President of Mauritius Ameenah Gurib-Fakim. Credit: Nasseem Ackbarally/IPS

By Nasseem Ackbarally
PORT-LOUIS, Mauritius, Apr 19 2017 (IPS)

An internationally renowned scientist, Ameenah Gurib-Fakim became Mauritius’s sixth president on June 5, 2015 – and one of the few Muslim women heads of state in the world.

Her nomination constituted a major event in the island’s quest for greater gender parity and women’s empowerment, giving a higher profile to women in the public and democratic sphere of Mauritius.

Gurib-Fakim started her career in 1987 as a lecturer at the Faculty of Agriculture, University of Mauritius. She was one of the leading figures in local academia with a reputation far beyond the Indian Ocean before she accepted the post of president.

She has also served in different capacities in numerous local, regional and international organizations. Gurib-Fakim has lectured extensively and authored or co-edited 26 books and numerous academic articles on biodiversity conservation and sustainable development.

In this exclusive interview with IPS, President Gurib-Fakim urged world leaders to save our oceans, noting that this critical ecosystem impacts millions of livelihoods, particularly for small island-states and coastal communities.

This June, the United Nations will convene a high-level Conference to Support the Implementation of Sustainable Development Goal 14: Conserve and sustainably use the oceans, seas and marine resources for sustainable development at U.N. Headquarters in New York.

Human activity has already left a huge footprint on the world’s oceans, Gurib-Fakim notes. “We have always assumed that the ocean is a dumping ground – which it is not.”

Excerpts from the interview follow.

Q: How would you rate the oceans in terms of importance in the context of sustainable development?

A: The ocean space occupies 70 percent of the world’s surface and it still remains unknown. There is no doubt that ocean space impacts livelihood, especially for islands and coastal communities. Several countries in the South-West Indian Ocean, for example, rely heavily on fishing to sustain livelihoods. In 2013, fish accounted for 17 percent of the world population’s intake of animal protein and 6.7 percent of all protein consumed. Coral-reef fish species also represent an important source of protein.

With more than 60 percent of the world’s economic output taking place near coastlines and in some African countries, the ocean economy contributes 25 percent of the revenues and over 30 percent of export revenues. It is becoming increasingly clear the enormous potential of our oceans.

Q: Do you think that the objectives of the World Ocean Summit can still reverse the decline in the health of our ocean for people, planet and prosperity?

A:  This Summit brings on board all the stakeholders involved with ocean issues. This summit is also a pledging conference as funding always remains a thorny issue and yet there is urgency in data collection on several areas of the ocean ecosystems. It provides the policymaker and the researcher a holistic picture of what the ocean stands for and will hopefully change the narrative on the need to reverse the decline of the health of our ocean space.

Climate change remains a big component as acidification of the waters as well as rise in temperatures will affect both the flora and fauna.

We must always be mindful to the fact that humans have had a huge footprint in the health of our oceans as we have always assumed that the ocean is dumping ground. It is NOT. There are within the ocean space, very fragile ecosystems that can be destroyed by small increases in acidity or temperatures.

Q: As an Ocean State, Mauritius does not seem to have given due consideration to the importance of our oceans in terms of an environmental asset. How would this Ocean Summit help to change our mindset?

A: Mauritius has a very small landmass, we have a very huge space of 2.2 million km and I think what the ocean summit helps us to do is to bring back to the fore these multiple challenges or opportunities that the ocean as an entity presents to the economy of Mauritius. As I said, one of the areas will be sustainable fishery, which can be flagged into the economy. Mauritius and in the South West Indian Ocean fisheries are threatened, with up to 30 percent of the fish stock over-exploited or depleted and 40 percent fully exploited. The poor management of this sector has amounted to an annual loss of about USD 225 million.

However, the ocean is not only fish, it is also sustainable tourism as well as renewable energy, including wave energy, amongst others.

Q:  The health of our oceans is critical for the survival of humanity. We have seen that despite all the international conferences and commitments, all the ecosystems of our planet are collapsing one after the other. How will this conference help to change things globally, but equally locally?

A:  For me, the ocean cannot and should not be taken as a dumping ground or a carbon sink. We should also take stock of effluents coming from the rivers as all the runoffs eventually end up in the sea.  Plastic pollution is also a very big issue because we know that a lot of damage is being done to wildlife because of un-recycled plastic. These conferences help us to see visually the impact of these polluting activities. They also bring live images, testimonies from people who have first-hand experiences. They help to change the mindset of people. They also try to bring people to think differently, sustainably.  We need to change the way people do business, the way people look at the ocean, we need to have a completely fresh look at these.

Q: Climate change is a major challenge for the survival of humanity, and we have seen that the United States of America has started to back-pedal on climate change agreements. How do you perceive this change of policy from a major carbon dioxide producer?

A:  To me, climate change is the biggest threat to humanity because it will impact not only on the ocean but also all the ecosystems on earth. It will impact the loss of many species; already 17,000 are threatened and when these species disappear, they reduce the resilience of our ecosystem. I always say biodiversity underpins life on earth and it also in the ocean as well. This balance in the oceans ecosystem is very very fragile.

So, any change, even half a degree increase in temperature of the water, is not sustained by the animals living out there and they will disappear and that is a thing that we do not want to envisage. Now, some countries want to backpedal on climate change agreements, it’s very unfortunate because many countries have fought very very hard to contain emissions. Large economies like India have started a global alliance on renewal energy, China has also made pledges, but it would be unfortunate that any country pulls out of this agreement because we are not talking about the short term but about the long term and for the larger good of humanity.

For those countries that feel that they still need fossil fuels to grow the economy, green technologies have shown that it is possible to sustain growth with same. It is proven and I don’t think people have to shy away from the fact that by disinvesting in fossil fuels their economy will still progress. Clean energy is the answer.

Q: What are your hopes and expectations for the ocean summit?

A: The hope is that those who made pledges deliver on them. We are not too far off the tipping point, but I think all is not lost. We need to act fast and deliver on results as well as on commitments. Our future depends on it.

Q: Nearly two years into your term as President of the Republic of Mauritius, how do you perceive the question of gender equality in Mauritius, and are things are improving?

A: Post-independence Mauritius had a very low per capita income of around 200 USD. Several decisions had been taken since then to ensure the well being of the people and one such decision was to make education free for all in 1976. Education is an enabler and ensures social mobility of people. At that moment in time, parents did not have to make choices of whether to educate their sons or daughters.

Over 40 years down the line we have seen the transformation that this decision has had. The percentage of women in many professional spheres has increased. The medical, judiciary, teaching professions have more than their fair share of women’s representation. We may be weak in terms of percentage at board levels or in politics but I think that it is work in progress. My message is very clear on this issue… any country that wants to make progress cannot afford to ignore 52 percent of its workforce and talents.

Excerpt:

Workers from Bangladesh in Mauritius. Many fall into debt to pay for their travel, yet find it almost impossible to save any money despite working long hours. Credit: Nasseem Ackbarally/IPS

By Nasseem Ackbarally
PORT LOUIS, Aug 29 2016 (IPS)

They come from Bangladesh, China, India and Madagascar, mainly to run the machines in the textile industry here. But they do all kinds of other jobs too, from masons to bakers, house cleaners and gardeners.

For the eight consecutive year in 2016, the World Bank’s Ease of Doing Business report ranked Mauritius first among African economies, and its GDP per capita was over 16,820 dollars, one of the highest in Africa. But there is a darker side to the success of this upper middle income island nation in the Indian Ocean, situated about 2,000 kilometres off the southeast coast of the African continent.“The government argues that foreigners are hired because the locals refuse the jobs. The truth is the government itself discourages the locals by introducing a four-month short-term contract, for example, in the construction sector." -- Trade unionist Reeaz Chuttoo

“Living like animals”

Local enterprises rely on foreign workers because Mauritians are increasingly reluctant to work long hours under difficult conditions. But these foreigners live in very poor conditions and in many cases, in human indignity.

Thirty-six-year-old Bangladeshi Maqbool* left his wife and two children back home in Dhaka two years ago and came to work in the manufacturing sector in Mauritius, hoping to earn enough money to offer a decent life to his family.

“I paid 150,000 takkas (about 2,000 dollars) to an agent who got me this job. I was supposed to get 675 dollars a month, which represents a huge amount in my country, and I was ready for any sacrifice to earn it,” he said. To his bitter disappointment, he earns only about half of that.

Foreign workers all have such stories to tell. They take loans or sell the family’s lands or jewelry to pay for their travel to Mauritius. “The island is very beautiful but there is no money here. I run short of money every month after paying for my own expenses. I send some to the family every three months and I save nothing,” adds Massood*.

Both men are frustrated as they have to leave the island in a couple of months and they have yet to save any money to take back home.

Running away from poverty

Poverty, unemployment and the rising costs of living in their home countries force thousands of Bangladeshis, Chinese, Indians and also Malagasy people to look for jobs abroad. About 40,000 of them already work in the manufacturing sector, the construction industry, hotels, transport and also in the seafood hub. They start work very early in the morning and finish up very late at night. They are forced to do overtime and do not earn more than a 150 dollars a month.

A local welfare officer from a well-known textile enterprise confirms under condition of anonymity that the foreigners work night and day with little time for rest and live and sleep in unhygienic dormitories with just a cupboard and a thin mattress full of fleas and bugs.

“I feel sorry for them. They live like animals and are helpless. They accept things as they are,” he told IPS.

Those who resist or cause trouble on their worksites are sent back home. Hundreds of them faced this fate last year after they took to the streets demanding better wages and protesting against their working conditions. Even though, says trade unionist Feisal Ally Beegun, these migrants are exemplary workers.

Still, some of them claim they are happy. “Please sir, tell them to give me more work and more money, no fuss about it,” one Bangladeshi worker pleaded with IPS, while others working at the Compagnie Mauricienne du Textile (CMT), which employs a few thousand expatriates, ran away upon seeing journalists.

A security guard posted at the gate of this factory in Phoenix, in the centre of the island, revealed that the foreigners have had so many problems with their employer and the police last year that they now refuse to talk to the media.

Source of irritation

The antipathy of the locals for the textile and manufacturing sector and for low-paid jobs has resulted in the import of labour to keep the wheels of the island’s industry turning. They were first brought in 1992 as a temporary measure as the industry moved from labour-intensive to capital-intensive manufacture.

Twenty-five years later, they are still here and the government believes they add value to the island’s economy by helping the factories deliver on time and also help in keeping the locals’ jobs.

Trade unionist Reeaz Chuttoo begs to disagree. “The government argues that foreigners are hired because the locals refuse the jobs. The truth is the government itself discourages the locals by introducing a four-month short-term contract, for example, in the construction sector, which the Mauritians refuse. In the seafood hub, foreigners are hired only for the night shift because no local does it.

“So the locals prefer to hawk cheap imported goods on the street rather than working long and late hours, even if they have to run from the police,” he says.

Chuttoo warns that a social explosion is in the making, with high unemployment, too many foreign workers and not enough jobs for the locals. “Mauritius is already invaded by a feeling of xenophobia and racism towards foreign workers,” he adds.

Jaynarain Mathurah, director at the Special Expatriate Unit of the Labour and Industrial Relations Ministry, brushes aside these allegations, arguing that foreign workers enjoy the same working conditions as the locals.

“We do not discriminate between them. The free zone manufacturing sector is governed by a remuneration order that is applied to all. Above this, there is a Special Migrant Workers Unit that take care of these migrants and it intervenes very fast with the employers when a problem arises,” he told IPS.

He believes the foreigners are well treated but agrees that “seeing their number, it happens that we are unable to visit them as often as we would have liked.”

“We believe they are well-off regarding their wages and their working and living conditions. Apart from their wages, they also get accommodation, food and transport,” he added.

According to him, low-paid jobs are common in developing countries where the free zone manufacturing sector has been introduced in a bid to create jobs. Investors are always looking for cheap and skilled labour and right now many enterprises in Mauritius plan to expand their activities and they need skilled labour.

“Where do I get them?” shouts a manager at Firemount Textiles in northern Mauritius.

Foreign workers will not stop coming to this island anytime soon, as they are needed to support its economic development in the absence of locals. They are now expected to increase in the agriculture and the ICT sectors.

*Names changed to protect their identities.

Credit: Nasseem Ackbarally

By Nasseem Ackbarally
Port Louis, Mauritius, Jul 3 2014 (IPS)

Nasseem Ackbarally reports from Port Louis Mauritius that despite clear evidence of climate change, the Indian Ocean Islands have not done much in terms of adaptation and mitigation.

[podcast]http://traffic.libsyn.com/ipslatamradio07/mauritius.mp3[/podcast]

Sen Dabydoyal, a farmer and leader of the Médine Cooperative Society, shows a pack of special sugar produced by sugarcane farmers from Mauritius. Credit: Nasseem Ackbarally/IPS

By Nasseem Ackbarally
PORT LOUIS, Jun 10 2014 (IPS)

While Mauritius has been forced to transform its sugar industry because of low prices for the commodity, the country’s small-scale sugarcane farmers who contribute to it say they are barely earning a living.

Previously, Mauritius produced only raw sugar from the cane plant. Now it produces value-added refined and special sugar, electricity from bagasse, ethanol and will soon produce bio-plastics.

“We are paid for the amount of sugar produced from our canes and some peanuts for the bagasse they use to produce electricity and nothing for the electricity which they sell to the national grid, or for our molasses or for the ethanol,” Jugessur Guirdharry, a farmer for the Union Park Cooperative Society, in the south of the island, told IPS. Farmer Salil Roy believes sugar cane is a victim of its own success “in the sense that it helped farmers support their children’s higher education, locally and abroad.”

With the end of the Sugar Protocol in 2009, an agreement between the European Union and African, Caribbean and Pacific states since 1970 wherein the latter supplied sugar to the EU at a much higher price than was available on the world market, meant that this Indian island nation stopped receiving high prices for its sugar. Instead, Mauritius was producing sugar at 500 dollars a tonne but selling it at 433 dollars a tonne.

To keep the industry alive, the government implemented drastic reforms. It centralised private sugar production factories and from the original 17 there are now four flexi-factories that crush cane, produce special and refined sugars, molasses, ethanol and renewable energy from bagasse — the fibrous pulp left over after cane is squeezed for its juice. Soon they will also produce bio-plastic.

This island nation now produces 400,000 tonnes of special and refined sugars that are sold on markets in Europe from where they are sold directly to big EU firms.

About 75 percent of the sugar produced in Mauritius is value-added refined and special sugar that is sold mainly in Italy, Spain, Greece, United Kingdom and Belgium while the rest is sold to a hundred clients in niche-markets in the United States and China.

However, the 17,000 small-scale farmers contribute to about 28 percent of the national sugar production are not happy. They say it is very difficult to make a living out of cane cultivation only.

Farmers complain of high production costs and costs of inputs like fertilisers, herbicides and manpower and transport.

“If a farmer does not do part of the work in the fields himself, he’ll not be able to make his ends meet,” Guirdharry added.

Without the contribution of farmers like him, this industry would not have survived, Issah Korreembux, a small-scale sugarcane farmer, told IPS. Indeed, the Mauritius Cane Industry Authority (MCIA) says that many smallholder farmers have abandoned between 5,000 to 6,000 hectares of land that had previously been sugar plantations.

“If they are not given their due, more will do so because of lack of manpower, high costs of inputs and an ageing population among the farmers with the youth staying away from agriculture,” Sen Dabydoyal, a farmer and leader of the Médine Cooperative Society, in eastern Mauritius, told IPS.

Guirdharry pointed out that by producing bagasse, small farmers contribute to the production of clean energy.

“If we use coal only, the impact on the environment would be devastating. We are thus preventing the import of about 250,000 tonnes of coal annually,” he explained.

Small-scale farmers like Dabydoyal are looking for other means to increase their income. About 5,000 of them have joined the fair-trade movement. They produced 21,000 tonnes of sugar under this label in 2013, which brought them an additional income of 60 dollars per tonne above the normal price of 530 dollars.

Under this certification by an international firm FLO-CERT, the small-scale producers develop good agricultural practices, make good use of the soil, use less chemical products and follow an integrated management plan for pests and diseases to improve the crop.

“This is a very good thing for small-scale farmers and we are encouraging all of them to join the movement,” Sooradehoo Punchu, president of the Mauritius Fair-trade Federation Cooperative Ltd, told IPS.

Farmer Salil Roy believes sugar cane is a victim of its own success “in the sense that it helped farmers support their children’s higher education, locally and abroad.”

“Today, these children have grown up and become professionals but have turned their back to the plantations,” Roy told IPS. Small and medium farmers have launched an Alliance of Sugar Cane Planters Association (ASPA) to defend their rights.

Its leader Trilock Ujoodha says a revision of the distribution of cane revenue will solve many problems faced by small and medium producers, which includes among them the issue of abandoned land.

Other farmers recalled that their income from sugar that represented 95 percent of their total revenue in the past stands today at 94 percent, despite the slump in local sugar prices.

