Participants at a Climate and Health Capacity Building Workshop. Credit: Friday Phiri

By Friday Phiri
BONN, Jun 12 2026 (IPS)

Africa contributes the least to global greenhouse gas emissions, yet it faces some of the world’s most severe climate-related health impacts. Several realities define the continent’s climate and health landscape – increased infectious diseases, air pollution, death, disruption and pressure on health systems through heatwaves, floods, droughts and storms.

Changing temperatures and, more significantly, rainfall patterns are expanding the geographical range and transmission dynamics of climate-sensitive diseases such as Malaria, Dengue fever, Cholera and other vector- and water-borne diseases.

Climate-induced droughts, floods, and changing rainfall patterns are reducing agricultural productivity and threatening food systems. This increases hunger, undernutrition, stunting among children, and vulnerability to disease. According to archive.uneca.org, malnutrition remains one of the largest climate-sensitive health risks across Africa.

Thus, as African climate negotiators intensify preparations for the 64^th sessions of the UNFCCC Subsidiary Bodies (SB64), a clear message is emerging from Bonn: climate action without health action is no longer an option.

Over two critical days of engagement, African negotiators, health experts, technical institutions, and young climate leaders came together to strengthen Africa’s negotiating positions and place health firmly at the centre of the continent’s climate agenda.

The Climate and Health Capacity Building Workshop supported by the International Institute for Sustainable Development (IISD), and the African Group of Negotiators (AGN) Lead Coordinators Meeting collectively noted the growing recognition that climate change is not only an environmental challenge but also one of Africa’s most pressing public health threats.

For AGN Chair, Nana Dr Antwi-Boasiako Amoah, the connection is clear, and the required measures are equally urgent.

“Health is the human face of the climate crisis,” he told negotiators and partners during the opening of the capacity building workshop in Bonn. “If climate negotiations are ultimately about protecting people, then health must remain at the centre of our efforts.”

Chair of AGN, Nana Dr Antwi-Boasiako Amoah, with Dr Lynn Wagner of IISD at the Climate and Health Capacity Building Workshop. Credit: Friday Phiri

Building a Stronger African Climate and Health Voice

Building on the launch of the first-ever African Negotiators Climate and Health Curriculum in 2025, by Amref Health Africa, the climate and health capacity-building workshop brought together representatives from WHO-AFRO, Africa CDC, Amref Health Africa, the International Institute for Sustainable Development (IISD), technical experts, and young negotiators to deepen understanding of climate-health linkages and identify strategic entry points across negotiation tracks.

Participants examined ways to strengthen Africa’s position on adaptation indicators, climate-resilient health systems, early warning systems, health infrastructure, preparedness for climate-related emergencies, and financing mechanisms that can support health adaptation efforts.

“Following the adoption of the Belém Adaptation indicators and the ongoing discussions under the Baku Adaptation Roadmap, Africa has a unique opportunity to shape how adaptation is measured, financed and implemented globally,” said the AGN Chair. “We must ensure that health indicators under the global goal on adaptation are meaningful, context-specific, and responsive to Africa’s realities. We must also continue pushing for adaptation finance that enables African countries to build climate-resilient health systems, strengthen early warning systems, protect health infrastructure, and enhance preparedness for climate-related health emergencies.”

The emphasis on institutional coordination reflected a growing understanding that advancing Africa’s climate and health agenda will require sustained collaboration between negotiators, public health institutions, technical partners, and civil society.

And the WHO-Africa Regional Team Lead on Climate Change, Health and Environment pledged coordinated stakeholder support for the climate and health agenda.

“At the WHO-Regional office, we have developed Africa-specific policy and implementation frameworks in support of an Africa-wide coordinated climate and health agenda. Together with the Africa CDC and Amref Health Africa, we have offered and continue to provide technical support for the continent’s climate and health agenda. As we head to the African COP next year, we pledge continued support to the AGN, as Africa’s voice in climate negotiations, to ensure that climate and health are not left behind.”

Meanwhile, IISD Senior Director for Tracking Progress Programme, Lynn Wagner, noted the need for coordinated climate action, pointing out that “isolated action is no longer tenable as the global community faces multiple and interconnected environmental and sustainable development crises.”

IISD has been supporting the Friends of Climate and Health initiative aimed at fostering international collaboration on climate change and health.

Unity and Coordination Ahead of Critical Negotiations

While health featured prominently in discussions, the AGN Lead Coordinators’ Meeting reinforced a broader strategic priority; maintaining a unified African voice theme across all negotiating streams.

Convening lead coordinators for the various thematic streams, the meeting focused on aligning positions ahead of what is expected to be a pivotal negotiating session, ahead of COP31 in November and, ultimately, COP32 next year.

Drawing on priorities established during the AGN Strategy Meeting in Accra earlier in March this year, lead coordinators reviewed progress in implementing elements of the African Common Platform and assessed emerging issues across the negotiation tracks.

The AGN Chair called for discipline, commitment, and coordinated action.

“Our strength lies in our unity and our ability to speak with one voice,” he said, reminding negotiators that Africa’s influence in the negotiations depends on collective preparation and strategic coordination.

The discussions intensified the interconnected nature of many agenda items. Climate finance remains Africa’s foremost priority, but increasingly, negotiators are recognising how finance decisions affect the various thematic outcomes, particularly, adaptation, which has been Africa’s main agenda over the years.

Health, Finance and the Road to COP32

A recurring theme across both meetings was the need to translate recognition of climate-related health risks into tangible climate finance support for African countries.

Negotiators emphasised the importance of securing adaptation finance that enables countries to build climate-resilient health systems, strengthen disease surveillance and early warning systems, protect health infrastructure, and improve preparedness for climate-related emergencies, as espoused in the Belem Climate and Health Action Plan launched at COP30.

“Health is already recognised within the investment frameworks and result areas of major climate finance mechanisms, such as the Green Climate Fund (GCF) and the Fund for Responding to Loss and Damage (FRLD),” said David Kaluba, a Climate Finance Lead Negotiator. “However, the challenge is not only the availability of financing windows, but the limited pipeline of country-driven health-focused proposals and investment demand. Most countries have yet to fully integrate health priorities into their national climate plans (NDCs), financing strategies, and project pipelines, resulting in significant underutilisation of available climate finance opportunities for health system resilience, adaptation, and loss and damage responses.”

Kaluba therefore notes the need to generate sufficient country-level demand through evidence generation, development of bankable climate and health investment pipelines, and strengthening of institutional capacity to access and absorb available financing.

A Defining Opportunity for Africa

For many participants, this work extends beyond SB64. It forms part of a broader trajectory towards COP31 and ultimately COP32, significantly viewed as more than a diplomatic milestone.

It represents an opportunity for the continent to shape the global climate agenda around African realities and priorities, including climate and health.

As negotiations intensify, African countries are seeking to ensure that climate action delivers meaningful benefits for people on the ground, and health offers a powerful lens through which to frame that ambition.

Therefore, as formal negotiations begin on 8^th June, one message is clear: protecting the climate ultimately means protecting human health. And for Africa, this principle is becoming an increasingly powerful driver of its engagement in the global climate process.

The author is the Climate Change and Health Advocacy Lead at Amref Health Africa.

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Anup Jagwani, Global Director for Farming and Agribusiness at the World Bank Group, addresses the World Seed Congress. Credit: Supplied

By Friday Phiri
LISBON, May 26 2026 (IPS)

It is often said that the quality of seed determines the quality of the produce and, consequently, the sustainability of the entire agricultural value chain, influencing everything from crop yields to nutritional value.

The United Nations Food and Agricultural Organisation (FAO) emphasises that “we cannot have good crops if we do not have quality seeds”, a principle that underpins global efforts to improve food and nutritional security. It may thus be safe to conclude that seed is the foundation of good health.

The week of 18 to 23 May 2026 witnessed two related but parallel global events: one on global health, the 79^th World Health Assembly in Geneva by the World Health Organization (WHO) and the other on the importance of seeds to global agriculture and food security, the World Seed Congress, organised by the International Seed Federation (ISF).

With a record attendance of more than 1,700 delegates and guests representing over 900 companies and organisations in Lisbon and held under the theme “Joint Actions, Resilient Futures”, the seed congress called for a collective commitment and action at a moment when the multilateral frameworks underpinning global food and nutritional security are under unprecedented strain.

The Congress took place amid mounting pressure on global agri-food systems, sparked by conflicts and worsened by climate change. In 2025, two famines were declared in a single year for the first time. This year, recent geopolitical tensions continue to threaten global trade and economic stability, while an estimated 700 million people worldwide, primarily in Africa and Western Asia, still face hunger each year.

And experts have warned that climate change, including a predicted El Niño event in mid-2026, could push an additional 132 million people in vulnerable contexts into food and nutrition insecurity within five years due to rising temperatures’ impacts on crop yields.

Michael Keller, Secretary General of the International Seed Federation. Credit: Supplied

“It would be easy to look at the state of the world and conclude that international cooperation is in retreat. But the seed industry tells a different story,” says Michael Keller, Secretary General of ISF. “We are here in Lisbon in record numbers in this critical year because we know that collaboration, innovation, and joint actions are practical and appropriate responses to the scale of the truly global challenges we face now and in the future. Unfortunately, in Africa, non-flexible legal and regulatory frameworks still hamper innovation by private seed companies.

And about 2,000 km away in Geneva, WHO Director General Dr Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus delivered a similar message, focused on the theme “Reshaping global health: a shared responsibility”, strongly reinforcing the interconnected nature of global health and climate change resilience with several important social determinants of health, including food systems and nutrition.

Ghebreyesus highlighted the importance of not treating health as a standalone sector but rather ensuring that all social determinants of health are well-functioning in support of resilience, sovereignty, and protection of communities from crises.

The chain is simple: climate change threatens agricultural production, food systems, and access to nutritious food, leading to malnutrition, and malnutrition in turn increases vulnerability to infectious diseases and public health emergencies.

Role of Seed Breeding Innovations for Health

Seed innovations alone account for 74 percent of the yield gains observed in crops in the European Union, according to S&P Global Commodity Insights. However, the global system of crop variety development depends heavily on cross-border trade, with the typical novel varieties bred, tested, produced, and distributed across multiple countries before they reach a farmer’s hands.

“Seed companies invest up to 30 percent of their turnover in research and development because we believe that innovation is key to solving problems at scale and for generations to come,” said Arthur Santosh Attavar, ISF President and Managing Chair of the international seed company Indo-American Hybrid Seeds. “ISF continues to work with national and regional seed associations, as well as governments, to create enabling policy environments that help ensure innovations reach farmers quickly and without unnecessary delays or restrictions.”

In the wake of increased climate-induced extreme weather events, one of the key innovations in seed breeding has been ‘climate-resilient seed’ to withstand not only intensified droughts but also the increased prevalence of pests and diseases related to drought conditions.

But the World Bank believes breeding seed that could go beyond being drought tolerant to high nutritional value could be a game changer.

“Until now, we have been dealing with climate resilience largely from the drought and sometimes excess rainfall perspective, but can we also start looking at developing seed varieties by building in additional nutritional aspects such as high protein content? At the World Bank, we are looking at different ways of how to build food systems resilience in a holistic way—covering the entire value chain from seed, infrastructure, markets and all the in-between, with a clear focus on sustainability,” said Anup Jangwani, Global Director of Farming and Agribusiness at the World Bank Group.

Sustained Awareness is Key for Sustainability  

Environmental sustainability has, in recent years, become a buzzword in the wake of increasing climate impacts. Unfortunately, there have been some cases of greenwashing linked to environmental sustainability – the promotion of false solutions to the climate crisis that distract from and delay concrete and credible action.

However, at Companhia das Lezírias the largest agricultural and forestry holding in Portugal, “environmental sustainability is a lived reality,” says Sandra Alcobia, who serves as a biologist and is responsible for tourism and visitation.

“Here we live and practice environmental sustainability in reality; our production is organic in every sense. In 2015, the drought conditions that we suffered provided us with an awakening to make a drastic change, and we have not looked back. We are proud to be a certified carbon-neutral establishment.”

Established in 1836, the farm boasts 20,000 hectares of land for crop farming, animal rearing and forestry – all premised on the principles of sustainability, emphasising organic practices.

But Antonio Farrim, Veterinarian and Director of Agriculture Production at Companhia das Lezírias, believes public awareness is key to the climate-resilient and sustainable agenda.

“Governments must take full responsibility for sensitising the public on the health benefits of sustainably grown food,” he says. “For example, in beef production, the colour of meat produced organically is not usually appealing to the eye; it is slightly dark with yellow fat. In terms of nutrition, however, this is the most healthy beef one can get, and yet most consumers don’t understand this fact. It is, therefore, incumbent upon governments to undertake sustained awareness for both environmental sustainability and good health. For us here at Companihia, we don’t only produce for sustainability but also for the good health of the consumers.”

Head of External Communication at Syngenta, one of the world’s biggest agricultural innovation companies, Dimitri Houtart agrees with the importance of the public awareness narrative.

Houtart says the growing global population poses a challenge as the global community races to produce enough for everyone, sustainably, with limited land. This, he states, can only be achieved through innovation and sustained public awareness for uptake of innovative technologies that support high productivity.

However, he notes, “misinformation on catalytic research and innovations to improve productivity while preserving environmental integrity is one of the drawbacks.”

“The need for a well-informed cadre of agricultural journalists cannot be over-emphasised. For me, Agricultural journalism is the most important branch of this profession because the agricultural information needs of the public, especially in this era of social media, are immense.”

Breeding Innovations for Africa’s Unique Challenges   

A quick search on post‑harvest losses in Africa reveals that it ranges between 20 and 40%, especially in crops such as maize, cassava, cowpea, and bananas, some of the continent’s staple crops

Losses are largely attributed to pests, diseases, poor storage and climate stress. While technological advancement is a critical means of enhancing agricultural productivity and improving food and nutrition security in many low- and middle-income countries, it has been slow to gain traction in Africa.

Thus, one of the innovations being tried is to breed crops that resist the noted stresses and reduce losses before they happen.

Professor Mohammed Ishiyaku of the Institute for Agricultural Research in Nigeria is one of the lead scientists behind Pod Borer Resistant cowpea – a variety developed by Nigerian scientists over three decades, now approved and growing commercially in Nigeria, with regulatory approvals advancing across the region.

“Legume Pod Borer (Maruca vitrata) is one of the most damaging insect pests limiting cowpea production,” says Prof. Ishiyaku. “The damage caused by the pod borer to cowpea plants reduces the size and quality of the cowpea harvest. It can reduce grain yield by up to 80%. Farmers typically spray pesticides up to 6 – 10 times within a planting season in an attempt to control this insect pest, but this is often not effective because the chemicals do not reach the pest larvae inside the plant tissues. The chemicals are also expensive, their availability to farmers is limited, and inadequate training in their use often leads to unintended dangerous human health and safety impacts. Therefore, a Cowpea product that can protect itself from Legume Pod borer damage makes it easier and cheaper for farmers to produce cowpeas in areas where this pest is a problem.”

An international public-private partnership, managed and coordinated by the African Agricultural Technology Foundation (AATF), is developing Pod-Borer Resistant Cowpeas.

Sticking with innovation, Bruce Knight of Legume Technology, based in the United Kingdom, has been conducting trials on how to support smallholder farmers in Africa with affordable means of accessing inoculants for legume seeds.

With limited resources, most smallholder farmers on the continent still use untreated seeds, usually kept from the previous harvest. To help boost productivity, Dr Bruce Knight has, through support from the Gates Foundation, developed an affordable and tailor-made small-packaged inoculant solution that is able to treat at least a hectare of legume seeds.

“After 10 years of trials, we have finally got it right; we have developed an affordable inoculant solution for smallholder farmers in Africa,” says Knight. “So far, our product has outperformed other inoculant producers on the continent, and we are geared to roll out and support smallholder farmers with this tailor-made solution.”

A well-known health phrase, “You are what you eat”, implies that food is the foundation of good health. What you eat dictates your general well-being. Seed, from which most food is cultivated, is therefore the foundation of optimal health.

The author is the Climate Change and Health Advocacy Lead at Amref Health Africa.

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Dr Gitinji Gitahi, Amref Group CEO speaking at an event at UNGA80. Credit: Friday Phiri

By Friday Phiri
UNITED NATIONS, Oct 9 2025 (IPS)

The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), the UN’s body on climate science, has over the years, repeatedly and steadily reported on the science of global warming leading to the changing climate with visible impacts.

IPCC Assessment Reports, particularly the Sixth Assessment chapter on health and well-being (AR6, 2021–2022), highlight an increased burden of climate-sensitive diseases, rising demand for emergency and preventive care, and health system disruptions as some of the direct impacts of climate change on primary health care.

Hope and Despair at UNGA80

On the sidelines of the 80^th session of the United Nations General Assembly (UNGA80) in New York, during NY Climate Week, the health sector, as they have done recently, showed up to highlight these climate-health realities for global leaders.

As the UN Secretary-General convened over 120 heads of state and ministers at the UN Climate Summit, where over 100 countries pledged to update their national climate commitments ahead of COP30 in Belém, Brazil, the health sector followed keenly and pointed out the importance of health inclusion in climate action plans, popularly known as the Nationally Determined Contributions (NDCs) under the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC)’s Paris Agreement.

However, this positive mood was dampened by one of the world’s major emitters, the United States’ absence on the list of progress. Reason? President Donald Trump does not believe in the concept of Climate Change.

And he reminded the global community of his opinion during his address to UNGA, when he continued on his anti-climate change trajectory, referring to climate change as “the greatest con job ever perpetrated on the world.”

But as they did in President Trump’s first term when his administration actively rolled back climate regulations, including pulling the US from the Paris Agreement, climate campaigners have yet again responded with defiance.

Africa’s Call for Equity and Justice

Women advocates participated in a Climate Action event during UNGA80. Credit: Friday Phiri

“Such statements are scientifically false and morally indefensible. For millions of Africans, climate change is not a debate. It is a daily reality. When powerful leaders mock the climate emergency, they undermine the global solidarity urgently needed to save lives and livelihoods,” commented Mithika Mwenda, Executive Director of the Pan African Climate Justice Alliance.

Amref Health Africa’s Group Chief Executive Officer, Dr. Githinji Gitahi, echoed this urgency, noting that communities across Africa don’t need science to be convinced about the climate crisis, as it is their daily lived reality.  Referencing the Lusaka Agenda, which calls for aligning global health financing with country priorities, and the Belem Action Plan Summary Version, which outlines concrete adaptation actions for health resilience, Gitahi outlined Africa’s concrete policy asks—integrating health into NDCs, prioritizing climate-health financing, and ensuring equity in negotiations and climate action.

“It is unfortunate that countries that contribute a paltry 4 percent of global emissions are asked to do more,” said Gitahi. “It is for this reason that at Amref, we place equity and justice at the core of our programming. Communities most affected—women, children, youth, pastoralists, and those in informal settlements—not only require support to adapt but are also best positioned to shape meaningful solutions. We cannot afford to get sidetracked and dwell on climate science, which is clear as day.”

In fact, for communities in Africa, they don’t need science to be convinced about the climate crisis—it is their daily reality. They don’t have to wait for meetings and discussions like this one to decide on their fate. But even as they adapt using their means, our asks are clear: strengthening primary health care through climate-resilient infrastructure, early-warning systems, surveillance, and community-centered adaptation solutions.

A panel discussion on Africa’s Primary Healthcare equity at UNGA80. Credit: Friday Phiri

The key to all these objectives lies in integrating health in climate plans to not only unlock financing but also support integrated implementation of climate action, particularly for health-determining sectors such as agriculture and water, among others, that have a direct bearing on health outcomes.”

Health sector’s call for strong leadership on the climate crisis

Multilateralism continues to be under serious pressure, and President Trump’s tirade on climate change exemplified the continued geopoliticking and outright mistrust in global processes.

“We want to raise the ambition, because we are in a crisis. We need leaders to be in crisis mode about the science that is guiding us. It’s guiding us on health, but somehow, leaders are ignoring the science,” said Mary Robinson, Former President of Ireland, pointing out that leaders hold the key to rebuilding multilateralism and galvanizing investment and action for the interconnected pressing threats overwhelming the health sector.

And in keeping with the leadership, on the sidelines of UNGA80, stakeholders took time to highlight the importance of women leadership for climate action, in view of gender-differentiated impacts of climate change.

“It is generally agreed that climate impacts are gender-differentiated. Women and girls often bear higher risks from climate change impacts—yet they remain on the sidelines in key discussions and policy decisions,” said Desta Lakew, Amref Health Africa Group Director for Partnerships and External Affairs.

Speaking at a roundtable co-organized with Women in Global Health and Pathfinder International, Lakew called for deliberate efforts to let women take the lead. “It is time we let women lead, as their active participation leads to interventions that reach the people most affected and therefore deliver stronger resilience for communities.”

Brazil Takes the Lead

Despite the noted gloomy picture resulting from climate denialism and dwindling multilateral trust, the health sector is determined to ensure climate and health are not left behind. And Brazil, the COP30 Presidency Designate, is already supporting the agenda.

Through the Belem Climate and Health Action Plan, which is set to be tabled at COP30, Brazil has outlined adaptation solutions, encompassing health surveillance, technological innovation, and the strengthening of multi-sectoral policies, to build climate-resilient health systems. It proposes a global collective effort for health and seeks the voluntary adoption by UNFCCC Parties and the endorsement of civil society and non-state actors.

“Don’t tell me there’s no hope at all; together we stand, divided we fall,” said Mariângela Batista Galvão Simão, Secretary of Health and Environmental Surveillance at Brazil’s Ministry of Health. “Discussions can’t start with financing. You need to have a solid plan and the Belem Climate and Health Action Plan will bring together health and climate agendas in Belem, including surveillance and monitoring as the first line of action.”

In the words of Dr. Agnes Kalibata, Alliance for a Green Revolution in Africa, “For every family that goes to bed hungry, for every child deprived of nutrition… the pace of global climate action remains painfully inadequate. This inequity is not only a moral failing; it is a direct threat to global security and stability.”

Therefore, as the global community heads to COP30, Africa is calling for health inclusion in NDCs for evidence policy and implementation, financing for climate-resilient primary health care in the context of adaptation support rooted in equity and historical responsibility as enshrined in the UNFCCC, and community-centered solutions with women and youth taking the lead.

Note: The author is the Climate and Health Advocacy Lead at Amref Health Africa.

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Delegates at a Ministerial event on climate and health organised by the CSO Climate and Health Cluster under the ACS2 organizing committee. Credit: Friday Phiri/Amref

By Friday Phiri
ADDIS ABABA, Sep 25 2025 (IPS)

At the Second Africa Climate Summit (ACS2) held in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia, from 8-10 September, African leaders committed to the climate and health nexus and their desire to advance climate-resilient and adaptive health systems on the continent.

According to available evidence , climate-induced extreme weather events—cyclones, droughts, floods and heatwaves, are leading to a surge in malaria cases including in regions previously unaffected as warming conditions provide conducive breeding ground for malaria carrying mosquitoes; overwhelming sanitation systems, creating a perfect storm for diarrheal diseases such as cholera; while climate-induced food shortages are driving malnutrition to dangerous levels, as droughts and floods disrupt agricultural productivity and production.

“We reaffirm our collective commitment to advancing Africa-led climate solutions that prioritise human health, environmental sustainability, and equitable development, as guided by the African Union’s Agenda 2063 and the principles of multilateralism, recognise the urgent need to address the intertwined crises of climate change and public health across the continent, and call for dedicated financial mechanisms for climate-related health and the resilience of African health systems, in particular, we highlight the growing threats of heatwaves and water scarcity, which severely affect public health, and call for early-warning systems linked to health services,” reads part of the ACS2 leaders’ declaration adopted at the close of the summit.

Amref Health Africa hosted delegates at the launch of the Climate and Health curriculum for African negotiators. Credit: Friday Phiri/Amref

The leaders thus committed to advancing climate-resilient and adaptive health systems across the continent and recognised the Belém Health Action Plan as a pivotal global framework that aligns with Africa’s aspirations for equitable, sustainable, and climate-smart healthcare.

Held under the theme, “Accelerating Global Climate Solutions: Financing for Africa’s resilient and green development,” the summit brought together African leaders, policymakers, youth, civil society, development partners, and the private sector to shape a unified African stance on the global climate agenda.

The summit served as a catalyst for bold commitments, transformative partnerships, and innovative solutions that address the continent’s most pressing climate challenges.

During the three-day summit, and at the 13^th Conference on Climate Change and Development in Africa (CCDA XIII), which served as a pre-session meeting to feed into the summit outcomes, experts discussed the clear linkages and the growing evidence of climate impacts on Africa’s health systems and delivery.

With limited, and in most cases, complete lack of climate-resilient infrastructure and well-trained health personnel to manage climate shocks affecting the sector, the discussions underscored that “health has become the human face of the climate crisis on the continent”, a reality that demands bold action from leaders.

“Health is the human face of climate change. Yet when you search for images of climate change, you only see the human face after page six. We must change that narrative,” remarked Naveen Rao, Senior Vice President of the Health Initiative at The Rockefeller Foundation, during the closing session of the launch of a Climate Change and Health Negotiators’ Curriculum by Amref Health Africa, a first-of-its-kind initiative to strengthen Africa’s voice in global climate negotiations.

A roundtable at the launch of the Climate and Health curriculum for African negotiators hosted by Amref Health Africa. Credit: Friday Phiri/Amref

With support from the Wellcome Trust, Amref Health Africa, working with its subsidiary, Amref International University (AMIU), and the African Group of Negotiators Expert Support (AGNES), has developed a curriculum which aims to equip African negotiators with the technical expertise, advocacy tools, and evidence to place health at the centre of climate negotiations and financing frameworks.

Dr Modi Mwatsama, Head of Capacity and Field Development for Climate and Health at Wellcome Trust, underscored the urgency of catalytic climate and health action, grounded in science.

“This is the moment to roll out training sessions, strengthen AGN’s leadership on climate and health, and ground Africa’s climate diplomacy in science and sustainability.”

In welcoming the curriculum, Dr Ama Essel, AGN Lead Coordinator on Climate and Health, who spoke on behalf of AGN Chair, Dr Richard Muyungi, emphasised the importance of unity and right framing.

