As thousands of Africans arrive in Europe every month, often risking their lives aboard shaky boats to get to a better life, lack of access to energy could be one of the reasons for their exodus.

Africa’s poverty challenges are well documented. In recent years there has been much discourse around how climate change worsens these challenges and could reverse the continent’s economic fortunes.

Lack of access to energy, for example has been mentioned here at COP 21 as one of the reasons why Africa’s young people leave the continent in search of opportunities, mostly in Europe.

While the International Organisation for Migration outlines that the linkages between human mobility and climate impacts are highly complex, it is critical to point out that, in most situations, people choose or are forced to migrate due to a number of factors and climate change could be the primary one or the key to many secondary factors.

Dr. Akinwumi Adesina, President of the African Development Bank agrees with this reasoning by highlighting lack of electricity in Africa as a reason for young Africans’ mass movement to Europe.

“Droughts all across Africa, the Sahel is burning, Lake Chad is dried-up, livelihoods are devastated, young people across Africa are jumping on boats, jumping to go to Europe because there are no economic opportunities,” Dr. Adesina told IPS at the COP 21 talks in Paris, France.

He says Africa’s lack of access to electricity is stopping the continent’s industrialization, costing Africa up to 4 per cent of its Gross Domestic Product (GDP).

“Africa has no electricity. And therefore, industrialization is not happening, the small and medium enterprises are not functioning at their full capacity. As a result, Africa today loses 3 to 4 per cent of its GDP for lack of electricity,” he said.

Linking his argument to migration, the AfDB President believes lighting-up Africa could transform the continent’s economic fortunes thereby according young people massive opportunities within their own countries.

“It’s also linked to migration by the way…if you turned off this light and it is dark, and you go to an area where there is light, even insects move from where there is dark to where there is light.

“So by lighting up and powering Africa, our young people will be staying on the continent because they can use electricity to do many things. Nobody works in the dark and succeeds, you walk in the dark you always stumble, you fall, that’s why we must light up and power Africa,” he said of the Africa Renewable Energy Initiative which was launched at the COP 21 talks, targeting 10 gigawatts in the next five years and 300 gigawatts by 2030.

This massive initiative dubbed Africa’s commitment to an ambitious outcome of the COP 21 climate deal will require billions of dollars to materialize.

Juxtaposing Europe’s migrant crisis that is set to cost as much as 5 billion dollars, and the cost of climate financing for Africa, there could be an opportunity for longer term investment in Europe addressing the migrant problem at its source.

Niclas Hällström, Director of What Next, a Swedish think-tank, says the renewable energy initiative provides an opportunity for Europe to make serious investments in its own interest.

“It is a moral imperative for developed countries to support Africa’s climate adaptation, but it is also in their interest.

“Take the newly launched Africa Renewable Energy Initiative. This bold effort by African countries is set to reach universal access for all Africans by latest 2030…It requires billions of dollars in climate finance, but will create jobs and enhanced well-being for people across the whole continent. Apart from the need to handle the refugee situations acutely, this is the best longer-term action one can think of,” said Hällström.

Climate finance has remained a sticking point in the climate negotiations for years. With few days to go before the end of COP 21, the trend has not changed much.

Dan Bodansky, Foundation Professor of Law and Faculty, Co-Director of the Center for Law and Global Affairs at the Sandra Day O’Connor College of Law at Arizona State University, shares insights on day 8 of the negotiations.

“Of the ‘crunch issues,’ finance is the most difficult…unlike the other issues, it may not be possible to paper over through artful wording, although the use of terms like “should” and “strive” may provide a middle ground,” he said, pointing out that the negotiating text that emerged from the ADP over the weekend still has many other brackets and options.

As negotiations enter the final frenzy hours with the text expected on Day 9, the African Group of Negotiators and other key stakeholders’ anxiety is reaching tipping points.

