South Asia's water resources are likely to fluctuate if temperatures continue to rise. Credit: Amantha Perera/IPS

The Monetary Board of Sri Lanka’s Central Bank, tasked with keeping the island’s economy on an even keel, does not only keep tabs on exchange rates, gold prices and inflation – it also has an eye on a less obvious indicator of economic stability: water levels in the country’s main reservoirs.

Central Bank Governor Ajith Nivard Cabraal last week told a group of journalists in the capital, Colombo, that the Board pays as close attention to water as it does to oil prices.

By August, hydroelectricity made up only 17 percent of the grid, whereas in a normal year the country expects to secure about 40 percent of its annual electricity needs through hydro, or even 50 percent in good years.

The drought forced the country to spend a colossal two billion dollars on imports of furnace oil for thermal generation, according to Finance Secretary Punchi Banda Jayasundera.

Cabraal told IPS that the government is “concerned” about these changing weather patterns and “will take steps well ahead of time, before they become an issue.”

Some say these promises offer too little, too late.

Erratic weather patterns are wreaking havoc across the country. In the last fortnight alone over 50 fishermen were killed at sea due to heavy winds, yet the Central Bank does not have an official or a desk that routinely keeps tabs on the weather and its impact on poverty levels, industrial output or even cargo handling at the island’s ports, which was badly disrupted during the recent storms.

But new research from leading international bodies suggests that countries like Sri Lanka will not be able to take a lax approach to climate change any longer, as extreme weather events are set to become the deciding factor in economic growth.

The World Bank today released its report entitled ‘Turn Down The Heat: Why a 4°C Warmer World Must be Avoided’, detailing how global warming could affect sub-Saharan Africa and South and Southeast Asia.

The report paid particular attention to “the likely impacts of present day two-degree and four-degree-Celsius warming on agricultural production, water resources, and coastal vulnerability for affected populations” in South Asia.

In Bangladesh, land areas at risk of floods could increase by close to 30 percent if temperatures rise by two degrees. Two major industrial and financial hubs in South Asia, Mumbai and Kolkata, are meanwhile both threatened by sea-level rise.

In India, where over 60 percent of crops are rain-dependent, erratic monsoons and rising temperatures are likely to impact harvests and crop yields.

“With a temperature increase of two to 2.5 degrees Celsius compared to pre-industrial levels, by the 2050s reduced water availability for agricultural production may result in more than 63 million people no longer being able to meet their caloric demand by production in the river basins (of the Indus, Ganges, and Brahmaputra),” according to the report.

The Bank also warned that if pledges made at the climate summits in Copenhagen and Cancun are not met, there is a greater-than-40-percent chance of “warming exceeding four degrees Celsius by 2100, and a 10-percent possibility of this occurring already by the 2070s, assuming emissions follow the…business-as-usual…pathway.”

In South Asia, whose population of 1.6 billion is expected to rise to 2.2 billion by 2050, the biggest issue is water scarcity or excess in the extreme.

The report predicted that even if action is taken and warming is reduced, the effects of a hotter climate would still be pronounced in the region, adding, “Many of the climate change impacts in the region, which appear quite severe with relatively modest warming of 1.5-2°C, pose a significant challenge to development.”

Major industrial and financial hubs like Colombo, Mumbai and India’s capital, New Delhi, are vulnerable to flash floods. Floods in May 2010 were estimated to have caused over 50 million dollars worth of economic damages in Colombo, while just last week New Delhi’s main airport was flooded due to the fast moving monsoon.

Darshani De Silva, environment specialist at the World Bank’s South Asia Sustainable Development Sector, told IPS that rapidly changing climate patterns could undo development gains in the region.

In countries like Bangladesh, which is struggling to move off a list of the world’s Least Developed Countries (LDCs), extreme weather events can set back a year’s worth of development in the course of a single day. On Nov. 15, 2007, Cyclone Sidr tore through Bangladesh, destroying 800,000 tonnes of rice, accounting for two percent of total annual production in 2007. The storm left in its wake a bill of 1.7 billion dollars, amounting to 2.6 of that year’s gross domestic product (GDP).

The South Asian monsoon, once as predictable as clockwork, now comes in fits and starts, either evading desperate farmers for months at a time or emptying in buckets on unsuspecting and vulnerable populations. Pakistan felt the weight of these changes in 2010 when torrential rain turned into rushing floods that claimed nearly 2,000 lives and affected 20 million people.

On Jun. 17, officials at the Indian Meteorological Department said that the monsoon arrived in New Delhi almost two weeks before predicted dates. The last instance of the monsoon moving so quickly over India and reaching the capital so fast was recorded in 1961.

Last year, Cyclone Nilam swept the Southern Indian coast, consuming half a million hectares of agricultural land and leaving over 1,300 small tanks and 7,000 km of roadways in dire need of repairs.

“An extreme wet monsoon that currently has a chance of occurring only once in 100 years is projected to occur every 10 years by the end of the century,” according to the World Bank report.

De Silva said that countries should also be worried about lack of water and the impact on agriculture. “It is expected that the southernmost tip of India and Sri Lanka will be affected, with 20 to 30-percent of summer months experiencing unprecedented heat with disastrous consequences on agriculture, livelihood and health,” she said.

The World Bank expert told IPS that attention paid to the issue is marginal compared to the damages caused, adding, “A change in thinking is urgently needed.”

She believes that all development and poverty reduction programmes, as well as urban planning, should have an in-built mechanism that factors in the impact of a changing climate, rather than waiting for disaster to strike before taking action.

Poor urban planning is now forcing the Sri Lankan government to spend 233 million dollars on a flood protection scheme in the capital. This economic burden will only increase until governments start taking seriously the reality of a much hotter world.

Waves bursting over the Malecón seawall and promenade in Havana. Credit: Jorge Luis Baños/IPS

“How much is a species worth? What is the price tag on the services provided by a river or a forest?” These are the questions biologist María Elena Perdomo is asking to encourage Cubans to take account of environmental costs, which may apparently be incorporated in the present economic reforms.

