Anote Tong, the president of Kiribati, claims to have created a marine protected area, but fishing is banned in just three percent of the reserve. Credit: Christopher Pala/IPS

A growing chorus of politicians, scientists and environmentalists are urging President Anote Tong of Kiribati to actually do what he claims was already done in 2008: create the world’s most effective marine protected area in a remote archipelago in the Central Pacific Ocean.

For years, Tong has been saying that under his leadership, Kiribati created the California-sized Phoenix Islands Protected Area (PIPA), “making it off limits to fishing and other extractive uses” – a quote that gets about 500 hits on Google, all Tong’s or his government’s. In speeches at climate change conferences and other venues, he has repeatedly called PIPA his country’s great gift to the world.

But what Kiribati actually did in 2008 was ban fishing in the three percent of the reserve that wasn’t being fished in the first place: the area around the islands, which are uninhabited. In the rest of the reserve, as in the rest of Kiribati’s Exclusive Economic Zone (EEZ), industrial tuna fishing has been steadily increasing as prices and profits soar.

In an interview with IPS in the capital island of Tarawa, Tong, who was first elected a decade ago, said that he had no intention of closing PIPA to fishing anytime soon. “It’s got to be done gradually,” he said, declining to set a date.

“President Tong has been misleading the world about the true status of the Phoenix Islands marine reserve,” Seni Nabou, an oceans campaigner with the environmental organisation Greenpeace, said in an e-mail from Fiji.

“While the world has hailed Kiribati for its conservation efforts, it seems the reserve has only served to bankroll the Spanish tuna fleets fishing in its waters. President Tong now needs to deliver on the talk.”

Misleading claims

For the creation of PIPA, Tong received several prestigious awards from organisations whose officials said in interviews that they had believed the entire reserve was closed to fishing. These awards include a Benchley Award for Excellence in National Stewardship of the Ocean in the United States and a Hillary Leadership Award in New Zealand.

In Tarawa, the skinny atoll home to more than half of Kiribati’s population of 100,000, most people queried, including several members of parliament, said they believed that PIPA had long ago been closed to fishing.

Teburoro Tito, Tong’s predecessor, was scathing about the current president’s descriptions of PIPA.

“The people of Kiribati will be disappointed to learn that their president had lied to the world and particularly those who were led to believe that he deserved prestigious awards” for closing PIPA, said Tito, who is still a member of parliament, now in the opposition. “He must close PIPA [to all fishing] immediately to salvage the country’s honor.”

An estimated 50,000 tons of tuna were taken out of PIPA last year at a time scientists say fishing levels should be decreasing, not increasing.

“Closing PIPA  would be the single most effective act of marine conservation in history” and a big step in preventing the world’s last major population of skipjack tuna from becoming as depleted as those of the Atlantic and Indian oceans, said Daniel Pauly, a fisheries scientist at the University of British Columbia in Vancouver, Canada.

In the interview, Tong said no progress had been made toward banning fishing in PIPA in the last five years because Kiribati requires millions of dollars in financial compensation to do so.

Kiribati earns between 30 and 50 percent of its budget from selling the right to fish in its waters to foreign fleets. Tong insisted that the doubling last year of Kiribati’s income from these licences means that the current demand for compensation – 50 million dollars for the PIPA Trust Fund – should be increased.

“Would we lose any money as a result of closing PIPA?” he asked rhetorically. “We would.” Dismissing the notion that it would be hard to ask international donors for money to protect tuna at a time when Kiribati’s tuna income is soaring, he insisted that that revenue would increase by a slimmer margin if PIPA were closed, adding, “So there is that lost opportunity cost,” which he casually estimated at “an extra two, five million dollars” a year.

But experts disagreed with Tong and raised the question of whether he ever intended to close PIPA in the first place. They said that while the closure would inconvenience foreign fleets, the mobility of both the tuna and the drifting fish-aggregating devices the fleets use meant that they could easily fish around the reserve and catch the same amount of fish.

And with profit margins for purse seiners now exceeding 100 percent, or 1,000 dollars a ton, the fleets would be unlikely to leave Kiribati’s waters, of which the reserves makes up 11 percent, if PIPA were closed, experts pointed out.