“It should have decreased more,” observed farmer Jugdish Rampertab. However, Roy believes small farmers are faring well but “they could do much better with a fair distribution of sugar revenue.”

Mauritius has transformed its main product that is sugar cane into several valued added products. It’s not the end of the road yet, as this industry prepares to face another big challenge in two years’ time with the end of the sugar quota system in the EU scheduled for 2017.

This will again lead to volatile prices of this commodity. “How far can we diversify our cane industry?” Dabydoyal asks.

The Chagossians pictured here when they visited the archipelago in 2006. Many are still fighting to return to the islands they were evicted from almost 40 years ago. Courtesy: Chagos Refugees Group (CRG).

By Nasseem Ackbarally
PORT LOUIS, Feb 20 2014 (IPS)

“The Marine Protected Area (MPA) created around the Chagos archipelago is a new obstacle that the British government has placed in our path to prevent us from going back to our homeland,” claims Olivier Bancoult, leader of the Chagos Refugees Group (CRG).

For the past 40 years, the Chagossians have been fighting to return to their home in Chagos archipelago, a set of 55 islets situated 1,200 km north of the Indian Ocean Island of Mauritius.

They lived there for five generations until the early 1970s when the archipelago was excised from Mauritius by the United Kingdom. The Chagossians were evicted and the archipelago now forms part of the British Indian Ocean Territory (BIOT).

“We’ll not give up,” Bancoult tells IPS as he prepares for a new legal battle against the British government, which will be heard by the High Court of Justice in London on Mar. 30.

Bancoult was four when he and his mother, Rita, came to Mauritius. In 1983 he created the CRG to defend the rights of his community and over the years the organisation has staged numerous public demonstrations and hunger strikes.

The MPA covers almost 545,000 square kilometres and aims to protect the natural resources of the Chagos archipelago by implementing strict controls over fishing, habitation, damage to the environment and the killing, harming and collecting of animals.

The U.K. Foreign and Commonwealth Office (FCO) designated the archipelago as an area that needs to be preserved “on the basis that the archipelago is one of the most precious, unpolluted, tropical ocean environments left on earth.”

A map of the Chagos archipelago which shows the proposed Marine Protected Area. Courtesy: Nasseem Ackbarally

Following a feasibility study in 2002, the FCO concluded that resettlement on the Chagos archipelago was unfeasible due to the islands’ low elevation and “the islands are already subject to regular overtopping events, flooding and erosion of the outer beaches.” It also said that “as global warming develops, these events are likely to increase in severity and regularity.”

However, scientists Richard Dunne and Barbara Brown, who have been working on coral reefs in the Indian Ocean for several decades, do not agree.

Dunne tells IPS that the British government has been presenting these findings to Parliament, court and the public for the last 10 years as an argument against the resettlement of the Chagossians back in their homeland.

“We now know that the feasibility study was scientifically flawed and that little reliance can be placed upon its conclusions,” he says, adding that this may be partly the reason why the FCO is undertaking a new feasibility study this year.

“The Chagos are low-lying coral islands with a mean elevation above sea-level of only about two metres. As a consequence, they are like the Maldives to the north — very susceptible to changes in mean sea-level, storms, erosion and flooding,” he says.

But Dunne sees no reason why the Chagossians cannot return to the archipelago.

“The Chagossians have lived on these islands for nearly two centuries, and on the scientific evidence that we have today, there is no reason that they should not continue there for at least the foreseeable future, by which I mean the next four or five decades.”

Bancoult believes his people can live in such an environment.

“How come Europeans, Americans and other wealthy people from elsewhere are staying for months on Diego Garcia, Peros Banhos and Solomon Islands which are part of archipelago, while Chagossians cannot live there?” he asks.

Simon Hughes, secretary of the Chagos Conservation Trust (CCT), an organisation that has been working to conserve the biodiversity and marine ecosystem of the Chagos archipelago for the last 20 years, denies the MPA was designed to keep Chagossians from returning.

“The MPA is only three years old. Neither would the MPA be a very effective tool for this purpose. Its framework can be revised to accommodate a local population if there is one in future,” he tells IPS.

“Since under the law of BIOT there is no right of abode in the territory and all visitors need a permit, the creation of a marine protected area has no direct immediate impact on the Chagossian community,” Hughes adds.

The CCT also argues that sea level rise and erosion continue to be a problem for the islands.

According to the CCT, the benefits of an MPA around the Chagos are manyfold. It says the absence of a settled human population, the strict environmental regime and the minimal footprint of the military base on Diego Garcia have enabled a high level of environmental preservation to have occurred.

“The islands, reef systems and waters around the Chagos in terms of preservation and biodiversity are among the richest on the planet and they contain about half of all the reefs of the Indian Ocean which remain in good condition,” Hughes explains.

British lawyer and lead counsel for the Chagossians, Richard Gifford, tells IPS that the Chagos is a magnificent place to live but “obviously, there are problems to address in restoring the infrastructure, the economy, the housing and the transport but the prospects are extremely positive.”

Most of the original 1,500 Chagossians have passed away. Currently, the remaining 682 are determined speak out about the MPA.

“We are working on our own resettlement plan that we will submit to the three governments involved — Mauritius, the U.K. and the U.S. — later this year,” Bancoult says.

Olivier Bancoult, leader of the Chagos Refugees Group (CRG), feel that the 2010 creation of a Marine Protected Area (MPA) created around the Chagos archipelago, prevents the resettlement of the Chagossians. Credit: Nasseem Ackbarally/IPS

A quarter of a million students across the Indian Ocean island of Mauritius will be exposed to principles of sustainable development. Educating youth about sustainable development is part of this long-term vision to establish a new, ecologically sound economy. Credit: Nasseem Ackburally/IPS

By Nasseem Ackbarally
PORT LOUIS, Jul 29 2013 (IPS)

Tourism, agriculture, fishing, the water supply – climate change threatens the very foundations of society and the economy in Mauritius. As the Indian Ocean island nation develops its adaptation strategies, it is working to ground the next generation of citizens firmly in principles of sustainable development.

Launched on Jul. 5, the country’s National Climate Change Adaptation Policy Framework (NCCAPF) included familiar but worrying predictions for the future. Half of this tourist destination’s beaches could disappear by 2050, swallowed by rising seas and increasingly violent and frequent storms. Fresh water resources could shrink by as much as 13 percent while demand will rise steadily.

“We are shocked to learn that our beautiful island – or part of it – may disappear because of a rise in sea levels,” student Felicia Beniff told IPS as she emerged from a class on the environment and climate change with four friends. “We are afraid. We have many more years to live. Where will we go?”

The teenage students at MEDCO Cassis Secondary School in the Mauritian capital Port Louis are among a quarter of a million students across the island that will be exposed to principles of sustainable development.

Mauritius is working hard to correct unsustainable practices, notably through the Maurice Île Durable. Educating youth about sustainable development is part of this long-term vision to establish a new, ecologically sound economy.

At Rabindranath Tagore State Secondary School in Ilot, northern Mauritius, students put organic waste into a compost bin.

“We collect plastic bottles. We turn off the lights and the air-conditioners when we leave the classroom. We open the windows to aerate the classes. This reduces the school’s expenses. We also plant trees,” one of the students, Ashootosh Jogarah, told IPS.

His friend, Varounen Samy, told IPS that they have “now changed our attitude towards the environment.”

Mahen Gangapersad, the school’s rector, believes Mauritians have taken the environment for granted for too long without realising the harm they cause to natural resources. The new education programme aims to correct this.  “Better late than never,” he told IPS.

Tree planting, the installation of photovoltaic cells for renewable energy, endemic gardens, backyard gardening, waste segregation, compost-making, rain water harvesting and water control are now a reality at many schools. The plan is to expose the entire student population.

“So we are reaching out to 250,000 plus people,” Veenace Koonjal, special adviser to the Minister of Education told IPS. He believes this training will have a great impact on awareness among the country’s population of 1.2 million as students take what they learn home to their families and communities.

“Climate change is weakening the economic, social and environmental pillars of the island,” said the Mauritian Minister of Environment and Sustainable Development Deva Virahsawmy, at the launch of the NCCAPF.

The launch of the newly-completed policy framework was accompanied by the opening of a Climate Change Information Centre in Port Louis, an initiative that will gather local and regional information on climate change and make it available to everyone – scientists, engineers, architects, as well as farmers and students.

Strengthening and broadening knowledge, awareness and information about climate change is a key part of this island nation’s response to global warming. Mauritius, like other island states, can expect to bear the full brunt of climate change despite contributing very little to the greenhouse gas emissions that cause it.

Floods devastated the Mauritian capital, Port-Louis, on Mar. 30 but locals can expect the island to be affected by more floods, landslides and cyclones in the coming years because of climate change. Credit: Nasseem Ackbarally/IPS

Further, the policy framework acknowledges that the island’s geography and topography limit what can be done to counter harmful impacts of global warming on fishing and the coastline, tourism, or agriculture.

Khalil Elahee, chairperson of the government’s Energy Efficiency Management Office, believes the population has begun to realise the very serious impact that climate change is already having.

“People want sustainable development. So it is essential we start a new way of living and developing our island, climate change or not,” he told IPS.

“Whatever we do may not be enough but the measures taken by Mauritius in its climate change education programme help to mitigate the impact of climate change on the island,” Elahee said.

Virahsawmy said that climate change education would enable Mauritius to strengthen its resilience in key sectors of its economy and mitigate the risks and prevent losses of lives and property.

Mauritius has already received three million dollars from the Africa Adaptation Programme – funded by the Government of Japan’s Cool Earth Partnership for Africa – to integrate and mainstream climate change adaptation into its institutional frameworks and core development policies.

An official from the Ministry of Environment and Sustainable Development told IPS that a Technology Needs Assessment (TNA) project is also being implemented this year. It will receive technical support from the United Nations Environment Programme’s Division of Technology, Industry and Economics, and its Risoe Centre in Denmark. It is funded by the Global Environment Fund (GEF) to the tune of 120,000 dollars.

The key aim of the TNA is to bridge the gap between identifying appropriate technologies and the design of action plans. The aim is to allow Mauritius to implement technologies to reduce greenhouse gas emissions and support adaptation to climate change that is consistent with national development priorities.

The government hopes to secure more funding for adaptation and mitigation efforts from the Green Climate Fund, the U.N. Adaptation Fund and the GEF.

Beyond the classroom, several other programmes run by NGOs complement what young people are learning at school. The Youth be Aware programme of the Mauritius Red Cross, for example, engages 600 young people on the risks posed by climate change to the island.

Since Mauritius eased the procedures for obtaining a business permit a year ago, small businesses are cropping up all over the island. People have started selling food, vegetables, fruits, small luxurious items and clothes. Credit: Nasseem Ackbarally/IPS

By Nasseem Ackbarally
PORT LOUIS, Jul 11 2013 (IPS)

Raja Venkat, a food vendor on the sidewalk of Immigration Square in the centre of Port Louis, the Mauritian capital, sits on his tricycle with a bag full of dhal puris – small, round, flat Indian bread stuffed with pulses – which he sells together with tomato sauce and bean curry.

“Come and taste my dhal puris, you’ll want more. Come, come,” he shouts.

Thousands of small businesses like this have sprung up in every town and village on the island since the government eased the procedures for obtaining a business permit a year ago.

“At times, I helped in masonry, in vegetable transportation or washing vehicles. I was available for any job, but most of the time I was unemployed,” Venkat tells IPS. “Net employment creation in small and medium business between 2000 and 2011 is estimated to be 67,800, i.e., an increase of more than 36 percent, as compared to an increase of 14,400 in large establishments.” -- Mauritian Minister of Business, Enterprise and Cooperatives Jim Seetaram

The unemployment rate stood at 8.6 percent at the end of 2012, according to figures obtained from Statistics Mauritius, the official organisation responsible for collection, compilation, analysis and dissemination of statistical data. And the easing of procedures for obtaining a business permit has been aimed at reducing unemployment in this Indian Ocean island. Official figures from Statistics Mauritius indicate that the total number of business activities increased from 133,723 to 138,236 in 2012.

Since he started his small business six months ago, after paying the required fee (about 50 dollars a year to the Municipality of Port Louis) for his business licence, Venkat now has a steady income. His wife, Aashna Venkat, cooks the dhal puris in the small wooden kitchen of their home at Terre-Rouge, four km away.

“I now earn enough to feed the family and also to save some money for the future,” this father of two children, aged six and three years, says.

Many other people have started similar businesses on the island, selling food, vegetables, fruits, small luxurious items and clothes. Some have opened small mechanical workshops where they repair bicycles and motorcycles. Many women, particularly from Muslim families, have developed the art of applying henna to the hands.

Minister of Business, Enterprise and Cooperatives Jim Seetaram tells IPS that there are more workers in these small and medium businesses than in the larger establishments.

“Net employment creation in small and medium business between 2000 and 2011 is estimated to be 67,800, i.e., an increase of more than 36 percent, as compared to an increase of 14,400 in large establishments,” he says.

“Small and medium businesses are the main drivers of job creation and contribute in a significant way to economic growth. They employ around 250,000 people, representing more than 44 percent of the total number of jobs.”

Mauritius Chamber of Industry and Commerce’s chairperson and business consultant Ganesh Ramalingum tells IPS that these microenterprises are very important to the economy because they create jobs.

“A person who has some mechanical skills opens a business of repairing bicycles and motorcycles. He’ll need one or two people to help him … So, many jobs are being created in this way and that’s good for the economy. People who earlier had difficulty earning a living are now creating their own businesses in fields that suit them,” he says.

Local authorities regulate these small businesses. They are not supposed to get involved in any unusual activity in a residential area, or disturb neighbours at unreasonable hours or pollute the environment with dust, fumes or odours. They are required to comply with the guidelines issued by the Fire Services, the Sanitary Authority and the Environment Ministry. But many feel that these small businesses are not complying with the guidelines.

Ganeshen Mooneesawmy, vice chairperson of the District Council of Rivière du Rempart that issues and monitors business permits in the northern part of the island, is happy that these people are working, but finds that many of them lack discipline in running their business.

“They won’t ask for jobs from the government as there (are) none available … (but) they sell food in an unhygienic manner and they disturb the living environment in their area. We have very few staff to keep a check on them,” he tells IPS.

In Goodlands, northern Mauritius, small businesses operate literally on the sidewalks in spite of a law that prevents this. Many of them put their goods in large baskets that they place on wooden or iron stands on the sidewalks.

Ashok (full name not given), a vendor, tells IPS he has to do this to attract clients because his business is very small.

“There is so much competition around from big stalls and also from smaller businesses around. If you don’t fight, you don’t eat tonight,” he says.

Municipal Councillor Kritanand Beeharry of Curepipe, a town in the southern part of Mauritius, chairs the Municipality’s Health and Sanitation Committee. He tells IPS that his staff has inspected some of these small businesses after receiving complaints from residents. “The police is also solicited when the need arises,” he adds.

However, he finds more positive points than negative ones in these modest endeavours, as “these small businesses are easy to manage”.

But councillor Prakash Bhunsee of the Flacq District Council in eastern Mauritius believes the situation has gotten out of control.

“I am afraid the police only check the licences of the small entrepreneurs and is not concerned with health, sanitation, environment or pollution matters,” he says.

The shortage of staff at the municipal inspectorate level makes it obvious that many of these businesses go unchecked for months.

Lallmamode Mohamedally, a Mauritian fisher at the port near Les Salines, a fishing town close to the country’s capital Port Louis. Credit: Nasseem Ackbarally/IPS

By Nasseem Ackbarally
PORT LOUIS, Jun 25 2013 (IPS)

“No fighting, please. Everybody will get their fish. Give us time to empty the crates and weigh today’s catch,” Patrick Guiliano Marie, leader of the St. Pierre Fish Multi-Purpose Cooperative Society, shouts at the crowd jostling impatiently at the fish landing station in Grand Gaube, a fishing village in northern Mauritius.

People bump into each other to buy the fish that this cooperative society has just harvested from cages out in the lagoon.

“We don’t get fresh fish all year round. We have to buy frozen ones. This is an opportunity for us to eat some fresh ones,” one customer Marie-Ange Beezadhur tells IPS as she tries to negotiate her way through the crowd.

In the lagoon, about 500 metres from the coast, two platforms have been set up, each with four underwater cages.

In one average-size cage of four square metres, there are about 5,000 fingerlings, or young fish, which are fed pellets and seaweed collected from the lagoon.

It takes eight months for the fish to grow to about 500 grammes, with a small cage producing about four tonnes of fish, and a large one producing about 25 tonnes.

To date, aquaculture has been introduced to three areas in the surrounding ocean here, while a further 19 sites have been identified.

The cages, nets, fingerlings, and feed have all been provided for free by the government and the European Union (EU) under the Decentralised Cooperation Programme.

Marie and the 14 members of this cooperative society catch fish on a line for seven months of the year and for the remaining five months they aquafarm – they were trained to do this by the Albion Fisheries Research Centre.

