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Too Many Tourists? Crowds Offer an Opportunity for Italy's South

]Tourists stand in Pretoria square, in Palermo, Italy, May 14, 2025. REUTERS/
]Tourists stand in Pretoria square, in Palermo, Italy, May 14, 2025. REUTERS/
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Too Many Tourists? Crowds Offer an Opportunity for Italy's South

]Tourists stand in Pretoria square, in Palermo, Italy, May 14, 2025. REUTERS/
]Tourists stand in Pretoria square, in Palermo, Italy, May 14, 2025. REUTERS/

In a rundown neighbourhood of Sicily's capital Palermo, a whitewashed old farmhouse that accommodates pilgrims now offers two rooms to tourists for bed and breakfast after a renovation.

As foreign visitors flock to Sicily, last year Brother Mauro Billetta, head of the parish in the Danisinni neighbourhood, decided that revenue from B&B guests could help lift the area out of decades of neglect. Two months ago he also opened a cafe at the farmhouse, overlooking the vegetable garden.

"That was our main goal from the start: to open up this part of the city, and also to tourists," said Mauro, sitting in his brown robes in his office at the parish church.

While residents in Rome, Florence and Venice have staged protests, complaining of overcrowded streets and housing shortages due to rising holiday rentals, it's a different story in poorer southern Italy. In Sicily and other parts the tourism boom is helping make some neighbourhoods safer and bringing much needed cash to deprived areas, although residents see risks ahead if it is not controlled.

Danisinni is walking distance from Palermo Cathedral and the Norman Palace, two of the UNESCO World Heritage sites in the Sicilian capital, which welcomed over 800,000 visitors in 2023, up 16% from 2022.

"Our houses became more valuable and some of the businesses that opened in recent years, like the restaurants, are good for the residents as well," said Aurelio Cagnina, while walking his dog near his home by Palermo's ancient port of La Cala.

However, some city residents are starting to complain that local authorities are failing to regulate the tourist boom. Short-term rentals are on the rise - more than 180,000 of Palermo's visitors in 2023 stayed in non-hotel accommodation, up 44% from 2019, official data shows - and residents say the growing night life has brought an increase in drug dealing.

"The lack of intervention is setting the stage for irreversible transformations. The so-called 'showcase' historic centre is what is happening," Palermo resident Massimo Castiglia said. He reflects fears voiced by residents in Florence and Venice that their city centres will become amusement parks as locals are priced out by visitors.

PRESERVATION STRATEGY

A rebound in air travel after the pandemic and more low-cost direct flights have led to a surge in visitor numbers to Europe's tourism hot spots, causing friction in parts of Spain and elsewhere, not just Italy - where tourism accounts for more than 10% of gross domestic product.

Spending by foreign visitors in Italy rose 19% in 2023 to a record 51.4 billion euros ($57.56 billion), according to The World Travel & Tourism Council's latest data.

Sicily drew 5.5 million tourists in 2023, up 14.5% on 2022, according to local government data, and more than the island's resident population of 4.8 million.

"There is no risk of overtourism. The idea that the historical areas will become a desert, sold out to short-term rentals does not exist in Palermo at present," said Alessandro Anello, councillor responsible for tourism in Palermo.

Yet he acknowledged a strategy was needed to preserve the city's character. The municipality was considering building student quarters in the city center, he said, and last month it passed rules to prevent the opening of more mini food markets for the next 18 months.

"Otherwise, there would be a risk that it becomes an open-air street food market," Anello said.

REVAMPED IMAGE

Tourism has helped Palermo to revamp its image after difficult decades that long overshadowed its beauty.

Memorial plaques in honour of the victims of the Cosa Nostra Mafia wars of the 1980s and 1990s are scattered across the city, sometimes hidden among shiny shop windows or restaurants serving typical Sicilian food.

A car bomb exploded in 1983 in a residential street near the elegant Viale della Liberta boulevard, killing anti-mafia magistrate Rocco Chinnici, two police officers escorting him and the doorman of the building where he lived.

Claudia Lombardo, who rents apartments to tourists with her daughter a few metres from the site, believes much has changed since then.

