Jamaica's Negril beach in the vicinity of the Tree House Hotel bar after rough seas on Good Friday 2013 and prior to the fire that destroyed the Country Country Hotel restaurant in the foreground. Credit: Mary Veira/IPS

By Zadie Neufville
KINGSTON, Feb 2 2015 (IPS)

A plan that government says will slow the rate of erosion on Jamaica’s world-famous Negril beach is being opposed by the people whose livelihoods it is meant to protect.

Work is set to begin in March, but some in the tourist town continue to resist the planned construction of two breakwaters, which experts say is one of a series of actions aimed at protecting the beach and slowing persistent erosion. Those opposing the plan say the structures will do more damage than good.The construction of the two breakwaters 1.2 kilometres offshore follows on previous work to strengthen the natural ecosystem protection of the coastal communities by replanting sea grass beds and mangroves in several vulnerable communities, including Negril.

“Building breakwaters is not what stakeholders here want.  These hard structures cause more erosion than they prevent,” Couples Resort’s Mary Veira told IPS.

There is fear, Veira explained, that the structures will hinder the natural regeneration of the beach that currently occurs after each extreme weather event.

Government targeted the ‘Seven Mile’ stretch of Negril’s coast as its climate change adaptation project after several studies indicated that more than 55 metres of beach had been eroded in the last 40 plus years. The tourist Mecca is said to account for 25 per cent of the earnings of an industry that is responsible for about half of Jamaica’s GDP.

Veira is one of a group of hoteliers calling for a halt to the breakwater project, fearing its construction will irreparably damage Negril’s tourism industry. The environmental activist also pointed out that the structure is significantly different to that proposed by Smith Warner International (SWI) in 2008, in a consultation paid for by the community.

In addition she said, “The engineers who have been awarded the job are not coastal engineers.”

In a newspaper article dated May 2014, Veira noted: “Also of concern to stakeholders is the fact that the Environmental Engineer of National Works Agency, Dr. Mark Richards, admits such a major project of sea defense has really never been done.”

Taken Apr. 19, 2014, this photo shows a fully restored beach at Negril. The sand is taken away by storms and returns a few months later. Hoteliers fear that the breakwater will prevent the natural generation from occuring. Credit: Mary Veira/IPS

Business owners expressed concerns that boulders from the two “large rubble mound breakwaters” could break loose and destroy properties during rough weather. They also worry that it will create an eyesore as well as cause further damage to the fragile marine ecosystem, effectively killing snorkeling beds.

Both the National Environment and Planning Agency (NEPA), which overseas environment and planning on the island, and the National Works Agency (NWA), the entity overseeing the project, are adamant that the fears are unwarranted. Many hoteliers, however, continue to dig in.

The government has accused Veira and others of conducting a misinformation campaign to undermine the project’s credibility and the issue has divided the community.

The construction of the two breakwaters 1.2 kilometres off shore follows on previous work to strengthen the natural ecosystem protection of the coastal communities by replanting sea grass beds and mangroves in several vulnerable communities, including Negril. The structures are expected to break wave action and allow other remedial work to take place.

Government has said the beach nurturing option is out of the question. In May 2014, director of environment in the project’s implementing agency the Planning Institute of Jamaica (PIOJ) Clare Bernard told Negril’s business community in a meeting that the 5.4 million dollars earmarked for construction of the breakwaters could not be used for beach nourishment.

With the start date fast approaching, Sandals Resorts International (SRI) has thrown its weight behind the government’s plan. The popular hotel chain’s position was made clear in a Jan. 13 letter to the Jamaica Observer newspaper by SRI director of business processes and administration Wayne Cummings and reiterated at Friday’s meeting.

“It would be irresponsible of the agency to use government-guaranteed funds to reseed the beach for short-term gain, without treating with the known problems of wave action, only to see the beach retreat once again,” Cummings said in his statement.

Sandals operates three properties along what is said to be the most impacted section of the coastline – the Long Bay Beach also known as the Seven-Mile-Beach, as well as a ‘yet-to-be-developed’ property on the Bloody Bay Beach. The company has over the years invested in its own solutions to protect its properties.

“Let’s get this corrective phase done and commit to working with the Government to initiate a phase two for reseeding and maintaining the beach to bring Negril back to its world-class conditions,” Cummings continued.

On Jan. 23, those for and against faced off in a meeting that authorities hoped would have settled the matter once and for all. But both sides dug in and the meeting ended in a stalemate.

In addition to the fear of property damage from boulders, opponents contend that the current project bears no resemblance to that in a 2008 proposal by Smith Warner International (SWI).

In fact even more recent plans for the beach’s restoration included a comprehensive ecosystem upgrade to include sediment trend analysis, hydrological studies, artificial reefs and other “soft engineering approaches to build disaster resilience”, NEPA’s Manager of Strategic Planning and Policies Anthony McKenzie told IPS in 2012.

But authorities say the plans changed, in part because of the community’s advocacy. And the PIOJ and other government organisations have also expressed shock at the community’s apparent about-face. They have been in constant dialogue since the start, they said.

On Jan. 7, in a statement to the Parliament’s Public Administration and Appropriations Committee, NEPA’s CEO Peter Knight blamed the ongoing row on the lack of  “institutional memory”, and a changing of the guard at the helm of various interest groups, such as the Negril Chamber of Commerce.

Knight told the house that as a precautionary measure, an experienced disaster mitigation expert had been contracted to review the plans, pushing the project six-months behind its original schedule.

A onetime head of the Negril Chamber of Commerce and the Jamaica Hotel and Tourist Association, Cummings implored the Negril community to remain focused. He pointed out that the solutions now being presented by government came from its own ‘cause and effect study’ that highlighted the loss of the reef due to due to natural and man-made issues.

Cummings accepted the community’s arguments that businesses will be negatively affected during the construction phase of the project and called on government to help them by providing “economic breathing room” in the form of tax breaks to keep companies afloat.

But marine biologist Andrew Ross understands why the community is upset.