“I’m sure foreign fishing interests will use the closure as a tool when they negotiate their fishing contracts, so the loss of revenue for Kiribati will depend on how well they negotiate,” said John Hampton, the region’s chief fisheries scientist.

Overlooking the dispute

Kiribati’s senior partner in PIPA, Conservation International of Arlington, Virginia, never challenged Tong’s compensation claims. With a staff of nearly 1,000, CI is one of the largest conservation organisations in the world. Its executive committee chairman is Wal-Mart’s head, Rob Walton, and its vice chair is the film star Harrison Ford.

CI’s senior vice president and chief scientist for oceans, Gregory Stone, who dived the Phoenix in 2000, proposed the idea of a giant reserve to Tong and helped Kiribati build a legal and financial infrastructure for PIPA.

Today, PIPA is CI’s biggest project, while Tong sits on CI’s board. CI’s website says the president “has gone further than almost anyone to protect the planet’s most pristine waters for the global good” and until recently called PIPA “completely off-limits to commercial fishing”.

In a series of phone calls, Stone brushed aside any questions of dishonesty and insisted that small countries like Kiribati needed sympathy and understanding to espouse conservation, not criticism. He said the negotiations over compensation were “progressing” and added, “Creating marine reserves takes time and patience.”

The management plan on PIPA’s website calls for CI to raise 13.5 million dollars by the end of 2014, after which another 25 percent of PIPA will be closed to fishing, for a total of 28 percent. Stone said he was optimistic he could raise the money, even though nearly a decade after fundraising began, the PIPA trust fund is still empty.

Jay Nelson, who recently retired as head of Pew’s Global Ocean Legacy program and was involved in creating several giant no-take reserves, said attracting such donations in today’s economic climate is unrealistic, especially since most people think the reserve is already closed.

“CI needs to admit that they won’t be able to raise that kind of money and tell President Tong to close it immediately so it lives up to its claim as a world-class marine reserve,” he said.

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.

Irrigation canal, Mchinji. Credit: FISD/IPS

Since food and water are so closely interlinked, there is a lingering fear based on the assumption, if there is no water, there will be no food.

The Food and Agriculture Organisation (FAO) underlines the strong links between the two when it declares that agriculture accounts for over 70 percent of global water use.

Meanwhile, the share of water available for agriculture is expected to decline to 40 percent by 2050, warns an FAO report released here for the agency’s 38thsession, currently underway. 

The figures are based on statistics released by the Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD).

The availability of fresh water resources shows a similar picture to that of land: sufficient resources at the global level are unevenly distributed, and an increasing number of countries, or parts of countries, are reaching critical levels of water scarcity, according to FAO.

The FAO also says many of the water-scarce countries in the Near East and North Africa, and in South Asia, further lack land resources.

Due to their vulnerability, coastal areas, the Mediterranean basin, the North East and North African countries and dry Central Asia appear as locations where investment in water management techniques should be considered a priority when promoting agricultural productivity growth.

Asked if the link between agricultural productivity and water scarcity is real, Prof. Jan Lundqvist, senior scientific advisor at Stockholm International Water Institute (SIWI), told IPS, “Yes and No”.

If there is no water (e.g. in deserts), food cannot be produced, he pointed out. But water is a renewable resource and the hydrological cycle, which is driven by the sun, will continue also in the future.

The amount of renewable freshwater in terms of precipitation falling over the continents is about 110,000 km3 per year, he said. But with an increasing population, the amount of water per capita is inevitably reduced.

It is increasingly difficult, costly and dangerous, according to Lundqvist, to divert more water from rivers and lakes and to pump water from groundwater reserves.

“At the same time, with economic development, the per-capita demand increases. It is, indeed, a tricky equation,” he noted.

Since everything humans eat requires water to be produced, the paradox of the “water we eat” was best illustrated by an exhibition at a SIWI conference last year, which pointed out that the production of an average hamburger – two slices of bread, beef, tomato, lettuce, onions and cheese – consumes about 2,389 litres of water, compared to 140 litres for a cup of coffee and 135 for a single egg.