“The science is there, but how we frame and communicate it is the value proposition. This curriculum is right on time, it will help Africa negotiate with a strong, common position,” said Dr. Essel, pointing out that the group is ready to support Africa’s agenda on climate and health, which should be rooted in the continent’s long-held priority of adaptation.

Dr Jeremiah Mushosho, WHO AFRO Regional Team Lead for Climate Change, emphasised the importance of aligning efforts with the Global Plan of Action on climate and health, while civil society voices, including the Pan-African Climate Justice Alliance, reinforced the need for advocacy “soldiers” to sustain pressure for health in climate talks, highlighting the Nairobi Summer School on Climate Justice as an important platform from which enthusiastic advocates could be recruited.

In summing up, Desta Lakew, Group Director of Partnerships and External Affairs at Amref Health Africa, refocused the discussions on the communities, emphasising their involvement at all stages of planning and implementation of climate action.

“Communities are the true front line of the climate crisis, as the health impacts of climate change are felt first in villages, towns, and cities. They are the first responders to shocks, witnessing floods, droughts, and outbreaks before national systems react. Resilience demands co-creation with communities at every stage, from surveillance and data generation to response. Leadership and coordinated action are critical to scaling an inclusive, African-led climate and health ecosystem. Climate resilience cannot be achieved from the top down. It must be built with and through communities, backed by integrated data systems, strong governance, and sustained investment. Thus, for Africa to build resilience, negotiators, governments, civil society, and scientists must work together to ensure health is firmly embedded in the UNFCCC processes and agendas.”

Other key climate and health sessions focused on the need to enhance climate information services for health resilience; pathways for integrating health into Africa’s climate change and adaption, mitigation and resilience strategies; unlocking climate and health financing; and ministerial dialogue on shaping a cohesive narrative for Africa’s climate and health agenda, among others.

• At the sessions, experts highlighted capacity building and training; research and evidence; and cross-sectoral partnerships, as key adaptation measures to support health sector’s resilience in the face of the climate crisis.
• The author is the Climate Change Health Advocacy Lead at Amref Health Africa.

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Negotiators at then UN Climate conference in Bonn, Germany. Credit: Friday Phiri

By Friday Phiri
BONN, Jun 20 2025 (IPS)

In recent years, there has been growing evidence of how climate change is impacting human health in several ways.

The Lancet Countdown has been producing ‘eye-popping’ reports, highlighting  how climate change is breaching health thresholds across multiple indicators—heat, disease vectors, food security, air quality, and socioeconomic stability.

With record-breaking heat threats exposing individuals to dangerous heat compared to pre-industrial expectations; worsening environmental stressors in the form of droughts and flooding, exposing people to heightened risks of waterborne and vector-borne diseases; and the cost of extreme weather events running into billions of dollars globally, the global community is being called upon to act swiftly.

Without urgent, health-centered transformation in energy, finance, health systems, urban planning, and governance, the world is not just delaying action—it’s fueling a global health crisis, the 2024 Lancet Countdown report warns.

Like other sectors, Africa’s health is highly vulnerable to climate impacts and in dire and urgent need of adaptation strategies. A quick perusal of the 2024 State of Africa Climate Report released in May, 2025, by the World Meteorological Organization (WMO) reveals how extreme weather and climate change impacts are hitting Africa the hardest.

The report highlights several health-related impacts of climate change in Africa, ranging from extreme heat events leading to serious heatwaves; flooding and landslides resulting in displacements and loss of lives; food and nutrition insecurity emanating from prolonged droughts; and tropical cyclones leaving a trail of destruction and loss of lives, among others.

These health-related impacts underscore the urgent need for climate adaptation strategies to mitigate risks and protect vulnerable populations across Africa. ​

“The State of the Climate in Africa report reflects the urgent and escalating realities of climate change across the continent,” said WMO Secretary-General Celeste Saulo. “It also reveals a stark pattern of extreme weather events, with some countries grappling with exceptional flooding caused by excessive rainfall and others enduring persistent droughts and water scarcity.”

“WMO and its partners are committed to working with Members to build resilience and strengthen adaptation efforts in Africa through initiatives like Early Warnings for All,” she said. “It is my hope that this report will inspire collective action to address increasingly complex challenges and cascading impacts.”

Armed with such devastating information, African climate change negotiators at the UN Climate conference in Bonn, Germany, are calling on parties to the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) to take the climate and health nexus seriously and consider mainstreaming it into the main agenda items of climate negotiations, in addition to the health sector target in the Global Goal on Adaptation (GGA) framework.

“The African Group of Negotiators reaffirms that Africa experiences some of the most severe climate change impacts on human health and health systems, despite contributing minimally to global greenhouse gas emissions. With African countries already having very precarious health systems, climate change impacts exacerbate and overwhelm these systems, putting lives at risk. Urgent help and adaptation support is needed for countries. We call for ambitious and urgent collaboration of parties to address these multifaceted challenges in a holistic manner,” said Dr. Richard Muyungi, Chair of the African Group of Negotiators on Climate Change (AGN).

The AGN is the mandated negotiating group, which represents all 54 African countries in the UNFCCC processes.

In his opening statement at the Bonn Climate Conference, Muyungi said the group was prepared to work with other parties to spearhead the climate and health agenda and called for the initiation of mandated dialogues on human health and climate change from COP30 and beyond.

Meanwhile, African civil society continues to raise its voice on the importance of climate finance for Africa’s adaptation.

“It is unfortunate that developed parties continue to evade their obligation to provide climate finance as enshrined in Article 9.1 of the Paris Agreement. This is the hallmark of the climate convention, without which we might as well forget about these negotiations. It is becoming increasingly frustrating that the climate finance agenda item continues to cause serious divisions, including the agenda fight that we have, once again, witnessed here in Bonn. But this should not be the case because both the convention and the Paris Agreement are clear on developed parties’ obligation to provide finance,” said Mithika Mwenda, Executive Director of the Pan African Climate Justice Alliance (PACJA).

Climate financing and capacity-building support through health systems strengthening have, likewise, dominated recent discussions in the climate and health sub-sector.

At a side event hosted by the Rockefeller Foundation, Wellcome Trust, and the World Meteorological Organization during the 78^th World Health Assembly in Geneva, investments in early warning systems were a key agenda.

Desta Lakew, Group Partnerships and External Affairs Director at Amref Health Africa, highlighted the existing gaps and the need for investments.

“Our early warning systems are not keeping pace. Investments in early warning, data, and information systems lag behind, forcing our governments to continue relying on outdated technologies and equipment that fail to capture and transmit real-time weather information to the public,” said Lakew. “This undermines the public’s preparedness, leading to avoidable losses of both property and lives. We therefore need to strengthen climate-health data systems, surveillance, early warning, and climate risk assessment by enhancing capacity to detect, predict, monitor, and respond to climate-sensitive health risks through improved data integration, early warning systems, and comprehensive vulnerability assessments.”

“At Amref, we believe in community investment; that’s why we are actively working with governments in Africa to build the technical capacity required for health systems adaptation and resilience to climate impacts. We thus advocate for financing that puts community-centered initiatives at the heart of climate adaptation of health systems,” added Lakew.

Local communities’ involvement is touted as the starting point for climate action. And the    Alliance for Food Sovereignty in Africa (AFSA) is leading local communities’ climate adaptation action through the promotion of agroecology.

The Alliance argues for and promotes the practice as a panacea to local farmers’ climate-related production and nutrition security challenges.

“Rooted in traditional knowledge and biodiversity, agroecology promotes healthy soils, thriving ecosystems, and resilient food systems,” says Bridget Mugambe, AFSA Programme Coordinator.

Mugambe argues that agroecology and health are deeply interconnected. “With thriving ecosystems free from chemical inputs, local farmers are guaranteed well-nourished crops, rich in nutrients and devoid of harmful residues, contributing to better human health,” she points out.

“At its core, agroecology respects cultural diversity and traditional food systems, which are central to promoting healthy diets rooted in local, indigenous foods that have nourished African communities for generations.”

As the climate talks continue, what is clear is that health voices calling for total inclusivity are getting louder each passing day, particularly due to the growing list of health-related impacts underscoring the urgent need for climate adaptation strategies to protect vulnerable populations across Africa.

The author is Climate Change Health Advocacy Lead at Amref Health Africa

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Community Health Assistants from Kenya. Credit: Friday Phiri/Amref

By Friday Phiri
BONN, Jun 11 2024 (IPS)

There is a rapid realization that climate change is impacting health, which is why the recently adopted World Health Organization’s Climate Change and Health Resolution is considered pivotal.

“Knowing that some of the difficulties we are currently facing are a result of climate change is assisting us in understanding which diseases are prevalent when it’s dry or during heavy rains. That way, we can increase awareness of which of the diseases that commonly occur in Mandera, especially malaria, dengue fever, and cholera, are likely to spread depending on the season,” are the sentiments of health assistants only identified as Nasra, Salima, Samlina and Ubah.

They are among over 100 Community Health Assistants (CHAs) from Mandera County in Kenya who are part of on-going country-wide training by Amref Health Africa to build capacity on essential skills to tackle health challenges.

This exemplifies the different layers of challenges that climate change creates for the health sector, not only altering disease spread and patterns but also complicating service delivery.

African Group of Negotiators Chair Ali Mohamed of Kenya during the SB60 opening session.

It is for this reason that at the just-ended 77th World Health Assembly (WHA 77) in Geneva, Switzerland, the 194 member states of the World Health Organization (WHO) adopted a historic resolution on Climate Change and Health.

The landmark decision marks a pivotal step in the global endeavor to protect communities from the diverse negative health impacts driven by climate change, as well as calling on the health sector to decarbonize.

The escalating climate crisis is a major driver of poor health outcomes, threatening to reverse five decades of progress in development, global health, and poverty reduction while exacerbating existing health disparities both between and within populations. The associated health damage costs are estimated to range between USD 2-4 billion annually by 2030. Regions with fragile health infrastructures, particularly in developing countries, will face the greatest challenges in coping without substantial assistance to bolster their preparedness and response capabilities.

“The movement to position health as ‘the human face of climate change’ has gained significant momentum with the adoption of this resolution, and I am profoundly optimistic about its transformative potential,” said Dr. Githinji Gitahi, Group Chief Executive Officer (CEO) of Amref Health Africa and the COP28 Climate and Health Envoy for Africa.

“This marks a pivotal moment where global leaders have formally acknowledged the urgent need to address the intertwined crises of environmental and public health with a unified, collaborative approach.”

However, there is still some work to be undertaken, as health is not yet part of the mainstream agenda of climate negotiations at the global level. The health community has the daunting task of navigating its way into the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) processes for a comprehensive global agenda on climate and health.

It is worth noting, however, that there have been efforts at the global and regional levels, such as at COP26 in Glasgow, where the health community reached an important milestone in bringing human health to the forefront of climate change work, with initiatives to support countries in developing climate-resilient and low-carbon sustainable health systems.

At COP28, the Climate and Health Declaration articulated similar commitments, including pledges of financial support to the sector in support of climate and health actions.

At the 60th session of the UN Climate Change Subsidiary Bodies (SB60) in Bonn, Germany, the African constituency is seeking ways to actively engage in the discourse and ensure that Africa’s interests in relation to the impacts of climate change on health are well noted.

Amref Health Africa Director of Population Health and Environment, Dr. Martin Muchangi.

During the preparatory meeting of the African Group of Negotiators prior to the SB60, AGN outgoing Chair, Zambia, raised the climate and health agenda and encouraged negotiators to take keen interest and actively engage in the climate and health discourse to set Africa’s agenda, particularly in the Global Goal on Adaptation’s UAE-Belem work programme on indicators where health is one of the thematic targets.

“A crucial point for us to ponder under the UAE-Belem work programme is the inclusion of health as one of the thematic targets. Instead of waiting for this agenda to be set by others, we should, as a group, be actively involved. The work programme offers a window for us to input in terms of how health should be mainstreamed into climate negotiations. As AGN, we have the AAI, which stands out as a shining example of our capacity to set our own agenda in these processes,” said Dr. Alick Muvundika, representing Zambia, as outgoing Chair of the AGN.

Paragraph 9(c) of the GGA decision at COP28 urges Parties and invites non-Party stakeholders to pursue the objectives of the GGA and increase ambition and enhance adaptation action and support in order to accelerate swift action at scale and at all levels, from local to global, in alignment with other global frameworks, towards; attaining resilience against climate change-related health impacts, promoting climate-resilient health services, and significantly reducing climate-related morbidity and mortality, particularly in the most vulnerable communities.

In view of the decision, the health sector in Africa, led by Amref Health Africa and partners, is leading efforts in support of Africa’s active engagement in the UAE-Belem Work programme on indicators for the GGA framework, as well as general technical support for mainstreaming health in climate policies and plans.

During a meeting of African Civil Society Organizations (CSOs) with AGN Chair at the on-going SB60, Amref Health Africa Director for Population Health and Environment, Martin Muchangi, said climate change is complicating health interventions and delivery, adding that “the visible impacts highlight that health is the human face of climate change.”

Muchangi briefed the AGN Chair on Amref’s availability and readiness to support the group to ensure that the yet-to-be developed indicators and related metrics of the health thematic target in the GGA framework would be in line with Africa’s aspirations in view of the continent’s unique circumstances and vulnerability.

“Amref and partners stand ready to support and ensure that the impacts of climate change on health are systematically addressed through investments, capacity building, building strong and resilient health systems, and ensuring that the voice of reason and science gets us where we want to be,” added Muchangi.

And AGN Chair Ali Mohamed welcomed the World Health Organization (WHO) resolution on climate and health, saying it was a step in the right direction.

Ambassador Mohamed challenged CSOs to heavily invest in research for Africa’s positions to be founded on well-grounded evidence, saying the continent continues grappling with climate-induced challenges, thereby worsening most countries’ debt portfolios.

“I am aware of the climate and health agenda as the WHO passed a resolution last week. This is a welcome move amid the visible impacts of climate change on health. The impacts on infrastructure, water and all other sectors are ultimately on human health. For us, health is one of the thematic targets of the Global Goal on Adaptation and we are ready as a group to engage further on the matter,” said the AGN Chair.

“My plea is for us, and I challenge you as CSOs to invest in research. Let’s generate a formidable base of evidence, building on the existing evidence base of Africa’s vulnerability and disproportionate impacts of climate change so that our arguments in these processes are well informed and clear,” added ambassador Mohamed.

Amidst all this, a recent report by the United Nations Economic Commission for Africa (UNECA), titled “Building Africa’s Resilience to Global Economic Shocks,” indicates that climate shocks generally are highly correlated with the cyclical component of GDP growth and not with the long-term trend in Africa, which suggests that part of the volatility observed in growth emanates from climate-induced shocks.

With the situation already volatile, as highlighted, stakeholders continue to seek integrated interventions, including the mainstreaming of health in climate policies and plans.

Note: The author is the Climate Change Health Advocacy Lead at Amref Health Africa.

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Laban Munsaka of Pemba District in Southern Province, farm is impacted by El Nino climate-induced prolonged dry spell. Credit: Friday Phiri/IPS

By Friday Phiri
LUSAKA, May 8 2024 (IPS)

For most families in Zambia, April is traditionally a month of plenty—it is typically the beginning of a harvest season for various food and cash crops. Both fresh and dried maize, groundnuts, pumpkins, and a whole variety of both traditional and exotic food crops are usually in full supply and readily available for consumption, supporting household food security and nutrition.

Similarly, during this period, most families’ income levels tend to be high and sound, supportive of family demands ranging from school fees to health care and grocery needs, as they sell various cash crops. It is, in summary, the beginning of the crop marketing season and a period of positive expectations.

This farming season, however, the story of millions of households, including that of Laban Munsaka of Pemba District in Southern Province, is gravely depressing. Munsaka’s family is part of the over six million people from over a million households in Zambia estimated to be facing acute food shortages and possible malnutrition until the next growing season, which is twelve months away.

Due to the El Nino climate-induced prolonged dry spell, half of the estimated 2.2 million hectares of maize planted in the 2023–24 farming season have been destroyed. According to Zambia’s President, Hakainde Hichilema, the debilitating dry spell lasted for more than five weeks at a time when farmers needed rain the most.

“In view of these challenges, urgent and decisive action is required from all of us,” Hichilema said in his address when he declared the situation a disaster and national emergency, earlier in March 2024. “The government, in accordance with the Disaster Management Act No. 13 of 2010, and other relevant legislation, declares the prolonged dry spell a national disaster and emergency,” he said, adding that the prolonged dry spell had affected 84 of the country’s 116 districts, negatively impacting more than a million farming households.

“It’s really difficult to compare last season to what has happened this farming season,” Munsaka narrates. “I harvested 100 by 50kg bags of maize last season but I don’t know what we might get from this destroyed field, it is just zero work this season,” he laments, pointing at his destroyed maize crop field.

With a relatively huge family of over 20 members to support, Munsaka is not only worried about the eminent food insecurity but also nutrition and other health-related challenges that may likely emerge from poor nutrition intake.

“I have a bigger family,” he says. “As you know, in such situations, our focus is only on food availability. Our focus is survival. We don’t usually care about the nutrition component.”

With dwindling pasture for grazing and expected water scarcity for livestock, animal welfare is likely to be compromised, leading to possible disease outbreaks such as nutritional anthrax, putting at risk both animal and human populations.

In a climate-induced drought environment, Munsaka’s worries about food insecurity, reduced nutrition options and eminent health challenges may not be far-fetched. There is increasing scientific evidence indicating how climate change is, and continues to significantly impact the physical, biological, and mental health of individuals.

According to the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change’s (IPCC) sixth assessment report (AR6), climate-related illnesses, premature deaths, malnutrition in all its forms, and threats to mental health and well-being are increasing.

For example, scientific evidence indicates that dwindling water security is leading to rising cases of waterborne diseases and an overall collapse of sanitation and hygiene, while frequent and intensified droughts and floods are said to be contributing to loss of agricultural productivity, leading to food insecurity and subsequently malnutrition.

Similarly, science experts are pointing fingers at rising temperature conditions as a contributing factor to the expansion of vector-borne diseases such as malaria and dengue fever into higher altitudes and previously colder regions of the world.

The World Health Organization (WHO) estimates that if urgent interventions to tame climate change are not implemented, approximately 250,000 additional deaths per year could be recorded from malnutrition, malaria, diarrhea, and heat stress alone. This is in addition to estimated economic losses of USD 2-4 billion per year by 2030.

While the situation is as dire as described, health is not part of the mainstream agenda of climate negotiations at global level.

It is worth noting, however, that there have been efforts at the global and regional levels to address the impacts of climate change on health. At COP26 in Glasgow, the health community reached an important milestone in bringing human health at the forefront of climate change work.

For the first time in the UNFCCC negotiations, a health programme was promoted, led by the UK government as the President of COP26, the World Health Organization (WHO), Health Care Without Harm (HCWH) and the UNFCCC Climate Champions.

Two of the programme’s key initiatives were to support countries in developing climate resilient and low carbon sustainable health systems, with countries announcing their commitments to develop and invest in climate resilient and low carbon sustainable health systems and facilities.

Since COP26, Amref Health Africa, working with WHO and other partners, has been leading climate and health efforts, culminating into the first ever Health Day dedicated to health issues at COP28, at which stakeholders made further commitments in a health declaration.

As parties prepare for the UNFCCC 60^th session of the Subsidiary Bodies (SB60) in Bonn, Germany, next month, the health community is also gearing to continue playing an active role in the negotiations.

“This is the time to seize the growing momentum across the globe, on the need to pool resources, knowledge, and creativity towards a forward-looking climate and health agenda to respond not only to the challenges of today but also anticipate the challenges of tomorrow,” says Desta Lakew, Amref Health Africa Group Director for Partnerships and External Affairs. “We must encourage and foster collaborations across disciplines, including environmental science, public health, epidemiology, economics, and social sciences, to address the multifaceted nature of climate change impacts on health.”

Based on this call, Amref Zambia is actively engaging the Ministry of Green Economy and Environment (MGEE) on the intersectionality of climate change and health, in view of not only the current situation but also future circumstances likely to emerge from the negative effects of climate change on the health sector.

Amref Zambia Country Manager, Viviane Sakanga, expresses delight at the opportunity to engage and Amref’s desire to collaborate on key climate and health interventions for better health outcomes amid the climate crisis.

“Evidence is abounding on how climate change is affecting health. It is for this reason that we believe, and have included the climate crisis as a key social determinant and driver of change in our 2023–2030 Corporate Strategy. We are keen to collaborate on climate and health,” said Sakanga when she recently met with the Director of Green Economy and Climate Change at the Ministry, Ephraim Mwepya Shitima.

On his part, Shitima welcomed Amref’s patronage and pledged the department’s readiness to work with like-minded institutions for meaningful climate action at all levels and in all sectors.

Ephraim Mwepya Shitima said, “it may interest you to know that Zambia identified the health sector for climate intervention as early as 2007. In implementing Article 4.9 of the Climate Convention, the COP in 2001, established the Least Developed Countries (LDC) work programme that included the National Adaptation Programmes of Action (NAPAs) to support LDCs to address the challenge of climate change given their particular vulnerability. In 2007, Zambia identified health as one of the priority sectors that required support under this work programme. Equally, the National Adaptation Plan (NAP), which was submitted last year also highlights health as a priority sector. We are therefore delighted and welcome your active involvement in the climate change and health action space.”

Amidst all, Munsaka and other millions of Zambians affected by the current and future climate-induced challenges are yearning for holistic support interventions focused not only food availability but also nutrition and health.

With the situation already declared a disaster by the Republican President, government and stakeholders continue to seek for integrated interventions.

Note: The author is Climate Change Health Advocacy Lead at Amref Health Africa

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Planeta Hatuleke, a small scale farmer of Pemba District in Southern Zambia, stands in a maize field. This year, she hopes that she will not be one of the country’s 2.3 million food insecure people thanks to the climate smart agriculture techniques she implemented while planting her crop in November. Courtesy: Friday Phiri

By Friday Phiri
LUSAKA and PEMBA DISTRICT, Zambia, Jan 15 2020 (IPS)

It is early Saturday morning and Planeta Hatuleke, a small scale farmer of Pemba District in Southern Zambia, awakens to the comforting sound of rainfall. As the locals say, the “heavens have opened” and it is raining heavily after a prolonged dry spell. 

“This is welcome after two weeks of a dry spell,” says Hatuleke with a sigh of relief. “The rainfall pattern has not been consistent so far; we could be headed for a repeat of last season” she adds pessimistically.

• The 2018/19 farming season was characterised by drought and prolonged dry spells, which, according to the government Disaster Management and Mitigation Unit (DMMU), left 2.3 million people severely food insecure and in need of humanitarian food assistance.

Hatuleke along with her 8-member family members are part of the hunger stricken population. Last farming season, the family harvested only five 50Kg-bags of maize, 10 short of their annual food requirements.

“It has not been easy to feed my family since the five bags finished. I am grateful to government for relief food support but for big families like mine, we have to supplement through other means,” says the 55-year old widow. “As a family, we have been surviving on sales from our gardening activities.”

• Statistics from DMMU show that at least 70,000 metric tonnes of relief food (maize grain and maize meal) has been distributed to the affected people between September 2019 and January 2020.
• According World Food Programme (WFP) country director for Zambia, Jennifer Bitonde, the United Nations’ food agency “requires $36 million to effectively support the government in responding to the crisis.”
• WFP is currently supporting the government’s response by delivering government-supplied maize meal, as well as by procuring and delivering pulses to ensure a nutrition-sensitive food basket. WFP is also working closely with partners to monitor food distributions and guarantee that resources reach those most in need.
  • In a statement after receiving a contribution of $3.39 million from the United States Agency for International Development (USAID) to help meet the immediate food needs of drought-affected people in Zambia, Bitonde added that “USAID’s contribution represents approximately 10 percent of the total needs and will allow WFP to ensure that drought-affected people will not go to bed hungry during this year’s lean season.’’
  • Other partners who have made a contribution to WFP Zambia include the Swedish government, which has contributed $2 million, and the Italian government with a contribution of $ 610,000.

Last October, the three U.N. food agencies—the Food and Agriculture Organisation (FAO), the International Fund for Agricultural Development (IFAD) and WFP—called for urgent funding to avert a major hunger crisis and for the international community to step up investment in long-term measures to combat the impact of climate shocks and build the capacity of communities and countries to withstand them.

They warned that a record 45 million people across the 16-nation Southern African Development Community would be severely food insecure in the next six months starting from October 2019.

At the time, they reported that there were more than 11 million people experiencing “crisis” or “emergency” levels of food insecurity (Integrated Food Security Phase Classification Phases 3 and 4) in nine countries: Angola, Zimbabwe, Mozambique, Zambia, Madagascar, Malawi, Namibia, Eswatini and Lesotho. 

“Late rains, extended dry periods, two major cyclones and economic challenges have proved a recipe for disaster for food security and livelihoods across Southern Africa,” said Alain Onibon, FAO’s Sub-Regional Coordinator for Southern Africa.

“As it could take many farming communities at least two to three growing seasons to return to normal production, immediate support is vital.  Now is the time to scale up agricultural emergency response. We need to ensure farmers and agro-pastoralists take advantage of the forecasted good rains, assuming they happen, as this will be crucial in helping them rebuild their livelihoods.”

While Southern Africa has experienced normal rainfall in just one of the last five growing seasons, persistent drought, back-to-back cyclones and flooding have wreaked havoc on harvests in a region overly dependent on rain-fed, smallholder agriculture.

Interestingly, Zambia is experiencing both climate extremes at the same time. While farmers in the southwestern parts of the country are anxious about the rainfall pattern that has been erratic so far, their counterparts in the northeast are battling flash floods, adding pressure on the already overstretched resource base.

Over 300 families have been reported as being affected by floods in the Mambwe and Lumezi districts of Zambia’s Eastern Province.

And Zambian President Edgar Lungu, continues to urge government technocrats to work at finding a lasting solution to the climate problem.

“So as we provide relief, I think that we should put our heads together. My Permanent Secretaries are here so we can work together to find a lasting solution,” said Lungu when he toured and interacted with flood victims on Jan 9.  

• It is unanimously agreed globally that climate change is due to human activities that cause damage (either directly or indirectly) to the environment. Such activities include overexploitation of natural resources, pollution and deforestation, among others.

