A fisherman sits next to several boats at the GeoCuba Local Interest Fishing Port in the bay of Manzanillo, in the eastern Cuban province of Granma. Credit: Jorge Luis Baños / IPS

By Dariel Pradas
MANZANILLO, Cuba, Oct 2 2024 (IPS)

Every time a hurricane clouds the skies over the city of Manzanillo, in the eastern Cuban province of Granma, the sea pounds the Litoral neighbourhood, forcing many of the 200 families who live there to evacuate inland because of flooding.

When the weather is calm, the sea penetrates subtly and constantly, salinizing the water table and eroding the coast, affecting the foundations of houses and artesian wells.

“The water almost always enters this area. The houses were built too close to the sea and the mangroves are deforested,” community leader Martha Labrada, 65, told IPS.

Labrada has presided over the people’s council (local administration organisation) for 13 years, which covers the Litoral neighbourhood and a two-kilometer stretch of coastline that is home to about 5,000 people.

Also, in her jurisdiction, about 0.2 square kilometres of mangroves have been deforested or are in very poor condition.

A mangrove forest in Manzanillo Bay, eastern Cuba. Credit: Jorge Luis Baños / IPS

Protective mangroves

According to the United Nations Environment Programme (UNEP), mangroves extract up to five times more carbon than land forests, raise the ground level and thus slow down the rise in sea level.

This coastal ecosystem, typical of tropical and subtropical areas, usually consists of a swamp forest, a strip of black mangrove (Avicennia germinans) and a strip of red mangrove (Rhizophora mangle), the barrier closest to the sea, whose trunks absorb the impact of waves and protect against extreme weather conditions.

Mangroves act as nurseries for fish fry and as havens for honey bees, among a huge variety of fauna and flora.

They also serve as a protective area for fresh water. If degraded, salt from marine waters would more easily enter underground water basins, contaminating the drinkability of this liquid and disabling wells located miles inland.

Blanca Estrada, administrative coordinator of the Mi Costa project on behalf of the provincial government of Granma in eastern Cuba. Credit: Jorge Luis Baños / IPS

Protection from the sea

The Litoral neighbourhood is one of the most vulnerable in the municipality to climate change because it borders the mangroves, but it is not the only one in this situation.

In Manzanillo there are six people’s councils that are in direct contact with the coast. Some 60,000 inhabitants suffer the consequences, almost half of the total population of the municipality located 753 kilometres east of Havana.

The need to find solutions to the problem of rising sea levels was therefore born in the rural neighborhoods and villages of Manzanillo.

To counteract this prospect, small community projects emerged in 2018, also promoted by a national plan to tackle climate change known as Tarea Vida, which had been launched by the central government a year earlier.

As a result, 23 initiatives were set up in the municipality, which were later grouped in a single nationwide project called Mi Costa, the project’s coordinator in Manzanillo, Margot Hernández, told IPS.

Mi Costa seeks to create conditions of resilience to climate change through adaptation solutions based on strengthening the benefits provided by coastal ecosystems. In essence, its main task is to reforest and rehabilitate mangroves.

“In addition, we have to change living habits. That’s what we are working on,” Hernández added.

Ditch built in the middle of a mangrove swamp to contribute to its drainage and the recirculation of saline and fresh water in the municipality of Manzanillo, eastern Cuba. Credit: Courtesy of Mi Costa in Manzanillo

Behind deforestation

Manzanillo, because of its low isometry and its 25 kilometres of coastline, is in a serious state of environmental vulnerability.

The deforested areas of mangroves amount to 708.7 hectares, being the most affected concentrated at the river mouths.

With a weakened natural containment barrier, the saline waters penetrate the riverbeds and, for example, in the Yara River, in the north of the municipality, they do so up to seven kilometres inland, according to Leandro Concepción, the project coordinator for the Granma Provincial Delegation of Hydraulic Resources.

In any case, the salinity penetrates through underground water basins and, according to Hernández, the coordinator in Manzanillo, “there are people’s artesian wells, which were once used for consumption but are now salinized.”

Mangrove deforestation has several causes: the lack or blockage of channels hinders the ebb and flow of the tide and alters the exchange of freshwater with marine waters.

It is also affected by the invasion of invasive exotic species such as the arboreal Ipil Ipil or guaje (Leucaena leucocephala), anthropogenic human intervention through the construction of infrastructure, agricultural and livestock practices near the coast, and even the felling of mangroves to make charcoal.

A group of people receive a class given by the Mi Costa project at the Manzanillo Training Center. Credit: Courtesy of Mi Costa in Manzanillo

According to Labrada, the community leader in Litoral, several houses have been built almost adjacent to the mangrove, without the corresponding construction permits. Moreover, state-owned industrial infrastructures, such as a shoe factory and an inactive sawmill, cause the same damage.

Coastal and river pollution from industrial waste dumping also depresses coastal ecosystems.

For decades, the region’s sugar mills and rice industry dumped their waste into the rivers, Blanca Estrada, administrative coordinator of Mi Costa on behalf of the Granma provincial government, told IPS.

This situation is one of the examples of climate injustice in the area: upstream, the industrial sector caused environmental havoc that affected mangrove health and, at the end of the chain, the quality of life of coastal residents, making them more vulnerable to climatic events.

In 2023, decisive measures were taken to solve the problem and the few active factories no longer discharge their waste into the sea or use filters. In the second half of 2024, the results have already begun to show: “The migratory birds have returned, something you didn’t see months ago,” said Estrada.

However, the effects of climate change still persist in Manzanillo.

“The environmental situation today is quite complex for the keys,” Víctor Remón, director of Manzanillo’s Department of Territorial Development, which belongs to the local government, told IPS.

The municipality’s territory contains an extensive cay of 2.44 square kilometres, but Cayo Perla has already been submerged under the waters of the Gulf of Guacanayabo.

“It disappeared six or seven years ago. It was a beautiful key, with beautiful white sands. There was a tourist facility from where you could see the city of Manzanillo,” Remón said.

For his part, Roberto David Rosales, fisherman and Mi Costa contributor, remembers a path he used to walk along the shore until last year; now it has been ‘swallowed’ by the sea.

“Almost two meters were lost in this area in one year. These are things that force us to be protectors of the mangroves. The Mi Costa project came at the right time,” he told IPS.

Margot Hernández (left), coordinator of the Mi Costa project in Manzanillo, opens the training centre in the city of Manzanillo. Credit: Courtesy of Mi Costa in Manzanillo

Steps towards a solution

Mi Costa was made official in December 2021, but heavy work began in 2023, due to a pause caused by the COVID pandemic.

In Manzanillo, the project brought together about 100 collaborators, who were divided into small community groups of about 10 people, who support the monitoring and cleaning of mangroves and ditches and awareness-raising among the population.

Labrada also has its own people’s council group, composed of six women and four men.

In addition, training centres have been set up in the municipality on climate change adaptability, environmental safeguards, gender and other issues. To date, 10,500 people have been trained.

“We are working with the coast dwellers, because the issue is that people don’t leave the coasts, but that they stay and learn to live there, taking care of them,” said Estrada, the government coordinator.

Sunset on the boardwalk in the eastern Cuban city of Manzanillo. Credit: Jorge Luis Baños / IPS

They have also built 1,300 meters of ditches, using picks and shovels, to achieve a form of water rotation, but this figure has yet to be multiplied.

The immediate challenge is to finish building the nursery where the mangrove seedlings will sprout and then be planted in the deforested areas.

“Once we have the nursery, there will be no difficulty at all in Granma to begin the process of rehabilitating the mangroves,” Norvelis Reyes, Mi Costa’s main coordinator in the province, told IPS.

Mi Costa’s area of action in Granma covers, in addition to the coast of Manzanillo, the northern municipalities of Yara and Río Cauto.

Nationwide, 24 communities in the south of Cuba are involved in resilience actions (1,300 kilometres of coastline), of which 14 are at risk of disappearing due to coastal flooding by 2050, including Manzanillo.

The southern coast of this Caribbean island country was chosen because it is more vulnerable to climate change and sea level rise, given its lower geographical isometry than in the north.

In addition, the south also has a higher concentration of mangroves, making it more necessary and effective to build coastal resilience based on adaptation and focused on the rehabilitation and reforestation of these ecosystems.

While implemented by the communities themselves and with the participation of the villagers, the project is supervised by the Ministry of Science, Technology and Environment and the country office of the United Nations Development Programme (UNDP).

The Green Climate Fund provided funding of USD 23.9 million, while Cuban state institutions contributed USD 20.3 million.

The ultimate goal will be to restore some 114 square kilometres of mangroves, 31 square kilometres of swamp forest and nine square kilometres of grassy swamps in eight years. After that, a period of 22 years will be dedicated to the operation and maintenance of the implemented actions.

It is estimated that more than 1.3 million people will benefit on this Caribbean island, the largest in the region and home to 11 million people.

UN Bureau Report

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Deforestation, along with fires, reduces the region's forests, expands the agricultural frontier, shrinks the habitat of indigenous peoples and wildlife, destroys water sources, and brings more diseases to populated areas. CREDIT: Serfor Peru

By Humberto Márquez
CARACAS, Jan 31 2023 (IPS)

The environmental priority for South America in 2023 can be summed up in the management of its terrestrial and marine protected areas, together with the challenges of the extractivist economy and the transition to a green economy with priority attention to the most vulnerable populations.

This management “must be effective, participatory, and based on environmental and climate justice, with protection for the environment and environmental and indigenous activists,” biologist Vilisa Morón, president of the Venezuelan Ecology Society, told IPS.

Latin America and the Caribbean is home to almost half of the world’s biodiversity and 60 percent of terrestrial life, and has more than 8.8 million square kilometers of protected areas, according to the International Union for Conservation of Nature (IUCN).

It is thus the most protected region in the world, with the combined protected area greater than the total area of ​​Brazil or the sum of the territories of Argentina, Mexico, Peru, Colombia, Bolivia and Paraguay, from largest to smallest. The leaders in percentage of protected territory are the French overseas departments and Venezuela.

The second great environmental challenge in the region for 2023 and the following years lies in the extractivist economies, which run counter to the region’s responsibility to the planet as a major reserve of biodiversity.

The extractivist economy involves the mining of metals in the Andes region, the Guyanese massif and the Amazon rainforest, and the exploitation of fossil fuels in most South American countries and Mexico.

Extractivism, plus the pollution in urban areas and in rivers and other sources of fresh water, weighs like a stone on the region’s transition towards a green economy that would rethink the management of these areas as a challenge, says Morón.

Other difficulties for the defense of the environment in the region are the destruction of the habitat, livelihoods and cultures of indigenous peoples, and the murders of environmental leaders and activists.

A view of a gold mining camp next to a river in the territory of the Yanomami, an ancient people who live in the extreme south of Venezuela and north of Brazil. Extractivism in search of precious minerals and hydrocarbons is a severe problem in the Amazon rainforest. CREDIT: Rogério Assis/Socio-Environmental Institute

Deforestation, a key issue

A major problem in Latin America, and particularly in South America, is deforestation of land for agriculture and livestock, or as a consequence of mining.

According to the report “Amazonia Viva 2022” by the World Wide Fund for Nature (WWF), 18 percent of the Amazon rainforest has been completely lost, another 17 percent is degraded, and in the first half of 2022 the damage continued to grow.

The loss of the Amazon jungle can directly affect the livelihoods of 47 million people who live in that ecosystem which forms part of eight nations, including 511 different indigenous groups (totalling more than one million individuals), as well as 10 percent of the biodiversity of the planet, said the WWF.

At the fifth Amazon Summit of Indigenous Peoples, held in September 2022 in Lima, the Amazon Network of Georeferenced Socio-environmental Information (RAISG) presented “Amazonia against the clock: A Regional Assessment on Where and How to Protect 80% by 2025”.

Brazil is the main focus of the deforestation, because 62 percent of the Amazon is located in that country, where the jungle is rapidly being cleared for agriculture and livestock, as well as the devastation caused by fires.

Indigenous people protest in the state of Pará, in northern Brazil, against companies that expand the agricultural frontier to produce biofuels, to the detriment of the lands that have been occupied by native peoples from ancient times. CREDIT: Karina Iliescu/Global Witness

For this reason, environmentalists around the world breathed a sigh of relief on Jan. 1, when moderate leftist Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva took over as president from the far-right Jair Bolsonaro, who turned a deaf ear to calls to curb deforestation and favored the expansion of the agricultural frontier.

Brazil “has shown that it is possible to reduce deforestation by implementing clear policies,” said researcher Paulo Barreto, co-founder of the Amazon Institute of Man and the Environment (IMAZON), based in the northern city of Belém do Pará, from which he spoke to IPS.

Barreto has faith in the environment minister appointed by Lula, Marina Silva, who already held that position when Lula was president, between 2003 and 2008.

Among the necessary policies that challenge the environmental agenda, according to Barreto, is the application of protective laws and, at the same time, addressing the social and economic issue represented by half a million smallholders in the Amazon and the Cerrado ecosystem.

The Cerrado is a more open forest, extending over 1.9 million square kilometers to the east of the Amazon basin.

According to the expert, policies aimed at reforestation and forest recovery “can be part of the solution in generating jobs and income, if, for example, payment is made for avoiding deforestation,” an initiative that he sees as positive in terms of bringing in foreign aid.

Barreto welcomed Colombian President Gustavo Petro’s launch of a new fund and new cooperation programs in the region to save the Amazon rainforest, based on extensive accumulated experience.

Peasant farmers from Peru’s Andes highlands engage in reforestation work and care for local fauna and water sources while expressing their native cultural traditions. CREDIT: Ecoan

Words and mining

The United Nations Environment Program (UNEP) says the restoration of 20 million hectares of degraded ecosystems in the region could generate 23 billion dollars in benefits over 50 years.

Peruvian biologist Constantino Aucca said that “In our countries and in general in the world there is a lack of political will to protect and recover our natural areas. More action is needed and fewer words,” he told IPS from New York, where he is staying temporarily.

In November Aucca received the Champions of the Earth award, the highest environmental honor given by the United Nations, in recognition of 35 years of work to restore the high Andean forests in 15 nature reserves in Argentina, Bolivia, Chile, Ecuador and Peru.

The Association of Andean Ecosystems that he heads has led the planting of three million trees in Peru and as many in neighboring countries, but Aucca insists that “much more is needed. Climate change is coming hard and fast and the Andes are already facing severe problems.”

“Enough egos, we need honest leaders who do not allow their heads to be turned by power. In some countries in our region a mining permit is granted in three weeks while studies for a protected natural area take five years,” he complained.

Unregulated illegal gold mining in southern Venezuela, eastern Colombia and northern Brazil is another major environmental challenge in the region, which combines the destruction of the natural environment – the habitat of native peoples – with the contamination of water and soil, Morón said.

Another problem is the presence of irregular armed actors, such as groups of garimpeiros (illegal miners) from Brazil, criminal “syndicates” from Venezuela or remnants of the guerrillas and other illegal armed groups from Colombia.

Morón stressed that illegal mining, bolstered by weak institutions in the region, as well as the oil industry that is active in most South American nations, is a constant source of environmental and social liabilities.

The harassment and murder of environmental defenders is another pending issue on the human rights agenda in Latin America. The Escazú Agreement, adopted by 25 countries in the region, is seen as a step forward in establishing policies and regulations for their protection. CREDIT: Diego Pérez/Oxfam

Drought, crime and indigenous people

In Argentina, three years of drought in most of the country have severely hit the indebted economy and public accounts, along with more than 6,700 fires that affected some 2.3 million hectares in the same period.

It is an urgent issue for Argentina, a global agricultural powerhouse whose economy depends on food exports to its clients, mainly Brazil, the United States and East Asia.

In addition, a serious regional problem is the murder of human rights defenders, including activists for the environment and the rights of indigenous peoples.

Of the 1,733 murders of environmental activists documented between 2012 and 2021 around the world, 68 percent were committed in Latin America and the Caribbean, and Colombia was the most dangerous country for them between 2020 and 2021, accounting for 33 of the 200 murders documented in that period by the Global Witness organization.

In this sense, the Regional Agreement on Access to Information, Public Participation and Justice in Environmental Matters in Latin America and the Caribbean, known as the Escazú Agreement because it was adopted in that Costa Rican city in March 2018, has a key role to play.

The agreement, signed by 25 countries and ratified by 14, seeks to ensure “adequate and effective measures to recognize, protect and promote all the rights of human rights defenders in environmental matters, including their right to life, personal integrity, freedom of opinion and expression.”

The sources interviewed also agreed on the need to give priority to indigenous peoples and local communities in all pending environmental management in the region, since their habitat is directly at stake in the short term.

The Escazú Agreement also provides an effective way of taking care of the territory and paying attention to the social debt that has accompanied the many decades of environmental degradation.

In the photo, people in several vehicles inspect a section of the Mayan Train, the flagship megaproject of Mexican President Andrés Manuel López Obrador, near the city of Valladolid, in the southeastern Yucatán peninsula, seat of the second most fragile jungle massif in Latin America, after the Amazon rainforest. CREDIT: Emilio Godoy/IPS

By Emilio Godoy
PLAYA DEL CARMEN, Mexico , Apr 8 2022 (IPS)

Along the wide slash of white earth in southwestern Mexico there are no longer trees or animals. In their place, orange signs with white stripes warn visitors: “Heavy machinery in motion,” “No unauthorized personnel allowed”.

Five tractors spread over the terrain, like intimidating metallic guards with sharp teeth. Two blue portable toilets keep them mute company, two white cans overflow with garbage, and a white and solitary awning attempts to protect them from the punishing sun.

The metal teeth tear up the jungle carpet on land in the Río Secreto ejido – an area of communal land used for agriculture – south of the city of Playa del Carmen. With a population of 305,000, Playa del Carmen is the seat of the municipality of Solidaridad, in the southeastern state of Quintana Roo, some 1,600 kilometers from Mexico City, on the Yucatán peninsula.

The new 90-meter gap in the jungle opens the way for the 120-kilometer southern route of Section 5 of the Mayan Train (TM), the most ambitious megaproject of the government of President Andrés Manuel López Obrador, who wants at all costs for the locomotives to blow their horns by late 2023."Hundreds of hectares are being deforested. We are going to end up with new cities or existing ones are going to grow. This could be a tragedy of enormous proportions, because the ecosystems are being disturbed. Simply by removing vegetation cover, the capacity of water systems to capture and filter water is altered.” -- Lorenzo Álvarez

Mina Moreno, an independent environmental conservationist, describes Section 5, one of the seven sections of the project, as “illegal and opaque”.

“There are no studies, there is no information as to why the route was changed, what is behind the new route. The problem is what the railway will bring with it: it’s a Trojan horse for what is coming behind,” she told IPS.

The project, under the responsibility of the government’s National Tourism Development Fund (Fonatur), has suffered delays and cost overruns since construction began in 2020 and will have environmental, social, cultural and labor impacts, as IPS saw during a tour of several areas along the route.

With seven sections running through the Yucatan peninsula and part of the southeast, the plan is for the Mayan Train, with 21 stations and 14 stops, to cover a distance of some 1,500 kilometers. The railroad will pass through 78 municipalities in the southern and southeastern states of the country: Campeche, Quintana Roo, Yucatán, Chiapas and Tabasco, which are home to a combined total of more than 13 million people.

The first three are located in the Yucatan Peninsula, which has one of the most important and fragile Mexican ecosystems and the second largest jungle massif in Latin America, after the Amazon rainforest.

It is here that around 80 percent of the TM railway will run, whose locomotives will pull wagons carrying thousands of tourists and cargo, such as transgenic soybeans, palm oil and pork, the main agricultural products from the peninsula.

The Mexican government is promoting the president’s flagship megaproject as an engine of social development that is to create jobs, boost tourism beyond the traditional attractions and bolster the regional economy. But these arguments have sparked conflicts between its supporters and critics.

UN Habitat, which is providing technical advice on the project’s land use planning, believes that the railway will create one million jobs by 2030 and will lift 1.1 million people out of poverty in an area with 42 municipalities with high rates of poverty and marginalization. (The estimates were made prior to the COVID-19 epidemic that hit Latin America’s second-largest economy hard.)

The Mayan Train, which will run 1,500 kilometers through five states in southern and southeastern Mexico, threatens ecosystems and tourist attractions, such as subterranean caves and cenotes. The photo shows tourists swimming in the cenote Azul, on the outskirts of Playa del Carmen, in the southeastern state of Quintana Roo on the Yucatan Peninsula. CREDIT: Emilio Godoy/IPS

One land, two faces

The TM, built with public funds, requires 1,681 hectares of land, which implies the cutting of 300,000 trees, according to the original environmental impact study. The construction of the first three sections, which require 801 hectares, began without environmental permits.

The western route is causing social, cultural and land-ownership conflicts, while the eastern route will cause greater environmental damage.

López Obrador denies that the railway will lead to deforestation, and promised the creation of three natural parks in eastern Quintana Roo and the reforestation of some 2,500 hectares.

But available information shows that the megaproject is moving ahead with construction while leaving environmental management plans behind.

This is seen in a close look at the 2020 public accounts of the Chief Audit Office of Mexico – the comptroller of the public treasury – on the budget and execution of the TM. The office concluded that the project lacks a master plan and the necessary resources to guarantee sustainable development and environmental protection.

It also documented an increase in cost from 7.3 billion dollars in 2019 to 8.8 billion the following year, and found that there was no explanation for the expenditure of about 13 million dollars.

Moreover, the megaproject only advanced one-fifth of what was planned in 2019 and 2020, a bad omen for the president’s plans, although the rate of progress in 2021 and the first quarter of 2022 is not known.

But it is clear that Fonatur decided to step on the accelerator to fulfill the president’s promise and that the last two sections may be built with the participation of the army in the middle of the jungle. It is also clear that López Obrador does not want to inaugurate the TM until the entire line is completed.

The Federal Prosecutor’s Office for Environmental Protection (PROFEPA) did not inspect the works in 2020, nor has it done so for section 5, as stated in a request for access to public information filed by IPS.

The porous karst soil of the peninsula has sabotaged the government’s plans and deadlines, as it has forced Fonatur to change the design several times. For example, section 5 underwent three modifications from January 2021 to January 2022.

In the Mexican municipality of Solidaridad, whose municipal seat is Playa del Carmen, on the Yucatán peninsula, the construction of one of the seven sections of the Mayan Train has deforested at least 10 kilometers of jungle. CREDIT: Emilio Godoy/IPS

The megaproject contains contradictions, because while the government promises sustainable tourism in other areas of the peninsula, the railway threatens the local sustainable tourism attractions, such as the cenotes, the caves and the entire ecosystem.

In the Yucatan Peninsula there are some 7,000 cenotes – freshwater sinkholes resulting from the collapse of limestone bedrock that exposes groundwater. Between Playa del Carmen and Tulum, cities only 61 kilometers apart, there are 13 of these ecosystems.

In the entire state of Quintana Roo there are at least 105 flooded caves over 1,500 meters in length and 408 underwater caves.

The TM threatens the largest system of subterranean rivers and flooded caves on the planet, a complex of submerged caves more than 340 kilometers long beneath the limestone floor.

From land to sea

Lorenzo Álvarez, a researcher at the Academic Reef Systems Unit of the Institute of Marine Sciences and Limnology at the public National Autonomous University of Mexico, says that as a regional development project, the railway will be “catastrophic”.

“Hundreds of hectares are being deforested,” he told IPS. “We are going to end up with new cities or existing ones are going to grow. This could be a tragedy of enormous proportions, because the ecosystems are being disturbed. Simply by removing vegetation cover, the capacity of water systems to capture and filter water is altered.”

The consequences: water with more sediment in the reefs, waste, leachates and more pollution.

That is the vision that the visitor gets looking at the map from inland to the coast in Puerto Morelos, in the north of Quintana Roo, which has suffered a real estate invasion, to the extent that the reefs have been mortally wounded. They are part of the Mesoamerican Reef, the second largest in the world, after Australia’s Great Barrier Reef.

The fear in this former fishing village, which is now the largest port on the so-called Riviera Maya with 27,000 inhabitants, is that the TM will exacerbate the real estate boom. But most locals are unaware of the danger.

The Mayan Train will run through the outskirts of Puerto Morelos, seen in the distance in the photo. Located 38 kilometers from Cancun and forming part of the so-called Riviera Maya, this former fishing village is now a port city with real estate encroachment that has damaged the reefs off its coast. The railroad could spell the end for the fragile ecosystem. CREDIT: Emilio Godoy/IPS

“Construction hasn’t started yet,” Fabiola Sánchez, an activist with the non-governmental group United Voices of Puerto Morelos, told IPS. “There has been no tangible damage here, as in other municipalities, but we know the environmental implications. Our aim is prevention, because we are going to suffer the same environmental effects.”

The activists’ concern is focused on the 2020-2030 Urban Development Program, which they accuse of favoring hotel and real estate interests to the detriment of citizen participation and sustainable planning on a coastline already stressed by excessive tourism.

And, above all, they accuse it of favoring construction of the new railway.

Through legal appeals, opponents of the program have managed to bring it to a halt, but they are witnessing construction without land use planning in other municipalities.

The Mayan Train megaproject includes the construction of sustainable cities (formerly called development poles) around the stations, which include businesses, drinking water, drainage, electricity and urban equipment.

The Ministry of the Environment and Natural Resources (Semarnat) itself warns that these poles may represent the greatest environmental threat from the railway line.

The sustainable cities should promote “well-managed urban planning” and should help reduce the backlog of local and regional services, according to the official website.