A decade ago, fishers could just throw their nets in the lagoon and catch as many fish as they wanted. But things have changed.“The idea is also to help protect the lagoon, to let our sea breathe.” -- chairman of the Syndicat Des Pêcheurs, Judex Rampaul

“Our catches have now diminished because of industrial pollution. There is also a lack of surveillance of the lagoon and the recklessness of some fishers, who have been catching small fish over a number of years, has put the sustainability of the fish resources at stake,” Marie tells IPS.

He says that fish farming “is more for the youth who can learn the trade and develop it in the future instead of taking a fishing line and some nets and going out to sea. This is a tough job.”

In February 2012, local fishers complained that an agreement between the EU and Mauritius, which allows European vessels to catch 5,500 tonnes of fish a year for three years, made it difficult for local fishers to earn a living.

That year, the production by local small fishers was only 5,100 tonnes and local fishers complained to IPS that because of the EU agreement, their catch had gone down by 50 to 60 percent.  The country produces a total of 29,000 tonnes of fish a year.

But Minister of Fisheries Nicolas Von Mally met with the fishers at Grand Gaube on Jun. 13 and told them that aquaculture was meant to raise the standard of living of some 2,200 traditional fishers who were finding it difficult to survive because of decreased fish stocks.

“We have no intention to fill the lagoon with these floating cages around the island, but only to install a few so that they can produce the maximum amount of fish without polluting or blocking the lagoon,” Von Mally tells IPS.

But not everyone is happy with the solution and some fishers and environmentalists say that fish farming will negatively impact the marine ecosystem.

The St. Pierre Fish Multi-Purpose Cooperative Society, has begun fish farming in the lagoon just off Grand Gaube, a fishing village in northern Mauritius. Credit: Nasseem Ackbarally/IPS

“We have observed that many fish and predators, like sharks, roam around the floating cages. They are attracted by the great number of fish in the same place and by the food,” one fisher from Bambous Virieux, in southern Mauritius, tells IPS.

Environmental engineer Vassen Kauppaymuthoo agrees.“Too many fish in small spaces means a concentration of fish urine. The fish are fed with pellets that contain antimicrobials and antibiotics. This can harm the marine ecosystem,” he tells IPS.

Judex Rampaul, chairman of the Syndicat Des Pêcheurs, an association that defends the rights of fishers, believes that fish farming is similar to the industrial rearing of chickens.

“They are different from the fish that live in a natural state in the lagoon. I believe the government is putting too much emphasis on aquaculture. Our fishing space is also reduced in the lagoon,” he tells IPS.

Rampaul and other fishers say that they would prefer for the lagoon not to be used for fish farming.

“The idea is also to help protect the lagoon, to let our sea breathe,” Rampaul says.

But Von Mally says that aquafarms around the island will benefit fishers and their customers alike. Presently, about 50 percent of the fish that Mauritians consume is imported.

“Demand for seafood is increasing and thus pressure on marine resources is rising. In this regard, marine ranching can provide a worthwhile means to sustain marine resources in Mauritius,” he says.

“We don’t know if the lagoon will keep on producing enough fish in the future, but aquaculture can become a big business and should help eradicate poverty among the fishing community.”

Floods devastated the Mauritian capital, Port-Louis, on Mar. 30 but locals can expect the island to be affected by more floods, landslides and cyclones in the coming years because of climate change. Credit: Nasseem Ackbarally/IPS

By Nasseem Ackbarally
PORT-LOUIS , Apr 16 2013 (IPS)

Mauritius may be one of the best-prepared countries in the world when it comes to cyclones, but recent heavy rains and flooding due to climate change have brought the country’s readiness for coping with increased rainfall into question. 

Ecologist Keshwar Beeharry-Panray tells IPS that he expects the island to be affected by more floods, landslides and cyclones in the coming years because of climate change.

Beeharry-Panray, the director of a local NGO called Environment Protection and Conservation Organisation, says that the population has yet to understand the effects this will have on the country, and that even the government has not yet begun to prepare for increased rainfall on this Indian Ocean Island.

“We won’t get enough time to run for safety if we are not prepared,” he says.

Floods devastated the Mauritian capital, Port-Louis, on Mar. 30. Eleven people were killed, a hundred were wounded and thousands of dollars of damage was caused to buildings, roads, vehicles, shops and houses. Emergency services were overwhelmed and unable to provide effective response to the disaster.

Environmental engineer Vassen Kauppaymuthoo, a private consultant on environmental issues, concurs with Beeharry-Panray.

“People know what to do, what precautions to take when a cyclone approaches the island. The weather deteriorates and the meteorological warnings are issued. Yet, (Mauritius) lacks the same preparation with regard to floods and other natural calamities,” Kauppaymuthoo tells IPS.

According to the United Nations Development Programme, the island is vulnerable to “considerable economic loss, humanitarian stresses and environmental degradation as a result of climate change impacts. The direct climate change impacts likely to adversely affect Mauritius include an increase in the frequency of intense rainfall episodes, sea level rise of 18 – 59 centimetres by 2100 and an increase in intensity of tropical cyclones.”

During the Mar. 30 floods, in less than two hours 156 millimetres (mm) of rain fell in the capital, while it barely rained on other parts of the island. Torrents of water swept down from the mountains that surround Port-Louis and surged towards the city centre, sweeping up everything in their path.

Feroz Banjal, 61, was travelling back home in a bus when the vehicle got carried away in the flood.

From the bus, he saw a few people being swept away by the rains. He got out of the vehicle but was carried by the water for about 500 metres before a taxi driver standing on top of a footpath saved him.

“Thirty years or plus I travelled to the capital, I have never, ever seen so much water on the streets,” Banjal tells IPS.

Climate change is a reality for Mauritius. One official from the Mauritius Meteorological Services says that because of climate change, the rainfall pattern on the island has changed over the last few years.

“For the past two years, the island suffered from a severe drought, until early 2013 when it started raining a bit. In February and March, it rained a lot,” he tells IPS on the condition of anonymity.

For Nathalie Pompom, who lives near Canal Dayot, a river that carries the mountain rains to the sea, the heavy rainfall was a shock.

“Eighteen years I have lived here, I have never seen so much water entering my home. We lost everything. We fear for our future,” Pompom tells IPS.

Kauppaymuthoo says that on Feb. 13 floods also struck the island, and that it was unacceptable that less than two months later Mauritians had not been prepared for the Mar. 30 floods.

“We were warned that there was more to come, but this warning fell on deaf ears. Mauritius needs a management plan for natural calamities. A unit should be set up that is on the alert 24 hours a day, and that can take decisions fast to save lives and prevent material damage. As time passes, natural catastrophes will be on the increase because of climate change,” Kauppaymuthoo says.

As concrete and asphalt roads sprout everywhere to ease traffic congestion, and as building progresses, green spaces are being reduced at a fast pace. There are very few trees in the capital and less than two percent of forest cover on the island that could mitigate the effects of the torrential rain, Kauppaymuthoo says.

The country also does not have well-maintained drains to carry the rainwater to the sea; instead they are blocked by construction waste.

He adds that the construction of a ring road on the slopes of a mountain overlooking Port-Louis could also be part of the problem.

“Altering the natural course of water, modifying the structure of the natural drains that existed for millions of years to cut out roads in them poses a real threat to the environment,” Kauppaymuthoo says.

But Public Infrastructure Minister Anil Bachoo, grilled by local residents and the media, who accused him of irresponsibility because of the road development, says the floods were unforeseen.

“What happened in Port-Louis is entirely beyond human control. We are, of course, sad that this natural catastrophe has caused so much damage to our island. We had never dreamt that we could get 150 mm of rain at one go in a small region like Port-Louis,” he told the media on Apr. 4.

But Karim Jaufeerally, from the Institute of Environmental and Legal Studies, believes that the loss of life in the recent floods is due to sheer negligence by the government and local authorities.

“Even if Mauritius was prepared against natural calamities, there would have been the same problem in the capital because the drains did not function properly. The magnitude of the floods would have been less if the drains were clean,” he tells IPS.

Jaufeerally asks: “It’s easy to speak of preparedness for the next time, but what about the last time?”

Mauritians protest against the construction of a 100-megawatt (MW) coal power plant in Pointe-aux-Caves. They say the project will cause irreparable damage to them and the environment of this Indian Ocean island nation. Credit: Nasseem Ackbarally/IPS

By Nasseem Ackbarally
PORT-LOUIS , Apr 4 2013 (IPS)

Residents of Albion, a small village in Pointe-aux-Caves, western Mauritius, say that by opposing the construction of a new coal power plant near their homes, they are defending their constitutional right to live.

“What a catastrophe is coming to our region,” says Ed Laverdure, as he sits under the veranda of a shop in Albion less than two kilometres away from the site where CT Power (Mauritius) Ltd., the company commissioned to construct and operate the plant, is clearing the land for construction.

For the last six months, the residents of Albion and environmental activists have protested the construction of a 100-megawatt (MW) coal power plant, commissioned by the country’s Central Electricity Board (CEB). They have also petitioned the Supreme Court to halt the project that they say will cause irreparable damage to them and the environment of this Indian Ocean island nation. The court will hear their case on May. 6.

On Thursday, Apr. 4, residents took what they hoped was a significant step in halting the construction of the plant. They presented, during a hearing closed to the public, their objections about the plant to the National Energy Commission, which was set up by the government following the recent public outcry over the issue.

The commission, which comprises high-level government officials, scientists from the Mauritius Research Council and the University of Mauritius, environmentalists and trade unionists, was asked by residents of Albion to halt the project and to ensure the government moves away from using the existing four power coal power plants in the country, which were installed in the early 2000s.

“They should not be allowed to be refurbished and have their usefulness extended with new coal units. Any new power plant must be (built using) renewable energy sources,” residents said in their request.

Presently, Mauritius produces about 438 MW of power, which supplies some 420,000 consumer households and industries.

Some 22 percent of the country’s electricity comes from renewable sources such as hydro, wind and bagasse. But fossil fuel plants generate about 50 percent of all electricity produced locally, with coal plants accounting for 30 percent. According to the CEB, Mauritius needs an additional 100 MW of electricity by 2015 to prevent a power shortage in this country of 1.3 million people.

Environmental engineer Vassen Kauppaymuthoo tells IPS that the impact the plant will have on the population will be significant.

“The environment, the economy and even the social life on the island will be affected,” he says. “About 1,600 tonnes of coal will be transported daily by road from the port to the plant causing: traffic jams and pollution on the road, ash emissions, the release of heavy metals in the air, and contamination of the underground water if the ash is not buried with great care in the soil.

“The sea nearby (will be polluted) and 900 grammes of carbon dioxide for every kilowatt of electricity produced will be released. These are just a few of the consequences,” Kauppaymuthoo adds.

Keshwar Beeharry-Panray, an ecologist and chief executive officer of Environment Protection and Conservation Organisation, an environmental and conservation NGO, says that residents could face serious health risks, including developing respiratory problems such as asthma, and skin rashes.

Beeharry-Panray questions what type of technology will be used at the new coal plant.

“Everybody knows that modern technology to reduce pollution to the maximum is very costly. Will (CT Power) invest in it? Not sure. They (power companies) always say that they’ll take care of the pollution, but when it comes to real implementation, nothing happens and even the authorities forget about it,” he says, questioning whether the Ministry of Environment and Sustainable Development is equipped to monitor the activities of the operating power companies.

The CEB states on its website that due to restructuring and privatisation, it produces 40 percent of the country’s power, with the remainder being produced by independent companies.

But according to the CEB, Mauritius has limited known exploitable energy sources.

“If this new project is not realised, we will have to use more oil to produce electricity. We need 100 MW of additional electricity very fast because what is most important of all is that the population should get their electricity,” Shiam Thannoo, general manager of the CEB, tells IPS.

He observes that there is a limit to using renewable energy, as the high investment costs are the main obstacle. However, the CEB is planning to construct one 20-MW wind power plant every three years starting from 2017, and one 10-MW solar plant every three years from 2013.

But Suttyhudeo Tengur, director of the NGO Association for the Promotion of the Environment and Consumers, believes a small island like Mauritius has no choice but to use thermal power as only oil and coal are readily available here, which “unfortunately pollute the environment and affect our health…”

Though Khalil Elahee, director of the government’s Energy Efficiency Management Office, points out that the current growth in energy demand is low. He says demand grew by two percent in 2012 compared to a growth of 10 percent in 1980.

“This is due to the evolution of the economy and the fact that the main old pillars like the textile and sugar industries were huge consumers of electricity. Today, the services sector, which is expanding, uses less energy,” he tells IPS.

Meanwhile, Laverdure tells IPS that he and his family want to leave Albion, but cannot. “Who’ll buy my house in which I have invested my savings and am still paying for the bank loan?”

He says that if all the demonstrations, petitions and protests against the construction of the plant do not succeed, he will have to live next to it forever.

“Our kids also,” adds his friend, who only wants to be referred to as Georges.

“We’ll also have to forget about our blue lagoon nearby because of the pollution,” claims Laverdure.

Mauritian smallholder farmer Kritanand Beeharry with some his produce. Credit: Nasseem Ackbarally/IPS

By Nasseem Ackbarally
PORT LOUIS, Feb 26 2013 (IPS)

By Kritanand Beeharry’s side are thousands of watermelon seedlings that he has grown in small pots without the use of chemical fertilisers.

As the farmer prepares his half-hectare piece of land in Soreze, near Mauritius’ capital Port-Louis, to plant the two-week-old seedlings, he takes a minute to admire his achievement. “Look at these, they look solid and better grown — it’s the compost,” he says.

It has been about a month now since the government teamed up with a private compost-manufacturer to offer farmers here a 30-percent subsidy for compost made from domestic waste and an increasing number are realising the benefits of going green.

“It’s the same as the manure that we used a long time back,” Beeharry tells IPS.

“This has not been available for decades, because animal husbandry has declined here — we had no choice but to use chemicals, and this has damaged our soil.”

The Compost Subsidy Scheme offered by the government since Feb. 1 means that farmers now pay 50 dollars less per tonne for the compost they buy from Solid Waste Recycling Ltd, a private enterprise that produces compost from domestic waste.

Roopesh Beekharry, manager at the Small Farmers Welfare Fund, which administers the subsidy, says 525 of the country’s 12,000 farmers have utilised the discount since the scheme’s official launch earlier this month.

“And the number is growing everyday,” the fund manager told IPS.

While things started off a bit slowly because of recent rains, he expects interest to pick up again after March, he says.  In total, about 2,000 farmers have bought compost from the plant since it opened in June 2012, according to Solid Waste Recycling.

Tomato farmer Kripalou Sunghoon from Triolet, northern Mauritius, believes that the compost subsidy has come at the right time to challenge the rising costs of chemical fertilisers. While the latter go for 750 to 800 dollars a tonne, compost presents a cheap alternative at only 175 to 200 dollars a tonne.

“We no longer can afford to buy chemical fertilisers,” Sunghoon told IPS. “The subsidised compost will bring down the cost of our inputs, besides giving a new life to our dying soil.”

The benefits of going organic are nothing new to Manoj Vaghjee, president of Resources and Nature Foundation, a non-governmental organisation promoting sustainable agriculture on the island. For the last five years he has been training farmers in biological agriculture and the use of organic compost.

He says that plants grow stronger, resist insects and pests, and farmers obtain a better yield when they use organic compost.

“Our trainees have cultivated 30 to 40 percent more ladyfingers, maize, tapioca, calabash and brinjals with compost than with chemicals per harvest,” Vaghjee told IPS.

What’s more, compost helps develop better roots and prevents soil erosion, according to agricultural engineer Eric Mangar from the Movement for Self-Sufficiency, an NGO for agricultural development.

“Chemical fertilisers affect the soil, reduce the plant’s resistance to diseases and pests,” he told IPS. “They pollute the rivers and lakes and underground reservoirs and also affect the quality of the vegetables.”

The quality of the compost, however, has not gone undisputed.

Raffick Dowlut, senior extension officer at Agricultural Research and Extension Unit, says he has compared compost made from domestic waste to chemical fertilisers and finds that compost has a relatively low concentration of nutritive elements as opposed to the chemicals.

But he admits that “compost improves the physical, chemical and biological nature of soil and its fertility – chemicals do not.”

Agricultural scientist Ramesh Rajkumar advises farmers not to change their production method immediately. Instead, they should use a mix of 50 percent of compost and 50 percent of chemicals, he said, as the latter supply minerals to the plants.

“The soil fertility is damaged by the use of too much chemicals over such a long time,” he explained, “It should be built slowly.”

Meanwhile, the recycling plant prevents about 100,000 tonnes of domestic waste a year from being dumped in the only landfill on the island, according to Patrick Maurel, chief executive officer at Solid Waste Recycling. Dumped at Mare Chicose, in the south “it would contaminate the underground water reservoirs and release methane that pollutes the air,” Maurel told IPS.

