Rayagada's tribal women look after community grain banks. Credit: Manipadma Jena/IPS

By Manipadma Jena
RAYAGADA, India, Apr 27 2012 (IPS)

Tribal farmer Harish Saraka has rediscovered the key to sustainable farming in this rain-dependent hinterland of eastern Odisha state – mixed cropping.

Saraka, 38, is careful not to take credit for helping to turn around farming in this area, in the news just a decade ago for starvation deaths. “All we are doing is returning to our grandfathers’ practices,” says this member of the Kondh tribe.

Saraka recalls that his forebears sowed three different seeds in the same field: millet, legume, oilseed and maybe a creeper bean.

The 72 Kondh households in Saraka’s village of Munda, in Rayagada district, reside in the foothills of the Niyamgiri Hills, stretching over 250 km, that the London-based mining major Vedanta Resources Plc has been trying to exploit for its bauxite deposits.

“The environs, the climate and the forests have changed drastically,” murmurs Bhima Saraka, 65, almost to himself, resting on a sagging string cot in front of the thatched house where he lives with 23 of his kinsmen.

The rains, he observes, are “regularly irregular”, resulting in crop losses year after year while Kondh families have grown in numbers, putting pressure on the forests they once shared with tigers and where they harvested tubers and fruits.

In 2010, amidst public outrage over a spate of farmers’ suicides over poor harvests and high interest on loans taken for farming inputs, the then agriculture minister Damodar Rout admitted that Odisha’s agriculture was in crisis, “impacted by climate change, erosion, dryness, soil acidity and falling ground water levels.”

For Harish Saraka and other subsistence farmers in 70 Niyamgiri villages in Rayagada, adapting to changing conditions meant reverting to traditional farming methods such as mixed cropping, the use of organic fertilisers and trusted seed varieties.

So, while farming has been failing elsewhere in Odisha, Harish Saraka has been cultivating not three but 14 crops on his half-hectare land since the last two years – enough to see his family through the lean August-December season.

“I now harvest 300 kg of food grains, a 200 percent increase from the earlier single-crop high-yield paddy farming,” says Saraka.

In Kerandiguda village, Loknath Nauri, 58, is the first to try mixed farming on a portion of his one-hectare hilly stream-fed land that he got under a government programme for the landless rural poor.

“Seeing my good harvest, ten other households here have decided to try their luck this year,” says Nauri, who is ready to share his seeds with them.

“The Kondhs’ once self-sufficient and local resource-based agriculture system was affected by the introduction of commercial high-yielding paddy,” says Debjeet Sarangi who heads ‘Living Farms’, a non-government organisation (NGO) that works with marginal farmers.

Bhima Saraka told IPS that a few years back, Munda villagers were lured into planting high-yielding paddy seeds given free by the government along with chemical fertilisers. “The seeds were old and many did not sprout, while the fertilisers demanded water, and we have no source except the rains,” he says.

“None got much out of this ‘free gift’ except an important lesson, that their local seeds – acclimatised to their dryland soil and more able to withstand monsoon’s unpredictability – were indeed their lifeline,” says Sunamajhi Pidika, Living Farms’s local field organiser.

Sarangi said tribal communities, “who neither cultivated nor ate rice traditionally, are now trying to re-establish their food sovereignty.”

‘Ailing Agricultural Productivity in Economically Fragile Region of India’ – a recent study published by the Bhopal-based Indian Institute of Soil Sciences found that the cultivation area for small millets in Odisha had declined by 500 percent over the last 40 years.

The popular perception is that the government policy is pushing in cash crops to the detriment of subsistence millet-farming practiced by communities like Bhima Saraka’s.

“The government is not coercing the tribal people, just putting intelligent choices before them,” said Nitin Bhanudas Jawale, administrative head of Rayagada district.

However, in April, it was decided to procure millet and make it available at fair price outlets, so that the tribal people could go back to their traditional food, Jawale said. “The U.N. World Food Programme is collaborating with us.”

“In discussions with village elders we came to know there are varieties of millets and pulses which can tolerate heat and water stress,” says Sarangi.

“I have heard my grandfather talk of the 11 varieties of millet that his father cultivated,” recounts 24-year-old Prasant Wadraka from Gandili village while waiting at the government’s tribal development office to collect free tin sheet roofing.

According to Wadraka, near-extinct millet varieties include one called ‘kodo’ which has medicinal properties to control diabetes. Millet is packed with protein, B-complex vitamins and minerals, nutritionists say.

“The movement in India to return to traditional seeds is growing stronger and at country inter-NGO level too we exchange seeds to supplement local communities’ seed needs,” says Sarangi.

In 2008, Living Farms began a programme of giving poor families seeds on condition that after harvest the same quantity would be returned plus 10 percent ‘interest’ to be put into grain banks.

Simple woven bamboo baskets sealed with thick clay-and cow dung daub, the grain banks are managed by Kondh women and opened only in times of need.

Just before the monsoons all the seed varieties are sown on the same field. These are a combination of niger (an oilseed), sorghum, millet varieties like finger, foxtail, pearl, pigeon pea and horse gram along with creeper beans.

Some of these will ripen in 90 days while others will take 120 days before harvest.

According to leading Indian agro-scientist M.S. Swaminathan, mixed cropping – that involves several cereals, pulses, oilseeds, vegetable and fodder crops – retards buildup of insect pests.

It is significant that tribal communities never use chemical inputs or even diesel irrigation pumps, and sell their produce in the local market.

“Their products have minimum carbon footprints,” Sarangi said. “In the imminent global climate crisis, we have much to learn from indigenous communities.”

* This article is one of a series supported by the Climate and Development Knowledge Network.

Explosives, high-watt light bulbs, monofilament nets, and poison: these are a few methods fisherfolk are using to catch ever-dwindling fish stocks off Ghana’s shores.

Thomas Essuman says Ghanaian fisherfolk know that using poison, dynamite and illegal nets to catch fish is doing long-term damage. Credit: Jessica McDiarmid/IPS

“Before, your boat was full,” says Thomas Essuman, a 20-year veteran of the seas around Takoradi- Sekondi, a city in western Ghana. “Now, you don’t get fish like before.”

As the number of fish continues to decline in this West African nation, those who rely on the sea say they have no choice if they want to catch enough to survive.

“If you don’t use those things, your net will be empty,” says Essuman.

He says that many use light to attract fish. Others use the pesticide DDT (dichlorodiphenyltrichloroethane) to poison fish, or dynamite, to kill large numbers that can be scooped up.

Fisherpeople know the practices are harmful, Essuman says. “They will destroy the country because fishing brings life. If you spoil the sea, the fish don’t come, and how are you going to earn money?”

Samson Falae, who has been fishing in western Ghana for 30 years, says dynamite scares fish out to deeper waters, and boat owners have to use more and more fuel to follow them.

“If you go far out and you don’t get enough fish, you can’t afford to go the next day,” says Falae.

Ghana released regulations to govern fishing in 2010, prohibiting many of these common practices. The regulations also restrict mesh sizes and types of nets, areas where fishing is permitted and sizes of fish that can be caught.

Alex Sabah, the director of the fisheries department in Ghana’s Western Region, says fish stocks are in danger of collapse. There are an estimated 200,000 Ghanaian pirogues now fishing, as the fisherfolk strain to feed an ever-larger population. Boats are going about three times further out to sea than 10 years ago to find fish.

And, he says, they are catching baby fish, small fish that serve as food for larger species, and are decimating sensitive areas such as estuaries. Only one of 30 common fish species in Ghana’s waters is not considered threatened, he says.

“They are destroying the stocks. If the stocks collapse…The little pain now of regulation is better than the bigger pain later.”

But, Sabah says, “We are having a hell of a time stopping it.”

Shortly after the regulations came out, fisheries officers, police and the navy cracked down, making arrests, seizing equipment and laying charges.

Fisherfolk did not take kindly to the new measures, and the situation deteriorated into violence and demonstrations.

“There have been clashes with the navy,” says Sabah. “We arrested a number of them and put them before the courts.”

He says enforcement is hindered by a lack of political will and, at times, interference by politicians eager for votes from the millions who rely on fishing in this West African nation of 25 million people. Politicians have phoned the department and ordered enforcement efforts to stop, says Sabah.

“In that situation, we are helpless,” he says.

Sabah says the introduction of regulations should have been handled differently, and that they are working on a new strategy. The department, he adds, needs to do more to educate fisherpeople on the effects of illegal fishing practices and to win their support for conservation efforts.

The fisheries sector sustains millions of West Africans – as much as a quarter of the workforce, according to the Environmental Justice Foundation (EJF), a London-based charity focused on environmental abuse.

EJF notes fish stocks are under siege from foreign boats illegally harvesting off the coast. The group estimates that sub-Saharan Africa loses about one billion dollars to illegal fishing annually.

But Sabah does not attribute all of Ghana’s troubles to foreign boats. “We cannot blame it all on them,” he says. “Our local fisherfolk are using the wrong procedures.”

Kofi Agbogah, deputy director and programmes coordinator at the Coastal Resources Center in Tadoradi-Sekondi, says regulation measures need to include fisherpeople and provide “enabling conditions”.

“They understand the issues, they know that something must happen,” said Agbogah, whose organisation is implementing a USAID (the government agency providing United States economic and humanitarian assistance worldwide) programme on coastal and fisheries governance.

“But if something happens, will he (the fisherman) get food to eat tomorrow morning? Once you take the net from the guy, he will be prepared to die.”

Sam Kojo stands in a thigh-high pile of brown seaweed that blankets a beach in western Ghana. Behind him, a decomposing mound of Sargassum stretches down the shore past the fishing village of Beyin.

Sam Kojo, chief fisherman of a village in western Ghana, says an influx of seaweed has crippled the fishing industry for months. Credit: Jessica McDiarmid/IPS

“Ever since I was born, I have not seen this,” says Kojo, holding a clump of the seaweed in his hand. He has been fishing since he was 10 years old, but since the weed began washing in about three months ago, he has been unable to work.

“We have a big problem because when we cast our nets, all the weeds would come inside the net and we would catch nothing,” says Kojo, through a translator. “So we decided not to continue fishing.”

Sargassum is the algae after which the Sargasso Sea – an elongated region in the middle of the North Atlantic Ocean – is named due to the large accumulations there. In the past year, it has been showing up in unprecedented quantities on beaches from the Caribbean to West Africa, wreaking havoc on tourism and fishing industries.

It started collecting on the beaches of western Ghana about three months ago, locals say. And in Beyin, it is bringing this small fishing village of a few hundred people to its knees.

Kojo says that with the boats kept ashore, people are going hungry and families can no longer pay their children’s school fees. He says theft is increasing along with the desperation.

His son Raymond says they saw the Sargassum floating on the water a few days before it hit the shores.

“For months now, we haven’t gone to sea,” says Raymond. “We’re hungry. Here, there are no other jobs.”

Beyin has a fledgling tourism industry. It serves as the launch point for trips to Nzulezu, a stilt village in the area that draws several thousand visitors a year. But fishing remains the main source of income.

Ernst Peebles, an associate professor of biological oceanography at the University of South Florida, says in an email that mats of Sargassum accumulate wherever ocean currents take them. The influx in Africa and elsewhere probably does not reflect increased local growth of Sargassum.

“More than likely, it is an indication that oceanic currents or eddies are closer to shore than usual. Persistent onshore winds can also help create such accumulations,” he adds.

In 2011, the eastern Caribbean was ridden with Sargassum, which plastered beaches at popular tourist destinations such as Antigua and Barbuda, Barbados and St. Martin. Some resorts closed down while tonnes of the algae were removed. In some areas people were warned not to swim due to the risk of getting tangled in the weeds. Sierra Leone, northwest of Ghana, also experienced an influx in 2011.

Brian LaPointe, who has studied the algae since the 1980s, said Sargassum circulates continuously between the Sargasso Sea, the Caribbean and the Gulf of Mexico, where it is picked up by the Gulf Stream current and can move east to the Azores, and even to West Africa.

Scientists are not sure what has led to the recent increase in the amount of Sargassum in circulation, said LaPointe, an expert at the Harbor Branch Oceanographic Institute at Florida Atlantic University in the United States.

“This is a very widespread phenomenon,” says LaPointe. “Almost every corner of the North Atlantic is reporting really large amounts of Sargassum.”

Nutrient levels in the ocean, particularly near shore, are increasing due to human activities such as fertilisation and the dumping of sewage, which in turn lead to faster algae growth.

The 2010 oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico may also play a role, says LaPointe, by further increasing nutrients the algae feed on. Hundreds of millions of gallons of oil spewed into the water after BP’s Deepwater Horizon rig exploded on Apr. 20, 2010.

“Last year, following the Deepwater Horizon spill, is when we saw this mass influx of Sargassum to a number of areas.”

LaPointe also points to a 2010 temporary change in currents in the Gulf of Mexico. A current “short circuited,” creating the Franklin Eddy, which meant outflow from the Gulf virtually stopped for months.

A blessing for those scrambling to contain the oil spill, the eddy also may have served as a “big incubator” for Sargassum, says LaPointe.

About six months after the eddy broke down, reports of large amounts of Sargassum began coming in.

“This could contribute more Sargassum not just to the west of the Atlantic, but the Azores and Africa as well,” he says.

LaPointe is working with researchers at the University of South Florida to monitor Sargassum movement via satellite imaging, in order to alert local managers of an imminent landing.

Back in Beyin, Ghana, the shore at Tenack Beach Resort is piled high with foul-smelling Sargassum, interlaced with the usual debris: plastic bags, flip-flop sandals, bottles, and other rubbish.

Hotel manager Nana Awuku says customers have complained about the seaweed.

“We tried to clean it but this is beyond us,” says Awuku. “It has to be tackled at a national level.”

He is quick to point out that, while Sargassum is affecting the resort, it is the fisherpeople who are really suffering.

