Studies show that indigenous fish species in Uganda – here being caught on Lake Victoria – have shrunk in size due to an increase in water temperature as a result of climate change. Credit: Wambi Michael/IPS

By Wambi Michael
KAMPALA, Aug 22 2015 (IPS)

Climate change is reducing the size of several species of fish on lakes in Uganda and its neighbouring East African countries, with a negative impact on the livelihoods of millions people who depend on fishing for food and income.

Studies conducted on inland lakes in Uganda, including Lake Victoria which is shared by three East African countries, indicate that indigenous fish species have shrunk in size due to an increase in temperatures in the water bodies.

“What we are seeing in Lake Victoria and other lakes is a shift in the composition of fish. In the past, we had a dominance of bigger fish but now we are seeing the fish stocks dominated by small fish. This means they are the ones which are adapting well to the changed conditions,” said Dr Jackson Efitre, a lecturer in fisheries management and aquatic sciences at Uganda’s Makerere University.

“So if that condition goes on, he added, “the question is would we want to see our fish population dominated by small fish with little value?”

“We need to provide lake-dependent populations with an alternative for them to survive … If measures cannot be agreed and implemented quickly, then we are condemning those communities to death” – Dr Justus Rutaisire, responsible for aquaculture at Uganda’s National Agriculture Research Organisation (NARO)
In Uganda, the fisheries sector accounts for 2.5 percent of the national budget and 12.5 percent of agricultural gross domestic product (GDP). It employs 1.2 million people, generates over 100 million dollars in exports and provides about 50 percent of the dietary proteins of Ugandans.

Efitre was one of the researchers for a study on ‘Application of policies to address the influence of climate change on inland aquatic and riparian ecosystems, fisheries and livelihoods”, which examined the influence of climate variability and change on fisheries resources and livelihoods using lakes Wamala and Kawi in the Victoria and Kyoga lake basins as case studies.

It also looked at the extent to which existing policies can be applied to address the impacts of and any challenges associated with climate change.

The study’s findings showed that temperatures around the two lakes had always varied but had increased consistently by 0.02-0.03^oC annually since the 1980s, and that rainfall had deviated from historical averages and on Lake Wamala – although not Lake Kawi – had generally been above average since the 1980s.

According to the study, these findings are consistent with those reported by the United Nations Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) in 2007 and 2014 for the East African region.

Mark Olokotum, one of the study’s researchers, climate changes have affected the livelihoods of local fishing communities.

“These are fishers who depend on the environment. You either increase on the number of times you fish to get more fish or get more fishing gear to catch more fish. And once that happens, you spend more time fishing, earn much less although the price is high, and there are no fish so people have resorted to eating what is available,” he said.

Olokotum told IPS that the water balance of most aquatic systems in Uganda is determined by rainfall and temperature through evaporation.

He said that about 80 percent of the water gain in Lake Wamala was through rainfall while 86 percent of the loss was through evaporation, resulting in a negative water balance and the failure of the lake to retain its historical water levels.

“Therefore, although rainfall in the East African region is expected to increase as a result of climate change, this gain may be offset by increased evaporation associated with increases in temperature unless the increases in rainfall outweigh the loss through evaporation,” Olokotum explained.

These changes have made life more difficult for people like Clement Opedum and his eight sons who have traditionally depended on lakes as a source of food and income.

Opedum’s living has always come from the waters of Lake Wamala. In the past, sales of tilapia fish from the lake to neighbouring districts were brisk; and some would be bought by traders from the Democratic Republic of Congo, sustaining his family and other fishermen.

Those days are now gone. Over the years, the lake has steadily retreated from its former shores, leaving Opedum and his neighbours high and dry, and faced with the prospect that the lake could vanish entirely.

Charles Lugambwa, another fisherman in the same area, has been obliged to turn to farming, and he now grows yams, sweet potatoes and beans on land that was previously under the waters of the lake.

Lugambwa told IPS that apart from tilapia fish, other species have started disappearing from the lake in 30 or so years he has lived there.  “In 1994, the lake dried up completely but came back in 1998 following heavy rains,” he told IPS. “We used to catch very big tilapia but now they are quite tiny even though they are adult fish.”

Scientists and researchers argue that the causes of lake shrinking include water evaporation, increased cultivation on banks, cutting down of trees and destruction of wetlands, while the reduction in the size of tilapia has been linked to increased lake water temperature as a result of global warming.

Dr Richard Ogutu-Ohwayo, senior research officer at the National Fisheries Resources Research Institute (NaFFIRI) told IPS that the response to the impacts of climate change in Uganda had been concentrated on crops, livestock and forestry with almost no concern for the fisheries sector.

“It is high time government took the bold step to bring aquatic ecosystems and fisheries fully on board in its climate change responses,” he said.

According to Ogutu–Ohwayo, the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) and the East African Community Policy on Climate Change commit states to building capacity, generating knowledge, and identifying adaptation and mitigation measures to reduce the impacts of climate change, however these have barely been implemented.

Ogutu-Ohwayo who was part of the lake study research team, told IPS that Uganda has a water policy which provides for protection and management of water resources, and “we must apply these policies to manage the water resources of lakes Wamala, Kawi and other lakes through integrated approaches such as protecting wetlands, lake shores and river banks and controlling water extraction.”

Like other East African nations, Uganda has relied heavily on capture fisheries, or wild fisheries, with a tendency to marginalise aquaculture as far as resource allocation and manpower development is concerned.

With climate change leading to a decline in the size and stocks of wild fish and capture fisheries, fisheries experts are saying wild fish and capture fisheries from lakes alone can no longer meet the demand for fish, both for local consumption and export.

Fish processing plants around Lake Victoria, for example, are now operating at less than 50 percent capacity, while some have closed down.

Dr Justus Rutaisire, responsible for aquaculture at Uganda’s National Agriculture Research Organisation (NARO), told IPS that aquaculture could be used as one of the adaptation measures to help communities that have depended on fish to supplement capture fisheries.

He noted, however, that the development of aquaculture in most Eastern African countries is constrained by low adoption of appropriate technologies, inadequate investment in research and inadequate aquaculture extension services.

“We need to provide lake-dependent populations with an alternative for them to survive and that is why we are asking government to invest in aquaculture,” said Rutaisire. ”If measures cannot be agreed and implemented quickly, then we are condemning those communities to death,” he warned.

