By Nalisha Adams
BONN, Germany, May 21 2021 (IPS)

On the occasion of World Environment Day, 5 June 2021, drawing from IPS’s bank of features and opinion editorials published this year, we are re-publishing one article a day, for the next two weeks.

The original article was published on February 24 2021

Sudanese youth live with continuous insecurity due to climate change vulnerability, including droughts, desertification, land degradation and food insecurity. Courtesy: Albert Gonzalez Farran/ UNAMID/ CC BY-NC-ND 2.0

BONN, Germany, Feb 24 2021 (IPS) – For Sudanese youth, climate change is synonymous with insecurity.

“We are living in a continuous insecurity due to many factors that puts Sudan on top of the list when it comes to climate vulnerability,” said Nisreen Elsaim, Sudanese climate activist and chair of United Nations Secretary General’s Youth Advisory Group on Climate Change.

She said this was directly linked to insecurity within Sudan. She noted that even a Security Council resolution from 2018 which acknowledged “the adverse effects of climate change, ecological changes and natural disasters, among other factors,”, including droughts, desertification, land degradation and food insecurity influenced the situation in Dafur, Sudan.

The United States Agency for International Development (USAID) ranks Sudan as one of the world’s most vulnerable countries when it comes to climate change. Increased frequency of droughts and high rainfall variability over decades has stressed Sudan’s rainfed agriculture and pastoralist livelihoods, which are the dominant means of living in rural areas like north Dafur.

“In a situation of resources degradation, hunger, poverty and uncontrolled climate migration will [mean] conflict is an inevitable result,” Elsaim said, adding that climate-related emergencies resulted in major disruptions to healthcare and livelihoods and that climate-related migration increased the risk of gender-based violence.

She also pointed out that women, youth and children where the groups most adversely affected by climate insecurity.

In January, inter-communal violence in Darfur displaced over 180,000 people — 60 percent of whom are under the age of 18. “Displacement has declined in recent years in Sudan, but many of its triggers remain unaddressed. Ethnic disputes between herders and farmers over scarce resources overlap with disasters such as flooding and political instability,” the Internal Displacement Monitoring Centre said in a statement. There are currently 2.1 million internally displaced persons in Sudan.

Elsaim was speaking yesterday, Feb. 23, during a high-level United Nations Security Council debate focusing on international peace and security and climate change, led by United Kingdom Prime Minister Boris Johnson. The UK currently holds the Security Council presidency and will also be host to the 26th UN Climate Change Conference of the Parties (COP26), which will take place in November in Glasgow, Scotland.

“Land and resources in Africa and in many other parts of the world, because of climate change, can no longer maintain young people,” Elsaim cautioned.

She said in the youth’s search for decent lives, jobs and proper access to services, the new challenge of COVID-19 meant the only solution for many was in country, cross-border or international migration.

The issue is a global one.

Natural historian Sir David Attenborough addressed the council in a video message also giving a stark warning that the “stability of the entire world” could be altered by climate threats.

“Today there are threats to security of a new and unprecedented kind,” Attenborough said.

“They are rising global temperatures, the despoiling of the ocean — that vast universal larder which people everywhere depend for their food. Change in the pattern of weather worldwide that pay no regard to national boundaries but that can turn forests into deserts, drown great cities and lead to the extermination of huge numbers of the other creatures with which we share this planet.”

He cautioned that no matter what the world did now, some of these threats could become a reality, destroying cities and societies.

“If we continue on our current path, we will face the collapse of everything that gives us our security: food production, access to fresh water, habitable ambient temperature, and ocean food chains,” Attenborough cautioned.

UN Secretary-General António Guterres said the last decade was the hottest in human history and that wildfires, cyclones and floods were the new normal which also affected political, economic and social stability.

“Climate disruption is a crisis amplifier and multiplier,” Guterres told the Security Council. “While climate change dries up rivers, reduces harvests, destroys critical infrastructure and displaces communities, it [also] exacerbates the risks of instability and conflict.”

He referred to a study by the Stockholm International Peace Research Institute which noted that 8 of the 10 countries hosting the largest multilateral peace operations in 2018 where in areas highly exposed to climate change.

“The impacts of these crises are greatest where fragility and conflicts have weakened coping mechanisms,” Guterres said.

