Curtailing Covid-19 on a dollar-a-day in Malawi: Role of community leadership for shaping public health and economic responses to the pandemic.

Utilizing population-based data from the Covid-19 phone survey ( N = 2 , 262 ) of the Malawi Longitudinal Study of Families and Health (MLSFH) collected during June 2nd-August 17th, 2020, we focus on the crucial role that community leadership and trust in institutions played in shaping behavioral, economic and social responses to Covid-19 in this low-income sub-Saharan African context. We argue that the effective response of Malawi to limit the spread of the virus was facilitated by the engagement of local leadership to mobilize communities to adapt and adhere to Covid-19 prevention strategies. Using linear and ordered probit models and controlling for time fixed effects, we show that village heads (VHs) played pivotal role in shaping individuals' knowledge about the pandemic and the adoption of preventive health behaviors and were crucial for mitigating the negative economic and health consequences of the pandemic. We further show that trust in institutions is of particular importance in shaping individuals' behavior during the pandemic, and these findings highlight the pivotal role of community leadership in fostering better compliance and adoption of public health measures essential to contain the virus. Overall, our findings point to distinctive patterns of pandemic response in a low-income sub-Saharan African rural population that emphasized local leadership as mediators of public health messages and policies. These lessons from the first pandemic wave remain relevant as in many low-income countries behavioral responses to Covid-19 will remain the primary prevention strategy for a foreseeable future.

Global-scale water security and desertification management amidst climate change.

Deserts and semi-arid environments are habitats to rare species, rich cultural heritage, and essential ecological processes. Approximately 46% of the world's surface area is covered by drylands (arid, semi-arid, and dry sub-humid areas), where 3 billion people live and unfortunately witness water insecurity and desertification implications. In this context, the present study argued that reduced dryland ecosystem services and decreased ecosystem health have resulted from the individual and compounding impacts of desertification, water scarcity, and climate change. At 1.5 °C, 2 °C, and 3 °C of global warming, under the shared socio-economic pathway SSP2, the number of people living in drylands who will be affected by various effects on water, energy, and land sectors is projected to reach 951 million, 1152 million, and 1285 million, respectively. Due to combinations of land use change, rainfall variations, fire suppression, and CO2 fertilization, as well as unsustainable management, widespread woody encroachment has occurred in many shrublands and savannas in Africa, Australia, North America, and South America. This has altered biodiversity and reduces ecosystem services, such as water availability and grazing potential. The north side of the Mediterranean, southern Africa, and North and South America are projected to have the most semiarid expansion. Contrarily, drylands are expected to shrink in India, northern China, eastern equatorial Africa, and the southern Sahara. Growing research evidence highlights the adoption of policy frameworks deriving the solutions from soil land management (SLM), indigenous and local knowledge (ILK), early warning systems coupled with adaptation and mitigation responses, and targets of sustainable development goals (SDGs).