With water usage for agriculture surpassing sustainable levels, farmers must embrace crop varieties which require little irrigation. Credit: Miriam Gathigah/IPS

Amid warnings that Kenya’s agricultural water use is surpassing sustainable levels and adversely affecting food security, biodiversity researchers say that agrobiodiversity should be considered as a vital tool to combat this.

“In order to feed the nation, the country must explore agrobiodiversity, specifically (the growing of) vegetables and fruits, which have been neglected in favour of maize,” Mary Abukutsa-Onyango, a professor of horticulture at the Jomo Kenyatta University of Agriculture and Technology, told IPS.

As climate change continues to wreak havoc on rainfall patterns, resulting in intermittent prolonged dry spells across this East African nation, vegetables present the best alternative to maize because they do not require large amounts of water.

The 2012/2013 Kenya country brief by the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations stated that the “October to December ‘short-rains’ season performed poorly … (and) a series of dry spells also caused poor germination … leading to wilting and drying out of crops.”

According to the United States Agency for International Development Kenya, this nation is “classified among the most water scarce countries in the world.” And government statistics indicate that 13 million Kenyans lack access to improved water supply.

“In Kenya, and by extension Africa, desertification and water scarcity are a major threat to agriculture and to pastoralist communities. Strategies such as irrigation, water harvesting and conservation, and tree planting must be revamped,” Nashon Tado, of the Norwegian Refugee Council’s Horn of Africa and Yemen office, told IPS.

A food security report by the Kenya Agricultural Research Institute said that “official estimates indicate over 10 million people are food insecure with majority of them living on food relief.”

The Ministry of Agriculture says that at least 70 percent of Kenya’s agricultural production comes from smallholder farmers who farm on two to five acres of land. Of Kenya’s 42 million people, eight million households are involved in agriculture, with five million depending directly on it for their livelihoods.

But Kenya’s Food Security Outlook 2013, released on May 15 by the U.N. World Food Programme, confirmed that embracing other crops besides maize was improving food security here.

“Improved availability of green vegetables, green maize and legumes from early June through July is expected to diversify diets and sustain food consumption,” the report stated.

It makes sense that Kenyans should explore biodiversity. Kenya has ratified the Convention on Biological Diversity, the globally negotiated agreement committed to sustainable use of biodiversity. Consequently, agrobiodiversity is being touted as a solution to the biting water stresses facing Kenya.

“This year’s International Biodiversity Day’s theme is Water and Biodiversity and is very significant as the country tries to find innovative techniques and strategies to maximise water usage,” Naomi Chepkorir, an agricultural extension officer at the Ministry of Agriculture, in Kenya’s bread basket, Rift Valley province, told IPS.

Indigenous vegetables and fruits are easy to manage, can withstand high and unpredictable temperatures, and are known to have high nutritional value and contain high concentrates of micronutrients, including iron.

“Take the spider plant and African nightshade, which are found in parts of Western and Nyanza provinces, as well as across East Africa. They are known to be nutritious, medicinal and are very rich in iron, calcium, magnesium, anti-oxidants and fibre,” Abukutsa-Onyango said.

The spider plant is known to have high levels of beta-carotene, calcium, protein, magnesium, iron and vitamin C. The plant is also high in antioxidants, which may help prevent diseases like diabetes, cancer and heart disease.

Chepkorir said that generally vegetables have a shorter life cycle compared to other crops. They grow in a few weeks and require very little irrigation, hence allowing smallholder farmers to reap the benefits of their harvest earlier than they would if they planted a crop like maize – which takes up to three to four months to mature.

Abukutsa-Onyango agreed, adding that indigenous vegetables are able to adapt to climate change because they mature faster. She gave the example of the spider plant and the variety of amaranth that is indigenous to Africa, which can be harvested within three weeks of planting. She added that the slenderleaf ice plant could also withstand water deficit conditions.

Abukutsa-Onyango added that growing a diversity of indigenous vegetables and fruits “would not only address food security, but also nutrition and health security.

“People should eat a balanced diet, and currently Kenyans are consuming inadequate amounts of vegetables and fruits leading to an upsurge of diet-related diseases,” she said.

Good nutrition and healthy diets are important aspects in meeting the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs). The eight ambitious goals, adopted by all U.N. member states in 2000, aim to curb poverty, disease and gender inequality.

According to the MDG Report 2010 “nutrition has long been seriously overlooked and underemphasised by donors and developing countries, despite good nutrition being a key enabler to meet almost every MDG.”

Yvonne Onyango, a nutritionist in Nairobi, explained: “If a child is not well fed in its first 1,000 days, its growth is affected and the damage is irreversible. The child will never rise to the potential that other children who are well nourished do.”

Government statistics show that about 35 percent of Kenyan children suffer from malnutrition, including iron deficiency anaemia.

But water is a significant aspect of food security and management of this resource requires cooperation from many levels, according to Phillip Muthee, from Kenya’s Private Sector Alliance (KEPSA).

KEPSA is the umbrella body of organised business associations, ranging from big to small enterprises in the country.

“When water is managed and shared cooperatively, it supports livelihoods, food security and the economy,” Muthee told IPS.

Muthee feared that Kenya’s new devolved system of government could lead to potential new conflicts around the provision of and access to water. Kenya is now implementing the new system, which allows for decisions affecting Kenya’s 47 counties to be taken at grassroots, as opposed to national, level.

“For instance, the government has already committed to make about one million hectares of land irrigable. But conflict may arise between the national and county governments regarding whose responsibility it is to ensure that this is done,” Muthee said.

He worried that if this happened “water will not reach the people at the grassroots level who need it, not just to feed themselves, but to feed the nation.”

A farmer walks past the solar panels used to pump water in the Soan Valley. Credit: Zofeen Ebrahim/IPS

Staring out at his golden wheat field with satisfaction, 50-year old Alamgir Akbar says with a sigh of relief: “We’ve had a good crop this season.”

The farmer has waited a long time to utter those words. A resident of a small rural community on the outskirts of the Ucchali village in the Soan Valley, a 737-square-metre expanse of farmland in the Khushab district of Pakistan’s Punjab province, he has spent five years battling the impacts of a prolonged drought.

With just 12,000 acres of irrigated farmland and only saltwater lakes dotting the landscape, the Valley, which borders the hills of Punjab’s famous Salt Range, is not ideal for practicing agriculture.

