Cape Town water activist Nokuzola Bulana says water management devices are not the way to solve water waste and debt for the poor. Credit: Brendon Bosworth/IPS

Nokuzola Bulana has a problem with leaks. The water that drips from the pipes of the toilet outside her home in Khayelitsha, a large semi-informal township on the fringes of Cape Town, South Africa goes to waste and drives up her water bill.

Bulana, a water activist, says she fixed the leaks in January but water on the floor at the base of the toilet, which is inside a stall painted with pink, yellow and purple stripes, and pooled on the ground outside the stall, shows that seepages persist.

In March, her eight-person home used over seven times the amount of water the city of Cape Town gives indigent households for free in a month. Bulana blames the leaks for this.

“We don’t mind to pay for the water we drink or cook with but now the water goes down the drain,” Bulana tells IPS when interviewed at her home. “I love the environment. I want to look after the water.”

Bulana is one of many South Africans whose wasted water contributes to the country’s yearly loss of more than a third of its water – a shortfall driven chiefly by leaks, according to a 2012 report from the South African Water Research Commission. These losses cost municipalities more than 731 million dollars annually and drive poor citizens into debt they often cannot afford to pay.

South Africa is also the 30^th driest country in the world and could hit water shortages as early as 2025. It can scarcely afford to squander this resource.

Water saving devices denounced

At about 4 pm on a Saturday afternoon, there was no water coming from the tap outside 60-year-old Lusi Daniso’s house in Khayelitsha. This is a regular occurrence, Daniso tells IPS.

She claims she gets just 20 litres of water daily – not enough for the eight people living in her home – and has to ask her neighbours for water.

Daniso’s home is one of about 84,000 in Cape Town where the city has installed water management devices (WMDs). Housed in oval boxes with blue lids, the devices are set to provide indigent residents (those with a total monthly household income of 313 dollars or less, or a property value of 20,890 dollars or under) with 10.5 kilolitres of free water per month. This allotment is broken into a 350-litre daily allowance.

The devices cut water supply once the daily limit is reached, and turn it back on the next day.

The WMDs play a key role in the city’s water management strategy and are touted as a way to deal with the 9.2 million dollars indigent households owe the city. If indigent residents choose to have a device installed, the city repairs leaks, installs the device, and cancels their outstanding water debt.

But as IPS reported previously community leaders and civil society organisations have denounced the WMDs.

The devices are going into households with low quality plumbing infrastructure, Taryn Pereira, a researcher with the non-profit Environmental Monitoring Group, based in Cape Town, tells IPS. Leaks from taps, cisterns and underground pipes result in residents not getting their daily 350 litres, she says.

Technicians fix leaks when installing the devices but repairs often don’t last and residents in poor communities don’t have the money to pay for plumbers, says Pereira.

Pereira’s research indicates that residents are not properly consulted about the devices, cut-offs due to leaks and technical problems are common, and people struggle to get help from the city when meters malfunction.

“In this city, this supposedly world-class city, many of our fellow citizens, even once they manage to get a house that they’ve been waiting a long time for on a housing list, are actually, in terms of water, worse off then when they lived in shacks,” she says.

A fragile compromise

Because of the issues with water management devices, Bulana and other residents in Makhaza, a subsection of Khayelitsha, met with city officials last year and asked for a six-month pilot programme in the subsection whereby the city will fix leaks and freeze residents’ debt without installing the devices.

“We can manage our water because we are the ones using the water,” says Bulana.

Over the past months, the city has been assessing leaks and doing education and awareness in Makhaza in preparation for fixing leaks, councillor Ernest Sonnenberg, the city’s mayoral committee member for utility services, tells IPS in an emailed response.

But that does not mean devices are off the table.

The city will review all the houses affected by the project and analyse their water use, Sonnenberg says. “If residents are unable to decrease their usage as discussed in the meeting the city will review their individual account and install a WMD if necessary.”

The Senate voted 99-0 to adopt a resolution that urged President Barack Obama to fully enforce existing economic sanctions against Iran and to “provide diplomatic, military and economic support” to Israel “in its defense of its territory, people and existence”.

Washington, it said, should support Israel “in accordance with United States law and the constitutional responsibility of Congress to authorize the use of military force” if Israel “is compelled to take military action in legitimate self-defense against Iran’s nuclear weapons program.”

The measure also re-affirmed the official policy of the administration of President Barack Obama that it would take whatever action necessary to “prevent” Iran from acquiring a nuclear weapon.

At the same time, the Foreign Affairs Committee of the Republican-led House of Representatives unanimously approved new sanctions legislation that, if passed into law, would blacklist foreign countries or companies that fail to reduce their oil imports from Iran to virtually nil within 180 days.

The same bill would expand the current blacklisting of companies that do business with Iran’s financial sector to include those engaged in the country’s automotive and mining sectors, as well.