Edited by Phil Harris   

Dja Abdullah, just one victim of the gathering pace of climate change fuelled by coal-fired power stations, has walked 300 km with his cattle in search of fresh pasture in the Sahel region of Mauritania. Credit: Pablo Tosco/Oxfam

By Sean Buchanan
LONDON, Jun 6 2015 (IPS)

As heads of state and government of the G7 states prepare for their Jun. 7-8 summit in Germany, Oxfam has released a new report titled Let Them Eat Coal which they may find hard to digest.

According to the report, coal plants in the G7 countries – Canada, France, Germany, Italy, Japan, United Kingdom and United States – are on track to cost the world 450 billion dollars a year by the end of the century and reduce crops by millions of tonnes as they fuel the gathering pace of climate change.“Coal-fired power stations … increasingly look like weapons of destruction aimed at those who suffer the impacts of changing rainfall patterns as well as of extreme weather events” – Professor Olivier de Schutter, former U.N. Special Rapporteur on the Right to Food

Launching the report, which has been endorsed by business leaders, academics and climate experts, Oxfam warns that coal is the biggest driver of climate change, which is already hitting the world’s poorest people hardest and making the fight to end hunger tougher.

Noting that the G7 countries remain major consumers of coal, Oxfam is calling on the G7 leaders meeting in Germany to shift from coal to renewable energy sources which offer a safer and cost effective alternative and the prospect of millions of new jobs around the world.

This, it says, would also be a giant step towards those countries not only meeting current emissions targets but moving closer to what is urgently needed.

The international agency reports that Africa, for example, faces costs of 84 billion a year by the end of the century due to the damage caused by G7 coal emissions. This is 60 times the amount Africa currently receives from the G7 in aid to support agriculture and food production.

The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) has warned that Africa’s food production systems are highly vulnerable to climate change, with declines likely in cereal crops across the continent of up to 35 percent by mid-century. Oxfam warns that seven million tonnes of staple crops could be lost annually by the 2080s because of G7 coal emissions.

Celine Charveriat, Oxfam International’s Director of Advocacy and Campaigns, said: “The G7 leaders must stop using emissions growth in developing countries as an excuse for inaction and begin leading the world away from fossil fuels by starting with their own addiction to coal.

“The G7’s coal habit is racking up costs for Africa and other developing regions. It’s time G7 leaders woke up to the hunger their own energy systems are causing to the world’s poorest people on the frontline of climate change.

Referring to the U.N. Climate Change Conference scheduled for December in Paris, Charveriat said: “Ahead of a new climate deal due to be struck at the end of this year, G7 leaders can give the global fight against climate change the momentum it needs by shifting away from coal. This will make significant additional cuts in their emissions, create jobs and be a major step towards a safer, sustainable and prosperous future for us all.”

Globally, coal is responsible for almost three-quarters (72 percent) of power sector emissions, and while more than half of today’s coal consumption is in developing countries, the scale of G7 coal burning is considerable – if G7 coal plants were a country, noted Oxfam, it would be the fifth biggest emitter in the world.

G7 coal plants emit double the fossil fuel emissions of Africa and ten times as much as the 48 least developed countries.

At the 2009 Climate Change Conference held in Copenhagen, all countries agreed to prevent warming of more than 2°C to avoid runaway climate change. Since then, said Oxfam, five of the G7 countries – France, Germany, Italy, Japan and United Kingdom – have been burning more coal, and the world is now heading for an increase in global warming by 4°C.

Climate experts, business leaders and development specialists who are backing the Let Them Eat Coal report include Professor Olivier de Schutter (former U.N. Special Rapporteur on the Right to Food), Nick Molho (Chief Executive of the Aldersgate Group of business, political and civil society leaders), Sharon Burrow (General Secretary of the International Trade Union Confederation) and Dessima Williams (former Ambassador of Grenada to the United Nations and former Chair of the Alliance of Small Island Developing States).

According to de Schutter, “climate disruptions are already affecting many poor communities in the global South, and coal-fired power stations are contributing, every day, to make this worse. They increasingly look like weapons of destruction aimed at those who suffer the impacts of changing rainfall patterns as well as of extreme weather events.”

Oxfam says that the G7 countries must lead the way because they are most responsible for climate change, and because they have the most resources to decarbonise their economies and fund both emissions cuts and adaptation so that developing countries can protect themselves from climate change and develop in a low-carbon way.

Oxfam is also calling on the G7 to stand by existing commitments to jointly mobilise 100 billion dollars a year by 2020, and to make visible progress in both raising public finance over the next five years and increasing the proportion of funding for adaptation to climate change.

Edited by Phil Harris    

Palm plantation in Sumatra, Indonesia. Palm plantations are being used for the production of biofuel under the guise of a new source of ‘green’ fuel, often displacing local communities and eradicating forests. Photo credit: Clare McVeigh/Down To Earth

By Robbie Blake
BRUSSELS, May 9 2015 (IPS)

Last week, the European Union reached a momentous decision to finally agree a reform to its disastrous biofuels legislation, signalling Europe’s U-turn on the burning of crops for biofuels.

In so doing, the European body has recognised what NGOs and scientists have long been warning – that using food and agricultural crops for transport fuel causes major side effects, including food price hikes and volatility, hunger, forest destruction, expanded land consumption, and climate change.“Using food and agricultural crops for transport fuel causes major side effects, including food price hikes and volatility, hunger, forest destruction, expanded land consumption, and climate change”

Six years of political wrangling has ultimately boiled down to a few percentage points. The European Union decided to limit biofuels from food crops like maize, rapeseed, soy and palm oil to 7 percent of transport energy in 2020 (compared with an expected 8.6 percent business as usual).

If that doesn’t sound much (and it should have gone further, given that it still means increasing consumption beyond today’s levels), it is worth knowing that this prevents emissions of an estimated 320 million tonnes of CO₂ – equal to the total carbon emissions of a country like Poland in 2012.

The European Union has moreover committed to end policies and subsidies supporting crop-based biofuels after 2020.

Friends of the Earth (FoE) first heard that policies to incentivise biofuels might be causing serious problems a decade ago. Back then, biofuels were hyped as a silver bullet – backed by big agricultural industry interests and as an easy ‘drop-in’ alternative to fossil fuels.