“The engineering reports to which these proposed groynes are modelled only look at the current state and make no reference to the ecosystem services that accumulated sands for the grass meadows, beach and dunes over the previous thousands of years, namely the coral reef ticket,” he noted.

Ross, who specialises in the restoration of coral reefs, added that, “Any sand-targeted engineered solution can only be a band-aid, at best.”

In fact, the sea grass beds replanted two years ago in a multi-sector project funded by the European Union is all but gone, washed out by storms after only a few months. And the introduction of Shorelock, a so-called ‘sand-magnet’ chemical being used on the beach, has not rested well with folks.

Both Cummings and Ross agree on one thing: with all efforts combined, “Negril’s ecosystem can be fixed.” But as Cummings puts it, “As long as the finished product ‘plugs the holes’ identified as being the main causes of the aggressive wave actions.”

Edited by Kitty Stapp

Healthy soils are critical for global food production and provide a range of environmental services. Photo: FAO/Olivier Asselin

By Busani Bafana
NTUNGAMO DISTRICT, Uganda, Jan 13 2015 (IPS)

A report published last month by the Montpellier Panel – an eminent group of agriculture, ecology and trade experts from Africa and Europe – says about 65 percent of Africa’s arable land is too damaged to sustain viable food production.

The report, “No Ordinary Matter: conserving, restoring and enhancing Africa’s soil“, notes that Africa suffers from the triple threat of land degradation, poor yields and a growing population."Political stability, environmental quality, hunger, and poverty all have the same root. In the long run, the solution to each is restoring the most basic of all resources, the soil." -- Rattan Lal

The Montpellier Panel has recommended, among others, that African governments and donors invest in land and soil management, and create incentives particularly on secure land rights to encourage the care and adequate management of farm land. In addition, the report recommends increasing financial support for investment on sustainable land management.

The publication of the report comes with the U.N. declaration of 2015 as the International Year of Soils, a declaration the Food and Agriculture Organisation (FAO) director general, Jose Graziano da Silva, said was important for “paving the road towards a real sustainable development for all and by all.”

According to the FAO, human pressure on the resource has left a third of all soils on which food production depends degraded worldwide.

Without new approaches to better managing soil health, the amount of arable and productive land available per person in 2050 will be a fourth of the level it was in 1960 as the FAO says it can take up to 1,000 years to form a centimetre of soil.

Soil expert and professor of agriculture at the Makerere University, Moses Tenywa tells IPS that African governments should do more to promote soil and water conservation, which is costly for farmers in terms of resources, labour, finances and inputs.

“Smallholder farmers usually lack the resources to effectively do soil and water conservation yet it is very important. Therefore, for small holder farmers to do it they must be motivated or incentivized and this can come through linkages to markets that bring in income or credit that enables them access inputs,” Tenywa says.

“Practicing climate smart agriculture in climate watersheds promotes soil health. This includes conservation agriculture, agro-forestry, diversification, mulching, and use of fertilizers in combination with rainwater harvesting.”

Before farmers received training on soil management methods, they applied fertilisers, for instance, without having their soils tested. Tenywa said now many smallholder farmers have been trained to diagnose their soils using a soil test kit and also to take their soils to laboratories for testing.

According to the Montpellier Panel report, an estimated 180 million people in Sub-Saharan Africa are affected by land degradation, which costs about 68 billion dollars in economic losses as a result of damaged soils that prevent crop yields.

“The burdens caused by Africa’s damaged soils are disproportionately carried by the continent’s resource-poor farmers,” says the chair of the Montpellier Panel, Professor Sir Gordon Conway.

“Problems such as fragile land security and limited access to financial resources prompt these farmers to forgo better land management practices that would lead to long-term gains for soil health on the continent, in favour of more affordable or less labour-intensive uses of resources which inevitably exacerbate the issue.”

Soil health is critical to enhancing the productivity of Africa’s agriculture, a major source of employment and a huge contributor to GDP, says development expert and acting divisional manager in charge of Visioning & Knowledge management at the Forum for Agricultural Research in Africa (FARA), Wole Fatunbi.

“The use of simple and appropriate tools that suits the smallholders system and pocket should be explored while there is need for policy interventions including strict regulation on land use for agricultural purposes to reduce the spate of land degradation,” Fatunbi told IPS

He explained that 15 years ago he developed a set of technologies using vegetative material as green manure to substitute for fertiliser use in the Savannah of West Africa. The technology did not last because of the laborious process of collecting the material and burying it to make compost.

“If technologies do not immediately lead to more income or more food, farmers do not want them because no one will eat good soil,” said Fatunbi. “Soil fertility measures need to be wrapped in a user friendly packet. Compost can be packed as pellets with fortified mineral fertilisers for easy application.”

Fatunbi cites the land terrace system to manage soil erosion in the highlands of Uganda and Rwanda as a success story that made an impact because the systems were backed legislation. Also, the use of organic manure in the Savannah region through an agriculture system integrating livestock and crops has become a model for farmers to protect and promote soil health.

Meanwhile, a new report by U.S. researchers cites global warming as another impact on soil with devastating consequences.

According to the report “Climate Change and Security in Africa”, the continent is expected to see a rise in average temperature that will be higher than the global average. Annual rainfall is projected to decrease throughout most of the region, with a possible exception of eastern Africa.

“Less rain will have serious implications for sub-Saharan agriculture, 75 percent of which is rain-fed… Average predicated production losses by 2050 for African crops are: maize 22 percent, sorghum 17 percent, millet 17 percent, groundnut 18 percent, and cassava 8 percent.

“Hence, in the absence of major interventions in capacity enhancements and adaption measures, warming by as little as 1.5C threatens food production in Africa significantly.”

A truly disturbing picture of the problems of soil was painted by the National Geographic magazine in a recent edition.

“By 1991, an area bigger than the United States and Canada combined was lost to soil erosion—and it shows no signs of stopping,” wrote agroecologist Jerry Glover in the article “Our Good Earth.” In fact, says Glover, “native forests and vegetation are being cleared and converted to agricultural land at a rate greater than any other period in history.