The UN has already stated that 2021 will a be critical, not only for curbing the rapidly spreading COVID-19 pandemic, but also for meeting the climate challenge. Guterres has already stated that he plans to focus this year on building a global coalition for carbon neutrality by 2050.

Alongside the Security Council debate, the Fifth session of the United Nations Environment Assembly wrapped up yesterday. The assembly, world’s top environmental decision-making body attended by government leaders, businesses, civil society and environmental activists, met virtually on Feb. 22 to 23 under the theme “Strengthening Actions for Nature to Achieve the Sustainable Development Goals”.

The assembly concluded with member states releasing a statement acknowledging “the urgency to continue our efforts to protect our planet also in this time of crisis”, and calling for multilateral cooperation as they “remain convinced that collective action is essential to successfully address global challenges”.

Joyce Msuya, the Deputy Executive Director for the UN Environment Programme (UNEP), noted that 87 ministers and high-level representatives participated during the two days. She shared some of the points of the dialogue noting that the health of nature and human health were inextricably linked.

“For our own well-being we must make our peace with nature in a way that demonstrates solidarity,” Msuya said, making reference to a recent UNEP report.

The report serves a blueprint on how to tackle the triple emergencies of climate, biodiversity loss and pollution and provides detailed solutions by drawing on global assessments.

Msuya added that the nature crisis was linked with the climate and pollution crisis and that the world now had the chance to put in place a green recovery “that will transform our relations with nature and heal our planet”.

She said the green recovery should put the world on a path to a low-carbon, resilient, post-pandemic world.

Meanwhile, Elsaim said that as a young person, she was “sure that young people are the solution”. She urged world leaders to engage with the youth and listen to them.

“Stop conflict by stopping climate change. Give us security and secure the future,” she said in conclusion.

Follow @IPSNewsUNBureau

Drone visual of the area in Upper East Region, Ghana prior to restoration taken in 2015. Experts say that Africa’s youth need to become involved in land restoration projects. Credit: Albert Oppong-Ansah /IPS

By Diana Wanyonyi and Nalisha Adams
ACCRA, Ghana/JOHANNESBURG, South Africa, Nov 1 2019 (IPS)

The last time Siyabulela Sokomani ran a marathon he did so with a tree strapped to his back. A native wild olive sapling to be exact. It affected his race time for sure, with the seasoned runner completing the 42.2 km race in 4.42 hours rather than his usual 3.37 hours.

But the entrepreneur, who is co-owner of the ethical South African nursery Shoots and Roots, which uses controlled release fertilisers, which are less harmful to the environment, and 70 percent less pesticides, was doing it for a good cause.

The #runningtreecampaign — a fundraising effort by the non-profit Township Farmers which Sokomani started with children’s rights activist Ondela Manjezi — was raising funds to plant some 2,000 indigenous trees in the former apartheid black housing area of Khayelitsha. In addition to planting trees, Township Farmers also educates school kids about gardening their own vegetables and how to plant and take care of trees.

Sokomani grew up in Khayelitsha an area known for the distinctive white, beach sand — in which you can still find seashells — which serves as soil. It’s an environment in which only indigenous plants can flourish.

Under apartheid these areas received little or no services, and had no green spaces. And many still lack this. It was only thanks to a teacher who taught him and his classmates about the importance of the environment, recycling and growing your own food that Sokomani pursued studies and eventually a career in horticulture.

“There was nothing. There was not even a culture of planting trees. The main thing that people strived for was to get a job and to feed their families,” he tells IPS.

So Sokomani and his friends and colleagues hit the pavement, completed the Cape Town marathon and raised the money for the indigenous trees. They have already started planting them in schools in Khayelitsha — starting with Sokomani’s alma mater, Zola Senior Secondary School.

Dotted around the schools are now wild olive, sand olive and silver oak trees, among others.

In September, horticulturalist and entrepreneur Siyabulela Sokomani (right) and friends ran the Cape Town marathon with wild olive saplings trapped to their backs to raise funding for 2,000 indigenous trees which planted in the disadvantaged township of Kayaltishea, South Africa. Courtesy: Siyabulela Sokomani

Making a business out of land restoration

The 34-year-old Sokomani, who was elected as a youth ambassador leading restoration initiatives by the 4th African Forest Landscape Restoration (AFR100), has just returned from Ghana’s capital, Accra, where the annual meeting concluded this week.