But FoE partners in Indonesia, Paraguay, Brazil and elsewhere began reporting a pattern of massive new plantation developments for sugar cane, oil palm and soy, under the guise of a new source of ‘green’ fuel. These began to displace local communities and eradicate forests – and continue to do so today.

Meanwhile, studies began to show that many biofuels were helping to drive – not prevent – climate change. Extensive scientific research now shows that, on balance, diverting crops to fuel our transport often does more to contribute to climate change than to combat it, due to the deforestation that goes hand-in-hand with large-scale expansion of agricultural land for biofuels.

The results were also disastrous for food. In 2011, a global report on food price volatility by organisations including the OECD, the World Bank, FAO, and the IMF recommended that “governments remove provisions of current national policies that subsidize (or mandate) biofuels production or consumption.”

By turning its back on these biofuels, Europe sends a strong signal to global markets that the biofuels bubble has burst.

The significance of this should not be underestimated. Many countries, rightly or wrongly, see the European Union as a global leader on policies to tackle climate change, and are likely to follow this example in their own biofuels policies. The European Union is also the world’s biggest producer and importer of biodiesel, so this decision will be noticed on world biofuels and commodity markets.

Biofuels-producing countries should take note. Indonesia recently announced plans for new subsidies to expand biofuels plantations in Indonesian forests – which now seems like a serious misstep.

E.U. governments will now have to implement this reform, and they must set the course for phasing out the misguided blending of food crops into Europeans’ fuel tanks altogether. They should next take stock and ensure that other forms of bioenergy (for example, burning wood for electricity) do not cause unintended harm for citizens, the environment and the climate.

And to truly and effectively reduce carbon emissions from transport, they must urgently adopt readily available options like reducing fuel demand in cars, making trains and public transport better and cheaper, speeding up the electrification of our transport systems, and incentives to get people cycling and walking.

Edited by Phil Harris   

The views expressed in this article are those of the author and do not necessarily represent the views of, and should not be attributed to, IPS – Inter Press Service. 

Excerpt:

The Dube AgriZone facility currently incorporates 16 hectares of greenhouses, making it the largest climate-controlled growing area under glass in Africa. Credit: FAO

By Kwame Buist
DURBAN, South Africa, Mar 22 2015 (IPS)

Agriculture is the major employer and a backbone of the economies of Southern Africa.

However, the rural areas that support an agriculture-based livelihood system for the majority of the nearly 270 million people living in the region are typically fragile and there is wide variability in the development challenges facing the countries of the region.

The agricultural sector is dominated by crop production, although the share of livestock production and other agriculture practices have been increasing.Chronic and acute food insecurity remain major risks and Southern Africa still faces enormous challenges in trying to transform and commercialise its largely small holder-based agricultural systems through accelerated integration into competitive markets in a rapidly globalising world

Chronic and acute food insecurity remain major risks and Southern Africa still faces enormous challenges in trying to transform and commercialise its largely smallholder-based agricultural systems through accelerated integration into competitive markets in a rapidly globalising world.

These and other challenges facing the sector were the focus of a three-day meeting (Mar. 10-12) in Durban of management and experts from the Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO), which ended with a call to prioritise broad-based partnerships and build synergies to provide countries with effective and efficient support in the agriculture sector.

In an annual event designed to provide a platform for discussion and exchange of information on best practices and the general performance of FAO programmes in the region, David Phiri, FAO Sub-Regional Coordinator for Southern Africa, reiterated the importance of different sectors working together.

“Achieving food and nutrition security in Southern Africa is a challenge far too great for any government or FAO to overcome alone,” he said. “As well as the governments of developing and developed countries, the civil society, private sector and international development agencies must be involved. Above all, the people themselves need to be empowered to manage their own development.”

Building on what works

As one example of the best practices under the scrutiny of the meeting, participants took part in a field visit to the Dube AgriZone facility – a high-tech agricultural development initiative pioneered by the KwaZulu-Natal Provincial Government.

The facility aims to stimulate the growth of KwaZulu-Natal’s perishables sector and aims to achieve improved agricultural yields, consistent quality, year-round production and improved management of disease and pests.

The facility – strategically located 30 km north of the important coastal city of Durban – currently incorporates 16 hectares of greenhouses, making it the largest climate-controlled growing area under glass in Africa.

Its primary focus is on the production of short shelf-life vegetables and cut flowers which require immediate post-harvest airlifting and supply to both domestic and export markets.

In addition to its greenhouses, the facility offers dedicated post-harvest packing houses, a central packing and distribution centre, a nursery and the Dube AgriLab, a sophisticated plant tissue culture laboratory.

Dube AgriZone is an eco-friendly facility, adopting a range of ‘green’ initiatives to offset its environmental impact, including rainwater harvesting, use of solar energy, on-site waste management, and the growth of indigenous plants for rehabilitation efforts.

Dube AgriZone provides growers with the potential to achieve improved agricultural yields, consistency of produce quality, close management of disease and pest infestation and year-round crop production with a view to improved sustainability and enhanced agricultural competitiveness.

“I could never have been able put up such a facility and produce at the current scale were it not for this innovative AgriZone,” said Derrick Baird, owner of Qutom Farms, which currently produces 150,000 cucumbers in the glass greenhouse leased from Dube AgriZone.

“This high-tech facility with all the necessary facilities – including transportation and freight – has allowed us to concentrate on producing cucumbers at much lower costs than in other locations where we had previously tried.”

The partnership between the provincial government and the private sector behind the facility was hailed as an example of a success story that could offer valuable lessons to others across Southern Africa.

“There is plenty we can learn from this facility and perhaps one of the more important ones is on forming partnerships and alliances,” said Tobias Takavarasha, FAO Representative in South Africa.

“We need to build on what is working by adopting and adapting technologies to the local situation, and then scaling them upwards and outwards to achieve even better results,” he added.

Edited by Phil Harris    

Safa Subha and three-year-old Rahat rely on Oxfam aid for food to fight malnutrition after having been accustomed to living on a diet of bread and tea. Credit: Mel Frykberg/IPS

By Mel Frykberg
BEIT LAHIYA, Northern Gaza Strip, Mar 1 2015 (IPS)

Extensive damage to Gaza’s environment as a result of the Israeli blockade and its devastating military campaign against the coastal territory during last year’s war from July to August, is negatively affecting the health of Gazans, especially their food security.