An average meal of rice, beef and vegetables requires about 4,230 litres of water while a chunky, succulent beef steak, a staple among the rich in the world’s industrial countries, consumes one of the largest quantum of water: about 7,000 litres.

Vincent Casey, technical support manager at the London-based WaterAid, told IPS that irrigated agriculture accounts for the vast majority of water withdrawals in many countries.

A great deal can be done to prevent water scarcity through changes to thirsty agricultural practices.

Crop types, irrigation methods and water tariffs can be changed to reduce demand. These actions require political commitment, which can be difficult to get, he noted.

Two things are required for water security: well-managed water resources and well-managed water supply services (pumps, pipes taps, storage tanks).

Water scarcity is already a daily reality for over 760 million people right now – not because irrigation farmers are drinking all of their water, Casey said, but because of a lack of the water supply services required to make use of available water.

“If we didn’t have reservoirs, pipes and taps in the UK, we would be water scarce too”.

Management of the water supply crisis will involve demand management in areas where there is pressure on the resource, he added, and supply management where people lack any kind of access to water — not because it isn’t there but because it requires investment to develop it.

If there is a scarcity of water, Lundqvist told IPS, food production will be a victim for two main reasons.

Firstly, other sectors will require a large share of water supply. With urbanization both industry and households will be able to articulate their demands and they are in a better position to pay for additional water.

“Water is becoming scarce not because the volume of water is reduced but because demand from society is increasing,” he said.

A second reason is that precipitation pattern will be more stochastic as a result of global warming. Risk will increase for farmers, since uncertainty will increase.

This is particularly problematic, he pointed out, for rain-fed agriculture. But with an increasing frequency and amplitude of droughts and floods, and with the increasing demands from other sectors, the timing of supplies for irrigation during the agricultural seasons will be more tricky.

Higher temperature will speed up the return flow of water back to atmosphere with complications for the farmers.

Under these circumstances –and considering the fact that enough food is produced to feed the entire world population properly– it will be crucial, he said, to make sure that the food produced is beneficially used to the degree feasible and reaches the consumers, including the poor.

Between one-third and half of the food produced is lost, wasted or converted. This means a tremendous waste of resources.

“We must walk on two legs into the future, ensure that enough is produced and make sure that the produce is accessed and used in a most worthwhile manner,” he declared.

The real predicament is regional. The population continues to increase in many areas where water availability is already quite limited.

Even more challenging: the rainfall pattern is becoming more unreliable, while temperature is increasing, he noted.

There will thus be seasons and periods when a growing number of people will experience prolonged droughts (they may last over several years) while in other places, floods will have devastating consequences, he warned.

Jomo Kwame Sundaram, Assistant-Director General for Economic and Social Development, FAO. Credit: ©FAO/Alessia Pierdomenico

After all, declining food prices in the second half of the 20th century, thanks to increasing production, were not enough to eliminate poverty and hunger in the world.

In the 1960s and 1970s, many governments invested a great deal to increase agricultural, especially food production. In the second half of the 20th century, agricultural productivity rose rapidly. But intense price competition reduced food prices, with consumers benefitting more from productivity gains – thus helping to reduce poverty.

Meanwhile, transnational agri-business has profited greatly from innovations in agricultural production, credit, processing and marketing value chains in recent decades.

More recently, food prices have gone up again as productivity and production have risen more slowly than before, partly due to reduced public investments in recent decades, slower productivity increases in the last decade, as well as recent increases in demand for food crops.

Recent food price increases have been associated not only with significant supply and demand changes, but also with biofuel mandates and subsidies as well as much greater commodity speculation.

In the unlikely event that food prices go down again after the recent increases since 2006, food would become more affordable, while reducing farmer incomes and the incentive to produce more food, which could eventually cause food prices to rise once again.

Fiscal redistribution?

Poor countries are doubly handicapped by their limited tax capacities, resulting in low tax rates on low incomes. While there is little excessive taxation of small farmers these days, there are also modest urban-to-rural resource transfers through the fiscal system or other transfer arrangements.