In perhaps its most controversial section, the bill also eliminates President Obama’s ability to waive most sanctions for national-interest or national-security reasons.

Such waiver authority, which has been routinely included in existing sanctions legislation, has been used by Obama to ensure that countries that have historically enjoyed important trade and financial relations with Tehran continue cooperating with Western-led international efforts to pressure Iran to curb its nuclear programme.

The president’s waiver authority is also considered critical to prospects for a negotiated agreement between Iran and the P5+1 (U.S., Britain, France, China, Russia plus Germany) by which such curbs would be accepted by Tehran in return for easing sanctions.

Both moves come as the Senate Republicans unveiled yet another bill even more far-reaching than that approved by the House Foreign Affairs Committee by blacklisting companies that do any trade with Iran and deprive the president of all waiver authority. Under the draft legislation, which so far lacks any Democratic co-sponsors, sanctions could be eased or lifted only by an act of Congress.

Approval of both the Senate resolution and the House bill were hailed by American Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC), the premier group of the Israel lobby here.

“The passage of this resolution is an extremely significant and timely state of solidarity with Israel and a restatement of America’s determination to thwart Iran’s nuclear quest – which endangers America, Israeli, and international security,” it said about the Senate action.

The House bill, it noted with approval, would impose a de facto commercial embargo against Iran and would “maximise the effectiveness of American economic and diplomatic efforts as Iran nears a nuclear weapons capability.”

But other observers said the latest Congressional moves marked a dangerous escalation in tensions at a critical moment.

“Congress should abstain from any more reckless threats or sanctions that push us closer to the brink of war with Iran,” Jamal Abdi of the National Iranian American Council (NIAC) said of the Senate action.

“Attacking the president’s waiver authority is a cynical attempt to weaken his hand at the negotiating table and sabotage diplomatic efforts,” he added about the House bill. “If the president can’t lift sanctions in exchange for concessions, the Iranians will have little incentive to cooperate.”

The latest Congressional moves came as the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) released its latest quarterly report on Iran’s nuclear programme detailing the installation of more advanced centrifuges that are used to enrich uranium, a buildup of stockpiles of 3.5-percent and 20-percent enriched uranium, and advances in the construction of its heavy-water reactor at Arak.

While a number of senators made much of the latest report, suggesting that Tehran was on the verge of building a nuclear weapon, experts here said that the report offered no major surprises and that Iran’s 20-percent enriched stockpile – which could most easily be further enriched to bomb grade – remained substantially below what Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu last September defined as Israel’s “red line”.

“The report findings underscore the urgent need to intensify negotiations with Tehran to resolve the political questions surrounding Iran’s nuclear program and to resolve the outstanding questions regarding the potential military dimensions of the program,” according to an analysis by the Arms Control Association (ACA) here.

“But, at the same time, the findings reinforce earlier assessments that Iran remains years away from obtaining a nuclear weapon.”

Iran has repeatedly denied that its nuclear programme is designed to develop a weapon, and, since 2007, the U.S. intelligence community has insisted that the country’s leadership has not yet decided to build one. But the progress Iran has made in building and mastering the technology would shorten the time it would need to construct a bomb if such a decision were made, according to nuclear experts.

On the diplomatic front, meanwhile, progress has been more or less frozen since the latest P5+1 meeting with Iran in Almaty, Kazakhstan in early April when Tehran rejected a Western offer to ease sanctions on gold and precious-metal trade and some Iranian exports in exchange for suspending 20-percent enrichment and transferring its existing 20-percent stockpile out of the country.

Most observers believe the new talks are unlikely until after Iran’s elections next month and the inauguration of a new president, despite the fact that decisions on nuclear issues are ultimately made by the country’s Supreme Leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei.

Among the favoured candidates approved this week by the Guardian Council is Iran’s nuclear negotiator, Saeed Jalili, who is considered by veteran Iran watchers a hard-liner who has often frustrated his P5+1 interlocutors.

Some had hoped that former president Akbar Hashemi Rafsanjani, who entered the race at the last minute and has occasionally urged better relations with the West, would offer a major challenge, but his candidacy was rejected by the Council.

Another approved candidate in the race, Hasan Rowhani, served as former president Mohammed Khatami’s chief nuclear negotiator. In that post, he struck a deal to suspend enrichment with the so-called EU-3 (Britain, France, and Germany). But his lack of prominence makes him an underdog in a race dominated by conservatives closely associated with Khamenei.

Whether the flurry of new threats and sanctions by Congress will affect the election – or the calculations of Khamenei himself – remains to be seen.

Even the strongest supporters of sanctions have conceded that the economic pressure they’ve exerted on the regime to date has not produced the desired result and may even have strengthened regime hardliners who are convinced that Washington’s ultimate aim is “regime change” – a conviction that is likely to be strengthened by a review of Wednesday’s Senate debate.

