PORT LOKO, Sierra Leone — When the tide pulls away from the beach in the agricultural regions in Mahera in Lungi, about 27 kilometers (17 miles) across the sea from the country’s capital, Freetown, the digging commences. Young men shovel sand into cement bags and carry them to a flat open area to pile sand into heaps to be sold by local women to truck drivers. These women are dedicated sand sellers. They negotiate prices, buy sand from the shovelers and sell to heavy-duty truck drivers to be transported to Lungi, Port Loko and other areas. The income helps pay for food, school fees and other basic needs of their families.  However, their work relies heavily on the seasonal tide: The sellers can buy sand during low tide but are banned from doing so during high tide. In Mahera, the sand trade began as a survival strategy for 14 women who became family breadwinners, mostly due to absent partners. Aminata Kargbo is the chairperson of the sand sellers in the locality in Mahera, and entered the business to support her seven children after her husband’s death. “Most of these women have lost their husbands, and the money we make goes to support our children,” she said. She oversees about 19 sand sellers, the majority of them women. Many of these women have become widows after losing their husbands to Sierra Leone’s civil war (1991-2002) and various illnesses. Aminata Kargbo, chairperson of the sand sellers in Mahera, stands in front of…This article was originally published on Mongabay

The environmental impacts caused by invasive alien species are more severe in poor countries of Global South than wealthy countries of Global North, a new study finds. The study shatters a long-standing assumption that wealthier Global North countries suffer the worst effects of invasive alien species (IAS) and highlights weak governance and insufficient management capacity as some of the reasons for greater severity of impacts in the Global South. The study published in Science in July employed a method involving the assessment of the average impact of severity, which uses a different approach from previous research. Instead of focusing on numbers of invasive species, this method focuses on how serious the level of impacts caused by invasive species are. Previously, impacts of IAS have been regarded more of a problem in the Global North because fewer large impacts were reported from the Global South, Sven Bacher, professor of ecology at University of Fribourg and the lead author of the research, told Mongabay by email. “We show that this is due to uneven reporting, and that the average impacts are actually higher in the GS [Global South]. This even holds for impacts of the same IAS introduced to both the GS and the GN [Global North]: on average their impacts are larger in the GS,” he said. Among the paper’s key findings, the scientists identified weak governance and limited management capacities as two major factors contributing to the Global South’s greater vulnerability. Some of the impacts of IAS can include damage…This article was originally published on Mongabay