“The bulk of the people in this area rely on the sea for their livelihood, which is fishing,” says Awuku.

Some fishers with deep-water boats are going far out to sea to get beyond the algae, but the added cost of fuel for the longer trip is crippling.

Kofi Agbogah, deputy director and programme coordinator at the Coastal Resources Center in Takoradi, a city about 160 kilometres from Beyin, calls the algae a “food security issue.” The centre studies a more common form of green algae that is also damaging local fishing.

“If fishermen cannot fish because of the presence of this green algae, or brown algae, it means that their children are going to go hungry, their pockets are going to be empty, their wives cannot go to the market.”

With Vietnam’s fertile Mekong delta threatened by rising sea levels and salt water ingress, the country’s future as a major rice exporter depends critically on research underway in the Philippines.

Scientists at the International Rice Research Institute (IRRI) are working with Vietnamese counterparts in the town of Los Banos, 63 km southeast of Manila, to develop a new strain of rice that can withstand submergence for over two weeks and also resist salinity.

A flood-tolerant variety, dubbed ‘scuba rice’, which has the submergence (SUB 1) rice gene, already offers half the solution.

“IRRI is experimenting to find a rice variety to deal with both problems,” says Bjorn Ole Sander, a scientist at the world’s leading non-governmental research centre on rice. “Even if we have rice crops that are tolerant to floods they can die because of salinity.”

The search for this new grain had its roots in the Indian state of Orissa, home to the flood-resistant rice variety that resumes growth after being underwater for even 14 days – unlike other rice varieties that die if submerged for just over a week.

“This has been achieved without genetic manipulation, by breeding the SUB 1 variety,” Sander said in an interview. “It can be submerged for 17 days.”

But the quest for a salinity-tolerant variety that could be blended with scuba rice is more daunting. “It will take at least four years to find a rice variety that will be tolerant to both – salinity and flooding,” he said.

“That would be the answer to the problems faced in the Mekong Delta from flooding and salinity from the rising sea tides,” he added.

Salt water from the South China Sea now spreads 40 km into the delta, unlike the 10 km inland reach of the sea 30 years ago.

“The future of the delta is at stake. That is why we are working with IRRI to develop a rice variety to deal with floods and salinity,” says Nguyen Van Bo, president of the Vietnam Academy of Agricultural Science, a government-backed entity in Hanoi. “Seven percent of the paddy fields in the delta are affected by rising sea levels.”

Already farmers have begun to change occupations, many going from rice farming to shrimp farming, he told IPS. “There is a very noticeable shift from the previous times when growing rice and shrimp farming were seasonal.”

And Vietnam’s fate – particularly on the delta – is going to worsen, warned Asian agriculture scientists and climate change specialists at a meeting in Bangkok, Apr. 11-12. It would add to existing woes from erratic weather patterns that have hit the region’s other major rice producers like Thailand, they added.

The delta accounts for nearly 50 percent of the 42 million tonnes of unmilled rice produced in Vietnam – the world’s second largest rice exporter after Thailand – with three annual harvests.

In 2011, Vietnam exported a record seven million tonnes of rice, mainly to the Philippines and other Asian markets.

For over 17 million of Vietnam’s 87 million people, who call the flat, humid delta their home, the network of waterways has been pivotal to rice production.

These arteries are fed by the Mekong River, Southeast Asia’s largest body of water, which begins its 4,880-km route in the Tibetan plateau and flows through southern China, touches Myanmar and Thailand, and winds its way through Laos, Cambodia and Vietnam before flowing out into the South China Sea.

Four dams built by China on the Mekong were the first to impact the delta’s rice farmers. As the usual water flow ebbed, salt water raced inland and the alluvial soil dumped on the delta by the river during the annual monsoon floods also dropped, reducing the natural fertility.

But, the dams provided clues to the possible impact of climate change. Almost one-third of the delta, where nearly half of Vietnam’s rice is grown, could be submerged by salt water if there is a one-metre rise in the sea levels, a report by the country’s National Institute for Hydrometeorology and Environmental Science warned in 2009.

World Bank studies rank Mekong delta communities among the most threatened by sea level rise in 87 developing countries surveyed.

Warnings that 21 percent of Asia’s crops will be affected by climate change by 2050 are yet to push government leaders from the 190 countries who gather at the annual United Nations climate change summit to include agriculture in the negotiations.

“Agriculture and food production are mentioned in the UNFCC (United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change) but they have not been translated into language that will initiate a specific work programme on agriculture in relation to climate change,” says Bruce Campbell at the Consultative Group on International Agricultural Research (CGIAR).

“There isn’t a common voice on agriculture at the UNFCCC negotiations,” said Campbell, a director at CGIAR which is sponsored by the Food and Agriculture Organisation, the International Fund for Agricultural Development, the United Nations Development Programme and the World Bank.

“Climate change is impacting farming systems and it is endangering crops,” Campbell told IPS. “Agriculture systems have to be transformed to make agriculture climate resilient.”

Nokwanda Sotyantya sits among heaps of garbage and patiently sorts through it, separating cardboard, plastic, glass, paper and metal, piece by piece. The recycled piles of trash are then weighed and sold to packaging manufacturers in South Africa that reuse the materials to create new products.

Recycling cooperative member Andiswa Konco sorts garbage. Credit: Kristin Palitza/IPS

Sotyantya belongs to the country’s first group of small business entrepreneurs who have benefited from the government’s move towards a green economy. It is a strategy aimed at creating environmental sustainability, social equity, and economic growth; the government wants to create 300,000 jobs within a decade in this sector.

For 48-year-old Sotyantya, who is a member of a local recycling cooperative and lives in Imizamo Yethu, a slum outside of Cape Town, the move towards a green economy has turned her life around. Previously unemployed and struggling to survive, she says she now earns an average of 250 dollars a month from her work – enough to care for herself and her four children.

“The more people become aware of the benefits of recycling, the more rubbish gets dropped off at the Hout Bay waste centre. For me, that translates into more money,” Sotyantya explains.

The Hout Bay Recycling Co-op to which she belongs is based at the municipal waste drop-off site in Hout Bay. Here Sotyantya and other members of the cooperative sort and sell the recycled material.

Her cooperative of six formerly jobless, poverty-stricken men and women currently recycles 25 tonnes of waste each month. And this number is slowly increasing.

The cooperative received a boost when Thrive, a social enterprise incubator that helps green start-ups to become viable, competitive businesses, decided to help the cooperative improve its business strategy and management expertise.

“We focus on creating jobs that help to minimise waste, increase renewable sources, protect and restore local biodiversity, reduce energy and water demands and create a local food network,” explains Thrive managing director Iming Lin.

It is much more than developing traditional business models, she adds; it is about incorporating social, environmental and economic benefits.

Although it has only been operating since July 2011, Thrive’s work has not gone unnoticed. The SEED Initiative of the United Nations Environment Programme (UNEP) acknowledged the organisation’s work by selecting it for one of its 2011 sustainable development awards that are annually presented to 35 African grassroots entrepreneurs in the green economy.

“On this continent, companies and countries, from small communities to heads of state, are suddenly realising the importance of the green economy,” says UNEP spokesperson Nick Nuttall.

Economic development and environmental and social sustainability cannot operate in isolation, he says.

“Going green doesn’t mean it’s nice and fluffy. There are some hard economic figures behind it, too.”

Creating a green economy is no longer an option, but a requirement, Nuttall says. “We are living in a world of seven billion people increasing to over nine billion by 2050. If we don’t change the way we consume goods and services and think about the environmental limits, then we’re in trouble.”

“But it’s a world of opportunity too,” Nuttal says, adding, “there are more and more examples of small businesses solving big problems and creating livelihoods.”

It is an opportunity that the South African government wants to seize over the next few years. In November, it signed a Green Economic Accord that stipulates active national investment in the green economy.

“The green economy can create large numbers of jobs, provide a spur for industrialisation and help create a sustainable future for this and the next generations,” said Minister of Economic Development Ebrahim Patel after the accord was announced.

The agreement is part of a plan to shift towards a lower carbon-intensity economy, while creating jobs and promoting industrial development.

But government alone cannot manage and fund South Africa’s transition to a green economy, says Patel. The business sector, trade unions and civil society organisations must also play a role.

That is why organisations like Thrive have started talking to and collaborating with different government departments, such as environmental affairs, trade and industry, solid waste or public works, to jointly develop ways of giving the local green economy a jolt.

“Social enterprises are a growing model. We want to develop donor-independent, viable, scalable business models that link the economy and the environment and that can be rolled out in multiple communities or even nationally,” says Lin. “Government has been very supportive of what we’re doing.”

Apart from supporting the recycling cooperative, Thrive is trying to get a number of other innovative green economy businesses off the ground.

One of them is TrashBack, a bicycle recycling collection scheme that picks up re-usable material from restaurants, businesses and residential housing complexes, which are currently not serviced by the municipality. For every eight clients – or 4,800 kilogrammes of garbage – TrashBack can create one full-time job, says Lin.

“We want to show people how it all links into each other: waste, water, food, jobs and better livelihoods for all,” says Lin. “We can’t afford not to have a green economy.”

With extreme weather pounding countries across a wide arc in the Asia-Pacific region, questions hover over entitlements for millions of people displaced by climate change, pledged under the Green Climate Fund (GCF) and other sources.

Will the long wait by climate change migrants – including the 42 million people displaced by storms, floods and droughts in Asia and the Pacific during 2010 and 2011 – be finally over? Will they be able to tap international aid to help them adapt to extreme weather?

The International Organisation of Migration (IOM) hopes it is so as it sets its sights on the annual United Nations climate change summit to be held in Qatar later this year.

The Geneva-based body is looking to the 18th session of the Conference of the Parties (CoP 18) of the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change to deliver on a breakthrough that emerged at the end of acrimonious negotiations at the CoP 16, held in the Mexican resort of Cancun in December 2010.

At Cancun, government leaders from over 190 countries affirmed that climate change migrants qualify for assistance from the GCF. A paragraph of the Cancun Adaptation Framework said victims of “climate change induced displacement (and) migration” are eligible for the billions of dollars pledged by the GCF.

“The IOM is pushing to implement this para at the next CoP in Qatar,” says Diana Ionesco, migration policy office at IOM, referring to paragraph 14f in the Cancun document. “Migration can now be part of the global adaptation strategy, which was not the case before Cancun.”

“We want people who have been victims of climate change – including those who cannot move – to benefit from this new policy that has recognised migration as part of the climate change adaptation framework,” she told IPS. “It opens the way to apply for adaptation- related funding to help migrants.”

Following the negotiations at the CoP 15 in Copenhagen, the GCF produced a blueprint unveiled the following year in Cancun to start dispensing funds by 2020. It will finance projects using green- friendly technologies, help communities adapt to climate change and promote ways of mitigating the impact of greenhouse gases responsible for global warming.

A 2010 report by U.N. secretary-general Ban ki-Moon’s climate financing advisory group estimates that 100 billion dollars a year would be needed for a raft of climate change initiatives in the developing world.

This estimate dwarfs the amounts dispensed by the Global Environmental Facility (GEF), a 1991 financial organisation backed by over 180 governments and international development institutions, that, till now, has been one of the leading financiers of green- friendly projects in the developing world.

GEF has pumped in 10 billion dollars in direct financing and 47 billion dollars in co-financing in over 2,800 projects in over 168 developing countries.

For its part, the IOM had even more limited resources to assist migrants who are victims of humanitarian emergencies – the 6.5 million dollar IOM development fund for 2012 and the newly established IOM migration emergency fund in 2011, which aimed to raise 30 million dollars.

The marginalisation of climate change migrants during adaptation negotiations at the CoPs stems from the political implications of who a climate change migrant is. Neither IOM nor the United Nations refugee agency use the term “climate refugees” to describe people displaced by natural disasters.

“Very often when we talk about adaptation we don’t talk about migration,” says Francois Gemenne, climate and migration research fellow at the Paris-based Institute for Sustainable Development and International Relations. “It is seen as too complicated and too sensitive.”

“Migration will only become a fatality if we don’t address it today,” he added during a recent panel discussion held in the Thai capital on ‘Climate Induced Migration and Livelihood Security’. “We need to guarantee people the right to stay for those who want to stay and also provide migration options for those who want to leave.”

Their growing numbers in the Asia-Pacific region makes this vulnerable community hard to ignore, argues the Asian Development Bank (AsDB), the Manila-based regional financial institution in a recent report, ‘Addressing Climate Change and Migration in Asia and the Pacific’.

The estimated 42 million people who were displaced by environmental disasters in 2010 and 2011 confirms that “the environment is becoming a significant driver of migration in Asia and the Pacific as the population grows in vulnerable areas, such as low-lying coastal zones and eroding river banks,” says Bindu Lohani, the Bank’s vice- president for knowledge management and sustainable development.

“Migration should be viewed as one component of a broader adaptation strategy, and a tool with which to strengthen the resilience of those who remain in communities threatened by environmental challenges,” he adds.

Yet a financial challenge for adaptation looms in the Asia-Pacific region. While the annual climate adaptation costs for the region would reach 50 billion dollars in 2050, “less than 10 percent of that has been available to date,” according to the AsDB.

“It is unclear what kind of policy interventions will be available for funding under the GCF,” notes AsDB’s 81-page report. “A key challenge for future negotiations will be in making (paragraph 14f) operational, determining how adaptation funding can be attributed to policies related to climate-induced migration.”

“The Qatar CoP should open the way to apply for funding for adaptation-related projects,” asserts IOM’s Ionesco. “We need funds to prevent forced migrations and to provide assistance to prepare for migration.”

Naseema Akhtar, 38, worries that her daily treks to collect clean water from the mountain springs around her village of Bonpora, in Kashmir’s Kupwara district, are getting longer. She is already doing more than seven km every day.