His attendance at AFR100, a project where African countries have committed to restore over 111 million hectares of degraded land by 2030, was important. As an entrepreneur Sokomani was there to show other African youth how to create viable business opportunities within the land restoration space.

Shoots and Roots has a number large clients in South Africa, regularly providing 150,000 to 200,000 indigenous trees to single clients in one order, and with a capacity to grow one million trees.

“We are missing something. We are missing the youth being actively involved in the management side of things,” Sokomani pointed out.

The AFR100 Secretariat at the African Union’s development agency, the New Partnership for Africa’s Development (NEPAD), coordinates restoration activities on the continent, with support from the initiative’s technical partners, including the Center for International Forestry Research, United Nations Environment and World Resources Institute (WRI), among others.

Land degradation remains a threat to global security, according to the U.N. Convention to Combat Desertification, with two-thirds of Africa comprising desert or drylands. UNCCD figures show that in 2019 some 45 million people across Africa, mostly from East and Southern Africa, are food insecure.

Aside from restored land providing food security, the U.N.’s Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) report released in August states that better land management can help combat global warming and limit the release of greenhouse gases. The report authors recommended vigorous action to halt soil damage and desertification.

Engaging the energy and innovation of Africa’s youth

But many believe that without engaging the youth in these activities, success may not be possible.

“We have to engage young people meaningfully, invest in them. We need to harness their energy or get out of the way. Are we ready for these young people?” Wanjira Mathai, co-chair of the World Resources Institute’s Global Restoration Council and the current Chair of of the Wangari Maathai Foundation, told the meeting. Mathai’s mother was the late Wangari Maathai — the first African woman to win the Nobel Peace Prize in 2004 and an environmentalist and human rights activist.

Speaking to IPS, Mathai said that youth were an “incredibly important demographic in this restoration movement” as they were Africa’s largest demographic. Some 60 percent of Africa’s population is under the age of 25.

“If you don’t work with youth, who are you working with because they are after all the majority.

“Restoration and many environmental initiatives are very slow and deep because they take time, it takes 30 years for some trees to mature and that is fast in our tropics, it could be even longer — 90 years in Scandinavia. The generation that is actually going to deliver a lot of these ambitions and ambitious commitments that are being made today are the youth,” Mathai told IPS.

She said young people “want to be involved in entrepreneurship ventures many of them are environmentalists but we have not created spaces for them, we only often think they are too young”.

Mathai said that it was not obvious to many nations that the youth should be involved in land restoration and environmental efforts and that new and innovative ways needed to be explored to support youth engagement.

“What we know for sure is that if we leave them out, we leave them out at our own peril because they are energetic, they think differently and they are operating on a completely different level of consciousness that is needed especially for this decade that 2013 is end of a lot of different ambitious targets,” Mathai told IPS.

According to the African Development Bank, 420 million of the continent’s youth aged 15 to 35 are unemployed.

Creating jobs by financing entrepreneurs

This challenge can be solved if the youth venture into agroforestry, says Honorine Uwase Hirwa, founder Rwanda’s Youth Forest Landscape Restoration initiative, which has trained more than 15,000 young Rwandans to plant trees.

“There’s an opportunity especially on this restoration movement, one can establish a tree nursery, one can plant fruit trees and sell the fruit, there is a lot of opportunity when it comes to restoration it’s a matters of empowering them with knowledge and making it easy for them to access the finance,” she told IPS.

Sokomani agrees.

As a South African in the Western Cape province, where only 4,9 percent of agricultural land is owned by the black population, for Sokomani it was particularly hard to succeed in a business that requires land.

But Sokomani has not received bank or grant funding for his business and instead was able to make a success of the business, thanks to the involvement of a business partner and former client, Carl Pretorius.

But he tells IPS, “you won’t get anywhere unless you have a passion for trees…it’s all about the passion and what you do”.

Land restoration more than planting trees

“Forest landscape restoration is more than just planting trees,” Mamadou Diakhite, Sustainable Land and Water Management (SLWM) team leader at NEPAD, told the meeting.