"There is a different air, a more open mentality, and I believe the opportunity to interact with tourists has helped a lot," she said.

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Varieties

Sudan's Historic Acacia Forest Devastated as War Fuels Logging

Little is left of the once sprawling acacia forest south of Sudan's capital. Ebrahim Hamid / AFP
Little is left of the once sprawling acacia forest south of Sudan's capital. Ebrahim Hamid / AFP
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Sudan's Historic Acacia Forest Devastated as War Fuels Logging

Little is left of the once sprawling acacia forest south of Sudan's capital. Ebrahim Hamid / AFP
Little is left of the once sprawling acacia forest south of Sudan's capital. Ebrahim Hamid / AFP

Vast stretches of a once-verdant acacia forest south of Sudan's capital Khartoum have been reduced to little more than fields of stumps as nearly three years of conflict have fueled deforestation.

What was once a 1,500-hectare natural reserve has been "completely wiped out", Boushra Hamed, head of environmental affairs for Khartoum state, told AFP.

Al-Sunut forest had long served as a haven for migratory birds and a vital green shield against the Nile's seasonal floods.

"During the war, Khartoum state has lost 60 percent of its green cover," Hamed said, describing how century-old trees "were cut down with electric saws" for commercial timber and charcoal production.

Where tall acacias once cast cool shade over a wetland just upstream from the confluence of the Blue and White Nile, barren ground now lies exposed, criss-crossed by people gathering whatever wood remains.

Hamed called it "methodical destruction", though the perpetrators remain unknown and there has been no investigation.

Similar devastation is unfolding across several regions -- including western Darfur, neighboring Kordofan and the central states of Sennar and Al-Jazirah -- as insecurity and economic collapse drive unchecked logging, according to Sudan's Forests National Corporation.

According to a 2019 study by the Nairobi-based African Forest Forum, Sudan had already lost nearly half of its forested land since 1960 due to agricultural expansion, firewood collection and overgrazing.

By 2015, the country ranked among Africa's least forested nations, with around 10 percent of its territory still covered by woodland, the study said.

The report had also warned of further degradation if reforestation and sustainable management efforts were not implemented -- concerns now compounded by the ongoing conflict.

- 'Barrier' -

Aboubakr Al-Tayeb, who oversees Khartoum's forestry administration, said the damage "affects not only Khartoum, but Sudan and the wider African continent."

"The forest was home to several migratory species from Europe," he told AFP.

More than a hundred bird species, including ducks, geese, terns, ibis, herons, eagles and vultures, had been recorded in the area, alongside monkeys and small mammals.

Al-Nazir Ali Babiker, an agronomist, said the loss of tree cover could cause more severe seasonal flooding because the "forest acted as a barrier" against rising waters.

Flooding strikes Sudan every year, destroying homes, farmland and infrastructure and leaving many families with no choice but to flee to safer areas.

The war in Sudan, which erupted in April 2023, has already killed tens of thousands, displaced 11 million and shattered critical infrastructure.

Before the fighting, forests supplied roughly 70 percent of Sudan's energy consumption, primarily through charcoal and firewood, according to data from the African Forest Forum.

Al-Sunut had also been a popular leisure spot for Khartoum residents.

"We used to come in groups to study and have a good time," recalls Adam Hafiz Ibrahim, a student at Omdurman Islamic University.

Today, wood gatherers have supplanted the usual walkers. Disregarding army notices alerting them to landmines, men and women traverse the dry, open ground that now stands where the ancient forest once grew.

"We're not cutting the trees. We just pick up whatever wood's already on the ground to use for the fire," said Nafisa, a woman in her forties navigating the dry grasslands.

"We found the trees down. We collect the wood to sell to bakeries and families," said Mohamed Zakaria, a construction worker who lost his job because of the war.

Experts say that the economic hardship caused by the war combined with a lack of enforcement has encouraged logging.

"The logging continues, because those responsible for forest protection cannot access many areas," said Mousa el-Sofori, head of Sudan's Forests National Corporation.

Efforts to replant acacias are underway, Tayeb of the Khartoum forestry administration said, but seedlings grow slowly and can take years to mature.