Experiencing a critical energy deficit, with over 2 million food-insecure people to feed due to a climate-induced droughts and flash floods in a single year, are key lessons for leaders and ordinary people alike.

This December, at the United Nations Climate Change Conference (COP25), Zambia’s Permanent Secretary in the Ministry of Lands and Natural Resources Ndashe Yumba highlighted the adverse effects of climate change on his country’s natural resource-sensitive sectors, such as energy and agriculture, and how the country was moving away from a business-as-usual approach.

“There is still increasing evidence that climate change is negatively impacting critical sectors of our country,” said Yumba during a high-level event at COP25.

“In the recent past, drastic reduction in precipitation and rising temperatures in Zambia has led to a reduced agricultural productivity by about 16 percent and subsequently slowed down our economic growth. While Zambia is still pursuing her aspirations on socio-economic development, it is mindful of the need to maintain a healthy environment in order to achieve sustainable development…a recipe to a healthy climate is a healthy environment,” he added.

Back in Pemba District in Southern Zambia, Hatuleke is hoping that climate smart agricultural principles which are routed in sustainable environmental management, and which she has recently implemented, will bring her a better harvest this year. 

“I ripped my field and planted early; just after the first rains in mid-November and as you can see, my maize is at tussling stage,” she says. “I am hopeful of a good harvest, provided it consistently rains in the remaining half of the season.”

Jennifer Handondo (right) strategising with other facilitators about a practical FMNR session with farmers. Courtesy: Friday Phiri

By Friday Phiri
PEMBA, Zambia, Jul 26 2019 (IPS)

Jennifer Handondo, a small scale farmer of Choma district in southern Zambia, plants food crops such as maize mostly for her family’s needs. Because of uncharacteristically high temperatures and low rainfall during the rainy season in March, the divorced mother who single-handedly supports her three children, has not been able to harvest as much as she usually does. So she has diversified into selling seedlings of neem, Moringa and other medicinal trees.

“For me, trees represent money and a livelihood, but not in the wrong way through charcoal production but through these seedlings,” she told IPS. As a value add, she recently diversified into selling leaf powders such as Moringa Oleifera—a scientifically proven food and medicinal tree.

While she earns on average about 78 dollars from selling seedlings and powders each month, she said she earns as much as 5,400 dollars a month  when she has large orders of the Moringa powder. She receives orders for the powder from large local institutions and explained that she usually has to collaborate with other farmers to fulfil these orders.

“My livelihood is based on trees,” she said.

Zambia’s rising deforestation threat

Zambia has a forest coverage of 49.9 million hectares, representing 66 percent of the total land area in this southern African nation and boasting at least 220 different tree species. However, with a deforestation rate of between 250,000 and 300,000 hectares per annum, this rich biodiversity is at risk of being wiped away.

A recent environment outlook report by the Zambia Environmental Management Agency (ZEMA) showed that the country’s high levels of deforestation are not slowing down. The report points to various causes for this, among them illegal indiscriminate cutting of trees and the reckless collection of wood for fuel, charcoal burning, the harvesting of timber, clearing of large tracks of land for agriculture through slash and burn methods, urbanisation and new human settlements.

In addition, the country’s renewable energy connectivity figures are not impressive. It is estimated that only about 25 percent of the population of 17 million is connected to renewable energy sources.

Handondo’s story is different though. A grade nine dropout, she has returned to school and graduated in General Agriculture from the Zambia College of Agriculture. She is passionate and active in forest conservation, participating in tree-planting campaigns and awareness programmes since 2016.
So for her the link to selling seedlings and products from trees as a source of income was an easy one.

She is also a change agent and champion for the World Vision Zambia supported farmer-managed forest regeneration (FMNR) project, which is being implemented in southern Zambia. FMNR is the active regeneration and management of trees and shrubs from felled stumps, sprouting root systems or seeds with the goal of restoring degraded farmland and soil fertility, and increasing the value and/or quantity of woody vegetation on farmland.

“The main objective of FMNR is to empower the community with knowledge to reduce deforestation which has been very rampant in this country,” Shadrick Phiri, World Vision Zambia Agriculture and Natural Resource Specialist, told IPS.

Lucky Choolwe, a field facilitator for Grassroots Trust in Zambia, which engages with land owners and policy-makers to regenerate eco-systems, conducts a practical session with farmers on FMNR. Courtesy: Friday Phiri

According to Phiri, the technique is highly appropriate for rural communities and land that has been degraded to a point where the loss of perennial vegetation cover, biodiversity and soil fertility on farmland is diminishing livelihoods and quality of life.
“FMNR can take place either as an on-farm activity practiced by individual farmers, or in forest areas protected and managed by the community,” Phiri said, adding that the practice is also relevant to the regeneration of grazing lands.

“We have chosen to use a cheap but robust system of regenerating our forests naturally. We currently have 600 farmers under the four area development programmes in Southern Province currently practising FMNR. The figure currently stands at 2,600 households nationally across the 25 area programmes where World Vision is currently working.”

The FMNR project is one of several initiatives in Zambia targeting the restoration of degraded land. Other projects include:

•  the Community Based Natural Resources Management in Zambia with the World Wildlife Fund for Nature serving as secretariat;
• the Zambia Community Forests Programme implemented by Bio Carbon Partners;
• the Promoting Climate-Resilient, Community-Based Regeneration of Indigenous Forests in Zambia’s Central Province project by ZEMA;
• and the Zambia Integrated Forest Landscape Project supported by the World Bank.

Another intervention working to improve local livelihoods of farmers by revitalising degraded lands, is Plant A Million (PAM). Launched last year, PAM is a United Nations Convention to Combat Desertification-supported project under the Africa-led 3S initiative. It aims to plant at least two billion trees by 2021.

Emanuel Chibesakunda of Munich Advisors Group, a business and investment consultancy firm that developed the concept and is implementing the initiative, told IPS that since the launch an important milestone for rural farmers has been the partnerships with like-minded stakeholders.
Musika Development Enterprise, a non-profit company with a mandate to stimulate and support private investment in the Zambian agricultural market with a specific focus on the lower end of these markets, has been one of these partners.

“Musika provided both technical and financial support to PAM to set up a commercial nursery in order to strengthen rural livelihoods through domestication of indigenous fruit and non-fruit trees in Zambia. This proposed intervention will enhance Musika’s efforts in testing the ‘trees on farms’ concept as a business for the smallholder economy that has the potential to generate socio-economic return on investment and enhance environmental sustainability,” Reuben Banda, Musika’s managing director, told IPS.

The nursery sells readily-available seedlings at an affordable price.

Community centred approaches
At the Global Landscapes Forum held last month in Germany, leaders, experts and indigenous communities deliberated and adopted a rights approach to sustainable landscapes management and conservation.

The forum showcased evidence from around the globe that when the authority of local communities over their forests and lands, as well as their rights, are legally recognised, deforestation rates are often reduced.

In recognition that it is this generation who can and must recover the damaged land, governments, civil society and traditional leadership, are using community-centred approaches to achieve land degradation neutrality.

A unique feature of FMNR in Zambia is the targeting of traditional leadership as an entry point.

“As custodians of vast traditional land where most of deforestation activities take place, we believe their involvement is very important in reversing the damage,” said Phiri.
He explained that the community approach has been successfully implemented in Niger and Ethiopia, with millions of hectares of forests under regeneration, while Malawi is equally making steady progress.

At a recently-held community meeting in Zambia, traditional leaders resolved to form Community Forest Committees to enforce FMNR and all related forest management activities in their chiefdoms.

But to achieve this, they requested that the government consider strengthening their authority by giving them powers of enforcement with regards to laws that govern local offences and penalties.

“As traditional leaders, we are of the view that section 19 of the Village Act on offences and penalties be strengthened to give more power to traditional leaders to sternly deal with offenders in our local jurisdiction,” said Tyson Hamamba, a representative of Chief Choongo from Southern Province.

Hamamba said this was the only way to deter rampant charcoal making and deliberate bush fires among other destructive practices leading to alarming forest and land degradation.

According to current laws, chiefs cannot issue a penal sanction against offenders. Their only role is to facilitate arrest of offenders by state police and/or other legally authorised law enforcement agencies.

For Handondo, FMNR is important for the future of the country’s forests. She credits it as being key to the lush growth of her seedling business.
“As a small scale farmer, and a seedling grower for that matter, I have found this practice cheap and easy to undertake. I have noted that we have a lot of stagnant bushes that are not growing because they are overcrowded but when we prune through the practice of FMNR, we have seen that these shrubs quickly grow into trees forming the much needed forest cover because nutrient competition is reduced.”

*Correction: This story originally stated that Handondo earned 78 dollars a month from selling crops. This has been corrected to state she earns 78 dollars a month from selling seedlings and powders.

The Global Landscapes Forum (GLF) was held in Bonn, Germany and focused on how to give land rights the visibility needed to showcase that a rights approach, particularly when it comes to indigenous people, is a solution to the climate change crisis. Courtesy: Pilar Valbuena/GLF

By Friday Phiri
Jun 29 2019 (IPS)

The Global Landscapes Forum (GLF) was held in Bonn, Germany to rally behind a new approach to achieving a future that is more inclusive and sustainable than the present – through the establishment of secure and proper rights for all.

On Jun. 22 and 23, experts, political leaders, NGOs and indigenous peoples and communities gathered to deliberate on a methodology that emphasises rights for indigenous peoples and local communities in the management and perseveration of landscapes. The forum took place alongside the  United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change Bonn Climate Change Conference.

The forum focused giving land rights the visibility needed to showcase that a rights approach is a solution to the climate change crisis, and to develop a ‘gold standard’ for rights.

Indigenous peoples, local communities, women and youth, are believed to be the world’s most important environmental stewards but they are also among the most threatened and criminalised groups with little access to rights.

“We’re defending the world, for every single one of us,” said Geovaldis Gonzalez Jimenez, an indigenous peasant leader from Montes de María, Colombia.

But industries such as fossil fuels, large-scale agriculture, mining and others are not only endangering landscapes but also the lives of the people therein.

Already this year, said Gonzalez, his region witnessed 135 murders, adding that the day before the start of the GLF a local leader was killed in front of a 9-year-old boy.

According to the United Nations, the land belonging to the 350 million indigenous peoples across the globe is one of the most powerful shields against climate change as it holds 80 percent of the world’s biodiversity and sequesters nearly 300 billion metric tons of carbon. 

It is for this reason that amid the urgency to meet Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) under pressure from the climate threat, dialogues about the global future have begun to wake up to the fact that indigenous peoples’ relationships with the natural world are not only crucial to preserve for their own sakes, but for everyone’s.

The drafting of the document of rights was led by Indigenous Peoples Major Group (IPMG) for Sustainable Development and the Rights and Resources Initiative in the months leading up to the GLF.

Wider discussions and workshops over the two days served as a consultation on the draft (which is expected to be finalised by the end of the year) as a concrete guide for organisations, institutions, governments and the private sector on how to apply different principles of rights. This includes the rights to free, prior and informed consent; gender equality; respect to cultural heritage; and education.

U.N. Special Rapporteur on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples Vicky Tauli-Corpuz said lands managed by indigenous peoples with secure rights have lower deforestation rates, higher biodiversity levels and higher carbon storage than lands in government-protected areas.

But Diel Mochire Mwenge, who leads the Initiative Programme for the Development of the Pygme in the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC), one of the largest indigenous forest communities in Central Africa, said he has witnessed more than one million people being evicted from the national parkland where they have long lived. He explained that they had not been given benefits from the ecotourism industries brought in to replace them and were left struggling to find new income sources.

“Our identity is being threatened, and we need to avoid being completely eradicated,” said Mwenge.

In Jharkhand, India, activist Gladson Dungdung, whose parents were murdered in 1990 for attending a court case over a local land dispute, said an amendment to India’s Forest Rights Act currently being reviewed by the Supreme Court could see 7.5 million indigenous peoples evicted from their native forest landscapes. The act can impact a further 90 million people who depend on these forests’ resources for their survival, he said.

The amendment, Dungdung said, would also give absolute power to the national forest guard; if a guard were to see someone using the forest for hunting or timber collection, they could legally shoot the person on-sight.

“Indigenous peoples are right on the frontline of the very real and dangerous fight for the world’s forests,” said actor and indigenous rights activist Alec Baldwin in a video address.

“Granted that indigenous peoples are the superheroes of the environmental movement,” Jennifer Morris, president of Conservation International wondered why they are not heard until they become victims. “Why do we not hear about these leaders until they’ve become martyrs for this cause?”

The examples of intimidation, criminalisation, eviction and hardship shared throughout the first day clearly showcased what indigenous peoples and local communities go through to preserve the forests or ‘lungs of the earth’.

The rights approach, according to conveners of the GLF, aims to strengthen respect, recognition and protection of the rights of indigenous peoples and local communities as stewards and bearers of solutions to landscape restoration, conservation, and sustainable use. It also aims to end persecution of land and environment defenders; build partnerships to enhance engagement and support for rights-based approaches to sustainable landscapes across scales and sectors; and, scale up efforts to legally recognise and secure collective land and resource rights across landscapes.

“By implementing a gold standard, we can both uphold and protect human rights and develop conservation, restoration and sustainable development initiatives that embrace the key role Indigenous peoples and local communities are already playing to protect our planet,” said Joan Carling, co-convener of IPMG.

IPMG recognises that indigenous and local communities are bearers of rights and solutions to common challenges.

“This will enable the partnership that we need to pave the way for a more sustainable, equitable and just future,” added Carling.

And the Center for International Forestry Research (CIFOR) Director General, Robert Nasi, said when rights of local communities and indigenous peoples are recognised, there are significant benefits for the fight against climate change and environmental degradation.

“Whoever controls the rights over these landscapes has a very important part to play in fighting climate change,” he said.

In the climate and development arenas, the most current alarm being sounded is for rights–securing the land rights and freedoms of indigenous peoples, local communities and the marginalised members therein.

How can these custodians of a quarter of the world’s terrestrial surface be expected to care for their traditional lands if the lands don’t, in fact, belong to them? Or, worse, if they’re criminalised and endangered for doing so?

The basic principles of a ‘gold standard’ already exist, such as free, prior and informed consent, according to Alain Frechette of the Rights and Resources Initiative (RRI). What has been lacking, he said, is the application of principles that could be boosted by high-level statements that could “spur a race to the top”.

A group of farmers attend a field day on diversification for improved productivity and nutrition. Experts have recognised the agricultural sector’s special role in mitigating child and maternal under-nutrition in vulnerable groups through the increased availability of diversified diets. Credit: Friday Phiri/IPS

By Friday Phiri
PEMBA, Zambia, Apr 26 2019 (IPS)

It is slightly after 3pm on a hot Wednesday afternoon in Chipata district, eastern Zambia, and a group of women are gathering for a meeting. It is Elizabeth Tembo’s turn to stand amongst the other mothers like herself and share key lessons on nutrition.

It is a subject she learnt about from a project implemented by the International Institute of Tropical Agriculture (IITA) and their partners.

“Through the project, I learnt a lot of improved farming practices for producing high-nutrient crops such as cowpeas and soya beans from which my family has greatly benefited,” Tembo says in an IITA report. “And I am now happy to help other women as well, so that together, we can reduce the high prevalence of malnutrition and stunting among our children in the community,” adds the lactating mother.

The Scaling Up Nutrition (SUN) project under ‘The Most 1,000 Critical Days Programme,’ was implemented from 2014-2017 by the IITA in collaboration with Development Aid from People to People (DAPP) and funded by Irish Aid, UK Aid Direct and the Swedish International Development Agency (SIDA). It targeted pregnant and lactating mothers with children up to 24 months of age.

“The project focused on promoting production, processing and utilisation of nutrient dense crops, vegetable and, fruit trees such as Soybeans, Cowpeas, Pigeon peas, Beans, Orange maize, Orange fleshed sweet potato and Papayas; and our role was to provide training to community-based trainers on production, processing and utilisation of these promoted crops and vegetables at community level,” Theresa Gondwe, Technology Dissemination Specialist at IITA Southern Africa Research and Administration Hub (SARAH), tells IPS.

In recent times, experts have recognised the agricultural sector’s special role in mitigating child and maternal under-nutrition in vulnerable groups through the increased availability of diversified diets.

“Now, around Africa, governments and communities are adopting innovations that are improving the lives of millions through diversified agricultural production as a pathway to improved diversity in household diets of poor small-scale farmers who produce for their own consumption,” Emmanuel Alamu Oladeji, from IITA SARAH, tells IPS.

The move comes as experts are more and more in agreement that food availability and access alone are not enough without the required nutrition levels.

For its part, IITA played a key role in the 2016 International Year of Pulses, to promote traditional high protein value crops such as cowpeas, common bean, lentils, chickpeas, faba and lima beans and other varieties.

According to a write-up by IITA, pulses may look small, but they are a big deal as nutritionists consistently find that their low glycemic profiles and hefty fibre content help prevent and manage the so-called diseases of affluence, such as obesity and diabetes.

It is also believed that because of the protein they hold they could assist the world in managing its livestock practices in a more sustainable way. This way more people can enjoy better and more varied middle-income diets without placing excess strains on natural resources.

And in the advent of climate change, which is already putting massive pressure on food systems, the need to more sustainable approaches in agriculture and integration of diversified diets for better nutrition has gained extra significance.

According to the United Nations, by 2050, population growth and dietary changes will drive food needs up by 60 percent. But as climate change is already putting pressure on food systems and rural livelihoods through drought, floods and hurricanes, ocean acidification and rising sea levels and temperatures, more climate-smart and environmentally friendly approaches are needed.

Adaptation is therefore an indispensable component in the ending hunger equation, especially for smallholder farmers, who are already grappling with climate change vagaries.

World Wide Fund for Nature (WWF) Zambia has a climate change adaptation project for smallholders in south-western Zambia.

“We are supporting smallholder farmers to build climate resilience,” Nachilala Nkombo, WWF Zambia Director, tells IPS. “We are providing direct training on climate-smart approaches to food production and working with government extension systems, as well as a peer network of farmers, to disseminate knowledge amongst farmers.”

Nkombo believes African agricultural policies have to mainstream climate change at all levels to cope with rising populations and the growing pressure on land and food production systems.

“We need a proper balance. We should not just open up new land because the population is growing, but also look for ways to play a role in large-scale reforestation,” observes Nkombo.

Back to the SUN project, Gondwe is convinced of the positive impact of the intervention.

“The project emphasised on diversifying crop production for improved nutrition and there are successful examples in Luapula, Eastern, and Northern Provinces where the project was implemented. And most of the involved farmers in the project areas have seen positive changes in their livelihood,” she says.

Lyness Zimba from Lundazi district in eastern Zambia provides further testimony about what she has learnt.
“I took seriously the weekly lessons given to us by agricultural and health specialists,” says Zimba in an IITA report.

“We were taught a variety of topics such as the importance of feeding our children with nutritious foods, how to cultivate and make use of a variety of high-nutrient crops to get maximum nutritional benefits. The recipes have made it easy for us to prepare nutritious meals for our children; we are no longer the same.”

In refugee camps at Dolo Odo, Ethiopia there is enough food for small markets to operate. One in every 70 people around the world is caught up in a crisis, including the refugee crisis, with more than 130 million people expected to need humanitarian aid next year. Credit: James Jeffrey/IPS

By Friday Phiri
MARRAKECH, Morocco, Dec 10 2018 (IPS)

Amidst negative sentiments and last-minute withdrawals from the Global Compact for Safe, Orderly and Regular Migration (GCM) by some member countries, the United Nations says the regrettable decisions are being fuelled by misinformation.

Addressing the media Dec. 9 on the eve of the historic two-day GCM conference in Marrakech, set against the dramatic backdrop of Morocco’s snow-capped Atlas Mountains, Louise Arbour, Special Representative of the Secretary-General for International Migration, addressed the question of whether the U.N. could have been better engaged with countries to persuade them to come on board.

“I have to tell you, I am not convinced you can persuade those who don’t want to be convinced,” Arbour says. “I am skeptical it would not have turned it into a dialogue of the deaf.”

The GCM is the first-ever inter-governmentally negotiated agreement to cover all dimensions of international migration in a holistic and comprehensive manner, providing a platform for cooperation on migration. Its genesis lies in the New York Declaration for Refugees and Migrants adopted unanimously by the U.N. General Assembly in 2016. It is the culmination of 18 months of discussions and consultations among Member States, and other actors, including national and local officials, civil society, private and public sectors and migrants themselves.

“It creates no right to migrate; it places no imposition on States; it does not constitute so-called ‘soft’ law—it is not legally binding,” Arbour says. “It expressly permits States to distinguish, as they see fit, between regular and irregular migrants, in accordance with existing international law. This is not my interpretation of the text—it is the text.”

She added that it is surprising there has been so much misinformation about what the Compact is and what its text says, emphasising that “the adoption of the migration compact is a re-affirmation of the values and principles embodied in the U.N. Charter and in international law.”

This was, she conceded, notwithstanding several member States who have already declined to participate, others making last-minute indications they would not adopt the compact, while some have stated their final decision must await further internal deliberation. These include, most notably, the United States. Other countries also include Austria, Australia, Hungary, Poland, Czech Republic, Dominican Republic, Latvia and Bulgaria, among others.

United Nations Special Representative for International Migration Louise Arbour speaks to the media in Morocco. Courtesy: Global Compact for Migration/CC by 2.0

“It is regrettable whenever any State withdraws from a multilateral process, on a global issue, the outcome of which has generated overwhelming support,” Arbour says. “It is particularly regrettable when a State pulls out from a negotiated agreement in which it actively participated a short time before.”

Arbour emphasised the process of adoption would still go on as planned, with over 150 States registered to attend, joined by over 400 partners from the U.N. system, civil society, private sector and academia.

Even with the adoption of the compact, the unwelcome last-minute withdrawals and negative sentiments around the compact have unsettled several stakeholders from civil society.

Carolina Gottardo, director of the Jesuit Refugee Service in Australia, says the civil society movement is concerned with deliberate false information being peddled about the compact.

“It is your role as media to report facts and ignore political ideology,” Gottardo said during an IPS and U.N. Foundation training session for journalists on the eve of the conference.

The GCM defines 23 objectives covering all aspects of migration. Each objective comprises a general goal and a catalogue of possible actions, drawn from best practices, that States may choose to utilise to implement their national migration priorities.

“Many challenges still stand in the way of implementation – not least the toxic, ill-informed narrative that too often persists when it comes to migrants,” Arbour says.

During an evening reception for U.N. delegates that followed Arbour’s announcement, António Guterres, the U.N. Secretary-General, officially launched the U.N. Network on Migration, an agile and inclusive network of all key stakeholders on migration—U.N. agencies that have migration components, private sector, civil society and others—with the aim of mobilising the full resources and expertise to assist Member States in their endeavour to implement the 23 objectives outlined in the compact. 

He announced that the “the International Organization for Migration (IOM) will play a central role” in the network.

The U.N. chief also expressed confidence in the new network, highlighting some of its core features, saying it would focus on collaboration and have an inclusive structure, while embodying U.N. values, like diversity and an openness to working with all partners, at all levels.

“Your participation in this conference is a clear demonstration of the importance our global community places on the pursuit of the better management of international migration, through a cooperative approach that is grounded in the principles of state sovereignty, responsibility-sharing, non-discrimination and human rights,” Guterres told conference delegates.

But, as many attending the GCM acknowledge, in this age of social media and polarised political posturing, success all too often depends more on message and narrative—one of the main challenges the GCM, and the migration issue in general, faces.

“Report on facts, not political ideology,” Gottardo told journalists. “Avoid dichotomies between ‘good’ or ‘bad’ movements of people.”

• This story was brought to you by IPS with support from the United Nations Foundation . IPS organized capacity building workshops for media in Marrakech.

Morocco has in recent years emerged as a continental leader in terms of modelling green growth. Credit:Celso Flores/CC By 2.0

By Friday Phiri
PEMBA, Zambia, Oct 22 2018 (IPS)

Science has increasingly made it clear that the world is on an unsustainable growth model where economic development is occurring at the expense of the environment. The need for a well-balanced approach has therefore become a necessity rather than a luxury.

The green growth model, according to experts, is seen as having the required balanced approach that fosters economic growth and development while ensuring that natural assets continue to provide the resources and environmental services on which people’s well-being relies.

While Morocco has in recent years emerged as a continental leader in terms of modelling green growth, the country has an estimated green investment gap of USD24 billion.

The Global Green Growth Institute (GGGI), an international treaty-based organisation that assists countries develop a green growth model, is actively supporting initiatives to help the North African country close this gap and transition to a green economy.

IPS had an opportunity to speak to Nicole Perkins, the GGGI country representative in Morocco on the specific aspects of support being offered, and how it relates to the green growth model being spearheaded by GGGI. Excerpts of the interview follow:

Inter Press Service (IPS): The government of Morocco has requested technical support from GGGI to support the transition to a green economy. The design of the project is dedicated to the development of inclusive green territories in order to contribute to Morocco’s goal of a national overall GHG emission reduction target of 42 percent below business-as-usual (BAU) emissions by 2030, and contribute to the Nationally Determined Contribution (NDC) target of closing the green investment gap of USD24 billion in conditional investments. Could you briefly shade more light on this project?

Nicole Perkins (NP): GGGI’s work in Morocco provides technical support to accompany the implementation of the National Sustainable Development Strategy, aimed at promoting a green, inclusive, integrated and sustainable development model at the territorial (regional) level, and the realisation of Morocco’s NDC number 9, which is to develop a model, low-carbon city centred on optimised energy, transport and waste management.

Our support focuses on the development of policies and incentives, identification and design of bankable projects, and assistance in mobilising funding for their implementation, in alignment with the advanced regionalisation process adopted by the Kingdom of Morocco.

On Oct. 23, 2017, GGGI and the Moroccan government signed in Rabat, a Memorandum of Understanding during a workshop they co-organised on the theme: green growth and development of the green territories in Morocco.

In June 2018, GGGI Morocco received two official letters requesting technical support from both the ministry of interior and the secretary of state for transport, for a total of eight measures in the areas of increasing sub-national access to climate finance, and sustainable mobility, which provides a solid focus for the 2019-2020 programme.