Women in rural Kashmir walk great distances to fetch clean water. Credit: Athar Parvaiz/IPS

Akhtar, and other women from Bonpora, 110 km north of Srinagar, carry pieces of cloth with them to strain the water – though this is poor defence against dangerous water-borne pathogens.

“We know that the cloth only removes insoluble solids, but what can we do? There is no other source of safe water for our daily needs,” said Akhtar. People in most of Kashmir’s hamlets rely on water from mountain springs or, if unable to walk distances, resort to the risky streams and ponds nearby.

Kashmir, a distinct region in the Indian state of Jammu and Kashmir, has seen armed separatist militancy since 1989, complicated by territorial claims over the region by neighbouring Pakistan.

“When the mountain springs get scanty or dry up, we are forced to use the stagnant water in small ponds around our village,” says Shahzad Mir, a resident of Badibera village, also in Kupwara district.

Badibera, since December, has the benefit of water pumped out of a bore well installed by the state government, but the water is hard with dissolved minerals, including fluorides. The residents complain that the supply is erratic and may fail for days together.

“In the summers, people here regularly fall sick and children seem particularly prone to diarrhoea and other ailments,” said Mir. “Doctors tell us that this happens because of drinking dirty water.”

Zareefa Begam, a 43-year-old woman in Mir’s village, has learnt it the hard way. “Last year, all my three kids suffered severe diarrhoea and I had to stay away from work for more than a week to look after them.”

Other villagers said they were spending more out-of-pocket than ever before for treating stomach ailments, especially young children.

“Children are most vulnerable to water-borne diseases,” says Dr. Rehana Kousar, nodal officer for Integrated Disease Surveillance Project at Kashmir’s health directorate. “Repeated diarrhoea can lead to severe malnutrition, stunted growth and even death.”

Poor rural families, says Kousar, suffer on many counts. “They end up spending money on transportation and medicines, apart from having to take out time from earning livelihoods. And the women, as caregivers, take the brunt of it.”

Under-five mortality rate in Jammu and Kashmir state is 43 per 1,000 – nowhere near achieving the United Nations Millennium Development Goal of reducing the rate to 31 per 1,000 by 2015.

Tufail Mattoo, director of rural sanitation in Kashmir, identifies the major cause of diarrhoea and other water-borne diseases to open defecation in the rural areas. “The rains leach the faecal matter into the water bodies, making them unsafe.

“We are trying very hard to discourage open defecation, but it is going to take time to convince the people,” Mattoo told IPS.

Srinagar’s State Medical Hospital treats thousands of patients for diseases like typhoid, cholera and hepatitis in the summer months. “About 90 percent of the patients come from villages where contaminated water is emerging as a huge health risk,” Rafreeq Ahmed, a doctor at the hospital, told IPS.

A government survey released in March said that more than 65 percent of Kashmir’s seven million people drink untreated water and that the bulk of the population depends on water from ponds, streams and wells.

The survey, taken together with a study released in February by the Integrated Disease Surveillance Unit (IDSU), showing high coliform bacteria count in Kashmir’s water bodies, gives clues to why diarrhoeal diseases are on the rise in the region. Coliform bacteria found in water, soil and on vegetation warn of the presence of dangerous faecal pathogens, including bacteria, viruses, protozoa and larger parasites.

Said Dr. Sajjad Ahmed who was part of the team of doctors who carried out the IDSU study: “There is a dangerous trend in which raw, untreated sewage is channelised into water bodies without any treatment, and that is why the water sources are showing such high levels of contamination.”

“In all the rural areas of Kashmir, toilets are build close to water bodies,” says senior gastroenterologist at the Sher-e-Kashmir Institute of Medical Sciences, Ghulam Mohammad Malik.

Malik also laid blame on security forces – deployed in Kashmir to fight separatist militancy and stop infiltration from Pakistan – who often bypass sanitation rules. Some 500,000 troops are presently stationed in Kashmir, most of them deployed in the strategic upper reaches, adding to the contamination of the natural springs.

“Security personnel form a good percentage of the population of Kashmir and obviously their behaviour is a major influence,” says Rishab Khanna, president of Indian Youth Climate Network (IYCN). “We are seeking to engage them as part of our awareness campaigns.”

Kashmir’s status as a major tourist and pilgrimage destination contributes to the waste disposal problem. According to official information, there are 4,300 hotels in 22 tourist resorts and towns across Kashmir functioning without proper sewage disposal facilities.

In 2011, Kashmir received two million tourists including 634,000 Hindu pilgrims headed for the Amarnath cave shrine in Anantnag district. “Heavy tourist influx makes matters worse when you have no infrastructure to treat waste,” says Khanna.

IYCN, which has been organising environmental safety campaigns in Kashmir for the last two years, advocates green solutions such as converting the human waste into organic fertilizer.

“Right now Kashmir imports vast quantities of synthetic fertilizer from outside the state,” Khanna said. “Converting the waste into fertilizer will make for safe disposal as well as savings on farming inputs,” he said.

By Manipadma Jena and - -
BANGKOK, Mar 27 2012 (IPS)

India, like other Asian countries, has focused its climate change adaptation strategies on rural and urban areas while neglecting the urban fringes, say experts.

Peri-urban areas are characterised by haphazard, accelerated expansion and are farthest from basic urban services and infrastructure, according to United Nations-Habitat’s ‘The State of Asian Cities 2010-11’. By 2020, of the projected 4.2 billion urban population of the world, 2.2 billion will be living in Asia, many in peri-urban areas, the U.N. report says.

“These are places where nobody is in charge,” said Stephen Tyler of the United States-based Institute of Social and Environmental Transition (ISET), while in the Thai capital to attend the Mar. 12–13 Asia Pacific Climate Change Adaptation Forum.

“Populations residing in peri-urban areas are most vulnerable to climate change because they have neither the modern infrastructure, clean water, and sanitation available in urban areas nor the ecosystems that rural folks fall back on,” Tyler told IPS.

“Climate change exacerbates land and resettlement issues in Asia,” said Youssef Nassef, coordinator of the adaptation programme with the U.N. Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) and a delegate.

“In India, while the municipality’s administration area is demarcated, responsibility for peri-urban areas is fragmented. Where are the policy levers for peri-urban areas, for example, in India’s policy?” Nassef asks.

India is not alone in neglecting peri-urban areas. Last year’s devastating floods in Thailand provided a good example of such neglect.

“What is Bangkok and what is not Bangkok is the question being asked after the flood,” said Jonathan Shaw, executive director of the Bangkok-based Asian Institute of Technology.

“Bangkok’s urban sprawl spreads seamlessly to its suburbs, yet the business district with large foreign direct investment got priority flood protection,” Shaw said. “The flood manifested the fissures in the urban and peri-urban.”

“People here think the political factor played a major role in flood intervention. While two-tonne sand bags were available to prevent flooding into Bangkok city, the suburban provinces got only small sandbags which failed to keep the water out,” Shaw said.

Cities that are not socially sustainable can never be environmentally sustainable, said Marcus Moench, who heads ISET. “The vulnerability of any city is directly proportional to the quantum of marginalised populations and to the exposure.”

“As India urbanises, we see more and more poverty pockets because it is urbanising in an unorganised way,” ISET researcher Shashikant Chopde told IPS.

According to India’s federal ministry of urban development, by 2051, 48 percent or 820 million people of its estimated 1.7 billion will be living in 6,500 urban settlements.

For these new arrivals from ‘push migration’ dynamics with low-skill sets and earning ability, peri-urban areas are preferable to the crowded and expensive city cores.

In a report launched at the Bangkok forum, the Asian Development Bank (AsDB) said that by 2050 some 1.4 billion Indians will be living in areas experiencing negative climate change impacts.

India’s coastal region will become “further vulnerable to climate change impacts due to high urbanisation, rural–urban migration and dwindling agricultural productivity,” says the AsDB report titled ‘Addressing Climate Change and Migration in Asia and the Pacific’.

“If migration is not carefully planned and assisted, there is a serious risk that it can turn into maladaption, i.e. leave people more vulnerable to environmental changes,” AsDB report warns.

Chopde says that in India while many city slum dwellers are eligible, under the National Mission on Sustainable Habitat, for low-cost safe shelters, clean water and sanitation, inhabitants on the city fringes are unable to avail of the schemes thanks to blurred administrative boundaries.

“This is because they are included neither under rural nor within urban local governance systems,” says Chopde. “As cities grow, peripheral lands are becoming increasingly attractive to commercial developers, and once again, low-income informal settlements are pushed away to cities’ new outer periphery.”

“If a city’s master plans are strictly followed, peri-urban areas could be developed for climate-smart farming, helping to prevent city water logging.

“Since much of the vegetable supply comes from a city’s fringes, livelihood security for peri-urban inhabitants and food security for city dwellers could be ensured.” Chopde suggests.

Experts at the Bangkok meet said that the challenge of building climate resilient societies could no longer be the responsibility of governments alone.

Saleemul Huq, who heads the Dhaka-based International Centre for Climate Change and Development, said at a media roundtable here that countries need to “build social capital by training a wide cross-section of people to better prepare for climate change at a time of unprecedented urbanisation.”

While there is no cookie-cutter solution, Anna Lindstedt, Sweden’s ambassador for climate change, stressed that planning and adaptation strategies should be context- specific and tailored to localities.

“The process of engaging diverse partners, of building a shared understanding of climate risks and urban vulnerability, of developing joint and separate interventions and building a shared platform for ongoing learning is more valuable to the resilience building effort than any other strategy itself,” states ISET’s 2011 publication ‘Catalysing Urban Climate Resilience’.

The report discusses study-based climate vulnerability and resilience -building strategies of a network of cities in India, Indonesia, Vietnam and Thailand supported the by Rockefeller Foundation through Asian Cities Climate Change Resilience Network.

For India, the best bet is still community-driven development, says Bharat Dahiya, researcher on peri- urban areas at U.N.-Habitat’s Asia-Pacific regional office in Bangkok. “In India, self-help, voluntarily initiated by civil society, even if ad hoc in nature, is of crucial importance,” Dahiya said.

Excerpt:

By Sujoy Dhar
KOLKATA , Mar 25 2012 (IPS)

Sahara Bibi, a 47-year-old poor Muslim woman living on one of the climate- impacted islands of Eastern India’s fragile Sundarbans archipelago in West Bengal state, was forced to pull her two young sons out of school and send one of them to the Southern state of Kerala to earn a decent income.

A resident of Mousuni village in the Namkhana area of the Sundarbans, Sahara has lost her home twice in seven years owing to erosion caused by the rising sea level as a result of the severe impact of climate change.

Declared a World Heritage site by UNESCO and home to a highly unique ecology – including the world's largest mangrove gene pool and the endangered royal Bengal tiger – the Sundarbans (spread across a 9630 square kilometer-area in India and covering 16,370 square kilometres in Bangladesh) face a drastic threat from global warming and attendant climatic change.

Here, the sea level has been rising at a rate higher than the global average for years now, wreaking havoc on the archipelago’s population of roughly 4.37 million people, according to 2011 provisional data released by the Indian census department.

Furthermore, a new study by the Centre for Science and Environment (CSE), one of India’s leading environment pressure groups, in partnership with the Kolkata-based South Asian Forum for Environment (SAFE), has revealed a double whammy for the region’s people – not only loss of habitat from climate change but also a complete lack of climate-sensitive development planning.

According to "Living with Changing Climate: Impacts, vulnerability and adaptation challenges in Indian Sundarbans", inadequate development planning is forcing people in this fragile region to migrate to other parts of India in search of livelihoods, while the number of climate refugees in the area swells and vast swathes of agricultural land is either devoured by the encroaching sea or rendered unfit for cultivation.

When Sahara’s younger son Sahzahan went to the Southern Indian state of Kerala to work as a mason, she was shattered. But now her son earns 300 rupees (roughly six dollars) a day and persuades others from their village to join him as a migrant labourer. Since migration is dependent on networks and acquaintances, Kerala is quickly becoming a depot for scores of workers fleeing their ravaged home in search of minimum-wage jobs.

When the CSE quizzed Sahara about the efficacy of government schemes for alternative livelihood in her region, she said she had heard nothing about it.

Nor has she been provided with any information about the perils of climate change in the Sundarbans, despite being a climate refugee herself. All she knows is that the number of pre-seasonal cyclones has only increased in the Sundarbans, with the worst – Cyclone Aila – causing utter devastation and massive deaths in May 2009.

Unlike Sahara, Saikh Rustam (52), also hailing from the Namkhana area, is better informed about government schemes but is unable to avail himself of their benefits.

Rustam’s home has been devoured by the rising sea level thrice in just 12 years. The advancing sea robbed him of his livelihood as a farmer and he was forced to become a fisherman.

However, "during the monsoon, when the river is dangerous, there is no livelihood even as a fisherman," he told IPS.

Rustam says he has heard about the Mahatma Gandhi National Rural Employment Guarantee Scheme (MGNREGS), a flagship government rural poverty alleviation plan promising 100 days of wage labour per financial year to rural households whose adult members volunteer to do unskilled manual work.

"But I prefer not to get engaged in MGNREGS because the payment is made in a bank account. I did not have an account earlier, while even now one has to lose a day’s wage to go to the bank located far away," he said.

Urgent need for climate-sensitive development

According to official statistics, sea surface temperature (SST) in the Sundarbans is increasing at the rate of 0.5 degrees centigrade per decade, compared to the global increase of 0.06 degrees centigrade per decade.

The Sundarbans is losing land rapidly and soil salinity is increasing fast, posing a dire threat to the future of agriculture in the region.

The Indian part of Sundarbans has been losing land at the alarming rate of 5.5 square kilometres per year over the past ten years.

In the same period, the frequency of cyclones increased by 26 percent, according to the CSE.

The joint CSE-SAFE research report also warned that one of the most biodiverse habitats in the world is getting pummeled not only by a changing climate, but also by the complete lack of development planning.