“We still continue to harvest more nutrients than we replace in soil,” he says. If a country is extracting oil, people worry about what will happen if the oil runs out. But they don’t seem to worry about what will happen if we run out of soil.

Adds Rattan Lal, soil scientist: “Political stability, environmental quality, hunger, and poverty all have the same root. In the long run, the solution to each is restoring the most basic of all resources, the soil.”

Edited by Lisa Vives

José Alberto Chacón weeds between bean plants on his small farm in Pacayas, on the slopes of the Irazú volcano, in Costa Rica. The terraces help control water run-off that would otherwise cause soil erosion. Credit: Diego Arguedas Ortiz/IPS

By Diego Arguedas Ortiz
ALVARADO, Costa Rica, Mar 4 2014 (IPS)

José Alberto Chacón traverses the winding path across his small farm on the slopes of the Irazú volcano, in Costa Rica, which meanders because he has designed it to prevent rain from washing away nutrients from the soil.

His careful husbandry ensures his crops of beans, maize and carrots on his half-hectare parcel of land, which like that of many other farmers in the Pacayas area, is located on steep slopes that are prone to the loss of the land’s fertile layers.

Chacón told IPS that he is constantly applying techniques like designing a winding path, and building terraces or containment walls with harvest leftovers, and he feels like an acrobat leaping from one measure to another to keep his family farm alive.

“It hurts to see soil being washed into the river. I’m getting older and my piece of land will always be the same size, so I have to find ways of making it flat with terraces, so as to keep working it as long as God wills,” said the 51-year-old Chacón, who is married and has three children.

One of his children helps with the sale of excess produce. His 50-year-old wife, Irma Rosa Loaiza, shares the farm work. “We are a model of family agriculture. She comes out to the plot of land itself to help,” said her husband.

The community of Pacayas, one hour east of San José, is located on the eastern end of the fertile Costa Rican central valley, between the Irazú and Turrialba volcanos. The population density is higher than the national average and it receives 2,300 millimetres of rain a year, on slopes of up to 70 percent.

Now climate change is another factor, increasing rainfall and soil erosion. The Ministry of Environment and Energy estimates that erosion has reduced agricultural GDP by 7.7 percent between 1970 and 1989.

The 2014 agricultural census may show a worsening of the situation in this Central American country of 4.4 million people, where agriculture contributed 10.7 percent of GDP in 2000 but 8.67 percent in 2012, according to official figures.

Chacón, wearing black rubber boots and a white hat for protection against the sun, proceeds along the cultivated rows. His field has a 50 percent slope, and there is a height difference of up to 20 centimetres between one maize row and another, sufficient for rainwater not to pour straight down to the Pacayas river in the canyon below.

Farmers in Pacaya cultivate crops on a slant across the slope so that rains will not wash away their soil. In this micro-basin, 68 percent of the fields have a slope of more than 30 percent. Credit: Diego Argueda Ortiz/IPS

He is a subsistence farmer, like the rest of the farmers in the area, whose parcels are an average area of 2.5 hectares and who eke their living out of the mountainside. If their crops fail, they do not eat; if they overplant and the soil is washed away, they also fail to put food on the table.

“There has to be a balance between sustainability and food security. I can’t tell local people: this land is unfit for agriculture, you should plant forests, because it is all they have,” agricultural scientist Beatriz Solano, assigned to the area for the past 17 years by the Ministry of Agriculture and Livestock, told IPS.

A study published in 2013 by the journal Environmental Science & Policy describes how “a combination of extreme precipitation, steep topography and questionable land use has led to heavy erosion and impairment of soil regulation services” in the area.

Even families with land on gentler slopes have had to apply new techniques. The certified organic farm Guisol is an example. Its owners, 68-year-old María Solano and 43-year-old Marta Guillén, work small parcels using live hedges to contain erosion, as they showed IPS.

Not all the area’s producers are aware of the importance of such actions. A survey carried out in 2010 by a researcher with the inter-American Tropical Agronomy Research and Training Centre (CATIE), based in this country, found that seven out of 10 farmers in Pacayas did not use soil protection techniques.

Moreover, the small size of the farms means that they do not benefit from payment for forest cover, the preferred system of erosion control in Costa Rica.

Experts say the latest soil conservation practices in family agriculture will be essential in Pacayas, because of the changes in rainfall patterns.

“There used to be steady rainfall from October to January or February, with thick mist. Now it’s more unstable, and without water potatoes do not grow, and it is farmers who lose out, because seeds and fertilisers are increasingly expensive,” 68-year-old farmer Guillermo Quirós, who had to rebuild the drainage channels on his farm two years ago, told IPS.

In 2011 researcher Carlos Hidalgo of the National Institute of Agricultural Innovation and Technology Transfer concluded a research study monitoring soil management in the area.

“It’s a process that has to include all the actors, including municipalities, producers and research centres,” Hidalgo told IPS in his office in San José.

The multi-disciplinary effort is making progress. Every two months, the soil management committee for the Birrís river basin, a group made up of different sectors, meets in Alvarado municipality to which Pacayas belongs. There they plan their work for the next period.

This month the modest town hall of Alvarado hosted the first meeting of 2014, presided over by local environment manager Gabriela Gómez, and seven out of the eight participants were women. In Pacayas, men carry out most of the agricultural work and women take on local planning and conservation.

“We’re gong to ask the TEC (Technological Institute of Costa Rica) to do a study of run-off, so we can improve the ditches, prevent flooding in the lowlands of the district and reduce erosion,” Gómez told IPS. She has led environmental initiatives that have achieved nationwide recognition.

Pacayas is located in the Birrís river basin, a hydrographical complex rising in the mountains above the town, which feeds the hydropower plants of the Costa Rican Electricity Institute (ICE).

The Institute spends close to four million dollars a year removing sediment derived from soil erosion from its reservoirs.

Meanwhile, Chacón and other small farmers keep building terraces following the contours of their plots, to prevent the rains from stripping their topsoil.