Nicole Perkins, the GGGI country representative in Morocco. Courtesy: Nicole Perkins

IPS: The general thematic area of support is green cities and territories. Could you explain in some detail, the concepts of green cities and territories? What are they, and how do they relate to the green growth model? 

NP: For GGGI, green cities are:

• Innovative and smart: This implies cities that provide a unique environment and an opportunity for innovation, through technology, information, communication and good governance – and the synthesis of these.

• Resource-efficient and based on circular economies: Waste-to-resource and circular economy to lower resource footprints. They are transformational and creative: they decouple growth from resource use.

• Climate smart and resilient: In pursuing low-carbon pathways in support of the Paris Agreement, and underpinned by resilient infrastructure, systems and communities.

• Inclusive and pro-poor: Green cities must provide livelihood opportunities beyond BAU. They are pro-poor, ‘connected’, accessible, and provide affordable solutions for all.

• Healthy and liveable: With an improved quality of life, cleaner air and accessible green spaces.

• Prosperous and bankable: Cities that are competitive, create opportunity and are attractive for (new) investment.

Green territories can be geographically defined as a region or province that inclusively encompass both the urban and rural populations. They leverage the characteristics of green cities and ensure healthy linkages between the urban and rural components in terms of access to economic opportunities and sustainable services such as transport, waste, water, energy, education and health.

IPS: Aside from the key strategic outcome of greenhouse gas (GHG) reductions, the project aims to achieve, among others, green jobs, sustainable services, air quality, ecosystem services, and enhanced adaptation to climate change. Briefly explain how the project intends to achieve these targeted outcomes?

NP: The programme aims to increase access to climate and green growth finance; strengthen national institutional capacity to develop policy in the transport/mobility sector; accelerate national and sub-national investments in the National Sustainable Development Strategy (NSDS), NDCs, and Sustainable Development Goals; and improve the enabling environment in the territories in order to catalyse pro-poor, pro-youth, inclusive, and gender-sensitive investments in environmental goods and services. To achieve these outcomes, GGGI in Morocco is focusing on: supporting the design, implementation and operationalisation of a multi-sectoral National Financing Vehicle, its institutional framework, capacity building, and mechanisms for monitoring and evaluation.

This will contribute to the NDC target of closing the green investment gap of USD24 billion in conditional investments and contribute to Morocco’s goal of a national overall GHG emission reduction target of 42 percent below BAU emissions by 2030.

Regarding the transport and mobility sector, GGGI is providing policy advice and project development services to increase access to sustainable transport and mobility, transition to green transport/mobility, and support the implementation of the National Sustainable Mobility Roadmap, contributing to the NDC target of 23 percent energy savings in the transport sector by 2030.

At a sub-national level, GGGI support is to catalyse the development of Morocco’s inclusive green territories and support the Regional Project Execution Agencies in selectively and strategically developing a pipeline of bankable, sustainable, inclusive and scalable projects in order to attract investments into Environmental Goods and Services and transition to a low carbon economy, contributing among others to Morocco’s NSDS target of 23 percent energy savings in the transport sector by 2030; 20 percent recycled materials rate by 2020; 50 percent wastewater reuse rate in inland cities by 2020; 60 percent wastewater treatment rate by 2020.

IPS:  What financing model have you used to raise funds for the project? Is it a wholly public financed project or a mixture? This comes on the back drop that Green cities—the roads, pavements, street lights are all public sector and are owned by governments not the private sector. 

NP: GGGI Morocco has been building ties with in-country priority donors and conducted comprehensive partner and donor consultations on a national level, which provide the foundation for the 2019 – 2020 biennial country programme. Both GGGI and Morocco’s various donors and international financing institution partners have indicated interest in supporting the government of Morocco’s requests for technical support and GGGI’s efforts to assist Morocco in implementing its NSDS territorial approach to transitioning to inclusive green growth. The structuring of project financing, and avenues for partner involvement and contribution is currently in process.

Excerpt:

The pastoralists of Ethiopia’s Somali region make a living raising cattle, camels and goats in an arid and drought-prone land. They are forced to move constantly in search of pasture and watering holes for their animals. Ahead of COP 24, African experts have identified the need to speak with one unified voice, saying a shift in the geopolitical landscape threatens climate negotiations. Credit: William Lloyd-George/IPS

By Friday Phiri
NAIROBI, Oct 18 2018 (IPS)

In December 2015, nations of the world took a giant step to combat climate change through the landmark Paris Agreement. But African experts who met in Nairobi, Kenya at last week’s Seventh Conference on Climate Change and Development in Africa (CCDA VII) say the rise of far-right wing and nationalist movements in the West are threatening the collapse of the agreement.
The landmark Paris Agreement focuses on accelerating and intensifying actions and investments needed for a sustainable low carbon future, through greenhouse-gas emissions mitigation, adaptation, finance, and technology transfer among others.

And as Parties struggle to complete the implementing measures needed to get the Paris regime up and running, African experts have identified the need to speak with one unified voice, saying a shift in the geopolitical landscape threatens climate negotiations.

“The rise of ‘the inward-looking nationalist right-wing movement and climate deniers’ in the West is a signal of hardening positions in potential inaction by those largely responsible for the world’s climate problems,” Mithika Mwenda, secretary general of the Pan-African Climate Justice Alliance, told the gathering.

Mwenda said civil society organisations were seeking collaboration with governments on the continent and stood ready to offer support as Africa seeks homegrown solutions to mitigate the effects of climate change.

“Our leaders who hold the key for the effective implementation of the Paris Agreement should remain candidly focused and resist attempts to scatter the unified African voice to deny Africa a strong bargain in the design of the Paris rulebook,” Mwenda told IPS in an interview.

The 24th Conference of the Parties (COP 24) to the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) to be held in Katowice, Poland in December, is earmarked as the deadline for the finalisation of the Paris Agreement operational guidelines.

But there are concerns from the African group that there is a deliberate attempt by developed parties to derail the process as the operationalisation of the agreement implies a financial obligation for them to support the adaptation and mitigation action of developing countries.

Since 2015 when the Paris Agreement was reached, the world has seen a shift in the geopolitical landscape, ushering in a climate-sceptic Donald Trump as president of the United States, and several far-right wing nationalist movements gaining power in Europe.

“Two strong groups have joined forces on this issue – the extractive industry, and right-wing nationalists. The combination has taken the current debate to a much more dramatic level than previously, at the same time as our window of opportunity is disappearing,” said Martin Hultman, associate professor in Science, Technology and Environmental studies at Chalmers University of Technology and research leader for the comprehensive project titled ‘Why don’t we take climate change seriously? A study of climate change denial’.

For his part, Trump made good on his campaign promise when he wrote to the UNFCCC secretariat, notifying them of his administration’s intention to withdraw the United States from the treaty, thereby undermining the universality of the Paris Agreement and impairing states’ confidence in climate cooperation.

With this scenario in mind, the discussions at the recently-concluded climate conference in Africa were largely dominated by how the continent could harness homegrown solutions and standing united in the face of shifting climate political dynamics.

In his opening remarks, which he delivered on behalf of Kenya’s President Uhuru Kenyatta, Kenya’s environment and forestry minister, Keriako Tobiko said climate change was a matter of life and death for Africa.

And this was the reason why leaders needed to speak with a strong unified voice.

“We have all experienced the devastating and unprecedented impacts of climate change on our peoples’ lives and livelihoods as well as our national economies. Africa is the most vulnerable continent despite contributing only about four percent to global greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions but when we go to argue our case we speak in tongues and come back with no deal,” he said.

He said given Africa’s shared ecosystems, it was essential to speak in one voice to safeguard the basis of the continent’s development and seek transformative solutions.

This climate conference was held just days after the release of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) special report on Global Warming of 1.5 degrees Celsius which warned of a catastrophe if immediate action is not taken to halt GHG emissions.

And commenting on the IPCC report, Tobiko reiterated the resolutions of the first Africa Environment Partnership Platform held from Sept. 20 to, under the auspices of the New Partnership for Africa’s Development, the technical body of the African Union, which emphasised the need to turn environmental challenges into economic solutions through innovation and green investments.

Tobiko said that Kenya would be hosting the first Sustainable Blue Economy Conference from Nov. 26 to 28 to promote sustainable investments in oceans, seas, lakes, and rivers.

Just like the Africa Environment Partnership Platform — which recognised “indigenous knowledge and customary governance systems as part of Africa’s rich heritage in addressing environmental issues” — indigenisation was also a trending topic at the CCDA VII.

Under the theme: ‘Policies and actions for effective implementation of the Paris Agreement for resilient economies in Africa’, the conference attracted over 700 participants from member states, climate researchers, academia, civil society organisations and local government leaders, among others.
Experts said that local communities, women and the youth should be engaged in Africa’s efforts to combat the vagaries of climate change.

James Murombedzi, officer-in-charge of the Africa Climate Policy Centre of the U.N. Commission for Africa, said African communities have long practiced many adaptation strategies and viable responses to the changing climate.

However, he said, “there are limits to how well communities can continue to practice adaptive livelihoods in the context of a changing climate”, adding that it was time they were supported by an enabling environment created by government-planned adaptation.

“That is why at CCDA-VII we believe that countries have to start planning for a warmer climate than previously expected so this means we need to review all the different climate actions and proposals to ensure that we can in fact not only survive in a 3 degrees Celsius warmer environment but still be able to meet our sustainable development objectives and our Agenda 2063,” added Murombedzi.

Murombedzi said it was sad that most African governments had continued spending huge sums of money on unplanned adaptations for climate-related disasters.

And these, according Yacob Mulugetta, professor of Energy and Development Policy, University London College, “are the implications of global warming for Africa which is already experiencing massive climate impacts, such as crop production, tourism industries and hydropower generation.”

Mulugetta, one of the lead authors of the IPCC special report, however, noted that “international cooperation is a critical part of limiting warming to 1.5 degrees,” but warned African climate experts to take cognisance of the shifting global geopolitical landscape, which he said is having a significant bearing on climate negotiations.

Meanwhile, the African Development Bank (AfDB), pledged continued support to a climate-resilient development transition in Africa through responsive policies, plans and programmes focusing on building transformed economies and healthy ecosystems.

James Kinyangi of the AfDB said the Bank’s Climate Action Plan for the period 2016 to 2020 was ambitious, as it “explores modalities for achieving adaptation, the adequacy and effectiveness of climate finance, capacity building and technology transfer – all aimed at building skills so that African economies can realise their full potential for adaptation in high technology sectors.”

Under this plan, the bank will nearly triple its annual climate financing to reach USD5 billion a year by 2020.

A drought stressed maize crop on Leo De Jong's farm, in the Netherlands. De Jong says he spends between 20,000 and 25,000 Euros per week on irrigation. Credit: Friday Phiri/IPS

By Friday Phiri
WAGENINGEN, The Netherlands, Sep 5 2018 (IPS)

“This season, the month of May was particularly hot and dry,” says Leo De Jong, a commercial farmer in Zeewolde, in Flevopolder, the Netherlands. Flevopolder is in the province of Flevoland, the largest site of land reclamation in the world. Here a hectare of land costs up to 100,000 Euros. “At the moment, we are spending between 20,000 and 25,000 Euros per week on irrigation.”

While most reports point to developing nations being the most vulnerable to the effects of climate change, it is slowly emerging that farmers in the North who generally have more resources are feeling the heat too.

From incessant wild fires and powerful hurricanes in the United States and the Caribbean, to record-breaking high temperatures and droughts in Europe and Asia, the scientific community is unanimously in agreement that climate change is the more likely cause of these extremes in weather.

And it is causing severe disruptions to agricultural production systems, the environment and biodiversity.

This is troubling as, according to the Fifth Assessment Report of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, a rise in temperature of more than 2°C could exacerbate the existing food deficit and prevent the majority of African countries from attaining their Sustainable Development Goals on poverty and hunger.

While De Jong can afford spending thousands of Euros on irrigation each week, he knows it is no longer sustainable for his farming business. He currently grows potatoes, onions and wheat, among other crops, on 170 hectares of reclaimed land.

Leo De Jong in his potato field, in the Netherlands. Credit: Friday Phiri/IPS

Soil health emerges as key

With 18 million inhabitants, the Netherlands is densely populated. Half of the Netherlands is below sea level, but part of the sea was reclaimed for agricultural purposes.

After a flood in 1916, the Dutch government decided that the Zuiderzee, an inland sea within the Netherlands, would be enclosed and reclaimed. And later, the Afsluitdijk was completed—a 32 kilometre dyke which closed off the sea completely. Between 1940 and 1968, part of this enclosed inland sea was converted into land and in 1986 it became the newest province of the Netherlands—Flevoland.

Soil health in the Flevopolder, Flevoland, which sits about four meters below sea level, is of particular importance. De Jong sees it as a hallmark for every farmer in this era of climate change, regardless of their location.

He believes the answer to the climate challenge lies in farmers’ ability to “balance between ecology and economy.” This, he tells IPS, can be achieved through various ways such as improved and efficient irrigation technology, research and innovation, as well as farmer-to-farmer knowledge exchanges like the one to which he belongs—the Skylark Foundation. At the foundation he exchanges knowledge with a group of colleagues, mainly focusing on soil health.

“I have a feeling that the climate is getting extreme but consistent usage of manure, cover crops and other efficient sustainable practices guarantees good soil health, and soil health is the hallmark on which sustainable crop production is built.”

Similarly, Peter Appelman, who specialises in farming broccoli and cabbage, agrees with the soil health argument.

Appelman says that farmers should not be preoccupied with the various systems (conventional and organic farming) currently being propagated by researchers. He says that farmers should rather adopt systems that work for them depending on the type of soils on their farms.

“We have stopped feeding the crop but the soil,” he tells IPS, pointing at a pile of composite manure. “I am not an organic farmer but I try to be sustainable in whatever way because this comes back to you. You can’t grow a good product in bad soil.”

Market access for sustainability

In addressing the production cost side of the business, Appelman points to consumer satisfaction and predictable markets as key enablers to farmers’ sustainability in this era of climate stress.

As consumer preferences become more obvious, Appelman says farmers should not expend their energies complaining about market access and growing consumer demands but should rather work hard to satisfy them.

“I think my fellow farmers complain too much, which is not the best practice for the business,” he says. “As farmers, we should exert this energy in looking for customers, and work to satisfy them—I believe better farmer-to-customer relations should be the way forward.”

According to Appelman, production should be determined by consumer/market preferences. “I travel around the world looking for markets, and through these interactions, I learn and do my work according to the needs of my customers. Look for customers first and then proceed to produce for them, because it is tough in the production stage,” says Appelman, whose farm has an annual turn-over of about two million Euros.

The Appelman family grow broccoli on 170 hectares and red and white cabbage on 60 hectares.

Research and innovation

According to Professor Louise Fresco, president of the research executive board of Wageningen University in the Netherlands, the answer to the global food challenge lies in ensuring that the contribution of agriculture to climate change is positive rather than negative.

This, she says, is only possible through investment in research and innovation in order to achieve maximum efficiency for food production and to minimise waste.

“The agriculture sector therefore needs to do more than produce food—but produce efficiently,” she said in her opening address to the 2018 International Federation of Agricultural Journalists congress held in the Netherlands in July. “Food has to be produced not as a chain, but in a circular way. Water and energy use are highlights.”

Under the theme: Dutch roots—small country, big solutions; the congress highlighted what lies at the centre of the Netherlands’ agricultural prowess.

“Productivity through innovation and efficiency is the answer to why the Netherlands,ca small country, is the second-largest agricultural exporter [in the world],” said Wiebe Draijer, chief executive officer and chairman of Rabobank.

Draijer said Rabobank, which was founded as a cooperative, was happy to be associated with the Dutch agricultural prowess, which is anchored in sustainable and innovative practices.

“In response to the global food challenge, we keep refining our lending modalities to support environmental sustainability. For example, we track farmers that we give loans to to monitor their environmental sustainability practices, and there is an incentive in the form of a discount on their loans.”

Sustainability is the buzz word globally. However, it seems there is much more to be done for farmers to achieve it, especially now that negative effects of climate change are similarly being felt in both the north and the global south.

Fainess Muzyamba of Pemba district, Zambia, ending up ditching her traditional maize crop for sweet potatoes in the last farming season. It proved a successful strategy for her. She is pictured here with the clay flower pots that she also makes and sells at Zambia’s tourist capital, Livingstone, for additional income. Courtesy: Friday Phiri

By Friday Phiri
PEMBA, Zambia, Aug 30 2018 (IPS)

Just having better information about when and for how long it will rain is proving the difference between success and failure among smallholder farmers in southern Zambia. Empowered with timely information about the weather ahead of the 2017/18 farming season, 56-year-old Fainess Muzyamba of Pemba district ditched her traditional maize crop for sweet potatoes.

“Through the monthly weather briefings that we get, I decided to plant sweet potatoes instead of maize,” Muzyamba told IPS.

The monthly weather bulletin that Muzyamba is referring to is part of an integrated package of interventions under the Rural Resilience Initiative by the World Food Programme (WFP).

The initiative integrates six management strategies, which include risk transfer through rainfall index insurance, prudent risk taking through input and cash loans, climate services and information, and post-harvest management and marketing.

“This service has been very helpful,” said Muzyamba. “Through this information and technical advice from extension officers, I was able to project that seasonal rainfall would be problematic, and decided to plant sweet potatoes—these don’t need a lot of water to do well.”

And the decision paid off.

She harvested 60 x 50-kilogram (kg) bags of sweet potatoes which she has exchanged for 40 x  50-kg bags of maize.

At the current market price, Muzyamba would earn 2,800 Zambian kwacha (USD280) for the maize and an additional 1,200 Zambian kwacha (USD120) from her crop of sugar beans, which she has recently diversified into for its income and nutrition value. She added, however, “20 bags of maize is for food consumption” for her 11-member family. And it is guaranteed to last until the next harvest.

Smallholder farmers not protected against climate shocks

In Zambia, 73 percent of farmers or 1.5 million of the country’s 16 million people are smallholders, cultivating less than two hectares of land. Erratic rainfall is an additional burden to challenges such as fragile soils and poor access to agricultural inputs, markets and improved agricultural practices.

They often do not have access to basic risk management strategies and when climate shocks hit, their wellbeing in the short term is compromised. In the long term, these shocks have enduring consequences, including poverty, malnutrition and low life expectancy.

“The issue of erratic patterns of the weather and how we have seen this evolving, is a concern and a larger problem affecting smallholder farmers not only in Zambia but the entire southern African region,” noted Lola Castro, WFP regional director for southern Africa, during her visit to Zambia in March.

She told IPS: “It is for this reason that we think the Rural Resilience Initiative we are implementing with partners needs to be scaled up to empower smallholders to create resilience and adaptation to climate change impacts by discouraging mono-cropping of maize and promoting diversification.”

In partnership with Meteorological Department of Zambia, WFP “has installed two Automatic Weather stations to improve upstream and downstream dissemination and utilisation of agro-met information,” Allan Mulando of WFP Zambia told IPS. “WFP has also installed 20 manual rain gauges manned by trained local farmers and used by the community to make timely decisions on planting.”

Farmers take and then share readings from the gauges with the meteorological office, field project and government extension officers, and fellow farmers for planning purposes.

In their farmers’ clubs, lead and follower farmers gather to discuss parameters such as the right soil moisture content for planting. By comparing their own locally-obtained information and the broad-based national and regional weather forecast, they are able to make projections of what to expect, thereby helping them to plan what and when to plant.

A success in a season of disaster

When she compares the average yields of other farmers in the area, Muzyamba believes her story is a remarkable turnaround in a season that has largely been a disaster for the majority of smallholders due to poor rainfall.

“Paying for my children’s school fees will not be a problem this year. I was particularly worried [about having the fees for my] oldest son who is in grade twelve,” she said. She added that the situation would now be manageable as she is also involved in a savings scheme with the farmers’ club. She uses the proceeds of her savings to transport clay flower pots to Zambia’s tourist capital, Livingstone, where they are sold.

This is a typical story of diversification as a climate change adaptation strategy for smallholder farmers. But, perhaps, what has been lacking over the years are concrete integrated and sustainable ways of incentivising smallholder farmers.

“I think what we have learnt so far, is that the only way to address some of these issues is through an integrated approach—ensuring that activities are mainstreamed into national programmes to avoid confusion, and in future even when we leave as partners, these programmes continue to be implemented by relevant government departments,” Zambia WFP country director, Jennifer Bitonde, told IPS.

The initiative, which started in 2014, has been expanded to the Monze, Gwembe, Namwala and Mazabuka districts, reaching a total of 18,157 farmers.

More people need more food

By the year 2050, global population is expected to rise from the current seven billion to about nine billion, requiring a dramatic increase in agricultural production. According to the Food and Agricultural Organisation of the United Nations (FAO),  as populations grow and diets change the world must produce 49 percent more food by 2050 than it did in 2012.

FAO believes that hunger, poverty and climate change can be tackled together by recognising the links between rural poverty, sustainable agriculture and strategies that boost resource use efficiency, conserve and restore biodiversity and natural resources, and combat the impacts of climate change.

At a global level, one important step taken to actualise this strategy was the adoption of the Koronivia Work Programme on Agriculture by the U.N. Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) at the 2017 Conference of Parties—the highest decision-making body on climate change and development.

This was after several years of discussing agriculture as a secondary subject at the UNFCCC negotiating table. But the decision to adopt it as a work programme, provides hope for farmers and processors in developing economies as meaningful action to adverse effects of climate change on agriculture will be taken.

“From our perspective as Zambia, our interest is in line with the expectations of the African group which is seeking to protect our smallholders, who are the majority producers, from the negative impacts of climate change through tried and friendly technologies,” Morton Mwanza, Zambia’s ministry of agriculture focal point person on climate smart agriculture, told IPS.

Technology adoption and human rights approach the way forward

Meanwhile, George Wamukoya, one of Africa’s well-known experts on climate change and agriculture, believes innovative technology adoption is the next big step forward for African agriculture to be transformed.

“I think it is a positive step because it has brought the issues of implementation and science together, and this is what we have been fighting for. We need investment in agriculture, to try and get science to inform whatever we are doing in agriculture, and to help cushion our farmers’ challenges,” Wamukoya told IPS.

However, civil society groups are cautious of some approaches. Mithika Mwenda of the Pan African Climate Justice Alliance argued for a human rights approach.

Mwenda told IPS that agriculture is no longer just an issue of science but also a human rights issue, adding that industrialised agriculture was not the right remedy to smallholder farmers’ climate challenges.

“Our interest is to promote resilience to agriculture, the context in Africa is how to support that smallholder farmer, that pastoralist whose cows are dying due to drought every time, so it’s important that we look at it from this context and not theories of industrialisation,” explained Mwenda.

St. Vincent and the Grenadines has installed 750 kilowatt hours of photovoltaic panels, which it says reduced its carbon emissions by 800 tonnes annually. Credit: Kenton X. Chance/IPS

By Friday Phiri
PEMBA, Zambia, May 23 2018 (IPS)

Climate finance has never been more urgently needed, with massive investments in climate action required to meet the goals of the Paris Agreement and avoid the devastating effects of a warmer planet.

However, it is an open secret that public financing mechanisms alone are not enough to meet the demand for climate finance, especially for developing countries whose cost to implement their conditional Nationally Determined Contributions (NDCs) and transition to low-carbon economies is pegged at 4.3 trillion dollars.Scaling up and accelerating innovative approaches to climate finance from multiple sources, including the private sector, has emerged as a key strategy to meet the goals of the Paris Agreement.

This is a huge price-tag when compared to the Green Climate Fund (GCF’s) current coffers, which are still being counted in billion terms. The GCF is one of the designated UNFCCC financial instruments created at COP 17 in Durban, South Africa.

Therefore, scaling up and accelerating innovative approaches to climate finance from multiple sources, including the private sector, has emerged as a key strategy to meet the goals of the Paris Agreement through long-term and predictable climate-smart investments.

It is for this reason that the World Bank and partners has been organising platforms in which ways of leveraging public resources with private sector financing are discussed.

One such platform is the Innovate4Climate, launched in 2017 in Barcelona. It serves as an integral part of the global dialogue on climate finance, sustainable development, carbon pricing and markets.

This year’s event, set for Frankfurt from 22-24 May, with four thematic areas, convenes global leaders from industry, government and multilateral agencies for a one-day Summit, workshops and a Marketplace, to work and dialogue on development of innovative financing instruments and approaches to support low-carbon, climate-resilient development pathways.

The Business Case for Climate Investment

Under this pillar, the focus is on the important role of the private sector to fight climate change. It explores climate-related business opportunities such as how to create markets for climate investments, and which approaches are effective in de-risking investment opportunities.

At the meeting, this stream is set to showcase sustainability and climate-resilient initiatives of business associations and industries, present models of collaboration and partnerships between public and private sector, as well as analyse trends and new initiatives in mobilizing development/climate finance, to match developing country investment needs with private sector capital.

A classic example under this theme is the GCF blended model—the use of four financial instruments: concessional loans, equity, grants, and guarantees that can be used through different modalities and at various stages of the financing cycle. Debt and equity instruments help close a specific financing gap for specific projects and programmes, thus bringing more projects and programmes to fruition, while guarantees help to crowd in new private sector financing from multilateral development banks, national development banks, and others.

“We are starting to see it already with the GCF,” says Fenella Aouane, Global Green Growth Institute (GGGI’s) Principal Climate Finance Specialist. “They put out the 500-million-dollar private sector facility…they have gone into the market for the entirety of the private sector globally, they put out a call for proposals to spend up to 500 million. Now relate that to the fact that in a single board meeting in February, they approved projects worth 1 billion.”

NDC Implementation—policies and finance

Another central theme of the Innovate4Climate conference this year is focusing on improving access to finance and support for capacity building to successfully implement countries’ NDCs. This stream targets initiatives aiming at getting “further-faster-together” for NDCs implementation.

The key questions revolve around how to improve access to available funding and mobilize new sources, to strengthen climate finance readiness and accelerate disbursement of climate finance, how to increase and sustain ambitions, and ensure accountability and how to reduce transaction costs through standardisation and simplifying processes.

Innovation for Climate Resilience

Technology is a crucial component of the Paris Agreement’s means of implementation pillar. There is no question that innovative technologies and financial instruments are changing the narrative of climate change resilience. Thus, this stream presents achievements and models in climate smart agriculture, climate action in cities, and disaster risk management among others.

