing Cooperative Society (AMCOS), where farmers pool crops for sale at organised auctions during the marketing season. Jeremiah Luwe, 49, a maize and pigeon pea farmer from Ngomai village in Kongwa district, has tried using M-Kilimo on his smartphone. But he says responses to questions about markets and agricultural inputs can take up to two weeks. “Sometimes the information arrives too late to be useful. The government should provide a faster system that responds on time...

In a joint ministerial statement issued by members of the Alliance of Champions for Food Systems Transformation (ACF) at UN COP17, ministers said inadequate access to finance was preventing agricultural cooperatives and local communities from implementing changes needed to protect nature and strengthen food systems. It has been backed by ministers from Brazil, Cambodia, Norway, Rwanda and Sierra Leone and Italy. The statement, titled ‘Food Systems for Nature: Closing the Implementation Gap’, argues that transforming food systems is essential to meeting the Kunming-Montreal Global Biodiversity Framework, which aims to conserve 30% of land and sea, restore degraded ecosystems and reform incentives that harm nature. More than half of the framework’s 23 targets depend on addressing the impacts of food systems, the ministers said, while progress remains insufficient with four years left until 2030. Debt and funding barriers limit action The ministers identified debt distress, high borrowing costs and complex funding procedures as barriers to delivering finance to those working on the ground. Countries facing the greatest impacts of climate change are often constrained by these financial pressures, while bureaucratic processes can prevent available funding from reaching local organisations and producers. They called for finance for biodiversity and sustainable food systems...

In a joint ministerial statement issued by members of the Alliance of Champions for Food Systems Transformation (ACF) at UN COP17, ministers said inadequate access to finance was preventing agricultural cooperatives and local communities from implementing changes needed to protect nature and strengthen food systems. It has been backed by ministers from Brazil, Cambodia, Norway, Rwanda and Sierra Leone and Italy. The statement, titled ‘Food Systems for Nature: Closing the Implementation Gap’, argues that transforming food systems is essential to meeting the Kunming-Montreal Global Biodiversity Framework, which aims to conserve 30% of land and sea, restore degraded ecosystems and reform incentives that harm nature. More than half of the framework’s 23 targets depend on addressing the impacts of food systems, the ministers said, while progress remains insufficient with four years left until 2030. Debt and funding barriers limit action The ministers identified debt distress, high borrowing costs and complex funding procedures as barriers to delivering finance to those working on the ground. Countries facing the greatest impacts of climate change are often constrained by these financial pressures, while bureaucratic processes can prevent available funding from reaching local organisations and producers. They called for finance for biodiversity and sustainable food systems...

The CalEPA Tribal Advisory Committee was invited to the Eastern Sierra to address urgent environmental issues affecting Tribal communities.

Just 2.5% of all public climate finance currently goes to agriculture and land use systems, despite the sector producing around 33% of all global greenhouse gas emissions. Ahead of COP31, the United Nations climate conference that starts November 9 in Antalya, Turkey, many are hoping these numbers will change. “If agrifood accounts for 33%, the finance to help it should go up to that number as well, so that we have the tools to reduce greenhouse gas emissions and we [can] adapt and mitigate climate change,” Ismahane Elouafi, executive managing director of the CGIAR, said in a webinar this week. Climate finance is a key agenda item at COP31. The UN defines it as “the provision and mobilization of funds from public, private, and alternative sources to support mitigation and adaptation, particularly in developing countries.” As the above numbers make clear, food and agriculture have historically been sidelined in climate conversations, including those at past COPs. And while this is slowly changing, farming and land use, particularly for smallholder farmers in low- to middle-income countries, are among the most vulnerable sectors in the world when it comes to climate risks. More climate finance reaching agrifood could, as Elouafi says, enable...