*Jim Lobe’s blog on U.S. foreign policy can be read at http://www.lobelog.com.

When Gabriela Blanco tells other Cubans that she works in an organic vegetable cooperative and is getting ready to study agronomy at the university, she gets surprised looks.

She is not sure where her vocation came from, but she does know that this is what she wants to do.

In Cuba, which is seeking to boost agricultural yields, there is a scarcity of young people working in the sector.

Blanco, a petite 20-year-old, dropped her math studies after two years to try her hand at the Vivero Alamar, a successful agricultural cooperative in Havana that operates as a Basic Unit of Cooperative Production.

“I began working here in September 2012; in three months they made me a member of the cooperative. I realised that I really like it and I want to stay here. The agricultural sector has lots of possibilities and many fields of investigation; it’s a very interesting and lovely experience,” she told IPS.

Mercedes Cepero, 18, has had a similar experience, although she came to this cooperative to fulfil her professional training requirement as an agronomy technician. “I’ve passed the student stage, and now I have to get trained and learn as a worker. I used to think that agronomy was just working with a hoe in the sun, but I was wrong,” she told IPS.

Cepero is also preparing for university entrance exams, which will be held this month, because she wants to be an agricultural engineer. Unlike Blanco, she was told about this career when she was in secondary school. “That was when I became interested,” she said.

Blanco thinks that the lack of interest in agricultural careers among young people is due in part to today’s society. “A lot of people see agriculture as something that is not studied, that doesn’t involve science, because it’s just planting and harvesting. Other people view work in the countryside as a lot of hard work that brings few benefits,” she said.

Twenty young people, between the ages of 17 and 30, work at the Vivero Alamar.

However, most young people leave agriculture when they find jobs that are more in line with their aspirations for better incomes and less hard work.

Cepero has little patience with the general attitude toward agricultural work: young people “are a little bit lazy, and they want everything to just fall into their lap,” she said.

According to figures provided by the national urban and suburban agriculture programme, about 70,000 young people in this country of 11.3 million are working in agriculture.

The Vivero Alamar urban farming cooperative is located in the housing project of Alamar about 15 km from downtown Havana. The housing development is home to about 100,000 people.

Research by the Centre for the Study of Youth has found that young Cubans prefer to seek jobs in the emerging economy, such as foreign companies, and reject jobs related to sanitation services, construction and agriculture.

“People view agriculture today as if it were punishment. Whoever misbehaves will go work in the fields. The children of farmers do not want to continue their parents’ work; they want to move to Havana and become doctors,” said Isis Salcines, who describes herself as a worker-of-all-trades at the coop, and who is about to graduate as an agronomist.

Shortly after beginning her university studies, Salcines decided to create a kind of vocational club at an elementary school close to the coop, dubbed “Agro-ecological Kids”. But first she conducted a couple of surveys. One asked, “What do you want to be when you grow up?” and another asked them to complete the sentence: “When I grow up, I want to be.…” with farmer as one of the choices.

Not one of the children chose farmer. Salcines, who is the daughter of the coop’s founder and president, Miguel Ángel Salcines, set herself the goal of holding weekly sessions to teach the children about how the coop is run using agro-ecological methods, and why it is important to eat healthier.

By the time the first course was over, the “Kids” would eat every bite of vegetables they were served in tasty salads, and they knew how to work on the farm, understood the importance of producing food, and had learned about the comprehensive management of pests and diseases.

In a new survey she conducted at the end of the first workshop, 15 of the boys and girls – nearly three-quarters – marked agronomy as a possible career. “This experience was a real incentive. It made me see how it was possible for them to choose this line of work once they are grown-up,” Salcines said.

For Norma Romero, a plant protection engineer, the formula must include education from an early age and assurances for young people that they will feel recognised, motivated and encouraged to continue working in agriculture, despite any difficulties.

Good wages, a flexible schedule to allow them to study, free breakfast and lunch, work clothing and shoes, and other benefits are motivating factors, “because in agriculture there is mud, lots of sun, dust, and really hard conditions. For us it is vital for people to come and stay, especially young people,” Romero said.

As part of the recent reforms of the Cuban economy, the Education Ministry expanded in 2011 the number of agronomy specialties offered at the vocational school level and ordered a reinforcement of vocational guidance toward agriculture in the early years of primary education, in line with the characteristics and needs of each province.

Agriculture accounts for 20 percent of total employment but less than five percent of GDP because it has the lowest productivity of any sector. Last year, the country imported 1.6 billion dollars’ worth of food.

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.”

Madam Siankusulu complains of poor harvests

Fifty seven thousand people were displaced on the Zambian and Zimbabwean sides of the Zambezi River to make way for the construction of the Kariba hydroelectric dam.

Almost six decade later, they are still to be compensated for being moved from their homes.

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.