“Climate change effects reduce biodiversity, cause a decline in quality of life, change landscapes and have enormous social consequences. But what does all this mean in economic terms?” asks Perdomo, a researcher at the Centre for Environmental Studies and Services in Villa Clara, 268 kilometres from Havana.

In an interview with IPS, she said that this kind of analysis should be given more attention when decisions are being made about how to protect the environment, and when planning ecological projects, defining environmental education messages and programmes and planning construction or other works that could harm vulnerable areas.

“One way of determining the value of a service, resource or ecosystem is to consider the cost of replacing it if it were not available,” she said. “What losses are caused by a tropical cyclone or a prolonged drought? How much would it cost to take clean water to arable lands left without water sources?”

In Cuba, as in other Caribbean countries, the effects of global warming will have the greatest impact on coastal areas, although the whole island will be increasingly affected by extreme weather events, such as heat waves, prolonged periods of drought and heavy rains. Potable water and fertile land will be scarcer and biodiversity will be diminished.

Some 80 coastal settlements are likely to be affected and 15 could disappear by 2050 if the Cuban government does not implement adaptation measures in response to the prediction that, by then, 2.32 percent of the national territory will be permanently under water, according to the Ministry of Science, Technology and the Environment.

Because of this situation, conservation and remediation of natural areas that can contribute to mitigating temperature rise is another challenge for Cuba’s 11.2 million people and its economy, which is struggling to emerge from a severe crisis that has lasted over 20 years.

The strategic programme of economic and social reforms begun in 2008 by the government of President Raúl Castro includes addressing environmental problems. This year, that approach became more visible as using renewable sources of energy, which are much less polluting than fossil fuels, became a higher priority.

The authorities are directing investments so that by 2030 about 10 percent of the energy consumed in the country will come from wind, sun, water and other renewable sources, it was announced this month.

The ministry has also created an environmental research and management macro-project to consider climate change vulnerability and risk assessment in coastal zones from 2050 to 2100, which includes recommendations for adaptation measures.

“Often there is no reliable quantitative evaluation of natural resources,” said Perdomo. Other problems that have been identified, she added, are the lack of “financing for remediation, lack of decision-making power in local communities, and lack of financial support for environmental education.”

A study published in 2012 by the Revista Cubana de Geografía, an online geographical journal, estimated the total cost of restoring the vegetation along the banks of the river Guanabo, in the Cuban capital, at 825,500 dollars, according to figures from Unidad Silvícola, a state forestry unit in Havana.

To remedy damage to the vegetation of the Guanabo river basin caused by human activity, the research study found that forests, “cuabal” (dry-adapted thorny scrub growing on thin soil or bare rock) and mangroves would all have to be restored, to allow natural regeneration to occur.

Replanting efforts would take until 2022, says the study titled “Valoración económica de las afectaciones ambientales al recurso bosque en la franja hidrorreguladora de la corriente principal del río Guanabo, La Habana, Cuba” (Cost of environmental damage to forest resources in the hydro-regulating zones along the main course of the Guanabo river, Havana, Cuba).

This area has been subjected to indiscriminate exploitation for years, with the result that forests and thickets have been fragmented and destroyed, river channels eroded and bodies of water polluted with sediments, among other effects, the study says. If nothing is done, the costs of remediation will increase, the authors warn.

The National Statistics Office reported that Cuba spent 37 million dollars more on environmental protection in 2012 than in the previous year. However, expenditure on river basins of national interest fell by 81,000 dollars in the same period.

The report “Social Panorama of Latin America 2012″ by the Economic Commission for Latin America and the Caribbean (ECLAC) says that the environment was one of the most neglected areas in the region over the last two decades. On average, the region’s countries devoted 0.2 percent of public expenditure to environmental actions, sanitation, housing and drinking water during that period.

“Communities should be mitigating factors, not agents that accelerate climate change,” Sandra Ribalta, the coordinator of Ando Reforestando, a community reforestation and awareness-raising project in Havana, told IPS. “Our population sees climate change as something that will happen far in the future, or simply isn’t aware of it as a problem.”

Alba Camejo, an environmental communicator, told IPS that “things are being done, but information about them needs to be circulated more widely.”

That is why she started Árbol de Vida (Tree of Life), a way of spreading the word about environmental actions using a web site and a subscriber list of more than 10,000 email addresses.

Torrential rains from tropical storm Andrea buffeted the western province of Pinar del Río in the first few days of June, pouring down almost twice the province’s average rainfall for the month. Local authorities are now taking stock of the environmental damage and agricultural and housing losses left in its wake.

According to preliminary reports, the state Provincial Environmental Unit of Pinar del Río identified damage to the dunes of the Boca de Galafre beach. The local press was told that the downpours may also have caused deforestation in certain locations, among other destructive effects.

A farmer in northwestern Bangladesh points to one of the newly dug ponds that are helping to boost food production. Credit: Naimul Haq/IPS

“I would never have believed it possible to get a bumper rice harvest during the drought season,” 43-year-old Mohammad Shajahan Ali, a farmer hailing from the village of Magtapur in Bangladesh’s northern Chapainawabganj district, told IPS.

Yet this is exactly what he has got. Leading a proud tour of his small holding, Ali stops beside a pond, dug close to his modest, thatched-roof home. Without this, he says, the dry season that runs from June to October would have brought with it the usual hardships and hunger that most farmers in this district, 330 km from the capital, Dhaka, are accustomed to.

“We usually only cultivate aman rice (a deepwater crop) during the summer monsoon. But since we began digging these mini ponds for storing water, we’ve had extra production, almost year-round,” he said.

This year Ali harvested 12 tonnes of aman rice from his three-acre plot, making a 450-dollar profit, in addition to earning 542 dollars from growing and selling other varieties of rice, all grown using rainwater harvested in his 12 square-metre pond.