The impact is clearly visible. On the other side of the river that borders his field, the earth is reddish and bare and there are only a few green patches lower down the slope. “That soil has already been eroded,” said agricultural scientist Solano.

A sand mining site in Dominica. Credit: Desmond Brown/IPS

By Desmond Brown
CODRINTON, Barbuda, Jun 22 2013 (IPS)

Arthur Nibbs was known for his staunch opposition to sand mining in his homeland of Barbuda, a Caribbean island with dazzling white sand beaches that comprise most of its deserted coastline.

But Nibbs, the chairman of the Barbuda Council, has had a change of heart because of the economic hardships residents face here, he said.

He is dismissing warnings by environmentalists that sand mining has exceeded safe limits and that its continuation is placing Barbuda, the tiny island in the Antigua and Barbuda union, at ever-greater risk from storms and sea level rise.

“Reality has set in,” Nibbs told IPS, noting that the council is currently in deep financial trouble. “Our finances usually come from the central government,” he explained, but the government itself is in “a precarious situation”."Sand mining...is the only revenue source that we have."
-- Arthur Nibbs

“We are forced to continue…sand mining because that’s the only revenue source that we have, and we need to meet our obligations on a daily basis,” he said.

“Would you prefer to appear to be protecting the environment and then have your people going hungry with no food on their table and people can’t pay their bills?” he asked.

Barbuda, one of the lowest lying islands in the Caribbean, has been labelled as one of those most vulnerable to the effects of climate change, with local scientists complaining that the 62-square-mile island, made up of wetlands, is becoming one of the most vulnerable spots on earth with respect to the consequences of climate change.

A year ago, Nibbs criticised then-council chairman Kelvin Punter’s decision to resume sand mining as “foolishness”.

He is fully aware that he now appears to be flip-flopping on the subject.

“I’m sure the whole of Antigua and Barbuda is accustomed to hearing me talk about sand mining and the damage that it has done to the environment,” he agreed, noting that he had “every intention” of trying to move away from the practise.

“But that just was not possible,” he argued. “You have to take care of the people right now.”

Nibbs is not against a long-term development strategy for the island, but he says that “sitting down making up a development plan will not pay your bills” and that developing such a plan and finding ways to meet people’s daily needs must occur simultaneously.

He is optimistic that under his leadership Barbuda will pull itself out of this situation, and he pointed to planned development in the form of hotel resorts in about 18 months to two years.

“We do need something that can give us money quickly,” Nibbs said. “Sand mining is the only thing.”

Digging a deeper hole

But marine biologist John Mussington is worried Barbuda is digging its way off the planet.

“Where do they intend to get the sand from? Do they intend to dig such a hole that they sink Barbuda?” he questioned.

Sand mining here began in 1976 and by the mid-1990s, major environmental reports were warning that the extent of mining was causing irreparable damage.

“The fact of the matter is [that]…in 2006, the technicians from the environment division came to Barbuda and they were so shocked and appalled at the damage that was being done that they called for an immediate halt to sand mining,” Mussington told IPS.

The technicians said that in the long run, mining would expose Barbuda to many consequences of climate change, and they recommend that the island cease mining.

Following a 2006 cabinet decision, Mussington said, the technicians conducted surveys, and 103 acres were allocated for sand mining. But within a year and a half, those 103 acres were exhausted.

“Sand was supposed to be taken out following certain strict guidelines but the guidelines were never followed. The acreage given was exhausted.”

Calling large-scale sand mining a “destructive and irrational practice”, Eli Fuller, a marine environmentalist, offered alternatives means of income for Barbudans, including light tackle and deep-sea sport fishing.

Fuller added that cruise tourism could also be a source of income. “Many of the ships visiting some of the Caribbean’s most celebrated destinations anchor offshore and tender their guests to little docks on the mainland,” he said.

“Without any significant investment, this could happen in Barbuda almost immediately. One or two small ships a week could provide significantly more employment than the entire mining industry does in Barbuda,” Fuller added.

In the neighbouring island of Nevis, authorities have adopted a zero tolerance approach to sand mining.

Premier Vance Amory told IPS that the wellbeing of the island’s pristine environment is of utmost importance to his administration.

“The erosion of our coastline has cost us a loss of significant historical proportions,” he said. Illegal sand mining “reduces the beauty of the beaches”, which are critical for tourism, he said. It also leads to erosion and creates a situation that makes breaking the law more likely in other areas.

“We are intent as an administration on restoring respect for our environment,” Amory added.

The minister of agriculture in the Nevis Island administration, Alexis Jeffers, said sand mining is hurting marine life on the island.

“The sand is there for a reason,” he told IPS. “If we remove it, we remove a particular element of the ecosystem that would create problems for the future generations to come.”

Disaster officials are blaming the floods in Trinidad on the denudation of hillsides by builders and "slash and burn” farming. Credit: Peter Richards/IPS

By Peter Richards
PORT OF SPAIN, Trinidad, May 12 2013 (IPS)

Officially, the Caribbean’s rainy season begins in June, coinciding with the start of the hurricane season. But recently, heavy rains have signalled an early start to the rainy season, flooding streets, swelling rivers and causing widespread damage to crops.

“With global warming, you have to expect anything these days,” Shiraz Khan, president of the Trinidad and Tobago Farmers’ Association (TTFA), told IPS.

He said the situation has been further complicated by the fact that during the dry season, many people were harming “greenery”, destroying water paths and hurting lands farmers use for planting."With global warming, you have to expect anything these days."
-- Shiraz Khan

“This is basically what is happening throughout the country,” he said, warning consumers to brace for increased food prices as helpless farmers watch their crops being destroyed by floods.

Dhano Sookho, president of the Agricultural Society of Trinidad and Tobago, told IPS that the “water channels are not being maintained”. He is calling for the establishment of an inter-agency group including the government to work out solutions to the problem.

The government, which in the past has had to compensate farmers to the tune of millions of dollars for lost crops due to floods, says it will undertake an early assessment of the situation and that “the timely submission of claims will ensure a speedy disbursement of relief”.