“We were living on bread and tea and my five children were badly malnourished as my husband and I couldn’t afford proper food,” Safa Subha, 37, from Beit Lahiya told IPS.

“My children were suffering from liver problems, anaemia and weak bones. It was only after I received regular food vouchers from Oxfam and was able to purchase eggs and yoghurt that my children are now healthier.Lack of dietary diversity is an issue of concern, particularly for children and pregnant and lactating women, due to the lack of large-scale food assistance programmes and the high prices of fresh food and red meat

“But it is still a struggle as I have to ration out the food and my doctor has warned me to keep giving the children these foods to prevent the malnutrition returning,” said Safa.

According to the U.N. Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA), in several communities, lack of dietary diversity was highlighted as an issue of concern, particularly for children and pregnant and lactating women, due to the lack of large-scale food assistance programmes and the high prices of fresh food and red meat.

Before the war, Safa’s husband Ashraf worked as a farmer, renting a piece of land on which he grew produce that he then sold.

“My husband used to earn about NIS 300 per week (about 75 dollars) from farming. After the land became too dangerous to farm, because of Israeli military fire and much of it destroyed in Israeli bombings, my husband tried to earn some money renting a taxi,” said Safa.

However, Ashraf’s attempts to support his family as a taxi driver did not provide sufficient income for their survival.

“He can only use the taxi a couple of days a week because it doesn’t belong to him and he often doesn’t have money to buy fuel because it is so expensive and Israel only allows limited amounts of fuel into Gaza because of the blockade,” said Safa.

Kamal Kassam, 43, from Beit Hanoun, in the northern Gaza Strip, has had to rely on Oxfam’s Cash for Work programme to support his wife and five children aged 6 to 12.

During the war the Kassam’s had to flee to a U.N. shelter after the family home was destroyed by Israeli bombs, which also wounded his wife and left one of his daughters severely traumatised, suffering from epilepsy and soiling herself at night.

Kassam’s wife Eman is ill and another daughter needs regular medical treatment for cancer.

The Kassams were provided with a temporary tin caravan to live in by aid organisations but were unable to purchase food or school clothes because they had received housing aid and were therefore “less desperate”.

“I used to work in a factory but lost that job after Israel’s blockade. Before the war I made about NIS 30 (about 7.50 dollars) a day by picking up and delivering goods from my donkey cart,” Kassam told IPS.

But during a night of heavy aerial bombardment, a bomb killed his donkey and destroyed the cart as well as his only way of supporting his family.

Israel’s extensive bombing campaign during the war also destroyed or damaged, infrastructure, including Gaza’s sole power plant and water sanitation projects.

As a result, untreated sewage is pumped out to sea and then floods back into Gaza’s underground water system, contaminating drinking water and crops and leading to outbreaks of disease.

Israeli restrictions on imports, including vital spare parts for the repair of sewerage infrastructure and agricultural equipment such as fertiliser and seedlings, has limited crop production.

Furthermore, the regular targeting of fishermen and farmers, trying to access their land and Gaza’s fishing shoals in Israel’s Access Restricted Areas (ARAs), by Israeli security forces has severely hindered the ability of Gazans to earn a living from farming and fishing.

OCHA identified the most frequent concerns regarding food security and nutrition as “loss of the source of income and livelihoods due to severe damage to agricultural lands; death/loss of animals; inability to access agricultural lands, particularly in the Israeli-imposed three-kilometre buffer zone; and loss of employment.”

Food insecurity in Gaza is not caused by lack of food on the market alone. It is also a crisis of economic access to food because most Gazans cannot afford to buy sufficient quantities of quality food.

“As a result of the lack of economic access to food due to high unemployment and low wages, the majority of the population in Gaza has been pushed into poverty and food insecurity, with no other choice but to rely heavily on assistance to cover their essential needs,” said ‘GAZA Detailed Needs Assessment (DNA) and Recovery Framework: Social Protection Sub-Sector’, a report by the World Bank, European Union, United Nations and the Government of Palestine.

“The repetition of one harsh economic shock after the other has resulted in an erosion of household coping strategies, with 89 percent of households resorting to negative coping mechanisms to meet their food needs (half report purchasing lower quality food and a third have reduced the number of daily meals),” said the DNA report, adding that the situation was expected to worsen in 2015.

Edited by Phil Harris   

Men and women plant vegetable seeds in a nursery bed in Eastern Equatoria state, South Sudan. The state has given civil servants Fridays and Saturdays off to farm. Credit: Charlton Doki/IPS

By Charlton Doki
JUBA , Sep 5 2012 (IPS)

Police in South Sudan have begun press-ganging every “idle” youth they can find to provide labour on police farms. The State Police Commissioner in Northern Bahr al Gazal state says young men cannot be left to drink tea and play cards all day while food insecurity threatens the country.

“Anyone who does not want to cultivate will be captured and brought to plant for us. Whether you are a soldier, or a policeman, or a member of the prison service … if you choose to put on your best clothes to come and loiter in town, we shall take you to work for us. Whether you want it or not,” State Police Commissioner Akot Deng Akot told IPS.

A staggering 4.7 million South Sudanese – almost half the population – are food insecure, according to the United Nations.

“One million of these people are severely food insecure meaning they can only afford to eat one meal once in two or three days, while the other 3.7 million people are moderately food insecure meaning they can at least afford to eat a meal per day,” the U.N.’s Humanitarian Coordinator in South Sudan, Lise Grande, told IPS in an earlier interview.

The countrywide food insecurity is being blamed on a number of factors, including a cereal deficit. According to the U.N. the deficit doubled from 200,000 metric tonnes in 2011 to 470,000 this year. In addition, high fuel prices and a weakening local currency have contributed to the situation.

According to data from the National Bureau of Statistics, more than 80 percent of Northern Bahr al Ghazal’s estimated 790, 898 people are affected by food insecurity.

And it has resulted in drastic measures by state authorities attempting to encourage farming in the region. Akot even warned people against attending local courts dealing with petty disputes.

“This also applies to people who go and crowd at local courts in disputes over ownership of cows. Such courts will not be allowed to operate during cultivation (which lasts from October to December) so that everybody goes to their farms to produce food,” he said.