To the small farmer, whose income last year barely touched 200 dollars, this was a small fortune.

He attributes this windfall to a project sponsored by the United Nations Food and Agriculture Organisation (FAO) to tackle a chronic water shortage here by digging 100 ponds in villages around the region free of charge.

Small Ponds Bring Bumper Harvests from IPS Inter Press Service on Vimeo.

Rashid Miah, a veteran farmer in the Nachole division of Chapainawabganj, showed IPS the small diesel-powered motor pump that channels water from the small pond into his four-acre paddy field.

Just 200 metres away, his neighbour Jashimuddin’s field lies barren, but Miah believes it is only a matter of time before he, too, reaps the benefits of harvested rainwater.

Revitalising an arid region

Chapainawabganj is one of seven districts comprising the 8,000-kilometre Barind Tract, an arid drought-prone region in northwestern Bangladesh that accounts for 60 percent of the nation’s rice production.

Paddy farmers here have recently been struggling to secure a harvest in the face of changing climate patterns, with experts warning that output in the world’s third largest rice producing country is under severe strain.

Studies show that the groundwater table in the Barind is gradually sinking, while annual average rainfall has dropped to less than 1,200 millimetres, against the national average of 2,350 mm.

With about 2.7 million hectares of paddy fields – out of a total of 5.8 million hectares of arable land in the Barind Tract – affected by drought during both dry and wet seasons every year, researchers predict a 7.4-percent annual drop in rice production.

In a country with a population density of 900 people per square-kilometre and an annual food deficit of 1.8 million tonnes, a decline in food production in the Barind region is a major concern for government, civil society and farmers alike.

Already, demand for rice is rising along with the population, which is expected to increase from the current 150 million to a staggering 192 million by 2025.

Over one-third of Bangladeshis live on less than a dollar a day, while 35 percent of the population is malnourished and 45 percent of children under five are underweight and stunted.

Anxious to take action against an impending crisis, the government, with support from the FAO, launched a comprehensive disaster management programme in 2005 aimed at enhancing the capacities of the agriculture department to cope with climate change and possible disasters in the agriculture sector.

Dr. Abu Wali Raghib Hassan, former national programme officer who supervised and implemented the FAO-funded project in 2005, said implementing the project was no easy task.

“We found frustrated farmers, barren farmland, abandoned deep tube wells and declining production,” he told IPS. Quickly realising that water, or the lack of it, was at the root of all the problems, the food agency began to dig 12-square-metre mini ponds to store summer monsoon rainwater for use during the dry season.

Part of the reason for the project’s success was that it built on indigenous knowledge that has been present in this region for generations.

According to 56-year-old Ashutosh Podder, a local farmer from the neighbouring Hamidpur village, “Mini-ponds are not new – they are simply a modern version of dug wells, known locally as ‘kua’, which our ancestors have used for centuries.”

He told IPS this traditional wisdom had initially been put into practice at higher levels of elevation, since over 47 percent of the Barind Tract is classified as highland (between 18 and 22 metres above sea-level), compared to other agricultural regions located primarily in low-lying floodplains.

But as temperatures got hotter, and rainfall thinner, these dug wells, along with the gigantic rivers that once watered this region – the Jamuna, Mahananda and Korotoa – dried up, seriously affecting farmers’ access to surface water.

Attempting to overcome the looming water crisis in the region in the late 1970s, the Barind Multipurpose Development Authority (BMDA) installed over 8,000 electric water pumps to facilitate continued irrigation, while hundreds of kilometres of narrow canals were dug to allow water to meander through roughly 600,000 hectares of rice fields.

But BMDA Project Director Dr. Abul Kashem told IPS that a receding groundwater table made this task much harder, resulting in over 30 percent of the pumps lying idle during periods of drought.

In desperation, farmers began to flee the drought-ravaged region. A 2008 survey of several villages revealed that 41 percent of farmers and agricultural labourers left to seek work in other regions of the country during the dry season, when temperatures reach as high as 40 degrees Celsius.

But now the ancient way of life in this region has come full circle, with experts hoping that the pond system will ease farmers’ burdens once and for all. The same local NGO that carried out the 2008 survey recently reported that fewer agricultural labourers are leaving their small-holdings, relying instead on mini ponds to reap a harvest at unexpected times.

An agricultural officer in Nachole told IPS that roughly 4,500 farmers in his district are benefiting from the project, while over 15,000 farmers throughout Chapainawabganj have experienced higher yields as a result of improved irrigation.

Hoping to multiply the success of the project, major agencies like the World Bank and the FAO have awarded the government a 22.8-million-dollar grant to try out the scheme in other parts of the region, and throughout Bangladesh.

A farmer in his banana field, which was destroyed by a tropical storm. Credit: Desmond Brown/IPS

The Caribbean has the unenviable reputation as one of the most disaster-prone regions in the world, a situation exacerbated by climate change and vulnerability that experts warn could have significant economic consequences if unaddressed.

As a result, a comprehensive strategy to build Caribbean resilience ought to include adaptation to the effects of climate change, Warren Smith, president of the Barbados-based Caribbean Development Bank (CDB), the region’s premier lending institution, has suggested.

Calling the Caribbean “the most vulnerable region in the world to natural hazards”, Smith said that “a growth strategy, in the context of the Caribbean reality, will be found wanting if it does not address resilience in all of its manifestations”.

Natural hazards “have been increasing in intensity and adversely impacting the region’s economic growth”, he added while addressing the bank’s governors recently, citing a recent International Monetary Fund (IMF) report which found that in the past 60 years, Caribbean countries have been hit with 187 natural disasters, primarily cyclones and floods.

The report estimated the annual economic cost of damage from natural hazards at one percent of gross domestic product (GDP) – a considerable drag on economic growth and a central factor in debt accumulation.