Residents traditionally relied on rainwater to recharge their roughly 3,000 community wells, but half a decade of drought in the 1990s brought farming to a standstill and pitched the region’s 150,000 residents into the vortex of poverty.

Farmers here operate smallholdings of no more than five hectares, cultivating crops like cauliflower on flat land as well as terraces and selling the produce in Punjab’s big cities like Lahore, Faisalabad, Sargodha and Gujrat.

Before the drought hit, a farmer could typically earn a net profit of 600 to 800 dollars in a 75-day cropping period, but lost a considerable amount of this income on hiring trucks to transport goods to urban markets.

As the rains became increasingly infrequent, farmers were forced to bore tube wells, some as deep as 200 or 300 feet. This new system required investments in turbines to pump out the water, which in turn generated huge energy costs, as the 26-horsepower machines guzzled gallon after gallon of diesel.

Unable to afford the necessary investments, farmers turned to relatives for loans and sold their animals or other assets to continue farming.

When villagers began to chop down trees for fuel it sparked a process of deforestation, which then “accelerated the rate of soil erosion” and increased the risk of prolonged drought, Gulbaz Afaqi, director of the Soan Valley Development Programme (SVDP), told IPS.

Yields dropped, and farmers like Akbar began to despair.

Bringing back water

Driving down the mud track to Ucchali, the tranquil and almost picture-perfect pastoral scene is marred by solar panels.

But what outsiders see as an eyesore, villagers see as an angel of mercy. Owned and operated collectively by 12 families, these three-kilowatt panels are helping to pump water – and new life – into the farmers’ fields.

The landscape is once again alive with patches of cauliflower, coriander, chillies and potatoes as a pilot project spearheaded by the Pakistan Poverty Alleviation Fund (PPAF) begins to bear fruit.

Working with 112 partner organisations in more than 90,000 settlements spread across 120 districts in Pakistan, the fund aims to help this country of 170 million meet the targets defined in the Millennium Development Goals before the 2015 deadline.

Armed with donations from the government, international agencies and corporate entities, the PPAF embarked on a nationwide programme of drought mitigation and disaster management in 2003, which quickly identified the Soan Valley as “one of the areas that needed our attention,” PPAF spokesperson Zaffar Pervez Sabri told IPS.

Determined to avoid the worst-case scenario of locals being forced to sell their livestock or migrate from the Valley, the PPAF developed a “water balance model” to manage and conserve remaining resources and address the impacts of climate change, according to Sabri.

To date, the fund has enabled the construction of 124 irrigation pipes feeding over 8,000 acres of farmland; 60 rainwater harvesting ponds, each about the size of an acre; five delay action dams that collect surface water and are ideal for the Valley’s pitted landscape; 40 check dams, which help to prevent erosion; and 12 natural resource management schemes, benefitting over 100,000 people.

Villagers themselves raised the money for the solar panels that pump the water, giving community members a sense of ownership over the project. “We collected 6,000 dollars from the village, and the fund provided the other 6,000,” Afaqi said. By eliminating the need for diesel pumps, the panels have enabled farm communities to save over 2,000 dollars annually.

Villagers also replaced traditional open channel irrigation networks with the more efficient pipe irrigation system to avoid “huge losses and water evaporation in unpaved water courses,” said Afaqi, adding, “The PVC pipes facilitate even distribution of water into the field.”

Mohammad Ismail, an engineer working with the SVDP, told IPS that pipe irrigation is especially useful on slopes where surface water would otherwise run off.

A 50-percent increase in crop yields after this transition nudged farmers into accepting other, more comprehensive changes in their lives, such as new crops and cropping patterns.

Following the SVDP’s advice, farmers gave up cultivating cauliflower, a water-intensive crop that needs to be watered 16 times in 75 days, in favour of potatoes, “which need to be irrigated only eight times,” a local farmer named Sher Khan told IPS.

Potatoes have become a major cash crop in the area, with 46 percent of irrigated land dedicated solely to their production.

In addition, farmers grow chillies in the summer, wheat in the winter and practice year-round horticulture with nectarines and peaches.

The water scheme has made farming viable once more – with just a single acre of land, according to Afaqi, the average farmer can earn a monthly profit of 1,200 dollars on potatoes, 1,500 dollars on coriander and between 1,000 and 1,500 dollars on wheat.

“With an initial investment of about 1.3 million dollars, combined with technical assistance from the PPAF and hard work by the farming communities, we have created a new economy that generates over six million dollars annually,” said Afaqi.

The programme has also spawned interest in local water conservation efforts, including bi-monthly monitoring of ground water resources at 40 different locations, he added.

Reports from quarterly inspections suggest the groundwater table is improving. Regular monitoring also serves as a kind of early-warning system, by alerting farmers about decreasing water tables ahead of cropping cycles.

For farmers like Akbar, the project has literally helped him and his large extended family – spread between 12 homes in Ucchali – achieve their modest dreams.

“All our children go to school,” he says, pride written all over his face as he conducts a brief tour of his humble brick home. The small, attached toilet at the back symbolises huge progress: “It means we no longer have to go out into the fields to relieve ourselves,” he said with a smile.

South Africa has pledged to help Nigeria make the automotive sector the West African nation’s flagship industrial target. Currently German car manufacturer BMW has a plant at Rosslyn near Pretoria. About 80 percent of the BMWs produced there are for the international market. Credit: John Fraser/IPS

The lack of economic diversification throughout sub-Saharan Africa means that despite South Africa’s pledges to help Nigeria make the automotive sector the West African nation’s flagship industrial target, it may be difficult to do so, experts say.

Earlier this month, South African Trade and Industry Minister Rob Davies announced the initiative during a visit here by Nigerian President Goodluck Jonathan.

It is a move that is seen as an important milestone in inter-African industrial cooperation. However, Peter Draper, a research fellow at the South African Institute of International Affairs, questioned whether this collaboration would develop into economic integration.

“The real question is whether such cooperation could ultimately evolve into meaningful, broader, economic integration rather than the network of mostly hollow shells that currently masquerade as free trade agreements,” he told IPS.

“I think that Nigeria and the Southern African Customs Union should negotiate a complementary Free Trade Area agreement to promote closer economic relations – as the complementarities are strong, and it would bring the two countries closer together politically.”

Draper said that the African Union (AU) has already developed a number of initiatives for specific sectors, but more needs to be done.