Later, he told IPS why this had to be differentiated: “We had to  make this statement loud and clear because there are some papers now including scientific papers that are being written and disseminated that portray and show AFR100 initiative as only planning trees, fencing them and preventing communities and people to access it which is the exact opposite, that’s is why we say that restoration is beyond only tree planting. It is more about agro forestry and agro ecology systems.”

Mathai concurred: “Sometimes there are agro forestry which are food production and trees and sometimes they are purely for food production. It is about understanding the landscape, the mosaic of the landscape and then maintaining the integrity of the landscape as a whole. The reason you hear us mentioning that all the time is to remind ourselves that landscapes occur in mosaics.”

Horticulture — a business opportunity right in front of you

For Sokomani, the type of trees planted remains important. He said that while we often hear about large, bold initiatives of forests of trees being planted in a single day, he questioned the types of trees planted.

“If we don’t create entrepreneurial opportunities through the establishment of nurseries that are growing [indigenous] trees and, in some areas, [indigenous] grasslands and bulbs and plants that actually thrive in those areas, we are really going to be messing up,” the horticulturist said.

He said he heard of land restoration efforts where the Chinese Popular, a non-indigenous tree, was being used. “You can’t restore degraded land with exotic species.”

He said indigenous trees should also be grown and propagated among local communities and the resultant horticultural enterprises could also prevent migration of local populations to larger cities.

“For the youth out there in Africa, Asia and South Africa, I always say it is very easy to start a horticulture business because your initial inputs are right in front of you. You can get seeds from a tree, from your block or from a forest, you can do division, you can do many other propagation techniques that you actually just start your business,” he said.

Sokomani said that if someone didn’t study horticulture like he did it would require a little bit of effort to learn the techniques, but he insisted that he didn’t believe in the myth of “green fingers” and anyone could learn to propagate and grown plants.

This weekend the horticulturist/marathon runner will slip into on running shoes and participate in one of South Africa’s well-known races – the Soweto marathon. This time though, he will be doing it without a tree strapped to his back.

“Let’s start today, because we really don’t have time when it comes to mitigating climate change.”

By Nalisha Adams
JOHANNESBURG, Aug 27 2018 (IPS)

Access to safe water for drinking and an adequate supply of water for other purposes is challenging in the rural areas of Vanuatu. A new project, that uses solar water pumping technology, will save time and energy for rural women whose task it is to collect and make water more accessible to their communities.

Just over half the population in Vanuatu had access to appropriate facilities for basic sanitation in 2015, but with an annual progress of 0.2 percent, the country is projected to achieve basic sanitation targets far in the future. For Vanuatu, the rate of progress on water is slow.

The Vanuatu Government is working with ministries and institutions to mobile finance and implement projects to ensure that communities in the country have access to clean and safe drinking water.

A recent partnership to provide solar-powered water pumps to 30 communities in rural areas and on remote islands will address the lack of secure freshwater access, which also results from extreme climatic events such as drought, which frequently hit Vanuatu. 

“This in turn should improve rural livelihoods [and] also improve sanitation and health for the project beneficiaries,” says Paul Kaun, Global Green Growth Institute’s (GGGI) senior project officer for Vanuatu. It will also cut CO2 emissions and improve “opportunities for income generation in rural areas through more reliable and safe water supplies.”

In July, the government of Luxembourg signed an agreement with GGGI committing about USD 1,750,000 to the provision and installation of the solar-powered pumps on Vanuatu. GGGI, an international organisation that works with developing and emerging countries to create programmes according to a sustainable green growth model, will administer the funds through the agreement.

The project will be implemented in close partnership with the Vanuatu ministry of climate change, the department of energy and department of water.

“Vanuatu is one of the small island states in the Pacific region that faces climate change because they are very vulnerable. But given that, there is a lot of potential for sustainable development,” says Dr. André Weidenhaupt, director-general at the department for environment in Luxembourg’s ministry for sustainable development and infrastructure.

Considered the world’s most vulnerable small developing nation to climate change and natural disasters, Vanuatu, which is located just east off Australia’s Queensland coast, is regularly affected by droughts, cyclones and volcanic eruptions. In recent years it has experienced rising sea levels, increased frequency and intensity of cyclones, and drastic changes in weather patterns that affect agricultural production.