“Considering climatic conditions, efficient use of water, energy and integrated management of solid waste…and respecting natural conditions, affecting ecosystems as little as possible,” are essential, Semarnat stated.

But the construction work on the ground and the lack of urban development plans contradict these precepts.

In any case, the railway’s route does not seem to be set up for the benefit of excursionists and local workers, as its planned stations are far from tourist sites and work centers. Passengers would have to use other means to travel to these places.

In addition, the popular perspective values supposed future returns, such as jobs and income, over current and potential harms, like deforestation.

There have also been labor abuses. Section 5 workers earn about 39 dollars a week – less than the minimum daily wage of 8.5 dollars – and work without protective equipment and without signed contracts, as IPS learned.

Furthermore, there has been arbitrary treatment of “ejidatarios” or local residents of ejidos, since in Campeche the authorities paid about 2.5 dollars per square meter of expropriated land, while in Quintana Roo the price rose to about 25 dollars.

The threat of collapse is not merely an apocalyptic proclamation, environmentalists insist. They quote the closing line of the novel La vorágine (1924), by Colombian writer José Eustasio Rivera, a Latin American classic: “The jungle swallowed them up”, in allusion to the fate of its characters, and they say the same thing could happen to the TM.

Siamese Rosewood trees on a farmland in Lao PDR - Credit_NAFRI, Laos

By Catherine Wilson
CANBERRA, Australia , Nov 30 2021 (IPS)

The famed Rosewood forests of the Greater Mekong region in Southeast Asia produce dark, richly grained timbers zealously sought after worldwide by manufacturers of luxury furniture, flooring and musical instruments, among other products. But their high value has also made them a major commodity in transnational organized crime.

Now a strategic partnership of international and national government research organizations is leading an expert endeavour to ensure their survival.

“The Rosewood species are among the most valuable species in the world. They are worth tens of thousands of dollars per cubic metre, but because of illegal logging, they were almost wiped out in the Indochina landscapes,” Riina Jalonen, a scientist working with the Alliance of Bioversity International and the International Center for Tropical Agriculture (CIAT), based in Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia, told IPS. The collaborative research-for-development initiative pursues research and innovative solutions to the major global challenges of land degradation, biodiversity loss and poverty around the world.

For the past three years, the Alliance has joined with national partners in Cambodia, Lao PDR and Vietnam as well as the University of Copenhagen and the Chinese Academy of Forestry to spearhead ways of conserving the genetic diversity of Rosewoods. The project, which is also working to support planting and restoration of Rosewood timbers and galvanize a strong reliable supply of seeds and seedlings, is led by the University of Oxford and funded by the Darwin Initiative in the United Kingdom.

Collecting seed of Burmese Rosewood (Dalbergia oliveri) in Cambodia – Credit_IRD, Cambodia

Chaloun Bountihiphonh at the National Agriculture and Forestry Research Institute in Vientiane, Lao PDR, has witnessed a turnaround in the fortune of the species since the project began in 2018. “The status of the Rosewood Dalbergia populations have improved and now cover more than 60 percent of their natural habitat, and a seed network has been established. And communities of the project have been strengthened in their awareness of the importance of Rosewoods and the additional income that they can get from seed collection,” Bountihiphonh told IPS.

The Greater Mekong subregion, comprising the countries of Cambodia, Lao PDR, Thailand, Myanmar, Vietnam and China, boasts immense biodiversity, including 20,000 plant species and 1,200 species of birds. The region’s forests provide the natural habitats for wildlife, but also prevent soil erosion and landslides, create essential levels of atmospheric moisture and combat climate change by reducing greenhouse gases in the atmosphere. And local communities, including many indigenous peoples, depend on the forests for shelter, sustenance, livelihoods and income.

But deforestation, driven by rapid population growth, expansion of infrastructure, agriculture and mining, as well as forest fires and illicit logging operations, has taken a heavy toll. Forest cover in the Greater Mekong declined by 5 percent, while in Cambodia alone it declined by 27 percent, from 1990-2015, reports the United Nations Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO).

The Rosewood conservation project has focussed on three specific species: Dalbergia cochinchinensis, also known as Siamese Rosewood, is in high demand by furniture makers. Dalbergia oliveri, or Burmese Rosewood with highly fragrant and with a pronounced grain, is popular for woodworking, and Dalbergia cultrata, also named Burma Blackwood, is a blackwood timber characterised by varied hues of burgundy.

The United Nations Office for Drugs and Crime (UNODC) reports that 8.3 million kilograms of illegally trafficked Rosewood was seized worldwide between 2005-2015. The top ten source countries included India, Thailand and Cambodia, and the main destination countries included China, Malaysia, Vietnam and the United States. This is also what makes regional collaboration so crucial for safeguarding the species.

“Illegal logging of primary forests has directly destroyed the mature trees and good quality mother trees which produce seeds for natural regeneration and silviculture,” Bountihiphonh said.

The conservation project grew out of discussions with forestry experts in the Mekong countries, who highlighted the issues threatening the valuable timber forests. The Alliance first conducted conservation assessments of the species to analyse and identify the specific threats and conservation needs.

Then, in partnership with Cambodia’s Institute of Forest and Wildlife Research and Development, Lao’s National Agriculture and Forestry Research Institute and the Vietnam Academy of Agricultural Sciences, two main conservation approaches were implemented. The ‘in situ’ approach preserves the Rosewood trees in their natural environment, for example, in the form of a national park or community-managed forest. The second ‘ex situ’ strategy promulgates the species in a different designated location, such as a plantation or in a seed production area.

However, restoring and expanding forests requires a vast supply of seeds. And so, seed and seedling production are some of the most important activities carried out in forest-dwelling communities.

“We have been helping farmers to establish seed orchards, where trees are planted specifically for seed production. It is the farmers who are interested in producing seeds and selling them. Especially in Cambodia, they have quite an active network of seed producers and seed collectors, and the Institute of Forest and Wildlife Research and Development has really spearheaded this work to help more and more farmers to participate and benefit” Jalonen said.

Seed orchards make seed collection an easier, safer and less time-consuming process than in the natural environment, and have led to substantial economic benefits for communities.

Some of the largest remaining rosewood populations in Cambodia are found within Community Forests – Credit_Alliance of Bioversity International and CIAT

“People in rural areas are increasingly realizing the value of these species. The species provides two sellable products; timber and seed. Timber takes a very long time to produce, but seed is something that the farmers can collect after a few years and Rosewood seed is highly valuable, fetching around US$200-250 per kilogram. It is something that the farmers can harvest every year for annual income,” Jalonen explained.

The work being done by the Alliance and its national partners aims to benefit seven rural forest-based communities in the Greater Mekong region and reduce poverty in 175 households by boosting earnings from the marketing of seeds and seedlings by up to 20 percent.

“Big Rosewood trees are not widely available as before because of the illegal cutting and debarking of the Burmese Rosewood,” Ou Veng, farmer and village leader of O Srao in Cambodia, said. “In the past, people were not interested to protect the forest. But now they worry about losing it because it’s required for their livelihoods. So more and more people are involved in patrolling, tree planting and fire protection. The forest has regenerated significantly.”

In Pursat, Cambodia, the expansion of a local farmer’s nursery for the sale of Rosewood seed and seedlings increased local employment opportunities in the community threefold between 2018 and 2020.

In the village of Kampeng, also in Cambodia, Soeung Sitha, a farmer described how reafforestation efforts had also acquired a heritage purpose. “Many of our community forest members have planted Siamese Rosewood in their home gardens and farms. They don’t want the species to become extinct. They want the younger generation to use them as well,” he said.

Ahead of the initiative coming to an end in December, Jalonen reflected on what is likely to be some of its important legacies.

“A model for farmer-led seed production for Rosewoods now exists. What has been really successful is the establishment of seed orchards by farmers,” she said. “Seeds are providing incomes and job opportunities and, what is also important, is that it generates more opportunities for women because collecting the seeds of these trees from the forest is difficult. You actually have to climb the trees. So when the seed production is done on farms with smaller plants, it is much easier to collect.”

And the new forest growth will be more robust. “By helping to improve the quality of seeds and seedlings in restoration areas and making sure they are genetically diverse, the planted forest will grow to be productive and also resilient. Under the rapidly changing environment, this capacity of the trees to adapt is more important than ever – and not only for the species themselves but also for the global efforts to mitigate climate change through forest conservation and restoration,” Jalonen emphasised.

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Brazil has a "green future," announced Environment Minister Joaquim Leite and Vice-President Hamilton Mourão, in a videoconference presentation from Brasilia at the Glasgow climate summit, in an attempt to shore up Brazil’s credibility, damaged by Amazon deforestation. The two officials concealed the fact that deforestation in the Amazon rose by 21.9 percent last year. CREDIT: Marcelo Camargo/Agência Brasil-Fotos Públicas

By Mario Osava
RIO DE JANEIRO, Nov 26 2021 (IPS)

For three weeks, the Brazilian government concealed the fact that deforestation in Brazil’s Amazon rainforest increased by nearly 22 percent last year, accentuating a trend that threatens to derail efforts to curb global warming.

The report by the National Institute for Space Research (INPE) based on the data for the year covering August 2020 to July 2021 is dated Oct. 27, but the government did not release it until Thursday, Nov. 18.

It thus prevented the disaster from further undermining the credibility of far-right President Jair Bolsonaro’s government, already damaged by almost three years of anti-environmental policies and actions, ahead of and during the 26th Conference of the Parties (COP26) to the climate change convention, held in Glasgow, Scotland from Oct. 31 to Nov. 13.Brazil had managed to reduce Amazon deforestation since the 2004 total of 27,772 square kilometers. A concerted effort by environmental agencies reduced the total to 4,571 square kilometers in 2012. This shows that it is possible, but it depends on political will and adequate management.

INPE’s Satellite Monitoring of Deforestation in the Legal Amazon Project (Prodes) recorded 13,235 square kilometers of deforestation, 21.97 percent more than in the previous period and almost three times the 2012 total of 4,571 square kilometers.

The so-called Legal Amazon, a region covering 5.01 million square kilometers in Brazil, has already lost about 17 percent of its forest cover. In a similar sized area the forests were degraded, i.e. some species were cut down and biodiversity and biomass were reduced, according to the non-governmental Amazon Institute of People and the Environment (IMAZON).

Carlos Nobre, one of the country’s leading climatologists and a member of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), says the world’s largest tropical forest is approaching irreversible degradation in a process of “savannization” (the gradual transition of tropical rainforest into savanna).

The point of no return is a 20 to 25 percent deforestation rate, estimates Nobre, a researcher at the Institute of Advanced Studies of the University of São Paulo and a member of the Brazilian and U.S. national academies of sciences.

Reaching that point would be a disaster for the planet. Amazon forests and soils store carbon equivalent to five years of global emissions, experts calculate. Forest collapse would release a large part of these greenhouse gases into the atmosphere.

A similar risk comes from the permafrost, a layer of frozen subsoil beneath the Arctic and Greenland ice, for example, which is beginning to thaw in the face of global warming.

This is another gigantic carbon store that, if released, would seriously undermine the attempt to limit the increase in the Earth’s temperature to 1.5 degrees Celsius this century.

The Amazon rainforest, an immense biome spread over eight South American countries plus the territory of French Guiana, is therefore key in the search for solutions to the climate crisis.

Evolution of the deforested area in the Brazilian Amazon since 1988, with its ups and downs and an upward tendency in the last nine years. Policies to crack down on environmental crimes by strengthened public agencies were successful between 2004 and 2012. Graphic: INPE

Brazil, which accounts for 60 percent of the biome, plays a decisive role. And that is why it is the obvious target of the measure announced by the European Commission, which, with the expected approval of the European Parliament, aims to ban the import of agricultural products associated with deforestation or forest degradation.

The Commission, the executive body of the 27-nation European Union, does not distinguish between legal and illegal deforestation. It requires exporters to certify the exemption of their products by means of tracing suppliers.

Brazil is a leading agricultural exporter that is in the sights of environmentalists and leaders who, for commercial or environmental reasons, want to preserve the world’s remaining forests.

The 75 percent increase in Amazon deforestation in the nearly three years of the Bolsonaro administration exacerbates Brazil’s vulnerability to environmentally motivated trade restrictions.

This was the likely reason for a shift in the attitude of the governmental delegation in Glasgow during COP26.

Unexpectedly, Brazil adhered to the commitment to reduce methane emissions by 30 percent by 2030, a measure that affects cattle ranching, which accounts for 71.8 percent of the country’s emissions of this greenhouse gas.

As the world’s largest exporter of beef, which brought in 8.4 billion dollars for two million tons in 2020, Brazil had previously rejected proposals targeting methane, a gas at least 20 times more potent than carbon dioxide in global warming.

Brazil also pledged to eliminate deforestation by 2028, two years ahead of the target, and stopped obstructing agreements such as the carbon market, in a totally different stance from the one it had taken in the previous two years.

The threat of trade barriers and the attempt to improve the government’s international reputation are behind the new attitude. The new ministers of Foreign Affairs, Carlos França, and Environment, Joaquim Leite, in office since April and June, respectively, are trying to mitigate the damage caused by their anti-diplomatic and anti-environmental predecessors.

But the new data on Amazon deforestation and the delay in its disclosure unleashed a new backlash.

President Jair Bolsonaro stated that the Amazon has kept its forests intact since 1500 and does not suffer from fires because it is humid, in a Nov. 15 speech during the Invest Brazil Forum, held in Dubai to attract capital to the country. He made this claim when he already knew that in the last year deforestation had grown by almost 22 percent. CREDIT: Alan Santos/PR-Fotos Públicas

Leite claimed not to have had prior knowledge of the INPE report, difficult to believe from a member of a government known for using fake news and disinformation. He announced that the government would take a “forceful” stance against environmental crimes in the Amazon, commenting on the “unacceptable” new deforestation figures.

Together with the Minister of Justice and Public Security Anderson Torres, who has the Federal Police under his administration, he promised to mobilize the necessary forces to combat illegal deforestation.

The reaction is tardy and of doubtful success, given the contrary stance taken by the president and the deactivation of the environmental bodies by the previous minister, Ricardo Salles, who defended illegal loggers against police action.

The former minister stripped the two institutes executing environmental policy, one for inspection and the other for biodiversity protection and management of conservation units, of resources and specialists. He also appointed unqualified people, such as military police, to command these bodies.

President Bolsonaro abolished councils and other mechanisms for public participation in environmental management, as in other sectors, and encouraged several illegal activities in the Amazon, such as “garimpo” (informal mining) and the invasion of indigenous areas and public lands.

The result could only be an increase in the deforestation and forest fires that spread the destruction in the last two years. The smoke from the “slash-and-burn” clearing technique polluted the air in cities more than 1,000 kilometers away.

Bolsonaro, however, declared on Nov. 15 in Dubai, in the United Arab Emirates, that fires do not occur in the Amazon due to the humidity of the rainforest and that 90 percent of the region remains “the same as in 1500,” when the Portuguese arrived in Brazil.

His vice-president, General Hamilton Mourão, acknowledged that “deforestation in the Amazon is real, the INPE data leave no doubt.” His unusual disagreement with the president arises from his experience in presiding over the National Council of the Legal Amazon, which proposes and coordinates actions in the region.

Brazil had managed to reduce Amazon deforestation since the 2004 total of 27,772 square kilometers. A concerted effort by environmental agencies reduced the total to 4,571 square kilometers in 2012. This shows that it is possible, but it depends on political will and adequate management.

Golden Monkey (Cercopithecus mitis ssp. kandti) Endangered in IUCN Red List. In Cameroon, 1999 bushmeat was openly on sale along the road as 100-year-old trees were illegally logged and transported. Today large primates face the same fate, even if not so openly. Credit: Steve Morgan / Greenpeace

By Manipadma Jena
BHUBANESWAR, India, Sep 2 2021 (IPS)

As Arti Prasad rode the Kuala Lumpur Pavilion mall escalator up to the third floor, a pair of luscious lips pouted down at her. Next to the towering and oversized lips, the vibrant red shades of lipstick on the giant screen immediately caught the 36-year-old Indian tourist’s fancy.

Prasad headed straight to the cosmetic outlet and bought all four of the advertised lipsticks. She, like many others, is oblivious to a baby Orangutan’s plight – orphaned when its forest home was burned down to grow the palm oil that went into these beauty products. Primary forest losses mean that only 10% of gorilla habitat will remain in the Congo Basin by 2032.

Deforestation, a significant threat to biodiversity and climate change, is accelerated by global demand for commodities. However, a considerable share of this agro-commodity production is intended for export – driving massive deforestation and conversion of natural ecosystems in the global south.

The Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations (FAO) estimates global forest areas declined by 129 million hectares between 1990-2015, equivalent in size to South Africa.

Data from satellite imagery released on Global Forest Watch in June 2020 recorded 3.75 million hectares of tree cover loss in humid primary forests in the tropics in 2019, an almost 3% increase from 2018 and the third-largest tropical forest loss since 2000. 

Consumption patterns of G7 countries (Canada, France, Germany, Italy, Japan, Britain, and the US) drive an average loss of 3.9 trees per person per year, over 15 years from 2001-2015, says a study published this year in Nature.

The International Union for Conservation of Nature (IUCN) will hold the IUCN World Conservation Congress in Marseille, France, from 3-11 September 2021. This premier conservation event will address global deforestation. More importantly, Congress motion 012 – the fight against imported deforestation – was co-sponsored by numerous IUCN Members and voted on and approved before Congress.

The IUCN Congress meets every four years to tackle the most pressing issues impacting people and the planet. This IUCN Congress in Marseille will drive action on nature-based recovery, climate change, and biodiversity for decades to come.

Congress motion 012 calls on countries to stop imported deforestation through several ambitious strategies, including imposing additional taxes on imported products that generate deforestation.
The aim is to recommend that private companies establish concrete action plans to guarantee supplies that did not result in deforestation.

Red-faced spider monkeys (Ateles paniscus) are found in undisturbed primary rainforests, in northern Brazil, Suriname, Guyana, French Guiana and Venezuela. Because of its ability to climb and jump, it tends to live in the upper layers of the rainforest trees and forages in the high canopy. With habitat loss and hunting it is listed as Vulnerable on the IUCN Red List. Credit: la Vallee des Singes

The list of imported agricultural products contains, first and foremost, soy, palm oil, cacao, beef and its by-products, rubber, timber, and derived products that do not come from sustainably managed forests. Others include coffee, tea, or even cane sugar, which impact the deforestation and conversion of natural ecosystems.

“The most recent IPCC and IPBES reports show that we are now at the point where significant and permanent changes to consumption patterns and legislative regulation can no longer be delayed,” David Williams-Mitchell, Director of Communications, European Association of Zoos and Aquaria (EAZA) told IPS via email. Netherlands-based EAZA, an IUCN member, is one of the co-sponsors of Congress motion 012.

More than 50% of global forest loss and land conversion is attributable to the production of agricultural commodities, and forestry products are driven by consumer demand, as shown by a 2020 WWF study on Switzerland’s overseas footprint for forest-risk commodities.

To end deforestation, companies must eliminate 5 million hectares of conversion from supply chains each year.

“The concept of imported deforestation is still quite new to the public in Europe. For EAZA, the key issue is to establish understanding globally that imported deforestation is one of the root causes of climate change and biodiversity loss,” Williams-Mitchell said.

He cited examples of a hugely expanded meat industry leading to increases in greenhouse gases, carbon sink capacity loss, and biodiversity loss through habitat conversion.

In 2017 alone, the international trade of agricultural products was associated with 1.3 million hectares of tropical deforestation emitting some 740 million tonnes of carbon dioxide – this is equivalent to nearly a fifth of the EU28’s total greenhouse gas emissions that year.

“We need countries all over the world to participate in the fight against imported deforestation. We need to learn to use local resources and establish sustainable sources for exported products, especially without harming the forests,” says Jean-Pascal Guéry of Primate Conservation Trust. This France-based IUCN member also co-sponsors Congress motion 012.

The world’s forests absorb 2.4 billion tons of carbon dioxide (CO2) per year, one-third of the annual CO2 released from burning fossil fuels. Forest destruction emits further carbon into the atmosphere, with 4.3–5.5 gigatons of total anthropogenic Green House Gas (GHG) emissions per year, generated annually mainly from deforestation and forest degradation, according to Cameroon-based NGO Environment and Rural Development Foundation (ERuDeF).

IUCN Member ERuDeF, co-sponsor of Congress motion 012, estimates that half of the tropical forests worldwide have been destroyed since the 1960s. Every second, more than one hectare of tropical forest is destroyed or drastically degraded.

“Deforestation and conversion-free supply chains must protect not only forests, but all the terrestrial natural ecosystems threatened by the expansion of commodity production and trade including savannahs, grasslands, and peatlands among others,” Romain Deveze, WWF Switzerland’s senior manager, sustainable commodities & markets and co-author of the WWF 2020 study told IPS.
“It is vital that people understand that their choices and the frameworks that allow them to make those choices are at the heart of the solution,” Williams-Mitchell concurs.

“As governments, science engagement institutions, schools, and other providers and facilitators of education, we need to act to ensure this level of understanding at all levels of society,” Williams-Mitchell says, explaining why EAZA is sponsoring the motion.

Guéry is critical of some of the efforts to combat deforestation.

“There is awareness (too late, in our opinion) in certain European countries of the deleterious effects of this imported deforestation, and the French initiative to establish a national strategy to combat imported deforestation is commendable, but it lacks ambition and does not set binding and short-term goals,” he said.

“The assessments of companies including distributors, manufacturers, operators, rely too much on self-assessment rather than establishing an independent external certification,” Guéry said.

WWF also mentions that despite more initiatives to halt deforestation, including certification, corporate commitments, and market incentives, the rate of commodity-driven land use doesn’t appear to be declining. This means the negative impacts on local people and nature continue.

A full truck loaded with 60-70 Mukula logs at Katanga Province, the Democratic Republic of the Congo, 2016. Around 8-10 trucks transported out Mukula logs every day. Mukula is a rare and slow-growing hardwood unique to southern and central Africa, illegally logged and traded from Zambia and DRC. Credit: Lu Guang / Greenpeace

In a study earlier this year, Greenpeace said that “certification is a weak tool to address global forest and ecosystem
destruction.”

By certifying their products as ‘sustainable,’ some certification schemes can help guide consumption choices and have a positive impact locally, “but it is (largely) greenwashing destruction of ecosystems and violations of Indigenous and labour rights.”

So, while buyers think they are making the right ethical choice, they might still buy products linked to abuse and destruction.

However, WWF’s Deveze says, “certification and legality are critical to halt deforestation at scale. A hectare of conversion is just equally as harmful to people and nature whether or not it is done legally.”

Ranece Jovial Ndjeudja, Greenpeace Africa’s campaign manager in Cameroon, told IPS in a Zoom interview, “the limitations to the policy effectiveness for the IUCN Congress motion on imported deforestation is increased taxation aimed at deterring forest clearing. This, however, cannot always prevent deforestation.”

“Companies would just increase production to compensate for the tax hikes,” Ndjeudja said, speaking from Yaoundé, where Cameroonians rallied in early August to demand EU stop deforestation for rubber production.
“It is industrial logging and industrial agriculture which is the problem. Are these industrial productions really bringing in a large revenue to the exporting governments? No. If it did, Cameroon and Congo would not be so poor. A small group gets rich. While Cameroon’s natives lose access to food, health, and their culture,” Tal Harris, Greenpeace Africa’s international communications coordinator, told IPS from Dakar, Senegal.

The Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC) hosts the second-largest contiguous tract of tropical forests globally, including roughly 60 percent of the Congo Basin rainforest. It is home to plants and animals found nowhere else on earth.

“A government cannot work out of a capital city thousands of miles distant from such extensive forests,” Harris said. “Devolution of power to the local population is necessary.”

Local communities play a vital role in wildlife conservation and environment protection. Comprising less than 5 percent of the world’s population, indigenous communities protect 80 percent of global biodiversity, says ERuDeF.

Cameroon’s Ndjeaudja echoes this. To ensure trees are not cut, there is the need to work with local communities because, for generations, they have been living with forests and have the knowledge of their sustainable management.

“We have a lot to learn from them and must allow indigenous communities to share this knowledge,” he said.

Deveze concluded: “Economic and technical incentives are required to shift producer behaviour. At an international policy level, go for differentiated custom tariffs based on sustainability requirements and due diligence processes. Compensation mechanisms to support farmers in protecting high conservation value areas should be amplified.”

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In Anapolis, Brazil's North-South railway line, which took more than 30 years to complete, was unable to connect with the existing network due to the different width of its tracks and its southern section remained inactive for several years, until it was privatised in 2019. Precedents like this one create concern about the new planned railway lines, dedicated to the transportation of grains to the export ports. CREDIT: Mario Osava

By Mario Osava
RÍO DE JANEIRO, Aug 27 2021 (IPS)

The sea of soybeans that sprouts every November will spread even further in the state of Mato Grosso if three new railway lines that would boost soy production in central-western Brazil and growing parts of the Amazon rainforest are built.

The most controversial railway line, the EF-170, is better known by its nickname “Ferrogrão (grainrail)” because it is to be built for the export of grains from the mid-northern part of Mato Grosso, the area where most soybeans and corn are produced in Brazil, through Amazonian rivers and ports in the north of the country.

Mato Grosso already produces 70 million tons of grains per year, a total that will reach 120 million tons by 2030, said Minister of Infrastructure Tarcisio de Freitas, who described the Ferrogrão as “the most important logistics project in Brazil,” in a digital meeting with foreign correspondents in June.