In fact, some arrests have already been made. A local journalist from Northern Bahr al Ghazal state, Hou Akot Hou, said that police arrested dozens of youth under the orders of a local chief, Atak Awan Anei, who is also the brother of Northern Bahr al Ghazal Governor Paul Malong Awan Anei. The arrests occurred in July in Warwar – a market near the South Sudan-Sudan border.

Some locals are supportive of the policy.

“The government should force older boys who are capable of taking care of themselves and are loitering in town to go and cultivate,” local resident Justin Ayuer told IPS.

Local teenager Titotiek Chour concurred: “We as youth have the energy to produce food. We have a chance to do more and we should use this opportunity to produce food and improve the lives of our people.”

Northern Bahr al Ghazal state is not the only region trying to institute policies to encourage food production.

Since April, in Eastern and Central Equatoria state, officials have given civil servants Fridays and Saturdays off to farm.

Eastern Equatoria state’s Governor Louis Lobong Lojore threatened to cut the salaries of civil servants who do not use the time off to work on their farms. He said that the measure was necessary as some civil servants were drinking, and playing cards and dominoes instead of farming.

Those who did so, he said, would lose two days of pay every week while the programme lasts. Eastern Equatoria state’s Information Minister Felix Otudwa told IPS that he believed the government’s initiative would lead to an increase in food production and security this year.

“These days you do not see people sitting under trees drinking tea or playing cards the way it used to be in the past. Everybody is busy farming, even on weekends. The governor, minister and other senior civil servants are all involved in cultivation these days. This year, we will all harvest in a big way,” Otudwa said.

But not everyone is comfortable with the forced regulations.

Edmond Yakani, the coordinator of local rights organisation Community Empowerment for Progress Organisation, told IPS that the policy was illegal.

“Where is the law that allows them to arrest people simply because they are not on a farm during work hours? Who passed that law and when?” Yakani asked.

He said that it was equally wrong for the government of Eastern Equatoria to cut the salaries of civil servants who do not use their given days off to farm.

“Where is the law that allows them to cut people’s salaries?” Yakani asked.

“A law has to be passed, and this can only be passed by the South Sudan National Assembly so that it becomes obligatory for everyone to farm,” he said.

He said that the government needed to facilitate voluntary farming by improving access to land, tools and seeds.

A state official who spoke on condition of anonymity said that the decision to designate Friday and Saturdays as farming days for all civil servants would affect the delivery of health services and affect patients who badly needed treatment.

But Isaac Woja, an agriculturalist and natural resources management expert, said the initiatives might turn out to be successful.

“I think people are taking farming seriously as compared to previous years. When you travel you see more crops on more farms along the road side, and this means that more people have gotten involved in cultivation this year,” Woja told IPS.

He added that only an assessment after the harvest season would determine whether or not the initiative leads to an increase in food production.

Central Equatoria state’s Agriculture Minister Michael Roberto Kenyi told IPS that the policy of giving civil servants days off was making a difference and that civil servants had to lead by example.

“Leadership in the past used to be that you should have a house, a garden and a granary. A leader must have these things to be considered a leader. As a civil servant, you need to be exemplary to the community and you cannot be exemplary when your granary is empty,” he said.

He said that an assessment would be done by the state after the December harvest.

“We are going to conduct an assessment. We will be asking people to tell us the size of area under cultivation or the acreage, the number of hours worked to and the quantity of produce harvested to determine if there has been an increase in food production due to the new initiative,” Kenyi told IPS.

Women in Africa spend 200 million hours collecting water. Credit: Charles Mpaka/IPS

By Thalif Deen
STOCKHOLM, Aug 31 2012 (IPS)

As the weeklong international conference on water concluded Friday, it was left to one of the keynote speakers from the United Nations to focus on a much neglected perspective on water and food security: the role of women.

Lakshmi Puri, deputy executive director of U.N. Women, told delegates that development can be neither sustainable nor inclusive if it does not free women and girls from “carrying heavy buckets of water every day”.

In Sub-Saharan Africa, 71 percent of the burden of collecting water for households falls on women and girls, says the U.N.’s 2012 report on Millennium Development Goals (MDGs).

Currently, women in sub-Saharan Africa spend an average of about 200 million hours per day collecting water, and a whopping 40 billion hours per year, according to the U.N. Development Programme.

“And that’s a billion with a B,” Puri emphasised to IPS hours after she made an impassioned plea for gender equality and women’s empowerment in relation to food and water security.

Speaking at the closing session of the conference, she pointed out that although women carry, literally and metaphorically, most water-related tasks – playing a key role in food production, especially in subsistence farming, and performing most of the unpaid care work -their participation in decision-making processes on water and food management remains very low.

“This does not only result in biased and misinformed decision-making, it jeopardises the achievement of women’s human rights,” she added.

The annual conference, one of the world’s largest gathering of water experts, drew over 2,000 delegates to the Swedish capital this year.

Rita Colwell, the 2010 Stockholm Water Prize Laureate, said women in Bangladesh were using their saris to filter contaminated water, resourcefulness that has helped reduce cholera by nearly 50 percent.

“The key area of empowerment is in empowering women,” she added. “In educating women on the value of safe water, we are then educating the household, and through that the entire country, to change their behaviour.”

At a side event, “Why African Women Matter in Sustainable Food Production”, it was pointed out that women do much of the farm work, and also grow most of the food crops, yet men control most of the land, farming inputs and equipment and agricultural markets.

The bottom line: women are key actors in agricultural activities but they are not key decision makers.

There are few or no women in national water boards governing the management and distribution of water, and fewer still holding decision-making jobs at ministries for gender affairs.

In 2012, women held less than six percent of all ministerial positions in the field of environment, natural resources and energy, according to the United Nations.

Agriculture has not fared any better. “Only five percent of women in Kenya own land registered in their own names,” said Dr. Akinyi Nzioki of the Centre for Land, Economy and Rights of Women (CLEAR) based in Kenya.

Violet Shivutse of Grassroots Organisations Operating Together in Sisterhood (GROOTS) of Kenya said today’s land tenure system continues to undermine rural women’s efforts to access land when they rely so much on agriculture for their livelihoods.

She said most inherited land is transferred primarily to sons, not daughters. And there were instances of widows with HIV/AIDS who were evicted from homes and denied access to land.