Devant Maharaj, food production minister, said that as soon as claims are lodged with the necessary authorities, then a schedule of payments will be made, even as Khan noted that in some areas, farmers’ losses were as high as 100 percent.

Harmful practises

But disaster officials are blaming the floods on the denudation of the hillsides by builders and on the practises of so-called “slash and burn” farmers to clear lands for cultivation.

Hills have a natural cycle of replenishment during the dry season, said Stephen Ramroop, head of Disaster Preparedness and Management (ODPM), while addressing a meeting of the Inter-Governmental Coordination Group for the Tsunami and other Coastal Hazards Warning System for the Caribbean here last week.

Because of this natural cycle, fires cannot be stopped altogether, he said, adding that people must not be allowed to build their homes illegally and in a manner that allows them to be in the path of danger.

He told the meeting of a recent aerial reconnaissance of the hillsides in Trinidad and Tobago.

“What we saw was that a lot of the water that was spilling onto the roads because people put gravel and sand in the drains… clogging waterways and causing flooding,” he said, noting that in the past few months, the authorities cleared several waterways only for the situation to be repeated.

“We can’t keep clearing the drains that people are blocking up,” he warned.

The coalition People’s Partnership government has warned that it will adopt a tough stance against those building structures and not following to various codes.

Those “bad developers” would have no choice but to adhere to the standards once the National Spatial Strategy is developed and implemented, said Bhoendradatt Tewarie, the minister of planning and sustainable development.

“When I became minister, I did not want to go for any kind of heavy enforcement because the situation was unclear, the rules were not clear, [and] it was so arbitrary,” he said. Now, he said, once national and regional strategies are in place, “we are going to be very strict about new development and the standards they adhere to.”

“I am not joking about this,” he told IPS.

Tewarie said that 12 new enforcement officers and other officials have already been employed and are in training to “align” enforcement with “the new spatial development strategy and the new regional and community development strategies”.

He has warned that if contractors behave “like citizens who do not care,” then strong action will be taken.

The government intends to introduce a planning and development bill that would focus on “big development”, such as those projects undertaken by the state or private developers. It would also hand local governmental bodies approvals for housing developments in the communities.

The greenhouse option

But even as the authorities grapple with the causes of the floods here, a local marketing and distributing company says it can provide the technology that would allow farmers to produce higher quality and increased food crops throughout the year.

The company says it has teamed up with the U.S.-based Atlas Manufacturing to install affordable greenhouses following requests from farmers who had been exposed to the technology before.

“The farmers told us the problems they were having. They wanted us to retrofit a greenhouse suited to our climate,” said Fareed Rahaman, the technical director within the agricultural and industrial department of the local company M&D.

“[The] greenhouse will have a tonne of opportunities and benefits to farmers,” he told IPS.

Speaking during a demonstration exercise last week, he said a single farmer can produce roughly 1,000 pounds of tomatoes weekly from 1,000 plants, indoor production that significantly outweighs that of the outdoors.

“In the rainy season, what you find is that prices of crops tend to go up. If you want to maintain crops at reasonable prices throughout the year, you would have to go undercover,” he said. He pointed out that during the rainy season, soil nutrients diminish and erosion increases, factors that work against farmers and decrease overall output.

A field in Jacmel, near Port-au-Prince, which was devastated by the January 2010 earthquake. Credit: Patricia Grogg/IPS

By Patricia Grogg
PORT-AU-PRINCE, Apr 12 2013 (IPS)

In Haiti, a simple spring shower that would barely be noticed in most countries can cause devastating floods, due to the severe deforestation and erosion that impedes the absorption of rain.

And the increasing frequency and intensity of rainfall and other meteorological phenomena, which scientists say are affected by climate change, are aggravating this country’s already severe food security problems.

These risks are among the biggest challenges in developing sustainable agriculture, said Philippe Mathieu, a former agriculture minister and current adviser to the United Nations World Food Programme (WFP).

The expert said it was necessary to help small farmers obtain more resistant varieties of plants and production systems adapted to climate change, and to address problems like drought and tropical storms. “We also have to work with the community, train people in prevention,” he said in an interview with IPS.

Wilson Sanon, a popular educator and official with the Haitian Platform for the Defence of Alternative Development, concurred with Mathieu.

“To adapt to climate change that could accentuate the problems of the agricultural sector, farmers must receive training in agroecological practices, and people should be enabled to share their experiences at a local, regional and international level,” he told IPS.

But Sanon also said his country needed training of extension workers, land reform, access to soft credit, capacity-building for small farmers, grain storage and transport facilities, secure markets, and a 30 to 35 percent increase in customs duties to protect national production from the invasion of cheap imports.

“Small farmers need capacity-building,” said Mathieu. “What we need is a mix: intensive farming can be practiced on large swaths of public land, while small-scale farmers are given incentives to become more efficient by combining crops for family consumption with crops to sell or export.”

Agriculture accounts for a quarter of Haiti’s GDP and 60 percent of available jobs.

According to a report by Oxfam America, the agricultural sector in Haiti declined by four percent from 2000 to 2010 due to soil erosion, insufficient investment in irrigation and agricultural inputs, and the growing impact of climate change.

The indiscriminate felling of trees over the last two centuries was a direct cause of the degradation of about two-thirds of Haiti’s arable land.

This island nation’s mountains have been almost completely stripped of vegetation, and when it rains, the soil is washed downhill. The government hopes to increase forest cover from two to five percent of the national territory in the next three years, by means of a wide-ranging plan.

To bolster agriculture in such adverse conditions, Mathieu said the most important thing was to carry out programmes that combine a focus on the environment – such as the restoration of soils – with measures to boost productivity.

“Not enough food is produced for local consumption,” he added.

The WFP adviser said 55 percent of the food consumed by Haitians is imported, a direct consequence of the trade liberalisation policies that began to be implemented by dictator Jean-Claude Duvalier (1971-1986) in 1983.

These neoliberal policies, which are still in effect, led to a drop in agricultural output and revenue, he explained.