The country’s 1.3 million people produce about 1,200 tonnes of waste daily, or 400,000 tonnes a year, and the government spends around 16 million dollars collecting it and transporting it to the dumping ground, according to the Local Government Ministry.

Citing a 2002 study by the University of Mauritius, Maurel says almost 90 percent of the waste is recyclable and 55 percent can be transformed into compost and used in agriculture.

Back at Beeharry’s melon farm, the green grower looks at his latest transition holistically.

“When we care for the environment, we care for natural resources that are made up of land, water and air. This not only helps us to get a better production, but it also gives us our daily food, now and in the future.”

By Nasseem Ackbarally
Nov 13 2012 (IPS)

Mauritius, held up as an economic success story, is undergoing a lot of social change. However it seems the education system is not keeping pace with the rapid change as the number of teenage pregnancies is on the rise.

[podcast]http://traffic.libsyn.com/ipsaudio/Early_sex_debut_leads_to_increased_teenage_pregnancies_in_Mauritius.mp3[/podcast]

Lallmamode Mohamedally, a Mauritian fisher, points to a European vessel offloading its catch at the port near Les Salines, a fishing town close to the country’s capital Port Louis. Credit: Nasseem Ackbarally/IPS

By Nasseem Ackbarally
PORT LOUIS, Aug 9 2012 (IPS)

“Look out there, the blue one…. that is a European Union fishing vessel that is threatening our livelihood,” says Lallmamode Mohamedally, a Mauritian fisherman, as he points to a boat offloading its catch at the Les Salines port, close to the country’s capital Port Louis.

He is one of the fishers who have returned after a hard day at sea with their boats almost empty. Pollution and tourist activity have reduced the fish catch on the island’s lagoons over the past few years.

But local fishers say a February agreement between the EU and this Indian Ocean island nation, which allows European vessels to catch 5,500 tonnes of fish a year for three years at a cost of 660,000 euros annually, has made the situation worse.

While there are no official figures to confirm this, the 3,500 local fishers, who now have to compete with modern industrialised fishing boats, say that their catch has gone down by 50 to 60 percent.

And the Les Salines fishers believe that the 86 vessels from companies based in the EU, which are fishing in the area, are stealing their livelihoods.

“These big vessels are scratching the sea around Mauritius and taking away all the fish,” says Mohamedally.

While most fishers want the EU vessels to leave, Mohamedally says he would not mind them operating in Mauritian waters “only if they fish like everybody else, like the Taiwanese and the Japanese.”

“Only longliners please. No seines. Those vessels catch all types of fish, small and big alike,” he says.

Long line fishing is a commercial technique that uses hundreds or sometimes thousands of baited hooks, which hang from a single line. This type of fishing commonly targets swordfish, tuna, halibut, and sablefish. Seines use surrounding nets.

However, Mauritian authorities believe that this is the only way to exploit its vast exclusive economic zone or EEZ of 2.3 million square kilometres.

Local fishing companies here are small and do not have the ability to fish on such a large scale. The 5,500 tonnes of fish that Mauritius has allowed the EU to catch each year is in stark contrast to the few tonnes the 34 fishermen of Les Salines catch in a year.

Currently the fisheries sector in Mauritius represents only one percent of the country’s GDP, and the local fish production is only 5,100 tonnes.

Mohamedally says that in the past fish were abundant three to four nautical miles from the coast. Today, the fishers travel almost 15 nautical miles out to sea, but many still come back without a catch.

“What will happen in five years time to our jobs? They are giving us an egg and taking an ox out of our sea,” adds Mohamedally, referring to the 660,000 euros annually that Mauritius has agreed in payment by the EU in exchange for fishing rights in its EEZ.

Judex Rampol, chairman of the Syndicat des Pêcheurs, a fishers’ association, is furious about this. “This is peanuts,” he tells IPS. If local fisherfolk had the capacity to fish so far out at sea, they would earn about 15 million euros for the 5,500 tonnes of fish the EU is now allowed to catch.

However, Minister of Fisheries Nicolas Von-Mally believes Mauritius needs help to exploit its vast EEZ.

“We have no fishing vessels. Should we depend on locals, many fishes would have long died of old age,” he says.

Von-Mally adds that canning factories on the island process the tuna caught by the EU vessels. However, it is sold mainly on the European market.

He adds that tuna is migratory, and if it is not caught in the Mauritian EEZ, it will swim to the zones of the neighbouring Indian Ocean islands of Seychelles and Maldives. “We’ll thus lose revenue,” he says.

Bahim Khan Taher, manager of Taher Seafoods, a small local fishing company, tells IPS that he would like to exploit Mauritius’ fish stock, but he needs modern vessels, equipment and financial incentives to fish in the EEZ.

“If we get some help from the government in terms of fiscal incentives, we could also go out fishing there. This would boost our seafood hub exports,” Taher says.

Meanwhile, environmentalists are concerned that overfishing may deplete tuna stocks in the Indian Ocean. Mauritian oceanographer and environmental engineer Vassen Kauppaymoothoo is one of them.

“The EU vessels are here because the stocks in the other oceans have collapsed. They have been overfished by vessels from Portugal, France and Spain. The only ocean where there is still some fish is the Indian Ocean,” he tells IPS, adding that 5,500 tonnes a year was overfishing and would deplete resources.

He adds that while Mauritius does not have the capacity to fish its EEZ, this does not mean that they should allow foreigners to do so. He says Morocco decided to close its EEZ to foreigners in a decision to solely keep its fish stock for its local population.

“There is no reason to loot my house because I do not have the means to exploit its wealth,” Kauppaymoothoo argues.

But the head of the EU Delegation in Port Louis, Alessandro Mariani, tells IPS that they are helping to create jobs, not take them away.

“In Mauritius alone, 5,500 jobs benefit from the tuna that is disembarked by the EU vessels,” he says.

Mariani claims that there is no competition between the EU fleet and the local fishers because they operates very far away from each other. The EU vessels fish 15 nautical miles from the coast, and the locals at three nautical miles.

“We are also targeting different fish species,” he says.

Mariani says the EU is very sensitive about the tuna stocks in the Indian Ocean.

“Our fishing efforts are guided by scientific research. The Indian Ocean Tuna Commission Scientific Committee said in October 2011 that there is no overfishing in this region,” he says.

Von Mally adds: “We are not shooting at our own feet. We want fish to be always available in our seas for future generations.”

They both deny that the EU placed pressure on the Mauritian government to sign the agreement. “This is simply not true. Mauritius and the EU are partners and we always discuss things about the interest of both the EU and Mauritius,” says Mariani.

Mauritian farmers have become fair trade certified and have begun farming in a more environmentally sustainable way. Credit: Nasseem Ackbarally/IPS

By Nasseem Ackbarally
PORT LOUIS, Jun 22 2012 (IPS)

In finding a way to survive a 36 percent cut in sugar prices, Mauritian farmers are not only exporting a variety of fruit and vegetables to the European Union, but they have also begun farming in a more environmentally sustainable way.

This is because a large number of farmers here on this Indian Ocean island have become fair trade certified. Fair trade is a social movement that promotes just terms for farmers and workers and encourages sustainability in the developing world. Fair trade certified products also usually command a higher price than regular ones because of the high standards and ethics involved in producing them.

Mauritius is one of Africa’s largest sugar exporters to Europe, and most of its refined sugar is exported to the EU. But when the sugar price fell over a period of three years by a total of 36 percent at the end of 2010, small farmers here realised that they could still earn a good income and do so in a way that would protect the small island’s environment from harmful fertilisers and chemicals.

“Our income was dwindling. So it was better to be fair trade certified to earn some more money,” said farmer Keshoe Parsad Chattoo.

Products labelled fair trade generally sell well in Europe and the United States because they meet agreed international environmental, labour and developmental standards. There are some 3,000 products that fall under the label, including sugar, coffee, spices, vanilla and bananas. Consumers willingly pay more for fair trade products, a premium of 585 dollars per tonne in the case of sugar, above the normal price of about 525 dollars per tonne.

Jean-Philippe Zanavelo, Fair Trade International’s representative for Mauritius, said that producers are at the heart of the fair trade concept.

“Consumers are willing to pay more for good-quality products, and this extra money goes directly to producers. They get good markets and attain sustainable development,” he told IPS.

As a result many local farmers are joining the movement here.

“We are now producing and exporting good-quality food free of chemicals that trouble our health and our environment, and earning additional income,” said Kishan Fangooa, a farmer and secretary of the Long Mountain Pineapple and Allied Growers Cooperative Society Ltd. The society has almost five hectares of land under pineapple cultivation in Long Mountain, northern Mauritius.

The fair trade movement began here in 2011, with 4,500 farmers from 32 cooperative societies. That year they earned 701,000 dollars in income, compared to 492,000 dollars in 2010, when fewer farmers were members.

Becoming fair trade certified is an exacting and difficult process, some farmers told IPS. But many feel it is worth the effort.

“The criteria may be constricting, but it helps improve the quality of our produce and we are determined to earn an increased income,” Fangooa told IPS.

Producers have to be audited by the standard-setting body, Fair Trade International, and an independent certification body to ensure that the agreed standards are met. In agreeing to fair trade, producers have to abide by criteria that include democracy, transparency, good governance and the protection of the environment.

Narain Phagoo, a fair trade certified farmer, said that the products are routinely monitored.

“Apart from regular audits and inspection of the fields, I understand there are laboratories in Europe that keep checks on the quality of our produce that we export. They’ll know if we use prohibited products and they’ll reject our exports,” he told IPS.

“We better observe the regulations and get our increased income,” he added.

Rajen Hemoo, secretary of the Victoria Cooperative Society, said that the fair trade concept was good for small producers and the requirements were not difficult to comply with.

“It’s a new model of operation, a disciplined way of producing. It’s an old concept but we discovered it only recently,” he said.

“There are both direct and indirect benefits to this concept. Our inputs are subsidised, we obtain cash grants and loans at low interest rates. We also get involved in the community in our region,” he said from his sugar cane field in Congomah, northern Mauritius.

Farmers are required to share some of their proceeds with their local communities by funding social activities or aiding in the development of villages. There is, however, no prescribed amount of how much they should donate.

But not everyone is keen to be fair trade certified here. In the south of the island, members of the Southern Planters Association (SPA) are reluctant to join the movement.

“We produce the canes and the sugar. Yet, the communities get the extra money and manage it for themselves. We thought the extra money obtained from fair trade would go into the pockets of small producers directly to help them manage the rising costs of production,” SPA president Gassen Modely said of the requirement for producers to give back some of their profits to the community.

Modely does not believe farmers will benefit from the fair trade concept after they pay audit fees of between 1,000 to 3,500 dollars annually per cooperative society in order to remain certified. Currently these fees have been subsidised by government. “This is very high,” Modely told IPS.

Inder Rajcoomarsingh, a member of the Sebastopol Multi-Purpose Cooperative Society, agreed.

“Such high audit fees and to get peanuts in return. Many people do not know that the government has supported us to pay the audit fees for fair trade. That’s how we make extra money. Had we incurred the expenses ourselves, we would not have seen any profit in this concept,” he told IPS.

He said that he finds that the criteria are rigid and interferes with the way things have always been done here.

“A chairman’s mandate under the cooperative legislation is three years but nobody abides by it. Many chairmen have been here for the past 20 years. Now, Fair Trade International is insisting that it be only a three-year mandate. Cooperative members are not happy.”

Business and Cooperatives Minister Jim Seetaram said that they want small producers to have the choice between traditional farming and farming with fair trade policies, which brings about sustainable development. He believes Mauritian farmers can also export litchis, flowers, fruits, lemon and honey under the fair trade label.

By Nasseem Ackbarally and - -
PORT-LOUIS , Mar 19 2012 (IPS)

Rani Murthy, a public officer who lives in Plaines Wilhems, central Mauritius, wakes at three every morning to wait for the water tanker from the Central Water Authority so that she can collect water for cooking and household chores.

Mauritius has been experiencing a water shortage for months as the anticipated summer rains are yet to arrive with the season close to its end. Credit: Nasseem Ackbarally/IPS

But scenes of people queuing for water are recurrent on several parts of the island. As local reservoirs run dry, running water has become a luxury here.

The shortage has had widespread implications across the island as farmers, particularly in the north, can now only cultivate a fraction of their land. Kreepallou Sunghoon, secretary of the Small Planters Association, says farmers who used to cultivate vegetables on 10 to 15 hectares pieces of land only use less than a third of that now.

“Agriculture is no longer profitable,” he laments.

Kritanand Beeharry, chairperson of the Mauritius Agricultural Marketing Cooperative Federation, says that many farmers have resorted to harvesting rainwater on the roofs of their houses, which they use to irrigate their plantations.

“Some are building basins on their land to collect rainwater, while others buy it from private trucks roaming their area that have collected the water from rivers,” he says.

Before the lack of rains Mauritius was already classified as a water-stressed country. According to United Nations standards a water-stressed country has a per capita availability of less than 1,700 cubic metres. Mauritius only had a per capita consumption of 1,044 cubic metres.

The country has been experiencing a water shortage for months and it seems as if there are no signs of it abating, as the anticipated summer rains are yet to arrive with less than a month of the season left.

Normally, the whole island gets two-thirds of its usual rainfall or 1,344 mm from November to April.

“More than half of the summer period is gone and we got only 373 mm of rain over the whole island. It always rains a lot between January and March, but this year we got only 88 mm of the normal 261 mm in January,” says Rajen Mungra, director of the Mauritius Meteorological Services.

In the centre of the island where the Mare-aux-Vacoas reservoir, the biggest of the five on the island with a capacity of 27 million cubic metres, is located, the long-term rainfall mean is 2,173 mm. However, the area received only 549 mm this summer and the water level in this reservoir, which services the country’s main towns and almost half its population, stands at 29 percent.

Water production from the Mare-aux-Vacoas reservoir has decreased from 110,000 cubic metres to 40,000 cubic metres daily.

In other regions, production from reservoirs and boreholes has also fallen by more than 50 percent, according to the CWA. River levels have dropped by almost 70 percent on several parts of the island, according to the country’s Water Resources Unit.

“We are facing a severe hydrological drought. We are worried,” Prem Saddul, chairman of the CWA, told IPS.

The CWA is transferring water from reservoirs of higher capacity to ones of lower capacity and are identifying new boreholes to be put into operation. Five new filters have been installed on rivers that previously flowed into the sea to filter the water and redirect it to the reservoirs.

The government is also offering a grant of about 100 dollars to every household earning less than 330 dollars for the purchase of a water tank.

Meanwhile, the CWA is rationing the water supply in order to maintain the service to the population as long as possible.

“We ensure that every household receives a minimum amount of water daily,” says Jeet Munbahal, the chief engineer at the CWA.

The CWA has issued regulations restricting people from wasting water by using a hosepipe, sprinkler or any similar apparatus. Mauritians have even been warned against washing their vehicles, pavements, and buildings.

Those domestic consumers who contravene this regulation shall, on conviction, be liable for a fine not exceeding 1,800 dollars and a term of imprisonment not exceeding two years. For other consumers the fine is larger though it does not exceed 7,200 dollars.

Despite the efforts by the CWA to conserve water and a public campaign calling for Mauritians to save the precious commodity, Saddul says most of the population is not complying and water is still being wasted.

Saddul says CWA officers have been monitoring petrol stations to ensure that they stop washing vehicles.

“Our officers are checking on them regularly. We are seeking the collaboration of the public who can also inform us through our hotline about people wasting water. We are not punishing people, but discouraging them from wasting water,” he adds.

Even the country’s national Police Commissioner has instructed police officers to monitor water wastage during patrols.

Meanwhile, Kheswar Beeharry-Panray, director of the Environment Protection and Conservation Organisation, believes the lack of rainfall in Mauritius is due to climate change.

“The water cycle has changed in the world and so Mauritius cannot expect to get the same rain pattern like 20/30 years back,” he says, further estimating that too many trees have been cut down in the country’s catchment areas.

“This explains the scarcity of rains. It is now better for us to increase our stocking capacity – on rooftops, in tanks, small dams, everywhere,” Beeharry-Panray says.

Excerpt:

Amateurism, high prices, mismanagement, and a limited product range have discouraged Inderjeet Rajcoomarsingh, the former chairman of the Mauritius Agricultural Cooperative Federation, from shopping at cooperative stores.

Mauritians are abandoning shopping at dirty and disorganised cooperatives in favour of shopping malls. Credit: Nasseem Ackbarally/IPS

Instead you can find Rajcoomarsingh, who was a cooperative member for 34 years, pushing a trolley full of goods at The Bagatelle, a new shopping mall that is presently the craze in Mauritius.

Many Mauritians, mostly the youth here, say they have never heard of cooperative stores or the principles of consumer cooperatives. In theory consumers’ cooperative are meant to provide quality goods and services at the lowest price. But in practice, their goods and services are priced at market rates or higher.

“Today, a cooperative is just a name. There is no value and no principle. I don’t see that people’s lifestyles have improved so much in Mauritius by shopping at cooperative stores,” Rajcoomarsingh told IPS.