And in relation to the theme of technology, Tony Simon, Director General of the World Agroforestry Centre (ICRAF), recently emphasised the importance of adopting locally-relevant options that enhance agricultural productivity, for example, in relation to climate change adaptation and mitigation through exploring innovative finance instruments.

“Explore innovative finance instruments,” said Simon at the UNFCCC organized first regional Talanoa which was part of the Africa Climate Week, held in Nairobi in April 2018. “Private equity offers a huge amount of money. Use the money from CTCN and other sources to pull in other funds and use that as an opportunity to blend financing for climate change initiatives.”

Climate Market and Metrics

Under this theme, the focus is on the contribution of market-based approaches to efficient and cost-effective climate change mitigation. Delegates will discuss current and future trends around practical outcomes of international negotiations on Article 6 (voluntary cooperation on mitigation and adaptation actions). The theme also seeks to understand what can be expected from aviation and shipping.

“One area where forestry hopes the private sector may be interested is—the airline industry is currently trying to decide how it will offset its emissions as an industry and one way that might do this is through the purchase of carbon offsetting assets so that could be forestry in the form of some level of carbon credit,” GGGI’s Fenella told IPS. “If they do this, then there will be a possible clear return for investors.”

While the Innovate4Climate conference gets underway in Frankfurt next week, it seems the private sector approach by GGGI is already paying dividends. According to its 2017 Annual report, GGGI helped mobilize over half a billion dollars for green investments that aim to support developing countries and emerging economies transition toward environmentally sustainable and socially inclusive economic growth.

It contributed to the mobilization of 524.6 million dollars in green investments in Ethiopia, India, Indonesia, Rwanda and other countries in which the Seoul-based international organization operates.

“This is a record achievement for GGGI, representing more than 11 times the organization’s actual budget in 2017,” said Dr. Frank Rijsberman, GGGI Director-General. “Working closely with partner countries over the years to develop and implement policies that enable the environment to for green growth investment, GGGI is now demonstrating its growing capacity to access and mobilize finance for projects that deliver strong impact.”

With GGGI technical support to design and de-risk bankable projects, of the total amount mobilized, 412 million came from the private sector.

And just to highlight some countries in Africa, in Ethiopia, GGGI produced a pipeline of projects for the Mekelle City Water Project that helped attract 337 million dollars from the international private sector, while in Rwanda, GGGI catalyzed a 60-million investment from the private sector for a Cactus Green Park Development Project in Kigali, to support Rwanda’s secondary cities program.

Role of Multilateral Banks

The discussion on green economic growth and the increasing need for private sector climate financing cannot be complete without mentioning the role of multilateral banks. According to the World Bank, concessional climate finance is one critical strategy under this pillar, to support developing countries to build resilience to worsening climate impacts and to catalyzing private sector climate investment. Through this approach, collectively, the Multilateral Development Banks (MDBs) increased their climate financing in developing countries and emerging economies to 27.4 billion dollars in 2016 – including more than 11 billion from the WBG.

From an African perspective, the African Development Bank (AfDB) has been instrumental to the green growth discourse and the need for African countries not to follow the fossil fuel development pathway.

And in its efforts to foster a green growth economic pathway, in 2014, the AfDB released the first-ever Green Growth Framework—to function as a foundational reference document for its work on green growth. The bank was therefore instrumental in the formulation of Africa Renewable Energy Initiative (AREI).

The initiative, which came out of COP21 and subsequently approved by the African Union, aims at delivering 300GW of renewable energy by 2030.

The AfDB also played a key role in de-risking one of Africa’s gigantic multi-billion-dollar solar power investment in Ouarzazate, Morocco, an example of a green growth economic model, which requires multi-million-dollar investments that cannot be done by public financing alone.

Mustapha Bakkaoury, president of the Moroccan Agency for Solar Energy (MASEN), told delegates at COP 22 that his country’s renewable energy revolution would not have been possible if multilateral partners such as the AfDB had not come on board to act as a guarantor for financing of the project.

About the Global Green Growth Institute (GGGI)

Based in Seoul, GGGI is an intergovernmental organization that supports developing country governments transition to a model of economic growth that is environmentally sustainable and socially inclusive.

GGGI delivers programs in 27 partner countries with technical support, capacity building, policy planning & implementation, and by helping to build a pipeline of bankable green investment projects.

More on GGGI’s events, projects and publications can be found on www.gggi.org.

UN Climate chief Patricia Espinosa making a point during a media roundtable. Credit: Friday Phiri

By Friday Phiri
BONN, May 15 2018 (IPS)

As negotiators concluded ten days of climate talks in Bonn last week, climate finance was underlined as a key element without which the Paris Agreement’s operational guidelines would be meaningless.

The talks, held from April 30 to May 10, were aimed at finalising the PA’s implementation guidelines to be adopted at the annual climate conference to be held in Katowice, Poland in December.

The guidelines are essential for determining whether total world emissions are declining fast enough to achieve the goals of the Paris Agreement, which include boosting adaptation and limiting the global temperature increase to well below 2°C, while pursuing efforts to limit the increase to 1.5°C.

Climate finance dialoge

However, the catch is that all this requires financing to achieve. For instance, the conditional Nationally Determined Contributions (NDCs) from developing countries in implementing the Paris Agreement are pegged at the cost of 4.3 trillion dollars to be achieved.

“Finance is a very critical component for us,” said Ephraim Mwepya Shitima, Zambian Delegation leader and UNFCCC focal point person. “Agriculture, general adaptation and the APA agenda for implementation modalities form the core issues we are following keenly but we believe all these are meaningless without finance.”

It has always been the cry of developing countries to receive support through predictable and sustainable finance for it is the lifeblood of implementation of mitigation and/or adaptation activities. And Least Developed Countries (LDC) Chair Gebru Jember Endalew agrees with Zambia’s Shitima on the importance of finance.

“Finance is key to meeting the goals of the Paris Agreement. In the face of climate change, poor and vulnerable countries are forced to address loss and damage and adapt to a changing climate, all while striving to lift their people out of poverty without repeating the mistakes of an economy built on fossil fuels. This is not possible without predictable and sustainable support,” he said.

The civil society movement was particularly unhappy with the lukewarm finance dialogue outcome. “The radio silence on money has sown fears among poor countries that their wealthier counterparts are not serious about honouring their promises,” said Mohamed Adow, International Climate Lead, Christian Aid.

He said funding is not just a bargaining chip, but an essential tool for delivering the national plans that make up the Paris Agreement. And adding his voice to the debate, Mithika Mwenda of the Pan African Justice Allaince (PACJA) expressed dismay at the lack of concrete commitments from developed country parties.

“We are dismayed with the shifting of goal posts by our partners who intend to delay the realization of actual financing of full costs of adaptation in Africa,” said Mwenda.

Civil society campaigners protest big polluters at the negotiating table in Bonn. Credit: Friday Phiri

But for Patricia Espinosa, Executive Secretary of the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC), the final analysis of the talks revealed a more hopeful outlook.

“I am satisfied that some progress was made here in Bonn,” said Espinosa at the close of the ten-day talks. “But many voices are underlining the urgency of advancing more rapidly on finalizing the operational guidelines. The package being negotiated is highly technical and complex. We need to put it in place so that the world can monitor progress on climate action.”

According to Espinosa, the presiding officers of the three working bodies coordinated discussions on a wide range of items under the Paris Agreement Work Programme, and delegations tasked them to publish a “reflection note” to help governments prepare for the next round of talks.

She said the preparatory talks would continue at a supplementary meeting in Bangkok from September 3-8, at which the reflection note and the views and inputs by governments captured in various texts in Bonn would be considered.

The Bangkok meeting would then forward texts and draft decisions for adoption to the annual session of the Conference of the Parties (COP24) in Poland.

“We have made progress here in Bonn, but we need now to accelerate the negotiations. Continuing intersessional streamlining of the text-based output from Bonn will greatly assist all governments, who will meet in Bangkok to work towards clear options for the final set of implementation guidelines,” she explained.

The Talanoa Dialogue

In parallel to the formal negotiations, the Bonn meeting hosted the long-awaited Fiji-led Talanoa Dialogue.

Following the tradition in the Pacific region, the goal of a ‘talanoa’ is to share stories to find solutions for the common good. In this spirit, the dialogue witnessed some 250 participants share their stories, providing fresh ideas and renewed determination to raise ambition.

“Now is the time for action,” said Frank Bainimarama, Prime Minister of Fiji and President of COP23. “Now is the time to commit to making the decisions the world must make. We must complete the implementation guidelines of the Paris Agreement on time. And we must ensure that the Talanoa Dialogue leads to more ambition in our climate action plans.”

The dialogue wrote history when countries and non-Party stakeholders including cities, businesses, investors and regions engaged in interactive story-telling for the first time.

“The Talanoa Dialogue has provided a broad and real picture of where we are and has set a new standard of conversation,” said the President-designate of COP24, Michał Kurtyka of Poland. “Now it is time to move from this preparatory phase of the dialogue to prepare for its political phase, which will take place at COP24,” he added.

All input received to date and up to October 29, 2018 will feed into the Talanoa Dialogue’s second, more political phase at COP24.

The Koronovia work Programme on Agriculture  

Farmers are particularly vulnerable to climate change impacts such as prolonged droughts and shifting rainfall patterns, and agriculture is an important source of emissions.

Despite this importance however, agriculture had been missing and was only discussed as an appendage at the UN climate negotiating table, until November 2017 when it was included as a work programme.

Recognising the urgency of addressing this sector, the Bonn conference made a significant advance on the “Koronivia Joint Work on Agriculture” by adopting a roadmap for the next two-and-a-half years.

“From our perspective as Zambia, our interest is in line with the expectations of the African group which is seeking to protect our smallholders who are the majority producers from the negative impacts of climate change,” said Morton Mwanza, Zambia’s Ministry of Agriculture focal point person on Climate Smart Agriculture.

And according to the outcome at the Bonn talks, the roadmap responds to the world’s farming community of more than 1 billion people and to the 800 million people who live in food-insecure circumstances, mainly in developing countries. It addresses a range of issues including the socio-economic and food-security dimensions of climate change, assessments of adaptation in agriculture, co-benefits and resilience, and livestock management.

Nevertheless, key to this roadmap is undoubtedly means of implementation—finance and technology. Developed countries pledged, since 2009, to deliver to developing countries 100 billion dollars per year by 2020 for climate action.

However, the withdrawal of 2 billion dollars’ worth of support by the Trump administration because of its decision to leave the Paris Agreement, leaves the climate finance debate unsettled, and a major sticking point in the talks.

Big polluters influence

And some campaigners now accuse some fossil fuel lobbyists allegedly sitting on the negotiating table to be behind delayed climate action.

According to a study, titled “Revolving doors and the fossil fuel industry,” carried out in 13 European countries, failure to deal with conflict of interest by the EU is due to cosy relationships built up with the fossil fuel sector over the years. It calls for the adoption of a strong conflict of interest policy that would avoid the disproportionate influence of the fossil fuel industry on the international climate change negotiations.

“There is a revolving door between politics and the fossil fuel lobby all across Europe,” said Max Andersson, Member of the European Parliament, at the Bonn Climate Talks. “It’s not just a handful of cases—it is systematic. The fossil fuel industry has an enormous economic interest in delaying climate action and the revolving door between politics and the fossil fuel lobby is a serious cause for alarm.”

According to Andersson, to meet the goals of the Paris Agreement and keep global warming to as close as 1.5 degrees as possible, there is need to clamp down on conflicts of interest to stop coal, gas and oil from leaving “their dirty fingerprints over our climate policy.”

Interestingly, there was good news for the ‘big polluters out’ campaigners at the close of the talks. “No amount of obstruction from the US and its big polluter allies will ultimately prevent this movement from advancing,” Jesse Bragg of Corporate Accountability told IPS. “Global South leaders prevailed in securing a clear path forward for the conflict of interest movement, ensuring the issue will be front and center next year.”

And so, it seems, climate finance holds all the cards. Until it is sorted, the implementation of the Paris Agreement in two years’ time hangs in the balance.

President Edgar Lungu just before planting a tree during the launch of Plant a Million Trees Initiative in Chinsali District. Credit: Munich Advisors Group

By Friday Phiri
CHINSALI, Zambia, May 3 2018 (IPS)

As global climate experts meet in Bonn this week to discuss how to take climate action forward, Zambia counts itself amongst the leaders as President Edgar Lungu officially launches the Plant a Million (PAM) trees Initiative.

In fact, the initiative is even more ambitious than its name implies, and aims at planting at least two billion trees by 2021. According to President Lungu, the initiative is in line with the country’s Seventh National Development Plan whose aim is to diversify the economy from copper dependency.

President Lungu says the initiative, which targets young people through schools, colleges and universities, will be used as a vehicle for mindset change among Zambians to begin to value the importance of planting trees as a tool for economic diversification.

“This initiative marks the beginning of growing money through trees and government stands ready to support it and ensure that it succeeds,” he said during the launch at Kapasa Makasa University in Muchinga Province, Northern Zambia.

In line with the country’s commitments to international treaties, especially the landmark Paris Agreement on Climate Change, President Lungu said government envisages not only creating a tree-based economy, but also mitigating climate change through the initiative.

He is particularly concerned with the country’s alarming deforestation rate of 276,021 hectares per year, making Zambia one of the most deforested countries in Africa.

“The Plant A Million initiative will significantly contribute to reducing deforestation which has earned Zambia a bad name of being one of the most deforested countries in Africa as a result of uncontrolled harvesting of trees,” he said.

The Zambian president added that he was impressed with the youth involvement model through schools, colleges and universities, saying it will help push the agenda of mindset change because “when our learners appreciate the importance of trees, it will in turn create a positive impact in families and the communities at large.”

President Edgar Chagwa Lungu planting a tree while Minister of Lands and Natural Resources looks on. Credit: Munich Advisors Group

Speaking earlier, Higher Education Minister Nkandu Luo said her Ministry would use the initiative to redefine the education system from exam-based to real-world practices.

“Over the years, the thinking in our school system has been that education is passing exams but we are redefining this thinking, so that people know that education is total transformation of a human being, and this programme is one of the ways to do it,” she said.

As one of the brains behind the initiative, Professor Luo said that Zambia was aiming to break the world record of planting the most trees, which is currently held by India. Last year, Volunteers in India planted more than 66 million trees in just 12 hours in a record-breaking environmental drive.

About 1.5 million people were involved in the huge campaign, in which saplings were placed along the Narmada river in the state of Madhya Pradesh throughout Sunday.

India committed under the Paris Agreement to increasing its forests by five million hectares before 2030 to combat climate change.

“We are aiming to beat the world record, to go above 66 million trees done by India. We aim to plant at least a billion trees by 2019, and another billion plus by 2021; and I am positive that with universities’ involvement, it is doable,” she said.

Meanwhile, Minister of Lands and Natural Resources Jean Kapata is optimistic that the initiative will not only add value to people’s livelihoods through income from the sale of fruit and other forest products, but also contribute to the country’s ambitious mitigation targets as set in the Nationally Determined Contributions (NDC).

“As you may be aware, tree planting plays an important role in addressing impacts of climate change, and mitigating effects of climate change. In this regard, the Zambia Plant A Million initiative is also responding to national efforts of reducing greenhouse gas emissions,” she said.

Zambia has undertaken, and is still implementing, several tree planting and preservation projects across the country. Central to such initiatives has been the goodwill of the country’s first president, Dr. Kenneth Kaunda, who was a pioneer of tree planting during his time in office.

And according to Emmanuel Chibesakunda, PAM initiator and project manager, the initiative wants to build on this foresight and activism of the 94-year-old freedom fighter and founding father of the nation.

“I am pleased to announce this morning that Dr. Kenneth Kaunda has kindly agreed to be the goodwill ambassador for this initiative,” announced Chibesakunda amid thunderous applause from those who gathered to witness the ceremony in a district which is also home to Dr. Kaunda. “Dr. Kaunda did not only lead our country into independence, but also pioneered tree planting in Zambia.”

Chibesakunda shared his inspiration for the initiative, which he said was from his father who taught him that talent was like a seed which needed to be planted in the right soil to germinate into beautiful fruit. This led to his passion for trees, and especially the involvement of children and young people.

“My father told me that we all have talents, but what matters is where we plant them,” he told the gathering. “And my desire for this project is that we plant the knowledge in the young generation, let us put the future into their hands.”

So far, tree nurseries have been set up at 12 schools in Lusaka, and the project expects to reach 720 schools in the next two years in 60 districts across the country.

Matero East primary school students collecting water. Credit: Munich Advisors Group

By Friday Phiri
LUSAKA, Apr 24 2018 (IPS)

Trees are a vital component in the ecosystem—they not only give oxygen, store carbon, stabilise the soil and give refuge to wildlife, but also provide materials for tools, shelter and ultimately, food for both animals and human beings.

In fact, according to the World Bank statistics, some 1.3 billion people around the world depend on forests for their livelihood—that is a fifth of the global population. This includes income from the sale of trees and tree-related products. It also includes the value of fruit, fodder, medicines, and other direct or indirect products that they consume.

In monetary terms, the International Union for the Conservation of Nature (IUCN) estimates the annual net benefit of restoring 150 million hectares of land at approximately 85 billion dollars per year. Additionally, it would sequester massive amounts of greenhouse gases.

However, it is globally recognised that forest restoration requires an integrated approach which appreciates and understands forests along their entire value chain. Thus, it is crucial to see forest landscape restoration efforts as much more than just protecting forests, but as a force for economic growth and poverty reduction.

It is from this background that several game-changing initiatives such as the decade-long United Nations Convention to Combat Desertification (UNCCD)’s Great Green Wall, UN REDD plus strategy for carbon trading, and national governments’ annual tree planting exercises are being implemented to restore the world’s degraded landscapes and in the process transform millions of lives.

Seedlings thrive at Chunga School. Credit: Munich Advisors Group

For Zambia, the forestry sector contributes significantly to household incomes for forest dependent communities, particularly in rural areas. Nationally, according to recent data by the Integrated Land Use Assessment (ILUA) project, the forestry sector contributes 5.5% to GDP.

But for a country which boasts 44 million hectares of forests covering 58.7 percent of the total land surface area, 5.5% contribution to GDP is not good enough. And an alarming annual deforestation rate of 276,021 hectares confirms this challenge that require immediate attention.

“Growing population and economic pressure has increased demand for economic and social development, forcing people to just take from the environment instead of growing from it,” says Richard Jeffery, a conservation expert. Jeffery believes “Plant A Million” (PAM) initiative could reverse this trend as it is promoting an economic benefit model.

What is PAM?

“Plant A Million” (PAM) aims to plant at least two billion trees by 2021. According to Emmanuel Chibesakunda, PAM initiator, sponsor and project manager, the vision is to accelerate and scale up a tree-based economy for socio-economic change in Zambia and mitigate climate change impacts.

“Plant A Million is a joint public-private tree planting initiative that is promoting a tree-based economy and sustainable development through local school and community participation,” Chibesakunda told IPS. “This initiative focuses on developing the future of Zambia with the full set of skills and know how, through promoting thought leadership and innovation, social responsibility, leadership skills and helping children to connect to the world.”

Therefore, he adds, the project has taken a deliberate strategy to entrust the future in the hands of future leaders—children, thus the emphasis on public schools and community participation.

Under this strategy, he says, education and attitude change are key project outcomes:

“We want to shift away from the focus on number of trees planted as the wrong success factors. Key is how many trees survive the critical first two years, and the value they add to the community. Our focus is attitude change, and it has to start with the future leaders—children.”

Children as key players

There is a common adage in one of Zambia’s local languages, Bemba, which states: “imiti ikula empanga,” loosely translated as “today’s seedlings are tomorrow’s forests.” In a nutshell, the values being imparted in today’s children will determine the future world view.

Roy Lombe, an educator, believes that today’s seedlings have to be well nurtured through a practical hands-on approach. “Our generation has mishandled forests due to poor attitude, and so we don’t want to fall in the same trap,” he says. “Once they learn the value of a tree while young, they will not depart from it when they grow into adults.”

Confirming this nurture-analogy, is Maureen Chibenga, a 16-year-old Grade Eleven pupil at Lake Road PTA School.

“When the project team came to our school, I did not hesitate to be a champion, as my interest in trees dates back to my early life family values—farming,” Chibenga told IPS. “My grandfather has a farm, my father has a farm, so I saw this as an opportunity to grow my knowledge of trees and their value to humanity.”

For 15-year-old Subilo Banda, also in Grade Eleven at the same school, his motivation, he says, is to correct the wrongs of the past.

“I think our generation is open-minded. The old generation’s mistakes have taught us what we know. That’s why I think it is a very good idea to start with us in terms of mindset change,” he says, adding that there is a better possibility for his generation to embrace a ‘green’ lifestyle due to this early exposure and education.

As an incentive, the schools involved will be earning an income. Chilando Chella, Lake Road PTA School Manager, cannot wait for this exciting opportunity to make extra cash: “We have targeted to raise 50,000 seedlings this year from which we expect to earn thousands of kwacha. And we plan to plough back this money into skills training, for we know that not all of our learners will end up in the formal sector.”

So far, the project has already reached out to 12 schools with 15,000 students in Lusaka district, who are growing 500,000 tree seedlings. A further 132 schools are on standby to be included in the program within the next eight months with the target from the vice president to reach 720 schools in all 10 provinces in the next two years involving approximately one million children.

Zambian Vice President Inonge Wina (right), with Minister of Lands and Natural Resources, Jean Kapata, during the launch of the 2018 tree planting exercise. Credit: Munich Advisors Group

Government buy-in

With the project announced by Republican Vice President in February 2018 during the National Tree Planting day, almost all ministries are already keyed-in. Strategic among them are the Ministries of National Development Planning (overall coordination), General Education and High Education (Schools, Colleges and Universities), and the Ministry of Lands and Natural Resources, which holds the forestry sector portfolio.

Professor Nkandu Luo is the Minister of Higher Education. With a considered view that her ministry is the bedrock on which development is anchored, Professor Luo also believes the project is in tandem with, and supports the value system agenda that government is promoting, as espoused in the country’s constitution.

“Honesty and hard work are some of the key values that our constitution is promoting, and I think this project is timely in this regard. Teaching our young ones to learn the value of hard work, of honesty and being able to earn based on one’s input and not expecting to earn where one has not sown. So, this project will be used by the Ministry of National Guidance and Religious Affairs to push the value system agenda as advocated in our constitution.”

Meanwhile, for the Ministry of Lands and Natural Resources, the approach of not looking at plantations but individuals is very important, considering the high deforestation rate that the country is recording.

“I am not afraid to mention here, and let me put it on record, that for as long as we do not provide alternative energy solutions for our people, they will continue cutting trees,” laments Jean Kapata, Minister of Lands and Natural Resources.

“But I am happy to report that we have started looking at several alternative options one of which is the bamboo for charcoal which we believe will be a game changer if well implemented.”

According to Kapata, government is considering scaling up plantations of some fast-growing bamboo species which can be harvested starting at four years and can go on up to fifty years.

However, attitude change requires information. And Dora Siliya, Minister of Information and Broadcasting Services, argues for a narrative change regarding the climate change and development discourse.

“We have been looking at this climate change issue wrongly, only thinking about how to mitigate, adapt and conserve, we have not thought of what wealth and jobs can be created from this agenda…so it is time we took a different approach as communicators on how to publicise these issues for mindset change, and this ministry is taking a lead on that front.”

In terms of scale, PAM is an ambitious project that could change Zambia’s forestry landscape forever. However, with several initiatives undertaken in the past, which have seemingly not achieved the desired results, there is always room for caution.

Finnish Ambassador to Zambia Timo Olkkonen provides some guidance to the PAM initiators:

“Finland has directly and indirectly contributed to Zambia’s efforts to have sustainably managed forests, over the last 50 years of development cooperation between the two countries. However, some of the projects and programmes have not been hugely successful; it is therefore imperative for you to understand reasons why some of the initiatives of the past have not yielded much results, there are key lessons to be learnt.”

As the project awaits its official launch by President Edgar Chagwa Lungu later this month, the children already involved are keen to be key influencers.

“I wouldn’t blame charcoal makers for it is a source of livelihood for some of them, but let them learn to plant more than what they cut,” says 15-year-old Mutwiva Upeme, Grade Eleven pupil at Chunga School. “Thank you for letting us get involved—we are the future!”

Zambian Farmer Lameck Sibukale showcasing his newly acquired ox, which he bought using earnings from a savings group. Credit: Friday Phiri/IPS

By Friday Phiri
LUSAKA, Zambia, Feb 14 2018 (IPS)

In the past, Lameck Sibukale only knew savings in the form of rearing chickens, goats and more importantly, cattle—a long cherished cultural heritage of the Tonga-speaking people of southern Zambia.

But thanks to a village savings scheme, the 78-year-old from Nachibanga village in Pemba district is now part of this growing financial inclusion crusade, bringing some fresh air to the functionality of the village economy.

“How I wish I was introduced to this concept earlier,” Sibukale told IPS. “This is a fantastic idea for us villagers who are far from formal banks, especially at a time like now when we need to save in case of crop failure, which has become common as a result of poor rainfall.”

Saving just over 200 dollars, Sibukale earned over 500 dollars from a portfolio of 2,100 dollars, which the 25-member group saved in eight months.

Using the farmers’ club concept, up to 25 members come together and form a solidarity group. The group meets on either a weekly, bi-weekly or monthly basis to save (buying shares at a stipulated price) based on their financial capabilities. The money is banked in a box whose keys are kept by two or three people for purposes of transparency. For financial sustainability, members are encouraged to borrow and pay back at an agreed minimal interest rate.

While there are several organisations championing savings for the majority unbanked rural population, Sibukale and his group are part of the World Food Programme (WFP)’s R4 rural resilience initiative.

Integrated solutions for emerging climate complications

One African proverb states: “If the rhythm is changing, so must the dance steps,” implying the need to develop new strategies to deal with emerging complex challenges such as climate change, which is compromising food, nutrition and income security—three key elements at the core of Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) 1 and 2, aimed at ending poverty and hunger.

Therefore, as climate change is already complicating global food systems, development actors are also looking to integrated approaches to sustain productivity and production especially for the over 500 million smallholder farmers who produce much of the world’s food.