To increase output, Mathieu recommended crops suitable to the months outside of hurricane season, which runs June through November. He also suggested that small farmers adopt farming techniques, such as drip irrigation and greenhouses, that help mitigate risks.

He said the biggest efforts should focus on producing more, starting with areas where there is “a certain level of competitiveness,” such as cassava and sweet potatoes, to later integrate production in an agroforestry system that preserves the environment.

“From my point of view, the first thing is to increase yields, and at the same time, develop agriculture that protects the environment. Once that is ensured, a bigger challenge is to incorporate value-added into products, the benefits of which should reach small farmers,” he said

Mathieu explained that efforts towards that end had been put in motion, with good results. But he added that it was necessary to integrate them into a clear state policy.

“The Agriculture Ministry has documents on agricultural policy, although there is nothing concrete on the ground as yet,” he said.

He also stated that it was necessary to raise public awareness of the threats posed by climate change in a country that is highly vulnerable to extreme meteorological events and which has the highest poverty rate in the hemisphere. “People are not prepared to weather disasters that could be even worse in the future,” the former minister said.

He added that one of the main focuses of environmental education should be climate change.

“When people have to deal with so many challenges just to survive day to day, it’s hard to talk to them about problems that will be faced 50 years from now, like the rise in sea level. But sending out an alert and anticipating what lies ahead is a duty of the organised part of society and also the state,” he said.

Hotel in Antigua. Most hotels in the Caribbean are built on the beaches and coasts. Credit: Desmond Brown/IPS

By Desmond Brown
BASSETERRE, St. Kitts, Oct 17 2012 (IPS)

The postcards portray sand, sea and sun. But key players in the Caribbean tourism industry are warning that it’s time to shift gears away from the region’s threatened coastlines and instead promote inland attractions like biodiversity.

“Climate change is one of the things that is affecting the hotel industry, and the fact that most of our hotels are right on the beaches (means) they are subject to violent storms, the frequency of which has been projected to increase due to climate change issues,” hotelier and social entrepreneur Valmiki Kempadoo told IPS.

“Outside of Trinidad and maybe a large country like Jamaica, tourism is by far the largest economic driver of these smaller islands…and we have to seek new solutions, new business models that could take this thing into the 21st century,” he said.

Kempadoo is urging his regional counterparts to move their properties away from the beaches, noting that in light of the effects of climate change “having a hotel at 500 feet or 1,000 feet above sea level can help in that general direction”.

He said while the Caribbean is known best for its beaches, there are also lots of other experiences the different islands can offer.

“The climate away from the beaches is much better. It’s an incredibly fertile place where we can grow all these amazing exotic tropical fruits and vegetables that we have a world class collection of,” he said.

“We can offer beautiful hikes, we can offer beautiful views and a beautiful experience without the high humidity and the other things that come with having a hotel on the seaside,” Kempadoo added.

Dominica’s Tourism Minister Ian Douglas knows only too well the devastating effects of climate change on the tourism-dependent economies of the Caribbean.

In fact, he told IPS Dominica is probably one of the islands most affected by this global phenomenon.

“The islands are hit by hurricanes every year and that costs the islands millions (of dollars) to the point where governments have to look at some kind of disaster risk fund to mitigate against the damage,” he said.

“At least one of the islands gets hit every year and Dominica is no exception. In fact we are seeing a new phenomenon in Dominica right now where we are have massive flooding, something that was never before seen, and last year this caused considerable damage even to some of our tourism plants and equipment.”

Douglas noted that Dominica, with most of its hotels on the west coast on the Caribbean Sea, “takes a beating every year”.

And he said the island now has to grapple not only with sea surges and rising sea levels, but also severe flooding in its 365 waterways.

“We have about three of our rivers within the Canefield to Layou area experiencing massive flooding and villages had to be evacuated. Riverbanks were flooded out, bridges and homes were destroyed to the point where government had to actually give families grants for short-term replacements.

“I’ve said all of that to tell you how much climate change continues to affect Dominica. It’s an issue that we continue to grapple with. We actually have a department formulated specifically for dealing with the challenges posed by climate change,” he added.

Sam Raphael, the owner of Jungle Bay Hotel in Dominica, smiles at the suggestion from Valmiki Kempadoo.

He said when he established his jungle resort several years ago, “it was out of an acknowledgement that it is imperative that we make some radical changes and improvement to our tourism industry if it is to survive.

“A few years ago, our industry accepted a false choice between enterprise development and protecting our fragile natural environment. The empowerment and capacity building of our people to be the entrepreneur drivers of the primary industry of our region, our daily bread, was not a priority,” he said.

Nestled in the forests along Dominica’s east coast, the Jungle Bay Hotel focuses on nature-based activities and wellness of guests.

Grenada is also moving to diversify its sun, sand and sea tourism product. And as the island moves towards greater sustainability, Tourism Minister Dr. George Vincent points to the importance of the energy sector.

“We are working with the electricity company to produce alternative energy in the form of wind. We are encouraging the hotels to do solar energy to replace fuel costs. But the sustainable tourism thing is where we’re heading,” he said.

“I tell folks — long ago things like IT and languages were important. Now, they are only platforms to build on. So we are building a sustainable platform, and we will. Everything down the road is supposed to be sustainable, green, eco-friendly. So we have the energy, we have the preservation, we have the rainforest, and we have a number of marine parks that are well-preserved.

“So we’re doing fine in the area of preservation, and we are now going to convert that preservation to use, and make it work for us. So we feel that Grenada benefits greatly from preservation and conservation,” Dr. Vincent, who took over the tourism portfolio in May of this year, added.

A recent State of the Industry Conference, held here Oct. 10-12, was facilitated by the region’s tourism development agency, the Caribbean Tourism Organisation (CTO).

Secretary General Hugh Riley told delegates the Caribbean is experiencing the toughest economic conditions since the Great Depression. He urged hoteliers and other tourism stakeholders to assemble all the creativity, discipline and collective resources they have and use them wisely for the good of the region.