“Actually there are quite a few sectoral policies covering, inter alia, energy, communications, transport, and various other integration initiatives. The problem remains implementation, not a lack of plans,” he said.

He said that it seemed to be commonly accepted that the AU’s role was to develop and coordinate implementation of a continental “master plan” that integrates these various initiatives.

“I think there is a role for a broader continental perspective, but I prefer the notion of ‘subsidiarity’ – pioneered in the European Union – where implementation is left to the lowest possible level of government.”

Draper said that the cooperation between South Africa and Nigeria could be an important mentoring initiative for South Africa.

“South Africa has been (involved in) auto industry policy development since the mid-1920s and has a lot of experience to draw on and share,” he explained.

“It reminds me of cooperation in Latin America, which historically evolved through sectors, involving the auto industry particularly. The European Community (which became the EU) also started out through a network of sectoral collaboration – iron and steel in particular.”

Minister Davies told the Business Day newspaper that discussions on automotive cooperation with Nigeria were still at an early stage.

But while some manufacturers, such as Nissan, might be willing to set up plants in Nigeria, others are more cautious.

Bodo Donauer, the managing director of BMW South Africa, said that in his group “production follows the market” and he does not currently envisage a BMW plant being established in Nigeria.

“Local production plants make it easier to access and develop new markets with long-term growth potential. Having a local plant also makes the company a ‘local player’ and boosts acceptance of the products locally and underscores our good corporate citizen approach,” he said.

“The success of this strategy has been proven by positive sales trends since the ramp-up of production plants, for example in the Unites States, in China, in the United Kingdom and, of course, in South Africa.”

He said that around 20 percent of BMWs produced at the Rosslyn plant near Pretoria are sold on the local market in South Africa “with more than 80 percent exported to markets around the world, including one percent to certain markets in the rest of Africa.”

“Given the current size of the new premium car market in the rest of Africa, we believe the BMW Group is well-placed with its current global production network to meet any additional demand in markets like Nigeria without the necessity for additional production locations,” he said.

Peggy Droidskie, an advisor to the South African Chamber of Commerce and Industry, said that the initiative between South Africa and Nigeria was very welcome, as regional integration in Africa remains high on the development agenda.

“Nigeria is a large market, and it is closer to Europe. This proximity to Europe implies that it would be logical for European connections to be used.

“The fact that South Africa is preferred (as a partner for Nigeria) indicates that South Africa is very competitive and can accommodate the requirements of Nigeria. It also provides South African manufacturers with an additional footprint in Africa,” she said.

Droidskie predicted that some manufacturers who currently operate in South Africa would become interested in setting up in Nigeria.

“Agreements of this nature are driven by politicians,” she noted. “The politicians believe that the agreements that they enter into benefit the private sector, which is often, but not always, the case.”

She said that South African vehicle manufacturers are already exporting a significant number of vehicles to Nigeria.

“Last year, the number was nearly 15,000. Nigeria is therefore currently a lucrative market for South African vehicle manufacturers. It is therefore very likely that the manufacturers will take advantage and come to the party.”

And she predicted that this cooperation could expand to other industrial sectors.

“If the profile of Nigeria’s imports is taken into account, there is considerable room for an increase in South African exports to Nigeria. For instance, there is room for greater trade in electrical and electronic equipment and machinery.

“With the development of the Tripartite Free Trade Agreement between the three regional economic blocs in sub-Saharan Africa, there is considerable potential for cooperation to expand to other countries and to other sectors.”

A man hauls water at the Chico Mendes landless peasant camp in Pernambuco, Brazil. Credit: Alejandro Arigón/IPS

Everyone knows water is life. Far too few understand the role of trees, plants and other living things in ensuring we have clean, fresh water.

This dangerous ignorance results in destruction of wetlands that once cleaned water and prevented destructive and costly flooding, scientists and activists warn.

Around the world, politicians and others in power have made and continue to make decisions based on short-term economic interests without considering the long-term impact on the natural environment, said Anik Bhaduri, executive officer of the Global Water System Project (GWSP), a research institute based in Bonn, Germany.

“Humans are changing the character of the world water system in significant ways with inadequate knowledge of the system and the consequences of changes being imposed,” Bhaduri told IPS.

The list of human impacts on the world’s water – of which only 0.03percent is available as freshwater – is long and the scale of those impacts daunting.

“We have accelerated major processes like erosion, applied massive quantities of nitrogen that leaks from soil to ground and surface waters and, sometimes, literally siphoned all water from rivers, emptying them for human uses before they reach the ocean,” Bhaduri said.

On average, humanity has built one large dam every day for the last 130 years, which distorts the natural river flows to which ecosystems and aquatic life adapted over millennia. Two-thirds of major river deltas are sinking due to pumping out groundwater, oil and gas. Some deltas are falling at a rate four times faster than global sea level is rising.

More than 65 percent of the world’s rivers are in trouble, according to one study published in Nature in 2010. Those findings were very “conservative” since there was not enough data to assess impacts of climate change, pharmaceutical compounds, mining wastes and water transfers, Charles Vörösmarty of the City University of New York previously told IPS.

Recently, China’s First National Census of Water discovered they’d lost more than 28,000 rivers compared to just 20 years ago. Most experts blame the loss on massive overuse and engineering projects to shift water from one region to another.

“We treat symptoms of environmental abuse rather than underlying causes…by throwing concrete, pipes, pumps, and chemicals at our water problems, to the tune of a half-trillion dollars a year,” said Vörösmarty, who is also co-chair and a founding member of the GWSP.

As these problems continue to mount, the public is largely unaware of this reality or its growing costs, he said in a release.

Protecting and investing in natural infrastructure is far cheaper than concrete and pipes, representing the smarter solution to water security. This approach also benefits tourism, recreation and cultural benefits, improved resilience and biodiversity conservation.

World experts are meeting in Bonn, Germany this week to consolidate this understanding and offer policy makers solutions to prevent ongoing damage to the global water system.

The Water in the Anthropocene conference will also make recommendations on how decision makers can adapt to the multiple challenges of growing water use, declining ecosystems and climate change.

The public and policy makers are not aware of these huge water challenges, said water expert Janos Bogardi, senior advisor to GWSP. Education aside, there is an overwhelming need to have well-defined global water quantity and quality standards that meet the needs of people, agriculture and healthy ecosystems.