“In the face of these daunting statistics, the IMF has suggested that small island developing states in the Caribbean should be seen as frontline states for climate change funding,” Smith said.

“Growth prospects for our most vulnerable countries will be enhanced if resources for climate resilience can be front-loaded as part of a more comprehensive adjustment package,” he added. “Climate adaptation interventions should be fast-tracked and targeted at the most vulnerable economic sectors, primarily tourism and agriculture.”

St. Lucia’s prime minister, Kenny Anthony, told IPS the CDB had shown keen interest in providing assistance to the region on the issue of climate change. Together with the European Investment Bank, the CDB was refining projects to be funded under a 65-million-dollar Climate Action Line of Credit (CALC).

“This credit line provides an opportunity for low-cost financing for projects aimed at building resilience against climate change,” he described. “The region should…embrace this opportunity and make every effort to use these resources to help deal with reducing greenhouse gas emissions, land degradation and dwindling water supplies,” he told IPS.

Small Caribbean states include Antigua and Barbuda, the Bahamas, Barbados, Belize, Dominica, Grenada, Guyana, St. Kitts and Nevis, St. Lucia, St. Vincent and the Grenadines, Suriname, and Trinidad and Tobago.

Six of these countries rank in the top 10 most disaster-prone countries in the world in terms of disasters per land area or population. The rest of the Caribbean is not far behind, with all the countries among the top 50 hot spots.

The frequency of disasters varies significantly within the Caribbean, with Jamaica and the Bahamas having the highest probability of a hurricane striking in any given year. However, for most other countries, the probability of a hurricane remains high, above 10 percent per year.

The CDB president said “bitter experience” has taught the region that even the most carefully crafted fiscal adjustment programme can be quickly derailed by a major climate event, adding that adequate insurance coverage could be an efficient way of transferring some of this risk.

He cited the Caribbean Catastrophe Risk Insurance Facility (CCRIF) as “an excellent vehicle for this purpose” but said the challenge is that a borrowing member country (BMC) of the CDB, going through acute fiscal adjustment, would be unlikely to purchase adequate insurance coverage.

“The CCRIF estimates that, based on current levels of coverage purchased by Antigua and Barbuda, Jamaica, and St. Kitts and Nevis, the CCRIF payouts for Hurricanes Georges and Gilbert, would have been a mere one to two percent of total national losses,” he said.

“The prevailing view in sections of the donor community is that countries in fiscal and debt distress should front-load their reforms. This notion should be broadened to include the front-loading of climate resilience support,” he added.

Smith noted the CCRIF is ideally placed to provide two practical forms of such support to Caribbean countries, adding that donor assistance could be provided to these countries to increase the level of their catastrophic insurance cover to a more acceptable level.

The CCRIF recently request a new injection of donations to help make flood insurance more affordable, he pointed out, a move that “would open up yet another window for transferring some of the risk associated with flooding, which is now an almost annual event in the Caribbean”.

The costs associated with the frequent recurrence of natural disasters in the region are high. Since the early 1960s, the Caribbean has experienced average losses equivalent to almost one percent of GDP in damages each year, and such economic costs are on the rise. Losses have risen from .9 percent of GDP per year in the 1980s and 1990s to 1.3 per cent of GDP in the 2000s.

Natural disasters have also taken the lives of 1,345 people over the past 60 years, though they have by no means defeated Caribbean countries.

Guyana, often dubbed the breadbasket of the Caribbean, says it is pioneering an aggressive approach to accelerating economic diversification and building greater resilience, with significant returns emerging from these efforts.

“Gone are the days when our heavy dependence on the traditional products, sugar, rice and bauxite, left our economic fortunes to the vagaries and vicissitudes of these industries,” Ashni Singh, Guyana’s finance minister, told IPS.

“Today, buoyant activity in mineral exploration and extraction, agricultural diversification, information and communications technology (ICT), construction and financial services and adventure tourism, all form the basis for a broader-based and more resilient Guyanese economy.”

He also pointed to “aggressive efforts at migrating from dependence on fossil fuels to reliance on hydropower to meet the needs of our national electricity grid”, with increased generation capacity and improved reliability and affordability.

Kenyan farmer Geoffrey Ndung’u adapted to a prolonged drought and now earns a living growing watermelon. Credit: Isaiah Esipisu/IPS

The U.N. Food and Agriculture Organisation (FAO) has long warned that a quarter of the world’s farmland is “highly degraded”.

The main culprits are natural disasters, including droughts, floods and desertification. These pressures have now reached critical levels, with climate change expected to worsen the situation, according to the FAO’s annual report The State of Food and Agriculture, released here.

At the 38th session of FAO’s biannual conference, currently underway in Rome, three major issues on the table are the high level of undernourishment, volatile food prices and sustainable agricultural productivity.

The United Nations said up to 12 percent of Africa’s agricultural gross domestic product (GDP) is being lost due to environmental degradation, with comparable figures for countries in Latin America varying from six percent in Paraguay to about 24 percent in Guatemala.

According to the U.N. Convention to Combat Desertification (UNCCD), food yields in Uzbekistan have declined by 20 to 30 percent, while in East Africa nearly 3.7 million people still require food aid following the 2011 drought.

“Business as usual is no longer an option,” said UNCCD Executive Secretary Luc Gnacadja.

“Desertification, land degradation and drought are key constraints to building social and environmental resilience, achieving global food security and delivering meaningful poverty reduction,” he added.

Mohamed Adow, global advisor on climate change at the UK-based Christian Aid, which promotes sustainable development and battles hunger and global poverty, told IPS, “Climate change remains the significant challenge facing food security.”

Extreme and less predictable weather patterns are having the first and hardest impacts on food production, which in turn affects those who are least able to protect themselves, he added.

Adow said that with just the current 0.8 C rise in global temperatures, the world is suffering from increased hunger, disease, floods and sea level rise.