“We have to determine what it takes for small, vulnerable tourism economies to effectively compete in an arena that is populated by large industrialised countries with vastly superior budgets and the power to pass legislation that discriminates against us, impacts our competitive position and further shifts the balance of power in the direction of the already powerful,” he said.

“The good news is that we in the Caribbean have more than a few cards to play. We in this cluster of small populations are bold enough to assemble and decide that we can come together as One Caribbean, enlist some of this industry’s sharpest minds, elect leaders, thrash out ideas and mold them into actions that allow us to win in this environment,” he said.

Ordinarily they live for at least half a century. But at least 20,000 leatherback sea turtle hatchlings never made it past their nesting ground at Grand Riviere, a stretch of shoreline along Trinidad’s north coast, in what’s been described as “an engineering disaster” last weekend.

Instead, the hatchlings and eggs were destroyed by heavy duty earth-moving equipment brought in by authorities to halt erosion and save homes and businesses in the area. The erosion was being caused by the Grand Riviere River, which authorities said started meandering away from its natural course last December.

“The remedial work was deemed an emergency due to the drastic and sudden erosion that had taken place in an extremely short space of time,” the Ministry of the Environment and Water Resources said in a statement.

A makeshift hatchery for leatherback turtles. Volunteers at Grande Riviere saved at least 500 hatchlings from heavy duty machinery used to halt erosion. Credit: Desmond Brown/IPS

The erosion was endangering “several buildings, including a hotel (that) is one of the most popular tourist accommodations during the turtle nesting season”. “The Ministry remains concerned about the welfare of the turtle nesting site and the sea creatures that make their home on that space,” the statement added.

The government department said it was unfortunate that in its efforts to halt the degradation of the area, some of the eggs and hatchlings there were negatively affected.

But Planning Minister Dr. Bhoe Tewarie said the actions that led to the death of the endangered leatherback turtle hatchlings should not be excused.

“The people who operated the equipment in there and the company that operated it….should be held to account,” Tewarie said, adding that “the government as a whole needs to address the issue of the incompatibility of policy issues which emerge”.

“The ministries need also to align their strategies and their actions to the policy framework within which the government is operating. And there is no deviation from the fact that the policy framework is sustainable development, and we need to get in line and get on board with that issue,” he added.

“The impact is not as severe as has been claimed”

But Dr. Joth Singh, the chief executive officer of the Environmental Management Agency (EMA), said that while he regretted the tragedy, the remedial work would ultimately save many more eggs and hatchlings, as the river would have washed away parts of the beach that were more nest intensive.

“The intervention was imperative, if not, there would have been significant impact on the nesting areas left and the season is still ongoing. The fact is that the impact is not as severe as has been claimed and circumstances were created where the authorities were made to appear to have been negligent,” he said.

Newly appointed Environment Minister Ganga Singh said that it is not in the “DNA” of Trinidad and Tobago to destroy the nesting grounds of the turtles and that the works were not carried about arbitrarily but after proper consultation.

He insists that the best interests of the community had to be considered.

But Sherwin Reyz of the Grande Riviere Environmental Organisation said that the dredging was unnecessary.

“This is the part of the beach (with) the most nests…thousands of eggs and hatchlings were lost,” Reyz said, adding, “we all agree that the work had to be done but we believe they did not have to dig up the whole beach”.

Calling for an investigation

In a swift response to the tragedy, Nalini Dial, chair of the non-governmental organisation (NGO) Animals Are Humans Too, called on Prime Minister Kamla Persad-Bissessar to launch a full investigation into the incident.

Dial said her organisation was “aghast and distressed at the mindless, needless, callous killing of hundreds of baby turtle hatchlings” and that the killings were yet another demonstration of the lack of concern the four-party coalition People’s Partnership government and the Environmental Management Authority (EMA) show to the voiceless people.

Like Tewarie, Dial said the perpetrators should be held accountable, noting that the leatherback turtles are an endangered species “and anyone found guilty of harming them should be punishable by law”.

Grande Riviere is Trinidad’s most nest-intensive beach during the laying season of sea turtles, including the critically endangered leatherback, and is the third most prolific site in the world. The nesting season runs from May to September every year.

In May of this year, the EMA held a Sea Turtle Convention, to bring focus to the protection of these critically endangered marine animals. Leatherbacks, the largest sea turtle, can grow to almost 10 feet and weigh 800 pounds.

All turtles are regarded as critically endangered worldwide, according to the Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species of Fauna and Flora (CITES), to which Trinidad and Tobago is a signatory.

Tragic, but not devastating

One Caribbean turtle conservationist said the destruction at Grande Riviere would not significantly affect the reproductive output of the nesting ground and would not accelerate the decline of the species.

Len Peters, head of Turtle Village Trust said that although the destruction was unfortunate, much of the nesting area had already been lost to the river.

“We would have lost more nesting space eventually. We didn’t lose a lot of eggs, although this is an engineering disaster,” he said.

The executive director of the Wider Caribbean Sea Turtle Conservation Network, Karen Eckert, agreed that the incident will not significantly affect the reproductive output of the beach “and certainly will not accelerate the global decline of leatherback sea turtles”.

Scientists says sea turtle population, already under pressure from over-exploitation, fisheries bycatch and habitat modification face potentially serious problems from changing sea conditions in their nesting areas as a result of climate change.

Reclamation of desertified, sandified land on either side of the Sudu desert road in Wengniute County, China, is well under way. Credit: Manipadma Jena/IPS

By Manipadma Jena
CHIFENG, Inner Mongolia, China, Jul 5 2012 (IPS)

As scientists increasingly label desertification as one of the most burning challenges facing the world today, a small village in China’s semi-arid Northeastern region of Inner Mongolia is fighting back.

Chifeng City’s dry climate and sparse vegetation have given way to severe surface erosion and poor soil fertility. Agriculture and animal husbandry, the two economic cornerstones of Chifeng City’s nine counties and three districts, are increasingly threatened by the spell of desertification, though afforestation began as early as 1940.

Chifeng City identified deforestation and plowing of hill slopes, continued overuse of sandified farmlands and intensive grazing as the main culprits of the problem, in a region low in plant density and productivity.