Vanuatu ranks 134 out of 188 countries o the United Nations Development Programme’s Human Development Index. The project goals address crucial areas of development on the island archipelago as some 43 percent of Ni-Vanuatu are categorised as living in poverty and the nation remains heavily reliant on fossil fuels.

According to the GGGI Vanuatu Country Planning Framework (CPF) 2017-2021, a strategic planning document which commits GGGI and the Government of Vanuatu to common goals for green growth, “rural electrification rates are very low—under 10 percent of households.” The large majority, 76 percent, “are located in rural areas, where only one in 10 homes, under half of the schools (42 percent), and one in four health facilities have some self-generated electricity (mainly petroleum fuel based).”

“A challenge is to make energy accessible to all, but by means that are climate safe. This can be [done] with small scale photovoltaic systems, which are assessable to everyone, and which is feasible,” Weidenhaupt says.

“The goals [of the project] are at first level to provide clean and safe drinking water and, in parallel, to give access to sustainable energy for all at local and regional level. And at secondary level this allows economic rural development in Vanuatu,” Weidenhaupt adds.

The Need for a Clean Water Supply

In 2015, the category 5 Cyclone Pam—the strongest on record in the region at the time—affected 74 percent of the islands’ 300,000 people. It cost the nation more than half—USD450 million—of its national gross domestic product, says Kaun.

In the aftermath of Cyclone Pam, access to clean water was a major challenge as “68 percent of rainwater harvesting structures were damaged and 70 percent of the existing wells and water systems were contaminated,” Kaun tells IPS via email.

The Vanuatu islands sit 90 centimetres above sea level. But according to a U.N. Children’s Fund report, the sea level has been rising by 5.6 millimetres per year since 1993, and is expected to reach more than 50 centimetres by 2100. As sea levels rise, and people migrate to the islands’ interiors, water quality is under threat. According to the CFP, “access to reliable safe water supplies in rural areas is low.”

The many islands that make up Vanuatu are too small to have significant natural lakes or artificial reservoirs, and “river courses are short and the flows are short lived especially in dry periods,” according to the Food and Agricultural Organization of the U.N.

“The migration of people into the islands’ interiors also threatens the quality of surface water supplying downstream coastal villages. The water supply is either taken from groundwater via open wells and bores, from surface water sources, or rainwater collection with storage in ferro-cement or polyethylene tanks,” Kaun says.

The Need of Aid in Building Climate Resilience

The country’s economy depends largely on tourism and agriculture. A government report, funded by the U.N. Framework Convention on Climate Change for the Least Developed Countries, noted “small-scale agriculture provides for over 65 percent of the population while fishing, offshore financial services and tourism also contribute to the government revenues.”

It is one of the reasons why the Luxembourg government/GGGI/government of Vanuatu partnership is key to assist the people of Vanuatu. “Vanuatu has a relatively smaller revenue base. Tourism has been the main contributor of national GDP and also contributes to government revenues, most of which are on government operations. Therefore, Vanuatu relies a lot on external aid for development and building climate resilience,” says Kaun.

Weidenhaupt points out that “this nexus between water supply and renewable energy is a very important one.” He says both technologies can be conceived in a decentralised way that has advantages in places like Vanuatu.

“You can install them in a couple of households, in small municipalities [and] even in larger municipalities. They are like building blocks and can be conceived in whatever dimension,” Weidenhaupt says.

Weidenhaupt notes that GGGI is an ideal partner as the organisation has a wide range of experience and scope in projects that are at the nexus of climate change, sustainable development water management and other environmental objectives.

“In relation to climate action, Luxembourg immediately realised we needed an additional geographic focus, and that’s the small pacific island states. We looked to find a partner for that, and obviously GGGI is very active in this area,” Weidenhaupt says.

Vanuatu’s Challenge in Accessing Climate Resources

Vanuatu became a member of GGGI in 2015 and since then GGGI has been working with the government of Vanuatu to promote green growth and assist in meeting Vanuatu’s national development objectives.

For the Luxembourg government-funded solar water-pumping project, GGGI has formed a partnership with both the department of energy and the department of water, to implement the project.