The upcoming U.N. Sustainable Development Goals are expected to include “water security”, which is huge step forward, Bogardi told IPS.

“Defining these interrelated needs is huge challenge for scientists and politicians alike,” he said.

Reasonable daily water use to meet sanitary needs and drinking is 40 to 80 litres, but U.S. per capita daily use is over 300 litres, while Germany is 120 litres. In urban Hungary, where water is relatively expensive, consumption is 80 litres/day.

But how much water does nature need?

GWSP scientists’ best guess at this point is that taking 30 percent to 40 percent of a renewable freshwater resource constitutes “extreme” water stress which could tip an ecosystem into collapse. This can be mitigated if water is returned and recycled in good quality. Mining fossil groundwater resources is by definition non-sustainable.

“We have to be careful that the water security goal is truly sustainable for ecosystems,” Bogardi said.

It is not clear that the Sustainable Development Goal on water will “simultaneously optimise water security for humans as well as for nature”, said Vörösmarty.

“The water sciences community stands ready to take on this challenge. Are the decision makers?” he asked.

Of the 195 workers at Vivero Alamar, 46 are women. Credit: Jorge Luis Baños/IPS

“The people are the only thing that matters,” says agronomist Miguel Ángel Salcines, who then goes on to list a series of other “secondary” factors that have turned Vivero Alamar, an urban farm on the outskirts of the Cuban capital, into a rare success story in the country’s depressed agricultural sector.

“We offer flexible hours, relatively high wages, and professional upgrading, among other benefits that make the cooperative an attractive option. This is how we attract high quality human resources, who are crucial today in order to produce more organic food,” said Salcines, the president of Vivero Alamar, where production has been chemical-free since 2000.

The cooperative’s recipe for success also includes transparent accounting, equitable profit sharing, interest-free loans for the workers, free lunches, and support for women workers with young children or others in their care: they are allowed to arrive up to an hour later than the official beginning of the work day, at seven in the morning, Salcines told Tierramérica*.

Human capital played a decisive role in raising production at this urban agriculture venture, founded in 1997 on an initial 800 square metres of land in the community of Alamar, around 15 kilometres east of downtown Havana. This is why Salcines believes that the key to achieving food security in Cuba lies in agricultural workers with a “vocation” for farming, as well as training.

In 2012, world food prices skyrocketed as a result of poor crop yields in various centres of agricultural production, such as the United States. The Caribbean countries, which are net food importers, suffered the greatest impact in the region, according to the Economic Commission for Latin America and the Caribbean (ECLAC).

Less than five percent of the population of Cuba suffers from malnutrition, but the country was forced to spend over 1.633 billion dollars on food imports last year, an unsustainable expenditure for an economy in crisis for more than 20 years, specialists say.

Reducing this massive expenditure by raising domestic food production remains a challenge for the government of President Raúl Castro. In fact, in the first quarter of this year, the National Office of Statistics and Information reported a 7.8 percent decrease in agricultural production other than sugar cane.

“There is a big demand that needs to be met, which is why we are able to sell everything we grow,” said Salcines, one of the founders of the cooperative, which now covers a total of 10.14 hectares and produces more than 230 different crop varieties (primarily garden vegetables, as well as some fruits, grains and tubers) in greenhouses and open fields.

In the midst of a generally inefficient agricultural sector, Vivero Alamar has achieved consistent growth for more than 15 years, thanks to the constant upgrading of its organic farming methods, which have even earned the praise of the director-general of the United Nations Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO), José Graziano da Silva, who visited the cooperative earlier this month.

In 2012, they produced 400 tons of vegetables, 5.5 tons of medicinal and “spiritual” plants (used in religious rituals), 2.6 tons of dried herbs and spices, and 350 tons of worm manure.

They also produced 30,000 ornamental plant and fruit tree seedlings and three million vegetable seedlings, some for their own planting needs, others for sale to other farmers, reported Salcines.

Fresh vegetables, especially lettuce, are the products most sought after by the local residents in Alamar, who have begun to learn in recent years – like people in the rest of the country – about the benefits of including more greens in the traditional Cuban diet of rice, beans, “viandas” (starchy tubers and plantain) and pork.

“The first time we planted cauliflower, in 2000, it all got left in the fields, because nobody knew what it was,” plant health engineer Norma Romero told Tierramérica. In her view, one of the most important contributions made by the more than 33,000 urban and suburban farms in Cuba has been the expansion of access to and consumption of vegetables.

Thanks to a new initiative at Vivero Alamar, recipes for the preparation of different vegetables and mushrooms accompany the lists of products available at the cooperative’s sales outlet, as part of its business and educational strategy. The shelves also stock pickled vegetables, fruit preserves and garlic paste, produced through its own small industry sideline.

Although organic produce can be prohibitively costly in other countries, the organic fruits and vegetables sold by Vivero Alamar are actually priced lower than those produced with agrochemicals and sold in private farmers markets, where the prices are set in accordance with supply and demand.

“The affordable prices are the biggest attraction. A head of lettuce costs four Cuban pesos (five cents of a dollar) here, and everywhere else they charge 10 pesos,” regular customer Sonia Ricardo told Tierramérica. “The vegetables here are fresh, they have no pesticides, and the service is really fast,” she added.

Despite these low prices, the cooperative is able to earn good profits, production chief Gonzálo González assured Tierramérica. Eighty-five percent of its products are sold directly to the population, and the rest go to restaurants like La Bodeguita del Medio, a major tourist attraction in Havana.

Since it first started out with just five people, Vivero Alamar has progressively moved towards a closed-loop farming system that reduces waste and environmental damage.

“We try to buy as few inputs from outside as possible,” explained González, which is what led to “the idea of producing our own manure and various bio-pesticides and fertilisers.”

Vivero Alamar raises bulls to obtain manure, has set up “worm bins” to produce earthworm castings, another organic fertiliser, and breeds mycorrhizal fungi (which attach themselves to the roots of plants and promote their growth) as well as insects and microorganisms that can boost crop yields naturally. The cooperative has also established links with 17 scientific centres for the incorporation of new organic farming techniques and products.

Today, the 195 people who work here are striving to raise production by 40 percent to reach the farm’s full potential output, and have also expanded into raising rabbits and sheep, in order to include meat in its sales to the public and improve protein consumption among the neighbouring population, some 30,000 people.