Restoring the lost woodlands would be "long and costly", said Sofori.

"Some of these forests were centuries old," he added.

Varieties

Coffee Regions Hit by Extra Days of Extreme Heat, Say Scientists 

17 April 2012, North Rhine-Westphalia, Vluyn: A general view of Arabica Coffee beans. (dpa)
17 April 2012, North Rhine-Westphalia, Vluyn: A general view of Arabica Coffee beans. (dpa)
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Coffee Regions Hit by Extra Days of Extreme Heat, Say Scientists 

17 April 2012, North Rhine-Westphalia, Vluyn: A general view of Arabica Coffee beans. (dpa)
17 April 2012, North Rhine-Westphalia, Vluyn: A general view of Arabica Coffee beans. (dpa)

The world's main coffee-growing regions are roasting under additional days of climate change-driven heat every year, threatening harvests and contributing to higher prices, researchers said Wednesday.

An analysis found that there were 47 extra days of harmful heat per year on average in 25 countries representing nearly all global coffee production between 2021 and 2025, according to independent research group Climate Central.

Brazil, Vietnam, Colombia, Ethiopia and Indonesia -- which supply 75 percent of the world's coffee -- experienced on average 57 additional days of temperatures exceeding the threshold of 30C.

"Climate change is coming for our coffee. Nearly every major coffee-producing country is now experiencing more days of extreme heat that can harm coffee plants, reduce yields, and affect quality," said Kristina Dahl, Climate Central's vice president for science.

"In time, these impacts may ripple outward from farms to consumers, right into the quality and cost of your daily brew," Dahl said in a statement.

US tariffs on imports from Brazil, which supplies a third of coffee consumed in the United States, contributed to higher prices this past year, Climate Central said.

But extreme weather in the world's coffee-growing regions is "at least partly to blame" for the recent surge in prices, it added.

Coffee cultivation needs optimal temperatures and rainfall to thrive.

Temperatures above 30C are "extremely harmful" to arabica coffee plants and "suboptimal" for the robusta variety, Climate Central said. Those two plant species produce the majority of the global coffee supply.

For its analysis, Climate Central estimated how many days each year would have stayed below 30C in a world without carbon pollution but instead exceeded that level in reality -- revealing the number of hot days added by climate change.

The last three years have been the hottest on record, according to climate monitors.

Varieties

Dog Gives Olympics Organizers Paws for Thought

A dog wanders on the ski trail during the women's team cross country free sprint qualification event of the Milano Cortina 2026 Winter Olympic Games at Tesero Cross-Country Skiing Stadium in Lago di Tesero (Val di Fiemme), on February 18, 2026. (Photo by Anne-Christine POUJOULAT / AFP)
A dog wanders on the ski trail during the women's team cross country free sprint qualification event of the Milano Cortina 2026 Winter Olympic Games at Tesero Cross-Country Skiing Stadium in Lago di Tesero (Val di Fiemme), on February 18, 2026. (Photo by Anne-Christine POUJOULAT / AFP)
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Dog Gives Olympics Organizers Paws for Thought

A dog wanders on the ski trail during the women's team cross country free sprint qualification event of the Milano Cortina 2026 Winter Olympic Games at Tesero Cross-Country Skiing Stadium in Lago di Tesero (Val di Fiemme), on February 18, 2026. (Photo by Anne-Christine POUJOULAT / AFP)
A dog wanders on the ski trail during the women's team cross country free sprint qualification event of the Milano Cortina 2026 Winter Olympic Games at Tesero Cross-Country Skiing Stadium in Lago di Tesero (Val di Fiemme), on February 18, 2026. (Photo by Anne-Christine POUJOULAT / AFP)

A dog decided he would bid for an unlikely Olympic medal on Wednesday as he joined the women's cross country team free sprint in the Milan-Cortina Games.

The dog ran onto the piste in Tesero in northern Italy and gamely, even without skis, ran behind two of the competitors, Greece's Konstantina Charalampidou and Tena Hadzic of Croatia.

He crossed the finishing line, his moment of glory curtailed as he was collared by the organizers and led away -- his owner no doubt will have a bone to pick with him when they are reunited.