"With a growing population, there is a constant conflict between conservation and livelihood needs. The costs of conservation are globally dispersed but not locally enjoyed. With a growing subsistence economy, no global market for the produce from the region and little benefits from tourism, a majority of the population is forced to suffer grinding poverty," says lead researcher and author of the report, Aditya Ghosh.

CSE-SAFE researchers also report that broad development planning for the region has failed to envisage how people will continue living in the island with a sense of security and dignity.

"There is a piecemeal approach that can, at best, serve a short term agenda. Population pressure and diminishing returns from natural resources are at loggerheads (and) the sustainability of the island itself is threatened," Ghosh added.

The report goes on to claim that many families in the Sundarbans are now entirely dependent on remittances from migrant family members for all major household expenses.

According to Chandra Bhushan, head of CSE’s climate change programme, development planning in the Indian Sundarbans has never included the impacts of climate change impacts in its purview.

"This is quite evident in the way everything from electrification to land management is being done here. A decentralised distribution network for renewable energy has not been promoted," Bhushan lamented.

According to SAFE chairperson Dipayan Dey, the paradigm for sustainable development in the Sundarbans must shift from disaster-based hazard mitigation to community-based climate adaptive intervention.

"Before it is too late, (strong) political will to advocate community governance of natural resources must emerge," he stressed.

Excerpt:

By Amantha Perera and - -
WELIGAMA, Sri Lanka, Mar 10 2012 (IPS)

The gentle waves of Weligama bay that lap at the small, tight-knit fishing village of Kaparratota, 140 km south of Colombo, can be deceptive.

The waters of Weligama bay can prove deceptively calm for fishers. Credit: Indika Sriyan/IPS

A total of 29 people had died along Sri Lanka’s southern coast, and over 10,000 buildings damaged, though Weligama was the worst affected area. Many who faced the storm were left stunned by its ferocity as well as the suddenness with which it whipped up and died down.

“We never knew a storm was coming, no one told us…suddenly the sea just rose,” Lamahevage Chandana, a fisher told IPS. He survived by floating on the waves for seven hours, his small boat smashed.

Experts say the tragedy could have been avoided if ordinary folk like Chandana, as well as authorities, had paid better attention to changing weather patterns around this island country.

Of late, extreme weather events have increased in frequency, Mudalihamige Rathnayake, who heads the geography department at the Ruhuna University in southern Sri Lanka, told IPS.

“Gale-force winds hitting towns and villages are being reported as cyclones, or mini-cyclones, which they are not,” he said. “They are the creation of cooler air rushing in to fill the vacuum created by an extreme temperature rise in a small area.”

Gale-force winds are defined as those reaching a speed of up to 117 km per hour on the Beaufort scale and though not as strong as hurricanes, they create exceptionally high sea waves and are capable of uprooting trees.

Statistics show that there are now fewer rainy days, with the monsoon now dumping its water in a shorter time span. This was what happened between January and February 2011, when a year’s worth of rain fell on parts of the Eastern Province in one month, flooding hundreds of villages.

Nimal Dissanayake, who heads the Rice Research Institute of Sri Lanka, told IPS that the changing rain patterns have forced experts to develop quick maturing rice varieties. “We have developed them, but need a better understanding of the rain patterns to recommend them,” he told IPS.

Rathnayake recently carried out a survey of awareness levels among ordinary people in southern Sri Lanka of changing weather patterns and was disappointed with the results.

“There is hardly any knowledge of climate change or changing weather. No one is really interested in knowing how to cope with natural disasters,” he said.

Rathnayake found the lack of knowledge and the disinterest surprising given that the southern coast of Sri Lanka was pulverised by the 2004 Asian tsunami. Signboards that dot the coast do indicate higher, safer ground to run to in the event of a tsunami.

“Everybody knows that they have to run if a tsunami is coming, but they don’t know how to deal with a cyclone, or fast moving winds that come in short bursts. No one even thinks that a prolonged drought may have been caused by changing climate,” he said.

Only around 20 percent of Sri Lanka’s 1,520 km coast is prone to erosion, but the bulk of it is in the densely populated southern and western coasts that take the brunt of the monsoons.

The western and southern provinces account for over 40 percent of the population or around eight million people. Economically, these two provinces contribute around 47 percent of the GDP, with the western province serving as the island’s financial and administrative centre.

Much of the erosion-prone coast is protected by a sea wall of boulders, a solution that the Coast Conservation Department (CCD) has now found to be counter-productive.

Anil Premarathne, CCD director-general, told IPS that the barriers built of boulders limit economic activity and transfer the erosion from one part of the shore to another.

The CCD is now encouraging ‘softer solutions’ like wider beaches, sand filling, mangroves and strict zoning regulations. But with the coast thickly populated, Premarathne says it is difficult to even discuss these options.

“In Sri Lanka we need strict zoning measures,” Premarathne said. “But unless there are beaches where there are no houses or businesses nearby – which is hardly the case in the south and the west – it is not easy to implement.

“Because erosion takes place over many years, even decades, there is not much concern. People don’t seem to notice it happening nor are they worried,” he said. Already some coastal urban areas are at risk from rising sea levels.

Coastal districts like Gampaha, that lies just north of Colombo, meet at least 40 percent of water requirements by pumping out groundwater, increasing the risk of saline ingress.

“Salinity will rise in coastal areas if sea levels rise,” said Premarathne. “We have also seen that wave heights are tending to get higher during the monsoons,” he added.

Sri Lanka’s National Climate Change Adaption Strategy (NCCAS) has prioritised mainstreaming adaptation, healthier human settlements and minimisation of impacts on food security for the period between 2011 and 2016.

Since stopping climate change is unrealistic, the NCCAS focuses on preparing and understanding what needs to be done by way of preparation, economically and environmentally.

Yet, most ordinary people do not take climate change seriously. Chandana, even after his near death experience, says nonchalantly: “These incidents happen…we just have to live with them.”

Such indifference, says Rathnayake, is cause for concern. “These things are beyond our control, but we can be better prepared to face them and save lives.”

Excerpt:

By Catherine Wilson
PORT MORESBY, Mar 9 2012 (IPS)

Early morning on Jan. 24, in the remote Southern Highlands of Papua New Guinea, a massive landslide destroyed communities living below a quarry used by the country’s largest liquefied natural gas (LNG) project, operated by Esso Highlands, a subsidiary of Exxon Mobil.

Six weeks later survivors, still awaiting government assistance, are speaking out following a flawed preliminary investigation.

“We want a Commission of Inquiry to look at the landslide and, more widely, Exxon Mobil’s activities,” declared Joseph Warai, a landowner and community leader in the Hela province. “We want our safety guaranteed. We live with a lot of fear.”

The landslide, 1.5 kilometres long, descended from the top of a mountain where the Tumbi Quarry is located, obliterating the villages of Tumbi and Tumbiago, near Tari. The Papua New Guinea (PNG) Red Cross estimates 42 homes were destroyed and 60 people perished.

The disaster occurred in an area being used by the 15 billion dollar LNG Project, an Exxon Mobil co- venture with JX Nippon Oil and Gas; Australian-led Oil Search and Santos; and PNG’s national petroleum company, Petromin PNG Holdings and Mineral Resources Development Company, assisted by an Australian export credit loan of 350 million dollars.

Since 2010, landowner discontent over the government’s slow delivery on promises regarding project benefit funds has increased, and benefit-related disputes have led to fatalities. Last year, after a local boy died due to toxic poisoning from a project site, landowners forced the temporary closure of the Hides gas conditioning plant in the vicinity of Tumbi.

Anomalies abound

Community grievances escalated following an initial investigation conducted by the National Disaster Centre (NDC) in association with personnel from Exxon Mobil and Australian government agency, AusAID.

Landslide survivors were not consulted, said Warai, adding, “We were not told there was an investigation. We only saw some government people visit. We were never asked any questions; we were never asked what happened. We were shocked when we saw the report.”

The report contained no reference to the PNG LNG Project, concluding, “The Tumbi Landslide was caused by continuous heavy rainfall which weakened, or undermined, the existing topography and the limestone formation.”

“Our villages have been here for 13 generations and at no time has there been a landslide here,” Warai said, claiming that landowners had personally witnessed blasting and drilling in the quarry area.

“Explosives were used by Exxon Mobil through its subcontractor, (McConnell Dowell Consolidated Contractors Joint Venture and Clough Curtain Joint Venture, or MDCCJV/CCJV) at the headwaters of Tumbi and Tumbiago [rivers],” he recounted, “They were also doing drilling of the mountain and left around March 2011. Because of the explosives and chemicals applied at the headwaters of our two rivers, the waterway was blocked and applied pressure on the quarry mountain.”

Exxon Mobil has refuted this claim, stating, “No blasting was ever done by the project contractors at Tumbi Quarry since commencing activities at the site in 2010. There was no need for blasting at this quarry.”

Professor Dave Petley, director of the International Landslide Centre at the UK-based Durham University, exposed serious inaccuracies in the report.

In comments published by the Papuan watchdog LNG Watch, Petley asked, “If this was a natural failure, then why weren’t the surface features of the landslide picked up prior to the construction of the quarry and, indeed, during quarrying operations?”

Petley shed doubt on the investigation team’s claim that they “saw clear evidence of liquefaction of the rock formation.”

“This is most surprising,” he wrote, “(as) limestone is not a material that undergoes liquefaction. I have never heard of such a mechanism in a hard rock, and so I just cannot understand this purported process.”

He further commented, “The [Tumbi] quarry site was located right in the middle of the section of slope that has failed. It is bold to suggest that the two are not linked without undertaking a proper investigation.”

Issues of project operation safety in the quarry, and delayed work schedules, drew recommendations by independent environmental consultant D’Appolonia, back in March 2011.

Although, Exxon Mobil claimed that “The Project responded to these recommendations and, by its August 2011 report, (PNG LNG’s independent environmental and social consultant) IESC stated that the Tumbi Quarry appeared to be well-operated and that modifications (have) been made that have enhanced the quarry’s safety.”

While the Minister of Works and Transport subsequently promised landowners an independent investigation, no further information has been announced. Traditional landowners believe that only an independent Commission of Inquiry will deliver valid outcomes.

Local communities say the government is favouring the LNG project, while neglecting those affected by the disaster.

In the aftermath, NDC and Exxon Mobil expedited clearance of a blocked road critical for project access. Relatives of the deceased claim they were placed under duress with threats of repercussions, if they prevented work proceeding.

Kristian Lasslett, PNG coordinator of the International State Crime Initiative and lecturer in criminology at the University of Ulster, commented, “The Papua New Guinea state has the capacity to resist and indeed even oppose corporate agendas. When it fails to do so, it is because it also has an interest in the issue.”

Meanwhile survivors are still homeless. In the immediate aftermath, Exxon Mobil supplied people with food, water and shelter, while the PNG Red Cross reported delivering water in late February.

“But there is no direct assistance from the NDC yet,” Warai confirmed, “Our living conditions are overcrowded and very poor. More than 3,000 people are living together in a temporary shelter. The two sources of water have been affected and there is no sanitation. We have called on the government to resettle us, but there has been no response. The only thing they said was ‘let’s open the road.’”

“No-one has spoken to us about helping (us) to recover the bodies,” he continued. Nor has trauma counselling been provided, as recommended.

In February the government informed community leaders of 10 million Papua New Guinea kina (PNGK) in disaster funding, with 7 million PNGK allocated for infrastructure and 3 million PNGK awarded to relatives of the deceased.

But following a violent incident on Feb. 22 between mobile police squads, employed for project security, and landslide survivors at a traditional mourning house, local leaders have demanded victims be given the full 10 million PNGK. The funding is yet to be provided.

The NDC did not respond to requests for comment. Meanwhile, survivors are still waiting for justice.

“When we have exhausted what we can do, the last thing we will do is to shut down the LNG project,” Warai vowed.

Excerpt:

By Marwaan Macan-Markar and - -
BAAN LOONG SUMLAN, Thailand, Mar 8 2012 (IPS)

As fingers of morning light slip through the mango and banana orchards of his village, Suchin Utanarat heads out in a boat to net a fresh catch from the nearby canals teeming with shrimp.

But there is more to this idyllic, riverine scene. By stirring the waters through his daily routine, this 40-year-old fisher is showing the advantages of a sustainable local economy that is small, simple and green.

A few hours in the brackish waters and Suchin has netted catches worth 1,000 baht (33 dollars). “This is my main income and it is enough for our family,” he says, sorting the shrimp, seated in his boat of carved teak. “This shrimp goes to seafood restaurants, even in Bangkok.

“Most of the families in our village catch shrimp in the canals all year and depend on it for a livelihood,” he adds. “It is a small economy but it is a safe one. And we want to keep it that way,” he says.

Suchin’s sentiments are shared by many who live in Baan Loong Sumlan and other villages spread across a province bountiful with fruit orchards and crisscrossed by a network of canals.

What has steeled the determination of people like Suchin was Samut Songhkram province’s disastrous experiment with industrial-scale shrimp farming.

Large swathes of mangroves were levelled to make way for the big shrimp farms, and a province that had 8,000 hectares of mangroves in 1986 now has only 256 hectares of the protective vegetation.

Samut Songkhram’s aquaculture ambitions took a when a virus, first detected in 1992, swept through shrimp farms across this marshy delta. Fear of the virus has kept the villagers from going back to industrial shrimp farming of the type that dot other southern provinces.

It is a choice that makes villagers like Wong Takrudthong, 70, beam with an air of community pride, knowing that it sets communities here apart from those making a killing from the large shrimp farms.

In 2011, the southern provinces produced over 600,000 tonnes of shrimp, guaranteeing Thailand’s place as the world’s largest shrimp exporter.

“We learnt our lesson once. Families lost a lot. And we will not take another risk,” says Wong, a respected village elder. “People would like to see Samut Songkhram remain a small place with a sustainable economy.”

But the province’s location 63 km south of Bangkok has brought new challenges. Investors want to covert some of the barren tracts into industrial zones like the Map Ta Phut industrial estate in the nearby province of Rayong.