“The present reality at the conference confirms that countries have spent the first week restating their old positions leaving most of the key debates unresolved,” said Sam Ogallah of the Pan-African Climate Justice Alliance (PACJA), calling on Ministers to urgently inject energy into the process for a fair deal that would reflect the principle of Common But Differentiated Responsibility-CBDR and addresses the issues of loss and damage, finance for adaptation and mitigation and keeping the global warming well below 1.5 Celsius.

In adding impetus to the climate change and migration nexus, a report released by the International Fund for Agricultural Development (IFAD) at the COP 21 Talks, accuses world’s top media of failing to identify climate change as a contributor to some of the world’s biggest crises, including migration, food insecurity and conflict.

IFAD President, Kanayo Nwanze, said “If the world becomes aware of how climate change threatens our food security or why it is a catalyst for migration and conflict, then we can expect better support for policies and investments that can pre-empt future crises.”

Will developed countries at COP 21 recognise this argument? The world will know in a matter of hours.

(End)

Left to right: Juan Camilo Restrepo, Josefina Stubbs and Alex Segovia Credit: Juan Manuel Barrero/IPS

By Helda Martínez
BOGOTA, Apr 25 2013 (IPS)

International Fund for Agricultural Development (IFAD) initiatives working to overcome poverty and improve food security in the Colombian countryside can make a positive contribution to government efforts to tackle some of the most neglected problems facing this South American country.

“Rural development was forgotten in Colombia for a long time,” Minister of Agriculture and Rural Development Juan Camilo Restrepo said at a seminar on Monday Apr. 22, organised by IFAD and his ministry to share experiences linking the situation in rural areas with peace efforts in this country that has seen nearly 50 years of armed conflict.

“That’s why we’re now making great efforts to give rural development pride of place. But there is a long way to go,” Restrepo admitted at the opening of the seminar on “Desarrollo rural y construcción de territorios dinámicos y pacíficos” (Rural development and construction of dynamic and peaceful territories).

Recent indicators show progress has been made against poverty, but it is still concentrated in the rural areas where one-third of Colombia’s 47 million people live.

According to figures released Apr. 18 by the National Administrative Department of Statistics, while the overall poverty rate declined from 40.3 percent in 2009 to 32.7 percent in 2012, the urban rate last year was 28.4 percent compared to 46.8 percent in rural areas.

“The country needs to work extremely hard to give rural areas the importance they deserve, with or without a peace accord,” said the minister, referring to the talks taking place in Havana between the government and the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia (FARC) guerrillas, in which land reform is a key issue.

“The support we receive from IFAD, and events like this, contribute to increasing our resolve,” Restrepo said.

Josefina Stubbs, Latin America and Caribbean director of IFAD, said “Colombia today is at a crucial moment, redefining its frameworks, policies and laws for rural development.” That is why “this event is very important, as much for IFAD as for other development sectors here present,” she told IPS.

The Victims’ Law, in force since January 2012, provides for the restitution of lands taken by armed groups from campesinos or peasants and other people displaced by the conflict.

The government says it has already distributed over one million hectares and is waiting to recover another one million hectares of idle land to form a land bank. The authorities estimate that some 200,000 campesino families lack land to farm.

Another bill, the Law on Land and Rural Development, which Restrepo is promoting, is under consultation with indigenous and campesino communities before it is presented to Congress.

In this context, “strengthening dialogue with the Colombian government at this point is extremely important, because this country is trying to close the gaps of inequity and the large differences between urban and rural sectors, and very seriously re-thinking the processes of rural development in a way that would contribute effectively to poverty reduction,” said Stubbs.

IFAD’s experience in this field is vast. Through its Rural Opportunities Programme, shared with the government, “it has generated support covering 20,000 families and 400 businesses,” Roberto Haudry, IFAD country programme manager for Colombia and Peru, told IPS.

The Rural Opportunities Programme “is an off-shoot of another programme with which IFAD has contributed to public policies in Colombia through the strengthening of over 1,000 campesino enterprises involving some 120,000 families,” he added.