It would lower freight rates in general, by creating competition in the transportation of the bulk of the national agricultural production, replacing thousands of trucks and expanding exports through the ports of northern Brazil, relieving pressure on ports in the south and southeast.

The government intended to auction the concession for the rail line this year, but is unlikely to do so in the face of environmental obstacles and economic uncertainties.

The railway would cause the deforestation of between 1,671 and 2,416 square kilometres by stimulating the expansion of the planted area in the state of Mato Grosso alone, according to a study by the Climate Policy Initiative (CPI), an international non-profit organisation with which the Pontifical Catholic University of Rio de Janeiro is associated.

The study does not take into account damage in the state of Pará, where two thirds of the 933 kilometres of the line would be built and where the port of Miritituba on the Tapajós River, the railway’s destination, is located.

In Brazil’s Amazon region, the EF-170 railroad, known as Ferrogrão, is a project of agricultural transnationals supported by the Brazilian government. The aim of the railway, construction of which has not yet begun, is to bolster soybean and corn exports through the ports of northern Brazil. Map: National Land Transport Agency of Brazil

At the port, grains are transferred to barges that travel about 1,000 kilometres on the Tapajós and Amazon rivers to reach the export ports where the large transatlantic ships dock.

In addition to underestimating the extent of the deforestation, the project would violate indigenous rights, threaten conservation areas and stimulate illegal land appropriation, says a group of 38 social organisations in an “extrajudicial notification” to banks that could finance the construction of the Ferrogrão.

“The most serious thing is that it does not evaluate alternative routes,” said Sergio Guimarães, coordinator of the Infrastructure and Social Justice Working Group, a coalition of 47 organisations that headed the notification pointing out nine flaws in the project. (The Working Group is one of the 38 social organisations that sent the notification.)

There are alternatives for transportation already in place or under way for soybeans in Mato Grosso, where 35.9 million tons were produced this year (26.5 percent of the country’s total), such as the BR-163 highway along the same route as the Ferrogrão, a railroad under construction and two others in the planning stage. They should all be assessed in order to find the best economic and environmental options, he told IPS by telephone from Brasilia.

“It is very difficult for the Ferrogrão to be competitive, considering that the BR-163 highway is already in place and there are other alternatives,” said economist Claudio Frischtak, president of the InterB International Business Consultancy.

“It’s a bad project,” he told IPS in a conversation in Rio de Janeiro. “It underestimates the investments and the time needed for implementation and runs the risk of having the same fate as two other railroads whose construction was interrupted in the last decade, leading to the loss of public resources.”

The state of Tocantins in central Brazil aims to repeat this century the soybean boom that transformed the neighbouring state of Mato Grosso, the country’s largest soy and corn producer, which has record exports. To do this, producers are demanding the extension of rail transport. CREDIT: Mario Osava/IPS

The economist compared the data from the government’s proposal with figures from the Midwest Integration Railway (Fico), a project under construction by the mining company Vale, which has years of experience in railways. Fico will link Agua Boa, a city in central-eastern Mato Grosso, and Mara Rosa, 383 kilometres to the east, in the state of Goiás.

Based on this comparison, Frischtak calculates that the actual cost of building the Ferrogrão would be 3.4 times the amount reported by the government: 5.45 billion dollars rather than 1.58 billion dollars.

The projected rate of return of 11.05 percent is also totally unrealistic, he said, as is the estimated construction time of nine years.

Frischtak projected that construction would actually take 21.9 years, or even longer given the complicated terrain where the Ferrogrão would be built.

The Fico does not reach the most productive soybean production area, which is around the city of Sinop, the planned starting point of the Ferrogrão. Instead, it connects with the North-South Railway that reaches the port of Itaqui, on the Atlantic coast of the northeastern state of Maranhão, which has the capacity to serve the largest ships.

The third new rail alternative for grains in Mato Grosso is the Ferronorte, a 730-kilometre stretch planned by Rumo, the largest national railroad transportation company, with access to the Port of Santos, the country’s biggest, after crossing the state of São Paulo, the most densely populated productive, agricultural and industrial state in Brazil.

The large warehouses next to the BR-163 highway, used by trucks to transport soybeans to the Amazon ports through which they are exported, have turned Lucas do Rio Verde into a hub of the agro-export economy of the state of Mato Grosso, in central-western Brazil. CREDIT: Mario Osava/IPS

Rumo’s rail network already reaches Rondonópolis, in the south of Mato Grosso. The idea would be to extend it to the mid-north of the state, where large quantities of soybeans are produced between October and February, and corn in the following months, on the same land. Agriculture in tropical climates has the competitive advantage of producing two harvests per year.

But the biggest competition for the Ferrogrão, according to Frischtak, would be the BR-163 highway, the paving of which was completed in 2019. Management of the highway was awarded to a private company this year. Overland trucking costs fell and continue to decline, which will hinder the financial viability of the new parallel rail line.

The economist argued that it would make more economic sense to upgrade existing infrastructure, such as widening the highway and improving the waterways that also serve agricultural exports through the north. “We must not continue to make the same mistakes,” he said.

But Tiago Stefanello Nogueira, coordinator of Agricultural Policy and Logistics of the Association of Soybean and Corn Producers of Mato Grosso (AprosojaMT), said there is no doubt about the viability and benefits of the Ferrogrão.

“There will be less pollution, because it will reduce the consumption of petroleum derivatives, greater transportation capacity, less carbon emissions and thousands of jobs created during construction, as well as demand for services; there are many benefits,” he asserted.

Railroads are mostly used for freight transport in Brazil, and passenger trains like this one on the Carajás line in Maranhão state often run at a loss, as compensation for the local populace from the companies that control the rail lines. CREDIT: Mario Osava/IPS

Only 11 percent of the land in Mato Grosso is dedicated to agriculture, according to Aprosoja, and this could expand to 40 percent, Nogueira estimates.

“To achieve this we need all modes of transportation, whether railways, highways and future waterways, and the paving and widening of roads,” he told IPS by telephone from Sorriso, a city located in a soybean-growing area in the north of the state.

But that’s the problem, according to Alexandre Sampaio, Policy and Programme coordinator of the International Accountability Project (IAP), an international organisation that works for human and environmental rights in development. He said Ferronorte would exacerbate the already unbalanced development model in its area of influence.

Of the 90.3 million hectares in Mato Grosso, 9.7 million are under agricultural production. That includes nine million hectares where soybeans are grown and then corn and cotton after the soybean harvest. The remaining 0.7 million hectares are dedicated to other agricultural activities, according to Aprosoja.

In other words, even though the state of Mato Grosso is known as a huge breadbasket, it produces abundant agricultural production for export but little food, which it has to buy from other regions. In fact, only 18 percent of the state´s population is rural.

Although it is intended to be used for export agriculture, “the railroad is a great investment that drives up the value of the land, boosts the economy and wealth, in addition to reducing traffic on the roads. In other words, it indirectly benefits family agriculture,” said Nilton Macedo, president of the Federation of Agricultural Workers of Mato Grosso.

“We have 148,000 members, 97,000 of whom were resettled as part of the agrarian reform programme,” he told IPS by telephone from Pontes e Lacerda, in the southeastern part of the state. The federation says it represents 500,000 workers, including wage-earning farmworkers and family farmers who work their own land.

In contrast, soybean and corn producers number only 7,300, according to Aprosoja, but they dominate the state’s economy.

Charcoal sold in urban centres is usually illegally imported from Mozambique and Zambia, where charcoal has traditionally been produced. But this energy source is now being produced in Muzarabani District in Mashonaland Central Province close to the border with Mozambique, according to the Forestry Commission. Credit: Busani Bafana/IPS

By Busani Bafana
BULAWAYO, ZIMBABWE, Jun 14 2021 (IPS)

Once a week a tonnage of fresh charcoal is dropped off at Sibangani Tshobe’s rugged, pit-stop stall by a hired, battered old Bedford lorry. Small, makeshift trolleys — nicknamed Scania’s — quickly cart off small loads and disappear into Old Pumula, the oldest suburb in the country’s second-largest city of Bulawayo.

Electricity blackouts have temporarily stopped in Zimbabwe, but higher power costs and an occasional cold spell still offer Tshobe a chance to make a few dollars.

“I sell a bag of charcoal for $7 and it is good business for me,” Tshobe tells IPS, indicating to a 50 kg polythene bag from other traders that is split into smaller bundles that he sells for $1.

High costs of electricity for cash-strapped Zimbabweans — the country has a poverty rate of just over 38 percent, according to the World Bank —  means that the demand for firewood for cooking, lighting and heating has increased.

And so too has the destruction of Zimbabwe’s fragile forests.

“With the high cost of electricity what does one do? This is a means to fend for my family. I am aware our business means destroying trees but we have to live,” Tshobe says.

Felling forests to keep warm

Each year, Zimbabwe loses about 60 million trees — some 33,000 hectares of forests — thanks to illegal deforestation, according to the the Forestry Commission, a body mandated to protect state forests.

Charcoal making is increasing the loss of indigenous forests and also increasing land degradation, says Violet Makoto, spokesperson for the Forestry Commission.

“Charcoal is happening and is a worrying trend necessitated by the energy challenges the country is facing. Yes, a few months back we had an issue of no electricity, so charcoal was coming in handy for cooking, especially in urban areas. Now, in most parts, electricity is available but beyond the reach of many due to the high tariffs,” Makoto tells IPS.

Charcoal production is depleting indigenous forests in Zimbabwe where hardwood trees are preferred to make charcoal. Credit: Busani Bafana/IPS

Charcoal – favoured for burning hotter and longer than wood – is made from heating wood without oxygen. The practice is taking root across swathes of the country, dominated by native forest hardwoods such as the mopane hardwood species (Copaifera mopane J), Makoto says.

Charcoal sold in urban centres is usually illegally imported from Mozambique and Zambia, where charcoal has traditionally been produced. But this energy source is now being produced in Muzarabani District in Mashonaland Central Province close to the border with Mozambique, according to the Forestry Commission. The Midlands province, Mashonaland West Province and Matabeleland North province were also hot spots for charcoal production, says Makoto.

In Matabeleland North province charcoal producing areas include Hwange Colliery Concession, Gwayi River Farms and resettlement villages along the Bubi-Nkayi boundary, says Armstone Tembo, the Forestry Commission Chief Conservator of Forests. 

“We have been carrying out raids and confiscating the charcoal but our problem is that we are aware that even if we confiscate the charcoal people still go to those areas and cut down more trees and produce charcoal,” she says.

Last year, more than 30 people were arrested and fined for trading in charcoal with 1,9 tonnes of charcoal confiscated.

This year, more than 1,000 bags of charcoals were confiscated and 10 people arrested and charged for making and selling charcoal.

“We need a lasting solution that can completely eliminate charcoal making in the country. Maybe crafting new laws to directly address the issue of charcoal production in Zimbabwe would help.”

The production, marketing and even consumption of charcoal are crimes, unless one is buying charcoal made from exotic trees, according to Abednego Marufu, the Forestry Commission’s General Manager. Marufu says that there was an exception for timber companies who harvested exotic tree species, such as wattle, for charcoal making.

Charcoal from hard wood trees is wiping out forests in most part of Africa because of rising energy needs. Credit: Busani Bafana/IPS

Tighter laws for culprits

The Forestry Commission is pushing for tighter laws to curb the practice, proposing a mandatory jail term, instead of fines, which are proving not sufficient deterrent. Currently anyone caught selling firewood and charcoal can receive a Level 7 fine for $59 or a year in jail.

“The Level 7 fine for people in communal areas is deterrent enough what is required by us is enforcement and we are working with the Zimbabwe Republic Police and the Rural District Councils and the Environmental Management Agency to curb this activity,” Marufu says.

“We envisage a mandatory jail term rather than optional fines so that people can go to jail for three months. We feel it will be painful enough for people to understand that environmental crimes are serious.”

However, stricter fines are not necessarily the answer to issue, some activists note.

“The constant rise of electricity is unsustainable not just for consumers who are poor and unemployed but also for businesses because electricity is a key component of both the domestic and household economy,” Effie Ncube, a civil rights activist, tells IPS. He adds that high costs of electricity are also pushing up the costs of basic goods and services.

Last September, the Zimbabwe Electricity Transmission and Distribution Company (ZETDC), the holding company of the Zimbabwe Electricity Supply Authority (ZESA), increased charges by 50 percent. These were increased by a further 30 percent in May. The increases were attributed to the high costs of importing electricity.

Soaring prices of basic food stuffs, food, fuel and energy are driving Zimbabweans to poverty, says Comfort Muchekeza, Southern region Manager of the Consumer Council of Zimbabwe, arguing that government needs to restore economic production for consumers to afford electricity.

“Energy is a really a sensitive issue,” Machemedza tells IPS by telephone. “It is high time the government comes up with alternative sources of energy and invites other players into the energy sector.  The cost of electricity today has gone beyond the reach of not only the ordinary consumers but even the middle class. Since September last year we have seen more than three increases in electricity and that is worrying.”

Wood fuels represent significant economic value in many countries, accounting for approximately $ 6 billion for the whole of Africa, according to the United Nations’ Food and Agriculture Organisation (FAO). More than $1 billion of this amount was made up by charcoal.

“Zimbabwe needs to invest in wide scale alternative energy sources like wind and solar so that people have access to affordable and clean energy at a time when firewood and charcoal are widely use but these have a serious environmental impact,” says Ncube.

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CANOPY COVER: Nepal’s midhills have seen the greatest increase in forest cover over the past 25 years. Outmigration from villages and the success of community forests like this one in Chitlang of Makwanpur district have contributed to the regrowth. Photos: KUNDA DIXIT.

By Peter Gill
KATHMANDU, Sep 19 2019 (IPS)

New analysis of historical satellite imagery indicates that Nepal’s forest area has nearly doubled, from 26% of land area in 1992 to 45% in 2016. The midhills have experienced the strongest resurgence, although forests have also expanded in the Tarai and in the mountains. This makes Nepal an exception to the global trend of deforestation in developing countries.

These findings may come as a surprise to readers who regularly hear about deforestation. Indeed, recent infrastructure expansion projects seem to pit development against nature. Protesters have pushed back against the felling of trees for the Ring Road expansion project in Kathmandu, as well as the plan to cut down 8,000ha of jungle in Bara district for a proposed airport in Nijgad.

But the new research, conducted by a NASA-funded team whose members are based in the US, Switzerland and Nepal, does not indicate that Nepal has been free from deforestation in recent decades. Rather, the data show that on average, more new forests have grown up than have been cut down. As a result, there has been net forest gain.

Unlike government officials, local communities were seen to have a vested interest in preserving forest resources for long-term, sustainable use. They also were better positioned to monitor forests and enforce rules for harvesting forest products.

Jefferson Fox, a geographer at the East-West Center in Honolulu who is the project’s principal investigator, thinks it is important to acknowledge Nepal’s forest successes, even if localised deforestation remains a problem in parts of the country.

“When I did my dissertation work in the early 1980s, Nepal was all over the international press for deforestation,” he says. “Now that Nepal has turned it around, it can’t get any attention!”

From 1950 to 1980, Nepal lost much of its forest cover. Deforestation was due in part to a growing rural population that cut trees to harvest timber and convert land to agriculture. Nepal had nationalised all forests in the 1950s, but the government was often ill-equipped to oversee them. Bureaucrats were frequently unaware, or turned a blind eye, when villagers cut trees for household use, and sometimes they colluded with commercial loggers to illegally exploit timber.

In the late 1980s and early 1990s, the government began handing over what eventually amounted to 1.8 million hectares of national forest land to communities to manage. Unlike government officials, local communities were seen to have a vested interest in preserving forest resources for long-term, sustainable use. They also were better positioned to monitor forests and enforce rules for harvesting forest products.

Fox’s research team found that areas with high rates of community forest membership experienced the most forest recovery, implying that decentralised forest management has played a key role in Nepal’s reforestation.

Demographic changes have also been important to forest recovery. Although Nepali villagers have migrated to India for seasonal and military work for centuries, migration to Gulf countries, Southeast Asia and beyond has exploded since the 1990s.

Migrants’ families often abandon marginal farmland because they lack the manpower to use it, allowing forests to naturally regenerate. Likewise, the families often harvest fewer forest products, like firewood, because they have more money to purchase alternatives, such as LPG. Fox’s team found that areas of Nepal where people receive the most remittances have also experienced greatest reforestation.

The data also indicate that Nepal’s forest gains have been concentrated in the midhills. This is not surprising, because community forests are widespread in this region and outmigration and agricultural land abandonment are increasingly common. The data also show that forests have expanded in the Tarai, despite greater population growth, fewer community forests and more conflicts over resources there. However, gains in the Tarai — and in the mountains — have been smaller than in the midhills.

Importantly, forest extent is not the same thing as ecological value, which can vary greatly from forest to forest. For example, young, dry, and isolated forests do not provide as good wildlife habitat as old-growth and riverine forests, or forests located along wildlife corridors. Similarly, a forest on a steep slope helps reduce soil erosion, giving it conservation value that a forest in a flat area may not have.

Fox’s team is not the first to analyse Nepal’s forest cover change using satellite imagery. A group at the University of Maryland (GlobalForestWatch.org) has monitored forest change globally since 2000. In Nepal, its data show there has been forest loss — the opposite of Fox’s team’s findings. This data has been cited by numerous academic studies and the media, including this newspaper.

Both the old and new data were generated using computer algorithms that look at historical satellite images to determine — based on the colour and shade of pixels in each photograph — what is forest and what is not. Forests are considered to be any area with at least 50% canopy cover — meaning that, looking from the air, at least half of the ground is obscured by trees. (This may not sound like much, but the FAO standard is only 10%.)

While the Maryland team used algorithms designed for application around the world, Fox’s team have created algorithms specifically tailored for Nepal. Alex Smith, a member of Fox’s team who is also a PhD candidate at Oregon State University and a current Fulbright-Hays scholar in Kathmandu, says that image-analysis algorithms designed for worldwide use can be inaccurate in Nepal because of the mountainous terrain.

By contrast, his team’s algorithms use topographic correction techniques to compensate for shade and other visual distortions caused by steep slopes. Furthermore, they ensure their algorithms are accurate by cross-analysing results with other high-resolution photographs of the same areas — a process known as ‘ground truthing’.  For these reasons, the results are probably far more accurate for Nepal than the University of Maryland data.

Some would argue that because Nepal nearly doubled its forest area since 1992, it can spare a few thousand hectares here or there for infrastructure projects like Nijgad. But according to Smith, this is not the upshot of his team’s research.

“Our study provides a big-picture view about what is happening, but the decision to convert any specific forest should be taken after considering local factors as well,” he says.

These might include the potential benefits of the infrastructure project weighed against the value of the forest as wildlife habitat and as a source of resources, cultural values and aesthetics for local people.

Infrastructure aside, some people argue Nepal should allow more timber harvesting, which has hitherto been tightly regulated, as long as it is accompanied by sustainable forest management. Proponents of this approach say that forest-based industries could boost the economy without leading to deforestation, because trees would be replanted once cut.

Sceptics counter that ensuring long-term sustainability would be difficult, given pervasive problems with corruption and short-term thinking among leadership.

The new research by Fox’s team does not provide conclusive evidence for one side or the other. Decisions about how much, and where, to harvest will inevitably involve balancing conservation and development objectives.

However, the research does highlight the continued importance of community forestry. “Local communities have put in a huge amount of effort conserving these forests,” says Smith. “Whatever happens next, you want to keep people invested.”  

This story was originally published by The Nepali Times

India’s minister for environment, forests and climate change, Prakash Javadekar (left), said he would be happy if CoP 14 could achieve consensus on such difficult issues as drought management and land tenure. Courtesy: Ranjit Devraj

By Ranjit Devraj
NEW DELHI, Sep 4 2019 (IPS)

Expectations are high, perhaps too high, as the 14th Conference of the Parties (CoP 14) of the United Nations Convention to Combat Desertification (UNCCD), now into the third day of its two-week session, is being held outside the smog-filled Indian capital of New Delhi.

At the inauguration on Monday, India’s minister for environment, forests and climate change, Prakash Javadekar, soon after ceremonies to mark his taking over as president of the Convention for the next two years, said he would be happy if CoP 14 could achieve consensus on such difficult issues as drought management and land tenure.

Other issues on the agenda of CoP14, themed ‘Restore land, Sustain future’ and located in Greater Noida, in northern Uttar Pradesh state, include negotiations over consumption and production flows that have a bearing on agriculture and urbanisation, restoration of ecosystems and dealing with climate change.

According to Ibrahim Thiaw, executive secretary of the Convention, CoP14 negotiations would be guided by, its own scientific papers as well as the Special Report on Climate Change and Land of the U.N. Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), released in August.

The IPCC report covered interlinked, overlapping issues that are at the core of CoP14 deliberations — climate, change, desertification, and degradation, sustainable land management, food security and greenhouse gas fluxes in terrestrial ecosystems.

“Sustainable land management can contribute to reducing the negative impacts of multiple stressors, including climate change, on ecosystems and societies,” the IPCC report said. It also identified land use change as the largest driver of biodiversity loss and as having the greatest impact on the environment.

Javadekar said he saw hope in the fact that of the 196 parties to the Convention 122, including some of the most populous like Brazil, China, India, Nigeria, Russia and South Africa have agreed to make the U.N. Sustainable Development Goal of achieving land degradation neutrality (LDN) targets by 2030 as national objectives.

But the difficulty of seeing results on the ground can be gauged from India’s own difficult situation. Nearly 30 percent of India’s 328 million hectares, supporting 1.3 billion people, has become degraded through deforestation, over-cultivation, soil-erosion and wetland depletion, according to a satellite survey conducted in 2016 by the Indian Space Research Organisation.

A study, conducted last year by The Energy and Resource Institute (TERI), an independent think-tank based in New Delhi, estimates India’s losses from land degradation and change in land use to be worth 47 billion dollars in 2014—2015.

The question before CoP14 is how participating countries can slow down loss of land and along with it biodiversity threatening to impact 3.2 billion people across the world. “Three out of every four hectares have been altered from their natural states and the productivity of one every four hectares of land has been declining,” according to UNCCD.

Running in parallel to CoP14 is the 14th session of UNCCD’s committee on science and technology (CST14), a subsidiary body with stated objectives — estimating soil organic carbon lost as a result of land degradation, addressing the ‘land-drought nexus’ through land-based interventions and translating available science into policy options for participating countries.

On Tuesday, as CoP4 launched into substantive business, the participants at the CST and other subsidiary bodies began to voice real apprehensions and demands.

Bhutan representing the Asia Pacific group, highlighted the need for cooperation at all levels to disseminate and translate identified technologies and knowledge into direct benefits for local land users.

Bangladesh pointed out that LDN targets are sometimes linked to transboundary water resources and also called for mobilising additional resources for capacity building.

Colombia, speaking for the Latin America and Caribbean group, appreciated the value of research by the scientific panels, but urged introduction of improved technologies and mitigation strategies to reduce the direct impacts of drought on ecosystems, starting with soil  degradation.

Russia, on behalf of Central and Eastern Europe, mooted the establishment of technical centres in the region to support the generation of scientific evidence to prevent and manage droughts, sustainable use of forests and peatlands and monitoring of sand and dust storms.

Civil society organisations, led by the Cape Town-based Environmental Monitoring Group, were also critical of the UNCCD for putting too much emphasis on LDN and demanded optimisation of land use through practical solutions that would ensure that carbon is retained in the soil.

“Retaining carbon in the soil is of particular value to India and its neighbouring countries, which presently have the world’s greatest rainwater runoffs into the sea,” says Himanshu Thakkar, coordinator, South Asia Network on Dams, Rivers and People (SANDRP), a New Delhi based NGO, working on the water and environment sectors.

“What South Asian countries need to do urgently is to improve the rainwater harvesting so as to recharge groundwater aquifers and local water bodies in a given catchment so that water is available in the post-monsoon period that increasingly see severe droughts,” Thakkar tells IPS. “This is where governments can be supportive.”

Benefits such as preventing soil degradation and consequent landslides that have become a common feature in South India, Sri Lanka and Bangladesh.

A study published in May said half of the area around 16 of India’s 24 major river basins is facing  droughts due to lowered soil moisture levels while at least a third of its 18 river basins has become non-resilient to vegetation droughts.

Responding to the suggestions and demands the Secretariat highlighted  recommendations to ensure mainstreaming of LDN targets in national strategies and action programmes, partnerships on science-policy to increase awareness and understanding of LDN and collaborations to assess finance and capacity development needs.

In all, the delegates, who include 90 ministers and more than 7,000 participants drawn from among government officials, civil society and the scientific community from the 197 parties will thrash out 30  decision texts and draw up action plans to strengthen land-use policies and address emerging threats such as droughts, forest fires, dust storms and forced migration.

“The agenda shows that governments have come to CoP14 ready to find solutions to many difficult, knotty and emerging policy issues,” said Thiaw at the inaugural session. The conference ends with the parties signing a ‘New Delhi Declaration’ outlining actions to meet UNCCD goals for 2018-2030.

If forest loss continues at the current rate, it will be impossible to keep warming below two degrees Celsius as pledged in the Paris Agreement. Credit: José Garth Medina/IPS

By Tharanga Yakupitiyage
UNITED NATIONS, Jan 18 2019 (IPS)

From expansive evergreen forests to lush tropical forests, the Earth’s forests are disappearing on a massive scale. While deforestation poses a significant problem to the environment and climate, trees also offer a solution.

After a series of eye-opening reports from the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) to the United Nations Environmental Programme (UNEP) were published in 2018, it was clear that international action is more urgent than ever to reduce emissions and conserve the environment.