“A lot of land was bought up after the shrimp farms closed and now these new landowners want to convert them into industrial zones,” says Amonsak Chatratin, deputy chairman of a village council. “We are against it because of the pollution.

“We have learnt lessons from the industrial parks in the neighbouring provinces,” he told IPS. “We do not want another Map Ta Phut here.”

Map Ta Phut, home to 117 industrial plants that include 45 petrochemical factories, eight coal-fired power plants and 12 chemical factories, dominated the national news in 2009 and 2010 following a successful court case by a local environmentalist to shut the estate.

Community-based small-scale tourism, a new money-spinner for the province, will be affected if big industries move in, warns Surajit Chirawet, former head of the province’s chamber of commerce. “This has become an important lifeline for us. Many families drive down here from Bangkok for the weekends.”

The riverine lifestyle offers a welcome contrast to Thailand’s sprawling modern capital. Among the reminders of quieter, less bustling times are scenes of Buddhist monks paddling in boats at dawn on their daily rounds to collect food.

Consequently, local concerns have seen the emergence of a grassroots movement rallying around twin causes – respecting the local sentiment for small, environment-friendly economic policies and keeping away large-scale, polluting industries.

“Local people are against the big projects and are applying pressure on the provincial authorities to have public hearings,” revealed Manop Yanpisitkul, environmentalist at the provincial office of resources and environment. “They only support eco-friendly projects”.

This eco-friendly initiative is supported by the United Nations Development Programe (UNDP) and the U.N. Environment Programme. “We are helping the local communities to make their case to the provincial and national government,” says Sutharin Koonphol, programme analyst at the UNDP’s environment division.

Assistance under the Poverty-Environment Initiative (PEI) of the U.N. agencies helps lobby the grassroots cause with Thailand’s powerful interior ministry, which controls Thailand’s development planning.

“We are trying to convince the ministry to strengthen the public participation process and see the merits of a bottom-up development approach,” Sutharin told IPS. “The green growth vision of Samut Songkhram is particularly important for Thailand.”

Suchin, the shrimp fisher, will settle for no other. “They may like industrialisation in other provinces, but we prefer to make a living from fishing in the canals, our fruit orchards and home-stay tourism.”

Excerpt:

By Raquel Martinez and - -
MADRID, Mar 1 2012 (IPS)

Though Vitoria-Gasteiz, capital of the Basque Country, was elected the European Green Capital of 2012 – an award presented by the European Union to promote and reward efforts to mitigate climate change – Spain still has a long way to go to earn the label of ‘sustainable’ for others cities around the country.

The air that the citizens of Vitoria-Gasteiz breathe is of the highest quality, according to the score given by the European Union, thanks to campaigns to increase bicycle use around the city and the promotion of a new bus network together with tram routes and new parking regulations.

In contrast, cities such as Madrid, Barcelona, Sevilla or Bilbao have been consistently exceeding standard levels of pollution as a result of a lack of environmental planning and a long drought.

“The necessary ingredients of a sustainable city are social inclusion and environmental quality in a dense, compact and diverse area with (democratic) participation in decision making,” Luís Jiménez, director of the Observatory on Sustainability in Spain (OSE), told IPS.

“In the developed world, cities determine to a great extent (a country’s) consumption pattern of materials and energy as well as territory. (Urban areas) contribute 75 percent of the planet’s pollution and use 70 percent of energy consumed by mankind,” he added.

Ignacio Santos, an environmental expert currently working as a technical assistant for the Spanish Agency for International Development Cooperation (AECID), points out two key factors in measuring environmental advances or degeneration in Spanish cities: firstly, residents’ quality of life (which is tied to the quality of the urban environment) and secondly, an ‘ecological footprint’.

In terms of air quality, it is worth noting that approximately 87 percent of the Spanish population breathes ‘polluted air’, as defined by the World Health Organization.

This has resulted in 16,000 premature deaths annually and led to the proliferation of various respiratory diseases.

“In Spain, the process of industrialisation and urbanisation has degraded quality, particularly in urban centers. It is crucial to reinforce the public’s capacity for action against atmospheric pollution and to take decisive action to reduce greenhouse gas emissions, with integrated health, environmental and climate change policies,” Jiménez stressed.

According to Luis González, a member of Ecologistas en Acción, the main reason behind air quality degeneration in the cities is increased traffic, which directly emits particles in suspension from precursors (carbon monoxide, nitrogen oxides or methane) that make up tropospheric ozone.

Sadly, “Local authorities have just denied the problem or moved the measure stations. There are no programs aimed at reducing traffic and insufficient awareness of the use of different means of transport, such as the bicycle,” González told IPS.

The ‘ecological footprint’, a reliable methodology designed to measure human impact on the planet, essentially maps humans’ demand for natural resources and contrasts it against the Earth’s ecological capacity to regenerate those resources. According to the Ecological Footprint Atlas (2010), a publication from the Global Footprint Network, Spain has the 19th largest eco-footprint per person in a list of 153 countries.

Spain’s ecological footprint has grown by an annual average of 0.1 global hectares per person since 1995, according to the report Global Change Spain 2020/2050. By 2005 there had been an increase of 19 percent, which meant that the necessary ecological territory to produce resources and assimilate the residue produced by each Spanish person in 2005 was 6.4 global hectares per person.

“Therefore we are living beyond our means. If we want cities with quality of life and minimum impact, we have to ensure that our ecological footprint does not exceed our available biocapacity. Technological measures to improve efficiency in the use and production of resources are not enough to achieve that. The main challenge is to achieve a great change in current consumption habits,” Jiménez concluded.

Some experts believe it is necessary to rethink ‘urban metabolism’ as a means of reducing a country’s ecological footprint and improving air quality as well as other environmental aspects.

In the past few decades, territorial and urban planning based on unlimited and indiscriminate real- estate growth has been promoted.

This programme has been supported by a series of contradictory legislations: several regions’ urban regulations placed an upper limit on building densities, but in no case were these regulations enacted.

“It is important to have a clear idea of what kind of model of city we are talking about,” said Santos. “Sustainable cities are not those which are built with a lot of houses nor those full of big buildings and without green spaces,” he added.

“For example,” Santos told IPS, “Madrid’s metropolitan area is a model of a big city developed in an uncontrolled and dispersed way. New neighborhoods without an underground transport service are still being designed while there are a large number of empty houses in the city centre.”

An expansive city with a low building density and territorial dispersion in urban services needs more transport infrastructure, more energy consumption and takes up more land surface. All those factors affect the environment and increase greenhouse emissions, with a severe impact on air quality, climate change and acoustic pollution, among others – all of which affect the quality of life of citizens and other surrounding social and natural systems.

Also, a city without parks and green belts means a lack of trees to absorb pollution and reduce the impact of noise.

Dealing with all of these issues requires adapting the city to the limits of biocapacity, while aiming for sustainability.

“If we are in a relative situation of sustainability improvement, as a result of the economic crisis, this does not mean that a clear effort to change unsustainable growth (patterns) exists,” Jiménez stressed.

Current development trends in Spain are intrinsically incompatible with the planet on which we live, which has finite resources that are dwindling faster than at any other time in human history.

Stressing the urgency of the situation, Santos urged “not only need political will, but also scientific knowledge. To design and implement policies, it is necessary to have planners, decision makers and citizens with the carbon cycle constantly on their minds.”

Excerpt:

By Lee Middleton and - -
CAPE TOWN, South Africa, Mar 1 2012 (IPS)

Tucked against the rolling hills of South Africa’s Eastern Cape province, a small rural school has been turning its kitchen scraps, and agricultural and human waste into methane gas for cooking, and nutrient-rich fertiliser, and is even recycling its water.

Zothe, the school caretaker at Three Crowns Rural School in Lady Frere District oversees the feeding of the bio-digester. Credit: David Oldfield/IPS

According to the Council of Scientific and Industrial Research, if a business as usual approach is followed, South Africa’s freshwater resources will be fully depleted by 2030, unable to meet the needs of people or industry. “The problems will be made worse by more frequent incidents of water pollution and increased costs of water treatment,” said the 2010 CSIR report author, Peter Ashton.

With over 40 percent of South Africa’s dams affected by eutrophication (the process by which water becomes too nutrient-rich and prone to toxic algae blooms), acid mine drainage threatening to poison the water table around heavily populated Gauteng Province, and, according to the Department of Water Affair’s 2010/11 Green Drop report, 56 percent of the nation’s 821 sewage works either in a “critical state” or delivering a “very poor performance,” arid South Africa must develop economical ways of effectively recycling its naturally scarce water resources.

Funded by the Development Bank of South Africa, the Chris Hani District Municipality’s Environmental Management System Programme has been doing just that in its two-year-old pilot project at the Three Crowns Rural School.

The school’s zero-waste system feeds organic waste from the school’s kitchen, gardens, and toilets into an anaerobic “digester” (an oxygen-limiting, gas-tight enclosed pit) where microbial action breaks down the waste, creating methane “bio-gas” in the process.

The digested effluent is sent to a series of ponds, where first the remaining pollutants combine with oxygen and are transformed into a nutrient-rich “algal slurry” that makes excellent fertiliser. The water that emerges from the first pond shuttles to another, where fish like tilapia can feed on remaining algal content. The fishpond eco-system produces another algal fertiliser, and the pond water is irrigation- ready.

The final result is a system that transforms 100 percent of organic waste into biogas for cooking, pathogen-free algal fertiliser, and recycled pathogen-free water for irrigation of the school’s gardens. The project also provides an impressive life-science laboratory where learners daily witness and come to understand concepts like decomposition, aerobic and anaerobic biological action, and sustainability.

“It’s nothing new for the children to talk about digesters and bacteria and the algal pond and sterilisation. Hopefully these guys coming out of the school will help advance this type of thinking in the future,” said Mark Wells of People’s Power Africa (PPA), a consortium of environmental biotechnologies companies that was commissioned to install, manage, and monitor the system.

Francois Nel, head of environmental health and community services for Chris Hani District Municipality, emphasised the project’s ability to affect the way people think. “The first thing is the education of the children and changing the mindset in terms of energy, waste, and climate change. And the ownership – the children take ownership of the environment and the importance of protecting it.”

And it is not only the children who benefit. “This project is very, very important. First I can say to my own life, because I learned a lot of things about nature,” said Zothe, the school caretaker who oversees the feeding of the bio-digester. “We’ve learned how to use things that are connected to nature, like we have a solar cooker, bio-digester, wind power energy, so we don’t have to spend a lot of money, and we don’t waste.”

The Three Crowns project has been a great success, with four schools requesting installation of the same system, and the nearby communities of Intsikayethu and Engcobo planning to install the systems on a much larger scale.

It has also won numerous awards, including the 2011 Netherlands-sponsored Moolah for Amanzi award for best concept in water and sanitation projects, two Eskom ETA awards, and an Eastern Cape flagship project award.

Though adoption of the Three Crowns Project appears to be taking off, not far away in East London’s Buffalo City Municipality, another People’s Power Africa project is attempting to prove its worth to a sceptical municipality.

Like Three Crowns, PPA’s “eMonti Green Hub” is a one-stop shop to recover resources (e.g., nutrient- filled fertiliser, methane gas, and recycled water) from waste, but this time the “feed” includes municipal wastewater, sewage sludge, and the organic fraction of municipal solid waste including garden and abattoir refuse.

Currently 10 million litres of that “feed” in the form of raw sewage are dumped daily into the surf zone by Buffalo City’s defunct Second Creek Wastewater Treatment Works. The green hub proposes to use a large-scale anaerobic digester that is heated in continuously stirred reactors to more rapidly process that waste (woody garden refuse would fuel the heating).

Based on PPA’s feasibility study, the green hub is projected to produce methane biogas at a rate of 300 kilogrammes/hour (a head-high gas canister holds 40 kg), resulting in “green” methane gas, which can provide a sustainable source of income to run the hub. Mercedes Benz South Africa has already provided a letter of interest to purchase the biomethane for use in their paint shop air dryers and ovens.

Processing the daily “feedstock” (including eight million litres of industrial wastewater, eight million litres of domestic wastewater, two million litres of sewage sludge, 48 tonnes of food waste, 16 tonnes of abattoir waste, and 82 tonnes of garden refuse), the hub would yearly generate 5.8 billion litres of recycled water, 2,300 tonnes of biomethane gas, and 10,000 tons of bio-fertiliser, while diverting 30,000 tonnes of waste from landfills every year.

“That’s where it becomes so exciting,” Wells explained. “Especially when you look at what’s happening in the environment, the municipality needs to get its head around the huge amounts of bio-resources that they’re currently not using at all, that are just being thrown into landfill sites and into the sea. It just doesn’t make sense.”

Ultimately PPA wants the hub to benefit local communities, and so plans are for the plant to be held mostly in a joint community and municipal environmental trust, with additional private and public equity. Unfortunately getting the hub operational will involve cutting through extensive administrative red tape, which relies on changes in the attitudes of the city’s engineers and administrators.

“We know that everything is possible, but getting the city’s approval and endorsement has been a struggle. These projects are very difficult to put together because you’re talking about municipal resources and there’s all sorts of issues around that. Plus municipalities have to change the way they do things. We’re pushing the boundaries. We have the technical understanding, but now it’s the how to make it real,” Wells said.

Francois Nel agreed that PPA would face an uphill battle in getting the hub approved. “It’s a brilliant idea. The problem is that people don’t understand. They don’t understand the environment, and they don’t understand climate change,” Nel commented, recalling how even now he struggles to convince engineers to “come to the party,” despite the Three Crowns’ success.

Nonetheless, PPA and its partners anticipate that the hub’s environmental impact assessment will soon begin, and are working with the municipality on moving the public consultation process forward. They remain optimistic that by the end of 2013 the hub will begin producing the nutrients, energy, and recycled water.

