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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Edited by Phil Harris   

In Egypt, some families are turning to bio-gas digesters that convert organic waste into methane for fuel. Credit: Cam McGrath/IPS

By Cam McGrath
CAIRO, Jun 12 2013 (IPS)

The bio-gas digester on the roof of Hussein Farag’s apartment in one of Cairo’s poorest districts provides a daily supply of cooking gas produced from the kitchen waste his family would otherwise discard in plastic bags or empty into the clogged sewer below his building.

Constructed of two large plastic tubs and mostly recycled materials, the zero-emissions bio-gas unit saves his family about LE 20 (three U.S. dollars) a month in gas bills. And in the ramshackle Darb El-Ahmar district where Farag lives, that works out to nearly a day’s wage.

Farag’s bio-gas digester converts organic waste fed into its 1,000-litre plastic tank into methane gas that can be used to heat water or cook food. Ordinary kitchen waste – everything from food scraps, to stale tea and mouldy bread – is soaked overnight in water to soften, then poured into the tank’s bacteria-rich soup to decompose. A pipe carries the methane gas produced to the family’s kitchen stove.

“I just empty my kitchen waste into it, but anything organic will work as feedstock,” Farag told IPS.

The digester produces about two hours of gas a day in the summer, and slightly less in the cooler winter months, according to Farag. Every week he drains a few litres of dark effluent from the tank.

“I bottle the residue and sell it as organic fertiliser to garden shops,” he explains.

Farag says the unit, which he built for less than LE 1,000 in 2008 (180 U.S. dollars at the time), requires virtually no maintenance, as it has no mechanical parts.

“Egypt needs a system like this, because there is a lot more organic waste now that all the pigs are gone,” he says, referring to the nation-wide pig cull that the Egyptian government carried out in April 2009 in a knee-jerk reaction to the swine flu pandemic."Most families produce enough kitchen waste each day to produce enough gas to meet all their cooking and water needs."
--Hanna Fathy

Pigs were the linchpin of Cairo’s traditional waste management system, consuming up to a third of the 20 tonnes of daily waste produced by the city’s 18 million residents. Without them, the volume of “wet” waste has swollen, clogging sewers and landfills and piling high in city streets and empty lots.

The rotting heaps of organic rubbish attract flies and rats, creating vectors for disease.

Farag says initial support and funding for building bio-gas digesters came from Solar CITIES, a non-profit initiative to develop sustainable energy solutions for low-income families. The non-governmental organisation (NGO) helped build more than half a dozen bio-gas units in Cairo, as well as rudimentary solar water heaters constructed from local recycled materials, before its funding dried up.

In Manshiyet Nasr, another low-income Cairo district, Solar CITIES coordinator Hanna Fathy constructed his own bio-gas digester in 2009. He has since travelled extensively instructing residents of poor and off-grid communities on how to achieve energy independence through home bio-gas production.

“Most families produce enough kitchen waste each day to produce enough gas to meet all their cooking and water needs,” Fathy says.

Fathy, currently working on environmental projects outside Egypt, says the government’s energy subsidies discourage Egyptians from investing in sustainable energy solutions. Recovering the initial capital cost of a bio-gas digester can take up to ten years but would take just one year if subsidies were dropped.

“The government doesn’t provide incentives for families to switch to clean energy, so they stick with the cheapest short-term solution, which is to buy gas cylinders,” Fathy told IPS in an earlier interview.

More than 12 million Egyptian households rely on butane cylinders, which retail for LE 8 (1.15 dollars). The tanks last about two weeks and are not without problems.

Apart from the enormous burden the heavily subsidised gas cylinders put on the economy, shortages of imported butane have resulted in long queues at distribution outlets. Disputes over cylinders have even led to fatalities.

The poorly maintained gas cylinders also have an alarming tendency to explode, resulting in catastrophic kitchen fires and injuries.

Electrician Mohamed Rageb, whose wife was severely burned when the gas cylinder she was cooking with exploded in 2010, says the accident pushed him to consider switching to a bio-gas digester. Using a design he found on the Internet he plans to build a compact unit on his balcony.

“I think they are safer, and save time [spent queuing for gas cylinders],” he says.

While instalment plans are available for purchasing energy-consuming kitchen appliances and air conditioners, no credit facilities exist for families switching to green energy bio-gas. Rageb must borrow the full amount to buy the parts for his homemade digester. It could take years to recover the costs, but he is confident his gas bill savings will grow as Egypt’s cash-strapped government phases out energy subsidies.

“Without subsidies, a gas cylinder would cost about LE 100 (14 dollars) to fill,” he points out.

Rageb maintains that if the government would subsidise clean energy technologies instead of unsustainable conventional energy use, price-conscious low-income Egyptians would be the first to make the switch.