The staff is made up of 175 cooperative members and 20 employees, and boasts a high overall level of education, with 92 university graduates and 42 technical college graduates. Women currently account for only 46 of the 195 workers.

“A farm can do much more than produce food,” commented Salcines, as he watched a group of foreign tourists who had booked a guided tour and organic lunch at Vivero Alamar.

* This story was originally published by Latin American newspapers that are part of the Tierramérica network.

Indigenous students learning to operate equipment at a communications workshop. Credit: Courtesy of PCSAN/Daniela Silva

Indigenous communities in remote areas of Brazil have begun to recognise that they have the right to not be hungry, and are learning that food security means much more than simply having food on the table.

Rosiléia Cruz, 19, dreams of studying journalism. She chooses her words carefully during her interview with Tierramérica* by mobile phone from Tabatinga, in northwest Brazil, which can only be reached by plane or river travel.

Cruz is a member of the Ticuna indigenous ethnic group, one of the most numerous in the country. The Ticuna live in the Brazilian Amazon rainforest, in the Alto Solimões region around the river of the same name, near the borders of Peru and Colombia.

The lands of their ancestors were invaded for decades by “seringueiros” (rubber tappers), fishermen and loggers, who left poverty and destruction in their wake.

Up until three years ago, young people like Cruz had few prospects, and many sought relief in alcohol and even suicide.

But in January 2010, the Joint Programme on Food and Nutrition Security for Indigenous Women and Children opened a window of hope, with activities aimed at creating agricultural and other nutritional solutions, but with particular emphasis on training and awareness raising.

Cruz forms part of a group of 50 young people from Ticuna and Kokama indigenous communities participating in communications workshops held in local schools. At the Umariaçu II community school in Tabatinga, she learned how to conduct interviews, take photographs, and produce daily news billboards and radio programmes.

She was thrilled by the opportunity to handle a microphone or camera in order to question the village chief about community problems, explain the importance of breastfeeding to mothers-to-be, or inform children about healthy habits, soft drinks, processed foods and the fruits of the region.

“There are a lot of young people that we can rescue from alcoholism,” she said. “We just prepared a news report on ‘Indian Day’ (a Brazilian holiday celebrated every Apr. 19) and I’m going to participate in Indigenous Babies Week.”

The aim of the workshops is to motivate young people to promote and defend their rights. An agreement with a local television station made it possible for the youngsters to be trained in the use of the equipment donated by the joint programme. The radio station in Tabatinga provided them with space in its Saturday programming schedule so that they could broadcast their own radio show.

The group also uses loudspeakers mounted on posts in their villages to get their message across. The daily news billboards are displayed on the walls of medical clinics and schools, and internet workshops have provided them with the skills to run their own website, which will be launched on May 21.

Once all the workshops are completed, the participants will share what they have learned with other students. Partnerships with local governments, universities and indigenous organisations will ensure continuity, and the internet will serve as a platform to disseminate the results, expand communication and inspire other young people.

These experiences form part of a wider project to help Ticuna and Kokama communities to organise in order to demand health care, education and economic and political participation.

The joint programme is an initiative of the Millennium Development Goal (MDG) Achievement Fund, set up with a financial contribution from the government of Spain and administered by various United Nations agencies, including the UN Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO), in partnership with the Brazilian government.

Now in the stage of collecting data and evaluating results, since it will conclude in June, the programme focused on the municipalities of Tabatinga, Benjamin Constant and São Paulo de Olivença in the northwestern state of Amazonas, and the municipality of Dourados in the southwestern state of Mato Grosso do Sul, which are home to a combined total of 53,000 indigenous people.

These areas were chosen because of their high rates of malnutrition, substance abuse and violence, as well as their remote and difficult-to-reach locations. It is hoped that the positive results expected can be extended to other regions of the country, Fernando Moretti, the national coordinator of the joint programme, told Tierramérica.

In the three and half years since the programme was launched, International Labour Organization (ILO) Convention 169 on indigenous and tribal peoples has been translated into the Guaraní, Terena and Ticuna languages. Brazil ratified the convention in 2002, but its implementation remains a challenge.

Another concrete outcome was the publication of a book that shares the perceptions of 25 children and adolescents in villages in Mato Grosso do Sol and neighbouring Paraguay on food and nutrition security. The book, which includes photographs, letters and artworks, will be distributed in a Portuguese-Guaraní bilingual edition to schools, libraries and cultural centres.

“When we talk about food security, it is not simply a matter of food production, but also of training in health and self-esteem,” said Moretti.

The activities are aimed at motivating people to use the region’s biological and agricultural diversity sustainably.

Communities were provided with rural technical assistance and guidance for the establishment of agro-forestry systems, which combine farming with sustainable use and recovery of local forests, and of school gardens. In Dourados, indigenous farmers reintroduced yerba mate – used to prepare a hot beverage widely consumed in southern Brazil and neighbouring countries – and other native plant species with significant commercial potential.

In the village of Panambizinho, two plant nurseries were constructed, and the local residents learned how to make eco-friendly stoves that use less firewood, thus preserving the forest, and reduce harmful smoke emissions.

There were also discussions of concepts and practices related to healthy eating and disease prevention. Awareness raising and the creation of opportunities allowed the project to grow naturally, said Moretti.

Some families created gardens in their homes. Indigenous community members were trained to measure and weigh babies and children in order to provide data on these populations to the Food and Nutrition Security System.

In Alto Solimões, the ILO is supporting an association of craftspeople with a market study to help their products reach buyers.

For Moretti, what was most important was strengthening institutions and expanding interaction with the indigenous population. From now on, there will be two indigenous representatives on the National Council for Food and Nutrition Security, the agency responsible for implementation of the Zero Hunger policy launched by the Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva administration (2003-2011). Indigenous community members are also organising to participate in municipal councils.

In Dourados, the National Indigenous Fund and UNICEF organised a colloquium in order to create a network for the protection of indigenous children and adolescents and to define the measures to be adopted in cases of abuse, abandonment and alcoholism. A similar event will be held with communities in Alto Solimões on Jun. 17-19.

An ethnic mapping exercise was also conducted, which included the identification of what is produced in each region. “These are tools that the indigenous people themselves will be able to use,” stressed Moretti.

* This story was originally published by Latin American newspapers that are part of the Tierramérica network.

HIJOS, the acronym for “Sons and Daughters for Identity and Justice Against Oblivion and Silence”, is an Argentine rights group founded in 1995 when children of people “disappeared” by that country’s 1976-1983 military regime came together to hold escraches or outings of human rights violators.