Bethlehem Mengistu, regional advocacy manager for WaterAid in East Africa, told IPS that most African countries do have national legislation and are state parties to international conventions protecting the rights of women.

“We have made lots of progress,” she said, “but there is a gap between policy and implementation.”

Puri, who attended the Rio+20 summit meeting in Brazil in June, said the outcome document adopted by world leaders there set in motion a number of processes, including the development of Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) which will follow the completion of the U.N.’s  Millennium Development Goals (MDGs) in 2015.

It is important not only that these SDGs include a specific goal on gender equality and women’s empowerment, but also that gender perspectives are mainstreamed in all other goals, including a SDG on water, she noted.

“This will give the goals a better chance to be achieved and, at the same time, contribute to the achievement of gender equality.”

She said the combined impacts of the recent economic and financial crises, volatile energy and food prices, and climate change have exacerbated water and food scarcity, along with their detrimental impact on women and girls. Creating a water and food secure world requires putting women and girls at the centre of water and food related policies, actions and financing.

On the positive side, the global movement towards gender equality and women’s empowerment has also shown results, albeit limited.

In Morocco, for instance, the Rural Water Supply and Sanitation Project of the World Bank was aimed at reducing the burden of girls, traditionally involved in fetching water, in order to improve their school attendance, said Puri.

In the six provinces where the project is based, it was found that girls’ school attendance increased by 20 percent in four years, attributed in part to the fact that girls spent less time fetching water.

At the same time, convenient access to safe water reduced time spent collecting water by women and young girls by 50 to 90 percent.

She said it has also been proven that improvements in infrastructure services – especially water and electricity – can help reduce time women time spend on domestic and care work.

In Pakistan, putting water sources closer to the home was associated with increased time allocated to market work. In Tanzania, a survey found that girls’ school attendance was 15 percent higher for girls from homes located 15 minutes or less from a water source than for those in homes one hour or more away.

“We need to address the multifaceted gender discriminations in accessing and controlling productive resources such as water and land, assets and services,” Puri noted.

She said evidence suggests that investing in women-owned food and agricultural enterprises could narrow the resource gap and increase agricultural yields to potentially reduce the number of hungry people by 100 to 150 million.

Food prices are on the rise again. Above, an irrigated field in Kakamas, South Africa. Africa is particularly vulnerable to the effects of rising prices. Credit: Patrick Burnett/IPS

By Carey L. Biron
WASHINGTON, Aug 30 2012 (IPS)

After decreasing somewhat in recent months, international food prices have again risen dramatically, according to figures published on Thursday by the World Bank. Statistics for July indicate a 10 percent rise over just the previous month, and a six percent increase over already high prices from the same time frame a year ago.

“Food prices rose again sharply, threatening the health and well-being of millions of people,” World Bank President Jim Yong Kim said in a statement on Thursday from the bank’s Washington headquarters. “Africa and the Middle East are particularly vulnerable, but so are people in other countries where the prices of grains have gone up abruptly.”

That list includes countries around the world. According to the World Bank’s new Food Price Watch, between June and July prices for both maize and wheat increased by 25 percent, while soybeans went up by 17 percent. That leaves prices one percent higher than the previous price peak in February 2011.

Kim noted that the World Bank has already brought its agriculture support to its highest level in the past two decades.

“We cannot allow these historic price hikes to turn into a lifetime of perils as families take their children out of school and eat less nutritious food to compensate for the high prices,” he said. “Countries must strengthen their targeted programmes to ease the pressure on the most vulnerable population.”

In recent months, watchdog groups around the world have expressed frustration with a perceived lack of both urgency and creativity on the part of national and multilateral policymakers in dealing with the return of food prices to near-crisis levels.

“Today’s World Bank report is yet another alarm bell for governments that action on food price volatility is urgently required, but it’s still not clear whether they are listening,” Colin Roche, a spokesperson with the aid agency Oxfam, said on Thursday.

Roche said that Oxfam has already started to see “the devastating impact of food price volatility in developing countries that rely on food imports”.

On Monday, the head of the U.N. Food and Agriculture Organisation, Jose Graziano Da Silva, called on the Group of 20 (G20), a multilateral grouping, to engage in “coordinated action” on spiking food prices. But that same day, the G20 decided that it would wait for September’s U.S. crop report before deciding how to proceed, a move decried by Oxfam.

“The G20 must act now before prices spiral out of control and push more people into hunger,” Roche warned. “This ‘wait and see’ attitude is unacceptable, especially when the World Bank report has warned that prices are expected to remain high and volatile.”

Remembering sustainability

Much of the concern today is over the ongoing drought in the United States and in parts of Europe. The situation in the U.S. alone could have a devastating effect on food stocks and prices internationally, as the country is the world’s primary supplier of both maize and soybeans.

As of mid-August, the United States government had classified nearly 1,800 counties throughout the country as disaster areas, mostly due to a grinding drought that, even if it were to end soon, has already gutted this year’s harvest for many grain crops.

By late July, nearly three-quarters of the U.S. maize crop was officially rated very poor to fair. That’s a stark turnaround from forecasts made earlier this year of a record maize harvest in the U.S., which many were hoping could help shore up depleted foodstores in other countries.

Although more extreme than what has been seen in recent months, the new World Bank numbers extended a trend of volatility that has held over the past year as well as a trend of high food prices that dates back to 2008, when a confluence of issues created a sudden crisis in foodstores and prices that strained local communities globally and took many policymakers by surprise.

The 2008 experience helped to reverse a two-decade international decline in investment in agriculture.

“What we saw in 2008 – those high prices never really went away, especially for the developing world,” Danielle Nierenberg, director of the Nourishing the Planet programme at the Worldwatch Institute, an environment-focused think tank based here in Washington, told IPS.

“While the renewed investment in agriculture since 2008 has been much needed, it has been mostly focused on long-term, technology-focused research. We need a 180-degree turn in thinking in how we approach agriculture.”

Overlooked in today’s renewed agriculture policy, Nierenberg said, are “those things we already know work”, such as a spectrum of sustainable practices, rainwater harvesting and the use of natural fertilisers. She also highlights a need to return to national policies of storing grains and other foodstuffs, a practise that has faded in recent years.

“The silver lining of the current drought is that the West can perhaps take a new look at the sustainable practices that have been helping many African farmers combat drought,” she said. “This is an opportunity for the Western world to look to the developing world – they have a lot to teach us.”