Deforestation and forest degradation account for approximately 17 percent of greenhouse gas emissions, more than the entire global transportation sector and second only to the energy sector.

Tropical deforestation alone accounts for 8 percent of the world’s annual carbon dioxide (CO2) emissions. If it were a country, it would be the world’s third-biggest emitter, just behind China and the United States of America.

In fact, according to the U.N. Convention to Combat Desertification (UNCCD), the land-use sector represents between 25 to 30 percent of total global emissions.

If such forest loss continues at the current rate, it will be impossible to keep warming below two degrees Celsius as pledged in the Paris Agreement.

While forests represent a quarter of all planned emissions reductions under Nationally Determined Contributions (NDCs) under the Paris Agreement, there is still a long way to go to fulfil these goals.

The United Nations Programme on Reducing Emissions from Deforestation and Forest Degradation (UN-REDD) is among the international groups working to reverse deforestation. It supports countries’ REDD+ processes, a mechanism established to promote conservation and sustainable management of forests.

IPS spoke with UNEP’s Coordinator of Freshwater, Land, and Climate Branch Tim Christophersen about the issues and solutions surrounding deforestation. Excerpts of the interview follow:

Inter Press Service (IPS): What is the current state of deforestation globally?

Tim Christophersen: The rate of deforestation has slowed since 2000 globally. At some point, it had even slowed by about 50 percent. We still have a lot of deforestation—it’s just that the rate has gone down so that’s partially good news.

The good news side is we see a lot of restoration and reemergence of forests on deforested land. But often those forests of course cannot replace the biodiversity or ecosystem values that they once had.

The bad news is that in some countries, deforestation has accelerated.

This picture is mixed but it is not all gloom and doom.

IPS: Where have you seen improvements and what cases are most concerning to you? 

TC: In general, the picture is quite positive in Europe where forest area is increasing by a million hectares per year.

In Asia and the Pacific, the picture is quite mixed with China investing heavily in restoration and planting millions of hectares of new forests and other countries such as Myanmar where the pace of deforestation is accelerating.

Recently, an area of concern is of course Brazil with changes in leadership there that will probably weaken protections of the Amazon rainforest. We expect they might not be able to keep their positive track record that they had especially in the years between 2007-2012 where deforestation of the Amazon dropped by 70 percent.

IPS: What has UN-REDD and REDD+’s role in this issue? What are some successful case studies or stories that REDD had a direct role in? 

TC: REDD has, for example, put the issue of indigenous rights front and center to the entire debate about forests and land use.

That is largely thanks to the strong role of indigenous communities in the climate discussions and the strong safeguards that were part of the REDD+ package. So these safeguards have triggered, also across other infrastructure projects, the knowledge and awareness of indigenous communities that they have rights, that they can determine national resource use within their jurisdictions—that was not so much the case before.

For example in Panama, we have worked together with indigenous communities to map forest cover and priority areas for REDD+ investments. In Ecuador, indigenous communities have been involved from the start in the design of the REDD+ framework.

There are [also] other potential buyers that are out there and willing to invest in verified and clearly demonstrated reductions in deforestation.

We have not seen the amount of funding flow into REDD+ that we had anticipated to date but it is picking up now. We also hope that more countries will come online with their emissions reductions that they properly verify with the UNFCC process.

The issue is that land use and forests are about 30 percent of the climate problem and solution—it is a problem that can be turned into a solution. It is currently causing 25 percent of emissions and it could absorb as much as one-third of all the emission sequestration that we need.

But it has only received about 3 percent of climate finance so there’s a huge mismatch between the opportunity that natural solutions provide and the funding that goes into it.

IPS: Over the last year including during the recent COP, many have brought up and discussed nature-based solutions. What are these, and what could such solutions look like on the ground? 

TC: Nature-based solutions are solutions to climate change or other challenges we face where we use the power of nature to restore or improve ecosystem services.

An example would be using forests for flood prevention or purification of drinking water for cities. This is quite widespread in fact but it is not always recognised. About one-third of all major cities in developing countries receive their drinking water from forested watersheds.

If we lose those forests, that would have detrimental impacts on a lot of people’s drinking water supply. It can often be cheaper or at least more cost-effective for cities, provinces or nations to invest in keeping and restoring their forests rather than other solutions for water purification or drinking water supply.

Another example that is often cited is the role of mangroves in storm protection in coastal areas. Again, this can be cheaper to invest in planting and conserving mangroves than building sea walls or other grey infrastructure projects that we have to increasingly invest in for climate adaptation.

IPS: There are many initiatives around the world that involve planting trees as a way to address climate change and land degradation and many have received mixed reviews in terms of its usefulness. Is it enough just to plant trees?

TC: Planting trees is never enough because trees are a bit like children—it’s not enough to put the in the world, you also have to make sure they grow up properly. That’s often overlooked that you cannot just plant trees and then leave them to their fate.

Because often the reasons for landscape degradation, for example overgrazing, will very quickly eliminate any trees that you plant. So it’s more about a longer-term, better natural resource management.

Planting trees can be one activity in a longer process of restoring degraded forests and landscapes.

There are other ecosystems that are also very important—peatlands, wetlands—but forests and trees will play a major role in the next decade. I am convinced there will be more and more investments into this area because if trees are planted and properly looked after, it is a huge opportunity for us to get back onto the 2 degree target in the Paris Agreement.

IPS: Since the planet is still growing in terms of population size and food needs, is there a way to reconcile development and land restoration? And do wealthier countries or even corporations have a responsibility to help with land restoration?

TC: Absolutely. I would even say land restoration on a significant scale is our only option to reconcile the need for increasing food production and meeting the other Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) as well most notable goal 13 on climate action.

Without restoration, we are probably not going to achieve the Paris Agreement. That part of nature-based solutions, massive investments in ecosystem restoration is absolutely essential and we see that more and more corporations are recognising that.

The aviation industry is one of those potential buyers with their carbon reduction offset scheme which is called CORSIA.

It certainly is an option to channel financing for forest protection but there are of course limits as to how much emissions we can realistically offset.

Offsets are absolutely no replacement for very drastic, highly ambitious emission mitigation measures. We have to very drastically and quickly reduce industrial emissions.

Offsets can maybe tip the balance in favour of offsetting only those emissions that can otherwise not be reduced or avoided but they are not a replacement for strong action on reducing greenhouse gas emissions from all industrial sectors including agriculture.

The biggest part of corporate interest we see in restoration is from large agri commodity investors and food systems companies because they want to secure their supply chains and that’s quite encouraging.

*Interview has been edited for length and clarity

Excerpt:

A group of Wichí children play in the mud in the indigenous community of El Quebracho, in northern Argentina. This country’s laws recognise the right to bilingual support in the education of native children, but in practice the rule is not enforced and children suffer discrimination when they speak their native languages. Credit: Daniel Gutman/IPS

By Daniel Gutman
TARTAGAL, Argentina , Jan 12 2019 (IPS)

Nancy López lives in a house made of clay, wood and corrugated metal sheets, on private land dedicated to agriculture. She is part of an indigenous community of 12 families in northern Argentina that, like almost all such communities, has no title to the land it occupies and lives under the constant threat of eviction.

A widow and mother of nine, she has heard stories of better times. “My father told me that before they come and go and stay wherever they wanted. There was no talk of private land, no soybeans, no barbed wire. They felt free. Today they call us usurpers,” she told IPS.

López belongs to the Wichí people, one of the most numerous indigenous group of the 31 registered in Argentina. According to official data, native people represent 2.38 percent of the population of this South American country of 44 million people, although experts and indigenous leaders consider that the real percentage is much higher."The indigenous people who live on the outskirts of the cities are refugees who have been displaced from their place in the forest over the past 100 years by non-indigenous farmers who arrived with their cows and, in recent decades, by agribusiness.” -- John Palmer

Today, indigenous people in Argentina are struggling to preserve their way of life in a scenario made complex mainly due to conflicts over land.

Ninety-two percent of the communities do not have title to the land they live on, according to a survey published in 2017 by the National Audit Office, an oversight that depends on the legislative branch.

The scope of the conflict is huge. Approximately half of the 1,600 native communities in the country have carried out or are carrying out the process of surveying their lands that the State began more than 10 years ago, and they lay claim to eight and a half million hectares – a total area larger than the country of Panama.

The backdrop is the pattern of discrimination that persists in Argentina despite advances made on paper, as then UN Special Rapporteur on Indigenous Peoples James Anaya reported after a visit to the country in 2011.

“There are still legacies from the colonial era and the history of exclusion is still highly visible,” Anaya wrote in his report.

Nancy López, a leader in her community, says children no longer want to speak Wichí, because if they do, they suffer discrimination at school, which must have a bilingual assistant teacher, according to the National Education Law in effect since 2006.

“The bilingual assistant is given jobs like making photocopies or running errands. He barely translates to the kids what the homework is. There’s a lot of racism,” Lopez said, as local children from the community played with mud in the rain.

Nancy López sits next to her house built of mud, wood and corrugated metal sheets in the Wichí community of El Quebracho, Salta province, northern Argentina. The indigenous community lives on privately owned agricultural land, to which they returned after being evicted in a major police operation. Credit: Daniel Gutman/IPS

Her community, El Quebracho, is one of dozens located near Tartagal, a city of 80,000 people in the province of Salta, on route 86, which is actually just a dirt road that leads to the Paraguayan border.

López explains that the families in her community settled six years ago in the countryside where they now live, without the owner’s permission, “because this used to be uncleared forest.”

The Wichí and other indigenous peoples of the area, who are hunter-gatherers, have historically depended on the forest for food, medicine, or wood to build their houses.

But every day there are fewer forests. Along with neighboring Santiago del Estero, Salta is the Argentine province that has suffered the greatest deforestation in recent years, due to the expansion of the agricultural frontier, pushed mainly by transgenic soy, which today occupies more than half of the area planted in the country.

“As the city of Tartagal grew, they pushed our indigenous communities out, so we go wherever we can,” explains López, who says that a couple of years ago they were evicted in an operation in which some 200 police officers participated.

“We stayed on the side of the road for about two months, until the policemen left and we went back in. We have nowhere else to go. This used to be all forest. Today we are surrounded by soy,” she says.

Since Argentina became a nation in 1853, one of its main goals was to exclude or assimilate indigenous people.

In fact, the constitution that went into effect that year called for “the preservation of peaceful treatment for the Indians, and the promotion of their conversion to Catholicism”, while, on the other hand, it imposed on the government the obligation to encourage European immigration.

Posters at the entrance to an indigenous community in the province of Salta say the State has already carried out a survey recognising the land as ancestrally occupied by native people. But no progress has been made in the titling of community property in this area of northern Argentina. Credit: Daniel Gutman/IPS

The directive on the original population was still in force until just 25 years ago. Only in 1994, during the last constitutional reform, was it replaced by an article that recognises “the ethnic and cultural pre-existence of indigenous peoples” and “community possession and ownership of the lands they traditionally occupy.”

However, according to then rapporteur Anaya, the constitutional change did not modify a reality marked by “the historical dispossession of large tracts of land by ranchers and by the presence of agricultural, oil and mining companies that operate on lands claimed by indigenous communities.”

In 2006, Congress passed the Indigenous Communities Act, which declared indigenous lands in an emergency situation, ordered surveys of ancestrally occupied land and suspended evictions, even in cases with a judicial ruling, for a period of four years.

Since then, however, the survey has not even begun to be carried out in half of the communities, despite the fact that the law has been extended three times. And the great majority of the communities where the survey has been conducted still have no community property titles.

Today it is also reported that evictions are still being carried out, although the law in force prohibits them until 2021.

According to Amnesty International, which in 2017 released a study that detected 225 unresolved conflicts throughout the country, it is not surprising that the vast majority of the conflicts involving indigenous people in Argentina are over land.

“Some provinces have granted property titles, but there are no institutional mechanisms for access to indigenous community property in Argentina. We need a national law,” attorney Gabriela Kletzel, of the Center for Legal and Social Studies (CELS), told IPS.

This non-governmental organisation brought before the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights (IACHR) the case of a group of communities whose ownership of 400,000 hectares was recognised by the government of the province of Salta in 2014.

“However, these communities are not yet able to take control of the land because they do not have title to it. And they still can’t get white families to take their cattle off their land, which destroys the natural resources that are the foundation of indigenous life,” Kletzel said.

John Palmer, an English anthropologist who arrived in Salta more than 30 years ago and married a Wichí indigenous woman, told IPS: “The indigenous people who live on the outskirts of the cities are refugees who have been displaced from their place in the forest over the past 100 years by non-indigenous farmers who arrived with their cows and, in recent decades, by agribusiness.”

“The destruction of the forests has wiped out all of the resources that their economy is based on. So, like many animals that no longer have anything to eat, they came to the cities,” concluded Palmer, who lived for years in a rural Wichí community until he moved to Tartagal with his wife and their five children.

Instead of cutting forests to make charcoal for household energy, these Chinese women use bamboo which will grow back. Photo Courtesy of INBAR

By Manipadma Jena
NEW DELHI, Jun 12 2018 (IPS)

As governments scramble for corrective options to the worsening land degradation set to cost the global economy a whopping 23 trillion dollars within the next 30 years, a humble grass species, the bamboo, is emerging as the unlikely hero.

“Bamboo being grass, all 1640 species have a very strong root system that binds soil, and are the fastest growing plants making them best suited for restoring unproductive farmland, erosion control and maintaining slope stability,” Hans Friederich, Director-General of the International Network for Bamboo and Rattan (INBAR), told IPS from their Beijing headquarters.

Bamboo is a strategic resource that many countries are increasingly using to restore degraded soil and reverse the dangers of desertification.

“Our members pledged to restore 5 million hectares degraded land with bamboo plantation by 2020 for the Bonn Challenge in 2015. Political pledges have already exceeded the commitment and are today close to 6 million hectares,” Friederich said. “Planting on the ground however is much less , because nurseries have to be set up and planting vast areas takes a few years,” he added.

INBAR, an intergovernmental organization, brings together 43 member countries for the promotion of ecosystem benefits and values of bamboo and rattan. Before joining INBAR in 2014, Friederich was regional director for Europe at the International Union for Conservation of Nature (IUCN).

The Bonn Challenge is the global effort to restore 150 million hectares – an area three times the size of Spain – of deforested and degraded land by 2020, and 350 million hectares by 2030.

Western Allahabad rural farmland under 150 brick kilns in the 1960s.
Photo Courtesy of INBAR

The same farmland today revived by integrated bamboo plantations.
Photo Courtesy of INBAR

When soil health collapses, food insecurity, forced migration and conflict resurrect themselves

According to the United Nations Convention to Combat Desertification’s (UNCCD) latest review released in May, to take urgent action now and halt these alarming trends would cost 4.6 trillion dollars, which is less than a quarter of the predicted 23-trillion-dollar loss by 2050.

Globally, 169 countries are affected by land degradation or drought, or both. Already average losses equal 9 percent of gross domestic product (GDP) but for some of the worst affected countries, such as the Central African Republic, total losses are estimated at a staggering 40 percent of GDP. Asia and Africa bear the highest per year costs, estimated at 84 billion and 65 billion dollars, respectively.

“Healthy land is the primary asset that supports livelihoods around the globe – from food to jobs and decent incomes. Today, we face a crisis of unseen proportions: 1.5 billion people – mainly in the world’s most impoverished countries – are trapped on degrading agricultural land,” said Juan Carlos Mendoza, who leads the UNCCD Global Mechanism, which helps countries to stabilize land and ecosystem health.

Hans Friederich at a Chinese bamboo plantation. Photo Courtesy of INBAR

Indian farmlands ravaged by 150 brick kilns are nurtured back by bamboo plantations

In the 1960s, construction was newly taking off in India. Brick kiln owners came calling at the 100 villages of Kotwa and Rahimabad in western Allahabad, a developing centre in central India’s Uttar Pradesh state. Rice, sugarcane, and bright yellow fields of mustard flowers extended to the horizon on this fertile land. Attracted by incomes doubling, the farmers leased their farmlands to the brick makers. Within a decade, over 150 brick kilns were gouging out the topsoil from around 5,000 hectares to depths from 3 to 10 feet.

When the land was exhausted, the brick makers eventually left. Thousands of farm-dependent families sat around, their livelihoods lost, while others migrated away because nothing would grow on this ravaged land anymore. With the topsoil cover gone, severe dust storms, depleted water tables and loss of all vegetation became the norm.

Starting bamboo plantations on 100 hectares at first in 1996, today local NGO Utthan with the affected community and INBAR have rehabilitated 4,000 hectares in 96 villages. Here bamboo is grown together with moringa, guava and other fruits trees, banana, staple crops, vegetables, medicinal plants and peacocks, oxen and sheep. Annually bamboo stands add 7 inches of leaf humus to the soil and have also helped raise the water table by over 15 metres in 20 years.

Selling bamboo adds 10 percent to the farmers’ income now. But the best benefit has accrued to women – 80 percent of cooking is done with biogas, not charcoal or wood. Much of the waste bamboo goes into biomass gasifiers that run 10 am to 1 pm powering 120 biogas generators at the NGO’s centres to keep refrigerators running, keeping vaccines and critical medicines safe during the regular power shortages.

A family of bamboo artisans sells household items in Satkhira district of Bangladesh. Bamboo provides a sustainable livelihood for the poorest communities in Asia and Africa. Credit: Manipadma Jena/IPS

Multi-functional bamboo’s global market is 60 million dollars and community is reaping benefits

Today, bamboo and rattan are already among the world’s most valuable non-timber forest products, with an estimated market value of 60 million dollars. Rural smallholder communities are already benefiting by innovating beyond their traditional usages.

“The more they benefit from this growing market of bamboo and rattan, the more they can become an integral part of conservation efforts,” according to Friederich, an explorer and bamboo enthusiast.

He narrates to IPS how rural Chinese women have carved out economic opportunities, are being innovative and entrepreneurial with bamboo to reap rich incomes. After the devastating 1998 Yangtze floods and 1997 severe drought in the Yellow River basin, the Chinese government began a massive restoration programme afforesting degraded farmland with bamboo which today involves 32 million farming households in 25 provinces.

Like millions of others, a woman in Guizhou province in central China made furniture out of the abounding bamboo available. As she expanded the business, the larger pieces of bamboo waste went into the furnace generating electricity and heating but the bamboo powder heaps grew mountainous. She experimented growing mushrooms on them – high value delicacies restaurants vie to buy from her today.

The bamboo leaves are fodder for her 20,000 free-running plump chickens. A 2017 study shows fiber in the bamboo leaves enlarges the chickens’ digestive tract, enabling them to consume more and increase in body weight by as much as 70 percent more than chicken fed on standard organic diets. The dye in bamboo leaves the chicken eggs a slightly bluish tinge akin to the pricey duck egg. Consumers pay more for her blue chicken eggs. She’s not complaining.

Her yearly earnings have grown to 30,000 million Renminbi or 5 million dollars.

In Ghana again, a young woman manufacturing sturdy bamboo bicycles, employing and training local village girls who have few opportunities, is already exporting her innovation to Netherlands, Germany and the US.

Realizing bamboo’s disaster reconstruction value

“Peru, Ecuador, Colombia and other earthquake-prone regions have changed building regulations to allow bamboo as a structural element. They have seen, after disasters bamboo structures may crack or damage but have not collapsed as often as concrete structures have,” Friederich said.

Nepal is building 6,000 classrooms still in need of repairs post -2015 earthquake, with round earthen walls, and bamboo roofs which allow the building to flex a little bit even when the ground trembles.

Besides housing, furniture, household items, bamboo can be used for a number of other durable products, including flooring, house beams, even water carrying pipes.

An efficient carbon sink

But in a warming world, that bamboo as a very effective carbon sink is not as widely known. Because of their fast growth rates and if regularly harvested allowing it to re-grow and sequestrate all over again, giant woody bamboos (grown in China) can hold 100 – 400 tonnes of carbon per hectare. But bamboo’s carbon saving potential increases to 200 – 400 tonnes of carbon per hectare if it replaces more emissions-intensive materials like cement, plastic or fossil fuels, according to Friederich.

Partnering with International Fund for Agricultural Development from its start, INBAR now has recently entered a strategic intra-Africa project with the UN organization, focusing on knowledge sharing between Ghana, Cameroon, Madagascar and Ethiopia, regions in dire need of re-greening.

The Global Bamboo and Rattan Congress (BARC 2018), starting 25 June in Beijing will see this project kick-started, besides plenary discussions on bamboo and rattan’s innovative, low-carbon applications, and how bamboo has and can further support climate-smart strategies in farming and job creation.

Excerpt:

Two workers manually select umbús-cajás, in the factory of the Ser do Sertão Cooperative, in Pintadas, in the northeastern Brazilian state of Bahia, while the fruit is washed. It is the slowest part of the production of fruit pulp from fruits native to the semi-arid ecoregion, in a project with only female workers. Credit: Mario Osava/IPS

By Mario Osava
PINTADAS, Brazil, May 22 2018 (IPS)

The small pulp mill that uses native fruits that were previously discarded is a synthesis of the multiple objectives of the Adapta Sertão project, a programme created to build resilience to climate change in Brazil’s most vulnerable region.

The new commercial value stimulates the conservation and cultivation of the umbú (Spondias tuberosa) and umbú-cajá (Spondias bahiensis) fruit trees of the Anacardiaceae family, putting a halt to deforestation that has already devastated half of the original vegetation of the caatinga, the semi-arid biome of the Brazilian northeast region, covering 844,000 square km.

“I sold 500 kilos of umbú this year to the Ser do Sertão Cooperative,” Adelso Lima dos Santos, a 52-year-old farmer with three children, told IPS proudly. Since he owns only one hectare of land, he harvested the fruits on neighbouring farms where they used to throw out what they could not consume.

For each tonne the cooperative, which owns the small factory, pays its members 1.50 Brazilian reals (42 cents) per kg of fruit and a little less to non-members. In the poor and inhospitable semi-arid interior of the Northeast, known as the sertão, the income is more than welcome.

“A supplier managed to sell us 3,600 kg,” the cooperative’s commercial director and factory manager, Girlene Oliveira, 40, who has two daughters, told IPS.

Pulp production also generates income for the six local women who work at the plant. It contributes to women’s empowerment, another condition for sustainable development in the face of future climate adversities, said Thais Corral, co-founder of Adapta Sertão and coordinator of the non-governmental Human Development Network (REDEH), based in Rio de Janeiro.

The pulp mill began operating in December 2016 in Pintadas, a town of 11,000 inhabitants in the interior of the state of Bahia, and its activity is expanding rapidly. In 2017, it produced 27 tonnes, a figure already reached during the first quarter of this year, when it had orders for 72 tonnes.

But its capacity to process 8,000 tonnes per day remains underutilised. It currently operates only eight days a month on average. The limitation is in sales, on the one hand, and of raw material, whose supply is seasonal and therefore requires storage in a cold chamber, which has a capacity of only 28 tons.

Girlene Oliveira, commercial director of the Ser do Sertão Cooperative, monitors the fruit pulp packaging machine, with a capacity to fill a thousand one-litre containers per hour, but which is underutilised by a limitation in sales and in the storage of frozen fruit. But the initiative is still a success for family farmers from Pintadas in Bahia, in the semi-arid Northeast region of Brazil. Credit: Mario Osava/IPS

In addition to umbú and umbú-cajá, harvested in the first quarter of the year, the factory produces pulp from other fruits, such as pineapple, mango, guava and acerola or West Indian cherry (Malpighia emarginata), available the rest of the year. Also, it has five other kinds of fruit for possible future production and is testing another 16.

The severe drought that hit the caatinga in the last six years caused some local fruits to disappear, such as the pitanga (Eugenia uniflora).

The Productive Cooperative of the Region of Piemonte de Diamantina (Coopes), whose members are all women, is another community initiative born in 2005 in Capim Grosso, 75 km from Pintadas, to process the licuri palm nut (Syagus coronate), from a palm tree in danger of going extinct.

More than 30 food and cosmetic products are made from the licuri palm nut. Its growing value is also helping to drive the revitalisation of the caatinga, vital in Adapta Sertão’s environmental and water sustainability strategies.

This programme, focused on adapting family farming to climate change, has mobilised nine cooperatives and some twenty local and national organisations over the last 12 years in the Jacuipe River basin, which encompasses 16 municipalities in the interior of the state of Bahia.

It was terminated in April with the publication of a book that tells its story, written by Dutch journalist Ineke Holtwijk, a former correspondent for Dutch media in Latin America and for IPS in her country.

Having more than doubled milk production on some of the farms assisted by the programme, winning 10 awards and introducing technical innovations to overcome the six-year drought in the semi-arid ecoregion are some of the programme’s achievements.

Thais Corral, co-founder of the Adapta Sertão project, autographs a copy of the book that tells the story of the initiative, for Josaniel Azevedo, director of the Itaberaba Agroindustrial Cooperative. The programme “broadened our horizons,” based on a vision of environmental sustainability, says the farmer in Pintadas, in the northeast Brazilian state of Bahia. Credit: Mario Osava/IPS

Brazil’s semi-arid region covers 982,000 square km, with a population of 27 million of the country’s 208 million inhabitants. The region’s population is 38 percent rural, compared to a national average of less than 20 percent, who depend mainly on family farming.

The programme’s legacy also includes the training of 300 farming families in innovative technologies, the strengthening of cooperativism and a register of family farms to sustain production throughout at least three years of severe drought.

A focus on the long term, with adjustments and the incorporation of factors discovered along the way, was key to success, said Thais Corral about the programme, which was broken down into four phases over the last 12 years.