Argentine victims of forced disappearance. Credit: ha+/CC BY 2.0

An estimated 30,000 people were forcibly disappeared during the Argentine dictatorship’s systematic suppression of dissent. In 1976, then army chief Videla led the junta made up of the commanders of the three military forces after the coup d’état that overthrew the democratic government of Isabel Perón.

Videla, who died on May 17, may be physically no more, the 25-year-old Parodi told the audience in her acceptance speech, but Argentina is still trying to correct the historical wrongs of the regime he led for most of its seven years in power.

Parodi was with her colleague Marcos Kary in Gwangju to share the human rights experiences of Argentina and South Korea.

The Gwangju Prize is awarded by the May 18 Memorial Foundation in South Korea, which like HIJOS was established by the families of those subjected to the brutal excesses of a dictatorship. Protests against the rule of South Korean military commander and strongman Chun Doo-hwan (1979-1988) had culminated in the May 18-27, 1980 uprising in Gwangju, also known as 518, an allusion to the date the bloody crackdown began.

In spring 1980 there was a wave of demonstrations across South Korea. In Gwangju, in the southwest, the military responded with brute force, firing indiscriminately into crowds. Even passersby were killed. The final death toll is still uncertain, but up to 2,000 people may have died.

The uprising is seen as a pivotal moment in the struggle for South Korean democracy.

The May 18 Memorial Foundation was established in 1994, and the Gwangju Prize was created in 2000. Xanana Gusmao, who fought for the freedom of East Timor in Southeast Asia and was elected as its first president when it became a new country in 2002, was the first recipient of the prize.

The award has since gone to other leaders in South Asia, notably Aung San Suu Kyi, the icon for democracy in Myanmar/Burma, in 2004; Manipur’s Irom Sharmila, fighting the excesses of the military in northeastern India, in 2007; and Dr Binayak Sen, a civil rights activist working for the rights of tribal populations in India, in 2011.

For the first time, however, the prize has gone this year to an organisation so many miles and whole continents away from the parent country. HIJOS was chosen for its dedication to get justice for victims of human rights abuses during Argentina’s dictatorship.

Parodi and Kary, both students who work for and represent HIJOS, are not the children of any of those who fell prey to the atrocities of the regime, but are willing to carry on the job that the daughters and sons of the victims began nearly two decades ago.

Like other human rights groups in their country, their aim is to help restore truth and bring justice to Argentine society. The organisation has helped collect evidence, arranged legal assistance for those wishing to prosecute human rights violators, and offered psychological support.

Videla’s sentencing was a part of this effort. Tried and sentenced to life for human rights abuses soon after democracy was restored, he only served a few years in prison before he was released under a broad presidential pardon from Carlos Menem (1989-1999).

But the sustained efforts of organisations like HIJOS ensured that this impunity would not be permanent.

In the mid-2000s, the Argentine Supreme Court struck down the presidential pardon for the former members of the junta, as well as the two late 1980s amnesty laws, ruling that they were unconstitutional.

“In the period that no trials took place,” Parodi told IPS, “we undertook social action by identifying the perpetrators of atrocities and distributing leaflets to their neighbours indicating that the people next door were responsible for the brutal abuses that happened in the 1970s and 1980s.”

The human rights trials resumed after the pardons and amnesty laws were thrown out. In the central city of Córdoba, where Parodi and Kary work, there have already been four trials involving 400 victims and 43 accused, said Parodi. And a fifth trial began in December 2012 and will last another two years, the two activists told IPS.

However, helping to bring the perpetrators to court is not the end of HIJOS’s job, Parodi said, adding that there is still a lot to be done for human rights in their country.

“Human rights continue to be suppressed in Argentina,” Kary told IPS. “The military may no longer be in power, but the police continue to wield power, and their mindset has never really changed. Torture in jails continues.”

Meanwhile, the Gwangju Prize – and its 50,000 dollar cash award – has given the organisation an opportunity to share its human rights experience with rights groups and democratic movements in Asia. It is the first international recognition that HIJOS has received, and one it hopes to build on in its fight for human rights.

At the UN Forum of Mayors on Crime Prevention and Security in Urban Settings, from left to right: Dong Min Ki, Jonathan Lucas, Cecilia Andersson, Martin Xaba, Bilal S. Hamad, and Marin Casimir Ilboudo. Credit: Silvia Giannelli/IPS

As people around the world continue to migrate into cities, swelling urban populations, they have sparked growth in another area: crime and security issues.

“Big cities are…where the greatest opportunities are, but also where more criticalities concentrate,” said Piero Fassino, mayor of Turin, Italy, at the plenary session of the Forum of Mayors on Crime Prevention and Security in Urban Settings, held in Turin from May 20 to 21.

“While the quality of services to citizens are usually higher in those centres, they also present more problems of social alienation, youth unrest and crime,” Fassino added.

The forum, organised by United Nations Interregional Crime and Justice Research Institute (UNICRI) with the United Nations Settlements Programme (UN-HABITAT) and the municipality of Turin, sought to reduce inequality and injustice in urban settings and address the dynamics of security and crime preventions.

The challenge for the future is to take advantage of opportunities offered by urbanisation while reducing episodes of crime and violence that hinder sustainable development, particularly for the most vulnerable people: women, youth and marginalised groups.

“From 1960 to 1990, urbanisation was accompanied by a severe increase [in] crime and violence, which affected the majority of cities and towns in both the developed and the developing world,” explained Cecilia Andersson, human settlements officer of the Safer Cities Programme of UN-HABITAT, during her opening speech.

“This situation required change. It required the cities and towns themselves to take responsibility to deal with these issues,” she added.

Mayors and representatives of 18 municipalities around the world from Cape Town to Bangkok, from Ouagadougou (Burkina Faso) to Seoul, discussed the biggest challenges they encountered and the best measures to take to address them.

Martin Xaba, head of the Safer Cities and I-Trump Department of Durban, South Africa, explained how the local municipality decided in 2000 to adopt the Safer Cities strategy.

“The strategy requires the implementation of both reactive and proactive approach,” Xaba explained. While adequate responses to crime are always needed, “prevention remains the most effective tool, and this is where community involvement becomes critical”.

Such tools, in the case of Durban, include campaigns for crime awareness and against the abuse of women and children, workshops on drug abuse, and the active participation of the community in ward safety committees.