Cooperative stores did well here until the 1990s when the robust economic development of the island paved the way for supermarkets and, later, hypermarkets. Now, shopping malls have sprung up all over the island like mushrooms after the rains.

Several new shopping malls are set to open this year, putting another nail in the coffin of cooperative stores in this International Year of Cooperatives. IPS visited the Advance Coop Society, at Plaine des Papayes in northern Mauritius.

Here the store was disorganised, products were not properly displayed and the prices of goods were higher than that of the same goods on sale in local malls. And there is no such thing as a business returns policy or even customer care.

It is probably why Abdel Khodabockus, a teacher who lives near a cooperative store, has not entered one in years. “It is long time back since I have entered a cooperative store,” Khodabockus said.

And 21-year-old Mariam, who does not want to be identified, has never stepped foot in one. “Since my childhood, my parents took me to supermarkets for shopping and I have got used to it. It’s modern and clean…and we get all the products we need under a single roof. I don’t care for a cooperative shop because I do not know what it is all about,” she told IPS.

This does not surprise Dawood Mootoojakhan, who was once a member of a now defunct cooperative store at Plaine-Verte in the country’s capital.

“There is not a single good cooperative store in Mauritius. People who think the opposite are lying. I have personally witnessed cash and goods shortages in our cooperative shop, but who cares? That’s how our cooperative store went bankrupt some years back,” he told IPS.

That and a lack of progress from cooperative stores is one of the reasons for their failure.

“Cooperative stores remained stagnant when the island was developing fast. They did not modernise and develop further their operations to satisfy the demands of the population whose income and lifestyles were improving under the economic miracle of the 90s. The arrival of supermarkets accelerated this decline,” said Suttyhudeo Tengur, secretary of the Camp Thorel Multi-Purpose Cooperative Society Ltd, which owns a cooperative shop at Camp Thorel, a village in eastern Mauritius. He added that the Camp Thorel cooperative is doing well.

In just one decade, from 1990 to 2000, the number of cooperative stores fell from 95 to 30. Today, only three are operational. Tengur blamed the Mauritius Consumer Cooperative Federation (MCCF) for the downfall of cooperative stores.

“This organisation was supposed to set up a central warehouse and import large volumes of goods to sell to the stores at better prices. It abandoned this activity long ago, preferring to buy from the private sector and sell to the consumers. Because the MCCF has failed in its mission, many cooperative stores have closed down,” he said.

Yogendrasing Sreepaul, MCCF chief executive officer, agreed that the consumer cooperative sector has failed in Mauritius but he denied that it was because of his organisation.

“Co-operators who manage these stores are uneducated, they have no vision and will to modernise their shops and keep pace with development. They themselves have pushed consumers into the arms of super- and hypermarkets and shopping malls,” he said.

Sreepaul said cooperative stores are no competition for private business, as they do not have competent and visionary people.

“They do not have such qualities. Most importantly, how do you compete with a business in which millions of rupees have been invested with your 10-rupee share in a cooperative store?” he asked.

Other challenges that cooperatives in Mauritius face, according to a member of the Mauritius Cooperative Union, include a lack of capital, archaic management, no strategic planning, poor leadership, and low productivity, among others.

The MCCF is trying to save some of the cooperative stores by taking over their management and converting them into Fair Price Shops and trying to compete with the supermarkets. Seven such shops have been opened in 2011. Here goods are sold at reasonable prices.

“Shopping malls are selling at 35 to 40 percent mark ups. Why can’t our stores import their own goods and sell at 20 to 25 percent mark up? This can be done,” Tengur said.

Both Tengur and Sreepaul blame the Ministry of Cooperatives for having let down consumer cooperatives. Both said public officials have not done their jobs of inspection and supervision properly.

Minister of Cooperatives Jim Seetaram disagreed. “I do not find any cooperative society closing down in my books. Instead, our audit shows they are performing well,” he told IPS.

He said consumer cooperative stores suffer from a lack of visibility.

“Many people are not aware of them. The youth should be encouraged to get involved into the movement,” he said.

However, Seetaram said that while consumer cooperatives were not successful, the cooperative movement was doing well in other sectors in Mauritius. He said 40 percent of sugar and as much as 70 percent of fresh produce produced in the country was from cooperative societies. The cooperative movement contributes to about two percent of the country’s GDP.

Under a new gender quota law introduced in Mauritius, at least one-third of the candidates in local elections must be women. But the adoption of a national quota is not yet on the horizon, even though just 18 percent of legislators are women and there are only two female cabinet ministers.

Women participating in a WIP political training session. Credit: Nasseem Ackbarally/IPS

The next local elections are due by April in the five towns and 108 villages in this Indian Ocean island nation of 1.3 million people, located 2,400 km off the southeast coast of Africa.

Town and village councillors are elected every five years. They mainly look after the smooth running of their areas as far as services like garbage collection and road infrastructure are concerned. They are also tasked with taking care of the environment and organising cultural, leisure and sports activities for the local population.

Prime Minister Navinchandra Ramgoolam said the introduction of a quota was a legitimate right for women and a big step towards equality between men and women. “We must ensure that the number of women candidates rises considerably,” he said in his televised New Year address.

Three foreign constitutional experts – Professors Guy Carcassonne of the Sorbonne in France, Vernon Bogdanoret of Oxford University in the UK, and Pere Vilanova of the University of Barcelona in Spain – have submitted a report on these issues to Ramgoolam.

During debates in parliament in December, the prime minister was asked by the opposition about extending the gender quota to the national level.

“Let us wait for the report by Prof Carcassone and study the whole system before taking a decision,” he replied, giving the impression that he is not in a hurry to change the system. The next national elections are not due until 2015.

Mauritius is currently engaged in a process of reforming its British-style electoral system, in force on the island since its independence in 1968. The “first past the post” proportional representation, best-loser system for the participation of minorities and women is being scrutinised.

Presently, only 6.4 percent of all village and town councillors are women. And in parliament, only 18.6 percent (13 out of 70 members) are women, since the 2010 elections. Furthermore, there are only two women cabinet ministers out of a total of 25.

One of the eight United Nations Millennium Development Goals (MDGs) adopted by the world’s governments in 2000, with a 2015 deadline, is to promote gender equality and empower women. And one of the specific targets under the goal is to increase the proportion of seats held by women in national parliament.

Another international commitment along these lines is the South African Development Community (SADC) Gender Protocol, which calls for 50/50 representation of women in all areas of decision-making by 2015. But the Mauritian government has not yet signed the Protocol.

Women celebrate the new quota

Women’s organisations welcomed the new quota law, which will allow for a substantial increase in the number of women in local politics. Up to now, parties have generally filed few women as candidates in elections.

Ameenah Sorefan, a member of Women in Networking (WIN), the leading women’s network in Mauritius, says it will be difficult to reach 50/50 representation as prescribed by the SADC.

But, she told IPS, “We feel more women will now take part in local elections and be elected. We are ready to start our campaign to get more of them in local government for the next elections. I am sure the population wants to see more women in politics.”

Many women are taking political training courses by Women in Politics (WIP), another NGO working to promote equality between women and men, encourage the emergence of women leaders in all spheres of society, and increase the number of women in politics.

Bernadette Jhowry, a social worker who was among the first 215 women to go through the training, is ambitious and eager to run for local office.

“Nobody has so far recognised my capacity. Men always ask us to organise public meetings and bring the people, but they never see my potential as a candidate,” she says.

But “we cannot move forward without (women),” Jhowry told IPS.

Another trainee, Mirella Arjoon, always thought that politics was men’s territory, and that women’s place was at home. “The world is changing, so we should also change. But we should first learn the political job correctly,” she says.

About 1,300 women are expected to take part in the upcoming local elections in towns and villages. According to Nushrat Gunnoo, a member of WIP, a good number of women have been trained in politics.

“Parties can no longer say there are not enough women candidates. They have always used the services of a pool of women as activists. It’s time for them to take from there,” she said.

Not everyone supports the new law

But not everybody is happy about the quota for women.

Haniff Peerun, chairman of the Mauritius Labour Congress, the largest trade-union movement in the island, begs to disagree.

“Do women need a locomotive to carry them to the top? I don’t think so. They can make it on their own,” he told IPS, arguing that even women in his organisation are against such a move.

Peerun believes women are competent and can win elections on their own: “Why can’t they create a political party for women only? Why should they include some men in their party as suggested by the new legislation?”

He is convinced that the quota system shows that men still consider women to be weak. Lawyer Vishwanee Boodhonee, a candidate in the 2010 general elections, agrees.

“This is contrary to the concept of equal opportunity. Where is the need for enacting an Equal Opportunity Act if there is to be a quota for women? How can we then speak of gender equality?” she asks.

Rajiv Kumar Bundhun, a village councillor from Amaury in northern Mauritius, welcomes more women in local government but is sceptic about their performance “in this tough world of politics.”

“Many men run away from the field once they are elected and are unable to satisfy the needs of the population and sort out their daily problems in towns and villages. How can women perform under insults from the people when things do not work properly in their area? How many of their husbands will accept their wives getting insulted because of politics?” he asks.

Bundhun adds that it is more challenging for women to balance their professional lives, political commitments and family obligations.

Kashmira Banee from Rezistans ek Alternativ, a political movement, agrees. She says this is so because women work irregular hours, mostly in the manufacturing sector, while those who are in the public service are barred from active politics.

However, Banee welcomed the quota, because it creates more space for women to enter politics and allows them to express their ideas and contribute to social and political life on the island. “But a quota is not the end if the woman politician is unable to defend women’s rights and also to contribute towards the building of a better society,” she adds.

Mauritian women have won a first battle in securing a quota that can help increase their numbers in politics. But the most important is yet to come: more seats in parliament, where ministers, prime ministers and opposition leaders are forged.

Excerpt:

By Nasseem Ackbarally
PORT LOUIS, Dec 27 2011 (IPS)

Mauritius plans to privatise its water sector, as rains become rare, and century-old pipes continue to leak almost 50 percent of the water available, added to waste by the population, mismanagement and over-consumption.

There are not enough dams to collect water in Mauritius, and most of the rainwater runs into the sea. Credit: Nasseem Ackbarally/IPS

“Water rates are cheap in Mauritius compared to other countries in the region despite the increase of 35 percent scheduled for January 2012,” Energy and Public Utilities Minister Rashid Beebeejaun observes, while calculating the bill an average family of four who consumes 20 m3 (20,000 litres) of potable water a month would pay. “Only MRs 150 (five dollars); just compare this figure with the price of tobacco.”

Presently, 10 m3 of water (10,000 litres) for domestic purposes costs the equivalent of 1.50 dollars, while commercial users pay the equivalent of 43 cents of a dollar for the first 100 m3, industrial consumers 34 cents, and the hotel industry 62 cents for the first 100 m3. The cost for treating and delivering one m3 of water is MRs 12.00 (41 cents), according to the Central Water Authority (CWA).

Prime Minister Navin Ramgoolam has admitted that there is a problem with the water supply in this Indian Ocean island nation, located 2,400 km off the southeast coast of Africa.

“We can have plenty of water, we haven’t planned properly. That is the problem,” he said. More than 99 percent of the population has access to piped water on their premises or within their homes.

Experts from the Singapore Public Utility Board are currently reviewing the functioning of the entire water sector on the island, both public and private, to improve delivery of services.

The water shortage is mainly due to leakages from the 100-year old pipes that have never been replaced, and have not been maintained for years due to lack of funds.

Thus, fully half of the water leaks before reaching the consumers, said Dev Aukle, acting general manager of the CWA.

The challenge is big, adds Beebeejaun, who has unveiled a government plan to replace part of the 2,000-km long network and build two more dams.

Haniff Peerun, chairperson of the Mauritius Labour Congress, says privatisation always brings in higher rates for the services offered, while investors make huge profits.

“Water rates would keep on increasing under private ownership. Currently, private operators are selling one litre of water for MRs 20 (69 cents). One can get 4,000 litres of potable water with this same amount from the public water sector. So, how can we accept privatisation?” he asks.

Demonstrating in front of the offices of the CWA earlier this month, Jayen Chellum, general secretary of the Consumers Association of Mauritius (ACIM), said neither a rise in rates nor privatisation is justified “since a good part of the population does not get enough water because of the leakages in the pipes.”

But Mauritians approve of the government’s decision to raise water rates on grounds of transparency and good governance, citing as examples the banking, insurance and financial services sector and the sugar industry that are well managed by private hands.

Riad Hulmuth, a resident of New Grove, in southern Mauritius, says political intervention has ruined all public bodies in Mauritius.

“Political nominees who do not possess any skills always head such bodies. They are paid huge wages and fringe benefits, cars and travel allowances. Had the water sector been managed by the private sector there would have been less wastage, good management and abundant water for all,” he says.

Kritanand Beeharry from the Mauritius Agricultural Marketing Cooperative Federation (MAMCF) said he has no problem with privatisation “if the rates stay the same.”

Nevertheless, he agrees with the increase in water rates for other purposes “as the government needs money to invest in infrastructure to bring water to every household. This is not an easy task because production costs are increasing,” he says.

But Prakash Bhuckory, a farmer from Nouvelle Découverte, a village in the centre of the island, is not happy. Increased water rates would affect the profitability of his 200-cow dairy enterprise.

“Fodder and other inputs in animal husbandry are not cheap and milk production is not that great. It’d be difficult to manage the farm if prices keep on increasing,” he said.

Mauritius gets about 2,100 mm of rain annually that are collected by 11 dams, 5 aquifers, 25 rivers and rivulets and 364 boreholes. But most of the rainwater runs into the sea because of the topography of this 1,862 square kilometre island, while the rest is shared by domestic users whose per capita consumption is 167 litres, while the national per capita consumption including industry and others stands at 221 litres.

Demand for water is increasing by 2.5 percent a year – with a 16 percent increase for domestic users, 62 percent for commercial, 44 percent for hotels and 32 percent for public institutions.

Meanwhile, some 360 water users, mostly sugar estates, hold century-old water rights that guarantee them plenty of water, at almost no cost, from rivers, canals and streams that pass or border their lands, under the Rivers and Canals Act dated 1863.

But Beebeejaun told IPS that all water resources belong to the state and water rights are licences to use water and not to own it.

“The water rights owners are using almost half of the water available on the island. We are looking seriously into that matter,” he said.

But the director of the Mauritius Sugar Producers Association (MSPA), Jean Li Yuen Fong, told IPS that the estates need this water for irrigation purposes as they cultivate sugar cane, vegetables and fruit.

“Without this water, it would be impossible for them to produce food,” he added, emphasising that the producers are conscious of the lack of water and to that effect are investing in new and efficient technologies.

Yuen Fong said if the government puts a price on the water they use from the rivers that are presently free of charge, it would definitely drive up production costs.

Salil Roy, manager of the Planters Reforms Association (PRA), claims producers will die if they are prevented from using water from the rivers. “On one hand, we are asked to produce more food and on the other, water is running to the sea. What’s wrong with using it?” he asks.

By Nasseem Ackbarally
Dec 13 2011 (IPS)

Mauritian men are standing up against violence against women. Nasseem Ackbarally reports that some are now joining organisations to change attitudes towards women in society.

[podcast]http://traffic.libsyn.com/ipsaudio/20111212_mauritiusgender_nasseem.mp3[/podcast]

By Nasseem Ackbarally
PORT-LOUIS, Mar 11 2011 (IPS)

“We have had enough of the training given to us in cooking, sewing and household works… We now have another dream: of participating actively in the development of our island at decision-making level,” says Marie-Anne Laganne, a political trainer at Women In Politics.

Geejabai Teemulen is among the women being trained ahead of this year's local government elections. Credit: Nasseem Ackburally/IPS

Women’s participation at decision-making level represents a major challenge in this Indian Ocean island. Though well-represented as voters and activists on the ground, very few women stand as candidates in an election, be it local or national. There has been a worrying decline in the numbers of women in parliament from 17.1 percent in 2005 to 16.6 percent in the 2010 elections. At the local level, only 5.9 percent of councillors are women.

Mauritius is among the few Southern African Development Community countries yet to sign the 2008 Protocol on Gender and Development, which, amongst other goals, calls for 50/50 representation of women in all areas of decision-making by 2015. Government argues that it cannot sign because the island’s constitution does not allow for positive discrimination.

Mirella Arjoon, one of the participants at a Women In Politics (WIP) training session held recently at Tamarin, a coastal fishing village in the south-western part of the island, said she always thought that politics was reserved for men only and that women’s place was at home.

“The time has come now for a change in politics. We always see the same old faces in this field and the same ideas,” she told IPS. “The world is changing, so the figure should change. But we should first learn the job correctly.”

Bernadette Jhowry, another participant, is a social worker and is now eager to join politics and get elected at local level. She described herself as very ambitious.

“I am ready for the election,” she said, promising to make it later on to the national level.