“Essentially we see this as the people’s resources. Even if the municipality is in charge of it, they’re throwing it away, so we want to get the benefits from those resources back into community. Even if we don’t capitalise on it ourselves, the project will go forward. The main thing is to solve the problem and demonstrate these solutions,” said Wells.

Excerpt:

Governments and civil society organisations in Central Africa are slowly developing strategies in response to global warming. But specialists say the steps being taken seem hesitant in the face of emerging realities.

Forest elephants in the Mbeli River, Nouabalé-Ndoki National Park, Congo. Central African countries are developing strategies against climate change. Credit: Thomas Breuer/Wikicommons

For some time now, smallholder farmers in many parts of Africa, but particularly in the Congo basin, have noted with alarm a slump in farm output that can be linked to climate change.

“Before 2010, we would harvest, 1,200 kilogrammes per hectare of Kasaï 1 variety of maize, for example, or 1,000 kilos of the jl24 variety of groundnut. But beginning in 2010, yields per hectare fell to 600 kg for groundnuts and 700 kg for maize,” says a worried Jean-Baptiste Mbwengele, president of a production and sales cooperative which groups forty smallholder organisations in the Democratic Republic of Congo.

Mbwengele explains that the drop in production has been caused by disruptions to the agricultural calendar, due to both unusually heavy or prolonged rainy periods which make fungal, bacterial and viral plant diseases worse, and to drought – which he linked to the clearing of forests.

In partnership with the United Nations Development Programme, the DRC has initiated PANA-ASA – the Programme of Action for Adaptation and Food Security – designed to counter the threat that climate change poses to agricultural output and food security.

“This project will facilitate access to genetic material (improved seed) better adapted to the anticipated climatic conditions as well as the adoption of better practices for water management and soil fertility,” explains Jean Ndembo, the national coordinator for PANA-ASA.

Reducing deforestation is also a necessity, both to bolster the resilience of local farmers and to contribute to global mitigation of greenhouse gas emissions in the form of carbon stored in healthy forests.

For several years, the government of the Democratic Republic of Congo has been carrying out reforestation programmes as part of its Agricultural and Rural Sector Rehabilitation Support Programme, known as PARSAR. Supported by the African Development Bank, PARSAR has reforested some 600 hectares in the western provinces of Bandundu and Bas-Congo, planting 2.2 million trees, mostly acacias, according to the programme’s coordinator, Albert Luzayadio.

Smaller areas have also been rehabilitated by PARSAR in the east, in Orientale Province, where 44 hectares have been planted in Kisangani; and in the southeastern province of Katanga, 25 hectares in Pweto have been reforested.

The programme works in concert with civil society. Célestin Awiwi Mimbu, the national coordinator of non-governmental organisation Action de Reboisement au Congo, says his organisation has planted more than 900,000 trees across the Democratic Republic of Congo, mainly fast-growing eucalyptus and acacias – the latter tree’s leaves offer the additional benefit of fertilising the soil.

Mimbu explains that besides acacia and eucalyptus, umbrella trees – Maesopsis eminiii, a tall, fast- growing species widely found across tropical Africa – and various fruit trees have been planted at several sites in the southwestern DRC province of Bandundu, including 34 hectares at Ndunga and Ngulambondo, and another 56 hectares at Masimanimba.

“We have managed to carry out this reforestation work since the start of 2011, thanks to the National Forestry Fund established by the government. The aim is to build up resilience, support green growth, and fight global warming, which has many negative impacts,” he told IPS.

But he regrets that no budget was allocated for the care of these trees once planted, and some have been lost due to bushfires. Mimbu’s NGO is a member of the Natural Resources Network (la Réseau Ressource Naturelles), an umbrella organisation for civil society across Central Africa which works for the defence and promotion of better governance of forest resources.

“Armed conflict remains one of the major challenges in adapting to climate change in the Congo Basin. In the provinces of Maniema and North and South Kivu, in the eastern DRC, which have been plagued by conflict since 1997, shelling by armed groups has caused the degradation of forests, destroying soil fertility with the chemicals found in artillery shells,” said Corneille Lebu, a Congolese ecologist.

“The shelling cuts the leaves which in principle absorb carbon, leaving the soil bare, leading to the leaching (of nutrients) and destroying micro-organisms. There is a marked acceleration in the loss of moisture from the soil and the rapid release of greenhouse gases,” Lebu told IPS. “Since 1997, conflict in DRC have resulted in more than five million deaths.”

Lebu believes that for adaptation measures to succeed, it is essential to bring peace to war-ravaged zones, and to restore the soil using manure.”

Cameroon, the DRC and the Central African Republic have all begun implementing their National Adaptation Programmes, according to a 2010 report of COFCCA, the Congo Basin Forests and Climate Change Adaptation project.

Launched in Yaoundé, Cameroon, in 2008, COFCCA aims to identify and set joint priorities at the national and regional levels for forests and forest services that are vulnerable to climate change. The project also supports the sharing of experiences on adaptation strategies for a transfrontier resource such as the Congo Basin forests.

Elsewhere in the region, in 2010 the Gabonese government established an agency for research and observation of the climate from space, involving a tripartite accord with the French Institute of Research for Development (IRD) and the Brazilian Institute for Space Research.

Gabon has set up a station to receive satellite images, with the primary task of monitoring the state of health of tropical forests of the Congo Basin – 1.8 million square kilometres of forest, and constituting a “green lung” for the planet, second in size only to the Amazon.

In Burundi, deforestation is being countered by planting jatropha. Since 2010, the shrub has been planted on dozens of hectares in the Rukoko conservation area, which lies on the country’s border with DRC. The work has been done by the Tubane Association of Gikuzi with support from the Congo Basin Forest Fund.

A second phase of the project will be supported by the African Development Bank; the aim is to simultaneously combat poverty and protect the environment, with an integrated plan for exploitation of jatropha helping to bring an end to the present “anarchic” clearing of forest in the Rukoko Nature Reserve. The jatropha will reduce the impact of forest cover already lost while reducing pressure to cut down even more trees. People living in areas adjacent to the park will gain from the harvest and sale of raw jatropha seeds – which yield a valuable oil – as well as local production of soap and fertiliser from the seeds.

It’s in line with the government’s commitment to limit the impact of climatic changes due to deforestation, which is a growing problem Burundi. In November 2011, the country’s first vice president, Thérence Sinuguruza, called on the Environment Ministry to draft a law forbidding the unregulated cutting down of trees.

But even taken together, the actions of governments and civil society in Central Africa so far are inadequate, as they have not yet produced the desired results, says Odon Munsadi, a Congolese ecologist. “Communities in our respective countries are not yet applying agro-ecological practices, and the effects of climate change remain unchanged.”

“Sub-Saharan Africa produces less than four percent of greenhouse gases, this is much less than North America, Europe, Asia and other industrialised regions,” according to experts. But, “Africa is already suffering the effects of climate change will only suffer more in the years to come.”

* This article is one of a series supported by the Climate and Development Knowledge Network.

Mariem Mint Ahmedou sits cross-legged on a worn-out carpet in a basic tent built with mud bricks and layers of sewn-together fabric. Her eight-month-old twins, Hussein and Hassan, lie weakly against her body. Both of them have been malnourished since birth, because Beydar, undernourished herself, cannot produce enough breast milk to feed them.

A nutritionist assesses the health of a child: red indicates severe malnutrition. Credit: Kristin Palitza/IPS

“Because the rains didn’t come, we didn’t have any harvest. We bought some rice on credit, but there is no meat, hardly any milk. Sometimes we don’t eat for two nights,” explains Ahmedou of the dire situation not only her family but most of her village finds itself in.

The mother lives in Douerara, a small village about 800 kilometres east of Mauritania’s capital Nouakchott, in the midst of a parched landscape of sand and rocky soil, deep in the Sahel desert. A drought that destroyed the majority of the harvest in the region has ravaged the country for months, causing rural populations to start running out of food in early February, a good six months before the next rains – if they fall this year.

Apart from Mauritania, other countries in the Sahel, an arid zone between the Sahara desert in North Africa and Sudan’s Savannas in the south, are affected as well: Burkina Faso, Chad, Mali, Niger and the northern regions of Cameroon, Nigeria and Senegal. Twelve million people will soon suffer severe food insecurity and hunger in this region, aid agencies warn.

Mauritania, which has the least amount of potable water in the world, is one of the worst hit nations, with a third of its population already at risk of hunger. “The situation is extremely severe, especially for small children,” says Khadijettou Jarboue, a nutritionist who works at a public health centre in Kiffa, a small town in the country’s South-East.

With every week, more and more families line up at the clinic in search for help. “I am very concerned about the quickly rising numbers of severely malnourished children we see,” says Jarboue, as she weighs and measures a 21-month-old girl, Khadjetm, who has been brought to the centre by her mother, M’Barka Mint Salem, who lives in the village of El-Majba, 45 kilometres outside of Kiffa.

When the nutritionist places a three-coloured plastic band around the child’s upper arm, the strip tightens to the red section. This means the girl is severely malnourished, while yellow means moderate and green that a child weighs enough.

Her mother looks concerned: “I am extremely worried. We have no milk, no food. With every week, we’re struggling more to survive. And we are not the only ones. There are many malnourished children in our village.”

Children, the most vulnerable, are usually the first victims of a hunger crisis. As many as 60 percent of malnourished children can die in a food crisis, but the death rate could be even higher this year because the region has still not recovered from a serious drought in 2010. “The Sahel is a region in permanent crisis, faced with chronic food insecurity,” explains Felicité Tchibindat, regional nutrition advisor in West and Central Africa for United Nations Children’s Fund (UNICEF).

Even in a “normal” year, half of all children under five suffer chronic malnutrition in the Sahel. Rates of acute malnutrition among children are consistently above the ten percent threshold that for UNICEF defines an emergency. This year, the fund expects the situation to be much worse. “Every additional shock will push the lives of hundreds of thousands over the edge,” Tchibindat warns.

This year’s drought has been labelled the “worst since decades” by the U.N. As a result, food prices have tripled in Mauritania and other Sahelian countries, while the price of livestock – the main currency in the region – have dropped rapidly when pastures started to dry out. Roads lined with carcasses of cows that died of thirst and hunger.

“This year will be exceptionally difficult,” agrees Cheik Abdahllahi Ewah, governor of Hodh el Gharbi, one of the most affected provinces in Mauritania. “Last season’s lack of rain was like a death sentence to our people. There is an urgent need for intervention.”

“It’s only February now, and people are already in dire need. I’m very worried about how bad the situation will be in June, the height of the dry season,” he adds.

In a grain storage room in Legaere village in Mauritania’s east, stock manager Jeddou Ould Abdallahi looks helplessly at the few remaining sacks of millet and wheat stacked against the whitewashed walls. There is no way they will feed hundreds of people in surrounding villages until the next harvest in September. “We are on the brink of a famine. People’s health is diminishing quickly,” he says.

Since 2000, harvests have shrunk continuously due to lessening and unpredictable rainfall, says Abdallahi, noting that the persistent lack of water makes it more and more difficult to survive. But this year’s crisis is worse than other droughts the man in his late 40s can remember. It has become a fight for bare survival.

A few kilometres further on, an entire village has walked out to the communal millet field, in a desperate attempt to protect the few crops they managed to grow this season from a flock of birds that is equally desperate to find food to survive. Women and children shout and rattle stones in tin cans, while others wrap pieces of fabric around each millet stalk, so the birds can’t get to the grains.

But the situation is futile. “The birds have already eaten most of the harvest. Yet this field is all we have. All our hard work was for nothing,” laments farmer Zeidan Ould Mohammed. “I worry about my families survival. In the end we can only wait for death.”

For the first time in over 200 years, visible progress is being made in cleaning up the Matanza-Riachuelo River basin, the most highly polluted in Argentina, although improvements remain largely superficial so far.

Results of the clean-up and reforestation of the towpath along the banks of the Riachuelo. Credit: Juan Moseinco/IPS

“There have been advances, with the caveat that we are moving very slowly and there are some things that are still not being done, but overall the situation is positive,” Alfredo Alberti, president of the La Boca Residents Association, told Tierramérica. The southeastern Buenos Aires neighbourhood of La Boca (“The Mouth” in Spanish) is so named because it is located where the Riachuelo river flows into the Río de la Plata estuary.

The foul-smelling river stretches a total of 64 km, much of it through the northeast of the province of Buenos Aires, where it is called the Matanza River. Its name changes to Riachuelo from the point where it becomes the southern border of the city of Buenos Aires, the federal capital, with the rest of the province, until it empties into the estuary.

The Matanza-Riachuelo basin covers 2,240 sq km and includes 232 streams. Of the roughly five million people who live within this area, 35 percent have no access to drinking water and 55 percent lack sewers, according to the Environment and Natural Resources Foundation (FARN).

More than 12,000 businesses that operate along its banks, including tanneries, slaughterhouses and hydrocarbon, chemical and metallurgical plants, dump their wastewater into the river, polluting it with heavy metals like mercury, lead and chrome, among other toxins.

“Since late 2010, progress has been made in the clean-up of the river’s banks, the removal of sunken ships, and the relocation of people living along the most heavily polluted sections of the riverside,” activist Andrés Nápoli of FARN told IPS.

In fact, the tow paths along the river’s banks – 35-metre-wide strips on each side – have become visibly clearer, after being occupied for years by industries, slum housing and market stalls. In January, some 10,000 informal traders were evicted from the area.

The river’s banks are slowly being recovered and reconverted into public spaces. Around 30 of a total of 117 garbage dumps have been eliminated, trees have been planted, and a road is now being opened through an area that was impenetrable until recently.

But progress has been much slower in the identification and inspection of polluting industries, who have been slow to submit the conversion plans that each company is required to draw up, despite the fact that they have been offered easy financing for this purpose.

Of an estimated 12,000 polluting firms, 400 have submitted plans and 360 have been shut down for failing to do so, according to the executive president of the Matanza-Riachuelo Basin Authority (ACUMAR), Oscar Deina.