Starting in 2006, under the title Pintadas Solar, it tried to introduce and test solar pump irrigation, to meet the demands of women tired of transporting heavy buckets to water their gardens.

“But the solar panels and equipment were too expensive at the time,” said Florisvaldo Merces, a technician working for the programme since its inception and now an official of the municipality of Pintadas in the agricultural sector.

Problems such as salinisation of the soil because of the brackish water from the wells and the difficulty in maintaining the equipment were added to the emergence of other agricultural issues to extend assistance to small farmers and the area of intervention to other municipalities in addition to Pintadas.

Problems such as the salinisation of the soil by brackish water from the wells and difficulty in maintaining the teams were added to other agricultural issues of emergency to extend the assistance to small farmers and the area of intervention to other municipalities, in addition to Pintadas.

Credit, the production chain, cooperatives, water storage and climate change dictated other priorities and transformed the programme, including its name, which was replaced by Adapta Sertão in 2008, when the Ser do Sertão Cooperative was also created.

Florisvaldo Merces is an agricultural technician who has worked in the Adapta Sertão programme since its creation in 2006 and has specialised in water issues. Simplifying complex technologies ensures the success of the project to improve productivity and the lives of family farmers in the inhospitable Sertão, in Brazil’s semi-arid ecoregion. Credit: Mario Osava/IPS

Research, conducted in partnership with universities, found that the temperature in the Jacuipe basin increased 1.75 degrees Celsius from 1962 to 2012, compared to the average global rise of 0.8 degrees Celsius, while rainfall decreased 30 percent.

The programme had to test its strategies and techniques in the midst of the longest drought in the semi-arid region’s documented history, as a formula capable of sustaining production and maintaining quality of life as climate problems worsen.

It tries to respond to the challenge with the Intelligent and Sustainable Smart Agro-climatic Module (MAIS), the model for planning, productivity improvement, mechanisation and optimisation of inputs, especially water, in which Adapta Sertão trained 100 family farmers.

The aim is to “turn farmers into entrepreneurs, who record all production costs,” said Thiago Lima, a MAIS technician in sheep-farming, who now intends to apply his knowledge to his 12-hectare farm.

“Transforming complex technologies into simple ones” is the solution, Merces told IPS.

“The promoters’ sensitivity to talking with local people, carrying out research and not coming with already prepared proposals, favouring actions in tune with local forces,” was the main quality of the programme, acknowledged Neusa Cadore, former mayor of Pintadas and now state representative for the state of Bahia.

“But there was a lack of alignment with the government. We did everything with private stake-holders, foundations, cooperatives and local authorities, always hindered by the government. Ideally, Adapta Sertão should be adopted as a public policy for climate-resilient family farming,” Corral told IPS.

The company Adapta Group, created by the other founder of the programme, Italian engineer Daniele Cesano, will seek to spread the MAIS model as a business.

But Corral disagrees with the emphasis on dairy farming, which has presented the best economic results, but which requires 18 hectares and large investments, excluding most families and women, who prefer to grow vegetables. Also, she says that not enough importance is placed on the environment and thus long-term resilience.

José Antonio Borges is surrounded by the forage cactus, ready to be harvested, that he planted on his farm. It is the basis of the diet of their 30 cows, which allows them to produce 400 litres of milk per day, using an automatic milking system twice a day, in Ipirá, in the Jacuípe basin, in Brazil’s northeastern semi-arid ecoregion, where the optimal use of water is transforming family farms. Credit: Mario Osava / IPS

By Mario Osava
IPIRÁ-PINTADAS, Brazil, May 8 2018 (IPS)

Cattle ranching has been severely affected by drought in Brazi’s Northeast region, but it has not only survived but has made a comeback in the Jacuípe river basin thanks to an optimal use of water.

José Antonio Borges, who owns 98 hectares of land and 30 cows in Ipirá, one of the 14 municipalities in the basin, in the northeastern state of Bahia, almost tripled his milk production over the last two years, up to 400 litres per day, without increasing his herd.

To achieve this, he was assisted by technicians from Adapta Sertão, a project promoted by a coalition of organisations under the coordination of the Human Development Network (Redeh), based in Rio de Janeiro.

“If I wake up and I don’t hear the cows mooing, I cannot live,” said Borges to emphasise his vocation that prevented him from abandoning cattle farming in the worst moments of the drought which in the last six years lashed the semi-arid ecoregion, an area of low rainfall in the interior of the Brazilian Northeast.

But his wife, Eliete Brandão Borges, did give up and moved to Ipirá, the capital city of the municipality, where she works as a seamstress. Their 13-year-old son lives in town with her, in order to study. But he does not rule out returning to the farm, “if a good project comes up, like raising chickens.”

Borges, who “feels overwhelmed after a few hours in the city,” points out as factors for the increased dairy productivity the forage cactus (Opuntia ficus-indica Mill), a species from Mexico, which he uses as a food supplement for the cattle, and the second daily milking.

“The neighbours called me crazy for planting the cactus in an intensive way,” he said. “We used to use it, but we planted it more spread out.” Today, at the age of 39, Borges is an example to be followed and receives visits from other farmers interested in learning about how he has increased his productivity.

Normaleide de Oliveira stands in front of the pond on her farm that did not even run out of water during the six years of drought suffered by Brazil’s Northeast region. Water availability is an advantage of family farmers in the Jacuípe river basin, compared to other areas of the country’s semi-arid ecoregion. Credit: Mario Osava / IPS

He started after being taken to visit another property that used intensive planting, in an effort to convince him, said Jocivaldo Bastos, the Adapta Sertão technician who advised him. “Actually I don’t use cacti,” Borges acknowledged when he learned about the innovative tecnique.

The thornless, drought-resistant cactus became a lifesaving source of forage for livestock during drought, and is an efficient way to store water during the dry season in the Sertão, the popular name for the driest area in the Northeast, which also covers other areas of the sparsely populated and inhospitable interior of Brazil.

Also extending through the semi-arid region is the construction of concrete tanks designed to capture rainwater, which cost 12,000 reais (3,400 dollars) and can store up to 70,000 litres a year. With this money, 0.4 hectares of cactus can be planted, equivalent to 121,000 litres of water a year, according to a study by Adapta Sertão.

But that requires attention to the details, such as fertilisers, drip irrigation, clearing brush and selecting seedlings. Borges “lost everything” from his first intensive planting of the Opuntia forage cactus.

Parched, hard-packed land without vegetation is now green and fertile thanks to farmer and livestock breeder José Antonio Borges, who regenerated the land, supported by technicians from Adapta Sertão. It is now what he refers to as “the forest” where he grows watermelons and fruit trees, in Brazil’s semi-arid Northeast. Credit: Mario Osava / IPS

Then he received advice from agricultural technician Bastos and currently has three hectares of cactus plantations and plans to expand.

At the beginning, he was frightened by the need to increase investments, previously limited to 500 Brazilian reais (142 dollars) per month. Now he spends twelve times more, but he earns gross revenues of 13,000 reais (3,700 dollars), according to Bastos.

The second milking, in the afternoon, was also key for Normaleide de Oliveira, a 55-year-old widow, to almost double her milk production. Today it reaches between 150 and 200 liters a day with only 12 dairy cows, on her farm located 12 km from Pintadas, the city in the centre of the Jacuípe basin.

“It is the milk that provides the income I live on,” said the farmer, who owns 30 more cattle. “I used to have 60 in total, but I sold some because of the drought, which almost made me give it all up,” she said.

The Jacuípe basin is seen as privileged compared to other parts of the semi-arid Northeast. The rivers have dried up, but in the drilled wells there is abundant water that, when pumped, irrigates the crops and drinking troughs.

This concrete tank is being built on a large rock on the farm of Normaleide de Oliveira, in the municipality of Pintadas, to be used for fish farming. Stones were used to make the walls using cement, on top of a rock in order to facilitate irrigation by gravity, in an example of agricultural development that optimises the use of the scarce water in the Sertão eco-region in Northeastern Brazil. Credit: Mario Osava / IPS

Oliveira has the advantage of having two natural ponds on her property, one of which never completely dried up during the six years of drought.

Now she is building a concrete tank on a large rock near her house that she will devote to raising fish and irrigating her gardens. Its location up on a rock will allow gravity-fed irrigation for the watermelon, squash and vegetables that Oliveira, who lives with her daughter and son-in-law, plans to grow.

The pond was proposed by Jorge Nava, an expert in permaculture who has been working with Adapta Sertão since last year, contributing new techniques to optimise the use of available water.

Adapta Sertão’s aims are to diversify production and strengthen conservation, and incorporate sustainability and adaptability to climate change in family farming.

In Ipirá, Borges has a pond one metre deep and six metres in diameter, with 23,000 litres of water, surrounded by his cilantro crop. In the pond he raises 1,000 tilapia (Oreochromis niloticus), a species increasingly popular in fish farming.

Nearby is what he calls “the forest” – several dozen fruit trees on sloping ground with contour furrows, where he already used to plant watermelons using drip irrigation, which now coexist with the new project.

José Antonio Borges’ family members enjoy themselves in the 23,000-litre concrete pond built on his farm to irrigate the orchards and raise fish, taking advantage of the water in boreholes drilled on his land in Ipirá , in the semi-arid region of Northeastern Brazil. Credit: Courtesy of Jorge Nava.

“In 70 days he harvested 260 watermelons” and soil that was so dried up and hardened that the tractor had to plow several times, by thin layers each time, is now covered in vegetation, said Nava. “In 40 days the dry land became green,” he stated.

Contour furrows contain the water runoff and moisten the soil evenly. If the furrows were sloping they would flood the lower part, leaving the top dry, which would ruin the irrigation, the expert in permaculture explained.

This “forest” will fulfill the function of providing fruit and regenerating the landscape as well as making better use of water, boosting soil infiltration and acting as a barrier to the wind which increases evaporation, he said.

These are small gestures of respect for natural laws, to avoid waste and to multiply the water by reusing it, making it possible to live well on small farms with less water, he said.

In critical situations it is only about keeping plants alive with millilitres of water, until the next rain ensures production, as in the case of Borges’ watermelons.

Nava attributes his mission and dedication to seeking solutions in accordance with local conditions and demands to what happened to his family, who migrated from the southern tip of Brazil to Apuí, deep in the Amazon rainforest, in 1981, when he was three years old.

To go to school sometimes he had to travel nine days from his home, through the jungle. He became aware of the risk of desertification in the Amazon. The shallow-rooted forests are highly vulnerable to drought and deforestation, he learned.

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

By Friday Phiri
LUSAKA, Apr 24 2018 (IPS)

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

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

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

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

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

Seedlings thrive at Chunga School. Credit: Munich Advisors Group

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

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

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

What is PAM?

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

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

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

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

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

Children as key players

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Government buy-in

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

A soybean plantation in Tocantins, a state in northern Brazil, a country that is poised to be the world's largest producer of soy, a monoculture for which millions of hectares have been deforested. Commercial agriculture, especially livestock farming, and production of soy and palm oil, are key drivers in the degradation of Latin American soils. Credit: Mario Osava / IPS

By Orlando Milesi
SANTIAGO, Jan 30 2018 (IPS)

Two-thirds of the 33 countries of Latin America and the Caribbean have already submitted or are preparing to submit to the United Nations their land degradation goals, to combat a problem that threatens agriculture and the lives of their people.

In 2015, the parties to the United Nations Convention to Combat Desertification (UNCCD) agreed to combat desertification and restore degraded land and soil, with national goals, which are based on the level of erosion in each country and which aim to achieve Land Degradation Neutrality (LDN) by 2030.

“What we are doing directly now is to establish a policy of neutral land management. That is, where I degrade, on the other hand I compensate. We cannot continue with these extractive policies in the countries where what is degraded is never given back to the earth,” José Miguel Torrico, the UNCCD coordinator for the region, who is based in Chile, told IPS.

The new commitment, he stressed, is that “What one takes from the earth, one puts back, to maintain its productivity.”

The concept of LDN is defined as “a state whereby the amount and quality of land resources, necessary to support ecosystem functions and services and enhance food security, remains stable or increases within specified temporal and spatial scales and ecosystems.”

“Today we are in the process of setting targets to achieve land neutrality. This is happening in 22 countries of the region that are actively taking part. Some have already established their goals and others, like Brazil, are at the end of the process of setting them,” Torrico said.

According to figures from UNCCD, there are currently more than two billion hectares of degraded land in the world (an area greater than South America), which have the potential for land rehabilitation and forest restoration. Of that total, 14 percent is within the region.

Sally Bunning, Senior Policy officer of Agricultural Systems, Land and Water of the FAO Regional Office for Latin America and the Caribbean, told IPS that “degraded lands represent more than one-fifth of the forests and agricultural lands of Latin America and the Caribbean.”

“Commercial agriculture is a key driver (of that degradation), especially production of meat, soy and palm oil,” she said at the regional office in Santiago.

A farmer next to a community rainwater collection tank, for the agricultural production and domestic needs of a group of families, with which they mitigate the effects of the recurrent droughts that devastate their rural communities in the northern Argentine province of Chaco, part of one of the Latin American regions with the greatest erosion of its soils. Solutions like this improve the lives of local residents in the degraded lands of the region. Credit: Fabiana Frayssinet / IPS

The expert explained that “the main areas of farmland that are facing multiple pressures include, but are not limited to, dry lands in northeastern Brazil, areas of agricultural expansion in the area of the Argentine Chaco, central Chile, farmland in southern Mexico, and parts of Cuba and Haiti.”

Bunning explained that desertification “accelerates with overgrazing as well as the growth of demand for meat and other agricultural products such as soy, sugar and cotton worldwide.”

“It is estimated that in Latin America most of the degraded lands were degraded due to deforestation (100 million hectares) and overgrazing (70 million hectares). The increase in international demand encourages farmers and large landowners to deforest in order to extend their agricultural areas and pastures for livestock farming,” she said.

According to the FAO regional official, addressing the problem is crucial “to manage the livestock sector and limit the complete elimination of the original vegetation to replace it with crops.”

“In South America, urgent action is needed in the Gran Chaco, an area that covers four countries: Paraguay, Argentina, Bolivia, and to a lesser degree Brazil,” Bunning said.

“More than half of the territory in Argentina and Paraguay are affected by problems of desertification presenting a net loss of 325,000 hectares of forest per year in Paraguay, and 45 percent and 43 percent of the loss of forests were respectively caused by the expansion of pastures and the expansion of land for commercial crops in Argentina,” she said.

Torrico recalled, in turn, that several countries “have been hit very hard by climate phenomena. For example, the El Niño phenomenon affected them seriously and there have been very severe droughts in what has to do with the degradation of soils, but also with the effects suffered by the population.”

According to the UNCCD regional coordinator, Latin American small farmers are directly affected because they have less water for their crops and in some extreme cases they are forced to migrate.

He added that desertification is closely associated with migration, noting as an example that 80 to 90 percent of migrants from Africa are a visible effect of desertification.

Las Canoas Lake, near the capital of Nicaragua, dries up every time the El Niño weather phenomenon arrives to Nicaragua and leaves its inhabitants without fish and water for their crops. Credit: Guillermo Flores / IPS

“The migration of Haitians that Chile is currently experiencing is basically people who come from rural areas where they no longer have any chance to farm. They do not come from cities but from rural areas,” Torrico pointed out as an example of this situation in the countries of Latin America and the Caribbean.

Bunning, meanwhile, said that “unequal distribution and lack of access and control of land and its resources can be key factors of poverty, food insecurity and land degradation.”

“In Latin America, conflicts are mainly between landless people and large landowners, and between landless people and indigenous communities,” she explained.

She said that “the key factors of conflicts over land include a combination of inequitable access to and control over land, degradation of natural resources, historical demands and demographic pressures, exacerbated by weak management and political corruption.”

Torrico added that the problem of desertification is also closely associated with climate change.

“It is already clear that rainfall will decrease significantly in sectors of the continent. How do we forecast this? With an early warning system, so we know in advance when we are going to have a drought and, how do we prepare for this?” he asked.

“With efficient water catchment systems, reservoirs, dams and wells. And with better farming techniques, with mechanised irrigation, drip irrigation and more effective crops and better seed quality,” he answered.

Bunning warned that in the region “there are still no programmes to take into account the importance of water management.”

“For me this is one of the most important parts of the problem of degradation. It is not always degradation of the soils, but also the degradation of the capacity to retain water in the soil, to store and reuse water in agriculture, but also to be reused by other users,” she said.

The FAO expert listed solutions for this, such as “localised drip systems and more efficient systems, to also reduce evaporation.”

“There are technologies to use greenhouses, plastic cover in the fields, to pump water using solar panels, to distribute fertilisers in the water and reduce the problems of over-exploitation of fertilisers,” she detailed among the instruments that are at hand.

Judith Ncube, the chairperson of the Vusanani Cooperative in Plumtree, Zimbabwe. Credit: Sally Nyakanyanga

By Sally Nyakanyanga
PLUMTREE, Zimbabwe, Jan 29 2018 (IPS)

In Zimbabwe, the bulk of rural communities and urban poor still get their energy supplies from the forests, leading to deforestation and land degradation.

The Zimbabwe Environmental Law Association (ZELA) 2016 review on forest policies in the country found that fuel wood accounted for over 60 percent of the total energy supply, whilst 96 percent of rural communities rely on wood for cooking and heating.

At the same time, livelihoods are shaped by the availability of forest resources, especially in rural areas.

In Mlomwe village, Plumtree, Judith Ncube (54), along with nine other women, derives her livelihood from the marula tree through processing the nuts into oil, butter and skin care ingredients or cosmetic products.

Plumtree is in ecological region 5 in Zimbabwe, one of the areas at risk of desertification if the situation is not curbed. It is among the country’s drylands, receiving little rainfall and experiencing periodic drought.

But members of the Vusanani women’s group now support their families while in turn helping to protect the forests.

“Our livelihoods as women in this community have improved greatly, and we no longer depend on our husbands for our daily survival,” says Ncube, who is the chairperson of the cooperative.

Women are at the forefront of conserving forestry as their husbands have long gone to South Africa seeking greener pastures. Zimbabwe’s high unemployment rate forced many to flee the country, leaving women with the double burden of meeting the daily needs of their families. Some husbands don’t return, whilst some return after a year or two. Currently, most people are pinning their hopes on the new administration led by President Emerson Mnangagwa, who has promised to revive the economy following the ouster of Robert Mugabe.

Ncube and her team formed Vusanani Cooperative in 2010 through support from various development partners. They now have processing equipment to grind marula nuts into different products.

The Vusanani Cooperative, which process 40 litres of oil every week, buys the raw marula nuts from the Mlomwe community. They buy the kernels at a dollar a cup, with 20 cups producing a litre of oil. They then sell a litre of marula oil for 26 dollars, with marula butter going for a dollar.

The Marula tree is found in hot, dry land areas, an excellent source of supplementary nutrition and provides income for rural people living in this region.

Former Practical Action Officer Reckson Mutengarufu, who is based in the area, said people in the community used to cut down the marula tree to make stools, pestle and pestle stick for use in their homes.

“Things have improved now as villagers can only cut down the marula tree after consulting the village head. We have since trained people on sustainable forest management and the benefits of planting trees in their homes and fields,” Mutengarufu said.

Some members have undergone a capacity building training in South Africa through the Forest Forces project sponsored by the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations and Practical Action, an international development charity.

Margaret Ndhlovu (57), a founding member of the group and mother of ten children, managed to travel to South Africa to undergo training under the program. This enabled her to meet and interact with South African farmers in the marula processing trade.

“This was an experience of a lifetime, as I learnt during the trip in South Africa how other female farmers are processing marula fruit into various end products such bicarbonate of soda, okra or marula beer,” Ndhlovu told IPS.

The Sustainable Development Goal 15 provides for combating of desertification, reverse of land degradation and biodiversity loss.

Agricultural expansion and tobacco curing, inadequate land use planning, infrastructural development and human settlements in both urban and rural areas, uncontrolled veld fires, illegal gold panning, elephant damage and climate change have all been cited as major factors that impede sustainable forestry management.

According to the United Nations, about 12 million hectares of land are lost globally to desertification every year, with land degradation posing a significant threat to food security.

The United Nations Convention to Combat Desertification, to which Zimbabwe is a signatory, has helped the country’s Environmental Management Agency (EMA) work with various stakeholders to address the situation especially in dry regions. EMA is a government body that oversees environmental issues in the country.

David Phiri, the FAO Sub-Regional Coordinator for Southern Africa, told IPS how FAO is implementing other projects such as beekeeping and extraction of oil from trees including the baobab.

“FAO is promoting sustainable harvesting and value addition of non-timber forest products and use of appropriate post-harvest technologies which include metallic silos, improved granaries and hermetically sealed bags so as to minimize losses,” Phiri said.

For the women of Vusanani Cooperative, they have long-term plans. By 2020, they want to expand their small marula processing business into a large manufacturing plant. They have since registered a company to enable them to operate as a formal business entity.

Costa Rica increased its forest cover, but some wetlands and areas in the north of the country have been affected by deforestation and drought. The high use of agrochemicals and fertilisers in agro-industrial activities and logging in neighboring lands damaged the Palo Verde wetland and the surrounding forests. Credit: Miriet Abrego / IPS

By Daniel Salazar
SAN JOSE, Dec 31 2017 (IPS)

Jazziel Baca lives in the municipality of Esquías, in western Honduras, one of the areas hardest hit by the southern pine beetle (Dendroctonus frontalis), which damaged almost 500,000 hectares of forest in that Central American country between 2013 and 2015.

Supposedly, the pest that was destroying the pines would stop spreading with the rains, but the rainy season came and there was no rain. He told IPS that apart from fewer trees, his town also has less water, the soil has eroded and some of the neighboring communities face drought.

This is not the only problem causing them to run out of water.

In Honduras, forest coverage shrank by almost a third, from 57 percent in 2000 to 41 percent in 2015, explained by an increase of monoculture, extractive projects, livestock production and shifting cultivation. It is the Central American country with the greatest decline in forest cover, in a region where all of the countries, with the exception of Costa Rica, are destroying their forests.The Tapantí National Park, east of San José, has more than 50,000 hectares of forest. Costa Rica is the only one in Central America that has increased its forest cover in the last 15 years. Credit: Diego Arguedas Ortiz / IPS

According to the State of the Region Programme, the 2017 environmental statistics published this month, since 2000 Central America has lost forest cover and wetlands, vital to the preservation of aquifers, which coincided with a widespread regional increase in greenhouse gas emissions that contribute to global warming.

It is not good news, said Alberto Mora, the State of the Region research coordinator, who noted that the region could have 68 departments or provinces suffering severe aridity towards the end of the century, compared to fewer than 20 today.

Mora also stressed that demand for drinking water could grow by 1,600 percent by the year 2100, according to the study prepared by the State of the Nation of Costa Rica, an interdisciplinary body of experts funded by the country’s public universities.

“This greatly exacerbates the impacts of global warming and rising temperatures, on ecosystems and their species. It is really a serious problem in Central America,” he told IPS.

Fewer trees, less food

Baca, an environmental engineer active in the environmental NGO Friends of the Earth, explained that farmers are moving higher up the mountains, because the soil they used to farm is no longer fertile. Using the slash-and-burn technique, they grow their staple foods.

But also, he said, “we have very long droughts and, without rainy seasons, the peasant farmers can’t plant their food crops, which gives rise to emergency situations in terms of food security.”

To the west of Honduras, in neighboring Guatemala, losses are also reported in forest cover. In 2000, 39 percent of the territory was covered by trees; that proportion had fallen to 33 percent by 2015.

The Tapantí National Park, east of San José, has more than 50,000 hectares of forest. Costa Rica is the only one in Central America that has increased its forest cover in the last 15 years. Credit: Diego Arguedas Ortiz / IPS

Although fewer and fewer hectares of forest are cut down in that country, the problem persists and continues to generate serious food security challenges.

Agricultural engineer Ogden Rodas, coordinator of FAO’s Forest and Farm Facility in that country, explained to IPS from Guatemala City that the loss of forests is affecting Guatemala’s ability to obtain food in multiple ways.

Currently, he said, peasant and indigenous communities have less food from seeds, roots, fruits or leaves and fewer jobs, which were previously generated in activities such as weeding and pruning.

Their ability to put food on their tables is also affected, as the destruction of the forest cover impacts on the water cycles, affecting irrigated agriculture.

Rodas believes that her country needs to strengthen governance, the management of agribusiness crops such as sugar cane and African oil palm, to create alternatives for forest-dwelling communities and develop strategies for the sustainable use of firewood, a problem common to the entire region.

In Honduras, another FAO specialist, René Acosta, told IPS from Tegucigalpa that the government has committed to reforesting up to one million hectares by 2030, but the task will only be possible if it is coordinated with all the actors involved, and incentives and ecotourism business capabilities are generated.

Costa Rica increases its forest cover

The forest cover in Central America decreased from 46 percent in 2000 to 41 percent in 2015.
Forest cover shrank from 32 to 26 percent in Nicaragua, from 66 to 62 percent in Panama, and from 16 to 13 percent in El Salvador.

The exception was Costa Rica where more than half (54 percent) of the land is covered by trees, compared to 47 percent 15 years ago.

Pieter Van Lierop, subregional forestry officer and team leader of the FAO Natural Resources, Risk Management and Climate Change Group in Costa Rica, explained that there are many factors driving this process.

The progress made is due, he said, “in part to the priority put in this country on its forest policy.”

“Another factor is the structural changes in agriculture, which have reduced the pressure to convert forests into agricultural land and have led to an increase in the area covered by secondary forests and to legal controls to prevent the change from natural forest to other uses for the land,” he said.