“To become successful, there is only one way,” WIP’s Laganne told women attending the training. “You have to learn, persevere and persevere… if not you’ll reach nowhere,” she emphasised.

Laganne, whose ambition is to become the first female prime minister of Mauritius, states clearly that the struggle is not between men and women but is rather a question of democracy.

As to why so few women are in politics, she rejects the idea that a lack of education is the cause, noting that there are many men who also have limited education. “Yet they become ministers and rule for years. They learn how to master the arts of politics. Why can’t we do the same?”

The WIP training is geared to providing women with the skills to flourish in politics through sessions on how to behave in front of an audience, preparing speeches, public speaking and how to lobby for tickets if they join a group or a political party.

“Learn to know your audience, first. This should help you prepare your speech and know the language you’ll speak. The most important of all is to get your message through,” Rachel Ng, the day’s trainer told the aspiring politicians.

At the Tamarin training, women came up one by one, to simulate how they would participate in a public meeting prior to an election campaign. Arjoon articulated the problems affecting the village and her priority goals of tackling issues of road safety and pollution if elected. Her mock speech was well received by the other participants who congratulated her on her choice of priority issues.

“Such issues affecting the family should work well for women,” claimed Rachel Ng.

Others failed to impress the audience, while some went out of context. “We help them with the right ammunition so that they can keep firing. Such things happen but they should keep on practicing at home,” said Ng.

Bruno Woomed, another member of WIP, calls on the women to try to seize all opportunities that are available to talk to people, to raise issues that affect them in their daily life. “This should help you overcome your fear. Try to keep your fear under control and you’ll forget about it,” he encouraged them.

But while these women were busy in training, the ruling Labour Party of Prime Minister Navin Ramgoolam announced the composition of its new political bureau of 34 members.

Only six of them are women and all occupy junior posts, a development the participants at the WIP training session found “disturbing and discouraging”.

Excerpt:

“Sex workers rights are human rights”, close to a hundred people shouted during a recent march in Rose-Hill, a major town in Mauritius. Their aim was to sensitise the population, particularly the parliamentarians, to the state of sex workers on the island.

Sex workers marching for human rights Credit: Nasseem Ackbarrally/IPS

Beaten by their clients and even by police officers, looked down upon by the public and ill treated at hospitals and in other institutions, these women have many doors closed to them.

Sex workers live in every region of the island but those who are bolder stay in the capital and its neighbourhood and operate openly at the Company’s Gardens, a few metres away from the Prime Minister’s Office.

Marie-Ange (full name withheld), a former sex worker, who now works for Chrysalide, an NGO caring for sex-workers for the past six years, relates sex-workers’ experiences of being beaten, being gang-raped and at times not even being paid for the sexual services they provide.

When they call the police, they face being arrested for soliciting men for immoral acts because prostitution is illegal in Mauritius. “I know of many police officers who do not believe sex workers when they report being raped. They say, “You wanted it”, says Marie-Ange.

At the hospital, where services are free, sex-workers are not treated the same as other patients. “Even doctors and nurses stigmatise us. Once a doctor put on several pairs of gloves to examine a sex-worker. Some do not even touch our bodies. Why do they fear us?” the woman asks.

She adds, “No woman is born a sex worker. It happens in life, either by accident or because of poverty – that forces some women into this profession to be able to put food on the table to feed the family.

Any woman can find herself in such a situation but Mauritians are indifferent to the plight of sex-workers”. On the streets, they are looked down upon and spat at.

“So, sex workers also march for their rights now?” asks one man while watching the marchers in the centre of Rose-Hill. “We do not like them. They are bad people, using foul language all the time, smoking and dealing in drugs”, he told IPS.

Dhiren Moher, vice-chairperson of PILS, a local NGO, denounces such attitudes but is mostly critical of the politicians who, he says, do not regard sex workers as part of society. Yet they need their votes at election time.

“It is only when a sex worker or some other under-privileged person dies that they appear with a candle in their hands to march with us on the streets. They are hypocrites”, he told IPS.

Moher’s plan is to register the sex workers, organise them into an NGO and give them a health card so that doctors may follow their health regularly and they can be tested done for sexually transmitted diseases, including HIV. “This is a universal right”, he claims, “as it will not only protect the sex workers but also other people who are presently exposed to the dangers of such diseases”.

The NGO wants to improve the lives of sex workers by first and foremost denouncing the legislation that affects them. Former Attorney-General, lawyer Rama Valayden is working on some propositions on the treatment of sex –workers to submit to the government by February 2011.

According to Valayden, there are several types of prostitution – women selling sex in the streets, gardens or recreational parks, male prostitution, call girls and also massage that proliferate on the island. – and not a single person engaged in this profession is protected against anything, be it violence or sexually transmitted diseases.

He also says that many sex workers want to get out of this business but are unable to as it is almost impossible for them to get a clean certificate of morality that will help them get a job.

“Without such a certificate there is no job for them – either in the public or private sector. They cannot even get a license to trade as hawkers that will allow them earn a living. There is little scope for such women in society”, he says.

Prostitution in Mauritius also includes foreign workers from poor countries like Madagascar, Comoros, Rodrigues and Bangladesh, and even China – who work in the textile and manufacturing industry.

Some of them engage in sex work on a part-time basis to earn extra money to take back home at the end of their stay because they are under-paid. Valayden finds the legislation inadequate to counter sex trafficking and pornography.

“The legislation should be strengthened against trafficking and relaxed in favour of those who need support to get out of this profession”, he says. He also adds that there is a tendency to sympathise with the victims after they have died or been raped or brutally attacked.

“How many times haven’t we seen politicians marching on the streets together with the public with a candle in their hands, carrying posters and banners? If we do that in the beginning, we can protect and save the lives of these people”, Valayden says.

The lawyer says the draft document they will present may shock people but they will encourage the population to read it, check the figures of violence and start discussions, rather than stigmatise sex workers.

“The NGOs will refrain from suggesting the legalisation of prostitution”, says Valayden, “but the time will come to have a debate on this issue.”

“Even if prostitution is illegal, this is not a reason to deprive sex workers of their human rights”, concludes Marlène Ladine from Chrysalide home in Bambous, western Mauritius.

By Nasseem Ackbarally
PORT-LOUIS , Jul 14 2010 (IPS)

“Instead of moaning all the time, why don’t you create your own (political) party?” some men asked Brigitte Rabemanantsoa Rasamoelina, a female politician from Madagascar. She accepted the challenge and in February formed Ampela Mano Politika, a political party which started with only 22 female members and now has over 5,000 female members … and 10 men.

Brigitte Rabemanantsoa Rasamoelina, a female politician from Madagascar says a women's lot is very precarious. Credit: Nasseem Ackburally/IPS

And so too is the situation for many women in most of the Indian Ocean Islands. Female political representation is a mere three percent in Comoros, 18 percent in Mauritius and 23.5 percent in the Seychelles.

It is one of the reasons why Rasamoelina and 30 other women from the Indian Ocean Islands, gathered recently in Mauritius to identify ways to attain parity among men and women in politics in an event organised by the Indian Ocean Commission and Women in Politics (WIP).

“There are only 67 female mayors for the 1,557 regional councils and not a single female among the 22 heads of the regions,” Rasamoelina says of the female representation in Madagascar.

While the situation in the Seychelles may be slightly different, with claims that women do not face the same discrimination as on other islands, representation is still low at 23.5 percent in light of the country’s commitment to the SADC Protocol on Gender and Development – which commits countries to work towards the goal of having 50 percent women in political and decision-making positions by 2015.

And in Comoros, a relatively conservative Muslim country, only one woman sits among 33 men in Parliament. While the challenges facing women in politics are different on each island, they are also similar in many respects.

Rasamoelina observes that in Madagascar a major obstacle to women’s participation in politics is motivated by the local customs and traditions which say that men only should rule.

“Women are put in front when there is need to support and to applause. We are not just machines to give the breast to a child and to procreate. This is not our weakness but an added value to the society,” says Rasamoelina.

More women in decision-making processes, she says, would allow women’s voices to be heard. Women’s rights organisations are asking for Madagascar’s new constitution to include the requirement for gender equality in all aspects, including politics.

But in the Seychelles things are different. Men make room for women in politics and the percentage of female representation is the highest (23.5 percent) in this Indian Ocean island.

Linda William, the Principal Secretary at the Social Development Department, says there is no discrimination against women in her country and political parties elect people who are capable – be they men or women.

“Evidently it is through education that women play a role in politics in the Seychelles. There is no religious or cultural barrier for women to be involved in politics. I would say it is a matter of choice.”

William says the Seychelles is well placed to reach the 50 percent of female representation at the 2012 elections. But in contrast, in Comoros women are barely involved in politics and are literally absent from any decision-making process. Here the situation is blamed largely on a lack of self-belief.

“The Comorian woman lacks confidence. She is satisfied with her job in the public sector,” says Echati Chadhouli, a member of the National Network of Gender Lawyers (RENAG).

She does not blame men for lack of female representation in Parliament, claiming that educated men would not prevent women from entering the political field.

“We had some difficulty earlier with the religious leaders but no longer. Women are now free to enter politics and to seek higher positions. But since they are not fully sensitised, the Comorian women keep people waiting for them,” Chadhouli says.

In the French colony, La Réunion, men do not want to share power so easily, says Nassimah Dindar, president of the General Council, who also acts as head of the government of the colony.

“In spite of the legislation on parity on the regional and municipal election list, there are still many hurdles from political parties that women have to climb before succeeding,” she emphasises.

She finds it easy for men to tarnish the reputation of women and to destabilise them in politics. “This is why many women are not interested in politics fearing to get hurt in this battle of the cocks,” Dindar told IPS.

In Mauritius, it is still difficult for a woman to get an election ticket. Here a candidate must be nominated by the leader of their political party before they can stand for elected office. The alternative is to run as an independent candidate.

Aline Wong, obtained an election ticket from the ruling party “Alliance of the Future” but was not elected to office in the country’s May elections. Wong says men have always dominated the political field while women are just starting and need some time to find their place on this route full of hurdles.

“The party needs winning candidates. Since the leaders think women have got less chance to win, they nominate only a few of them,” Wong observes, putting the blame on the lack of a strong lobby for women.

But Bruno Woomed, a member of WIP, who monitors the move to improve female representation in politics in Mauritius, thinks change will only take place through legislation and the introduction of a system of proportional representation and a temporary quota for women.

“If we leave it to the goodwill of political parties, nothing will change,” he says.

The women have committed themselves to mobilise society in favour of female representation by 2015 by creating platforms to develop a network among the countries where experiences and the best practices will be shared. This network of female leaders is already in operation.

Excerpt:

By Nasseem Ackbarally
PORT LOUIS, Jul 2 2010 (IPS)

Workers from Bangladesh have helped Mauritius to achieve the economic success and world market share that the Indian Ocean island state boasts about. But many live and work in conditions described as akin to “modern slavery”, apart from facing discrimination, the denial of labour rights and even violence.

This Bangladeshi worker, photographed in his dormitory, did not want his name to be published as he feared being sent back to his home country. Credit: Nasseem Ackburally/IPS

He paid 150,000 takkas (about 2,200 dollars) to an agent in his country for a job as a machinist upon the promise of earning 20,000 Mauritian rupees (about 665 dollars) a month.

Often, such economic migrants take out bank loans and sell their family land and assets to secure a job in Mauritius with a view to sending money back home to improve the lot of their families — and eventually their own.

“That (the promised 665 dollars) is big money in Bangladesh and I was prepared to make any sacrifice for it,” Amin told IPS who visited him at Grand Gaube, in northern Mauritius, where he lives in a house provided by his employer, Firemount Textiles.

But, today, the Bangladeshi worker earns little more than a quarter of that amount. “I have been cheated,” he said.

He is frustrated as, in about a year’s time, he will have to leave the island. Amin is yet to save any money to take home. His meagre earnings allow him to cover his living expenses and to send a limited amount of money to his family every three months.

Poverty, unemployment and the high cost of living are the factors that force Amin and his compatriots to leave their country and look for jobs abroad.

They are not the only foreign migrants: the 5,834 Bangladeshis are among 30,000 foreigners working in Mauritius. As at mid-June 2010, there were 11,757 Indian; 6,704 Chinese; 1,696 Malagasy; and 268 Nepalese workers.

Of the 30,000, about 22,800 of them work in the manufacturing sector; 4,431 in the construction industry; 638 in the hospitality industry; 712 in community service; and 224 in transport and communications.

Expatriates work hard for long hours and are never absent. At times they are not paid — either because the factories have run short of cash or because they have closed. Hundreds of them, especially Bangladeshis, who dared to demonstrate in public were sent back home in the past year.

In their dormitories at factories, the situation is worse as hygiene and sanitation are poor. Many of them sleep on pieces of sponge, pestered by fleas and other bugs. The rooms, the kitchens and the yards are dirty.

IPS visited one such place at Grand Gaube — a one-storey concrete building with wooden partitions separating the rooms where about 50 Bangladeshi and Indian expatriates live.

Feizal Ally Beegun, spokesperson of the Textile Manufacturing and Allied Workers Union, showed IPS decrepit mattresses and kitchen tools that the workers have been using for at least 15 years.

“The employers do not care for them; they live like animals. How can humans sleep in such places?” he asked. “There is no government office where they can complain — even when their passports are seized from them.”

Imam Nasrullah Ginowrie, a social worker from Baie-du-Tombeau, near Port Louis, who has attended to Bangladeshi and Indian labourers for three years, calls them “modern slaves”.

“I am not allowed to meet them and they are warned not to complain to me. I know of some Bangladeshi women who have been kicked by their superiors. They are held very late at night in the factories,” Ginowrie told IPS.

Informed of the poor treatment prevailing in the manufacturing sector, newly-appointed labour and employment minister Shakeel Mohamed paid a surprise visit to a dormitory in Happy Village, eastern Mauritius, at the end of May.

He was shocked to see the unhealthy state of the dormitories, the toilets and the generally unacceptable hygienic conditions in which expatriate workers live.

“Some employers are still treating their workers as mere objects that will keep on producing until the end of their contracts,” he told IPS.

Mohamed regards such treatment as an insult to expatriates who come to the island to help factories meet orders for foreign markets.

“A migrant worker should enjoy the same terms and conditions of employment and the same prescribed salary than those granted to the locals, besides a free return air ticket, food allowance, lodging and accommodation in Mauritius,” the minister explained, referring to government regulations.

Mukeshwar Gopal, chairperson of the Mauritius Export Association (MEXA), admitted to IPS that some industrialists are to blame for the poor living conditions. However, he insisted that the dormitories are in a good condition when the expatriates first arrive.

“These are checked by the relevant health and fire services before the expatriates land there. We should understand that these people come from poor and dirty countries where hygiene does not exist. They put the dormitories in such a state that one cannot go inside because of the bad smell,” he told IPS, without flinching.

Some employers share Gopal’s discriminatory attitude, but not all.

As a sign of things changing, Gopal pointed to the Compagnie Mauricienne de Textile (CMT) that employs about 10,000 workers living in newly built houses “similar to five-star hotels”.

Beegun and Mohamed have appealed to other employers to follow this path.

Mohamed said there are loopholes in the legislation governing the recruitment of migrant workers that allow some employers to act irresponsibly.

But not for long, he warned. He promised that the ministry will soon decide on the type of accommodation and surrounding environment allowed for expatriate workers. *Name changed at the request of the worker who fears reprisal.

Excerpt:

Incumbent Prime Minister Navin Ramgoolam has won the Mauritian election, retaining a third term of office.

Women voters are ambivalent on the need to increase female representation in the Mauritian parliament. Credit: Nasseem Ackburally/IPS

Ramgoolam’s Alliance of the Future won 41 seats in the next parliament compared to the 18 seats won by the opposition Alliance of the Heart, led by Paul Bérenger.

One seat went to the Front Solidarité Mauricien, a Muslim political party. Ten women candidates only out of the 21 nominated by the two main alliances were elected. Five years ago, 13 women had been elected.

As Mauritians went to the polls to elect a new government in a closely contested election, across the island women were voting for a better life.

At the close of the polling centres late on May 5, 77.8 percent of the 879 897 registered voters cast their votes compared to 81.5 percent who did so in 2005.

The two main alliances – Alliance of the Future, and the opposition Alliance of the Heart – plus a number of smaller political parties and 549 independent candidates took part in the elections.

The plea from rights activists to include more female candidates in the election was not heard by political leaders as only 21 female candidates out of 120 for the two mainstream alliances and only 58 women out of the 549 independent candidates contested the elections.

Not all the female voters interviewed by IPS said they wanted more female representation in parliament, but all the women agreed – they were voting for their future. A large turnout of women voters was seen across the island, though official figures have not been released.

Unemployed Anusha Emrith (22) from Rivière du Rempart, northern Mauritius, says she voted for a change in government because “there is no meritocracy in the island”. Emrith has applied for a job in the public service many times during the past two years and she is yet to get one. She blames her representative in Parliament for not being successful, saying: “Nobody backs (my) application”.