It was “upon the request of African mayors, who were having an issue with regards to safety in their cities” that the programme Safer Cities began in Africa, Andersson explained to IPS, with Johannesburg, South Africa and Dar Es Salaam, Tanzania as pilot cities. The programme has since gone global.

Meanwhile, local leaders say that exchanging ideas among cities does work. Antonio Frey, director of local security in Santiago del Chile, told IPS, “The experience of Cape Town, South Africa, is very interesting for us. They managed to recover public spaces, thanks to the involvement of citizens from marginalised areas.”

“This strategy has positive effects in the long run, because those people recover that space, and then take care [of] and manage it.”

Despite the substantial differences between cities in terms of crime rates and types of crimes, a key requirement to enhance safety and security is the decentralisation of policies from the national to local level.

When policies are not decentralised, improving circumstances becomes very difficult, as Bilal S. Hamad, mayor of Beirut, could attest during his speech at the plenary session.

In Beirut, a lack of decentralisation is hindering the municipality’s ability to intervene on crime and safety issues. “The central government has its hand in the affairs of the municipality,” Hamad lamented. The city is not in charge [of] a police force, and the central government put someone in the role of governor, “taking all the executive power in the city of Beirut”.

In another example, inadequate housing is a problem indirectly connected to crime, but “we don’t have full power [over] it, because it’s the central government which controls that”, insisted Hamad.

According to Andersson, apart from decentralisation, cooperation is also essential. “The best results come when all the various departments in a municipality [understand] that they have a role to play with regards to providing safety and security for the inhabitants of the city,” she told IPS.

Interestingly, crime and violence differ significantly from city to city, and developed and developing countries do not necessarily face separate types of crimes.

“In developing countries, the biggest challenge is always finding resources,” Andersson told IPS, particularly moving resources from national to local governments. Some problems, however, affect most cities, regardless of the country in which they are located. “Across borders, in all regions, the issue of women and girls’ safety…comes out quite clearly,” Andersson said.

This issue, by limiting the freedom of women and girls, prevents them from participating in and contributing to their communities. As Andersson clarified during the conference, “Communities where all citizens are empowered to participate in social, economic and political opportunities…are instrumental [in reducing] poverty.”

Ramzi Kassem, a lawyer who defends prisoners at Guantanamo Bay. Photo courtesy of Ramzi Kassem.

Ramzi Kassem, associate professor of law at the City University of New York, is one of the lawyers who voluntarily defend prisoners of the “war on terror” being held at Guantanamo Bay. He currently represents seven detainees of various nationalities at Guantanamo and one at Bagram Air Base, Afghanistan.

The facility was established in January 2002 by the administration of former U.S. President George W. Bush to hold alleged enemies in the so-called global war on terror.

As pressure from the strike grew, Obama said on Apr. 30 that he would try again to close Guantanamo, despite persistent congressional opposition. “I think it is critical for us to understand that Guantanamo is not necessary to keep America safe,” the president said. “It is expensive. It is inefficient. It hurts us in terms of our international standing.”

In an interview with IPS correspondent Robert Stefanicki, Kassem described the brutal manner in which detainees are force-fed, the legal situation of the prisoners, and how the experience has been unique for him.

Q: What is the current scope of the hunger strike?

A: I was at Guantanamo on Feb. 6 this year, and on that day my client told me that the hunger strike had begun. Now even the U.S. government admits that more than 100 prisoners out of 166 are protesting.

But based on information from my clients, in reality, all of them are on strike, with the exception of those who are sick, old and “high value” detainees kept in complete isolation. The discrepancy comes from the fact that the U.S. government has a narrow definition of a hunger strike, just like it has a narrow definition of torture.

Q: Why are they protesting?

A: My client Moaz al-Alawi told me he is refusing food and drink to protest his indefinite imprisonment without charge and without fair process. This is the only way for prisoners to exercise their autonomy and dignity.

Those people were taken from their families over a decade ago. Very few have been tried or charged. Over half of Guantanamo’s current population has been approved for release by various U.S. security agencies: the CIA, FBI, and the Department of Defence.

Yet they are still in prison. One of my clients, Shaker Aamer, was cleared for release by the Bush and Obama administrations, and the UK government has been demanding his freedom for years, but he is still there, now on hunger strike.

Q: Do the prisoners have concrete demands?

A: The prisoners want Barack Obama to deliver on his promise to close the prison and send them home. Until the government takes some concrete steps in that direction, I think the hunger strike will continue. It may stop when some people are released, beginning with those cleared for release long ago.

Q: What are U.S. authorities doing to stop the protest?

A: Several prisoners are being force-fed. Force-feeding someone against his or her will is a violation of medical ethics and international law. Other prisoners in Guantanamo refuse food from their captors but accept feeding; they protest by making the U.S. military feed them by tube.

Although it is legal to feed those men, it is still illegal to do it in such a brutal way – sending five guards to take the prisoner violently, beat him up, restrain him in a chair, and tie down his arms, legs and head, so he cannot move. Then they put the tube through his nose down to the stomach. No anesthetic or lubricant.

Q: Do your clients claim innocence?

A: The fundamental concept in any legal system is that one is innocent until proven guilty. In this case you have people who have not even been charged.

At its peak, Guantanamo had 800 inmates. Now it has 166. The majority was released unilaterally by the U.S. government, not by court order.

I’ve seen several cases where the evidence did not support the accusation. When those cases were moved forward to trial level, federal judges ruled in favour of the prisoners in over 75 percent of the cases.

I am not saying that there aren’t any criminals at Guantanamo. If they are suspected criminals, they should be charged in a court of law that recognises the basic principles of fair process: presumption of innocence, no secret evidence, reliable evidence not extracted under torture.

Some families of my clients told me, “If my son or my husband did anything wrong, charge him. If he is convicted by a fair court, we would not have any objections. If you are not going to charge him, then release him.”

Q: Why is the U.S. government reluctant to bring Guantanamo detainees to court?

A: The U.S. government is reluctant because if you have torture, the case does not fly in court. All the prisoners of Guantanamo have been tortured one way or another.

Q: Are the concerns that released prisoners could return to terrorist activities justified?

A: When we say “return”, we assume that they were there. There is no proof of that. Also, there is no empirical evidence for the concern that they may engage in something wrong after release.