“We have also regularly involved other key government agencies such as the ministry of finance and the prime minister’s office in training workshops at both national and regional level and country meetings. These national agencies are consistently involved in GGGI’s in-country activities and programmes,” Kaun says.

GGGI has assisted in reviewing and updating the National Energy Road Map (NERM) in 2016.

“One of the objectives of NERM is to achieve the NDC target of 100 percent renewable energy (RE) by 2030, aimed at reducing the national CO2 emissions. Another objective on the NERM is to use renewable energy for green growth, including in the water sector,” says Kaun. Nationally determined contributions or NDCs are blueprints or outlines by countries on how they plan to cut greenhouse gas emissions. The government of Vanuatu also aims to achieve 100 percent rural electrification by 2030.

Kaun adds that GGGI’s open and transparent processes played a key role in gaining the confidence and trust of the Vanuatu government.

A Sustainable Way Forward for Vanuatu

Meanwhile, Weidenhaupt envisions the potential for a sustainable economy on Vanuatu.

“There is the whole ensemble of sustainable aqua culture, which can be developed in these island states. There is the whole potential of sustainable tourism which can provide for development [while] staying in the limits of our planet,” he says.

Weidenhaupt notes that in order to benefit from Vanuatu’s resources there is a need to better coordinate management of energy, water and marine sectors and to integrate environmental management with economic development.

But finally, Vanuatu has the potential for rural development, which, Weidenhaupt says, “is very key to sustainable development and which is perfectly adapted to smaller areas like Vanuatu or Luxembourg – to give this as a comparative example.”

Solar panels in Dakar, Senegal. Credit: Fratelli dell'Uomo Onlus, Elena Pisano

By Nalisha Adams
JOHANNESBURG, Jun 25 2018 (IPS)

When Senegalese president Macky Sall opened the 30MW Santhiou Mékhé solar plant last June, the country gained the title of having West Africa’s largest such plant. But the distinction was short lived.

Less than six months later, that November, the mantle was passed over to Burkina Faso as a 33MW solar power plant on the outskirts of the country’s capital, Ouagadougou, went online. But as in the case of Senegal, it is a title that Burkina Faso won’t hold for long as another West African nation, Mali, plans to open a 50MW solar plant by the end of this year.What may seem like increasing rising investment in renewables in West Africa is a combination of public-private partnerships and strong political will by countries to keep the commitments made in the Paris Agreement.

“It’s like a healthy competition…In Senegal in 2017 there have a been a number of solar plants that have quite a sizeable volume of production feeding into the electricity network. And this is turning out to be a common trend I think. Because it is one of the ways to actually fill the gap in terms of electricity, affordability and access,” says Mahamadou Tounkara, the country representative for the Global Green Growth Institute (GGGI) in Senegal and Burkina Faso. The institute has a mandate to support emerging and developing countries develop rigorous green growth economic development strategies and works with both the public and private sector.

What may seem like increasing rising investment in renewables in West Africa is a combination of public-private partnerships and strong political will by countries to keep the commitments made in the Paris Agreement, a global agreement to tackle climate change. In the agreement countries declared their nationally determined contributions (NDCs), which are outlines of the actions they propose to undertake in order to limit the rise in average global temperatures to well below 2°C. According to an 2017 International Renewable Energy Agency (IRENA) report, 45 African countries have quantifiable renewable energy targets in their NDCs.

However, many African countries still rely heavily on fossil fuels as a main energy source.

And while the countries are showing good progress with the implementation of renewables, Dereje Senshaw, the principal energy specialist at GGGI, tells IPS that it is still not enough. He acknowledges though that the limitation for many countries “is the difficulty in how to attract international climate finance.”

In a 2017 interview with IPS, IRENA Policy and Finance expert, Henning Wuester, said that there was less than USD10 billion investment in renewables in Africa and that it needed to triple to fully exploit the continent’s potential.

Representatives from Burkina Faso, Cote d’Ivoire, Gambia, Guinea and Senegal will meet in Ouagadougou from Jun. 26 to 28 at a first ever regional capacity development workshop on financing NDC implementation in the energy sector. One of the expected outcomes of the workshop, organised by GGGI, IRENA and the Green Climate Fund, is that these countries will increase their renewable energy target pledges and develop concrete action plans for prioritising their energy sectors in order to access climate funding.