“And this is predicted to worsen given the abysmally weak climate pollution targets in developed countries,” he noted.

This means that year after year, the numbers of people needing food aid and adaptation support are increasing as the effects of climate change exceed the coping limits of the poor, and as more people go hungry.

Developed countries have a responsibility and obligation to take decisive action to support adaptation and increase opportunities to develop sustainable climate-resilient livelihoods all over the world, Adow declared.

Teresa Anderson of the London-based Gaia Foundation, which advocates secure land, seed, food and water sovereignty, told IPS one of the key reasons for the existence of the U.N. climate convention is to address the inevitable impacts that climate change and increasingly erratic weather will have on food production.

Less rain, more rain, rain coming at unpredictable times – all this affects the germination and growth of crops, she pointed out.

Changing temperatures that are too high or too low can also reduce growth and pollination. And different pests and diseases are likely to emerge in different climatic conditions.

“To deal with these multiple challenges, farmers urgently need support to increase the diversity of seed varieties that they can save and grow, while improving soil health,” said Anderson.

Unfortunately, the growth of agribusiness focused on selling fertilisers and just a few types of seed, is making farming even more vulnerable to climate change, she added.

In addition, communities reliant on fishing and livestock grazing may find the ecosystems on which they rely producing less fish or grass.

Anderson said many communities will also face extreme weather events such as floods, hurricanes and droughts, as well as slow-onset impacts such as rising sea levels and salination that will make food production impossible.

Meanwhile, a report released at the climate change talks in Bonn last week by the Consultative Group on International Agricultural Research (CGIAR) said the cloudy aspects of climate forecasts are no excuse for a paralysis in agriculture adaptation policies.

“Climate projections will always have a degree of uncertainty, but we need to stop using uncertainty as a rationale for inaction,” said Sonja Vermeulen, head of research at CGIAR’s research programme on climate change, agriculture and food security (CCAFS) and lead author of the study.

“Even when our knowledge is incomplete, we often have robust grounds for choosing best-bet adaptation actions and pathways, by building pragmatically on current capacities in agriculture and environmental management, and using projections to add detail and to test promising options against a range of scenarios,” she said.

The CCAFS analysis shows how decision-makers can sift through the different gradients of scientific uncertainty to understand where there is, in fact, a general degree of consensus and then move to take action.

Moreover, she said, it encourages a broader approach to agriculture adaptation that looks beyond climate models to consider the socioeconomic conditions on the ground. These conditions, such as a particular farmer’s or community’s capacity to make the necessary changes, will determine whether a particular adaptation strategy is likely to succeed.

Rice is a staple for much of humanity. Credit: Bigstock

“If there was enough political will to defeat hunger, we would defeat it right now – immediately,” says Enrique Yeves, chief of corporate communications at the U.N. Food and Agriculture Organisation (FAO).

“It is a scandal that in the 21^st century there are still people that suffer from hunger in a world in which we produce more food than we need,” adds Yeves, speaking on the sidelines of the Jun. 15-21 FAO biannual conference opening Saturday in Rome.

Almost one billion people do not have enough to eat, yet we throw away one-third to one-half of the food we produce, according to U.N. estimates.

This is one of the paradoxes at the core of the global food system.

The world made progress over the last decade in combating hunger. But a widespread and lingering economic crisis has reversed this trend, especially in sub-Saharan Africa, according to FAO’s own assessments. High and volatile global food prices are putting additional strains on the world’s poor, as is the rapid depletion of natural resources caused by our unsustainable way of life.

This year, FAO’s membership will hit 195, once South Sudan, Brunei and Singapore join next week.

The sense of urgency in addressing hunger in the midst of the multiple global crises is reflected in the current attempt to reform FAO in order to make it more efficient and results-oriented.

“In the 2000s, there was even talk of shutting down FAO altogether, as the mantra of liberalisation of markets as a solution for food security became dominant and the World Trade Organisation became the locus for most food talks,” says Antonio Onorati from IPC, the International Planning Committee for Food Sovereignty, a platform bringing together around 300 million small food producers from all over the world in order to dialogue with FAO.

“But then we had the economic crisis and the food crises and the governments understood there was a need for a multilateral space for dealing with food issues,” he tells IPS. “They also understood that the crisis of the food system is not only an issue for poor countries in the Global South but for the global elites too.”

FAO’s Brazilian Director General José Graziano da Silva has come up with a set of proposals, including concentrating the organisation’s work around five strategic objectives: contributing to the eradication of hunger, food insecurity and malnutrition; increasing and improving the provision of goods and services from agriculture, forestry and fisheries in a sustainable manner; reducing rural poverty; enabling more inclusive and efficient agricultural and food systems at local, national and international levels; increasing the resilience of livelihoods to threats and crises.

Another important change will be the mainstreaming of gender issues across FAO programmes, a move that is very much welcomed by civil society.

“Women are the majority of farmers yet they have always been discriminated in agricultural policies,” says Alberta Guerra from Action Aid International. “If women are given the resources they need, many will be taken out of poverty. We are happy to see the progress made by FAO on gender mainstreaming.”

Da Silva, who came to FAO after being responsible for implementing the Fome Zero programme in Brazil, said to have lifted 28 million people out of poverty, may indeed have the needed stamina and good reputation to carry the reform package through.

Yet there will likely be resistance from governments gathering in Rome. One contentious issue is a minor budget increase put up for discussion: FAO’s budget was 1.005 billion dollars in the 2012-13 period, and the organisation is now asking for an increase of one percent from its member states for 2014-15.

Some member states may resist this budget hike and these may be precisely the rich countries, as larger developing ones (most notably the BRICS: Brazil, Russia, India, China and South Africa) are already committed to increasing their financial contributions to FAO apart from the one percent: China by an additional 21.3 million dollars, Brazil by 15.3 million and Russia by 9.2 million dollars.