Kavita Nunkoo from Barlow, in eastern Mauritius, wants the government she voted for to bring prosperity to the island and work for the people. Many women are interested in politics but very few would like to take part in an election, even at local level, the women IPS interviewed said.

But Nunkoo, who is an activist from the Labour Party, said if she gets the chance she will stand as a political candidate. She emphasises that many women are unemployed and need help from the government

“They work very late in the manufacturing industry. This is very tiring. I want to improve their situation.”

But another voter, Shireen Allybaccus, thinks there are presently enough women in politics. “Many more women cannot leave their responsibility at home to do politics where one needs the people in the field. Women cannot afford that much time to devote to it.” She voted for male candidates.

Mauritius has not signed the SADC Protocol on Gender and Development that requires member-countries to have 30 percent of women representation in Parliament arguing that provision to include such an action is against the Constitution of the island.

And the two main alliances have not attempted to include more women on their lists of candidates. The Alliance of the Future, led by Ramgoolam, has only 13 female candidates. Berenger’s party has only eight. This is despite Berenger’s promises that he will amend the Constitution so that one-third of the seats available in Parliament could be reserved for women – if he comes to power.

But not all women are worried about female representation in Parliament. “I love my party the Alliance of the Future and its leader Navin Ramgoolam,” Neelam Ramsurrun told IPS as she left the polling station after having voted. “Our family has always voted for him since generations. We would not stop now. He is doing a good job,” she claimed.

Sixty candidates (three from each of the 20 constituencies of the island and two from the island of Rodrigues) will be elected in the first past the post system.

(*Adds election results.)

By Nasseem Ackbarally
PORT-LOUIS , Feb 18 2010 (IPS)

Sandhya Boygah considers herself a victim of male-dominated politics. In 2007, she was asked by her party, the ruling Labour Party, to step aside and allow a man to stand for the elected post she sought.

Women's rights organisations want political parties to nominate one female candidate for every three candidates in the next election. Credit: Nasseem Ackbarally/IPS

“Unfortunately, when the time came the party preferred a man. I was really hurt,” she recalled.

She added that she will insist her party nominate her as a candidate for the July elections. (In Mauritius a candidate must be nominated by the leader of their political party before they can stand for elected office. The alternative is to run as an independent candidate.)

It has been three years since Boygah was asked to step aside because of her gender and, while progress has been made towards achieving increased female representation in politics, it remains far too slow for some.

Rights organisations say too few women are being nominated by leaders of political parties as candidates in local, regional and national elections. Of the members of parliament (MPs), only 17 percent (12 out of the 70 members) are women, in municipalities only 11.2 percent of politicians are women. And in the district councils the number is lower, with only 5.2 percent female representation. Though this is an increase from 2005 where only 5.4 percent of MPs were women.

There have been increasing calls to improve female representation in parliament ahead of July’s national assembly elections – where members are elected to parliament by voting in multi-member constituencies.

Mauritius committed to having 30 percent female representation in parliament by 2005 when it signed the Southern African Development Community Declaration on Gender and Development in 1995. The agreement, however, is not binding.

A local non-governmental organisation, Women In Networking (WIN), is circulating a petition calling for increased female representation in parliament. They hope to obtain 50,000 signatures by the end of March when the petition will be handed over to political leaders.

“We want things to change for the upcoming election due later this year,” said Paula Atchia, a member of WIN affiliate, Women in Politics (WIP). WIP has asked all political parties to nominate at least one female candidate for every three candidates in each of the 20 constituencies of the island.

Paul Berenger, head of the opposition Mouvement Militant Mauricien, may have promised to nominate a woman as speaker of parliament if his party comes to power in the next election, but WIP is sceptical. “This is not our goal. We want one in three candidates. Let us do it now,” Atchia said.

Other rights activists have called for a compulsory quota system to be introduced. “Without a quota, we’ll not get enough women as candidates,” said Professor Ameenah Gurib-Fakim, Vice-Chancellor at the University of Mauritius.

But this may not happen for a while. While a conservative culture has been partially blamed for lack of female representation in politics, the country’s constitution is also hindering transformation.

Mauritius remains one of two countries that have not signed the binding SADC Protocol on Gender and Development – which commits countries to work towards the goal of having 50 percent women in political and decision-making positions by 2015 – because it contradicts the country’s constitution. A quota system will contradict the clause in the constitution that promotes equality, experts say.

Nita Kumaree Deerpalsing, an MP from the ruling Labour Party, explained that the concept of gender equality in the constitution means one gender cannot be privileged over another.

“Mauritius subscribes to gender equality and this has been noted in the passing of the Equal Opportunity Act. But some of the clauses of the SADC protocol deal with quotas and when you deal with the Equal Opportunity Act and a society that believes in equality, the quotas then just go against what the nation believes and stands for,” Deerpalsing said.

She said Mauritius is a sovereign country with its own laws and government had to be careful how it interprets international codes, such as the SADC protocol. She said any international agreement signed by Mauritius had to comply with the country’s laws.

“The problem is legal so it has to be dealt with legally and they have to find gaps to try and solve the issue. The process has already started but will take time to identify the gaps because the constitution is good as a whole,” Deerpalsing said.

Loga Virahsawmy, the director of Gender Links (Mauritius and Francophone Office) agreed, adding that the constitution needed to be preserved.

“We have a very good constitution and we cannot amend it because of one article, so we just have to look for ways around the problem,” Virahsawmy said.

Deerpalsing said that until this was finalised, political parties had to commit to nominating more women to run for political office.

“The main political parties have to align more women on their lists – that way the number of female MPs can increase. Women across the country have become conscious of the fact that there is low female representation and they are starting to get involved in politics,” she said.

Virahsawmy said women in Mauritius wanted to venture into politics and have shown interest through their different political parties. “They are beginning to head committees and (are) taking up more leadership roles,” Virahsawmy said.

Rishy Kumar Choony, former chairman of the Moka-Flacq District Council (East), agrees that women have an important role to play in politics.

Choony nominated two women to his 12-member council after he realised they were able to successfully tackle the social problems that affected his village.

He added that many men still believed a woman’s place was at home: “Religion and culture have not been very helpful either in taking the women out of their home.” He is presently training his 16-year-old daughter in political skills so that she can take his place one day.

Dany Marie, member of Rezistans ek Alternativ, a small political movement, said there still remained certain factors that discouraged women to become involved in politics. One of these, she said, is the fact that most women work in sectors where being active in politics is against employment regulations.

She added that women also worked in areas, like the manufacturing industry and call centres, where the hours are so long and irregular that they had little time for pursuits apart from work and their family responsibilities.

Boygah has called on Prime Minister Navin Ramgoolam, who heads the Labour Party, to offer 50 percent of the party’s election tickets to women in the next election.

“Is he ready to play such a game?” asked Boygah.

*Additional reporting by Marshall Patsanza

Excerpt:

She cannot swim, but Marie-Claite Hector is not afraid of the ocean. The 53-year-old pushes her small boat with all her strength towards the blue lagoon, starts the engine, and sets out to sea.

A handful of Mauritian women have overcome prejudice to earn their living from the sea. Credit: IRIN

Fishing in Mauritius is a male pursuit, but Hector is one of eight women in the coastal village of Bambous Virieux who have been cage-fishing in the waters off southwestern coast of the island for years.

“It’s almost 25 years since I started fishing. I learned how from my husband, François. I have since taught my sister-in-law and my two daughters how to earn a living from the sea,” says Hector.

She goes out to sea to check on the family’s traps: bamboo and wire cages beneath the surface, two metres long, and a metre high, into which fish swim and find themselves trapped. She began fishing out of necessity, to improve earnings for a family of six that included four girls.

“Life was difficult for the family with only one person earning. We had to feed and educate the girls and build a house. Money was very tight,” the fisherwoman recalls.

“In the 1980s, this new industry recruited every unemployed woman who wanted to work. Many of my friends went in, but not me because this is not for my cup of tea. I love the sea and my freedom. I finish early so I get plenty of time to do many other things for the family and the community,” she said.

Hector speaks knowledgably of catches and environmental degradation. Ten years ago, she observes, fish was abundant in the lagoon.

“Now, it has somewhat decreased because of industrial pollution. But we earn more money because the price of fresh fish has gone up by more than 100 percent.”

Fresh fish used to sell for 50 or 60 rupees (about 2 U.S. dollars) a kilo and fishers needed to sell five kilos to make ends meet. Today a kilo of fresh fish can be sold to locals or tourists for 125-130 rupees a kilo.

Hector is proud of her work “because it brings me my daily food and I am not unemployed.”

She is a rarity in more ways than one. Only about thirty of the island’s 2,500 fishers are women. And amongst fisherwomen, her pride in her profession is also unusual.

In Trou-aux-Biches, on the northern coast of the island, the few fisherwomen who would speak to IPS did so on condition that their names be changed.

Floating cage offshore. Credit: Nasseem Ackburally/IPS

“It was very difficult for me to enter this profession that is dominated exclusively by men,” Ginette* told IPS.

Many of the men in the village regard her as an intruder in the profession and make unpleasant remarks about her. Teaching women the tricks of the trade is out of the question.

But what is harder to face, Ginette says, are the mocking remarks of other women who mock them for doing “a man’s job”.

Hector’s entry into the fishing profession was supported both by her husband and an NGO called Movement For Food Security that encourages women to join the fishing and agricultural trade.

Ginette shrugs. “We love the sea, that’s why we didn’t take work in a factory or one of the hotels around here.”

She and her friend Alberta* have persevered and today they work together, placing about ten cages daily, returning to check them three days later.

On their own, they have overcome prejudice and any fear of the sea. Ginette relates how one day, she was heading back to land when she found herself in a fog she could not see more than two metres through.

“I kept calm, stopped the engine, and waited for it to go away. It was an hour or more before I could start my way again. I was very scared. Now, we have learned to better understand the sea and tame it,” she said.

But Ginette and Alberta are worried by declining catches and would not encourage young women to follow in their footsteps. Sedimentation and algae blooms due to fertiliser washing into the ocean from inland plantations has been linked with dead or dying coral and reduced numbers of large fish.

As the textile and sugar cane industries wane, Mauritius has ambitiously expanded its tourism industry, creating new problems. Hotel waste water, careless anchoring of pleasure boats, and the activities of snorkelers and divers, combined with the removal of seagrass beds has harmed fish nurseries and further damaged the reefs where valuable fish live.

The most recent government initiative, the granting of licences for large-scale aquaculture just offshore alarms fishing communities and environmentalists alike, fearing it will do further harm to marine life.

But the country’s principal fisheries officer, Daroomalingum Mauree, is quick to reassure. “Pollution is our concern as well. We’ll monitor the water and biological parameters around the cages from scratch to finish.

“There will never be any negative impact on the marine environment. Many people are against the project without really understanding the essence of it. We want fishers to manage one such floating cage.”

Ginette is pessimistic. Gesturing to the sea beyond the Trou-aux-Biches Village Hotel, one of the many luxurious tourist resorts in found on the island, she says, “There is no future out there.”

By Nasseem Ackbarally
PORT LOUIS, Dec 1 2009 (IPS)

Eric Mangar deplores the fact that Mauritius, despite being a net food importer, has failed to learn its lessons from the food crisis. The island state is pursuing “business as usual” without taking steps to improve food production on the local front.

Eric Mangar: 'The global food system is very vulnerable.' Credit: Nasseem Ackbarally/IPS

Mangar is the manager of the Movement for Food Self-Sufficiency, which was set up as a non-governmental organisation (NGO) for agricultural development in 1981. As its name indicates, it works in favour of food self-sufficiency and advocates on issues of food security for Mauritius and the region.

This is done through a series of micro-projects including household egg production; training of artisans in handicrafts and of fishers. The movement partners with the government of Mauritius on agricultural issues. Nasseem Ackbarally spoke to Mangar.

IPS: Mauritius is a net food importer. Isn’t it a big risk for the food security of the island? Eric Mangar (EM): True, Mauritius depends too much on food-exporting countries and does not produce enough locally for its population. The island is thus very vulnerable. But the situation is not alarming right now because it has a two to three months’ stock of its staple foods, rice and flour.

The problem lies in the future: if the exporting countries are unable for any reason, be it demography or climate change, to export to Mauritius, what will it do? Food prices are already very high on the island.

IPS: Mauritians have money; the supermarkets are full of food. EM: Yes, but for how long? Just look at the number of supermarkets and hypermarkets that are opening in every region of the island. This is not good, particularly for future generations. Are we aware that we are not investing in agriculture? Instead we are investing in these “supers” and “hypers”.

IPS: You are concerned that, one day, Mauritians will have plenty of money in their pockets but the “supers” and “hypers” will be empty. EM: It can happen because there is much speculation with food products, particularly since crops are being used to produce bio-fuels. This speculation was unheard of during the past 15 years and then the food crisis of the past few years happened.

For example: Mauritius is self-sufficient in poultry. This is good but how many Mauritians know that this industry depends entirely on maize imported from South America?

With speculation affecting the food prices and the initiative to use maize in the production of bio-fuel, the price of this product will continue to rise. Just look at the prices of chicken on the local market, right now.

IPS: What is the solution, according to you? EM: We should produce more local food like potatoes, manioc, meat and milk. We should be able to provide at least 3,000 calories from local sources daily to each inhabitant of this island by 2050. Will the local poultry supply be able to provide between 30-35 percent of protein to us by that date? It should.

IPS: Mauritius has no choice than to import most of its food requirements because of a lack of fertile land. Land is also needed for industrial and infrastructural developments. Do you agree? EM: First, we must know that the global food system is very vulnerable. We should, then, find ways and means to produce more food, devote fertile land to agriculture and invest massively in this sector. We are not doing it, presently. We cannot continue business as usual.

Every country is working to prevent social unrest — or let us call it “food unrest”. Even food-exporting countries would prefer to keep their food for their own population rather than export it. If this should happen, the good relations that Mauritius has got with some exporting countries would not be of great help.

IPS: What you are proposing means a drastic change in the food consumption pattern of the population. Are Mauritians ready for a change from rice and flour? EM: They have no choice than to eat more local food and depend less on imports.

IPS: What is Mauritius doing to create food security? EM: Several strategic plans have been prepared and presented. Among them is the Food Security Fund set up during the food crisis. This plan has the potential to mitigate the island’s dependency on imports. But its implementation is a big problem. There is a lack of dynamism at this level.

For example: I read from the 2010 national budget introduced last month that the government will introduce a market information system for farmers. This is a good system that will prevent the wastage of food and vegetables but the problem is that they have been talking about it for 10 years.

Is there a real will, now, to implement this project? We all know that big farmers abandon their plantations as soon as prices fall because of a lack of proper planning. Too many tomatoes on the market make prices fall and nobody wins.

IPS: Mauritius plans to produce food in Madagascar and Mozambique where it has obtained large areas of land. Is it a viable project? EM: The idea is good but one must think about political stability and the protection of investments before launching into such an adventure in a foreign land.

Past experience by some Mauritian entrepreneurs in Madagascar, particularly theft, does not encourage others to join in this adventure. As for Mozambique, I have learnt that the local people are not happy about foreigners coming to exploit their land.

Under such conditions, Mauritius cannot depend on these two countries for sustainable agricultural development. It’s better for us to cultivate our own land to produce more food and leave some land for future generations.

Excerpt:

As the Second Africa Water Week ends, participants have reiterated that lack of access to clean water and adequate sanitation has a direct bearing on public health and the economy in Africa.

She also emphasised the need for enhancing regional capacity to carry forward the implementation of water and sanitation programmes.

Clarissa Brocklehurst, of the United Nations Children’s Fund, indicated that that 15 countries were behind schedule on achieving development goals for supplying drinking water; 39 countries were off-track as regards the sanitation target.

“For the sanitation MDG to be achieved in Africa, 45 million people per year would need to gain access to sanitation in the years preceding 2015,” she observed.

Brocklehurst further said that although aid disbursements for water in Africa had increased significantly, the available capacity to utilise this aid needed to catch up, deploring that only a small proportion of aid was directed to basic water and sanitation development.

In a discussion on financing water and sanitation infrastructure, Alan Nicol from the World Water Council noted that making  a case for prioritising water is not easy, as everyone wants a piece of the finance pie.

“Three key contextual issues are affecting investments: population growth, agriculture and climate change,” he said.

Several agreements were signed concurrently with the conference, including a $67 million dollar grant from the Netherlands to support infrastructure in poor communities in South Africa.

Throughout the week, parallel sessions were held on the theme of finance, as well as on closing the sanitation gap and addressing climate change.

A recurring theme was that political will was urgently needed, in conjunction with accurate knowledge of the realities on the ground in order to move effectively and efficiently.

Participants at African Water Week viewed several elements with particular concern: the lack of proper governance and corruption in some African countries and also the negative role sometimes played by big international mining companies and similar organisations.

Several civil society delegates said that viewed against Africa’s urgent socio-economic needs, it is more important than ever to move from talk to decisive action.