“The country is changing. It’s time to talk less theory and to put people to work with other people, with the state as a partner. We can have absolute confidence if small entrepreneurs are empowered to make changes in this country. Campesinos, young people and vulnerable sectors with a productive attitude will emerge from poverty under their own steam, with their own motivation and abilities, without intermediaries of any kind,” Haudry said.

This is what Teófila Betancourt has done. She is an Afro-descendant from Guapi, a small town on the Pacific ocean in the southwestern department of Cauca.

“We have worked for many years to improve people’s welfare, based on the recovery of traditional practices, food security, territorial solidarity and human rights, and we have made considerable progress,” she said.

There are 25 cooperatives in Guapi, with an average of 15 women each. They plant food crops for their own consumption, as well as aromatic and medicinal species, and they make jams, crafts and traditional musical instruments. They sell their produce in local markets and have gradually taken up the public space that had been occupied by vendors from other regions.

These producers have also opened a restaurant that promotes typical foods of the coastal region, and they offer accommodation to visitors.

Along the Pacific coast, there are 84 groups doing similar work. “We have been doing this for 22 years” and recently, “we have received support from IFAD through Fundación Acua (an Afro-descendants’ cultural organisation),” Betancourt said.

“They support us because they know what we contribute to the rural area of Guapi. And that’s why I’ve come here (to the seminar) today. Although I feel a bit like a fish out of water, I have learned that this is where we can find out exactly what the government is thinking and what it is doing,” she said.

Alex Segovia, technical secretary in the office of the president of El Salvador, described the experience of his country, where a 12-year civil war came to an end in 1992, and which is governed today by the Farabundo Martí National Liberation Front, the former guerrilla group that laid down its arms and took the path of electoral democracy.

“This debate is very important because rural development is combined with the urgent need for peace,” Miguel Fajardo, the head of the Centro de Estudios en Economía Solidaria (CEES – Centre for the Study of the Solidarity Economy), told IPS. He described the achievements of cooperativism in three provinces in the department of Santander, in the northeast of Colombia.

“There are signs of change linked to justice and land restitution in rural areas, and without a doubt minister Restrepo is presenting carefully thought-out reflections on issues that had practically vanished from the agenda over the past 20 years or more,” said Fajardo, a sociologist.

However, he expressed “uncertainty” about the advance of the mining industry in locations like Páramo de Santurbán, an area of rich biodiversity with a wealth of water resources, and in the region of Vélez, “which have been granted in concession to multinational corporations, with the result that the regions have become impoverished.”

Restrepo told IPS that “Colombia began a peace process in spite of ongoing armed conflict, which is not usual, but even within the conflict one must begin to think about what the post-conflict reality is going to be in every sense, and particularly in terms of rural development.

“Let us remember that real peace comes after an accord has been signed, when a country’s institutions achieve the administration of that peace and its adaptation to the times,” he said.

By Raúl Pierri
PUNTA DEL ESTE, Uruguay , Nov 1 2012 (IPS)

The countries of the developing South should remove the barriers still faced by small-scale farmers, because smallholders play a key role in economic growth, says Carlos Seré, the International Fund for Agricultural Development’s (IFAD) chief development strategist.

“National and regional policies need to eliminate cross-border delays and regulatory stonewalls faced by small farmers,” said the Uruguayan expert, who stressed that “Investment in smallholder agriculture and rural development is the foundation for economic growth.”

In this interview with IPS on the occasion of the Second Global Conference on Agricultural Research for Development (GCARD2), Seré also discussed the importance of helping women gain access to land and of taking into account the environmental challenges faced by smallholders, in support programmes.

Carlos Seré: “Investment along the entire value chain is key.” Credit: Courtesy of IFAD.

The Oct. 29-Nov. 1 conference held in the Uruguayan resort city of Punta del Este was organised by the Global Forum on Agricultural Research, in collaboration with the Consultative Group on International Agricultural Research (CGIAR) consortium.

Excerpts from the interview follow:

Q: The GCARD2 Road Map emphasises agricultural research and innovation for development. Is input from the ancestral knowledge of local communities – which has proved effective, for example, in the search for localised adaptations to climate change – being sidelined?