According to Onorati, the changes proposed by the FAO staff entail a “system view” of food issues – that is, looking at all factors together and interlinked – which is welcome. He also welcomes the organisation’s increased openness to civil society.

At the same time, Onorati warns that some of the national delegations coming to Rome may be less open than FAO itself to such changes.

During recent flooding in Budapest, the Danube rose to 8.9 metres. Credit: Zoltán Dujisin/IPS

Record floods in Central and Eastern Europe have highlighted some of the challenges of climate change for the continent, as well as the floods’ potential to spur populist politics.

An extraordinarily long winter followed by weeks of intense rains has saturated soils and caused large rivers, such as the Danube and the Elbe, to overflow. The floods have wreaked havoc in the region, killing 21 people and forcing the evacuation of several tens of thousands.

In Halle, Germany, 30,000 people were forced to leave their homes, after the Elbe reached its highest levels in 400 years. In Austria, mudslides brought about the closure of roads and train lines. The Polish capital of Warsaw was partially flooded, and in the Czech Republic, 20,000 people were evacuated from 700 different localities.

Most of the flood victims – 10 out of 21 – are Czech, having been hit by heavy rains that at one point brought down hail stones of the size of ping-pong balls.

Czechs feared for the fate of their medieval capital Prague, as authorities mobilised heavy machinery to sustain one of the city’s oldest symbols, the Charles Bridge, dating from the 14th century. Hospitals and even the city’s zoo were evacuated.

The Czech government has estimated the damage at 800 million Euros, promising to waive the income tax for companies affected by the catastrophe.

None of this drama was apparent in the Hungarian capital Budapest, where the Danube rose to 8.9 metres, the highest water level ever recorded.

In contrast to the chaos and fear seen elsewhere in the region, the floods became a hotspot for what authorities call “catastrophe tourism”, in reference to the masses of locals and foreign visitors who gather around the riverside, taking pictures and often obstructing authorities’ efforts to contain the flood.

In a city whose bridges are usually a prime location for suicide attempts, many were surprised to see a few daring tourists using them to dive into the flooded river. Citizens appeared equally unconcerned; youths drove skim boards into the water while the wealthiest water skied.

The calm and surreal atmosphere in Budapest nevertheless reflected a situation firmly under control, in the capital as well as in the countryside.

Testing governments

The differences in responses to the floods have highlighted the need for comprehensive and preventive strategies in a region where extreme weather phenomena are likely to increase as a result of climate change.

“Floods such as these put to test the ability of affected societies to adapt,” Sergio Tirado, a researcher at the Centre for Climate Change and Sustainable Energy Policy in Budapest, told IPS.

“The impact of climate change will be more or less severe depending on the region’s response, namely in terms of developing early warning systems or improving physical protection barriers against water rises,” he said.

Yet while many activists have directly blamed global warming for the recent events, Tirado was cautious about making direct causal links. “It is likely that as a result of climate change, the frequency of such extreme weather events is increasing, and this problem may grow in future decades.”

The smooth handling of the floods by Hungarian authorities has been hailed as a victory by its prime minister, Viktor Orbán, which in the last few years has become the European Union’s (EU) most controversial politician due to his authoritarian tendencies.

Orbán has been criticised by European officials for his heavy-handed approach to governance. He has been accused of challenging the independence of the judiciary, conducting widespread purges in the public administration and endangering freedom of expression.

As a result, the conservative prime minister, under attack at home and abroad, saw the floods as an opportunity to stoke citizens’ patriotic feelings and regain lost popularity.

Orbán capitalised on the efforts of the 10,000 soldiers, volunteers and even prisoners that were involved in placing some 10 million sandbags along the 700 kilometres of Danube riverside located in Hungarian territory.

During the floods, TV and online coverage constantly showed the prime minister in action: Orbán was always at the site of events, wearing rubber boots and a vest, walking against the river current, flying in helicopters, discussing hydrographic maps with experts and cracking jokes with workers.

Looking extremely tired, the prime minister made frequent live updates on the spot to keep citizens informed on what he called “the worst floods ever”.

Opposition politicians, alarmed by Orban’s successful show off of his leadership abilities, rushed to imitate the prime minister and were seen setting up dikes along flooded areas. Pro-government media were quick to show one of these dikes breaking.

While Hungarians were relieved that only 1,500 people required evacuation and that not a single victim was reported, many of Orban’s opponents will be concerned that his stunts against the forces of nature will convince many that he is strong enough to endure another onslaught of criticism from the European Union.

Natural gas extraction methods are extremely controversial in the United States. Above, a shale gas drilling site. Credit: Bigstock

Energy specialists say that advancements in fossil fuel extraction technologies have sparked a “revolution” in U.S. energy production, especially given radical recent changes in the global energy market and the U.S. role within it.

New extraction methods, such as horizontal drilling and hydraulic fracturing (“fracking”), have allowed producers to access natural gas and oil (known as “tight” or “unconventional” oil) in recent years that was once inaccessible.

Such access, brought about by technologies developed and still used primarily in the United States, have already changed the country’s approach to producing and consuming energy.

“The tight oil boom holds the potential to free [the United States] from spending literally trillions of dollars to buy petroleum products from the politically unstable areas of the world,” Pete Domenici, a former senator and currently a senior fellow at the Bipartisan Policy Centre (BPC), a Washington think tank that hosted a discussion on energy Wednesday.

“Tight oil has truly been an unexpected gift to our nation and to our hemisphere.”

Propelled by the boom in U.S. production, North America is today the fastest-growing region in the world in terms of fossil fuel production. As Daniel Yergin, an energy scholar, pointed out during Wednesday’s conference, the United States produces 43 percent more oil than it did in 2008 – the equivalent, he said, of having another major producing country enter the market.

A recent study by CitiGroup indicates if this growth continues, real gross domestic product (GDP) in the United States could increase by 3 percent, a bump that analysts say would help lower the country’s deficit and create jobs.