Degraded land, shorn of its green cover, became increasingly vulnerable to the March-May spring season’s high velocity winds, which, according to researchers, deposit an average of 35 tonnes of sand on a single square kilometre over a one-month period.

Fighting back

Qihetang, a 228-household village in Chifeng’s Linxi County, is experiencing an ecological disaster due to deforestation and over-grazing. By 1990, its per capita income was 300 yuans, or 50 dollars, and each family harvested a meager 150 kilogrammes of grain from average landholdings of roughly two hectares on the lower hill slopes, which led to rampant out-migration.

In 1992 the local village committee decided to fence hillsides, plant fruit trees and prohibit open grazing. In 2000, the State government chipped in with finance and technical advice for the green conversion. It gave ‘Grain for Green’ subsistence subsidies of 50 yuans (roughly eight dollars) and 200 kilogrammes of grain. Later it allocated 160 yuans, or 25 dollars, for each unit of land owned by farming families, said Cao Wenzhong, director general of the Inner Mongolia Forestry Department.

Of its total area of 2,154 hectares, Qihentang village today boasts a green cover of 80 percent with fruit trees, pines and resuscitated grasslands.

“Per capita income has (shot up) to 8,000 yuans (1,260 dollars) from fruit and timber trading. Farmers are even buying tractors,” Zhang Chun Jie, the head of the village, told IPS.

“Only the severe winter months see migration these days; but many stay home to process farm-grown crepe apples, pears and apricots, grass for fenced animals’ fodder and wood for panels. Tourism is a nascent industry too,” Jie said.

“More than two billion hectares of degraded land worldwide are suitable for rehabilitation through forest and landscape restoration, the majority of it through a combination of agro-forestry and smallholder farming,” Mansour N’Diaye, Chef de Cabinet of the United Nations Convention to Combat Desertification (UNCCD), said at a workshop in Chifeng earlier this year.

Situated directly in the middle of Chifeng, close to the Horqin Sandy Land – which is the primary source of sand drift in the region and one of the four major sand drift sources in China – Wengniute County is the most vulnerable to sandification, and the most important focus of the country’s desertification control programme.

Since October last year, 400,000 hectares of severely sandified land on either side of the Sudu desert-crossing highway in Wengniute County are being painstakingly converted to forests and landscapes. The protective tree barrier – built to stop high-velocity sand and wind – covers 120,000 hectares.

“Reclamation, using (labour) and machinery, costs 7,500 yuans or 1,180 dollars per hectare. The survival rate of indigenous sand-tolerant species like Chinese and Mongolian pine, yellow willow, and eight varieties of shrubs, is 75 percent,” Wang Feiyue of the Farmland Conversion Office told IPS.

While many believe that successful reclamation efforts rest on the government encouraging farmers to reduce livestock numbers or relocate away from arid areas, others believe the temporary displacement of farming communities throws up its own socio-cultural challenges.

In most grassland reclamations the government buys the land from farmers and herdsmen before the project is even launched. For five years all production and grazing is prohibited; from the sixth year seasonal and rotational land-use is allowed.

When a wave of protests in May last year swept across Inner Mongolia, where ethnic Mongolians comprise 20 percent of a population of 23 million people, experts pinned the cause to disruption of deep cultural ties between traditional nomadic ways of life and the grasslands.

China’s 12th Five-Year Plan aims to resettle the remaining nomad population of 1.1 million by 2015.

“We definitely need to better understand the traditional nomadic culture on the steppes here. Nomadic herdsmen are not comfortable with static agriculture. Governments may seek limiting the number of grazing animals (14 million in Chifeng City in 2008) but herdsmen want to own more animals; they lose two-thirds of their stocks to the winter cold,” said Yang Youlin, Asia regional coordinator for the United Nations Convention to Combat Desertification (UNCCD).

China on a knife’s edge

China is currently saddled with a colossal 2.6 million square-kilometre area of desertified and sandified land – almost a quarter of the country’s total territory, covering 18 provinces and impacting 400 million people.

China’s national desertification control programmebudgets five billion dollars annually to this crucial work and 19 ministries work together under the National Bureau to Combat Desertification.

Xu Qing, deputy director general of the programme, says China aims to reclaim half the 530,000 square-kilometre treatable area by 2020, and hopes to reclaim the area in its entirety by 2050.

Quoting results from the third round of national desert monitoring, Jia Xiaoxia, director of China’s Implementation of the Convention to Combat Desertification (CICCD), says the degree of sandy desertification has gone from 3,436 square kilometers in 1999 to 1,283 square kilometers annually.

China has emerged as a leader in fighting sandy desertification by resorting to a combination of scientific eco-construction and land conversion combined with suitable laws and policies that   offer lessons for similarly affected regions.

A global crisis

The conference on sustainable development in Rio, Brazil, may have ended last month, but burning environmental issues like desertification continue to make headlines.

“From Rio 1992 to Rio 2012 we have learned that desertification, land degradation and drought are drying up the ‘Future We Want’,” Luc Gnacadja, executive secretary of the UNCCD, warned at the closure of Rio+20.

“In 1992, the Rio meeting agreed to combat land degradation. Rio 2012 has given birth to a new paradigm, land-degradation neutrality,” he said.

The nearly 100 world leaders who gathered in Rio agreed to curb the growing gap between land degradation and its restoration, monitor it globally and improve and share related scientific information including forecasting and early warning systems.

“Desertification, the most urgent land crisis (of our time) affects over 40 percent of the world’s total land area. Asia has the largest desertified area of 1.7 billion hectares; the African continent is two-thirds dryland of which 71 percent is impacted by desertification, land degradation and drought (DLDD). Worldwide 110 countries have drylands that are potentially at DLDD risk,” Youlin informed attendees at the Chifeng workshop.

“By 2030, the demand for food is likely to increase by 50 percent, and by 45 percent for energy and 30 percent for water. Each of these demands will claim more land. This would lead to more deforestation unless we commit to restore degraded land,” Gnacadja stressed.

(END)