In a televised interview, Deina stressed that “we cannot trade health for employment,” referring to the dilemma faced until now by the authorities, who have been reluctant to shut down businesses because of the lost jobs that would result.

For his part, Nápoli stressed that little progress has been made in addressing the health problems of the people affected.

Official figures indicate that some 400,000 people need medical treatment as a result of living in the most severely polluted areas of the river basin, and they cannot wait until the clean-up efforts have been completed, he said.

FARN coordinates the Espacio Matanza-Riachuelo, a network of environmental groups and residents associations devoted to monitoring compliance with a clean-up plan ordered by Argentina’s Supreme Court in a historic ruling issued in July 2006.

In response to a suit filed by 114 residents of the river basin, the Court convened hearings with government officials, business owners and other stakeholders and then ordered the government to draw up a definitive clean-up plan for the area.

The plan is being implemented by ACUMAR, which was created for this purpose and is made up by representatives of the three jurisdictions involved: the national government, the government of the province of Buenos Aires, and the government of the city of Buenos Aires.

To help finance the cost of the clean-up – estimated at close to 1.5 billion dollars in 2009 – the World Bank granted Argentina a loan of 840 million dollars that same year, to be used for the construction of water supply and sewerage systems, water treatment plants and pumping stations, as well as industrial conversion, land planning and strengthening of the monitoring authority.

But work on the water and sanitation systems has yet to begin, and funding for other purposes has yet to be disbursed “because of bureaucratic issues,” reported Nápoli.

Environmentalists and local residents concur that the clean-up of the river, for which almost no one took responsibility a decade ago, progressed to some extent with the creation and consolidation of ACUMAR.

However, the greatest advances have been made thanks to the Supreme Court ruling, which established clear guidelines. The execution of the ruling was assigned to Federal Judge Luis Armella.

“He is a hardworking and thorough judge. Instead of handing out fines to those who don’t comply, he goes to the site, calls meetings and looks for solutions,” commented Alberti.

Nevertheless, “there have been improvements on the surface of the water, but the riverbed is just as polluted as ever,” he added.

Alberti also noted that the residents of the area have become “hostages to political disputes” between the different government authorities who have been brought together within ACUMAR but do not share the same party affiliations. This has resulted in delays in crucial work such as the construction of new housing.

Twenty percent of the 1,500 families who live on the banks of the Riachuelo have already been moved out of the area, reported Nápoli. Entire slum settlements have been relocated to new neighborhoods built in the Buenos Aires district of Lanús.

For its part, Greenpeace Argentina, which is also a member of the Espacio Matanza-Riachuelo network, does not share the generally positive view of the clean-up efforts expressed by others.

According to the environmental group, even if all of the factories complied with the rules on toxic waste dumping, the river would continue to be poisoned, because the limits established by the law are incompatible with the topography and characteristics of the Riachuelo.

Because it is a flat-lying river whose still waters make it more like a lake, it cannot withstand the same volumes of toxic wastewater as a faster-flowing river or one flowing down a mountain slope, explained Greenpeace activist Consuelo Bilbao.

As a result, the ultimate goal should be “zero wastewater” dumping. Greenpeace is working with ACUMAR for the adoption of progressive guidelines that become gradually less permissive.

For the time being, however, the goal is to at least ensure that the current legislation is obeyed.

*The writer is an IPS correspondent. This story was originally published by Latin American newspapers that are part of the Tierramérica network. Tierramérica is a specialised news service produced by IPS with the backing of the United Nations Development Programme, United Nations Environment Programme and the World Bank.

When a food crisis hits the continent, African countries tend to look to the international donor community to mobilise aid. But a fast-growing, drought- resistant tree with extremely nutritious leaves could help poor, arid nations to fight food insecurity and malnutrition on their own.

A Moringa tree in fruit, near Sprokieswoud in Namiba. Moringa leaves are dubbed a "super food". Credit: Hans Hillewaert/Wikkicommons

A 15-hectare plantation of the “miracle tree” with the botanical name Moringa oleifera has already started to make a positive change in the rural village of Tooseng, which is located in one of South Africa’s poorest provinces, Limpopo.

Moringa leaves are dubbed a “super food” because scientists found that they contain the calcium equivalent of four glasses of milk, the vitamin C content of seven oranges, the potassium of three bananas, three times the amount of iron found in spinach, four times the amount of vitamin A found in a carrot and twice the amount of protein in milk. It is like a supermarket on a tree.

Mavis Mathabatha, a former school teacher from Tooseng, has been working hard to set up a Moringa farm over the past three years that will produce enough leaves to make a positive difference in her community and further afield. “I want to make an impact in my area, province and across the country through this project,” she explains.

In 2009, she started harvesting, drying und grinding Moringa leaves from the first few trees she had planted, to sprinkle them on the meals provided to about 400 poor children at the local Sedikong sa Lerato (meaning “Circle of Love” in Sesotho) drop-in centre.

The centre feeds children from households with a combined income of less than 250 dollars a month, which includes practically all boys and girls in Tooseng, a community suffering from high rates of unemployment, poverty, food insecurity and low diet-diversity, malnutrition and HIV-infection.

“The results were visible almost immediately. The health of the children improved in a short period of time,” says Elizabeth Serogole, the drop-in centre’s manager who works closely with Mathabatha. She says many children had been showing signs of malnutrition, like open sores on their skins, which started to heal soon after the children regularly ate the leaves.

Supplementing their meals with Moringa also notably increased children’s ability to ward off new illness and infection and boosted their mental development, Serogole adds: “Most can now better concentrate at school.” All it needed was one teaspoon of leaf powder a day.

Dr. Samson Tesfay, a postdoctoral scholar at the South African University of KwaZulu-Natal’s Horticultural Science Department, confirms that Moringa is truly a multi-purpose wonder.

“The Moringa plant is unique in that every part can be utilised for beneficial purposes. It has medicinal, therapeutic, nutritive and practical uses. It is extremely effective in combating malnutrition,” says Tesfay. In addition, Moringa’s immature pods were full of essential amino acids.

Moringa leaves can also be used for medicinal purposes, to treat skin infections, lower blood pressure and blood sugar, reduce swelling, heal gastric ulcers and to calm the nervous system, Tesfay further explains. The plant, which is native to northern India, has been used in Ayurveda medicine for centuries and is said to prevent 300 diseases.

Moreover, the seeds of the tree can be used to purify water in rural areas where access to clean drinking water is difficult and often a cause for disease. “The seeds are effective in removing about 98 percent of impurities and microbes from contaminated water,” says Tesfay.

The slender tree with drooping branches is non-invasive, needs little water and grows fast, reaching a height of three metres within a year. It even grows steadily in Tooseng, in South Africa’s northeast, an arid region that has been suffering from repeated lack of rainfall in recent years.

“The tree can survive in relatively unfavourable conditions and does not require sophisticated and expensive farming methods or inputs,” explains Tesfay.

Moringa could thus indeed become a widely used hunger prevention method, food experts say, as it can grow in all of the world’s subtropical areas, where droughts and malnutrition are prevalent – in most parts of Africa, Central and South America, the Middle East and South-East Asia.

Since 2009, Mathabatha has built up her Moringa plantation little by little. After she heard about the multiple benefits of the tree, she applied for a grant from regional funding agency Southern Africa Trust, which help her to set up her own plantation. Today, she is the proud owner of 13,000 Moringa trees.

But Mathabatha did not stop here. She wanted to share her discovery of Moringa’s nutritious benefits with others and has therefore distributed more than 6,000 Moringa seedlings to poor families in various communities around Tooseng, together with a nutrition education campaign.

“Planting and distributing Moringa is a holistic approach to deal with the problem of food insecurity,” Ashley Green-Thompson, who managed the project grant, explains why the SAT decided to finance the project. “The level of household food insecurity is one of the key indicators of poverty, and it’s very high in this region.”

Today, Mathabatha’s farm produces and packages up to 10,000 tonnes a year of Moringa leaf powder, which is distributed not only within South Africa, but also exported to Botswana, Swaziland and Lesotho. “I am hoping to further extend my market in the next few years. There is a lot of interest in my product,” Mathabatha says.

But it is the urge to help much more than the desire to make money that motivates Mathabatha to expand her business. At the cost 60 cents per 40 grams of leaf powder – which lasts one person for about a month – the 52-year-old business woman puts affordability clearly before profits.

According to an old Serbian fairy tale, God tells a poor man who enters a gold mine that no matter what he chooses to do inside, he’ll be sorry when he leaves. If he takes some gold, he’ll be sorry for not taking more; if he doesn’t, he’ll be sorry for not taking any at all.

Modern Serbia now finds itself in a similar situation to the hero of that ancient tale.

Experts have revealed that parts of South-eastern Serbia lie on two billion tons of oil shale that could be processed into oil worth roughly 60 billion dollars in the next decade.

Further, the introduction and implementation of sufficient technology to turn the crude into derivates could reap between 120 and 180 billion dollars, according to studies by several domestic and international mining institutes and the Serbian ministry of environment and mining, which kept this secret carefully guarded until early January.

“It is our goal to introduce the most modern international technology so that oil shale can become a resource that will significantly improve the energetic balance of Serbia,” Oliver Dulic, minister of environment and mining, said last week on a visit to the small town of Aleksinac, some 210 kilometres south-east of the capital.

Yearning for growth

For the last few years, Serbia has barely managed to stay afloat in the tides of the global economic downturn, paying the price for moderate economic improvement with high unemployment and modest salaries.

The country’s unemployment rate soared to 23.7 percent in November 2011, up from just 19 percent in 2010. This is the highest level of unemployment since former dictator Slobodan Milosevic was ousted more than a decade ago, the national statistics bureau said Monday.

A breakdown of the data revealed the youth population to suffer the most, with an unemployment rate of 51.9 percent for the 15-24 age group and 32.0 percent for those between the ages of 25 and 34. But the discovery of shale deposits promises a leg-up for the struggling economy. Dulic proclaimed, “Several thousand people will be employed” once the operation is put into motion with the investment of between 700 and 800 million dollars.

In fact, Dulic’s visit to Aleksinac last week came after the media had a field day with the discovery of oil shale in the small, poor town, which is now gaining recognition as the frontier of what many hope will be a richer Serbia, once oil money starts to flow into state and municipal coffers.

The dirty side of progress

The celebration of imminent wealth notwithstanding, numerous experts have warned the “oil fairy tale” has a dark side that ordinary people are completely unaware of, namely, that the method of shale extraction is “the dirtiest technology” in the world today, with irreversibly destructive environmental impacts.

A long and bloody history has left the bulk of the Serbian public either apathetic or unaware of environmental issues: the wars of the 1990s that tore apart former Yugoslavia, followed by 10 years of economic sanctions, coupled with the NATO bombing of Serbia in 1999 have all but decimated the economy and created an economically overburdened citizenry.

In fact, the Serbian media has paid little attention to the controversy surrounding oil shale exploitation or to the growing international call against it.

But there is no escaping the fact that the proposed extraction project will be hazardous to the environment.

Oil shale is the term used for sedimentary rock that contains solid bituminous materials called kerogen, which are released as petroleum-like liquids when the rock is heated either underground (in situ) or in complexes above the ground, in the chemical process of pyrolysis.

The process gives off a vapour, which, when cooled, turns into liquid shale oil, or unconventional oil, which is then processed into oil and used for a host of economic activities.

According to Dejan Skala, a professor at the technology faculty in Belgrade, “Environmental problems (resulting from shale extraction) are enormous, particularly in the case of underground exploitation, as underground waters are heavily contaminated.”

He added that surface (or ex citu) exploitation, which is practically open pit mining, is also highly problematic, as it requires rock to be heated at incredibly high temperatures in special facilities, leaving the surrounding area looking much like Moon landscape.

Often, soil becomes too contaminated to host vegetation and the entire diverse ecosystem of the locality is destroyed.

The massive amounts of water consumed by the processing plants require the construction of protected deposition pools. The facilities also generate large quantities of carbon dioxide, which contribute significantly to global warming.

“Such processes should not be undertaken (in or) near densely populated areas,” Skala stressed.

According to Zoran Majdin, one of the few Serbian journalists dealing with environmental issues, “oil shale mining calls for serious environmental concern due to the (careless) use of land and water, (insufficient) waste disposal and waste water management, green house gas emissions and air pollution that people are completely unaware of.”

“So far people [are only concerned with the] economic progress associated with oil extraction,” he added.

Residents of Aleksinac are particularly thrilled about the project and conversations about oil shale have begun to dominate daily life in the small town.

“It’s high time someone did something for this part of Serbia,” Vladan Milosavljevic (60), one of the 5,000 miners employed in the Aleksinac coal mines – the biggest employer of the town’s 17,000 people until the disaster in 1989 – told IPS.

“Since (the mine was shut down) we’ve seen only poverty and bare survival here but the story of oil shale brings new hope,” he said.

Asked about the environmental hazards, Milosavljevic expressed little concern. “We survived the NATO bombing (in 1999),” he told IPS, “we can survive many other things as well.”

As the amount of protected forest dwindles rapidly in India, indigenous groups and wildlife find themselves living cheek to jowl in an increasingly contested space.

The Billigiri Ranga Temple Hills tiger reserve (BRT) in the South Indian state of Karnataka has become the site at which impoverished tribes like the Soligas and endangered species such as tigers are scrabbling for survival in the tide of India’s rampant neoliberal development program that is throttling both the environment and indigenous peoples.

Though the Soligas have traditionally been a subsistence community, their newfound participation in the market economy has made them reliant on the trade of non-timber forest products (NTFPs), which is detrimental to the local ecology.

“The Soligas’ dependence on different types of spinach, lichens, mosses, honey, seeds, nuts, berries, yams, roots, tubers, and fruits have reduced drastically, as these products [no longer] generate a substantial income,” Suresh Patil, deputy director of the Anthropological Survey of India, told IPS.