Senshaw points out that these West African countries, and even those in sub-Saharan Africa where most of the energy source comes from hydropower and biomass, “can easily achieve 100% renewable energy.”

“Increasing their energy target means they are opening for climate finance. International climate finance is really willing to [provide] support when you have more ambitious targets,” he says.

IRENA estimates that Africa’s potential for renewables on the continent is around 310 GW by 2030, however, only 70 GW will be reached based on current NDCs.

While the opportunities for investment in renewables “is quite substantial,” African countries have lacked the capacity to access this, according to Tounkara.

“One reason is the quality of their portfolio of programs and projects. It is very difficult to attract investment if the bankability of the programmes and projects are not demonstrated,” Tounkara says.

Christophe Assicot, green investment specialist at GGGI, points out that existing barriers to investment in renewables in Africa include political, regulatory, technology, credit and capital market risks. “Other critical factors are insufficient or contradictory enabling policies, limited institutional capacity and experience, as well as immature financial systems.”

“Governments need to create an enabling environment for investments, which means abiding by strategies and objectives defined in NDCs, designing policy incentives, strengthening the country’s capacity and knowledge about clean technologies, engaging stakeholders, mobilizing the private sector, and facilitating access to international finance,” Assicot says.

Senshaw adds that private sector involvement will provide sustainability for the implementation of NDCs. “Private sector involvement is engineered to reach the forgotten grassroots people. Mostly access to energy is in the urban areas. Whereas in the rural areas  people are far away from the grid system. So how you reach this grid system is through collaborative works with the private sector.”

Senegal, Mali and Burkina Faso have built their solar plants with public-private sector funding, with agreements in place that the energy created will be sent back to their country’s power grid. But, despite having the largest solar plant in West Africa, only about 20 percent of Burkina Faso’s 17 million people have access to electricity.

Toshiaki Nagata, senior programme officer for NDC implementation at IRENA, adds that public finance needs to be utilised in a way that leverages private finance.

“To this end, public finance would need to be used beyond direct financing, i.e., grants and loans, to focus on risk mitigation instruments and structured finance mechanisms, which can help address some of the risks and barriers faced by private investors.”

Mitigation instruments are staring to be used in Africa, with GGGI recently designing instruments for Rwanda and Ethiopia. In addition, Senegal’s Ministry of Finance requested GGGI and the African Development Bank design a financing mechanism for the country. It is called the Renewable Energy and Energy Efficiency Fund (REEF).

“The REEF is a derisking mechanism that [Senegal] had to have in place so that the local banks are interested in financing renewable energy projects and energy-efficiency projects,” says Tounkara.

Senegal’s REEF will become operational in October, starting with 50 million dollars and reaching its optimum size of 200 million dollars in 24 months. Senegal will become the first country in the region to have an innovative financing mechanism.

“That is the kind of mechanism that we think is going to be needed in countries to make sure that we accelerate the access to climate finance,” Tounkara says, adding that GGGI will provide the technical assistance for capacity building needs of the banks as well as the projects developers and project promoters.

Senshaw adds that GGGI has also been supporting countries with financial modelling and  leveraging and submitting proposals for funding. “So we support in terms of business model analysis, in terms of supporting them in business model development, in terms of how they can leverage finance. If you see the experience of GGGI, last year we leveraged for member countries USD0.5 billion.”

Capacity building has been considered vital for African countries attempting to access investment for renewables, as a major area of concern for financing has been the quality of the projects and the capacity of banks to assess the quality of those projects.

“By filling that gap we actually increase the interest of the investors, particularly of the local banks and the local financing institutions, to get on board and then invest in renewable energy as well as supporting the private sector to have the necessary capacity,” Tounkara says.

Jenni Williams (in white cap) addresses Women of Zimbabwe Arise members at Zimbabwe’s parliament building in Harare with the police looking on. The clampdown on civil society spreads far beyond Zimbabwe according to a recent CIVICUS report. Credit: Misheck Rusere/IPS

By Nalisha Adams
JOHANNESBURG, Apr 29 2013 (IPS)

As Zimbabwe is expected to head to the polls in a little less than two months, clampdowns on civil society in that southern African nation have increased, according to Godwin Phiri, western region chairperson of the National Association of Non-Governmental Organisations in Zimbabwe.