For WFP, ending hunger will not be possible without increasing smallholder farmers’ productivity. Thus, according to Jennifer Bitonde, WFP Zambia Director, “R4 is one of the pro-smallholder farmer approaches adopted where food assistance is defined not as old-style food aid handouts, but rather as a comprehensive range of instruments, activities, and platforms that together empower vulnerable and food insecure people and communities to access nutritious food.”

In support of national efforts to boost productivity and strengthen farmers’ food and income security amidst climate shocks, R4 deploys a set of four risk management strategies integrated through the project, which combines risk reduction (improved resource management), risk transfer (insurance), prudent risk taking (microcredit), and risk reserves (savings).

According to Allan Mulando, head of Disaster Risk Management and Vulnerability Assessment at WFP Zambia, the idea is to support farmers with several layers of protection across the value chain starting from production up to market access.

“In addition to conservation agriculture, insurance and microcredit, savings groups are specifically put in place to pool together financial resources which act as a buffer against short term needs, especially in times of shocks such as droughts and floods which usually lead to crop failure, ultimately affecting the normal livelihood pattern of the people,” explains Mulando.

And this is exactly what happened to farmer Sibukale. Last season, he lost one of his oxen, which negatively affected his tillage activities through reduced animal draft power. “I am happy that I joined this group where I’ve earned enough to replace it,” he said, proudly pointing at his newly acquired ox.

Supporting improved productivity

Whereas conservation agriculture and weather insurance are two layers of protection to support improved productivity, Sibukale believes savings are an added incentive.

He told IPS how he managed to pay for his children’s school fees, bought farming implements and inputs (fertilizer, seed and a ripper), helping him to increase the area under conservation agriculture, an exercise he says “would not have been possible without the money I earned from the savings group.”

And Milimo Haluma, a member of Silekwa savings group of Sikwale village, testifies to improved productivity. Haluma says before now, he found it difficult to buy inputs for himself.

“But now, with savings, I am able to purchase inputs on time,” Haluma said. “Due to timely input purchase, my productivity has improved. Last season, I was able to produce 3.75 tons of maize on the same size of land where I’ve been producing an average of 1.5 tons in the past seasons.”

Haluma, whose savings group is looking for external financial support to grow their portfolio, adds that with the incentive of weather insurance, farmers are finding it easy to save the little they earn. “Insurance is providing us a peace of mind to buy shares in our savings groups for we know that we are covered in case of crop failure resulting from poor rainfall,” he says.

Global support for up scaling financial services

Based on such positive strides, weather insurance and other related financial services for farmers’ adaptation to climate change have become topical issues at the highest global decision making levels. For instance, at COP 23, a global partnership to provide more financial protection against climate risks—‘InsuResilience’ moved into higher ambition phase.

The Initiative, which was launched in 2015 by the G7 group of nations under the German Presidency, aims at providing insurance to 400 more million poor and vulnerable people by 2020, and increase the resilience of developing countries against the impacts of climate change and natural disasters. It brings together G20 and V20 nations—the most vulnerable nations including Island states.

“The Global Partnership is a practical response to the needs of those who suffer loss because of climate change,” said the COP23 President and Fijian Prime Minister Frank Bainimarama.

Meanwhile, Thomas Silberhorn, German’s Parliamentary State Secretary to the Federal Minister for Economic Cooperation and Development, announced support for the new global partnership of 125 million dollars as part of the launch.

This follows the £30 million commitment made by the UK Government in July 2017, via its Centre for Global Disaster Protection. The initiative supports data and risk analysis, technical assistance and capacity building according to countries’ needs and priorities in terms of concrete risk finance and insurance solutions.

Commenting on the initiative, Patricia Espinosa, Executive Secretary of the UN Climate Change, said: “This new and higher ambition initiative represents one, shinning, example of what can be delivered when progressive governments, civil society and the private sector join hands with creativity and determination to provide solutions.”

The most recent example of support was in September 2017, when more than 55 million dollars was paid out to ten Caribbean countries within just 14 days after hurricanes Irma and Maria had wreaked disaster on the islands.

In Zambia, InsuResilience supports the NWK Agri-Services  cotton company, which offers direct weather and life insurance to small contract farmers. In 2015, some 52,000 farmers decided to buy insurance. Following a major drought in 2016, more than 23,000 farmers received payments.

And based on lessons from the R4 model which WFP has been piloting in Zambia since 2014, the Zambian government has this farming season incorporated weather insurance in its Farmer Input Support Programme (FISP) E-voucher programme, which has also allocated 20 percent for legume inputs aimed at encouraging crop diversification, an inbuilt resilience measure promoting improved soil fertility and income for farmers.

“We are also saying let us support the farmers on the e-voucher to grow more than maize,” said Dora Siliya, Minister of Agriculture. “So we as government give 170 dollars, while the farmer makes a contribution of 40 dollars. And for the first time this year, from this money, 10 dollars is going to be Weather Index Insurance.”

Tree seedlings at a nursery in Zambia, where charcoal production is worsening deforestation. Credit: Friday Phiri/IPS

By Friday Phiri
CHOMA, Zambia, Dec 18 2017 (IPS)

“We have various financial obligations that push us to charcoal making. Top on the list is farming inputs and school fees,” explains Arclay Moonga, a charcoal producer and chairperson of the recently formed Choma District Charcoal Association in Southern Zambia.

His statement validates a popular belief among the locals here that charcoal is their own version of Automated Teller Machines, or ATMs.In a society where charcoal production and the associated trade are mostly illegal, organising producer and trader groups has proven challenging.

Due to high demand, charcoal offers guaranteed cash income, adds 47-year-old Moonga. According to the Food and Agriculture Organisation of the United Nations (FAO) Forestry and Farm Facility (FFF) programme, this belief captures one of the main challenges to forests in Zambia, where small-scale farmers and charcoal producers have long been seen as the main reasons behind the country’s increasing deforestation and forest degradation problems.

In a country where forest land accounts for 59 percent of the total area, boasting at least 220 tree species, containing 3,178 million square meters as growing stock, 2.74 billion tons of biomass, and 1.34 billion tons of carbon, the deforestation rate is alarmingly high, currently at 276,021 hectares per year.

Based on the results from the Integrated Land Use Assessment (ILLUA II), Southern province is ranked the third least forested and regenerated area after the Copperbelt and Lusaka. The resultant effects of forest loss have impacted negatively on livelihoods.

“You may agree with me that some experiences like having some rivers that flowed throughout the year becoming seasonal, depletion of firewood sources in nearby places and water shortages are a common challenge causing some women to travel long distances to fetch these basic requirements for domestic use,” observed Daglous Ngimbu, Deputy Permanent Secretary for Southern Province.

Ngimbu told IPS that government is concerned that a province known for its contribution to agriculture is witnessing increased charcoal production, with a worrying trend where even food tree species such as Uapaka Kirkiana, locally known as Masuku, are not being spared by charcoal producers.

These are some of the key challenges that the FFF programme is addressing. A partnership launched in September 2012 between FAO, IIED and IUCN, and AgriCord, its Steering Committee is formed by members affiliated with forest producers, community forestry, indigenous peoples’ organizations, the international research community, business development service provider organizations, private sector, government, and donors.

In addressing the challenges, the FFF is using a unique approach—encouraging sustainable production of charcoal through increased support for collaboration between the Forest Department and the agricultural sector to improve smallholder producer organisations’ technical capacity, and strengthening of enterprise development.

But in a society where charcoal production and the associated trade are mostly illegal, organising producer and trader groups has proven challenging.

“I am reliably informed that it was not easy to bring charcoal producers together and start working with the forest department on various initiatives,” said FAO Country Representative, George Okech during a signing ceremony of a 15,000-dollar grant with the first ever Charcoal Association in Zambia—Choma Charcoal Association, comprising producers, transporters and traders among other stakeholders.

“The Forest and Farm Facility programme believes that organising the producers into groups is the first step to build capacity for sustainable utilisation of forest resources and improve business opportunities for the rural poor people who depend on these forests resources for their lives,” Okech said.

The grant is meant to support the Association in mobilisation of charcoal producers and institutional growth, demonstration of low cost and efficient technologies to produce charcoal that reduce waste of forest materials and to increase participation of members in sustainable forest management activities.

As a platform for capacity building and policy dialogue, Okech said the Charcoal Association is receiving additional support through the Forest Department, which has been given 52,960 dollars for tree nursery growers and other women’s groups related to basket-making activities.

For long-term policy support, “FAO through this facility has also supported the Forest department to develop a new charcoal regulation which is in draft, that will require charcoal producers to form Associations before licenses are provided,” he told IPS.

Interestingly, this bottom-up approach has brought on board and improved key stakeholders’ participation at the local level—the local councils and traditional leadership. The formation of the Charcoal Association was debated and voted for in the full council meeting, giving a voice to the otherwise voiceless charcoal business players.

With this development, their views will now be carried along all the way through to the highest national development decision-making level and mainstreamed into policies and implementation strategies.

“While the people of Choma largely depend on agriculture for livelihoods, the council is aware of climate change which is having a negative impact on agriculture, and we are alive to the fact that forests play a key role in the whole ecosystem,” noted Javen Simoloka, Mayor of Choma municipality.

“That’s why the full council voted for the formation of the Charcoal Association to strengthen community participation and ensure that their views are carried along in the management of forest resources.”

When His Royal Highness Chief Cooma heard this idea for the first time, his initial reaction was skepticism.

“I have a strict policy on conservation of forests in my chiefdom, regulating tree-cutting activities. Therefore, I was worried to hear that higher authorities had allowed for the formation of such a charcoal Association, which to me, was like giving a license for destruction of trees,” he said.

“But I am grateful that Charcoal Associations are not about indiscriminate cutting of trees,” he added with a sigh of relief, as he showcased portions of an indigenous regenerated and exotic forest reserve surrounding his palace.

It is also a relief for Moonga. “Even when we dully paid for licenses, we usually stayed away from government activities out of fear. Most of our members would move their products in the night just because of the perception that all charcoal trading was illegal,” lamented Moonga.

“But now I know that we have been empowered. Personally, as a producer for over 20 years, no one can intimidate me on prices anymore, I am free to bargain with traders and sell publicly as opposed to the past when I would sometimes be forced to sale at give-away prices for fear of being caught by authorities.”

For a country where over 70 percent of the population depends on biomass energy – charcoal and wood fuel – adopting such a community-friendly approach to forest management, formalizing what has over the years been considered illegal, could prove to be the difference between environmental degradation and sustainability.

U.S. President Donald Trump with Chinese President Xi Jinping during Trump’s visit to Asia. As the US pulls out of the Paris Climate Agreement, China has shown huge growth in clean energy and its emissions appear to have peaked more than a decade ahead of its Paris Agreement NDC commitment. Credit: Public Domain

By Friday Phiri
SAN FRANCISCO, California, Nov 12 2017 (IPS)

As negotiators meet in Bonn to put together a deal to implement the Paris Agreement, John Holdren, a professor of environmental policy at the John F. Kennedy School of Government, Harvard University, stressed that economic development and climate change mitigation and adaptation are not ‘either-or’ but must be pursued together.

Addressing science journalists a week before the Bonn climate talks, Professor Holdren said among climate change skeptics, “wafflers’ are the most dangerous, because their arguments to postpone aggressive climate action now in favor of economic progress has the potential to increasingly influence debate and government policy.”

According to Professor Holdren, the wafflers claim to favor research and development on better technologies so emissions reductions can be made more cheaply in the future, and further argue for accelerating economic progress in developing countries as the best way to reduce their vulnerability as well as counting on adaptation as needed.“The idea that society cannot afford to address climate change is wildly wrong.” --Prof. John Holdren

However, it is ironic, he says, that the current US administration “with climate deniers and wafflers occupying top positions” are cutting support for the same approaches they propose.

“Of course, the deniers and the wafflers in the top positions in the Trump administration are, with surpassing cynicism, busy cutting support for all of these approaches,” he said, referencing the numerous reversals that the Trump administration has made even to the ‘win-win’ adaptation-preparedness resilience measures adopted under Obama.

Apart from drastic domestic spending cuts to climate related programmes, President Trump earlier this year decided to pull the US out of the Paris Agreement—a move that has left the global community wondering what’s next.

Africa’s Dismay

Despite its negligent contribution to global emissions, Africa is one of the most vulnerable regions to climate change—already suffering droughts, floods, affecting the predominantly rain-fed agricultural productivity and production. And Professor Holdren’s address titled: Why the Wafflers are Wrong—Addressing Climate Change is Urgent—and a Bargain delivered to the 10^th World Conference of Science Journalists (WCSJ2017) in San Francisco, California, held 26-30^th October 2017, is music to the ears of the African Group of Negotiators (AGN) who have been pushing urgent climate action at the UNFCCC negotiating table.

According to Professor Seth Osafo of AGN, “The slow progress by developed country parties towards reaching the US$100 billion goal of joint annual mobilization by 2020 is not in Africa’s interest.”

And in the words of Emphraim Mwepya Shitima, Chief Environmental and Natural Resources Officer at Zambia’s Ministry of Lands and Natural Resources, the developing country community needs financial resources now more than ever. “We are at a critical stage where we need all the financial resources we can get to effectively implement our NDC which is off course now in sync with the recently launched Seventh National Development Plan running up to 2021,” he told delegates at a COP23 preparatory meeting.

With the US pullout meaning the loss of a major financial contributor, there are fears that the resource mobilization process might even get slower. Mithika Mwenda, Secretary General of the Pan African Climate Justice Alliance (PACJA), a consortium of African civil society organisations, is also concerned and is pushing for industrialised countries to set more ambitious goals in terms of their emission cuts.

“Coming from the region that suffers the most due to climate change, we have watched with utter dismay President Trump’s continued efforts at dismantling the former President’s Barrack Obama’s climate legacy, and wish to reiterate that this is the time to classify the global community into two: those for the people and planet, and those for Trump and profit,” says Mwenda.

He questioned the presence of the official US delegation, saying it may be a bad influence on other states that are already reluctant to take serious action on climate change. “The US withdraws from the Paris Agreement, yet they still want to show that they can negotiate the implementation framework,” complained Mwenda, “That’s why we are calling in delegates here to sign our petition to kick Trump and his government out of these negotiations…” 

Scientifically, climate change is a serious complex issue—it requires well-developed research systems especially on how it impacts different sectors of development, or at least in the spirit of the WCSJ2017 theme, to bridge science and societies. Unfortunately, as compared to the developed world, Africa’s scientific research and development still lags behind such that most often than not, it relies on the developed world for data, a concern that South Africa’s Minister of Science and Technology, Naledi Pandor raised during a session on Who will do Science at the WCSJ2017.

Pandor believes private companies which drive scientific innovations in the developed world must stop seeing the developing world just as a mass clientele—where research and development is done just for corporate interests and not for the benefit of the people.

“A number of private companies only have commercial relationships but do not have innovation relationships with the developing world; so the nature of partnerships between my continent Africa and other parts of the developing world must change,” she said. “If we are to do science in the 21^st century…the way we perceive Africa and scientists in Africa has to fundamentally alter.”

She further lamented the sidelining of women in science whom she said are doing a lot of tremendous work, and her plea is for Africa to embrace and give space to women scientists amidst the challenge of climate change in a continent that contributes less than 4 percent to global emissions. “The next generation of scientists must be women—and black people have to be a part of that.”

The High Cost of Inaction

Agreing that research and development are important steps in tackling climate change, Professor Holdren, who is former Assistant to President Obama for Science & Technology, argues that even if implemented, the wafflers’ favoured economic approaches would be grossly inadequate because while clean energy is essential to provide options for the next stage of deep emissions reductions, the global community needs to be reducing now with the available technologies.

He says climate change is already causing serious harm around the world with increases in floods, drought, wildfires, heat waves, coral bleaching, among others, all of which are “plausibly linked to climate change by theory, models, and observed ‘fingerprints’; most growing faster than projected”.

The global community has three options: mitigation, adaptation – or suffering. Therefore, minimizing the amount of suffering in the mix can only be achieved by doing a lot of mitigation and a lot of adaptation.

“Mitigation alone won’t work because climate change is already occurring and can’t be stopped quickly. And adaptation alone won’t work because adaptation gets costlier and less effective as climate change grows. We need enough mitigation to avoid the unmanageable, enough adaptation to manage the unavoidable,” he adds.

In arguing for adaptation specifically, Professor Holdren believes that many adaptation measures would make economic sense even if the climate were not changing because there have always been heat waves, floods, droughts, wildfires, powerful storms, crop pests, and outbreaks of vector-born disease, and society has always suffered from being underprepared.

Additionally, he says, virtually all reputable studies suggest that the economic damages from not adequately addressing climate change would far exceed the costs of adequately addressing it.

“The idea that society cannot afford to address climate change is wildly wrong,” he said, calling for urgent climate action now and not later

COP22 produced the Marrakech Partnership for Global Climate Action which called for all to go further and faster in delivering climate action before 2020. The global community now eagerly awaits COP23 Bonn declaration.

Minimum tillage (ripping) in Kasiya Camp, Zambia. Credit: Crissy Mupuchi/DAPP

By Friday Phiri
PEMBA, Zambia, Nov 7 2017 (IPS)

As governments gather in Bonn, Germany for the next two weeks to hammer out a blueprint for implementation of the global climate change treaty signed in Paris in 2015, a major focus will be on emissions reductions to keep the global average temperature increase to well below 2°C by 2020.

While achieving this goal requires serious mitigation ambitions, developing country parties such as Zambia have also been emphasising adaptation as enshrined in Article 2 (b) of the Paris Agreement: Increasing the ability to adapt to the adverse impacts of climate change and foster climate resilience and low greenhouse gas emissions development, in a manner that does not threaten food production.“My skepticism turned into real optimism when the two hectares I cultivated under conservation farming redeemed me from a near disaster when the five hectares under conventional farming completely failed." --farmer Damiano Malambo

The emphasis by developing country parties on this aspect stems from the fact that negative effects of climate change are already taking a toll on people’s livelihoods. Prolonged droughts and flash floods have become common place, affecting Agricultural production and productivity among other ecosystem based livelihoods, putting millions of people’s source of food and nutrition in jeopardy.

It is worth noting that Zambia’s NDC focuses on adaptation. According to Winnie Musonda of the United Nations Development Programme (UNDP), “There are three mitigation components—renewable energy development, conservation farming and forest management, while adaptation, which has a huge chunk of the support programme, has sixteen components all of which require implementation.”

This therefore calls for the tireless efforts of all stakeholders, especially mobilisation and leveraging of resources, and community participation anchored on the community-based natural resource management (CBNRM) approach.

Considering the country’s ambitious emission cuts, conservation agriculture offers a good starting point for climate resilience in agriculture because it has legs in both mitigation and adaptation, as agriculture is seen as both a contributor as well as a solution to carbon emissions.

According to the Food and Agriculture Organisation of the United Nations (FAO), Conservation Agriculture (CA) is an approach to managing agro-ecosystems for improved and sustained productivity, increased profits and food security, while preserving and enhancing the resource base and the environment. Minimum tillage, increased organic crop cover and crop rotation are some of the key principles of Conservation Agriculture.

As a key stakeholder in agriculture development, FAO is doing its part by supporting the Ministry of Agriculture in the implementation of the Conservation Agriculture Scaling Up (CASU) project. Targeting to benefit a total of 21,000 lead farmers and an additional 315,000 follower farmers, the project’s overall goal is to contribute to reduced hunger, improved food security, nutrition and income while promoting sustainable use of natural resources in Zambia.

So what is emerging after implementation of the 11 million Euro project? “The acid test was real in 2015 when the rainfall pattern was very bad,” says Damiano Malambo, a CA farmer of Pemba district in Southern Zambia. “My skepticism turned into real optimism when the two hectares I cultivated under conservation farming redeemed me from a near disaster when the five hectares under conventional farming completely failed.”

The bad season that farmer Malambo refers to was characterized by El Nino, which affected agricultural production for most African countries, especially in the Southern African region, leaving millions of people without food. But as the case was with farmer Malambo, CA farmers thrived amidst these tough conditions as the CASU project discovered in its snap assessment.

“CA has proved to be more profitable than conventional agriculture”, says Precious Nkandu Chitembwe, FAO Country Communications Officer. “In seasons when other farmers have struggled, we have seen our CA farmers emerging with excellent results”, she adds, pointing out that the promotion of legumes and a ready market has improved household nutrition and income security for the farmers involved in CA.

And farmer Malambo is a living testimony. “In the last two seasons, I have doubled my cattle herd from 30 to 60, I have bought two vehicles and my overall annual production has increased from about 150 to 350 by 50kg bags.

“I am particularly happy with the introduction of easy to grow cash crops such as cowpeas and soybeans which are not only money spinners but also nutritious for my family—see how healthy this boy is from soya-porridge,” says Malambo pointing at his eight-year-old grandchild.

While Zambia boasts a stable food security position since the introduction of government farmer input subsidies in early 2000s, the country’s record on nutrition leaves much to be desired. Hence, the recent ranking of the country in the top ten hungriest countries in the world on the Global Hunger Index (GHI) may not come as a surprise, as the most recent Zambia Demographic and Health survey shows that 40 per cent of children are stunted.

The GHI, now in its 12th year, ranks countries based on four key indicators—undernourishment, child mortality, child wasting and child stunting. According to the International Food Policy Research Institute, of the countries for which scores could be calculated, the top 10 countries with the highest level of hunger are Central African Republic, Chad, Sierra Leone, Madagascar, Zambia, Yemen, Sudan, Liberia, Niger and Timor-Leste.

“The results of this year’s Global Hunger Index show that we cannot waiver in our resolve to reach the UN Sustainable Development Goal of zero hunger by 2030,” says Shenggen Fan, director general of IFPRI, adding that progress made since 2000 is threatened, emphasising the need to establish resilience for communities at risk of disruption to their food systems from weather shocks or conflict.

It is worth noting that Zambia has recognized the challenges of nutrition and has put in place several multi-sectoral measures such as the First 1000 Most Critical Days campaign—an integrated approach to address stunting by tackling both direct and indirect causes of under-nutrition. Unlike the standalone strategies of the past, the 1000 Most Critical Days campaign brings together all key Ministries and stakeholders of which the Ministry of Agriculture is a key stakeholder and entry point.

And the implementation of CA, of which crop diversification is a key principle, is one of the Ministry’s contributions to the overall objective of fighting under-nutrition. As alluded to by farmer Malambo, promotion of crops such as soy beans and cowpeas among other food legumes is critical to achieving household nutrition security.

“With a known high demand for good nutrition in the country, especially for rural populations, soybean and other food legumes offer an opportunity to meet this demand—from soybean comes soy milk which is as competitive as animal milk in terms of nutrition, use in the confectionary industry and other numerous value addition options at household level for nutritional diversity,” explains Turnbull Chama, Technical Assistant, Climate Change component at the FAO Country Office.

While CA is a proven approach to climate resilience in agricultural production for food and nutrition security, its adoption has not been without hitches. According to a study conducted by the Indaba Agricultural Policy Research Institute (IAPRI), adoption rates for Conservation Agriculture in Zambia are still very low.

The study, which used data from the 2015 national representative rural household survey, found that only 8.8% of smallholder households adopted CA in the 2013/14 season. The report notes, however, that social factors, such as belief in witchcraft and prayer as enhancement of yields, were found to influence decision-making considerably.

But for the Southern Province Principal Agricultural Officer in the Ministry of Agriculture, Paul Nyambe, CA adoption should not be measured in a generic manner.

“The package for conservation agriculture is huge, if you measure all components as a package, adoption is low but if you looked at the issues of tillage or land preparation, you will find that the adoption rates are very high,” he says. “So, that’s why sometimes you hear of stories of poor adoption because there are several factors that determine the adoption of various principles within the package of conservation agriculture.”

Agreeing with these sentiments, Douty Chibamba, a lecturer at the University of Zambia Department of Geography and Environmental studies, offers this advice.

“It would be thus important for future policies and donor projects to allow flexibility in CA packaging because farmers make decisions to adopt or not based on individual components of CA and not CA as a package,” says Chibamba, who is also chairperson of the Advisory and Approvals committee of the Zambia Civil Society Environment Fund phase two, funded by the Finnish Embassy and managed by Panos Institute Southern Africa under its (CBNRM) forum.

This year’s World Food Day was themed around investing in food security and rural development to change the future of migration—which has over the years been proved to be as a result of the former. And FAO Country Representative George Okechi stresses that his organization is committed to supporting Zambia in rural development and food security to reduce rural-urban drift.

“With our expertise and experience, working closely with the Ministry of Agriculture, we continue providing policy support to ensure that farmers get desired services for rural development,” says Okechi.

“We are also keen to help farmers cope with effects of climate change which make people make a move from rural areas to urban cities in search of opportunities,” he added, in apparent reference to Climate Smart Agriculture initiatives that FAO is implementing in Zambia, among which is CASU.

Salting fish prevents losses and increases profits in the value chain. Credit: Friday Phiri/IPS

By Friday Phiri
MONGU, Zambia, Sep 12 2017 (IPS)

Fishing is the capture of aquatic organisms in marine, coastal and inland areas. According to the Food and Agriculture Organisation of the United Nations (FAO), marine and inland fisheries, together with aquaculture, provide food, nutrition and a source of income to 820 million people around the world, from harvesting, processing, marketing and distribution. For many, it also forms part of their traditional cultural identity.

This is the case for the people of western Zambia, where fishing is not only a major source of income, but also a way of life. However, as FAO highlights in routine studies on the sector globally, illegal, unreported and unregulated fishing remain major threats to the sustainability of the fishery industry in this part of Zambia as well.“Men’s attitudes have changed. Most of those we work with now treat us as equal partners." --Joyce Nag’umbili, a long-time fish trader in Senanga district

Here, poor post-harvest handling was identified as a major reason not only for illegal fishing but also over-fishing.

“The majority of people lack knowledge. They believe over-fishing is the best way to make up for the losses that they incur along the value chain,” laments Hadon Sichali, a fish trader in Mongu. “It is a chain, the trader believes breakages during transportation should be recovered by buying more fish at lower prices, forcing fishermen to overfish or even disregard the law to catch more.”