It would also give the United States more flexibility in dealing more harshly with oil-producing adversaries, such as Iran.

A new role in the global energy market

Yet while many had hoped that increased U.S. production would significantly reduce prices both in the United States and internationally, others believe it will have the opposite result.

Participants in Wednesday’s discussion generally agreed that the United States will likely become an exporter of both liquefied natural gas (LNG) and even crude oil in the near future. Like other exporters, it will prefer higher world energy prices.

“The U.S. no longer looks at prices purely from a consumer’s perspective,” Katherine Spector, head of commodities strategy at CIBC World Markets, said Thursday. Instead, she suggested that the country now looks for “goldilocks” prices: those that are neither too high nor too low.

Her statement corroborates analysis, such as that of Public Citizen‘s Energy Program, a non-profit public advocacy group, which concluded that “because oil prices are priced globally, the domestic oil boom can’t – and won’t – provide relief for consumers”.

Opponents of U.S. LNG exports have sought to prevent them, but in recent months two deals were reached with the Obama administration to allow U.S. companies to liquefy and export gas.

Along with what Domenici called a formerly “heretical” notion that the United States may export light crude oil, the deals represent a drastic shift from the country’s current model, under which its fossil fuel-related exports are almost exclusively finished petroleum products.

Holding back alternatives

Meanwhile, environmentalists are increasingly warning that the new technologies could worsen global warming, despite widespread suggestions that natural gas burns more cleanly than coal, for example.

“We are already seeing the devastating effects of global warming due to an overuse of fossil fuels,” Jamie Henn, communications director for the environmental advocacy group 350.org, told IPS. “The idea should be to de-carbonise the economy, but the exploitation of these new, extreme sources of carbon-based energy is moving us in the wrong direction.”

Henn also pointed to an additional danger of non-U.S. companies, with less advanced technologies, trying to replicate these extraction methods and potentially leading to environmental disaster. Leaking methane from fracking operations is one of the most potent climate change-causing greenhouse gases.

While Henn would like to see the global energy market transition away from fossil fuels and towards alternative energy sources, he said the primary obstacle is money.

“We already have access to cleaner, renewable energy sources,” he says. “But the transition to these sources is being held back because more profit can be made by exploiting these new, extreme sources of fossil fuels.”

In order for the North American production boom to continue, experts who spoke Wednesday said investments in controversial infrastructure projects, such as the Canada-United States Keystone XL pipeline and LNG export terminal facilities, will have to be realised.

Senator Lisa Murkowski of Alaska was one of the speakers in favour of these investments.

The senator pointed to Canada’s “abundant” supply of heavy crude oil, which she said is well-suited for the Gulf of Mexico refineries, and a problem of “too much oil and too few pipelines”, thus advocating for the controversial Keystone pipeline, which is currently pending U.S government approval.

She also stated her support for investment in U.S. capabilities to liquefy and export its natural gas surplus, saying it could lead to a “golden age of gas”.

Objections to the Keystone project have come to define the environmental movement in Washington over the past year, but the proposed LNG export terminal facilities also raise important environmental concerns.

Without strong government policies regulating emissions from natural gas production and use, the likely results of U.S. LNG exports would be “an increase in domestic greenhouse gas emissions, and questionable, if any, benefits to the global climate”, James Bradbury, a senior associate on climate and energy issues at the World Resource Institute, a Washington think tank, told IPS.

Furthermore, facilities that liquefy natural gas consume substantial electricity, while public debate has barely begun here on how energy prices would change once significant U.S. natural gas becomes available on the global market.

“Any amount of LNG exports would put upward pressure on U.S. natural gas prices,” Bradbury says. “This would make natural gas less competitive in U.S. electricity markets, likely causing a shift toward greater coal-fired power generation. This would cause an increase in U.S. greenhouse gas emissions.”

Granaries are half empty for farmers in southern Zimbabwe, and the country is importing maize to make up for a shortfall of at least two million tonnes. Credit: Busani Bafana/IPS

For the past five years, farmer Melusi Mhlanga has spent nearly 200 dollars each season for inputs, but the maize yields have not matched his investment. 

“With good rains I have been able to get more than 20 bags from my two hectare field but now I barely manage 10 bags,” says Mhlanga, who spoke to IPS at his homestead where he has diversified into livestock breeding. 

“Good rains are important for farmers but so is knowhow, which has been a challenge for me, and I decided to focus more on cattle breeding and running a business than on growing crops.”

Mhlanga operates a general store, a bottle store and a grinding mill, which he says are the new sources of income for him and his family since the maize failed. He now grows sorghum and millet for subsistence.

Extension services, education and advisory services provided by local technical institutions,  are critical in advising farmers on best agronomic practices to boost productivity and food security. Farmers like Mhlanga are potential role models under a well-funded agriculture sector.

However, state investment in Zimbabwe’s agriculture has been hijacked by political priorities at the expense of long-term food and economic gains. Once the top contributor to GDP, farming is now second to mining. Tobacco is still the main agricultural export.

At the core of Zimbabwe’s agriculture success is its main asset – land. Reforms availed more land to more people.

But without investment, there is no cheap finance to buy equipment and inputs, and no adequately financed and resourced extension services.

“Agriculture and land has become a political football between the main national parties, and with the donors,” Ian Scoones, an agricultural ecologist and professorial fellow at the Institute of Development Studies at the University of Sussex, UK who has extensively researched Zimbabwe’s agricultural sector, told IPS. 

“Neither ZANU PF [Zimbabwe’s ruling party] nor the MDC [the leading opposition party] have a coherent agricultural and rural development policy. Neither has thought through the implications of land reform.”

Scoones, co-author of the critically acclaimed book “Zimbabwe’s Land Reform: Myths and Realities”, explains that historically, Zimbabwe has invested massively in agriculture – in the pre-Independence period with the focus on building white commercial farming, and the period immediately post-Independence smallholder farmers in the communal areas.