Government spending to raise agricultural output, productivity and incomes has also been shaped by political considerations, especially the desire to secure rural political support. However, with a few notable exceptions, government spending on agriculture is rarely biased to the poor.

While agricultural taxation is generally proportional to land owned or to output, such public expenditure tends to benefit the relatively better-off in agriculture with much rural spending benefiting plantations and larger farmers more than smaller smallholders, tenants or sharecroppers.

This is generally also true of improved rural infrastructure or social services, including health and schooling, as well as agricultural support in the form of subsidised fertiliser or other inputs – typically distributed according to the amount of land owned. Nevertheless, the poor may have benefited in so far as the rising tide of greater output lifts all boats.

Social protection necessary

There is currently enough food being produced to feed everyone in the world. The problem is that most of the hungry cannot afford to adequately feed themselves, lacking the means to do so. Hence, the only way to reduce hunger in the near term is to enhance the incomes of the poor.

More than three quarters of the over 1.2 billion “dollar a day” poor in the world live in the countryside. Reducing poverty will therefore require significantly higher rural incomes, especially for the poor. Since most rural incomes are related to agriculture, raising agricultural productivity can help raise rural incomes all round.

However, to realise the commitment to “no one left behind” in the face of the likely protracted global economic slowdown as well as higher underemployment and unemployment for years to come, the only way to eradicate hunger soon will be by establishing the social protection floor. The 2011 U.N. General Assembly endorsement of the recommendation to establish a social protection floor implies that the means to do so are available.

Historically, social protection has developed in relation to urban formal sector wage employment. But in developing countries, rural social provisioning has often involved “workfare” rather than state welfare as with India’s National Rural Employment Guarantee Act.

FAO’s distinctive approach to cash transfers — which accelerates the transition ‘from protection to production’ — helps ensure more sustainable means to overcome hunger and poverty, thus pointing the way forward to achieving the Zero Hunger Challenge.

*Jomo Kwame Sundaram is Assistant Director-General, Economic and Social Development Department, UN Food and Agriculture Organization, Rome.  

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.

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.

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.

Owolabi Elabanjo, an agriculture extension officer based in Antigua, says the country has suffered much damage from hurricanes. Credit: Desmond Brown/IPS

With their islands devoid of rivers or streams, farmers in Antigua and Barbuda have been building dams and ponds for centuries, harvesting rainwater to irrigate their crops and provide drinking water for their livestock.

But now with the advent of climate change, they are facing major challenges. Stronger and more frequent storms regularly destroy trees planted around catchment areas as watershed as well as grass planted in and around these areas to slow evaporation.

“Since 1995, since Hurricane Luis, we have suffered a lot of damage,” Owolabi Elabanjo, an agriculture extension officer based in Antigua, told IPS. “We have suffered a lot in some of our mini-dams or ponds with the hurricanes and some of the storms.”

In September 1995, Hurricane Luis, a category four hurricane, passed directly over Barbuda, causing catastrophic damage in Antigua and neighbouring islands like St. Barthelemy, St. Martin and Anguilla.

The storm left 19 dead and nearly 70,000 homeless, causing damage estimated at 3 billion U.S. dollars. All of Antigua-Barbuda’s beaches were eroded by hurricane force waves.

Elabanjo said water is one of the most important factors of production in agriculture.

“You can use any other material apart from land to grow food, but we still need water to put into that material, so water becomes the number one factor of production,” he said.

But, he noted, water is a scarce and therefore expensive commodity, not only for agriculture but also for home use.

Elabanjo said the Ministry of Agriculture has been partnering with the Antigua Public Utilities Authority (APUA) and the Food and Agriculture Organisation (FAO) to educate farmers about rainwater harvesting and to create better opportunities for water use.

“If we are serious about food security and reducing our food import bill, we have to do something about water,” he told IPS.

Water and agriculture

Lystra Fletcher-Paul, land and water officer and the FAO representative for Guyana, agreed, noting that one of the key issues for water management is allocating water for agriculture.

“In a number of countries, you find that the priority is always water for domestic use, water for health, water for manufacturing, and if there is any water left they give it to agriculture,” she told IPS.