A: GCARD2 is a multi-stakeholder platform which is promoting partnerships in research for development. These are meant to forge alliances between advanced research institutions in the developed world, international agricultural research centres such as those of the CGIAR, and national agricultural research systems in the developing world.

The latter include national and local entities such as agricultural universities, civil society organisations, NGOs and farmer organisations, including indigenous peoples’ organisations, as full partners in the research process.

GCARD2 places an emphasis on the role of participatory technology development which builds on local knowledge and involves better understanding of people, their beliefs, their culture and other local socio-economic variables together with the bio-physical conditions.

Q: How can poor farmers adapt to new technologies and what criteria should guide investment in the sector?

A: For research to move from the lab to the field, it needs to be supported by a strong extension system and enabling policies that link research to products and markets so that the applications benefit both the public and private sectors.

The decision or choice to adopt new technologies is often quite complex for farmers, especially because they engage in agriculture for a variety of reasons such as generating income, providing for their own food consumption, buffering the impact of possible insecurity or shocks affecting other sources of income (for instance informal employment), and so forth.

Investment in the development of new technologies for adoption by small farmers should be guided by an understanding of the incentives and risks confronted by different types of farmer groups.

Therefore the need to focus more on research and innovation efforts to developing technologies that help farmers increase their productivity in ways that enable them to adapt better to harsher environments, water scarcity, and climate change.

Q: There are projects like the “Millennium Villages” which support small farmers in an interdisciplinary manner and have managed to increase yields. However, they still face logistical difficulties in accessing markets and ensuring that this increase will translate into higher revenues. How can this be fixed?

A: When small farmers in developing countries increase productivity, for a start, it can make a significant contribution to local and national food security and economic development – if they can, then, ensure that surplus food gets efficiently, safely from the farmer’s field to the market.

With extra money in the farmers’ pockets, we can then start to see true transformation for the developing world. Investment in smallholder agriculture and rural development is the foundation for economic growth.

If we want to make regional markets work, if we want to ensure developing countries’ food and economic security, then we must transform our infrastructure and the way we do business.

Roads, access to stable electricity, energy and running water, and good governance are also key to making the business environment attractive in developing countries Smallholder agriculture needs to be seen as a business.

National and regional policies need to eliminate cross-border delays and regulatory stonewalls faced by small farmers, to make it easy for them to get their produce from one country to the next.

Q: How successful can initiatives to provide inputs and training to small farmers in the South be, while subsidies in the North and barriers in international trade remain in place?

A: Proposals or schemes to provide inputs and training to farmers must be part of a broader package of initiatives to support agriculture-led development in developing countries – with maximising opportunities for access to markets.

However, while we recognise market distortions do exist and there are barriers to free trade, the low world food prices of the past that adversely affected agricultural incentives and performance have now changed dramatically.

Higher prices must come with opportunities for a supply response. We need comprehensive approaches to stimulating growth in the agriculture sector and in other rural sectors that can offer new entrepreneurial and employment opportunities.

Q: Women are the foundation of family farming in the developing world, but often the laws and customs of the countries limit their access to land. What is being done in this regard?

A: Gender equality is both a matter of fundamental human values and rights, but is now increasingly also clearly becoming more understood as a driver of economic efficiency in agriculture.

Women have major roles in all aspects of agricultural and food systems across the developing world.

Women are often the farmers of the developing world. Simply giving women the same access as men to agricultural resources and inputs could increase production on their farms by as much as 30 per cent and could reduce the number of hungry people in the world by 100 to 150 million people.

We know, from a number of studies, that when women earn money, they are more likely than men to spend it on food for the family.

When rural women are economically and socially empowered, they become a potent force for change. When it comes to access and control over land, in particular, this may translate into gender sensitive approaches in community-level institutions.

Thus, activities that have an impact on land access, building women’s capacity to be aware of their rights and able to claim them, supporting rural women to have access to identity cards so they can claim their entitlements over land are important enabling institutional responses, while technology systems must be responsive to time and labour saving for women.

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