Phiri tells IPS that it was very difficult to disseminate information to rural communities about their rights as voters as they were not allowed to hold public gatherings.

“The battle is in the rural communities where, according to the Public Order and Security Act, we need to inform the police four days before if we want to have a meeting. But the police say that you need to seek their permission, and what we have seen over time is that they decide what meetings can be held,” Phiri says.

He adds that as the elections draw nearer, the police have begun prohibiting meetings by civil society organisations in rural areas.

“Ahead of the elections the main thing we are trying to activate is our local structures to use as points of disseminating voter information. But a lot of communities are living in a context where there is a lot of violence and their movements are curtailed by the fear that anything can happen and can be interpreted as anti-government. So they are afraid to talk about issues,” he says.

And Women of Zimbabwe Arise (WOZA), an all-female social justice pressure group, has been no exception in the crackdown on civil society organisations, including arrests, over the past year, strongly believed to be a measure by the coalition government to thwart dissent.

Jenni Williams, founder and national coordinator of the group, tells IPS that she and her co-founder Magodonga Mahlangu have been arrested more than 50 times during the past 10 years that their organisation has been in existence. In April, WOZA laid a complaint with the African Commission on Human and Peoples’ Rights (ACHPR) at the African Union body’s 53rd session.

However, media and democracy campaigner Pedzisai Ruhanya, who is the director of the Zimbabwe Democracy Institute, says nothing will come of it as President Robert Mugabe’s defiant government has ignored other rulings from the ACHPR.

“They have done that before and they will do it again. Actually there is a precedent; they have done it and what has happened to them? They are still there. What happened to them when they…defied other rulings that came from the Banjul court in the Gambia where the ACHPR is based.

“They will continue to do business as usual because that court (the ACHPR) has no teeth, it is a toothless bulldog and cannot enforce its decisions, hence it’s an appendage of the state parties, including Zimbabwe,” Ruhanya says.

But the experiences of civil society in Zimbabwe are not unique to that country. A new report released by CIVICUS, the global civil society alliance, states that despite the expectation that the Arab Spring, Spain’s “indignados “and the global Occupy movements could bring radical change, this has not happened.

The report titled “The State of Civil Society 2013”, released on Apr. 29, says the great people’s movements of 2012 were followed by “a range of negative events that make the work of civil society even harder.”

“The ever-growing diffusion of social media and mobile technology, and the mushrooming of digital platforms for self-expression, might suggest that never before has civil society had so many venues to voice its claims and visions,” Mario Lubetkin, director of Inter Press Service (IPS), says in a chapter of the report co-written with Citizen Lab fellow Stefania Milan.

Milan and Lubetkin state, however, that this is not truly the case and note that “the news agenda is today largely dominated by stories from the global North.

“The mediascape is still characterised by growing media concentration, the predominance of ‘infotainment’ and ‘sensationalism’ over information and analysis, and the prevalence of Western voices at the expense of a silenced global South.”

They recommend that “familiarisation with the journalism world, its needs and practices, is essential for CSOs (Civil Society Organisations), and even more so for those people whose task is to reach out to journalists.”

In his introduction to the report, Dhananjayan Sriskandarajah, secretary general and chief executive of CIVICUS, concurs with Milan and Lubetkin.

“New technologies are making it easier to access information, connect with other like-minded people, and mobilise large numbers of people. But restrictions on websites and social media are increasingly being used as tools to keep citizens in the dark and prevent them from scrutinising corruption.”

The report notes that a number of governments have recently introduced or plan to introduce laws that regulate the formation and operation of CSOs. “Laws in Kenya, Tanzania, and Uganda, for example, give the state the power to declare a CSO unlawful or withdraw its registration.”

However, the report states that CSOs are finding innovating ways of tackling social problems. For example, in Kyrgyzstan, “Public Watch Councils have increased accountability and transparency of central governmental agencies. One of the ways in which they have done so is through several TV discussions and public hearings involving the participation of state officials, CSOs and private sector representatives.”

*Additional reporting by Misheck Rusere in Harare.