By disregarding the law, Sichali refers to a statutory annual fish ban which runs between December and March to allow fish breeding, but has over the years been a source of conflict between local fishers and government authorities. And the problem has been getting worse in recent years due to reduced catches of fish—an issue attributed to climate change.

But thanks to a Participatory Research project undertaken recently, some of these dynamics are changing, especially pertaining to women, who according to FAO, account for at least 19 percent of people directly engaged in the fisheries primary sector, and a higher percentage in the secondary sector such as processing.

Centered on improving fish post-harvest management and marketing, the Cultivate Africa’s Future (CultiAF) Fund project has seen a dramatic increase in women’s involvement in fishing.

According to the final technical report of the project implemented in Zambia and Malawi, Women who participated in the drama skits, a gender transformative tool, increased their involvement in fishing from 5 percent at the start of the project to 75 percent today.

“I would like to encourage the fisheries actors to utilize these methods since the improved technologies have shown that the losses can be reduced significantly and that the fish processed from these technologies have higher average value than the fish processed from the traditional methods,” said Western Province Permanent Secretary, Mwangala Liomba, during the project’s final results dissemination meeting in June.

“This allows for the fishers, processors and traders to have more money. The interventions require shorter time thereby increasing the time available to women processors…Furthermore the use of drama skits that challenge gender norms have enabled women processors in the floodplain to adopt and equitably benefit from improved processing technologies that reduce fish losses.”

Jointly funded by International Development Research Centre (IDRC)  and the Australian Centre for International Agriculture Research (ACIAR), the three year project, led by scientists from the Ministry of Fisheries and Livestock, the University of Zambia and WorldFish as a partner organization, the project aimed at improving effectiveness, re­duce losses, and promote greater equity in the fish value chain.

Researchers therefore undertook fish value chain analyses to understand post-harvest biomass losses, economic value and nu­trient content changes, and gender norms and power relations.

“In Zambia, the study found that physical fish losses occur at all the three nodes in the value chain and differ significantly between nodes,” says Alexander Shula Kefi, one of the lead researchers in the Project.

According to Kefi, on average, the processors lose the largest volume of fish (7.42 percent) followed by the fish traders (2.9 percent).  The fishers experience the least physical losses at 2 percent although, he says, this is not significantly different from the fish lost at trading node.  The major cause of physical loss was found to be breakages at processing and trading nodes.

Interestingly, “Women processors lost over three times the weight of their fish consignments than men processors, indicating that it is not only the function of processing that leads to losses but that gendered differences exist within the nodes too,” adds Kefi.

In tackling this aspect, the project employed a gender transformative tool using drama skits during implementation, and this led to a 35.7 percent increase in gender attitude scores among men.

And 36-year-old Joyce Nag’umbili, a long-time fish trader in Senanga district, testifies to this improvement. “Men’s attitudes have changed. Most of those we work with now treat us as equal partners,” she says. “Some men have put aside their egos and ask us on certain technologies which they don’t understand better.”

Caring for her two biological children and eight orphans has not been an easy task for Nag’umbili, and she says the CultiAF project offered a lifeline for her hand-to-mouth business, as the introduction of improved post-harvest handling technologies meant reduced losses and increased profit margins.

“At the time the project was introduced, my capital base was just about K 200 (22 dollars), but I now run an over K 8000 (888-dollar) business portfolio. In the last two years, I have managed to buy two plots of land and building materials worth over K 5000 (555 dollars),” she said happily.

Her excitement confirms the project’s findings, whose results show that the improved processing technologies reduce fish losses significantly and consequently improve the income of fisher folk.

According to the findings, cumulatively, the physical losses decline from 38 percent to 19.3 percent by applying the new piloted technologies of improved smoking kilns, salting, use of ice and solar tent drying.  Along the value chain, processors increased their GM from 4.7 percent to 25.26 percent while traders increased to 25.3 percent from 22.8 percent.

On the nutrition component, “Smoked fish using the improved kiln technology had significantly higher protein contents than fish smoked using the traditional method,” says Dr. Nyambe Lisulo Mkandawire of the Department of Food Science and Nutrition at the University of Zambia (UNZA).

To help meet the global agenda of eradicating hunger, food insecurity and malnutrition, and ultimately eliminating poverty, a secondary project was developed.

Dubbed Expanding Business Opportunities for African Youth in Agricultural Value Chains in Southern Africa, the Project aimed at developing tools and support mechanisms for the realization of agri-business opportunities in the fish and maize post-harvest value chains in Malawi, Zambia and Zimbabwe, to serve as vehicles for commercialisation of research outputs.

Implemented by the Africa Entrepreneurship Hub (AEH), the project awarded and seed-funded 23 winning youth start-ups/community-based groups; trained and mentored over 70 entrepreneurs and developed an electronic trading platform and business toolkits for supporting business development service providers and entrepreneurs.

According to Dr. Jonathan Tambatamba of AEH, the electronic platform has two parts—a mobile application where the fish sellers and buyers (fish traders, fishermen, fish processors, marketeers etc) register and find a market.

“Once they are registered, the seller can announce that they are selling fish i.e. type, form, smoked, fresh or salted; quantity, location, and price, while the buyers can also announce what they need,” explains Tambatamba. “This is an SMS system for now due to the fact that most of the target users just have basic phones.”

The second component, he says, is for mentors and mentees. Under this component, eight businesses have been provided with capacity building support such as training, but the businesses are also being mentored by assigned mentors. There are six mentors who provide advice on business management through the mobile platform.

Joyce Nang’umbili says that apart from benefiting from improved processing technologies, the Wayama Fisheries cooperative she belongs to emerged as a runner-up in the business proposals competition by AEH.

“We have been awarded 4,000 dollars,” she says. “Our plan is to construct solar tent driers which will be put on rent to the fisher folk, thereby generating us income as a cooperative.”

Bags of feed at the Rossgro agribusiness firm in South Africa. Credit: Friday Phiri/IPS

By Friday Phiri
MPUMALANGA, South Africa, Jul 6 2017 (IPS)

The United States and Europe’s preference for white meat is hurting Africa’s poultry industry, says Luc Smalle, manager at the agro firm Rossgro in South Africa’s Mpumalanga area.

With 3000 Ha of maize and 1000 Ha of soya, as well as 1,500 heads of beef cattle, Rossgro mills its own feed, which also caters for millions of chickens housed in 40 environmentally controlled houses.Africa’s young, dynamic population has the potential to lead an economic revival in the region, backed by targeted long- and short-term reforms in key areas.

But Smalle is uncertain about the future of the poultry business, not only in South Africa but the whole continent.

He recalled how the US and Europe exported millions of tonnes of chicken meat to the then Soviet Union (now Russia). Historically, Russia was the major importer of America’s dark meat. According to available data, in 2009 alone, Russia is said to have doled out 800 million dollars for 1.6 billion pounds of U.S. leg quarters.

But in 2014, Russian President Vladimir Putin banned U.S. chicken from Russian shores, allegedly because it was treated with ‘unsafe’ antimicrobial chlorine. The ban remains in place, although some say it’s more about politics than public health.

Either way, according to Smalle, the ban “has led America and Europe to look for alternative markets to dump brown meat because most of the First World eats white meat, so they are dumping chicken in the third world, especially Africa. We should stand together and work with our governments to stop imports or put high tariffs so that they can’t dump it anymore.”

In a chicken, white meat refers to the breast and wings while legs and thighs are considered red/dark meat. The nutritional difference is fat content. White meat is a leaner source of protein, with a lower fat content, while dark meat contains higher levels of fat, hence the developed world preference for white meat on health grounds.

Smalle believes this state of affairs is hurting African poultry industry competitiveness where the average cost of raising a chicken is far much higher than in the developed world. He says most African farmers rely on bank loans from banks while their European and American counterparts are heavily subsidised by their governments.

“It’s going to kill the whole poultry industry in Africa if nothing is done to reverse the trend; they have subsidies which the African farmer does not have,” Smalle told IPS, citing the South African poultry industry, where he says a third of the workers have lost their jobs because firms have been pushed out of business.

Under free market economics, Smalle’s arguments might seem out of order. But the latest Africa Competitiveness Report 2017 jointly issued by the African Development Bank, World Bank and World Economic Forum seems to support the continent’s argument.

The report warns that without urgent action to address stagnating levels of competitiveness, Africa’s economies will not create enough jobs for young people entering the job market, adding that if current policies remain unchanged, fewer than one-quarter of the 450 million new jobs needed in the next 20 years will be created.

The biennial report comes at a time when growth in most of the region’s economies has been slowing despite a decade of sustained growth, and is likely to stagnate further in the absence of improvements in the core conditions for competitiveness.

Compounding the challenge to Africa’s leaders is a rapidly expanding population, which is set to add 450 million more to the labour force over the next two decades. Under current policies, only an estimated 100 million jobs will be created during this period.

Africa’s young, dynamic population does, however, possess the potential to lead an economic revival in the region, backed by targeted long- and short-term reforms in key areas, the report finds.

“To meet the aspirations of their growing youth populations, African governments are well-advised to enact polices that improve levels of productivity and the business environment for trade and investment,” says the World Bank Group’s Klaus Tilmes, Director of the Trade & Competitiveness Global Practice, which contributed to the report.

“The World Bank Group is helping governments and the private sector across Africa to take the steps necessary to build strong economies and accelerate job creation in order to benefit from the potential demographic dividend.”

Some of the bottlenecks and solutions include strengthening institutions, which experts believe is a pre-condition to enable faster and more effective policy implementation; improved infrastructure to enable greater levels of trade and business growth; greater adoption of technology and support to developing value-chain links to extractive sectors to encourage diversification and value addition.

The World Economic Forum’s Richard Samans, Head of the Centre for the Global Agenda and Member of the Managing Board, believes that “removing the hurdles that prevent Africa from fulfilling its competitiveness potential is the first step required to achieve more sustained economic progress and shared prosperity.”

The Africa Competitiveness report was released in May during the 27th World Economic Forum on Africa in Durban, South Africa, attended by more than 1,000 participants under the theme “Achieving Inclusive Growth through Responsive and Responsible Leadership.”

The report combines data from the Forum’s Global Competitiveness Index (GCI) with studies on employment policies and city competitiveness.

Abshy Nchimunya of Kayokela farmers club in Pemba district, Southern Zambia. Credit: Friday Phiri/IPS

By Friday Phiri
PEMBA, Zambia, Jun 29 2017 (IPS)

Frequent extreme weather and climate shifts pose a challenge to already vulnerable groups such as smallholder farmers in the developing world. Between 2004 and 2014, farmers are said to have endured the brunt of the 100-billion-dollar cost of climate-related disasters.

With traditional insurance proving costly, especially for smallholders residing in typical rural areas, the alternative approach – weather index-based insurance, which links pay-outs to events triggered by extreme weather – is increasingly becoming popular.R4’s integrated approach to risk reduction has somehow changed the dominant monoculture mindset of more than 2,000 farmers.

In Zambia, the World Food Programme (WFP) has been piloting such an intervention for the past two years in Pemba district of Southern Province. Premised on improving credit uptake and savings – two key enablers for smallholder agricultural growth – the insurance product targets farmers who have taken the initiative of engaging in climate smart agricultural practices (Conservation Agriculture).

Dubbed R4—Rural Resilience Initiative, the project takes a holistic approach to managing risk by integrating improved natural resource management (disaster risk reduction), credit (prudent risk taking), insurance (risk transfer), and savings (risk reserves).

But to what extent has the project helped smallholders? Abshy Nchimunya of Kayokela Farmers Club thinks to a large extent. While there has not been any pay-out in the two-year pilot project cycle, the 34-year-old believes the mere fact of being under insurance cover has been enough incentive for farmers’ resilience to climate shocks.

“I want to thank DAPP and its collaborating partners for initiating a programme like this which has opened my eyes to begin crop diversification so as to improve food security in my household,” says Nchimunya. “Besides this, the opportunity of accessing inputs on time through micro finance made me plant early and a large portion (2.5ha) which has not happened in my farming practices in a long time.”

Over the years, Nchimunya, just like many other farmers in his area, had always grown maize as a major crop. But when the project came, especially with insurance cover as a reward for conservation farming practices, it became an incentive for farmers to diversify into other crops such as cowpea and beans.

And 29-year-old Choobwe Meldah of Sinamanjolo village of the Ndondi Agriculture Camp thinks the project’s emphasis on diversification has uplifted the female voices in male-dominated households where legumes are usually considered female crops with little or no importance attached.

“Over the years, we have been conditioned and made to believe that maize is the best crop with a few legumes grown within the main field just for home consumption, and mainly cultivated by us women,” says Choobwe.

Since R4 however, “extension services have improved; coupled with timely weather information provision from fellow farmers in charge of project rain gauge stations, we have confidence to grow other crops and now treat farming as a business.”

By providing key services that are generally hard to access – financing for inputs, reliable weather information, a profitable market and simple saving schemes – R4’s integrated approach to risk reduction has somehow changed the dominant monoculture mindset of more than 2,000 farmers.

“So far, the project has shown a lot of impact—at least 60 to 70 percent of farmers are practicing conservation agriculture; all these farmers are accessing insurance, micro-credit, and we have taken it as a matter of principle to ensure that they all belong to small village saving groups,” explains Nervous Nsansaula of Development Aid from People to People (DAPP), a lead implementing Agency of R4.

As the pilot project ends this year, a four-year expansion project is on the horizon to cover the other four districts of Southern Province. “With a lot of success stories recorded, the plan is now to extend the project for four years and reach a target of 17, 000 smallholder farmers in four districts,” says Stanley Ndhlovu, R4 Project Manager at WFP Zambia office.

It is such success stories that have led agricultural stakeholders and development agencies to seek sustainable ways of up-scaling weather-based adaptation for farmers who largely rely on rainfall.

Hosted by the CGIAR research program on Climate Change, Agriculture and Food Security (CCAFS), the Technical Centre for Agricultural and Rural Cooperation (CTA) and the Syngenta Foundation for Sustainable Agriculture (SFSA), how to strengthen the momentum of weather-based adaptation to climate change was part of a fortnight long UNFCCC Subsidiary Body for Scientific and Technological Advice (SBSTA) talks in May 2017, in Bonn, Germany.

During the event, Bruce Campbell, Director, CGIAR Research Program on Climate Change, Agriculture and Food Security, echoed farmers’ reasoning that insurance opens numerous opportunities for farmers, aside the expected pay-outs for climate change losses.

“Through research, we have seen that formally insuring farmers against damage and loss caused by climate change is effective,” he said. “Insurance not only compensates smallholders to avoid catastrophic losses, it also allows them to invest and adapt, even when they don’t receive a pay-out.”

His plea is to ensure that all key players are engaged in order to reach more farmers, noting the importance of bringing the insurance industry together with climate change and agricultural researchers to develop truly global solutions.

Adding to the multiple benefits nexus, Michael Hailu, Director, Technical Centre for Agricultural and Rural Cooperation (CTA), shared the prospects of CTA’s flagship project—Making Southern African cereal and livestock farming climate resilient, which seeks to promote the scaling up of four specific proven climate-resistant solutions for cereal and livestock farmers: drought-tolerant seeds, improved climate information services, diversified options for livestock farmers, and innovative weather-based insurance for crops and livestock.

“In one of our flagship projects in Southern Africa alone, 200,000 maize and livestock farmers in Zimbabwe, Malawi and Zambia will have access to weather-based information services by 2019, which will help bolster the insurance market as one of the elements in a bundle of adaptation solutions,” said Hailu, adding that such innovations could pave the way for a proper scale-up.

Working in partnership with the Southern African Confederation of Agricultural Unions (SACAU), the project focuses on a challenge that has critical importance for Southern Africa now and in the future. Climate change is affecting all sectors of the economy in the region, but especially agriculture, which is generally rain-fed.

And Ishmael Sunga, CEO, SACAU, said: “The Southern African Confederation of Agricultural Unions (SACAU) is actively encouraging farmers to take up weather-based insurance because we believe it is an important incentive for investment as well as a safety net for climate-related losses.

“SACAU is currently working with the private sector to help expand an innovative weather-based insurance solution after successful pilots in Zimbabwe. We strongly believe that scaling up index-based insurance on a regional level can effectively share the burden of climate change while also breaking the cycle of low risk, low investment and low productivity.”

Private sector involvement in agricultural development is heralded as a new normal. But how much insulation is provided to poor farmers from a profit-driven industry is usually the question that arises. For example, the first year in the WFP Zambia rural resilience pilot project, the premium for insuring 500 farmers cost about 77,000 dollars.

However, amidst an El Nino-induced drought that affected not only Zambia but the entire Southern African region, some farmers in the project were riled that the index insurance did not trigger a pay-out. This was due to the fact that the satellite data showed that there was rainfall during the agreed window period.

But for farmers, understanding such scientific technicalities proved difficult, a point that Pemba District Commissioner, Reginald Mugoba, highlighted during one of the District Development Coordinating Committee (DDCC) meetings.

“I think it is important to be clear with farmers from the beginning,” he said. “New concepts are always difficult for our farmers to understand, especially if they involve scientific interpretations,” he added, pointing out the need to avoid ambiguity for such projects to be successful in rural communities.

A panel discussion on Africa-Asia partnerships featuring AFDB Group President Akinwumi Adesina, Benin President Patrice Talon, Vice President of Cote d'Ivoire Daniel Kablan Duncan and Hellen Hai of Made in Africa Initiative. Credit: Friday Phiri/IPS

By Friday Phiri
AHMEDABAD, India, May 29 2017 (IPS)

There are nearly 420 million young Africans between the ages of 15 and 35 today. And it is estimated that within ten years, Africa will be home to one-fifth of all young people worldwide.

These millions of young people could be a source of ingenuity and engines of productivity that could ignite a new age of inclusive prosperity.“If we don’t change the labour composition of agriculture in Africa, in the next twenty years, there will be no farmers.” --AfDB President Akinwumi Adesina

But there are no guarantees. Although the continent has shown consistent economic growth in the last decade, it has failed in creating the number of quality jobs needed to absorb the 10-12 million young people entering the labour market each year.

And this, according to AfDB Vice President for Agriculture, Human and Social Development, Jennifer Blanke, is a time bomb waiting to explode.

“While the youth population is Africa’s asset, it can also easily become a liability, and this is the whole question about demographic dividends,” observes Blanke. “Let us be clear, it is only the existence of opportunity and the young person’s belief that they can access that opportunity that prevents pessimism and political unrest…inaction is not an option, young people without opportunity, and more importantly without belief in their leaders’ ability to provide opportunity are a certain source of civil unrest and we are seeing it every day.”

‘Transforming Agriculture for wealth creation in Africa’ was therefore the major theme of the 52^nd AfDB Annual Meetings held in Ahmedabad, India from 22-26 May 2017.

Experts here agreed that transforming Africa’s agriculture requires a business approach that would incentivize youth who still see farming as way of life for the poor. As a result of this scenario, the average age of farmers in Africa is 60, and Akinwumi Adesina, AfDB Group President, fears that “If we don’t change the labour composition of agriculture in Africa, in the next twenty years, there will be no farmers.”

To get youth involved, Adesina believes, “We need to change the mindset about agriculture—agriculture is not a social sector, agriculture is not a way of life, it is a business.”

But the how question is crucial, and he points to finance among other incentives. “There are opportunities for youth but certain things have to be put in place to realize them, such as financing…our young people are doing amazing things with ICT—they are providing weather index insurance, extension services and a host of other things.”

For its part, the Bank has provided a roadmap for the growth of agriculture in Africa with a plan to inject nearly 2.4 billion dollars every year for 10 years to build roads, irrigation infrastructure and storage facilities to attract high-value investors.

With this kind of investment, AfDB wants to transform Agriculture into a money-making business for those involved, highlighting that Africa should position itself to benefit from the growth of agricultural food markets which are set to grow to a trillion-dollar business portfolio by 2030.

The figure is huge and appetising. But certain steps have to be taken, and one of those steps is closing the infrastructure gap.

According to Thomas Silberhorn, Germany Parliamentary State Secretary, “It is important to close the infrastructure gap on the African continent, not just somehow, but in the spirit of the 2030 agenda for sustainable development, by building sustainable infrastructure especially in the energy sector,” he said, adding that it was for this reason that his government was advocating for more support to the African Renewable Initiative of the African Union whose secretariat is hosted at the African Development Bank.

While ICT is usually seen as a sure way of getting youth involved, there is another door to young people’s hearts which agricultural policy makers and implementers have not paid attention to—the film industry.  In Africa, the movie industry is dominated by young people and is emerging as an important contributor to gross domestic product and employment in countries like Nigeria.

However, the entertainment industry–especially the film industry—too often offers unflattering narratives of agriculture and the rural life, showing that real economic opportunities are only found in big cities. Such negative portrayal perpetuates the perception that agriculture is simply a way of surviving for the poor.

To tap into the power and influence of the movie industry, and change these perceptions by projecting agriculture as a profitable and viable economic sector, AfDB brought together Nollywood (Nigerian) and Bollywood (Indian) film makers to this year’s annual meetings to chart the way forward on how to market agriculture as a lucrative business through movies.

Nigerian filmmakers Omoni Oboli and Omotola Jalade Ekeinde represented Nollywood while Rajendrakumar Mohan Raney, a director and producer, and Rekha Rana, Indian and international award-winning actress, represented Bollywood.

Oboli and Omotola pledged to do everything in their power to tell the African agricultural transformation story and change the negative perceptions, especially among young people.

“We have learnt a lot about agriculture and are ready to change the state of affairs through filmmaking,” said Oboli during the Indian Cultural Night and AfDB Impact Awards ceremony where she was a guest presenter alongside BBC’s Lerato Mbele.

As Adesina noted, with 65 percent of the world’s uncultivated land, “What Africa does with agriculture is not only important for Africa: it will shape the future of food in the world.”

AfDB President Akinwumi Adesina adressing delegates at the nutrition event while Ambassador Kenneth Quinn, World Food Prize Foundation, listens. Credit: Friday Phiri/IPS

By Friday Phiri
AHMEDABAD, India, May 24 2017 (IPS)

Developing Africa’s ‘grey matter infrastructure’ through multi-sector investments in nutrition has been identified as a game changer for Africa’s sustainable development.

Experts here at the 2017 African Development Bank’s Annual Meetings say investing in physical infrastructure alone cannot help Africa to move forward without building brainpower.“We can’t say Africa is rising when half of our children are stunted.” --Muhammad Ali Pate

“We can repair a bridge, we know how to do that, we can fix a port, we know how to do it, we can fix a rail, we know how to do that, but we don’t know how to fix brain cells once they are gone, that’s why we need to change our approach to dealing with nutrition matters in Africa,” said AfDB President, Akinwumi Adesina, pointing out that stunting alone costs Africa 25 billion dollars annually.

Malnutrition – the cause of half of child deaths worldwide – continues to rob generations of Africans of the chance to grow to their full physical and cognitive potential, hugely impacting not only health outcomes, but also economic development.

Malnutrition is unacceptably high on the continent, with 58 million or 36 percent of children under the age of five chronically undernourished (suffering from stunting)—and in some countries, as many as one out of every two children suffer from stunting. The effects of stunting are irreversible, impacting the ability of children’s bodies and brains to grow to their full potential.

On a panel discussion Developing Africa’s Grey Matter Infrastructure: Addressing Africa’s Nutrition Challenges” moderated by IFPRI’s Rajul Pandya-Lorch, experts highlighted the importance of urgently fighting the scourge of malnutrition.

Laura Landis of the World Food Programme (WFP) said the cost of inaction is dramatic. “We have to make an economic argument on why we need action,” she said. “The WFP is helping, in cooperation with the African Union and the AfDB, to collect the data that gets not just the Health Minister moving, but also Heads of State or Ministers of Finance.”

The idea is to get everyone involved and not leave nutrition to agriculture and/or health ministries alone. And panelists established that there is indeed a direct link between productivity and growth of the agriculture sector and improved nutrition.

Baffour Agyeman of the John Kuffuor Foundation puts it simply: “It has become evident that it is the quality of food and not the quantity thereof that is more important,” calling for awareness not to end at high level conferences but get to the grassroots.

Assisting African governments to build strong and robust economies is accordingly a key priority for the AfDB. But recognizing the potential that exists in the continent’s vast human capital, the bank included nutrition as a focus area under its five operational priorities – the High 5s.

And to mobilise support at the highest level, the African Leaders for Nutrition (ALN) initiative was launched last year, bringing together Heads of State committed to ending malnutrition in their countries.

As a key partner of this initiative, the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation foresees improved accountability with such an initiative in place. “ALN is a way to make the fight against malnutrition a central development issue that Ministers of Finance and Heads of State take seriously and hold all sectors accountable for,” said Shawn Baker, Nutrition Director at the Foundation.

However, African Ministers of Finance want to see better coordination and for governments to play a leading role in such initiatives to achieve desired results. “Cooperation and coordination are key between government and development partners,” said Sierra Leone’s Finance and Economic Development Minister Momodu Kargbo. “Development partners disregard government systems when implementing programmes whereas they should align and carefully regard existing government institutions and ways of working.”

Notwithstanding the overarching theme of Africa rising, Muhammad Ali Pate, CEO of Big Win Philanthropy, says, “We can’t say Africa is rising when half of our children are stunted.” He pointed out the need to close the mismatch between the continent’s sustained GDP growth and improved livelihood of its people.

With the agreed global SDG agenda, Gerda Verburg, Scaling Up Nutrition Movement Coordinator sees nutrition as a core of achieving the goals. “Without better nutrition you will not end poverty, without better nutrition you will not end gender inequality, without better nutrition you will not improve health, find innovative approaches, or peace and stability, better nutrition is the core,” she says.

Therefore, developing Grey Matter Infrastructure is key to improving the quality of life for the people of Africa. But it won’t happen without leadership to encourage investments in agriculture and nutrition, and more importantly, resource mobilization for this purpose.

Section of the Zambezi River in Western Zambia. Credit: Friday Phiri

By Friday Phiri
MONGU, Zambia, Apr 12 2017 (IPS)

Ivy Nyambe Inonge, 35, is the treasurer of Mbeta Island Integrated Fish Farm in Senanga district. Her group won the first prize in Zambia under the Cultivate Africa’s Future (CultiAF)  Expanding Business Opportunities for African Youth in Agricultural Value Chains in Southern Africa. She is excited at the prospect of what 5,000 dollars can do for her group, and ultimately, the whole community of Mbeta Island.