A changing agriculture

Nierenberg suggested it will be at least a year or more before the full ramifications of the current situation are fully understood. Others suggest that the situation today is probably the new normal.

“My sense is that we are in a transition from an age of abundance to one of scarcity,” Lester Brown, a longtime sustainability advocate with the Earth Policy Institute here in Washington, told IPS.

In this, Brown notes not only a fast-growing global population but, more importantly, the inevitable effects of rising affluence. Over the past decade alone, he said, world grain demand has doubled, from 21 million tonnes per year to 41 million.

While the impact of demand for biofuels has also been widely felt on grain stocks in recent years, particularly leading to the economic collapse in 2008, Brown suggested that this demand is already starting to decline.

“Once we’ve set aside the issue of ethanol” – a common biofuel – “the big thing now is the fact that three billion people in the world are trying to move up the food chain and are clamouring to consume more meat, especially in China,” he explained.

Meanwhile, for years it has been apparent that arable land is becoming increasingly scarce. Now the same can also be said of irrigation water, including in the world’s three most important grain producers, China, India and the United States.

“We need to recognise that agriculture as we know it evolved over 11,000 years of remarkable climate stability – the system is designed to maximise production within that system,” Brown said.

“But that is now changing; today, we have constant flux. And with each passing year, the systems of climate and agriculture are becoming a bit more out of sync with one another.”

Smallholder farmers around the Yaounde city centre are increasingly farming on urban wastewater sites. Credit: Monde Kingsley Nfor/IPS

By Monde Kingsley Nfor
YAOUNDÉ, Aug 30 2012 (IPS)

Cameroonian urban famer Juliana Numfor has six plots of land where she grows maize, cassava, sweet potatoes and leafy vegetables, including cabbages, wild okra and greens.

The soil in which her crops grow is moist and visibly marshy, and a stream of water runs near it. But if you take a closer look you will notice that the water is dark and smells unpleasant.

In fact it is wastewater, which comes from a student residential quarter in Yaoundé, popularly called “Cradat”, that is less than 400 metres away from her plots of land.

But it is precisely thanks to the wastewater that Numfor is farming on this public land.

She told IPS that she prefers planting her crops on urban wastewater sites because she can easily irrigate them by using the readily available wastewater. She said that this was because rainfall had become increasingly irregular – coming and going when she least expected.

“The kind of crops on this piece of land can grow on any fertile land if it is well watered. But during this period in August, which is supposed to be a very wet time of the year in Yaoundé, very little rainfall has fallen. It makes it impossible for vegetable crops to grow without proper irrigation,” Numfor said.

And Numfor is not the only farmer doing this. Smallholder farmers around the Yaoundé city centre are increasingly farming on urban wastewater sites.

While there are no official figures of how many people are farming in these areas, the Ministry of Agriculture and Rural Development (MINADER) admitted that the practice was overwhelming.

Smallholder farmers in and around Yaoundé can be seen planting their crops on public land, along railways, in conservation areas, and even near roads.

“This is a long-time practice that has only intensified due to a lot of causes, climate change being one. Many farmers have resorted to urban farming with wastewater,” Collette Ekobo, an agricultural inspector at MINADER, told IPS.

One 45-year-old woman told IPS that she knew 11 other women who cultivated crops on land near wastewater.

“All I know is that the ground is very fertile. I think when people empty their sewers and other household waste into this water, it makes the land very fertile for farming. And there is water all season round,” she said.

Rural-urban migration, aggravated by the adverse effects of climate change on rural farming, is thought to be one of the main reasons behind the growing number of urban farmers in the city.

In 2011, MINADER began warning farmers about the climate variability affecting agriculture across the country. Yaoundé, which is located in Cameroon’s Centre Region, experienced reduced rainfall.

“Over the years in Yaoundé, the rainfall pattern has been so variable and not easy to understand. Rainfall has become very irregular, unpredictable and reduced … this leads to prolonged dryness and the drying up of streams, accompanied by exceedingly hot climatic conditions – all of which provoke poor agricultural performance and low output,” the ministry said.

Ekobo said that because of the changing climate, many farmers found it difficult to predict when to start planting.

“The month of March traditionally marks the start of the planting season in the Centre Region of Cameroon, following the start of the rains. But due to changing rainfall patterns, farmers have now readjusted their planting periods, a phenomenon which is rather difficult to grasp a perfect mastery of. It has caused a lot of confusion with the farmers,” she said.

She added that urban farming was integrated into the urban economic and ecological system of Cameroon.

“The land is rich with urban resources like organic waste, which is used as compost, and urban wastewater, which is used for irrigation. There are also direct links to urban consumers,” Eboko said.

But farming on urban wastewater sites is not a safe practice, according to Foongang Mathias, an agriculture expert at the Ministry of Environment, Nature Protection and Sustainable Development.

“Wastewater irrigation provides the necessary plant nutrients, especially nitrogen and phosphorous that are required by crops for ample growth. But farming in wastewater poses both health and environmental threats, not only to the urban agriculturalists, but also to the consumers of the crops grown on that field,” he said.

He told IPS that toxic waste from homes, hospitals and industries was probably deposited or carried into the wastewater.

“This water contains pathogenic organisms and disease vectors similar to those in human excreta. Pathogens that are brought in with the wastewater can survive in the soil or on the crop and are responsible for human diseases,” he said.

In addition, according to the World Health Organization: “Available evidence indicates that almost all excreted pathogens can survive in soil for a sufficient length of time to pose potential risks to farm workers.”

Despite the risks to her and her customers’ health, Numfor told IPS that the economic gains from farming in urban wastewater areas far outweighed the dangers.

She will continue to sell her produce to customers, who include restaurant owners and retailers. Numfor said that she earned an average of eight dollars a day, but sometimes made more when she sold her crop to women who export Cameroonian vegetables to the United States and Europe.

At a local market in Obili, a neigbourhood in Yaoundé, stallholders displayed large piles of vegetables that range in price from 200 CFA Francs (50 cents) to 300 CFA Francs (75 cents) per bunch. And consumers here did not care where the produce was grown.

“I totally ignore the fact that they are grown in wastewater because even if they contain germs, the organism cannot survive in the pot with very high temperature,” one woman, who bought three bundles of bitter leaf or Vernonia amygdalina, told IPS.