“Since 2000, the land reform programme took precedence, and, for a period, agricultural investment was run directly by the Reserve Bank of Zimbabwe,” said Scoones. “Much of this spending was inappropriate, corrupt and so poorly focused. Since 2009, with the stabilisation of the economy, there has been some limited investment, but not enough.”

Economic analyst Eric Bloch said Zimbabwe can restore its agricultural fortunes but first needs to tackle its external debt burden, convert current offer letters on land to transferable leases, and clarify the implementation of the Indigenisation Act, which is precluding potential investors.

“We are in a food insecurity situation as we are still dependent on international food aid and maize imports,” Bloch told IPS. “Our maize projections for the 2012-13 season are below three million tonnes, yet our national need is at 1.8 million tonnes. That is why we are importing 1.5 million tonnes from Zambia and other countries.”

The World Food Programme estimates that up to 1.6 million Zimbabweans will need food aid after a poor harvest by smallholder farmers who contribute about 50 percent of the national maize crop.

“The only times that the government has put a lot of resources into agriculture is during election years for obvious reasons,” agricultural economist and farmer Peter Gambara told IPS.

“This year, Minister [Tendai] Biti tried to put more resources into agriculture because it is now accepted that the performance of the agricultural sector is affecting the performance of the whole economy, and he has been criticised by fellow ministers and the president for failing to allocate adequate resources to such an important sector like agriculture.”

Unveiling Zimbabwe’s 2013 budget, Finance Minister Tendai Biti projected that agriculture will grow by 4.6 percent, up from a negative 5.8 percent in tumultuous 2008.

A vegetable vendor in Bangalore using a solar lamp to light her stall. Credit: SELCO/IPS

Emerging economies such as Mexico and India are shifting energy investments into renewable resources while industrialised countries hesitate, noted two new United Nations reports released Wednesday in Nairobi, Kenya.

“There is a structural change in the global energy sector underway,” said Ulf Moslener, head of research of the Frankfurt School in Germany.

“Costs are dropping radically. Renewables represented 6.5 percent of all electricity generated and reduced carbon emissions by 1 billion tonnes in 2012,” said Moslener, co-author of Global Trends in Renewable Energy Investment 2013, a report sponsored by the U.N. Environment Programme (UNEP).

Developing countries are finding installing green energy to be far less expensive than relying on fossil fuels, Moslener told IPS. Poorer countries want to reap the benefits of stable energy costs, new jobs, improved air quality and reduced health and climate damage.

While political debates about the future of green energy preoccupy countries such as the United States, United Kingdom and Germany, developing countries have embraced cleaner energy. The move is reflected by a narrowing investment gap. In 2012, developing countries invested 112 billion dollars in clean energy, compared to developed economies’ 132 billion dollars.

In 2007, developed economies’ investments were two-and-a-half times greater (excluding large hydro) than those of developing economies.

Globally, despite a 12 percent decline in investment, more renewable energy went online in 2012 than in any previous year, the main reason being a 30 to 40 percent drop in the cost of solar energy.

“Around the world, there is a shift to clean energy,” said Michael Liebreich, chief executive of Bloomberg New Energy Finance.

Political complications

Investors understand that clean energy no longer costs more than fossil energy. As such, there is a lot of excitement about the potential of large-scale projects in wide range of countries.

Nevertheless, investments in clean energy in 2013 would have been higher had governments in Europe and North America not abruptly pulled back from green energy policies.

“No industry has been treated as badly as the clean energy sector, particularly in Europe,” Liebreich said in an interview.

Frequent and sometimes wholesale changes in renewable energy policies create market uncertainty, he said, so investors hold back, waiting for clarity and stability.

Such changes are being driven by polarised politics and a fact-free debate about future energy choices, particularly in the United Kingdom, United States, Australia and Canada. These countries are going to be five years behind the shift to low-cost, clean energy, he said.

Liebreich highlighted Canada’s obsession with its tar sands as good example of a government’s failure to comprehend that future economic success will be based on clean energy sources. “They are not serving the public interest,” he said.

New energy records

In 2012, China, the United States, Germany, Japan and Italy were the top five investors in renewables. Globally, solar photovoltaic installations reached a record 30.5 gigawatts (GW), while installed wind installations topped off at 48.4 GW – both new records, according the REN21 Renewables 2013 Global Status Report.

In the wake of the Fukushima nuclear accident, Japan is shifting from a nuclear-dependent energy policy and investing significantly in solar, geothermal and wind power.

In the Indian state of Gujarat, a 605 MW photovoltaic solar park, completed in April 2012, is expected to save about 8 million tonnes of carbon dioxide per year. An amount of nearly 1 billion dollars was announced to go towards a 396MW wind project in Oaxaca State, Mexico.

“More and more countries are set to take the renewable energy stage,” said Achim Steiner, UNEP executive director. “Only last week the global host of World Environment Day, Mongolia, invited me to tour its first 50-megawatt wind farm.”

Mongolia has ambitious plans to harness wind and sun to power its future and supply clean energy to China and the region, Steiner said in a press conference in Nairobi.

“Like many other nations, it has seen the logic and the rationale of embracing a green development path,” he added.

A growing industry

An estimated 5.7 million people worldwide worked directly or indirectly in the renewable energy sector in 2012. The bulk of these jobs were in Brazil, China, India, members of the European Union, and the United States, with employment rising in other countries.

Selling, installing and maintaining small solar panels in rural Bangladesh, for example, employs 150,000 people directly and indirectly.

The transition from brown to green energy is gaining momentum as more countries, regions and cities realise that the shift is in their best economic interests, offering energy security, among other benefits.

Even the currently stalled U.N. climate talks won’t slow this shift, said Steiner, and a strong global climate treaty in 2015 could spur an increase in investment.

“The financial sector has factored in the glacial pace of the U.N. climate talks. Nothing that happens in that forum will reduce investment now,” said Liebreich.