“No more commitments… We have had enough of the promises. Can we please see something happening on the ground? Right now, it is business as usual and that’s why Africa is off-track on the MDG target.”

Jamillah Mwanjisi, executive secretary for the African Civil Society Network on Water and Sanitation attending the Second Africa Water Week in Midrand, South Africa, is not happy with what’s happening in the water and sanitation sector.

“In certain countries, one in eight people have access to safe sanitation. In terms of water supply, (it is) mostly rich people in urban areas who have access, while the rural community still has to walk four to eight kilometres to get water…”

Governments have repeatedly committed to increase support for water and sanitation (most recently in July 2008, at the African Union Summit in Sharm-el-Sheikh, Egypt) but civil society says implementation has failed due to a lack of funds and political will.

“Donor aid is not sufficient for Africa and this goes mostly to middle-income countries (in Asia or Latin America) where maybe the (water and sanitation) gap is not as huge as it is in Africa,” says Mwanjisi.

Fatima Zohra Zerouati, chairperson of the National Federation for Environment Protection (Algeria) agreed. “Africa is very, very late (in terms of achieving goals on water and sanitation)…  and we need action now,” she told IPS.

She emphasised that leaders should understand that water and sanitation are more important than the army, which received far more resources in almost every country.

So what can be done?

Ada-Oko Williams, the Regional Learning Centre Co-ordinator for Water Aid, an international NGO, says the way forward is prioritisation of water and sanitation issues, the designation of responsible agencies and drawing up clear national plans for sanitation using the millennium development goal targets as benchmarks.

Water Aid has developed a partnership programme with local government in several states in Nigeria which Williams believes can serve as a model elsewhere.

Williams concedes that some governments are putting money into the water, sanitation and hygiene programmes, but they are doing so in a very unsustainable manner.

A typical scenario, she says, is for a government official to walk into a village, put a borehole in the ground and go away without any participation from the community.   “We observe that local government now understands why they should talk to the people and why the voice of the beneficiary is important. It also understands that the community can play a critical role, particularly in terms of operations and maintenance of the facilities provided,” Williams told IPS.

Switzerland-based NGO International Rainwater Harvesting Alliance (IHRA), is also working on sustainable solutions to water and sanitation problems in West Africa. One project, at a school in the village of Luwasa in the southern Nigerian state of Lagos, replaced four poorly-maintained pit latrines with new toilets and a rainwater harvesting system.

The schools nearly 2,000 pupils had stopped using the overflowing pit latrines, instead defecating in the bushes near the school compound. The school had a borehole, but it had dried up. The lack of water and private toilet facilities at the school had been linked to absenteeism among girls in particular.

IHRA set up a system to trap and store rainwater, and built a new toilet block in collaboration with a local NGO. The programme actively involved students, parents and teachers who will maintain the new facilities; alongside the refurbished toilets, school garden and tree-planting projects were set up.

Rose Kaggwa, manager of external services for the National Water and Sewerage Corporation of Uganda, said that to move from talk to action, it is important to bring partners together to focus in one direction; otherwise, there would be too many people doing too many things in different directions.

Members of the Civil Society met at the Africa Water Week and identified some immediate calls for action.

Civil society appealed to governments and donors to meet existing commitments for financing water and sanitation, in particular allocating half a percent of national GDP for sanitation, increasing the political profile of sanitation, building climate resilience by investing in infrastructure to mitigate against floods, droughts and other threats; and involving citizens in the monitoring and management of rivers and lake basins.

By Nasseem Ackbarally
PORT LOUIS, Oct 14 2009 (IPS)

The Sugar Protocol enabling developing world sugar farmers to produce for the European market over the past 34 years ended on Sep 30. Among these, the small island state of Mauritius built two major industries — tourism and textile and clothing – on the back of its sugar sales.

Salil Roy: The government has a moral obligation towards small scale farmers. Credit: Nasseem Ackbarally/IPS

This agreement had secured for Mauritius a duty-free quota of 500,000 tons of sugar for export to Europe at a guaranteed price that was three times higher than the prevailing world price. Mauritius became the main sugar supplier to the European market among the African, Caribbean and Pacific (ACP) countries.

Mauritians would have loved things to continue like this for years. But the 36 percent cut in the price that the European Union (EU) paid for sugar over the past four years and the reduction of the quota by up to six million tons woke them up to the EU’s changing trade policy.

With the help of the EU, Mauritius took on the challenge of reforming its sugar sector. Sugar factories have thus been centralised to six units only; and small and medium scale farmers have been regrouped to benefit from economies of scale.

Moreover, electricity is being produced for the national grid with bagasse, a cane residue, along with ethanol and refined white sugar, thus optimising revenue from sugar cane. The industry has been transformed from a sugar to a cane industry.

Salil Roy told Nasseem Ackbarally how small and medium scale farmers are surviving the changes.

IPS: How does the end of the Sugar Protocol affect sugar farmers in Mauritius? Salil Roy (SR): We were prepared for it. It has been announced long time back. I think our reform plan has mitigated the impact on us. We have done a lot to reform our industry and make it competitive and viable for the coming years.

We will now refine our sugar before selling it, bringing in more revenue for the farmers, thus compensating for the drop in the price.

IPS: Do you regret the end of the protocol? SR: Yes and no. The end of the protocol has forced farmers to think out of the box. Earlier, they were just producing raw sugar and exporting it. Now they are looking for other niches in the same field and the reforms have shown numerous possibilities to them as to how to optimise their revenues.

They are now forced to do things differently because it is a world where only the fittest can survive. This is how our industry can become competitive in this global economy because nobody owes us a living. The end of the protocol is something good that is happening to our economy.

IPS: How has the protocol affected the livelihood of farmers over the past 34 years? SR: The protocol was a must in the 1970s to help not only farmers but all Mauritians who were struggling with poverty. Everything you see around in the island today bears the mark of the protocol.

Our political leaders made the right choice at that time by choosing to join the protocol. It has been very beneficial to us in the long run.

IPS: Does it still have a raison d’être? SR: No, it has not. Mauritius is one country that has derived the maximum of benefits from the protocol by investing in the tourism and textile and clothing industries, as compared to other ACP sugar producing countries. We are still doing very well, even after the protocol.

IPS: Have the reforms really changed the industry? SR: I must say, small and medium scale farmers are not getting their full due. They have cultivated marginal lands and contributed a lot to the island’s economy for decades. They are not just here to contribute to the economies of scale of big producers.

They should get the maximum revenue for their cane – from its juice, its sugar, its electricity, its ethanol, its molasses and every other thing that can be taken out of the cane. Don’t tell me that I cultivate sugar cane and that the bagasse does not belong to me.

IPS: So the reform plan does not satisfy the farmers? SR: To some degree, but the government has a moral obligation to protect us because we have toiled hard for the economy for the past three or four generations. We do not constitute a liability to the government; we contribute a lot towards the economic prosperity of Mauritius.

There is also the problem of having enough workers; the rising costs of production; the lack of funding from banks, and so forth.

IPS: Farmers produce between 40 to 50 percent of cane on the island. Why are they so badly organised? SR: This is a question of mentality that has got to be changed. Many farmers have difficulty coping with the changing world. It has really been very difficult to group them under one big roof so that they may benefit from economies of scale. Many of them think they’ll lose their land if they join a group.

We are relying on the reform plan to better organise the farmers. We should create a climate that is conducive for their existence.

IPS: Do you think medium and small scale farmers in Mauritius will survive the end of the Sugar Protocol? SR: Yes, all the ingredients for success are present. I am optimistic about it in spite of the problems we encounter. With hundreds of years of experience, the Mauritian sugar industry will not die now. We produce sugar very well; why can’t we do it in the coming years in this field where we command respect?

There is no doubt about it that we’ll survive the Sugar Protocol. We have just to get things in order.

Excerpt:

By Nasseem Ackbarally
PORT-LOUIS, Sep 21 2009 (IPS)

Ameenah Gurib-Fakim has spent the last two decades travelling among the Mascarene Islands in the Indian Ocean studying plants.

Mauritian scientist Ameenah Gurib-Fakim was awarded the African Union Women Scientist Regional Award 2009 this month. Credit: Nasseem Ackbarally/IPS

And now the Mauritian scientist has been awarded the African Union Women Scientist Regional Award 2009 this month for her scientific achievement and contribution through science to the socio-economic development of Africa.

This competition is meant to support the use and development of science in Africa.

For the past 20 years, Gurib-Fakim has worked on medicinal and aromatic plants in Mauritius and the Mascarene Islands in the Indian Ocean. She has published several books and received a number of international awards for her works.

Nasseem Ackbarally talked to Gurib-Fakim on her research work, on intellectual property rights, on how Africa is faring in this field and also how the continent can reap from economic benefits out of its biodiversity.

IPS: What has been the outcome of your research over the past twenty years? AMEENAH GURIB-FAKIM: My major contribution has been the substantive documentation that I have (written on the) medicinal and aromatic plants of Mauritius and the other islands of the Indian Ocean.

But particularly for Mauritius and Rodrigues in as much as the very first documentation was made almost 200 years ago. I have shown through my documentation that there has been an increase in the use of indigenous plants in a wide range of forms like medicines, cosmetics, food, dyes, and others and that these plants form part of the flora and fauna of our islands and, of course, of the local heritage.

By so doing, I have put at the disposal of the government a very important tool for (the) patenting of future plants and plant products emanating from the Mauritian biodiversity.

IPS: Intellectual Property Rights (IPR) regarding plants constitutes a major issue. What is happening on this front in Africa? AGF: The whole legacy of developing countries has been relooked (at) through the Convention for Biological Diversity (CBD). Unfortunately, the CBD has no enforcement power. But it has been a very important tool in raising awareness of countries that there is an IPR issue.

(It has made countries aware) that they have got sovereign rights on their biodiversity and that if they play their cards right, they can derive substantial benefits from it.

In terms of awareness, for example, countries have been trying desperately to put their laws in harmony with those of the World Trade Organisation and to make them TRIPS (Trade Related Aspects of Intellectual Property Rights) compliant. So if they are to develop anything from their biodiversity in the future the legal framework would be there.

But, unfortunately, a lot of countries in the developing world have not been moving fast enough on conservation issues. Therefore there is a loss of biodiversity to firms and institutions that are less scrupulous in terms of addressing the prime concern of intellectual property of countries.

IPS: Why do you think Africa is failing to reap the benefits from their rights on their valuable plants? AGF: Today, Africa contributes 25 percent in terms of genetic diversity in the world trade. This is a very substantial output from this continent. But Africa loses out in terms of adopting the same approach as regards the development of drugs in the continent.

For example, there is no legal requirement for the development of drugs emanating from African plants. Researchers and scientists have been very keen on publishing everything and putting it in the public domain. Once it is in the public domain, patenting becomes almost impossible. From this point of view, Africa has lost out and has not been able to harness its biodiversity to its best advantage.

IPS: Is there anything that can be done now? AGF: Africans have to have their governments recognising traditional medicine. There should be a two-prong approach – one is to isolate the molecule and test it for its potential as per the exigencies of the pharmaceutical industry.

The other is validate herbal remedies by taking the traditional recipes, checking and confirming its scientific components and be able to say that they are as good as allopathic medicine from the West. Even scientists and doctors are increasingly realising that sometimes the standards of extracts have much more benefits than the isolated molecules.

If African countries are to (develop) fast in this field, they’ll have to validate traditional herbal extracts because there is big money in this. This will also have a big impact on agriculture, which is very problematic on the continent because of several reasons including climate change.

The farmer would benefit as well as the healers and also the common man in getting safe and cheap medication which we must not forget is in line with the African culture. Both the cultural and economic aspects would thus be addressed.

Again, documentation would be required and we have to ensure that whatever is being produced on the continent is up to world standard so that the medication could also be exported. This is where the money will flow back into the continent.

IPS: Can useful medicines and products be developed in Africa? AGF: I am the chairperson of the Association of African Medicinal Plants Standards (AAMPS) that is working on the standardisation of herbal remedies that will soon publish the African pharmacopeia. This will not only provide the recipes, the benefits, the pharmacology, the toxicology, the side-effects but more importantly, it will put a big focus on the trading standards.

Until the farmer does not produce according to the norms of what is sought by the principal consumer in Europe and the United States, he’ll not be able to sell (his product). This is an area where we are putting lots of energy in terms of providing the farmers with the trading standards in order to reap the benefits.

IPS: Are there not too many external interests preventing African countries from doing something? AGF: Health is a national issue and each country will have to relook at itself and analyse how best they can derive benefits from their own biodiversity by providing products that are compatible with the norms. This is the area where countries can compete with each other based on the same biodiversity but, of course, providing the good products.

IPS: How do you see the future of Africa? AGF: The future is good for Africa. I am very positive about it. I travel a lot in the continent and I see much progress has been done and is made increasingly.

Africans are more and more focused on all aspects that will bring them revenue and benefits for their populations.

Excerpt:

Every year 400 Mauritians undergo amputations, another 400 have heart surgery; 175 people’s eyes are under the knife every week – all due to a disease that is easily prevented, Type 2 diabetes.

Not enough Mauritians have their blood sugar levels tested. Credit: Nasseem Ackbarally/IPS

“It seems that the whole population is ill,” lamented Mauritius’ health minister.

Mauritians’ health is seriously threatened by a disease that could easily be avoided with good nutrition and exercise, health experts say. A quarter of the 1.2 million population is suffering from diabetes, while almost 30 percent more are pre-diabetic. Many others are unaware of their condition, according to a new study by the national health department.

Almost all diabetes patients of the island state suffer from Type 2 diabetes, a metabolism disorder where the body struggles to break down glucose. Type 2 diabetes is mainly caused by unhealthy lifestyle choices, in contrast to type 1 diabetes – which accounts for less than one percent suffer of cases in Mauritius – in which a person’s own body has destroyed the insulin-producing beta cells in the pancreas.

Fifty-six-year-old Naden Sooprayen has been suffering from Type 2 diabetes for the past 16 years. He says did not know about the disease until he was diagnosed.

“I am living on diabetes pills since all these years, and I don’t think I’ll ever stop taking them because doctors say I may get serious health complications,” he explains, referring to the medication that helps him to control his blood glucose levels.

“Had I been aware of the damages caused by this disease, and that healthy foods, vegetables and physical activities can prevent it, I would have gone for them,” says Sooprayen, who works as a messenger at a publishing company in Mauritius’ capital Port-Louis.

Sooprayen is one of about 300,000 Mauritians who suffer from this disease, according to the National Service Framework for Diabetes (NSFD), which was set up this year by government in a concerted effort to fight the disease.

NSFD figures paint a dismal picture of Mauritians’ health: 30 percent of Mauritians are hypertensive, 38 percent are either overweight or obese, 45 percent have high cholesterol, and 75 percent of men and 90 percent of women are not physically active. Rapid economic development during the 1990s has led to unhealthy changes in the lifestyle.

Health minister Rajesh Jeetah told journalists at a press conference in August 2008 that thousands of diabetics are suffering from serious eye and kidney conditions caused by the disease, and many require hospitalisation.

Health experts note that the high rate of diabetes among Mauritians is not caused by leading unhealthy lifestyles alone. They believe that the Asian genetic background of the population might as well play a role.

During a presentation to the health department in August, Dr Jeremy Jowett, head of genomics and system biology at the Australian Heart and Diabetes Institute, confirmed that Asian populations suffer most from the disease. About 80 percent of the Mauritian population is of Asian descent.

The Mauritian government has now commissioned research to better understand the genetic reasons that cause diabetes.

Health officials are concerned that prevalence of diabetes will remain high because there is not enough awareness among the population about the seriousness of the disease. Dr Mahboob Kureemun, a private medical doctor, told IPS that most new cases of diabetes are only discovered when a patient requires a medical check-up for other ailments.

He is also worried that many diabetics, once diagnosed and put on treatment, do not take their medication consistently and don’t make any lifestyle changes.

“Many diabetics take their pills only a day or two before their next doctor’s appointment instead of every day, (hoping to improve the results of the blood test). This makes control of the disease really difficult,” he observes.

Believing that the health department cannot solve the issue alone, government officials have now enlisted the support of the private sector and civil society organisations in the fight against this disease.

The Holy Welfare Association, for example, is a non-governmental organisation that educates young diabetics under the age of 35 about healthy lifestyle choices, nutrition and the importance of sport.

“Most Mauritians eat an unhealthy diet and too much fast-food,” says Holy Welfare Association chair Vinay Narrainen.

Moreover, government is encouraging the local media to regularly broadcast talk shows and give out information on diabetes and other non-communicable diseases regularly, while public health facilities now offer free medical check-ups almost everywhere on the island.

A number of health clubs and support groups have been formed to help diabetics deal with the disease on a day-to-day basis and to counsel patients on how to lead a healthier lifestyle.

In a bid to protect the younger generations from this disease, the sale of soft drinks, sugar candies and salty snacks, loaded with fat, in school canteens has been banned by the education department.