Some sustainable practices contribute to this increase in forested areas in the country.

For example, there has been a programme of payment for environmental services in place for two decades, financed by a tax on fossil fuels, among other sources.

The State pays the equivalent of 300 dollars every five years for each privately-owned hectare of protected forest and 1,128 dollars to owners who wish to create a secondary forest on their farms.

“What have we gained with this? That many more people come to see the forests,” said Gilmar Navarrrete, one of the heads of the programme of the.National Forestry Financing Fund (FONAFIFO).

“Hurricane Otto also hit recently: if we didn’t have the forest cover we have, the impact would have been very serious,” he told IPS.

There are other programmes in place. Lourdes Salazar works in Paquera, Lepanto and Cóbano, in northwest Costa Rica, with 83 farmers in a programme financed by the non-governmental Fundecooperación and supported by other public institutions.

“We work together with farmers because we want them to adapt to climate change, establish improved pastures, and change their mentality. We want them to let fruit trees grow, as well as timber trees for shade, which will also help them produce more,” the agricultural engineer told IPS.

Salazar takes part in a 10 million dollar project which aims to impact 400 farms around five hectares in size, which each farmer must reforest while raising cattle and pigs and growing organic produce.

“The farmers themselves say it’s more beneficial. If there was only one tree in a pasture all the cows would huddle there. Why not leave more trees? They have been learning that they produce more when they implement this type of practices,” said Salazar.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Jamaica is the most biodiverse island in the Caribbean with more than 8,000 recorded species of plants and animals and 3,500 marine species. Credit: Zadie Neufville/IPS

By Desmond Brown
KINGSTON, Jamaica, Jul 12 2017 (IPS)

According to the United Nations Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO), 31.1 percent or about 337,000 hectares of Jamaica is forested. Of this, 26.1 percent or 88,000 is classified as primary forest, the most biodiverse and carbon-dense form of forest.

But between 1990 and 2010, Jamaica lost an average of 400 hectares or 0.12 percent of forest per year. In total, between 1990 and 2010, Jamaica lost 2.3 percent of its forest cover, or around 8,000 hectares.“Our forests produce oxygen and absorb carbon dioxide for photosynthesis while reducing the greenhouse gases in the atmosphere which contribute to global warming and climate change." --Allison Rangolan McFarlane

Deforestation is a crucial factor in global climate change which results from a build-up of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere. It is estimated that more than 1.5 billion tons of carbon dioxide are released to the atmosphere due to deforestation, mainly the cutting and burning of forests, every year.

Over 30 million acres of forests and woodlands are lost every year due to deforestation; and the continued cutting down of forests, the main tool to diminish CO2 build up, is expected dramatically change the climate over the next decades.

In an effort to conserve the island’s forests, the Environment Foundation of Jamaica (EFJ) has turned to communities throughout the island. On July 3, the EFJ signed grants with 13 community-based organisations in five parishes, in support of Jamaica’s forests. The grants total 672,000 dollars and were allocated under the EFJ’s Forest Conservation Fund (FCF).

“Deforestation is an issue. It often takes place as a part of agricultural practices, for example ‘slash and burn’ where fires are used to clear land which is then used for agricultural purposes,” EFJ’s Chief Technical Director Allison Rangolan McFarlane told IPS.

“Trees are also sometimes cut to make charcoal which is used for fuel, to make fish pots, for lumber, etc. Sometimes deforestation occurs because of construction, for example housing or roadways, or industrial activities such as mining.

“Our coastal forests (mangroves) are also affected.  Deforestation has the potential to reduce water quality, increase soil erosion, reduce biological diversity and further impact the watershed,” Rangolan McFarlane added.

She said the consequences as it relates to climate change are just as serious.

“Deforestation does play a role in climate change. Trees absorb carbon dioxide for photosynthesis; carbon dioxide is one example of a greenhouse gas. Deforestation reduces the number of trees available to absorb carbon dioxide,” the EFJ official told IPS.

“Additionally, the carbon stored in a living tree is also released into the atmosphere once it is felled. The greenhouse gases that are released into the atmosphere contribute to global warming which in turn contributes to climate change.

“Our forests produce oxygen and absorb carbon dioxide for photosynthesis while reducing the greenhouse gases in the atmosphere which contribute to global warming and climate change,” she added.

Group photo of grantee representatives awarded funds to halt deforestation by the Environment Foundation of Jamaica (EFJ). Credit: EFJ

Stressing the importance of forests to Jamaica, she said the Caribbean nation obtains many products or materials and generate by-products such as food, medicines and cosmetics from them.

She said the forests can also provide sustainable livelihood opportunities for individuals and communities.

“They provide shade and are an integral part of our water cycle and supply. Forests protect our watersheds, and reduce soil erosion and siltation in our water as the tree roots hold the soil in place, and their canopies help to reduce the force of the rain drops on the soil; this allows water to gradually percolate or seep into the ground and recharge the aquifers from which we obtain water,” Rangolan McFarlane explained.

“Forests also provide homes for many plants and animals many of which play many important roles in various ecosystems; for example, Jamaica’s mangrove forests are important nursery areas for many fish and other species. They are very important recreational areas some of which are historically and culturally significant,” she added.

EFJ Chairman Professor Dale Webber said 33 proposals from non-governmental organisations were considered and the FCF projects funded followed at least one of four required themes: alternative livelihoods, especially in buffer zone communities; watershed conservation; natural disaster risk reduction in coastal communities; and reforestation.

The largest single grant of 195,000 dollars to the Lions Club of Mona is in support of a long-term project focusing on sustainable forest management and climate change mitigation through reforestation and research in the Blue and John Crow Mountain Forest Reserve.

Apiculture (beekeeping), eco-tourism and agroforestry programmes will receive funding as alternative means of employment, including three beekeeping projects in the parish of Clarendon.

Several organisations are planning local workshops to sensitize community members on the importance of forest conservation. Local forest restoration will also be a feature of projects in Portland (mangrove restoration) and in Cockpit Country (Trelawny).

“Be sure that the work you are doing has impact,” Professor Webber told the grantees. “We want to help you make a difference in your communities.”

Meantime, Rangolan McFarlane said the partnerships with community based organisations, non-governmental organisations, and others are expected to generate many different results.

Each project/programme addresses the concerns identified by the implementing organisation in the area in which they will work. Some projects/programmes will provide sustainable livelihood opportunities, for example, bee-keeping, to reduce some of the unsustainable environmental practices in some areas such as slash and burn agriculture and charcoal burning.

Others incorporate various types of training, including sustainable livelihoods and project management, public awareness and education activities and disaster risk reduction including erosion control via reforestation and other activities.

“We expect that the results will lead to better environmental and social conditions in the communities in which the projects are implemented, and that the capacities of the implementing communities, organisations, and individuals will also be enhanced,” Rangolan McFarlane said.

Women and children are the primary victims of indoor air pollution in poor, rural areas of India. Credit: Athar Parvaiz/IPS

By Athar Parvaiz
DARJEELING, India, Feb 17 2017 (IPS)

Mountain communities in the Himalayan region are almost entirely dependent on forests for firewood even though this practice has been identified as one of the most significant causes of forest decline and a major source of indoor air pollution.

Improper burning of fuels such as firewood in confined spaces releases a range of dangerous  air pollutants, whereas collection of firewood and cooking on traditional stoves consumes a lot of time, especially for women.

The WHO estimates that around 4.3 million people die globally each year from diseases attributable to indoor air pollution. Women and children are said to be at far greater risk of suffering the impacts of indoor pollution since they spend longer hours at home.

Data from the Government of India’s 2011 Census shows that 142 million rural households in the country depend entirely on fuels such as firewood and cow dung for cooking.

Despite heavy subsidies by successive federal governments in New Delhi since 1985 to make cleaner fuels like LPG available to the poor, millions of households still struggle to make the necessary payments for cleaner energy, which compels them to opt for traditional and more harmful substances.

This has prompted environmental organisations like Bangalore-based Ashoka Trust for Research in Ecology and Environment (ATREE) to help mountain communities minimise the health and environmental risks involved in using firewood for cooking in confined places.

IPS spoke with the Regional Director of ATREE for northeast India, Sarala Khaling, who oversees the Improved Cooking Stoves (ICS) project being run by the organisation in Darjeeling, Himalayas. Excerpts from the interview follow.

The Improved Cooking Stove (ICS) keeps this kitchen in India’s Himalaya region smoke-free. Credit: Athar Parvaiz/IPS

IPS: What prompted you to start the ICS programme in the Darjeeling Himalayan region?    

Sarala Khaling: In many remote forest regions of Darjeeling we conducted a survey and found out that people rely on firewood because it is the only cheap source in comparison to LPG, kerosene and electricity. Our survey result found that around Singhalila National Park and Senchal Wildlife Sanctuary, the mean fuel wood consumption was found to be 23.56 kgs per household per day.

Therefore, we thought of providing technological support to these people for minimizing forest degradation and indoor pollution which is hazardous to human health and contributes to global warming as well. That is how we started replacing the traditional cooking stoves with the improved cooking stoves, which consume far less fuel wood besides reducing the pollution.

IPS: How many ICS have you installed so far?  

SK: Till now ATREE has installed 668 units of ICS in different villages of Darjeeling. After the installation of ICS, we conducted another survey and the results showed reduction of fuel wood consumption by 40 to 50 per cent and also saved 10 to 15 minutes of time while cooking apart from keeping the kitchens free of smoke and air pollution.

We have trained more than 200 community members and have selected “ICS Promoters” from these so that we can set up a micro-enterprise on this. There are eight models of ICS for different target groups such as those cooking for family, cooking for livestock and commercial models that cater to hostels, hotels and schools.

IPS: When did the project begin? 

SK: We have been working on efficient energy since 2012. This technology was adopted from the adjacent area of Nepal, from the Ilam district. All the models we have adopted are from the Nepalese organization Namsaling Community Development Centre, Ilam. This is because of the cultural as well as climatic similarities of the region. Kitchen and adoption of the type of “chulah” or stove has a lot to do with culture. And unless the models are made appropriate to the local culture, communities will not accept such technologies.

IPS: Who are the beneficiaries?

SK: Beneficiaries are local communities from 30 villages we work in as these people are entirely dependent on the fuel wood and live in the forest fringes.

IPS: What are the health benefits of using ICS? For example, what can be the health benefits for women and children? 

SK: Women spend the most time in the kitchen, which means young children who are dependent on the mothers also spend a large part of their time in the kitchen. The smokeless environment in the kitchen definitely must be having a positive effect on health, especially respiratory conditions. Also the kitchen is cleaner and so are the utensils. And then using less fuel wood means women spend lesser time collecting them thus saving themselves the drudgery.

IPS: What is the feedback from the beneficiaries? 

SK: The feedback has been positive from people who have adopted this technology. They say that ICS takes less fuel wood and it gives them a lot of comfort to cook in a smoke free environment. Women told us that their kitchens are looking cleaner as so also the utensils.

IPS: How much it costs to have a clean stove? And can a household get it on its own? 

SK:  It costs around INR 2500 (37 dollars) to make a stove. ATREE supports only the labour charges for making a unit. Of course we support all the training, mobilising, monitoring and outreach and extension. Yes, there are many houses outside of our project sites who have also adopted this technology. The material used for making the clean stove is made locally like bricks, cow dung, salt, molasses and some pieces of iron.

IPS: Since you say that you are training local people to make these stoves, do you have any target how many households you want to cover in a certain time-period? 

SK:  We are looking to provide 1200 units to as many households. But, depending on the uptake, we will scale up. Our main objective is to make this sustainable and not something that is handed out as free. Our model is to select community members and train them.

We want these trained community members become resource persons and organise themselves into a micro-enterprise of ICS promoters. We want these people to sell their skills to more and more villages because we believe people will pay to make and adopt this technology. We are noticing that this has already started happening.

IPS: Have you provided this technology to any hostels, hotels etc?

SK: Yes, government schools who have the midday meal systems have also adopted this. There are about half a dozen schools which are using ICS and we are mobilizing more to adopt this technology.

Excerpt:

Once fertile agricultural land in Kenya is being degraded by encroachment and the effects of climate change. Credit: Miriam Gathigah/IPS

By Miriam Gathigah
NAIROBI, Jan 31 2017 (IPS)

Too hungry to play, hundreds of starving children in Tiaty Constituency of Baringo County instead sit by the fire, watching the pot boil, in the hope that it is only a matter of minutes before their next meal.

Unbeknownst to them, the food cooking inside the pot is no ordinary supper. It is actually a toxic combination of wild fruits and tubers mixed with dirty water, as surrounding rivers have all run dry.“We are now facing severe effects of desertification because we are cutting down more trees than we can plant." --Hilda Mukui

Tiaty sits some 297 kilometers from the capital Nairobi and the ongoing dry spell is not a unique scenario.

Neighbouring Elgeyo Marakwet and Turkana County are among the counties spread across this East African nation where food security reports show that thousands are feeling the impact of desertification, climate change and rainfall shortage.

“In most of these counties, mothers are feeding their children wild fruits and tubers. They boil them for at least 12 hours, believing that this will remove the poison they carry,” Hilda Mukui, an agriculturalist and soil conservationist, told IPS.

Teresa Lokwee, a mother of eight children, all of them under the age of 12, who lives in Tiaty, explains that the boiling pot is a symbol of hope. “When our children see that there is something cooking, the hope that they will soon enjoy a meal keeps them going.”

Mukui, who was head of agriculture within the Ministry of Agriculture and worked in most of the affected counties for more than two decades, says that rainfall deficit, shortage of water and unusually high temperatures is the scenario that characterizes 23 out of the 47 counties in Kenya.

The situation is so dire that in Baringo County alone, 10 schools and 19 Early Childhood Development Schools are empty as children join other family members in search of water.

“Sometimes once you leave in the morning to search for water, you return home in the evening,” Lokwee told IPS.

In other affected counties, especially in Western Kenya, communities have resorted to eating insects such as termites which were previously taboo.

Though these unconventional eating habits are a respite for starving households, experts warn that this is a ticking time bomb since the country lacks an insect-inclusive legislation and key regulatory instruments.

In the Kenya Bureau of Standards, which assesses quality and safety of goods and services, insects are labeled as impure and to be avoided.

But if predictions by the Ministry of Water and Irrigation are anything to go by, the worst is yet to come as the country watches the onset of what experts like Mukui call a crisis after the failure of both the long and short rains.

“We are now facing severe effects of desertification because we are cutting down more trees than we can plant,” she explains.

She added that Vision 2030 – the country’s development blueprint – calls for the planting of at least one billion trees before 2030 to combat the effects of climate change, but the campaign has been a non-starter.

Mukui told IPS it is no wonder that at least 10 million people are food insecure, with two million of them facing starvation.

According to the United Nations Convention to Combat Desertification (UNCCD), which works in countries such as Kenya buckling under the weight of desertification, land degradation and severe drought, the number of people living on degraded agricultural land is on the rise.

Agriculture is the mainstay of the economy, with at least 45 percent of government revenue being derived from this sector.

Mukui says it is consequently alarming that at least 10 million of the estimated 44 million Kenyans live in degraded agricultural areas, accounting for an estimated 40 percent of the country’s rural community.

Other statistics by UNCCD show that though arid and semi-arid lands constitute about 80 percent of the country’s total land mass and are home to at least 35 percent of the country’s population, areas that were once fertile for agriculture are slowly becoming dry and unproductive.

A survey by the Kenya Forest Service has revealed that not only is the country’s forest cover at seven percent, which is less than the ten percent global standard, an estimated 25 percent of the Mau Forest Complex – Kenya’s largest water catchment area – has been lost due to human activity.

Within this context, UNCCD is working with various stakeholders in Kenya to ensure that at least five million hectares of degraded land is restored. According to Executive Secretary Monique Barbut, there is a need to ensure that “in the next decade, the country is not losing more land than what it is restoring.”

“Land issues must become a central focus since land is a resource with the largest untapped opportunities,” she said.

Research has shown that the state of land impacts heavily on the effectiveness of policies to address poverty and hunger.

Restoring forest cover in Kenya is key. Since 1975, official government statistics show that the country has suffered 11 droughts – and the 12th is currently looming.

The cost implications that the country continues to suffer can no longer be ignored. UNCCD estimates that the annual cost of land degradation in Kenya is at least five percent of the country’s Gross Domestic Product. And addressing land degradation can earn the country four dollars for every one dollar spent in land restoration efforts.

Barbut has, however, commended the country’s efforts to address desertification caused by both human activity and the adverse effects of climate change, particularly through practical and sustainable legislation.

Mukui says that UNCCD works through a country-specific National Action Programme which Kenya already has in place. “What we need is better coordination and concerted efforts among the many stakeholders involved, government, communities, donors and the civil society, just to name a few,” she said.

Efforts to enhance the country’s capacity to combat desertification by the UNCCD include providing financial and technical resources to promote management of local natural resources, improving food security and partnering with local communities to build sustainable land use plans.

Boats stranded on the dry bed of Moyúa lake in northern Nicaragua, which has lost 60 percent of its water due to the severe drought plaguing the country since 2014. Credit: Courtesy of Rezayé Álvarez

By José Adán Silva
MANAGUA, Apr 5 2016 (IPS)

A three-year drought, added to massive deforestation in the past few decades, has dried up most of Nicaragua’s water sources and has led to an increasingly severe water supply crisis.

Since January, photos and videos showing dried-up streams, rivers and lakes have been all over the social networks, local news media, blogs and online bulletins of environmental organisations.

Jaime Incer, a former minister of the environment and natural resources and the president of the Nicaraguan Foundation for Sustainable Development (Fundenic-SOS), is one of the loudest voices warning about the accelerated environmental deterioration in the country.

Incer told IPS that by late March the country had lost 60 percent of its surface water sources and up to 50 percent of its underground sources, which either dried up or have been polluted.

To illustrate, he cited the disappearance of at least 100 rivers and their tributaries in Nicaragua, and the contamination of Tiscapa and Nejapa lakes near Managua, as well as lake Venecia in the western coastal department of Masaya and lake Moyúa in the northern department of Matagalpa.

The scientist said the country’s largest bodies of water are also in danger: the 680-km Coco river, the longest in Central America, which forms the northern border with Honduras, is now completely dry for several stretches of up to eight km in length.

The water level in the river is at a record low, to the extent that it can be crossed by foot, with the water only ankle-deep.

And because of the low water level in the country’s other big river, the San Juan, along the southern border with Costa Rica, large sand banks now block the passage of boats, despite the dredging operations carried out in the last few years.

In addition, the 8,624-sq-km Lake Nicaragua or Cocibolca, the biggest freshwater reserve in Central America has suffered from serious water losses since 2012, which means docks and piers have been left high and dry, said Incer.

The same thing is happening in the country’s other large lake, Xolotlán, in Managua.

Although clean-up operations in the lake were launched in 2009, the results of these efforts have not been announced. But what is clearly visible is that since the drought began in 2014, the shoreline has receded up to 200 metres in some areas, according to reports by Fundenic-SOS.

This is what Lake Moyúa in northern Nicaragua looked like before it lost 60 percent of its water due to the effects of the El Niño climate phenomenon, which in this Central American country has spelled drought. Credit: Matagalpa.org

The environmental organisation does not only blame the crisis on the impact of climate change that has been felt in Nicaragua since 2014 due to the El Niño-Southern Oscillation (ENSO) – a cyclical climate phenomenon that affects weather patterns around the world – but also the lack of public policies to curb the rampant deforestation.

The big forest reserves in the south of the country have shrunk up to 40 percent, according to a study by the British consultancy Environmental Resources Management (ERM), hired by the Chinese consortium HKND Group to carry out feasibility studies for the canal it is to build that will link the Pacific and Atlantic oceans across Nicaragua.

The environmental deterioration of the Indio Maíz Biological Reserve and the Cerro Silva and Punta Gorda nature reserves in southeast Nicaragua was worse in the period 2009-2011 than in the previous 26 years, the ERM reported in 2015.

The study says that between 1983 and 2011, “nearly 40 percent of the natural land cover in southeast Nicaragua was lost.”

The non-governmental Humboldt Centre also reported 40 percent loss of forest cover in Bosawas, the largest forest reserve in Central America, declared a biosphere reserve by the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organisation (UNESCO) in 1997.

Food security, a major victim

The impact of the drought has been felt in the economy and the food security of a large part of this country’s population of 6.2 million people, 2.5 million of whom live on less than two dollars a day and 20 percent of whom are undernourished, according to statistics from international bodies.

Organisations of farmers, stockbreeders and tourism businesses have complained about economic damages caused by water shortages.

For example, the National Livestock Commission of Nicaragua (CONAGAN) confirmed in February that the sector is extremely concerned about the scarcity of water in the parts of Nicaragua that account for at least 30 percent of the country’s livestock.

What worries them the most is that according to international and national weather reports, the drought caused by El Niño could last through August, when the first rainfall in 2016 is forecast.

And this month, the Union of Agricultural Producers in Nicaragua (UPANIC) estimated losses caused by the drought at 200 million dollars in 2015.

Nicaragua’s Central Bank, meanwhile, reported that in 2015, the drought affected hydropower production – the least costly energy in terms of production costs.

Sociologist Cirilo Otero, the director of the Centre of Environmental Policy Initiatives, said the part of the country hit hardest by water shortages is the so-called “dry corridor” – a long, arid stretch of dry forest where 35 of the country’s 153 municipalities are located.

According to Otero’s studies, the impact of the drought and the lack of water in that region, which stretches from northern to south-central Nicaragua, has been so heavy that 100 percent of the crops have been lost and 90 percent of the water sources have dried up.

“The measures adopted by the government are ‘asistencialistas’ (band-aid or short-term in nature) – water and food are distributed on certain days – but there are no public policies to curb deforestation in the pine forests in the mountains of Dipilto and Jalapa, and that is one of the main causes of the disappearance of rivers and wells,” Otero told IPS.

He said children and the elderly are suffering the worst food insecurity in the dry corridor.

“There are entire families who have nothing but corn and salt to eat. The situation is very serious,” said Otero.

The government, which has been the target of complaints for failing to declare a national emergency for the drought, has continued to assist families in the area, providing them with medicine, food and water.

Ervin Barreda, president of ENACAL, Nicaragua’s water and sanitation utility, said they send some 65 tanker trucks a day to the most critical areas, supplying some 2,000 families every day.

According to official data, in February 2016 there were 51,527 families in 34 localities who depended on highly vulnerable aquifers for their water supply.

Edited by Estrella Gutiérrez/Translated by Stephanie Wildes

Members of the São Raimundo do Fe em Deus cooperative in the rural municipality of Belterra in Brazil’s Amazon rainforest peel manioc, to make flour. The associations of small farmers help them defend themselves from the negative effects of the expansion of soy in this region on the banks of the Tapajós River. Credit: Fabiana Frayssinet/IPS

By Fabiana Frayssinet
BELTERRA, Brazil, Dec 8 2015 (IPS)

In the northern Brazilian state of Pará, the construction of a port terminal for shipping soy out of the Amazon region has displaced thousands of small farmers from their land, which is now dedicated to monoculture.

The BR-163 highway, along the 100-km route from Santarém, the capital of the municipality of that name, to Belterra runs through an endless stretch of plowed fields, with only a few isolated pockets of the lush rainforest that used to cover this entire area.

State-of-the-art tractors and other farm machinery, a far cry from the rudimentary tools used by the local small farmers in the surrounding fields, are plowing the soil this month, ahead of the planting of soy in January.

José de Souza, a small farmer who owns nine hectares in the rural municipality of Belterra, sighs.

“Soy benefits the big producers, but it hurts small farmers because the deforestation has brought drought,” he tells IPS. “The temperatures here were pleasant before, but now it’s so hot, you can’t stand it.”

The effects are visible in his fields of banana plants, which have been burnt by the hot sun.

Resigned, De Souza waters a few sad rows of straggling cabbages and scallions.

Like other farmers, he has been hemmed in by the expansion of soy in the municipalities of Santarém and the nearby Belterra and Mojuí dos Campos.

According to the Santarém municipal government, of the 740,000 cultivable hectares in this region, soy now covers 60,000.

But Raimunda Nogueira, rector of the Federal University of Western Pará, offers a much higher figure. “Land-use change has involved 112,000 to 120,000 hectares, which have been turned into soy plantations,” she tells IPS.

And with the soy came the spraying.

“The soy fields bring a lot of pests because the poison they use to fight them drives them off their plantations onto our small fields,” laments De Souza.

The agrochemicals have polluted the soil and poisoned crops and animals, local farmers complain.

“The crops die, and as a result the property becomes completely unproductive – and the solution is to sell,” Jefferson Correa, a representative of the local non-governmental organisation Fase Amazonia, tells IPS.

There are no epidemiological data. But in these rural municipalities, the widespread perception is that health problems like respiratory and skin ailments have become more common.

According to Selma da Costa with the Rural Workers Union of Belterra, the threats to their health and the temptation to sell their land have led 65 percent of local small farmers to leave the municipality, which had a population of 16,500.

“They end up leaving, because who is going to put up with the stench of the pesticides? No one. People are getting sick. Pregnant women often feel ill and they don’t know why,” she tells IPS.

José de Souza waters the garden on his nine-hectare farm in the municipality of Belterra in the northern Brazilian Amazon rainforest state of Pará, where his vegetables grow sparsely due to the effects of the spread of soy monoculture, which has hurt family farmers in the area, who produce 70 percent of the food consumed by the local population. Credit: Fabiana Frayssinet/IPS

“They sold their land for a pittance. They practically gave away their land to the big producers, thinking their lives would get better, that they would build a nice house in Santarém But they can’t support themselves because they can’t grow anything,” she explains.