“You can’t be serious about food security if you are going to leave water for agriculture as the last priority. You have to have a strategy which says, ‘whether we have a drought or not, agriculture is going to get this amount of water.’”

Fletcher-Paul said the FAO has been active in the region, assisting countries with water management. In Antigua and Barbuda’s case, she said the FAO has been working with authorities since 1991, looking at soil and water management.

In 2008, Antigua was one of eight countries to benefit from a study of the feasibility of rainwater harvesting conducted jointly with the Caribbean Agricultural Research and Development Institute (CARDI), the Inter-American Institute for Cooperation on Agriculture (IICA) and the Caribbean Development Bank (CDB).

At the end of the study, the research group found rainwater harvesting in Antigua to be very feasible because the island receives an average of about 750 millimetres of rain per year.

Fletcher-Paul emphasised the importance of having a disaster risk management plan for the agricultural sector.

“Hurricanes are a normal event now; we’re talking about climate change,” she said, adding that the Caribbean would be facing more extreme weather events.

Protection must be set up in advance, whether well ahead of the hurricane season or just before, Fletcher-Paul said, such as planting trees around dams or grass to help hold soil.

2,010 trees

Agriculture Minister Hilson Baptiste told IPS that Antigua and Barbuda has been taking climate change seriously. And through what’s known as the Climate Project, the Ministry of Agriculture and the Environment Division have been on a drive to combat deforestation, one tree at a time.

Launched in June 2010, the goal of the Climate Change Project was to plant 2010 trees. Three years in, Baptiste boasts, “We plant more trees in Antigua than any other country in the Caribbean.”

Twice a year, school children are taken on a tree-planting trip, planting between 5,000-6,000 trees.

Every year on Arbor Day, “we give out half a million plants to schools, community groups and church groups to encourage citizens to plant a tree,” Baptiste told IPS. “Orange, avocado, breadfruit and mango trees are planted,” he added.

The agriculture minister said that having seen the effects of climate change on crop production, Antigua and Barbuda has no choice but to intensify its efforts to mitigate climate change.

Just as important are the island’s forests, the agriculture minister said, noting that not a single tree is destroyed in the food production process.

“Farming is done in between the forests and sometimes below the forests. No destruction of forests takes place to facilitate agriculture,” he told IPS.

Ashley Joseph, deputy director in the Ministry of Agriculture, agreed the environment should not suffer at the cost of food production.

“If you don’t protect the environment, after a time, your production is going to dwindle. So you have to take into consideration the environment when you are producing,” he told IPS.

For example, the government educates farmers about controlled grazing. “Where there is overgrazing, the grass and the herbage in pastures is depleted,” Joseph described.  ”When that happens the ground is left bare, and whenever it rains, the top soil is washed away, and the production becomes less and less.”

Over the years Zanzibar’s sea levels have risen to erode beaches and contaminate some of the island’s fresh water supply. Credit: Giandomenico Pozzi/CC by 2.0

Khadija Komboani’s nearest well is filled with salt water thanks to the rising sea around Tanzania’s Indian Ocean island of Zanzibar.

And until recently, the 36-year-old mother of 12 from Nungwi village in Unguja on the northernmost part of Zanzibar, spent most of her day walking to her nearest fresh water supply to collect safe drinking water.

“The water is very salty so it can’t be used for anything. You will use a lot of soap and water if you use it for washing clothes or dishes. Another difficulty is that you can’t use it for cooking or drinking. That is why we had to walk for long distances to collect water from fresh water wells,” Komboani tells IPS.

According to Zanzibar’s Department of Environment, rising sea levels have resulted in seawater mixing with fresh water supplies and contaminating the wells here. Zanzibar does not have rivers and the main source of water remains groundwater, which depends on the currently erratic rainfall. 

But thankfully, for Komboani, the experience of spending hours collecting water is now just a memory, since the implementation of a project to supply clean and safe water to households in her village.

In October 2012, the Africa Adaptation Programme (AAP) of the United Nations Development Programme (UNDP) constructed an eight-km pipeline from Kilimani village, in the interior, to Nungwi village, which lies along the coast. A huge water tank near Kilimani village sustains the water supply.