“As women, we endure the most burden on behalf of the family,” she says. “That’s why we are excited at this opportunity availed to us, firstly through participatory research in fish processing methods, and now business grants.”

By research and business grants, Inonge refers to a symbiotic relationship between the CultiAF research project focusing on post-harvest processing of fish to reduce losses and its complimenting agribusiness component seeking to generate and test novel, creative and bold business models in the fish value chain.

The two projects are jointly funded by Canada’s International Development Research Centre (IDRC)  and the Australian Centre for International Agriculture Research (ACIAR) and implemented by the Department of Fisheries and the Africa Entrepreneurship Hub (AEH), respectively.

According to the group’s winning proposal, they want to turn the 60,000 fingering capacity Malengaula lagoon on the island into a fish pond, and integrate it with livestock and vegetable production. The idea is to have an uninterrupted source of income, which is not the case at the moment due to a number of reasons.

Apart from the annual ninety days statutory fish ban, dwindling fish stocks in the Zambezi River due to climatic changes such as drought and inappropriate fishing methods persist, requiring alternative approaches as described above. Inonge believes their decision to move into fish farming integrated with crops and livestock “is an opportunity to develop a reliable source of income and a platform to become our own bosses.”

The youth and women dichotomy

Africa is the youngest region in the world. Youth make up more than two thirds of Africa’s population, yet they are more likely than adults to be unemployed. The story of women is well documented with global statistics estimating that they are responsible for more than 50 percent of food production worldwide. In Africa, the figure is higher, at 80 percent, according to the United Nations Food and Agriculture Organisation (FAO).

However, while agriculture is said to hold the greatest potential for global transformation to achieve the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs), a key constituency – youth and women – are conspicuously missing in the processes. This problem is particularly acute in developing countries like Zambia where they face limited access to financial resources hindering their potential for upward mobility, skills and experience to run successful businesses.

This contrast has brought about renewed interest in interconnected ways to meet not only the growing global food demands, but also poverty eradication. One innovative way recommended is agribusiness value chains to stimulate youth and women participation in agriculture and harness an increasingly educated and entrepreneurial workforce to drive growth and create jobs.

In terms of policy, African countries have it all covered. The Comprehensive Africa Agriculture Development Programme (CAADP) – an Africa-wide agriculture-led development plan – is one such robust blueprint with a strong component on youth and women’s participation.

According to Estherine Fotabong, Director of Programme Implementation and Coordination at the African Union’s technical Agency, NEPAD, CAADP remains an inclusive initiative providing the drive to address food and nutrition insecurity, as well as unemployment, particularly of youth and women, through access to markets and opportunities to expand agribusiness.

And the CultiAF Expanding Agribusiness value chains in Southern Africa, could be putting to reality this CAADP goal. “The main objective is to increase youth participation in the Agribusiness value chain through creative ideas,” explains Dr. Jonathan Tambatamba, Coordinator of the project. “The idea is to develop ways that will help youth get attracted into agriculture and stop seeing it as a profession for the retired.”

With a core team of international, national and local partners established to support emerging entrepreneurs, the process has advanced and now at entrepreneurship training and mentorship stage.

“For Zambia, we picked ten finalists from which five emerged as winners of the business grants of varying amounts,” Tambatamba told IPS. “For the first prize winners, they will receive 5,000 dollars for their project.”

Leadership commitment and Investment

Expert analysis points out that for developing economies to cut poverty and create meaningful jobs, particularly for youths and women, they require political will from leaders and colossal sums of investment in agriculture, which interestingly, is the basis of the CAADP compact. Tambatamba agrees with this assertion.

“We were impressed with a lot of ideas that came through,” he said, citing the winning proposal whose integrated approach in re-using water between fish farming and vegetable production fits well with this year’s theme of World Water Day—Why Waste Water? which focuses on reducing and reusing wastewater. Considering the extra importance of water for the fishing communities, Tambatamba believes serious investment is required to support such “brilliant ideas.”

Granted that cash capital is important in Agribusiness, entrepreneurship pundits argue for mindset change as a starting point. According to Mawila Fututu of Future Search, a Zambian Public Service Management Division (PSMD) entrepreneurship development project, “Even if you have the fish, the nets and the money; if your mindset is poor, you will still drift back into poverty.”

The onus therefore is on the people involved in the two projects to take advantage and maximize on the opportunity provided to diversify.

“I am excited to have been exposed to this project and my appeal to fellow women and youth is that we should rise and decide our own destiny,” says Lina Mahamba, one of the few people already engaged in aquaculture. The 31-year-old, who lives a stone’s throw away from the Zambezi river, adds that she was motivated to construct fish ponds to fill the market vacuum created during the annual statutory ban.

To sum it up, there is global consensus that the challenge is huge but not insurmountable if women and youth are carried along. In the words of former United Nations Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon: “The energy of youth can spark economies,” while African Development Bank’s Akinwumi Adesina believes that “when we solve the problem of women, we will address most of the problems facing us in terms of inclusive growth.”

Zambian farmer Surrender Hamufuba inspecting a maize plant in his field. Experts say a changing climate is bringing more crop pests to parts of Africa. Credit: Friday Phiri/IPS

By Friday Phiri
PEMBA, Zambia, Jan 23 2017 (IPS)

Surrender Hamufuba of Mwanamambo village in Pemba district recalls how he battled Armyworms in 2012. Fast-forward to 2016 and it is a similar story — another pest infestation on an even larger scale.

“I am not sure why, but there could be more to the increased frequency of these pest attacks, maybe weather changes,” speculates the 48-year-old farmer, who seems quite knowledgeable about climate smart agricultural fundamentals.“As temperature is projected to rise, insects like stalk borers will develop faster and this could lead to earlier population growth than expected.” --Researcher Donald Zulu

Out of the five hectares he planted, Hamufuba estimates the damage to be up to 1ha. In Pemba alone, at least 5,000 smallholders have reported some stalk borer damage in varying proportions.

Aside from the stalk borers, the Armyworm invasion has caused larger damage across the country. According to Minister of Agriculture Dora Siliya, at least 124,000 hectares of maize have been invaded, representing just under 10 percent of the 1.4 hectares of maize planted this farming season.

National Coordinator of the Disaster Management and Mitigation Unit (DMMU) Patrick Kangwa said “the pests were under control” as government bought and delivered 87,000 litres of pesticides for spraying in the affected farmers’ fields.

While farmers are being supported in every way possible to safeguard their crops in the short term, the long-term concern is the frequency — and unpredictability — of these devastating pests.

Donald Zulu, a lecturer and researcher at the Copperbelt University, says climate change may complicate the pattern of infestations.

“Outbreaks of Armyworms are highly dependent on the seasonal patterns of wind and rainfall. With global warming, the weather pattern in Africa will continue to change, which could mean more or fewer Armyworm outbreaks,” says Zulu, prescribing long-term integrated approaches built around “robust, country-wide surveillance and early warning systems” considering the devastating nature and feeding pattern of Armyworms.

Armyworms are serious migratory crop pests that feed on young maize plants, and also attack other cereal crops such as wheat, rice, sorghum, millet and most grass pastures, affecting both crop and livestock production. They feed with such devastating speed that by the time they are discovered, notable damage would already have been caused. Stalk borers on the other hand, have the habit of boring into stalks, affecting plant growth.

There are several types of Armyworms, among them the African Armyworm, which occur in Africa. While the 2012 attack was the African Armyworm, this year’s outbreak is different.

“This particular pest is the Fall Armyworm, and not the African Armyworm,” says Dr. Eliot Zitsanza, chief scientist at the International Red Locust Control Organisation for Central and Southern Africa (IRCO-CSA). “The two are closely related though. The Fall Armyworm is native to the Americas and may have been introduced to Zambia accidentally.”

Coincidentally this year, the Armyworm outbreak is occurring alongside stalk borers. Both belong to the same scientific family, called ‘Noctuidae’, of moths. From a scientific perspective, the two types of pests depend on weather for their production and growth, highlighting another importance of reliable early warning systems.

One of the most notable early warning systems uses an extensive network of pheromone traps that attract male armyworm moths using the artificial scent of mating female armyworms. The catches of Armyworm in the traps are used in combination with local weather reports to forecast armyworm outbreaks and help to alert farmers much faster to the need for control.

But with global warming causing massive weather unpredictability, is it to blame for increased incidences of pests? Professor Ken Wilson of Lancaster University, who has been studying Armyworms for 25 years, says it is very likely that over a few decades, the pattern of outbreaks has changed.

“It is very likely that climate change will affect the incidence of this pest because the armyworm is dependent on weather, so it feeds on crops and grasses that are dependent on the amount of rainfall, and the pattern of outbreaks depends very much on where rain storms occur and how frequently they occur,” Prof. Wilson told IPS, pointing out however, that the relationship is not simple as “we don’t have very good data and information to validate this hypothesis.”

As for stalk borers, just like most insects, they are directly under the control of temperature for their growth and it is the most important environmental factor influencing insect behavior, says Donald Zulu. “As temperature is projected to rise, insects like stalk borers will develop faster and this could lead to earlier population growth than expected.”

The Inter-Governmental Panel on Climate Change’s (IPCC) fifth assessment report confirms this strong linkage between warming and increased pest and disease. In highlighting the major risk posed by climate change to agriculture — reduction in crop productivity associated with heat and drought stress — the report cites increased pest and disease damage and flood impacts on food system infrastructure as key indicators.

Similarly, in identifying key adaptation issues and prospects, the report highlights adoption of stress-tolerant crop varieties, irrigation, and enhanced weather observation systems.

While several arguments may have emerged since the outbreak, Southern Province Agricultural Coordinator Max Choombe points to mono-cropping as a major reason, especially for the stalk borer outbreak.

“I believe mono-cropping has brought about this burden because our farmers grow maize after maize, they don’t change,” laments Dr. Choombe, insisting on the importance of crop rotation for breaking the cycle of pests.

Dr. Choombe also believes climate change is a precursor to pest infestations and does not rule out the linkage between the current outbreak and global warming. “Climate change also is a problem, is a precursor for certain pests attack and I believe the attack this season could be as a result of the extreme weather changes we have been experiencing.”

With a looming outbreak of Red Locusts as forecast by the IRCO-CSA, there could be more work ahead in identifying long-term solutions to the rising challenge of pests in a changing climate. Further, the entry into force of the Paris Agreement on Climate Change, which places obligations on individual countries to contribute to a global transition to green growth, means that Zambian policy makers would have to double their efforts considering that agriculture is at the forefront of the country’s vulnerability to climate change.

But while they do, Donald Zulu strongly believes in the following premise: “It is generally agreed that the earth is warming. And temperature influences insect development and is the most important environmental factor that affects insect pests. Because of this, climate change is more likely to influence insects’ geography distribution and affect crops.”

Mustapha Bakkoury, President of the Moroccan Agency for Solar Energy (MASEN), speaking at the COP22 in Marrakesh. Credit: Friday Phiri/IPS

By Friday Phiri
MARRAKECH, Nov 16 2016 (IPS)

Lowering investment risks in African countries is key to achieving a climate-resilient development pathway on the continent, say experts here at the U.N.-sponsored Climate Conference.

Mustapha Bakkaoury, president of the Moroccan Agency for Solar Energy (MASEN), says his country’s renewable energy revolution would not have been possible if multilateral partners such as the African Development Bank had not come on board to act as guarantors for a massive solar energy project, tipped to be one of a kind in Africa.Renewable energy has been identified as a key driver for Africa’s economic growth prospects, but requires multi-million-dollar investments which cannot be done by public financing alone.

The multi-billion-dollar solar power complex, located in the Souss-Massa-Drâa area in Ouarzazate, is expected to produce 580 MW at peak when finished, and is hailed as a model for other African countries to follow.

“Africa has legitimate energy needs, and development of Africa will happen through mobilisation of energy resources,” Bakkaoury told IPS at COP 22 after a roundtable discussion on de-risking investment in realising groundbreaking renewable energy projects.

Bakkauory believes it is possible for Africa to develop its energy sector while respecting the environment. “What we say is that there is no fatality between having energy resources and respect towards the environment, and Africa has abundant resources to do this through its key partner—the African Development Bank,” he said, noting the instrumental role of Africa’s premier multilateral financier to renewable energy in Africa.

And in affirming its continued commitment to universal access to energy for Africa, Alex Rugamba, AfDB Director for Energy, Environment and Climate Change, told IPS that “the Bank’s commitment has shifted gear as it has now a fully-fledged vice presidency dedicated to Power, Energy, Climate and Green Growth.”

Rugamba added that the Bank has learnt valuable lessons from various initiatives it is already supporting, and knows what is required to move forward with the initiatives without many challenges.

Renewable energy has been identified as a key driver for Africa’s economic growth prospects, but requires multi-million-dollar investments which cannot be done by public financing alone.

Private sector involvement is required to drive this agenda, a point underscored by World Bank Vice President for Sustainable Development, Laura Tuck.

“Private sector cannot be ignored because the money they have is more than what is available under public financing,” she says.

But the risk is believed to be too high for private investors to off-load their money into Africa’s renewables, a relatively new investment portfolio with a lot of uncertainties. German Parliament State Secretary Thomas Silberhorn says the highest risk in Africa is politically related.

“It’s not about economic risks alone, but also political risks,” said Silberhorn. “You don’t need to convince German investors about solar energy because they already know that it works, what they need is reliability on the political environment and sustainability of their investments.”

Silberhorn, who gave an example of a multi-million-dollar project in Kenya currently on hold due to political interference, added that ways to reduce political risks should be devised for Africa to benefit from private sector investments in renewables.

But even as risk factors abound, World Bank’s Tuck believes there is hope for Africa, citing Zambia, where record cheap solar energy has been recorded.

“Through a competitive bidding process, we have in Zambia under the Bank’s ‘Scaling Solar’ program, recorded the cheapest price at 6.02 cents per KWh,” she said, heralding it as a model to follow in de-risking climate investments for Africa’s growth.

And in keeping with the objective of universal energy for all, experts note the need to ensure that the end users are not exploited at the expense of investors.

“While the state should not interfere in this business model to work, modalities have to be put in place to ensure that the people for which energy is needed, afford it, otherwise, the project becomes useless,” said MASEN’s Bakkaoury.

Following up on this key aspect and responding to the political risk question, Simon Ngure of KenGen Kenya proposes a key principle to minimise political interference—involvement of the local communities.

“If you involve the local communities from the onset, regardless of whether governments change, the projects succeed because the people will have seen the benefits already,” said Ngure, who also noted policy restructuring as another key component to de-risk climate investments.

Agreed that de-risking investment is a crucial component, small grants are another issue that the African Union Commission’s implementing Agency, the New Partnership for Africa’s Development (NEPAD), believes could unlock the continent’s challenge of access to climate financing.

NEPAD Director of Programmes Estherine Fotabong told IPS that it was for this reason that the agency established the NEPAD Climate Change Fund to strengthen the resilience of African countries by building national, sub-regional and continental capacity.

“One of the objectives of the fund is to support concrete action for communities on the ground, but most importantly, to help with capacity building of member states to be able to leverage financing from complicated climate financial regimes,” said Fotabong, citing ECOWAS which she said used the funding to leverage financing from the Green Climate Fund, one of the financing regimes under the UNFCCC.

A panel discussion on means of implementation post-COP 21. Credit: Friday Phiri

By Friday Phiri
MARRAKECH, Nov 13 2016 (IPS)

The Paris Agreement hammered out at the summit on climate change in the French capital last year committed all parties to low-carbon and climate-resilient economies. The big question at the follow-up meeting here in Marrakech is how that deal will be implemented, especially for the developing nations of Africa.

“We have three major objectives at this COP: [the first is] to set a foundation for a strong technical and legal framework of the Paris Agreement,” said Seni Nafo, chair of the African Group of Negotiators (AGN).Africa, currently the most exposed region, has only been able to access less than four percent of global climate financing—the reason being lack of bankable projects on the continent.

“The second key issue is to push for accelerating action after the entry into force of the Paris Agreement and lastly but not the least, ensuring finance for Africa’s adaptation.”

Dubbed the ‘COP of Implementation,’ the summit dubbed COP 22 is seen by the African group as an opportunity to refine some of Paris’s unfinished business.

Despite adoption last year, a number of key decisions in the PA such as modalities for achieving the 2 degree C. threshold, mechanisms to enforce compliance and achieving a balance between mitigation and adaptation, among others, were deferred to COP 22.

One key issue for Africa is removal of bottlenecks to accessing climate funds. Available statistics from the African Development Bank (AfDB) show that Africa, currently the most exposed region, has only been able to access less than four percent of global climate financing—the reason being lack of bankable projects on the continent.

With the deal based on Nationally Determined Contributions, it is feared the challenge of access to climate finance for Africa might get further complicated as it has been discovered that most countries’ NDCs are vague, according to the African Climate Policy Centre (ACPC) of the United Nations Economic Commission for Africa (UNECA).

“ACPC is ready to support African countries in the revision of their Nationally Determined Contributions, most of which have been found to be defective,” James Murombedzi, Officer in Charge at ACPC told IPS, adding that his organisation wants to see an inclusive implementation of the PA.

Murombedzi said this would, however, not be possible if COP 22 does not lay a strong foundation.

The talk over the years has been capacity building to achieve the required levels of preparing bankable proposals in most African countries. Nevertheless, experts have urged caution even as the continent pushes for this need.

According to Balgis Osman Elasha, Principal Climate Change officer at the African Development Bank, Africa should avoid the ‘Clean Development Mechanism (CDM) trap’ by perpetually pushing capacity building and miss out on serious climate funding opportunities.

Elasha says “Africa could not benefit from the CDM because it was caught up in the capacity building mode while others were taking action.”

CDM of the Kyoto Protocol provided for emissions reduction projects aimed at assisting parties not included in Annex I in achieving sustainable development and compliance with their quantified emission limitation and reduction commitments.

As highlighted, a balance between adaptation and mitigation features prominently in the negotiations. And for African economies, adaptation is not a question of the future but now.

Available data shows that most countries are already facing economic challenges which are likely to be worsened by climate change effects. For example, cereal production is expected to decrease by up to 49 percent in Africa by 2050 due to the impacts of climate change, exacerbating food insecurity.

And Zambia’s Minister of Water Development, Sanitation and Environmental Protection, Lloyd Mulenga Kaziya underscored the need for urgent action especially the improvement of hydromet services.

“Zambia is deeply affected. In the past five years, our rivers have been drying up while the frequency of droughts has increased affecting our smallholder farmers in terms of production, and to make matters worse, information flow to the affected communities is not readily available,” said Kaziya, adding that the southern African country requires urgent support to upgrade hydromet systems and integrate them in all key sectors such as Mining, Energy and Agriculture

With these critical needs identified, the AGN is determined to ensure that Africa’s voice is heard at the negotiating table — especially now as the rules and modalities for implementation are being discussed.

“In line with our major objective of ensuring finance for adaptation, one key priority is to keep adaptation at par with mitigation,” said Nafo of the AGN, adding that adaptation for Africa is not an option but a must.

But on its part, the continent is not seating idle. At COP 21, the Africa Renewable Initiative (AREI) was launched to pave the way for Africa’s transition to inclusive green growth. AREI already has resulted in significant financial commitment of over 10 billion dollars for renewable energy projects in Africa, according to the African Development Bank, one of the partners of the initiative.

The tone for Africa’s demands at this year’s COP was clear on day one of the event as Salahedinne Mezouar, the COP 22 President, said: “Paris gave us a global commitment to climate change and COP22 in Marrakech will give us more ambitious climate action. We must all rise to the challenge in support of the most vulnerable countries in the fight against climate change,” underscored Mezouar, implicitly referring to Africa—the most exposed region whose contribution to global carbon emissions is just about 5 percent.

As negotiations enter the second week, the African group remains optimistic that most outstanding issues, especially means of implementation, would be resolved for smooth implementation of the Paris Agreement.

Delegates at the Sixth Conference on Climate Change and Development in Africa (CCDA VI), held from Oct. 18-20, 2016 in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia. Credit: Friday Phiri/IPS

By Friday Phiri
ADDIS ABABA, Oct 30 2016 (IPS)

The Paris Agreement on climate change is set to enter into force on Nov. 4, after it passed the required threshold of at least 55 Parties, accounting for an estimated 55 per cent of the total global greenhouse gas emissions, ratifying the agreement.

The landmark deal, reached at the 21st Conference of the Parties to the United Nations Framework Convention (COP21) in Paris in December 2015, aims to limit the increase in the global average temperature to ‘well below 2°C above pre-industrial levels’ and to pursue efforts to ‘limit the temperature increase to 1.5°C above pre-industrial levels’ in this century."Parties cannot have bargaining power from outside." -- Natasha Banda of the ACPC’s Young African Lawyers Programme

The basis of the Agreement is the Intended Nationally Determined Contributions (INDCs) submitted by all parties in the lead-up to COP 21, which are essentially blueprints for how they plan to cut greenhouse gas emissions. Once a party ratifies the Paris Agreement, its coming into force implies that the Agreement and all its provisions – including INDC which changes to NDC – becomes legally binding to that Party.

However, while some African countries are among the 86 Parties that had ratified the Agreement by Oct. 27, an analysis by the African Climate Policy Centre (ACPC) of the United Nations Economic Commission for Africa (UNECA) has revealed that most African NDCs are vague in their adaptation and mitigation aspirations.

“There are still a number of challenges with the submissions of many developing countries, including vagueness in their mitigation ambitions and adaptation aspirations; lack of cost estimates, no indication of sources of funding and in some cases, pledges of mitigation commitments that exceed their current levels of emissions, among others,” Johnson Nkem of ACPC told IPS during the Sixth Conference on Climate Change and Development in Africa (CCDA VI), held from Oct. 18-20.

Nkem sympathises with most African countries, which he said had to outsource the development of their INDCs due to lack of capacity and resources to do so on their own. He says ACPC is ready to help countries that are yet ratify to consider revising their climate action plans and make them more realistic before they submit instruments of ratification.

James Murombedzi of the African Climate Policy Centre speaking at the Sixth Conference on Climate Change and Development in Africa (CCDA VI), held from Oct. 18-20, 2016 in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia. Credit: Friday Phiri/IPS

With the continent considered the most vulnerable to climate change vagaries but contributing a mere five percent to global GHG emissions, the CCDA VI was held under the theme: The Paris Agreement on climate change: What next for Africa?

The main objective of the meeting was to discuss implications of implementing the Paris Agreement, considering that the continent is already experiencing climate-induced impacts, such as frequent and prolonged droughts and floods, as well as environmental degradation that make livelihoods difficult for rural and urban communities. Increasing migration is both triggered and amplified by climate change.

In this vein, of utmost importance for Africa is to understand the implications of the Agreement with regards to means of implementation (technology transfer and finance), an issue that has never escaped the minds of the African Group of Negotiators, and this is a point that Murombedzi emphasised to stakeholders at the conference.

“There are contentious nuances of the agreement that must be unpacked in the context of Africa’s development priorities, particularly in regard to the means of implementation which were binding provisions of the Kyoto Protocol and currently only non-binding decisions in the Paris Agreement,” said James Murombedzi, Officer in Charge of the ACPC.

But with the defective NDCs, Murombedzi is of the view that “the unprecedented momentum for ratification of the Paris Agreement presents an urgent opportunity for African countries to revise their Climate Action Plans to address the noted discrepancies and strengthen their ambition levels where appropriate.”

According to Murombedzi, the move would ensure that the implementation of the Agreement supports and accelerates the continent’s sustainable and inclusive development agenda as framed by the African Union’s Agenda 2063 and the UN 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development.

Apart from revision of NDCs, another key issue that emerged at the conference was the mainstreaming of climate information and services in national decision-making processes, in order to better manage the risks of climate variability and adaptation, especially among the most vulnerable communities.

UNECA believes the vulnerable groups’ access to climate information services differs from the rest of society, thus, climate information services, with pro-active targeting where possible, need to be integrated throughout climate interventions for the benefit of women, girls and the youth.

In catalyzing action for this, UNECA organised a meeting for lawmakers, on the sidelines of CCDA VI.

“This training is geared at setting the scene for lawmakers to factor climate information issues in budgetary allocation in their countries,” said Thierry Amoussougo of Economic Commission for Africa (ECA), pointing out that the meeting was looking at strategies that could be implemented by lawmakers and governments to ensure climate change policies were mainstreamed into development planning and actions in different African countries.

According to experts, climate information refers to data that is obtained from observations of climate (temperature, precipitation from weather centers) and also data from climate model output. It entails the transformation of climate-related data together with other related information into customized products such as projections, forecast, information, trends, economic analyses, counseling on best practices, development and evaluation of solutions and other services in relation to climate that are useful to society.

The challenge is that due to several factors, these services in most African countries are not well coordinated, let alone accurate.

“There is need to not only build the capacities of the required human resources but also invest in adapted climate information infrastructure and create the enabling environment for different institutions involved in climate information delivery,” said Sylvia Chalikosa, Member of Parliament for Mpika Central located in Zambia’s far Northern region of Muchinga.

Generally, in examining the implications of the Paris Agreement for Africa’s sustainable economic growth, the conference noted the need to identify viable and transformative investment opportunities, reform institutions to make them more efficient, and build capacity to access and absorb climate finance — in readiness to take advantage of the opportunities presented by the Paris agreement, to leapfrog technologies and transition to low-carbon, climate-resilient pathways.

This, according to Natasha Banda, who is part of the ACPC’s Young African Lawyers Programme, supporting the African Group of Negotiators is the only way, for there is no turning back for African countries even amidst the noted teething challenges with their NDCs.

“At this stage, signing and ratifying the Agreement is not optional for us as Africa,” said Banda, stressing that ratifying the Agreement is the starting point because the nature of international Agreements is that “parties cannot have bargaining power from outside.”

To this end, Mithika Mwenda of the Pan African Climate Justice Alliance (PACJA) has some advice for African countries as they go to Marrakech next month, where rules and procedures for implementation of the Paris Agreement would be set.

“We in Africa, particularly, are concerned with the most important action—adaptation to climate change,” said Mwenda, emphasising that the continent should not lose focus of the most important aspect—means of implementation.