Correa points out that back in 2000, land here was cheap. There were people who sold 100 hectares for 1,000 to 2,000 dollars, and later regretted it.

“They went to the city, spent all the money, and without any formal education, the only solution was to go back to work in the countryside, as rural labourers for the people who had bought their land,” he says.

Others scrape by on the outskirts of Santarém as street vendors or in other informal sector activities.

“The farmers had their property, their own food, like beans, rice, flour and what they could fish and hunt; but in the city they no longer have that,” adds Claudionor Carvalho with the Federation of Agricultural Workers of the State of Pará.

The change, he explains to IPS, has fuelled prostitution in the slums surrounding the city, “because the families weren’t prepared for what they would face.”

The process was accentuated 15 years ago, with the construction of a port facility in Santarém by the US commodities giant Cargill.

Through the new port terminal in Santarém, on the banks of the Tapajós River where it runs into the Amazon River, soy and other grains can be exported to the Atlantic Ocean.

The aim was to reduce the distance and the costs of transporting soy from the neighbouring state of Mato Grosso, Brazil’s biggest producer.

Brazil is the world’s second-largest producer and leading exporter of soy, which it sells to China, Europe and other markets.

Ports like this one in the Amazon basin have nearly cut in half the transport distance from Mato Grosso, which is around 2,000 km from the congested ports in the southeast, such as Santos in the state of São Paulo.

The new Amazon port, with silos that now have a total capacity of 120,000 tons – double the initial capacity – has drawn hundreds of soy producers from the south of the country, leading to a land-buying stampede and driving up property prices.

One of those who came with his family was Luiz Machado, from Mato Grosso.

“We had 90 hectares that we sold to buy a bigger farm here because the land was cheap,” he tells IPS. “Besides, we would be closer to the port, so we could get a better price for our product.”

Machado says the purchase was legal, and that he has left untouched the rainforest surrounding his property, much of which had already been deforested.

But many others did not do this, and the expansion of soy has devastated large swathes of forest, Cándido Cunha with the National Institute of Colonisation and Agrarian Reform explains in a conversation with IPS.

In 2006, in a “soy moratorium,” associations of producers, many of whom had ties to Cargill, pledged not to sell any more soy from deforested areas.

There was a temporary drop in deforestation. But it once again increased because the farmers that sold their land cleared property in other areas.

“What happened was what we call ‘grillaje’ of land: forged documents or illegal appropriation of public land,” which further complicated the already highly irregular land tenure situation in the Amazon region, says Cunha.

Of the two million and a half tons of soy exported annually from Santarém, just six percent is locally grown; the rest comes from Mato Grosso.

But Nelio Aguiar, secretary of planning in Santarém, says it helped modernise the economy, fomenting a shift from family farming to mechanised agriculture.

“Today we have larger scale, dollarised agriculture, and every harvest produces great riches,” he tells IPS.

But while some celebrate the expansion of agribusiness here, others are worried about the future of local food security.

The greater metropolitan region, population 370,000, depends on family farming for 70 percent of the local food supply.

“Now you have to buy everything in the market, even rice and beans – things we didn’t have to buy before because we produced everything ourselves. And we also sold what we produced,” complains De Souza.

“Why are we buying? Because we don’t have land anymore. And what we plant is being poisoned,” says Da Costa.

For Correa, one solution is to expand government programmes that support family farming. De Souza is a beneficiary of one of them.

Another solution is to join together in farming associations or cooperatives.

De Souza proudly takes IPS to the São Raimundo do Fe em Deus cooperative, of which he is a member, where a festive group of men and women are sharing the tasks of peeling, grating and cooking manioc to make the flour that is a staple food in Brazil.

“We have to help each other, because small farmers face a difficult situation today,” he says.

Edited by Estrella Gutiérrez/Translated by Stephanie Wildes

By Matthias Yeanay and Roland Harris
MONROVIA, Oct 22 2015 (IPS)

Liberian President Ellen Johnson Sirleaf recently affirmed her commitment to the land rights of Liberia’s local communities, who rely on the forests for their livelihoods and have cared for them for generations.

“Any successful paradigm shift for forest management in Liberia must have local communities at its centre,” Edward McClain, Minster of State for Presidential Affairs, said in a speech delivered on the President’s behalf. A draft Land Rights Act would make this possible, but the current session of Parliament ended without the Act’s adoption.

The land by Boegbor, a town in district four in Grand Bassa County, Liberia has been leased by the government to Equatorial Palm Oil for 50 years. Credit: Wade C.L. Williams/IPS

Such developments benefit large corporations but fail to deliver on the promise of shared economic development. Over half of Liberia’s territory has been sold to logging companies by the government, threatening the life-line of the communities that rightfully own Liberia’s forests.

These conflicts are not unique to Liberia. Around the world, contested lands fuel violence and threaten the commitments made by governments and companies. New research shows that out of eight fragile states in Africa, the governments of six claim ownership of nearly 100 per cent of the land in each country. Weak community rights also contribute to mass deforestation, as communities are generally better equipped than governments to care for their forests.

Despite growing attention around the world to these issues, the gap between how much land governments recognize as belonging to communities and the amount of land that communities govern in practice remains substantial.

As Ebola recedes, unsustainable demand for timber has returned to Liberia’s forests, but President Sirleaf’s comments give us hope that the government will side with local communities moving forward.

The President signed an agreement with Norway, which has promised up to $150 million over six years to help Liberia keep its forests standing. This agreement could provide much-needed funds for Liberia to provide basic services to its people, and stem the tide of mass deforestation.

Liberia’s leaders are turning towards conserving the forests rather than selling them off, and they recognize that the key to successful forest management is putting local communities in charge of their own forests. It only makes sense that the people who have managed the lands and forests all their lives, and whose communities have managed them for generations, are best-equipped to care for them. Research shows that when Indigenous Peoples and local communities have secure land rights, forest are more likely to stay standing.

The draft Land Rights Act would operationalise many of the commitments Liberia’s government has made. It would recognize Liberia’s local communities as the rightful owners of the country’s forests without requiring them to present an official deed, a significant development given that these communities inhabit a large percentage of Liberia’s land.

By extension, the legislation would protect the forests that communities have been the guardians of for generations. President Sirleaf has expressed her strong support for it, and it is now up to Parliament to take action. We expect them to take this important step towards securing Liberia a future of peace and prosperity.

But recognizing land rights is not enough. Communities already have legal title to over 30 per cent of Liberia’s land area, one of the highest percentages of community ownership in West and Central Africa, but a lack of technical capacity, government coordination and due process has led to legally titled communities losing their land to make way for concessions or conservation areas. Most were never compensated for their losses.

The reality is that local communities want to be the architects of their own development and manage their own forests, but they need more logistical and technical support to ensure that they will not be trampled by big business.

Negotiation of community forest management agreements should be done by the communities themselves with technical support from Liberia’s Forest Development Authority, civil society and other institutions with interest in the forestry sector. This will enable the communities to adequately harness benefits, including sustainable management of the forest as well as economic, social and infrastructure development at the local level.

We hope the new law will make it easier for communities to make fair agreements with corporations. They want the power to require companies operating on their lands to employ community members in key decision-making roles, and to ask companies that violate their wishes for them to leave. But faced with the prospect of negotiating commercial contracts on their land, many communities find themselves on the losing end.

Liberia is poised to clarify land rights at the local level, a move that could make history and make the country a leader in land reform in Africa. For this move to be successful, the government’s policies must not forget the vital role played by the local communities. It is the rightful owners who have kept Liberia’s forests standing.

This new vision for Liberia’s forests may be threatened from many sides, but with the power of the people and the power of President Ellen Sirleaf, how can it fail?

(End)

Excerpt:

An oil palm seedling in a burned peat forest. Credit: Courtesy of Wetland International

By Zhai Yun Tan
WASHINGTON, Aug 6 2015 (IPS)

Following growing concerns in the United States about the risks of trans fat since 1999, demand for palm oil, a cheap substitute for trans fat, more than doubled over the last decade and is expected to increase, eliciting concerns about deforestation in several Southeast Asian countries that provide 85 percent of the world’s palm oil.

Trans fat is a partially hydrogenated oil added to many frozen and baked goods that improves shelf life and adds flavour. The United States’ Food and Drug Administration (FDA) proposed banning trans fat after studies showed it may cause cardiovascular diseases. FDA banned the use of trans fat last month.

The ban, along with the burgeoning demand by China and India, are among the reasons many experts say motivate the rise in demand for palm oil. According to the United Nations Food and Agriculture Organization, global demand for palm oil is likely to grow by 60 percent in 2050 from 1999. Palm oil imports in the United States increased by more than 80 percent since 1999, according to the United States Department of Agriculture (USDA).

“Palm oil has a lot of same properties that hydrogenated oil has, that’s one of the reasons why it’s a common replacement,” Lael Goodman, a tropical forest analyst at the Union of Concerned Scientists told IPS in an interview. “As companies are looking around on what to use instead of these partially hydrogenated oils, palm oil is the cheapest vegetable oil in the market now.”

Palm oil plantations, according to the United Nations Environment Programme and Greenpeace International, is the leading cause of deforestation in Indonesia and Malaysia. Although United States imports most of its palm oil from Malaysia, Malaysia’s production growth is slowed by limited land and labor, according to USDA. Indonesia has emerged as the largest exporter since 2011.

Source: World Resources Institute

The concerns come at a time when Indonesia is expecting to double its palm oil production by 2020 in response to the rise in demand, although it is already suffering from one of the world’s highest deforestation rates.

Joko Widodo, president of Indonesia, strengthened the country’s moratorium against deforestation earlier this year. However, the moratorium, which was introduced in 2011, has failed to control the expansion of oil palm plantations in primary forest and peat lands, according to USDA.

A study by researchers from University of Maryland and World Resources Institute (WRI), a Washington, D.C. based think tank, revealed that Indonesia lost over 6 million hectares of primary forest from 2000 to 2012, an area half the size of England.

“We don’t have the data for 2014 or 2015 yet and there was a decrease in 2013, but the end result is still that the deforestation rate is at one of the highest rate it’s been in the country’s history,” James Anderson, communications manager for WRI’s Forests Program, told IPS.

The country is also notorious for causing haze pollution in Southeast Asia for forest burning activities that are often linked to land clearing for palm oil plantations.

“Up to 20 percent of land that are on fire have been traced back to palm oil,” Goodman said. “When peat soils are cleared– these are very carbon-rich soils– they can burn for months or even years. It puts a lot of particulate matter into the air that spreads across Asia and it is a huge health issue every year.”

The fires usually peak around September every year. In 2013, Malaysia and Singapore were badly hit by the haze pollution. The Singapore Meteorological Service expects haze pollution from Indonesia to be as bad this year with the incoming El Nino season.

Goodman said companies, under pressure from the public, have begun to focus on deforestation-free palm oil.

“There is a very great corporate attention to where palm oil comes from,” she said. “A lot of those pledges started in 2015, some of them don’t start until 2020. We are really just starting to see what’s going to make a difference hopefully in the next few years.”

The Roundtable on Sustainable Palm Oil (RSPO) was established in 2004 as a certification body for the production of sustainable palm oil. The nonprofit’s website said that it has over 2,000 members, representing 40 percent of the palm oil industry, and it certifies 20 percent of the world’s palm oil production.

Several companies, such as Dunkin’ Brands, Krispy Kreme, McDonald’s have made commitments to purchase deforestation-free palm oil in recent years.

Global Forest Watch (GFW), an initiative convened by WRI, tracks forest fires and forest clearings in Indonesia. The service offers real time maps of deforestation and hotspots for users. According to WRI, companies using the system include Unilever and members of the RSPO.

“A lot of companies lack the tools to actually implement the commitments simply because it is very difficult to trace their supply chains to know if the palm oil is coming from a place that is actually deforested,” Sarah Lake, corporate engagement research analyst for GFW told IPS.

The GFW service, she said, was offered free-of-charge to companies to receive alerts and monitor their land for deforestation or fires.

“Our approach isn’t necessarily to reduce the use of palm oil,” Lake said. “It can be perfectly sustainable. It’s just a matter of making sure you’re sourcing palm oil that isn’t linked to environmentally problematic behaviour.”

Edited by Kanya D’Almeida

Workers at Jamaica's Bodles Agricultural Station prepare fruit tree seedlings for distribution. Credit: Zadie Neufville/IPS

By Zadie Neufville
KINGSTON, Jun 4 2015 (IPS)

For Jamaica, planting more trees as a way to build resilience is one of the highest priorities of the government’s climate change action plan. So when Cockpit Country residents woke up to bulldozers in the protected area, they rallied to get answers from the authorities.

On May 18, Noranda Bauxite Limited acted on 2004 mining leases and moved its heavy equipment into the outer areas of the Cockpit Country, ignoring unresolved boundary issues. Their actions reignited a simmering row between stakeholders and government over demarcation and protection of the biologically diverse area.Bauxite mining is said to be the single largest cause of deforestation on the island.

Whilst the company denies that it has begun mining, its officials admit to prospecting. Noranda’s actions however, raised suspicions that government had reneged on a promise made in 2006 when several prospecting leases issued to Alumina Partners were revoked. Back then, authorities had promised residents that the Cockpit Country would be off-limits to bauxite mining.

Junior Minister for Mining and Energy Julian Robinson has reiterated his government’s commitment to preserving the area, but many continue to be wary.

Michael Schwartz, director of the Windsor Research Station, is fearful that government will seek to “placate” the people with “a token boundary” which defines the Cockpit Country to an area “where there is no bauxite to be mined”.

“My concern is that GoJ [the government] seems to be completely ignoring the Public Consultation Report, which they commissioned in 2013, and is going to come up with its own boundary,” he said in an email response to IPS.

Schwartz’s concern seems valid. After all bauxite was, until 2008 the island’s second largest earner of foreign exchange. That year bauxite earned 1.37 billion dollars and accounted for 55 per cent of Jamaica’s total merchandise exports and traditionally contributed around five to six per cent of Gross Domestic Product (GDP).

Just prior to the economic fallout and closure of mining operations in 2009, the sector was the third largest foreign exchange earner.

Bauxite mining is also said to be the single largest cause of deforestation on the island. Not only are large areas of forests destroyed to extract the ore, the cutting of haul and access roads opens the prime forests to further threats from loggers, yam stick traders and coal burners.

Forest clearing is identified as one of the biggest threats to the island’s biodiversity and the remaining forests. The Fourth Assessment Report of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (2007) also identifies forest clearing as one of the top contributors to climate variation.

Looking westward – Noranda Bauxite’s equipment cuts access roads for prospecting. Credit: Courtesy of Michael Schwartz

Minister of Environment and Climate Change Robert Pickersgill confirms that changes to the forest cover have  “significant implications” for Jamaica, given that is “highly dependent” on its environmental resources.

At a press conference to announce the findings of the most recent forest assessment surveys on Mar. 10, the minister said:  “The open dry forests that now stand as bare lands have increased the country’s vulnerability to the impacts of climate change and increased our risk of desertification. The loss of our broadleaf forests has reduced the forests’ capacity to provide us with ecosystem services such as water and clean air.”

“Cockpit Country is in relatively good shape today because of its topography, it has conserved itself, so to speak,” Schwartz said, pointing out that whilst farmers have been encroaching on the area for centuries, the difficult terrain had made access difficult thereby limiting the impact of their activities.

Depending on which of the three proposed boundaries is used, the Cockpit Country is estimated to cover between 820 and 1099 square kilometres (between 510 and 683 sq. miles). The core boundary – primarily forest reserves and crown lands – totals just over 56,000 hectares (138,379 acres), a transition boundary of just over 80,000 hectares (197, 684 acres) and the outer boundary of 116,218 hectares (287,181 acres).

The outer boundary proposed during the public consultations that the University of the West Indies conducted will more than double the reserves and is the preferred option. It seems that any other would not go down well with the stakeholders and according to Schwartz: “This would show a willful disregard of the public stakeholders.”

Aside from a rich biological diversity that supports the largest number of globally threatened species in the Caribbean region, Jamaica’s State of the Environment Report 2010 described the Cockpit Country as “the largest remaining primary forest” on the island. The area also supplies fresh water for about 40 per cent of islanders and recharges the aquifers in three major agricultural areas.

In what the Forestry Department describes as its most comprehensive analysis of forest cover change to date, a 2013 survey shows an overall increase in forests and a decline in the amount of high quality forests due to the destruction of wetlands and previously undisturbed areas. More than 4,000 hectares (about 10,000 acres) of mined-out lands have also been restored.

“We have gained new low-quality forests but lost high-quality closed and disturbed broadleaf forests. We also lost swamp forests and dry forests,” Conservator of Forests Marilyn Headley told IPS in an email.

The loss of the swamp forests, Pickersgill says, “poses serious risks to our tourism industry, as well as the success of our disaster management strategies and destroys the habitat for many of our essential wetland species.”

In addition to improved assessments, the Forestry Department is now updating the National Forest Management and Conservation Plan that aims to build on and outline additional strategies to arrest the loss of quality forests, promote sustainable use and regulate saw mills.

The Department continues to work with Local Forest Management Committees in the Cockpit Country and other areas across the island to replant and reduce the impact of the local communities on their forests. Schwartz is confident that ongoing sensitisation and community actions will help to preserve the areas if bauxite mining is excluded.

However, with an estimated one billion tonnes of bauxite remaining, a sluggish economy and most of the country’s earnings going to debt repayment, stakeholders are demanding a resolution of the boundaries sooner rather than later. Many believe that potential earnings from bauxite could tip the balance between preservation and mining of the prized ecological area.

“If mining were allowed, how would you explain how it’s alright for the big man to destroy large areas of forest, but it’s not okay for little man to cut a tree to improve his life?” the researcher asks.

Edited by Kitty Stapp

Siduduzile Nyoni, a mother of three, busily completing one of her ilala palm products, which will be sold through a women’s cooperative in western Zimbabwe. Credit: Busani Bafana/IPS

By Busani Bafana
LUPANE, Zimbabwe, Jun 3 2015 (IPS)

Seventy-seven-year-old Grace Ngwenya has an eye for detail. You will never catch her squinting as she effortlessly weaves ilala palm fronds into beautiful baskets.

“Working together as women has united us, and strengthened our community spirit.” -- Lisina Moyo, a member of the Lupane Women's Centre (LWC)
Her actions are swift and methodical as she twirls, straightens and tugs the long strands into a fine stitch. Periodically she pauses to dip the last three fingers of her right hand into a shallow tin of water that sits beside her, to wet the fibres and make them pliable.

Slowly, under the deft motion of her hands, a basket takes shape. She insists on attention to “detail, neatness and creativity.” Once she has decided on the shape and colour of her product, she will work for seven days straight to complete the task.

When she’s done, the basket will be inspected for quality, carefully packed up, and shipped off to its buyer who could be anywhere in the world from Germany to the United States. Her efforts earn her about 50 dollars a month – a small fortune in a place where women once counted it a blessing to earn even a few dollars in the course of several weeks.

Ngwenya lives in Shabula village in Ward 15 of Zimbabwe’s arid Lupane District, located in the Matabeleland North Province that occupies the western-most region of the country, 170 km from the nearest city of Bulawayo.

Home to about 90,000 people, this area is prone to droughts and has a harsh history of hunger.

Today, rural women are putting Lupane District on the map with an innovative basket-weaving enterprise that is earning them a decent wage, preserving an indigenous skill and enabling them to erect a barrier against extreme weather events by investing the profits of their creativity into sustainable farming.

Perfecting skills, preserving arts

It started small, when a group of women came together in 1997 to produce baskets and other crafts from local forest products and sell them along the Bulawayo-Victoria Falls road, a major tourist route.

In 2004, with the help of a Peace Corp volunteer, they establised the Lupane Women’s Centre (LWC) in order to streamline their production. At the time they had just 14 registered members.

A decade later they have grown their ranks to 3,638 members hailing from 28 wards in the district. Average earnings have increased from one dollar to 50 dollars a month, and this past May one of their number earned 700 dollars from the sale of her crafts.

For a community that was barely able to put three square meals on the table every day, this is a huge step towards a more wholesome life.

“Weaving has transformed my life, even in my old age,” Ngwenya tells IPS, pointing to a half-built residence not far from where she sits, busily threading away. In this impoverished village, the emerging two-roomed brick house is a veritable super-structure.

Grace Ngwenya, a skilled weaver from Zimbabwe’s Lupane District, deftly threads palm strands into a sturdy basket. Credit: Busani Bafana/IPS

“This year sales have been slow,” she says, “but God willing, my house should be complete by next year. I have already bought the windows and I will plaster and paint it myself.”

In addition to a dwelling place, her income has helped her buy a goat and erect a fence around her ‘keyhole’ garden, a popular farming method all across the African continent involving a keyhole-shaped vegetable bed with an active compost pile at its centre that feeds crops in the walled-in plot.

At a weaving competition last year she even won an ox-drawn plough and recently sunk more of her savings into the purchase of a heifer and some simple farm tools.

Considering that she joined the collective during a drought year back in 2008, she is forever grateful for her newfound wellbeing. And it is not just her own life that has changed.

Barely a stone’s throw away is the homestead of her sister Gladys, and her husband, Misheck Ngwenya. This cluster of huts is distinguished by solar lights attached to their thatched roofs, a luxury secured with the boons of Gladys’ basket sales.

“In the past I would go to my neighbours to ask for sugar,” Gladys Ngwenya recalls. “Not anymore.”

She tells IPS the women’s centre has helped her perfect her art by improving the dimensions and measurements of her craft work.

Beating hunger with baskets

It is no coincidence that these entrepreneurs sprang from the dry soil of Lupane District. The area is a farmer’s nightmare, yielding only drought-tolerant crops such as sorghum and finger millet and receiving inadequate rainfall – just 450-600 mm annually – to allow extensive maize cropping.

When the weather is bad, with long, dry spells, rural communities suffer badly.

Statistics from the Department of Agriculture and Extension Services indicate that Lupane experiences annual food shortages. In 2008, it had a food production deficit of more than 10,000 metric tonnes of grain, producing just over 3,000 tonnes of cereal against an estimated annual requirement of 13,900 metric tonnes.

The situation has not changed seven years later. In 2015, scores of people are at risk of hunger, with government data suggesting that only half of the region’s required 10,900 metric tonnes will be produced this year.

Families who practice subsistence agriculture will be forced to purchase food to make up for lower harvests, a situation that could leave many with no food at all given that income-generating opportunities are scarce.

Zimbabwe is this year importing 700,000 tonnes of the staple maize grain to cover a deficit following another bad agricultural season. The country requires 1.8 million tonnes of maize annually.

The Women’s Centre in Lupane is now tackling these twin problems – hunger and livelihoods – by helping craftswomen become breadwinners.

Hildegard Mufukare, who manages the Centre, tells IPS that putting women at the head of the household has created “peace in the home.”

“Women have bought assets from farm implements to cattle, they have taken up agricultural activities and are working together with the men to sustain their families.”

Applying a communal, grassroots approach to its management and upkeep, members contribute five dollars annually towards operational costs, accounting for 31 percent of the Centre’s required financing.

The remaining 59 percent comes from donors, including patron backers like the Liechtenstein Development Services (LED), but members say they plan to cultivate greater self-sufficiency by establishing and running a restaurant, conference centre and farm which will serve the dual purpose of providing more food and skills to the community.

As they grow their markets overseas, securing additional funding will not be difficult. Already members courier their wares to clients in the U.S., Germany, the Netherlands, Australia and Denmark.

Revenue from craft sales tripled over a two-year period, going from 10,000 dollars in 2012 to 32,000 dollars in 2014. The members keep the bulk of the profits while the Centre retains 15 percent to cover administration fees and government taxes.

The baskets are multi-functional, doubling up as waste bins or fruit bowls. The women are now toying with the idea of turning them into biodegradable coffins – to ensure sustainability even in their deaths.

Members of the Lupane Women’s Centre hope to market these ‘eco coffins’, biodegradable caskets made from local materials, to ensure their community is sustainable, even in death. Credit: Credit: Busani Bafana/IPS

They are unsure how such an idea will be received, but their bold proposal suggests a commitment to holistic living that goes beyond incomes or nutrition.

Preparing for a changing climate

Community-led buffers against the horrors of global warming are desperately needed in Zimbabwe, a country of 14.5 million that faces a host of climate risks from floods to droughts.

Unable to access adequate international climate finance, the country was forced to slice its environment ministry’s budget from 93 million in 2014 to 52 million this year.

The funding crunch has crippled the country’s ability to respond to natural disasters, with the meteorological services department – responsible for forecasts and early warnings – also experiencing budget cuts.

This means that when calamity strikes, remote communities and especially rural women will be left to fend for themselves, a reality that the women of Lupane are more than prepared to deal with.

Siduduzile Nyoni, a mother of three who joined the cooperative in 2008, says that the simple act of weaving baskets has helped her build a lifeline for times of crisis.

She has used her savings to buy a goat, and is also maintaining a chicken farm and a thriving vegetable garden. When the weather is fine, the garden feeds her family. If it takes a turn for the worse, she simply dips into her surplus stores to tide her over until the land yields food again.

“I joined the centre even though I didn’t know how to weave,” she tells IPS. Her husband is unemployed, but she is doing well enough to support them both.

She and three other women have created their own micro-savings scheme, pooling five dollars of their monthly income into a rotational pool of 20 dollars that each enjoys on a quarterly basis.