Even if you believe in U.S. government numbers – and I don’t – 77 percent of prisoners from Guantanamo have gone back to normal peaceful life.

Q: How is working at Guantanamo unique for a lawyer?

A: First, we have to fight for access to our clients. Then we stumble over numerous other restrictions: requirements of being a U.S. citizen, security clearance by the FBI, traveling to Cuba to meet the client.

In a normal criminal case, when given a report that the government wants to use against my client, first I would review this report with him. In Guantanamo such a report is classified, not to be shared with the client, so I have to develop the defence on my own—a big handicap.

Q: Were you surprised by recent revelations that authorities in Guantanamo listen to the conversations between prisoners and their lawyers?

A: For us it was confirmation, not a revelation. In 2005, when I first met with my clients in Guantanamo, I did not believe them when they said conversations were being recorded. But now I know my clients have always been right.

The prosecution at the military commission admitted that smoke detectors are in fact cameras and microphones. The government may not use these recordings in court against my clients, but the intelligence services are using them for whatever purposes they want.

Q: Do the lawyers at Guantanamo feel helpless?

A: We try to change the situation as much as we can. Our role is not necessarily to win in court. We have to amplify the voices of our clients to ensure they are heard by the media, NGOs and the public.

News from Guantanamo pressured the U.S. government to release prisoners. I hope this time pressure from the hunger strike will bring real change: closing Guantanamo, a place that has no right to exist.

Young women on a Damascus street. Credit: Rebecca Murray/IPS

When thousands of participants from around the world gather in the Malaysian capital of Kuala Lumpur next week, the primary focus will be on health and empowerment of girls and women.

The meeting, scheduled for May 26-30 under a banner titled Women Deliver, will zero in on a longstanding unanswered question: how does the international community meet the massive unmet needs for contraception by over 222 million women in the developing world?”

The U.N. Population Fund (UNFPA) points out that increased contraceptive use and reduced unmet needs for contraception are central to achieving three of the U.N.’s Millennium Development Goals (MDGs) – improving maternal health, reducing child mortality and combating HIV/AIDS – heading towards the 2015 deadline.

Sivananthi Thanenthiran, executive director at the Malaysia-based Asian-Pacific Resource & Research Centre for Women (ARROW), told IPS the ability to decide the number, timing, and spacing of their children is one of the most fundamental rights individuals and couples can have.

Currently, she said, it is estimated 222 million women have an unmet need for family planning, and in many countries most women still continue to have more children then they desired.

“Investing in reproductive health and reproductive rights requires investment in a number of interventions by U.N. agencies, governments and donors,” she added.

Since UNFPA began operations back in 1969, the average global fertility has been cut in half. UNFPA says it has been a “critical catalyst” in this success by responding to requests by developing countries.

Asked how best the contraceptive needs could be met, Dr. Purnima Mane, president and chief executive officer of Pathfinder International, told IPS the United Nations and the international community need to continue advocating for increased funding – domestic and international – for access to contraception and for the integration of family planning into universal health coverage in all possible forums and through broader partnerships across sectors.

While it is true that investments in women’s education are essential to this effort, she said, much more needs to happen to change the situation of women.

Community-oriented work to change social norms around gender and enabling social and economic policies are essential to prevent early marriage, to keep girls in school, and to help women to space their births and give birth safely, when they want to bear children, said Dr. Mane, who heads an organisation described as the global leader in sexual and reproductive rights.

She argued that based on historical evidence, political will is, and will be, the most critical element of success for strong family planning programmes.

“However, we need to be vigilant about the voluntary nature of such programmes and the quality of the care provided,” Mane added.

At this time, she said, the most critical priority is for the global community to come together to address the contraceptive and sexual and reproductive health information and service needs of the growing youth population of over three billion under the age of 25.

“There is no easy fix and we all know that. What we need is to address the multiple factors that impact on this issue rather than focus on any one aspect alone,” she said.

The Kuala Lumpur meeting, the third Women Deliver conference launched originally in 2007, is touted as the largest global event of the decade – primarily of government leaders, policymakers, healthcare professionals, representatives of non-governmental organisations (NGOs), corporate leaders, and global media outlets.

The event will include a Youth Pre-Conference, a Minister’s Forum and a Parliamentarians Forum.

Asked about investments in reproductive health, Thanenthiran told IPS these include interventions around delaying the age of marriage and the age of first pregnancies, which include investments in girls’ education especially at the secondary and tertiary levels.

Interventions such as making available a range of contraceptive methods and ensuring women receive the right information so that they can make informed choices about the method that best suits them, and that health service providers treat women with kindness and provide quality care and service are essential in increasing trust towards family planning programmes, she added.

Naturally this requires funding and political commitment, but the health of women and girls is well worth safeguarding, Thanenthiran added.

Asked how the U.N.’s post-2015 economic agenda could underline reproductive health, Dr. Mane told IPS human rights principles of the International Conference on Population and Development (which took place in Cairo in 1994) can be embedded constructively in a variety of ways in the new set of development goals, but given that the relevant MDGs are especially lagging, “more explicit attention to the unfinished agenda is needed as we go forward.”

Population dynamics are also often left out of important discussions about future needs and development scenarios. For example, population growth may be mentioned but not in relation to access to contraception as a solution, she added.

She said universal health care is a start, if coverage of the broadest range of sexual and reproductive health care is explicitly included to move the unfinished agenda forward.

“Only then will we achieve sustainable development,” she said.

“My organisation, Pathfinder International, stands behind confronting inequality by advocating with other civil society partners for better governance which not only addresses inequality but holds policymakers accountable for failing to address preventable deaths among women and children,” Dr. Mane declared.

Thanenthiran said it is essential that access to comprehensive, quality sexual and reproductive health services, as promised to women and committed to by governments in the Cairo ICPD Programme of Action, is prioritised in the post-2015 development framework.

The ICPD Programme of Action (PoA) is going to be 20 years in 2014, and women are yet to enjoy in full the promises made to them during that time, she pointed out.

In the MDGs, some attention was given to the agenda under MDG 5 (on improving maternal health), and those working in the field of sexual and reproductive health and rights are hoping to see a more comprehensive approach with more reproductive health issues and indicators being covered in the new goal on reproductive and maternal health.

This would be the best way to go about to ensure government commitments to the ICPD are fulfilled, and initial investments made during the MDGs are continued and fully realised in the new development framework, she declared.