The AAP, a climate change programme implemented in 21 African countries, aims to assist Tanzania with the development of climate-smart policies and climate change adaptation projects.

Meanwhile, the 15,000 people from Nungwi village now have access to water 24 hours a day, which can be sourced from taps and reservoir tanks.

Komboani says that since the water project was introduced, she now has more time to concentrate on her business of selling snacks. She says she earns approximately five dollars a day from this.

“I don’t have to worry about waking up early to collect water anymore. I use the time to engage in other productive activities, such as selling snacks and working in my vegetable garden.

“My husband used to accuse me of being unfaithful when I would return home late from the well. I am now glad that we have peace in our home,” she says.

Not only has it brought peace to Komboani’s home, but the easy access to drinking water has saved many women and girls from unwanted marriages.

Zanzibar’s North A district commissioner, the equivalent of a governor, Tatu Mganga, says her office had to intervene several times when they heard about women being married off so they could be used to fetch water for their new husbands.

“Such incidents were common and we had to intervene and rescue girls when we heard these stories,” Mganga tells IPS.

She says that while everyone in Nungwi village was affected by the shortage, women and children suffered the most because they were responsible for fetching water for their families.

Mganga says that the lives of the people from Nungwi village and its surrounding areas have now changed for the better.

“Almost all the people living in the area now have access to clean and safe water. Families can now wash their hands and clothes, and bathe properly. Subsequently, there has been improved sanitation,” says Mganga.

UNDP country director for Tanzania, Philippe Poinsot, tells IPS that the AAP is focused on improving the supply of clean and safe water to households through pilot projects.

“Women and children were walking for too long to fetch water from dirty surface water points (and consumption of this water) had accelerated ill health,” Philippe says. The rampant use of unclean water in Nungwi village led to an increase in pneumonia and skin diseases. Local health authorities say there has since been a decrease in these cases.

Ally Jabir Haiza, Zanzibar’s district health officer, tells IPS that the water from shallow wells along the island’s coast was tested and found to be excessively salty. This, he explains, impacted on healthcare in the area. In Unguja, a newly built maternity ward could not be used because of the shortage of clean water.

“Students too could not concentrate on their studies because they were frequently worried about fetching water when they returned home. And they were already tired when they commenced their lessons in the morning (from going to fetch water before school).

“Sometimes new mothers from Nungwi, who were experiencing postpartum stress, were forced to walk down the three-km road to fetch water from the nearest fresh water well,” says Hiza.

But now that fresh water is being piped in, the residents of Nungwi village have access to more water – some 20 litres per day compared to the five litres a day they collected from their nearest fresh water wells.

According to Sheha Mjanja, director of environment in Zanzibar’s Vice President’s Office, several surveys conducted over the past 10 years have confirmed that the island is vulnerable to the impact of climate change, particularly rising sea levels and beach erosion.

“The impact of climate change in Nungwi village is one of the biggest challenges at the moment. The water is quickly eating into the land and we fear the situation could worsen,” Mjanja tells IPS.

Mjanja adds that rising sea levels could cause a serious water shortage on the island as salt water is increasingly seeping into the ground water supply.

He says that the government is currently preparing a strategy paper to address the impact of climate change here and hopes to involve the private sector in implementing solutions.

Meanwhile, the elders here are witness to the impact climate change has had on this island. One community elder, 58-year-old Masoud Haji, tells IPS that over the years sea levels have risen about 80 metres.

“In December, we didn’t see any rains, compared to when I was young. The ocean was far from the shore, but it has now risen … the villages used to be far from the shore, but now everyone lives close to the ocean,” Haji says.

Dr. Palitha Kohona. UN Photo/Mark Garten

But despite progress made over the last two decades, says FAO, some 870 million people still suffer from chronic hunger.

What if the earth’s finite agricultural resources run out as a result of drought, desertification, climate change and natural disasters?

There is always the high seas and ocean floors, says Ambassador Palitha Kohona, who co-chairs a U.N. Working Group on the Conservation and Sustainable Use of Marine Biological Diversity Beyond Areas of National Jurisdiction.