Other groups of women have taken advantage of skills training at the Centre and taken up potato farming, bee keeping, candle making, and cattle rearing. Rearing indigenous chickens is also hugely popular activity as an additional source of revenue, and nutrition.

Women from Zimbabwe’s Lupane District invest the profits of their craft sales in ‘keyhole’ gardens to ensure food security. Credit: Busani Bafana/IPS

Others have turned to small-scale farming so they don’t have to rely on central supply chains for their food. According to Lisina Moyo, who joined the Centre in 2012, keyhole gardens “should be a part of every home” – earning 15 dollars a month from her personal vegetable patch has helped her pay her children’s school fees and contribute to a savings club that keeps her afloat during harsh seasons.

Saving the forests

Perhaps more importantly, the thousands of women who comprise the cooperative’s membership are natural caretakers of forests, having practiced sustainable harvesting of forest products for years.

The art of basket-weaving from both ilala palm and sisal, a species of the Agave plant found in Zimbabwe’s forests whose tough fibres make strong rope and twine, has been passed down for generations.

Furthermore, local communities have traditionally relied on surrounding forests for medicines, timber, fuel and fruits, so they have a vested interest in protecting these rich zones of biodiversity.

Considering the country lost an estimated 327,000 hectares of forests annually between 1990 and 2010, according to the United Nations Environment Programme (UNEP), empowering guardians of Zimbabwe’s remaining forested areas is crucial.

With an estimated 66,250 timber merchants operating throughout the country, as well as millions of rural families relying on forests for fuel, deforestation will be a defining issue for Zimbabwe in the coming decade.

But here again, the women of Lupane are planning for the worst, creating small plantations of ilala palms to ensure propagation of the species, even in the face of rapid destruction of its natural habitat.

Their work is reinforcing the land around them, and breathing life into the women themselves.

As Moyo tells IPS: “Working together as women has united us, and strengthened our community spirit.”

Edited by Kanya D’Almeida

This article is part of a special series entitled ‘The Future Is Now: Inside the World’s Most Sustainable Communities’. Read the other articles in the series here.

This reporting series was conceived in collaboration with Ecosocialist Horizons

Date palm trees abound in the Niyamgiri hills of the Indian state of Odisha. The fruits contain antioxidants and Vitamin A, and the sap is collected and fermented to produce liquor. Credit: Manipadma Jena/IPS

By Manipadma Jena
RAYAGADA, India, May 19 2015 (IPS)

Scattered across 240 sq km on the remote Niyamgiri hill range in the eastern Indian state of Odisha, an ancient tribal group known as the Dongria Kondh have earned themselves a reputation as trailblazers.

Having fought – and won – a decade-long battle with a British mining giant that invested close to a billion dollars in a bauxite extraction operation in this mineral-rich area, the Dongria Kondh set an example in 2013 to millions of tribal people around the world that David versus Goliath-style confrontations can still be won by the underdog.

Now, the indigenous group is once again at the forefront of a global problem – the twin issues of hunger and deforestation – as they continue to nurture an ancient way of life despite a wave of destructive development that is threatening their traditional and sustainable farming practices.

Here, a Dongria Kondh woman reaches for barada leaves, a vital source of iron for the community. Credit: Manipadma Jena/IPS

Numbering some 10,000 people, the Dongria Kondh believe the forests and hills to be sacred sites, and have for centuries lived in harmony with the land, with a single family harvesting an average of 130 kg of wild produce in a single year.

Their varied and nutritious diet, which includes over 25 species of plants, comes directly from the forests, while springs originating in the Niyamgiri hills provide fresh, clean water all year round.

But rampant deforestation for large-scale infrastructure projects, coupled with mono-culture plantations of fast-growing trees to supply timber and paper industries with raw materials, as well as mining activities, have reduced food availability for the Dongria Kondh and other indigenous groups by over 30 percent and increased their gathering time by 80 percent over the last 30 years.

Today, 55 percent of adults from the Dongria Kondh community are protein-energy deficient and 60 percent of school-aged children are malnourished.

The situation reflects a trend all across India, a country of 1.2 billion people, where some of the poorest and hungriest live in or around forests.

India is currently home to one-quarter of the 805 million malnourished people worldwide, as well as to a third of the world’s underweight children and nearly a third of all food-insecure people – most of them among the 275 million-strong forest-dwelling population of this vast country.

The irony of the fact that those living closest to readily available food sources are going hungry has not escaped the attention of policy-makers, with the United Nations spearheading efforts to protect forests due to their critical importance in alleviating hunger and mitigating the impacts of climate change, not just in India but worldwide.

With 1.6 billion people – including over 2,000 indigenous cultures – depending directly on forests for food, shelter, income and fuel, preserving these areas feeds directly into the U.N.’s sustainable development agenda, and could also play a role in the ‘Zero Hunger Challenge’, launched by Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon in 2012 in a bid to completely eradicate the scourge of malnutrition and food insecurity.

This is easier said than done, given that an estimated 13 million hectares of forests are destroyed annually, denying hundreds of thousands of people of their only source of food.

While this seems like a bleak trend, one need only look up at the Niyamgiri hills for a lesson on an alternative economic model, one based on community management and control of land and resources, rather than the rampant destruction of living ecosystems for profit.

Here in Odisha, the forest-food nexus meets the accumulated traditional knowledge of an ancient people, pointing the way to a horizon where hunger is a thing of the past, not the future.

A major reason for the Dongria Kondh’s opposition to Vedanta Resource’s bauxite mining in the Niyamgiri Mountains in the eastern Indian state of Odisha was that it would destroy their numerous perennial hill streams. Here, a tribal girl washes at a pipe that gushes fresh water 24 hours a day. Credit: Manipadma Jena/IPS

Date palm trees abound in the Niyamgiri hills of the Indian state of Odisha. The fruits contain antioxidants and Vitamin A, and the sap is collected and fermented to produce liquor. Credit: Manipadma Jena/IPS

Tribal women collect fistfuls of ‘broom grass’ from the hill slopes of the Niyamgiri range in Odisha, India. Bundles tied together with hemp rope sell for 60 cents apiece in village markets, though urban traders get double the price. Credit: Manipadma Jena/IPS

Rich in protein, young bamboo shoots are a delicacy among the Dongria Kondh tribal community in eastern India. The outer skin is boiled with salt and chilli as a source of nutrition. During the monsoon season, when the shoots are plentiful, members of the tribe earn an income from bamboo. Credit: Manipadma Jena/IPS

The ‘barada’ leafy green is sweet, easy to digest and rich in iron. Here, a tribal woman sun-dries the leaves so they can be stored for up to two months. Credit: Manipadma Jena/IPS

Women shoulder the lion’s share of forest produce collection. A typical day’s haul includes tamarind, which fetches a large part of a household’s annual income, and wild yams, a dietary mainstay during the lean months of August to October. Credit: Manipadma Jena/IPS

The highly valued mahua flowers are collected, dried and made into liquor. Its seeds yield oil that can be used for cooking. Among some tribal groups mahua paste is used medicinally to facilitate childbirth. Credit: Manipadma Jena/IPS

Honey is the Dongria Kondh’s most precious forest product, valued for its nutrition, medicinal properties and high returns from sale. Because the tribe manages and protects large sections of the Niyamgiri hills in the eastern Indian state of Odisha, hundreds of wild honeybee colonies can still be found here. Credit: Manipadma Jena/IPS

Freshly fermented liquor made from the sap of the Salapa palm tree is often used during rituals. This is one of seven trees considered a ‘must’ in the Dongria Kondh’s sacred grove. Credit: Manipadma Jena/IPS

Edited by Kanya D’Almeida

Bamboo nursery in Africa. There is debate over whether commercially-grown bamboo could help reverse the effects of deforestation and land degradation that has spread harm across the African continent. Credit: EcoPlanet Bamboo

By Jeffrey Moyo
HARARE, Feb 28 2015 (IPS)

Deforestation is haunting the African continent as industrial growth paves over public commons and puts more hectares into private hands.

According to the Environmental News Network, a web-based resource, Africa loses forest cover equal to the size of Switzerland every year, or approximately 41 000 square kilometres.

The United Nations Environment Programme (UNEP) is also on record as saying the African continent loses over four million hectares (9.9 million acres) of natural forest annually, which is twice the world’s average deforestation rate. And deforestation, according to UNEP, accounts for at least one-fifth of all carbon emissions globally.

The dangerous pace of deforestation has triggered a market-based solution using bamboo, a fast-growing woody grass that grows chiefly in the tropics.“If grown in the right way, and under the right sustainable management system, in certain areas, bamboo can play a role in reversing ecosystem degradation” – Troy Wiseman, CEO of EcoPlanet Bamboo

“The idea of bamboo plantations is a good one, but it triggers fear of widespread starvation as poor Africans may be lured into this venture for money and start ditching food crops” – Terry Mutsvanga, Zimbabwean human rights activist

EcoPlanet Bamboo, a multinational company, has been expanding its operations in Africa while it promotes the industrialisation of bamboo as an environmentally attractive alternative fibre for timber manufacturing industries that currently rely on the harvesting of natural forests for their raw resource. The company’s operations extend to South Africa, Ghana and Nicaragua.

For EcoPlanet and some African environmentalists, commercially-grown bamboo could help reverse the effects of deforestation and land degradation that has spread harm across the African continent.

“If grown in the right way on land that has little value for other uses, and if managed under the right sustainable management system, bamboo can play a role in restoring highly degraded ecosystems and connecting remnant forest patches, while reducing pressure on remaining natural forests,” Troy Wiseman, CEO of EcoPlanet Bamboo, told IPS.

Happison Chikova, a Zimbabwean independent environmentalist who holds a Bachelor of Science Honours Degree in Geography and Environmental Studies from the Midlands State University here, agreed.

“Bamboo plants help fight climate change because of their capacity to absorb carbon dioxide and act as carbon sinks while the plants can also be used as a source for wood energy, thereby reducing the cutting down of indigenous trees, and also the fact that bamboo can be used to build shelter, reduces deforestation in the communal areas where there is high demand of indigenous trees for building purposes,” Chikova told IPS.

But land rights activists are sceptical about their claims.

“The idea of bamboo plantations is a good one, but it triggers fear of widespread starvation as poor Africans may be lured into this venture for money and start ditching food crops,” Terry Mutsvanga, an award-winning Zimbabwean human rights activist, told IPS.

Mutsvanga’s fears of small sustainable farms losing out to foreign-owned export-driven plantations were echoed by Nnimmo Bassey, a renowned African environmentalist and head of the Health of Mother Earth Foundation, an ecological think-tank and advocacy organisation.

“No one can seriously present a bamboo plantation as a cure for deforestation,” Bassey, who is based in Nigeria, told IPS, “and unfortunately the United Nations system sees plantations as forests and this fundamentally faulty premise gives plantation owners the latitude to see their forest-gobbling actions as something positive.”

“If we agree that forests are places with rich biodiversity, it is clear that a plantation cannot be the same as a forest,” added Bassey.

Currently, bamboo is widely grown in Africa by small farmers for multiple uses. The Mount Selinda Women’s Bamboo Association, an environmental lobby group in Chipinge, Zimbabwe’s eastern border town, for example, received funding from the International Fund for Agricultural Development (IFAD) through the Livelihood and Economic Development Programme in order to create sustainable rural livelihoods and enterprises by using bamboo resources.

Citing its many benefits, IFAD calls bamboo the “poor man’s timber.”

Further, notes IFAD, bamboo contributes to rural poverty reduction, empowers women and can be processed into boats, kitchen utensils, incense sticks, charcoal and footwear. It also provides food and nutrition security as food and animal feed.

Currently, EcoPlanet Bamboo’s footprint in Africa includes 5,000 acres in Ghana in a public-private partnership to develop commercial bamboo plantations. In South Africa’s Eastern Cape, certification is under way to convert out of production pineapple plantations to bamboo plantations for the production of activated carbon and bio-charcoal to be sold to local and export markets.

Environmentalist Bassey worries whether all these acres were unutilised, as the company claims. “Commercial bamboo, which will replace natural wood forests and may require hundreds of hectares of land space, may not be so good for peasant farmers in Africa,” Bassey said.

EcoPlanet Bamboo, however, insists it does not convert or plant on any land that could compete with food security.

“(We) convert degraded land into certified bamboo plantations into diverse, thriving ecosystems, that can provide fibre on an annual basis, and yet maintain their ecological integrity,” said Wiseman.

Wiseman’s claim, however, did not move long-time activist Bassey and one-time winner of the Right Livelihood Prize, an alternative to the Nobel Peace Prize, who questioned foreign ownership of Africa’s resources as not always to Africa’s benefit.

“Plantations are not owned by the weak in society,” said Bassey. “They are owned by corporations or rich individuals with strong economic and sometimes political connections. This could mean displacement of vulnerable farmers, loss of territories and means of livelihoods.”

Edited by Lisa Vives/ Phil Harris   

Uncontrolled woodcutting in remote areas of Zimbabwe like Mwenezi district has left many treeless fields. Credit: Jeffrey Moyo/IPS

By Jeffrey Moyo
HARARE, Feb 6 2015 (IPS)

There’s a buzz in Zimbabwe’s lush forests, home to many animal species, but it’s not bees, bugs or other wildlife. It’s the sound of a high-speed saw, slicing through the heart of these ancient stands to clear land for tobacco growing, to log wood for commercial export and to supply local area charcoal sellers.

This, despite Zimbabwe being obliged under the United Nations’ Millennium Development Goals (MDGs) to ensure environmental sustainability by the end of this year.

“The rate at which deforestation is occurring here will convert Zimbabwe into an outright desert in just 35 years if pragmatic solutions are not proffered urgently and also if people keep razing down trees for firewood without regulation,” Marylin Smith, an independent conservationist based in Masvingo, Zimbabwe’s oldest town, and former staffer in the government of President Robert Mugabe, told IPS.“The rate at which deforestation is occurring here will convert Zimbabwe into an outright desert in just 35 years if pragmatic solutions are not proffered urgently” – Marylin Smith, independent conservationist based in Masvingo, Zimbabwe

According to the United Nations Environment Programme (UNEP), Zimbabwe lost an annual average of 327,000 hectares of forests between 1990 and 2010.

Smith blamed Zimbabwe’s deforestation on the growing numbers of tobacco farmers who were cutting “millions of tonnes of firewood each year to treat the cash crop.”

According to the country’s Tobacco Industry Marketing Board, Zimbabwe currently has 88,167 tobacco growers, whom environmental activists say are the catalysts of looming desertification here.

“Curing tobacco using huge quantities of firewood and even increased domestic use of firewood in both rural and urban areas will leave Zimbabwe without forests and one has to imagine how the country would look like after the demise of the forests,” Thabilise Mlotshwa, an ecologist from Save the Environment Association, an environmental lobby group here, told IPS.

“But really, it is difficult to object to firewood use when this is the only energy source most rural people have despite the environment being the worst casualty,” Mlotshwa added.

Zimbabwe’s deforestation crisis is linked to several factors.

“There are thousands of timber merchants who have no mercy with our trees as they see ready cash in almost every tree and therefore don’t spare the trees in order to earn money,” Raymond Siziba, an agricultural extension officer based in Mvurwi, a district approximately 100 kilometres north of the Zimbabwean capital Harare, told IPS.

According to the Zimbabwe National Statistics Agency (ZimStat), there were 66,250 timber merchants nationwide last year alone.

Deforestation is a complex issue. A recent study by the Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) reported that during the decade from 1980 to 1990, the world’s tropical forests were reduced by an average of 15.4 million hectares per year (an 0.8 percent annual rate of deforestation).

The area of land cleared during the decade is equivalent to nearly three times the size of France.

Developing countries rely heavily on wood fuel, the major energy source for cooking and heating. In Africa, the statistics are striking: an estimated 90 percent of the entire continent’s population uses fuelwood for cooking, and in sub-Saharan Africa, firewood and brush supply approximately 52 percent of all energy sources.

Zimbabwe is not the only sub-Saharan country facing a crisis in its forests. A panel run by the United Nations and the African Union and led by former South African President Thabo Mbeki found that in Mozambique thousands more logs were exported to China than were legally reported.

Disappearing forest cover is a particular problem in Ghana, where non-timber forest products provide sustenance and income for 2.5 million people living in or near forest communities.

Between 1990 and 2005, Ghana lost over one-quarter of its total national forest cover. At the current rate of deforestation, the country’s forests could completely disappear in less than 25 years. Current attempts to address deforestation have stalled due to lack of collaboration between stakeholders and policy makers.

In west equatorial Africa, a study by Greenpeace has called logging the single biggest threat to the Congo Basin rainforest. At the moment, logging companies working mostly in the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC) are busy cutting down trees in over 50 million hectares of rainforest, or an area the size of France, according to its website.

An estimated 20 to 25 percent of annual deforestation is thought to be due to commercial logging. Another 15 to 20 percent is attributed to other activities such as cattle ranching, cash crop plantations and the construction of dams, roads, and mines.

However, deforestation is primarily caused by the activities of the general population. As the Zimbabwe economy plummets, indigenous timber merchants are on the rise, battling to eke a living, with environmentalists accusing them of fuelling deforestation.

For many rural dwellers, lack of electricity in most rural areas is creating unsustainable pressures on forests in Zimbabwe.

“Like several other remote parts of Zimbabwe, we have no electricity here and for years we have been depending on firewood, which is the main source of energy for rural dwellers even for the past generations, and you can just imagine the amount of deforestation remote areas continue to suffer,” 61-year-old Irene Chikono, a teacher from Mutoko, 143 kilometres east of Harare, told IPS.

Even Zimbabweans with access to electricity are at the mercy of erratic power supplies from the state-owned Zimbabwe Electricity Supply Authority (ZESA), which is failing to meet electricity demand owing to inadequate finances to import power.

“With increasing electricity outages here, I often resort to buying firewood from vendors at local market stalls, who get this from farms neighbouring the city,” 31-year-old Collina Hokonya, a single mother of three residing in Harare’s high density Mbare suburb, told IPS.

Government claims it is doing all it can to combat deforestation but, faced with this country’s faltering economy, indigenous timber merchants and villagers say it may be hard for them to refrain from tree-felling.

“We are into the timber business not by choice, but because of joblessness and we therefore want to make money in order to survive,” Mevion Javangwe, an indigenous timber merchant based in Harare, told IPS.

“A gradual return of people from cities to lead rural life as the economy worsens is adding pressure on rural forests as more and more people cut down trees for firewood,” Elson Moyo, a village head in Vesera village in Mwenezi, 144 kilometres south-west of Masvingo, told IPS.

“Politicians are plundering and looting the hardwood forest reserves since they own most sawmills, with their relatives fronting for them,” Owen Dliwayo, a civil society activist based in Chipinge, an eastern border town of Zimbabwe, told IPS.

“For all the forests that politicians plunder, they don’t pay a cent to council authorities and truly how do people get motivated to play a part in conserving hardwood forests?” Dliwayo asked.

“We will only manage to fight deforestation if government brings electricity to our doorsteps because without electricity we will keep cutting down trees for firewood,” said Chikono.

Edited by Lisa Vives/Phil Harris   

Wood market in Chitungwiza. Twenty percent of the urban households in Zimbabwe do not have access to electricity, and rely mainly on firewood for their energy needs. Credit: Tonderayi Mukeredzi/IPS

By Tonderayi Mukeredzi
HARARE, Jan 27 2015 (IPS)

Janet Mutoriti (30), a mother of three from St Mary’s suburb in Chitungwiza, 25 kilometres outside Zimbabwe’s capital, Harare, frequently risks arrest for straying into the nearby urban forests to fetch wood for cooking.

Despite living in the city, Janet’s is among the 20 percent of the urban households which do not have access to electricity, and rely mainly on firewood for their energy needs.

Worldwide, energy access has become a key determinant in improving people’s lives, mainly in rural communities where basic needs are met with difficulty.

In Zimbabwe, access to modern energy is very low, casting doubts on the country’s efforts at sustainable development, which energy experts say is not possible without sustainable energy.

In an interim national energy efficiency audit report for Zimbabwe issued in December, the Sustainable African Energy Consortium (SAEC) revealed that of the country’s slightly more than three million households, 44 percent are electrified.“In rural Zimbabwe, the economic driver is agriculture, both dry land and irrigated. The need for energy to improve productivity in rural areas cannot be over-emphasised but current power generated is not sufficient to support all the energy-demanding activities in the country” – Chiedza Mazaiwana, Practical Action Southern Africa

They consumed a total of 2.7 million GWh in 2012 and 2.8 million GWh in 2013, representing 34 percent of total electrical energy sales by the Zimbabwe Electricity Distribution Transmission Company.

According to SAEC, of the un-electrified households, 62% percent use wood as the main source of energy for cooking, especially in rural areas where 90 percent live without access to energy.

A significant chasm exists between urban and rural areas in their access to electricity. According to the 2012 National Energy Policy, 83 percent of households in urban areas have access to electricity compared with 13 percent in rural areas.

Rural communities meet 94 percent of their cooking energy requirements from traditional fuels, mainly firewood, while 20 percent of urban households use wood as the main cooking fuel. Coal, charcoal and liquefied petroleum gas are used by less than one percent.

Engineer Joshua Mashamba, chief executive of the Rural Electrification Agency (REA) which is crusading the country’s rural electrification programme, told IPS that the rate of electrification of rural communities was a mere 10 percent.

“As of now, in the rural areas, there is energy poverty,” he said. “As the Rural Electrification Agency (REA), we have electrified 1,103 villages or group schemes and if we combine that with what other players have done, we are estimating that the rate of rural electrification is at 10 percent. It means that 90 percent remain un-electrified and do not have access to modern energy.”

Since the rural electrification programme started in the early 1980s, Mashamba says that 3,256 schools, 774 rural centres, 323 government extension offices, 266 chief’s homesteads and 98 business centres have also been electrified.

Zimbabwe Energy Council executive director Panganayi Sithole told IPS that modern energy services were crucial to human welfare, yet over 70 percent of the population remain trapped in energy poverty.

“The prevalence of energy of poverty in Zimbabwe cuts across both urban and rural areas. The situation is very dire in peri-urban areas due to deforestation and the non-availability of modern energy services,” said Sithole.

“Take Epworth [a poor suburb in Harare] for example. There are no forests to talk about and at the same time you cannot talk of the use of liquefied petrol gas (LPG) there due to costs and lack of knowledge. People there are using grass, plastics and animal dung to cook. It’s very sad,” he noted.

Sithole said there was a need to recognise energy poverty as a national challenge and priority, which all past and present ministers of energy have failed to do.

Zimbabwe currently faces a shortage of electrical energy owing to internal generation shortfalls and imports much its petroleum fuel and power at great cost to close the gap.

Demand continues to exceed supply, necessitating load shedding, and even those that have access to electricity regularly experience debilitating power outages, says Chiedza Mazaiwana, an energy project officer with Practical Action Southern Africa.

“In rural Zimbabwe, the economic driver is agriculture, both dry land and irrigated. The need for energy to improve productivity in rural areas cannot be over-emphasised but current power generated is not sufficient to support all the energy-demanding activities in the country. The percentage of people relying entirely on biomass for their energy is 70 percent,” she adds.

According to the World Bank, access to electricity in Southern Africa is around 28 percent – below the continental average of 31 percent. The bank says that inadequate electricity access poses a major constraint to the twin goals of ending extreme poverty and boosting shared prosperity in the region.

To end the dearth of power, Zimbabwe has joined the global effort to eliminate energy poverty by 2030 under the United Nation’s Sustainable Energy for All (SE4ALL) initiative.

The country has abundant renewable energy sources, most of which are yet to be fully utilised, and energy experts say that exploiting the critical sources of energy is key in closing the existing supply and demand gap while also accelerating access to green energy.

By 2018, Zimbabwe hopes to increase renewable energy capacity by 300 MW.

Mashamba noted that REA has installed 402 mini-grid solar systems at rural schools and health centres, 437 mobile solar systems and 19 biogas digesters at public institutions as a way to promote modern forms of energy.

A coalition of civil society organisations (CSOs) led by Zero Regional Environment Organisation and Practical Action Southern Africa is calling for a rapid increase in investment in energy access, with government leading the way but supported in equal measure by official development assistance and private investors.

Though the current output from independent power producers (IPPs) is still minimal, the Zimbabwe Energy Regulatory Authority (ZERA) says that contribution from IPPs will be significant once the big thermal producers come on stream by 2018.

At the end of 2013, the country had 25 power generation licensees and some of them have already started implementing power projects that are benefitting the national grid.

Notwithstanding the obvious financial and technical hitches, REA remains optimistic that it will deliver universal access to modern energy by 2030.

“By 2018, we intend to provide rural public institutions with at least one form of modern energy services,” said Mashamba. “In doing this, we hope to extend the electricity grid network to institutions which are currently within a 20 km radius of the existing grid network. Once we have electrified all public institutions our focus will shift towards rural homesteads.”

For CSOs, achieving universal access to energy by 2030 will require recognising the full range of people’s energy needs, not just at household level but also enterprise and community service levels.

“Currently there is a lot of effort put in to increasing our generation capacity through projects such as Kariba South Extension and Hwange extension which is good and highly commended but for us to reach out to the rural population (most affected by energy poverty, according to our statistics, we should also increase efforts around implementing off grid clean energy solutions to make a balance in our energy mix,” says Joseph Hwani, project manager for energy with Practical Action Southern Africa.

Practical Action says that on current trends, 1.5 billion people globally will still lack electricity in 2030, of whom 650 million will be in Africa.

This is some fifteen years after the target date for meeting the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs), which cannot be met without sustainable, affordable, accessible and reliable energy services.

Edited by Phil Harris