Another said she felt the vegetables were safe if cooked in hygienic conditions and besides, “no one has ever complained after consuming these vegetables.”

Meanwhile, Eboko said that the government did not plan to regulate farming near wastewater areas.

“Urban wastewater farming is not a regulated activity in Cameroon, although it is an important part of the urban food system. It is not yet considered as a potential problem, but is considered as a subsistence way of life for women.”

Hudiara drain winds through thick foliage of shrubs and trees, in the border village of Burki. Credit: Irfan Ahmed/IPS

By Irfan Ahmed
LAHORE, Jul 25 2012 (IPS)

At a time when spiraling input costs and perennial shortages of irrigation water are breaking countless farmers’ backs, a small village community on the outskirts of Lahore appears to have been spared.

The village of Hudiara, situated close to the Wagah border, falls in the way of a natural storm water channel called the Hudiara Drain, which originates in Batala in India’s Gurdaspur District and flows for nearly 55 kilometres before entering Pakistan.

The farmers here say the drain ensures them of year-round irrigation. What they won’t tell you – either because they don’t know it, or refuse to believe it – is that the water is poisoned.

Hundreds of factories located along the length of the canal dispose of their untreated industrial waste into it. This includes discharge from textile processing and dyeing units, carpet industries, tanneries, dairy plants, food, beverage and oil processing plants and ghee production units.

Municipal wastes are added along the way and the water that finally flows out of farmers’ pumps and into their fields is a toxic cocktail of pollutants.

Farmers and the local municipality are now locked in a fierce battle – with farmers ignoring countless warnings and taboos on the use of the water to irrigate farmland.

“The water is free, its supply regular and its ingredients strong enough to replace fertilisers. Only a fool will reject this deal,” Amanat Ali, a vegetable farmer who distributes his produce to the large population in Lahore, told IPS.

He is not worried about the toxic impact of heavy metals in this water.

“Flowing water can never be harmful; it’s the stagnant water that’s bad,” he said confidently when asked about the effects of the water on his agricultural produce and its consumers.

Impact of poisoned water

It is unsurprising that farmers are reluctant to heed official warnings. Less rainfall and the never-ending construction of roads and housing projects are exhausting ground water supplies, according to Dr. Muhammad Yaseen, associate professor of soil fertility and plant nutrition at the University of Agriculture in Faisalabad.

Yaseen, co-author of a report on heavy metals and their uptake by vegetables in adjoining areas of Hudiara, told IPS very little has been done at the government level to improve the situation in the village.

His team declared the drain water suitable for irrigation only during the monsoon, when rainwater dilutes the effluents to safe levels.

Though the report was released in 2009, farmers continue to use the water for irrigation all year round.

Citing the report, Yaseen told IPS that crops irrigated using poisonous water contained metals in higher than desired concentrations. For example, zinc concentration in ghia tori (a type of gourd) was 10 times higher than safe levels.

Brinjals and spinach samples from the village contained iron in higher concentration than the stated guidelines. Nickel content in all the crops except for brinjals were higher than prescribed levels. Cadmium concentration in almost all the plants exceeded the safe limit.

According to the report, food crops quickly absorb cadmium, which is one of the reasons why vegetables grown in Hudiara are oversized.

Naseem-ur-Rehman Shah, director of the Environmental Impact Assessment (EIA) of the Punjab Environment Protection Department (EPD) told IPS the irrigation department is about to start a process of lining Hudiara Drain to stop seepage of toxic water into the ground.

He said this process was of the utmost importance since locals are in the habit of drilling for subsurface drinking water, leading to the spread of waterborne diseases such as hepatitis and diarhhoea.

Environmentalist Ahmed Rafay Alam told IPS that according to the findings of another study, the drain contains extremely low levels of oxygen and cannot support any form of aquatic life.

Citing an investigative study conducted by the World Wildlife Fund in Pakistan nearly a decade ago, MUAWIN, a community organisation in Lahore, reported that, “the rate of abdominal pains, paralysis of limbs, joint pains and prevalence of arsenic toxicity and eye infection was greater in the respondents of a village along Hudiara Drain.”

Cattle take a dip in Hudiara Drain. At times, they drink the polluted water. Credit: Irfan Ahmed/IPS

“Domestic animals like cows and buffaloes are also seen wallowing and watering in the wastewater drains thus increasing the risk of water pollutants, mainly heavy metals, (entering) our food chain through the consumption of milk and meat of these animals.”

More than ten years later, experts are agreed that the situation today is much worse.

Furthermore, environmentalists fear that the drain, which eventually empties into the River Ravi after travelling 63 kilometres through Pakistani territory, will also poison the river with toxic elements.

Rafay, who is currently vice president of the Pakistan Environmental Law Association (PELA), says industries situated along the canal should take concrete steps towards reducing pollution rather than push the burden onto the farmers.

“All these sectors need different technologies to treat their effluents and must install plants immediately,” he stressed.

Water at any cost

Though the practice has been going on for years, the government has only made a few half-hearted attempts to change farmers’ behaviour before eventually surrendering to powerful industrialists.

Former Punjab chief minister Pervez Elahi ordered the closure of over 100 water pumps installed along Hudiara Drain in an effort to save crops and livestock but the initiative did not succeed.

“There was immense pressure from locals who feared loss of livelihood if this happened,” Raza Butt, an elected member of the local government of Lahore, told IPS.

Despite numerous studies showing that vegetables produced here contain metals in concentrations higher than prescribed levels, farmers have not heeded the warnings, he said.

Shah told IPS that the EPD has instructed all 130 industrial units along the drain to install water treatment plants without delay, which would make the water suitable for irrigation.

So far only 22 of these operations have complied, and even these were largely due to pressure from importers of their goods.

“The problem is that most (owners of industrial units) cannot afford to install these plants individually,” said Shah.

Still, he says, the burden of cleaning the environment lies with the polluter. Now, with the landmark introduction of Green Benches in Pakistan’s high courts, polluters will be forced to take environmental concerns more seriously.

Shah suggests that more industries follow the example of the 307 tanneries in Sialkot, who got together to buy a large chunk of land on which they set up a combined treatment plant.

The government provided the collective with a soft loan worth 300 million rupees (roughly 3.2 million dollars).

(END)