The seas and oceans, which cover 70 percent of the planet, are probably the last frontier on earth with vast areas still to be explored and life forms still to be discovered, he told IPS. And 65 percent of the oceans are beyond national jurisdiction, he added.

The mandate of the Working Group, co-chaired by the Legal Adviser to the Netherlands, covers the conservation and sustainable use of marine biological diversity beyond areas of national jurisdiction, and includes genetic resources, said Dr Kohona, who is also Sri Lanka’s Permanent Representative to the United Nations and former chief of the U.N. Treaty Section.

In an interview with IPS, he said, “We have a better knowledge of outer space than of the oceans which provide sustenance to over a billion people, mostly in developing countries.”

But global fisheries are under serious threat of collapsing mainly due to industrialised fishing.

For example, he said, stocks of cod, southern blue fin tuna and orange roughy are down to critical levels. And coral reefs are affected by ocean warming and acidification.

“Climate change will further negatively impact on life forms in the oceans,” Kohona said.

The new frontier opening up in the oceans is bio-prospecting and bio-harvesting, he added.

“It is now firmly believed that many new pharmaceuticals and other products can be developed from the genetic material available in the seas, especially in the deep seas, on the sea bed and in the sub surface of the sea bed,” Kohona noted.

Excerpts from the interview follow.

Q: How far have we gone in exploiting these rich resources?

A: So far, only a handful of advanced countries possess the vessels capable of harvesting genetic material, especially from deep sea trenches and hydrothermal vents.

Even less have the ability to conduct research and analysis on this material and basic research is mainly funded by industrialised states.

Developing countries argue that the benefits arising from developments made from material obtained from areas beyond national jurisdiction should be shared equitably through a global convention since the source of this material was probably in the area recognised as the common heritage of mankind.

Q: What are the primary objectives of your Working Group?

A: The Working Group is required to make recommendations to the General Assembly with a view to ensuring that a future legal framework will address the complex issues raised.

In fact, it is the expectation of many delegations that a legal instrument will result from these discussions.

Q: In its report last month, the High Level Panel of Eminent Persons predicted that extreme hunger — and poverty — could be eradicated by 2030? If so, what role can the high seas and oceans play in alleviating the world’s food crisis?

A: With extreme hunger, globally a billion people go to sleep every night without eating dinner, and extreme poverty, 1.2 billion people live on less than 1.25 dollars a day, our resources need to be more efficiently and equitably distributed.

Nearly 30 percent of available food goes to waste in developed countries due to wasteful consumption patterns. Global fisheries employ and provide nutrition to, including proteins, over a billion people.

It is a worrying reality that 70 percent of fish stocks are in serious risk of collapsing due to over fishing. If fish stocks collapse, the consequences will be disastrous.

In addition, the warming and increasing acidification of the oceans, rising sea levels, and coral bleaching will affect fish stocks and other life forms in the seas, in some cases pushing stocks to new habitats, especially tropical fish stocks.

While we focus on protecting whales, which we must also do, economically relevant stocks are reaching extinction point. It is imperative that we properly manage, conserve and sustainably use what is an essential but rapidly diminishing resource.

Q: What progress has been achieved in the negotiations on marine biological diversity beyond national jurisdiction?

A: Progress has been slow. While developing countries have been actively advocating the equitable sharing of the benefits arising from research into genetic material derived from areas beyond national jurisdiction, the sharing of information and technology and capacity building, the countries that conduct the research are reluctant to concede these readily.

They argue that it costs over one billion dollars to develop and bring a single new product to the market. Many products never reach the market despite the millions spent to develop them.

In the meantime, 4,000 marine organisms have been identified in relation to 40,000 new patents filed. Sometimes it is difficult to determine the actual origin of such material. But I believe an equitable formula for benefit sharing can be developed.

Q: How interested are member states in exploiting marine resources?

A: The major maritime countries, including the United States, Japan, Russia, member states of the European Union, India, Argentina, Brazil and over 120 other states participated in the discussions, along with civil society and academics. Our next sessions will take place at the United Nations, Aug. 19 to 23 this year.