“Instead, they now prefer to work as daily wage labourers in the coffee and tea estates surrounding the forests,” or engage in extracting and selling forest products.

In order to sustainably integrate tribes into the mainstream economy the government of India introduced Large Scale Adivasi Multi Purpose Societies (LAMPS), a scheme through which forest contractors buy forest produce from tribes under the supervision of forest officials.

These contractors would then supply the produce to large economic enterprises for the manufacture of cosmetics, herbal medicines, and pharmaceuticals.

This system has created a strain between tribes and the forests in which they live, leaving tribes aspiring for a higher standard of living but constantly unable to achieve it, given their battle for space with the wildlife.

The Central Tiger Task Force report ‘Joining the Dots’ claimed, “Villagers (in Karnataka) regard the tiger and the park administration as their common enemy number one. They live sandwiched between the two, and are bitter about their desperately wretched existence.”

“Thousands of years ago humans could coexist with wildlife, for they took from forests only those resources needed for their basic survival. There were no linkages to the market then,” Ullas Karanth, a biologist at the Wildlife Conservation Society, told IPS. Now, however, the Soligas’ use of cattle and wells – in their effort to generate more income and escape the throes of poverty – has ramped up the human- animal conflict in the already overcrowded reserve.

Tigers and leopards have begun to prey on cattle, causing great hardships for tribe members. Crop raiding elephants also threaten forest dwellers and squatters.

Human settlements in forests account for deforestation, rendering thousands of creatures homeless. Deforestation also traumatises migrating wildlife and separates individuals from the herd, which can lead to inbreeding.

Still, experts point out that the Soligas are only marginally responsible for deforestation when compared to the scale of deforestation perpetuated by the state forest department itself. Industrial farming in the BRT, including huge coffee estates owned by the biggest industrial houses in India, has seriously impinged on the protected land, pushing wildlife further into a concentrated space with tribes.

Following a lengthy lawsuit, which finally culminated this year in the Soligas winning access to 60 percent of the protected tiger reserve, conservationists fear that the tigers will bear the brunt of dwindling forest space.

The renowned tiger conservationist Valmik Thapar remarked famously, “[That] tigers and people are forced to co-exist, through some innovative scheme of increased use of underutilised forest resources involving the local people, does not make any sense to tiger conservationists, especially since human and cattle populations are constantly rising.”

“Each tiger must eat 50 cow-sized animals a year to survive, and if you put [a hungry tiger] amidst cows and people, the conflict will be eternal. Tigers [have witnessed a decline of] over 95 percent of their former range in India.”

“The premise of continued co-existence over vast landscapes where tigers thrive ecologically and people thrive economically is an impractical dream, with which I totally disagree. Such dreaming cannot save the tiger in the real world,” he said.

“This scenario is a “no win” situation for everyone and [could] result in the eventual extinction of tiger populations Alternatives where tigers have priority inside identified protected reserves and people have priority outside them have to be explored fast and implemented expeditiously. There is no other way,” Thapar concluded.

In 1998, when the Bhadra wildlife sanctuary was officially declared a protected tiger reserve, the government of Karnataka – assisted by a generous World Bank loan – earmarked a sizeable plot of land to create a township for relocated forest dwellers.

Indigenous groups living in the Bhadra sanctuary became the beneficiaries of a very sound relocation package. All the settlers were given ample arable land for cultivation, housing with sanitation, infrastructure for a sufficient power and water supply, agricultural produce markets, and facilities such as banks and schools and hospitals for both humans and livestock.

The Soligas have fiercely resisted a similar relocation package, claiming they would rather suffer death than be separated from their ancestral land.

However, conservationists are agreed on one thing: if the Soligas’ move to resist relocation is replicated in the future, habitat conservation could be futile. According to experts like Thapar, “The present concept of a ‘new’ coexistence [between tribes and tigers] is a utopian idea and will not work. This I am absolutely clear about.”

*This is the second of a two-part series on the struggle for space between indigenous peoples and endangered species.

*Malini Shankar is a wildlife photojournalist and filmmaker based in Bangalore.

Tucked away in a dense and ecologically diverse tiger reserve in Southern India, tribes-people and wildlife defenders are locked in a battle of indigenous peoples’ rights versus wildlife rights.

Earlier this year the Soligas – a tribe hailing from the Billigiri Ranga Temple Hills tiger reserve (BRT) – won the rights to their ancestral land, following a thorny legal encounter with the state forest department, which had earlier threatened to displace 1,500 indigenous families in order to protect 30 endangered tigers.

Tribal representatives insist that the Soligas’ presence on the reserve is not detrimental to the tigers, claiming back in December, “We have been the ones who looked out for the tigers. Give us poison rather than move us from our home.”

Last month the tribe secured access to 60 percent of the forest that they claim is their ‘birthright’ and rejected a relocation package outside the tiger reserve, which is situated at the confluence of the Eastern and Western Ghats in Chamrajnagar district in India’s southern state of Karnataka.

A press release by the UK-based tribal advocacy group Survival International said last year, “This unprecedented move brings an end to (the tribe’s) fears of eviction and the ban on their right to hunt and cultivate.”

But wildlife conservationists across India are deeply alarmed by the tribe’s decision to stay in the BRT, since it does not appear to take into account the irreversible impact of human settlement on wildlife populations and complex ecologies.

Many experts believe that continued human presence in the small, bio-diverse forest could be detrimental to the wildlife, particularly pyramid species like tigers.

The BRT was officially declared a protected reserve last year, when scientists discovered it was home to a huge variety of wildlife including endangered tigers, leopards, elephants, wild dogs, bears, 270 species of endemic birds, scores of snake varieties and other reptiles, as well as turtles and monitor lizards, all in a 541 square kilometre forest.

Anthropologists say this dense concentration of wildlife is already a strain on nature’s ability to provide adequately for all the forest’s dwellers. Add to this a human settlement that relies heavily on forest produce for its survival and the situation bodes badly for the wildlife.

The Soligas are considered by many to be to be an environmentally “low impact” group. They worship a 1000-year-old tree as their supreme deity and have, for centuries, lived as one with the forest.

“The Soligas’ traditional health care system is holistic, [relying on] herbal remedies. Their customary diet includes millet, pulses and 20 varieties of leafy vegetables found in the forest,” said H. Sudarshan of the tribal advocacy NGO Vivekananda Girijan Kalyan Kendra (VGKK).

However, the Soligas’ transition from a subsistence community into increased participation in the formal market economy through trade in forest products has increased their environmental impact on the reserve.

“Excluding firewood extraction, trade and consumption of minor forest produce (like herbs, roots, tubers, barks and mosses) account for 60 percent of their total cash income; they supplement their incomes by working as daily wage labourers with either the forest department or with the forest fringe coffee estates,” Siddappa Shetty, a senior fellow at the Ashoka Trust for Research in Ecology and Environment in the BRT, told IPS.

“Granting land and community rights within Protected Areas – which [comprise] less than four percent of India’s landscape – to growing populations of forest dwellers engaged in raising crops and livestock and commercial collection of non-timber forest products (NTFPs) for markets is a retrograde step,” Praveen Bhargav of the Bangalore-based Wildlife First, added.

“Since India’s independence, vast areas of wildlife habitats under the control of local communities have been decimated. While the consequences of mining, dams and wildlife resorts are clearly visible, the destruction caused by millions of people extracting forest products remains largely unseen,” he told IPS.

“Today, India’s Protected Areas are the last refuges where endangered species have a slim chance of survival. Rampant, market-driven exploitation of NTFPs in these ecologically sensitive hotspots could affect the delicate balance of nature,” he said.

According to a recent study by Aditi Sinha and Kamaljit S. Bawa, researchers at the Department of Biology at the University of Massachusetts, “the Soligas” – meaning children of Bamboo – “harvest an average of 86 percent of the fruit yield per tree.”

Quoting other scientific studies, Bhargav added, “Current harvesting techniques used by the Soligas have negative impacts on trees since they focus on maximizing economic returns by adopting methods of extraction like lopping branches and cutting trees. Such practices can ultimately decrease the rates at which trees grow, thereby making the extraction of Phyllanthus fruits unsustainable.”

Given that at least eight varieties of birds, 100 species of insects, one leopard, one bear, a dozen Langur monkeys, a colony of 200 bats, a herd of 35 spotted deer and five snakes can dwell in and around a single tree in a tropical forest like the BRT, every tree culled by human beings contributes to the human-animal conflict for space.

Statistics from the Chamrajnagar Deputy Commissioner’s office revealed the tribal population to be 60,930 in 2001.

According to the Wildlife Institute of India (WII)’s most recent tiger census, the 541 square kilometre reserve was also home to 37 tigers in 2010. An average adult Royal Bengal Tiger needs at least 50 square kilometres of space, which means that the current terrain deficit for the endangered creatures is staggering.

“Tigers occupy areas where human impact is minimal; high tiger densities occur in areas with low human disturbances. When humans outnumber wildlife, the wildlife will not survive,” Y.V. Jhala, head of the WII’s national tiger census, told IPS.

“While it is imperative that we redress injustices done to forest dwellers, it is vital that we do not simultaneously perpetuate injustices to wildlife, which are far more disenfranchised,” Barghav told IPS.

*This is the first of a two-part series on the struggle for space between indigenous peoples and endangered species.

*Malini Shankar is a wildlife photojournalist and filmmaker based in Bangalore.

With floods, droughts and other calamities battering deltaic Bangladesh regularly, farmers need little prompting in switching to climate-resistant varieties of rice, wheat, pulses and other staples.

Bangladeshi women farmers prefer climate-proof crops varieties. Credit: Naimul Haq/IPS

The crop diversification, actively supported by the government’s research institutions, is already benefitting the 145 million people of this densely populated, predominantly agricultural South Asian country.

Mosammet Sabera Begum, 38, a farmer in Purbadebu village, Rangpur district, about 370 km from the capital, earned Bangladeshi taka 14,000 (177 dollars) last summer selling paddy cultivated on two acres of land leased from a local landlord.

“I’d planted ‘paijam’ (an early maturing rice breed) which is ready for harvest about 30 days earlier than traditional varieties that take 150 days. It is superior in quality, has higher yield and fetches better pric,” said Sabera, mother of two teenage girls.

The rice variety that Sabera resorted to, developed last year by the Bangladesh Institute of Nuclear Agriculture (BINA,) withstands floods, drought and pest attacks and gives 4.5 – 5.5 tonnes per hectare compared to regular varieties which yield a maximum of three tonnes per hectare.

“The ‘BINA Dhan-7’ variety holds extra benefit for farmers. It can be sown during the monga (lean season beginning September) or while regular varieties are still maturing in the fields. So, in a sense, it is an additional crop harvested in shorter duration,” Abdus Salam, head of research at BINA, told IPS.

“BINA Dhan–7 has good economic, social and ecological acceptance. The biggest advantage of this variety is that it takes a shorter time to grow even during extreme drought conditions.”

In fact, BINA Dhan–7 combats seasonal food shortages by creating job opportunities for farm labourers who would wait for, on average, two extra months before the regular variety of rice would ripen.

Far in the southwest, 43-year-old Nargis Ara Begum dries harvested paddy in an open courtyard that she and her husband, Mukul Miah, had cultivated on highly saline soil.

“We never expected to get such a good harvest in salty soil,” said Nargis who owns the small granary next to her home in the Chaukani village of Satkhira district, located some 320 km southwest of Dhaka.

Nargis and her husband had cultivated a rice variety developed by the Bangladesh Rice Research Institute (BRRI) named, ‘BRRI -47’, which survives highly saline and water-logged conditions.

Farmers who had given up hope of growing crops in salty soil are keen to follow Nagis’s example and ready to invest in the new rice variety.

Not very far from Koyra lives Asma Begum, 32, a woman farmer in the Boro Nawabpur village of coastal Bagerhat district, who borrowed 914 dollars from a local non-government organisation to cultivate rice in saline soil, is confident of recovering her investment.

“I trained at the agriculture extension department learning to handle saplings. I heard that farmers in other districts successfully raised BRRI-47 and earned good profits,” said Asma, who now trains other local farmers, mostly women, to cultivate BRRI-47 rice.

Last summer, in Raghunathpur village in the Birampur sub-district of north-western Dinajpur district, Raxmi Mayaboti, 39, and her husband, Kailash Sarker, cultivated a new variety of wheat on three acres of land in the arid Barind Tract – a desertified region spread over 8,000 sq km.

The environment here is dry and hot during summer and growing crops in such conditions is considered impossible, except for ‘BARI Gom 25’ a new variety of wheat developed by the Bangladesh Agricultural Research Council(BARC).

“We had no problem raising wheat on the dry soil,” said Mayaboti. “Unlike traditional varieties of wheat, BARI Gom-25 requires water only in the initial stages and once the plants mature there is no need for further irrigation and nurturing.”

Other climate-proof varieties of crops developed in Bangladesh and available in the market include tomatoes, sweet potatoes, onion, pulses, mustard oil and sugarcane.

But Bangladesh’s agricultural institutions have been most successful with cereals. They have developed some 190 varieties of wheat and rice capable of withstanding drought, salinity, flooding or temperature extremes also come up with six salt-tolerant pulses.

Despite such advances, experts feel that Bangladesh needs better cooperation from international agriculture research agencies to help farmers adapt to climate change.

Wais Kabir, executive chairman of BARC, told IPS: “We need more skilled scientists, the latest biotechnology equipment and, above all, better international collaboration to deal with the climate crisis.”

The anxiety is understandable. Bangladesh’s ministry of agriculture estimates that about 80,000 hectares of arable land are lost every year due to natural disasters, prolonged floods, saline water intrusion and extended drought.

Nizamuddin Sheikh's eatery stays open longer thanks to a rooftop solar power set. Credit: Naimul Haq/IPS

By Naimul Haq
DHAKA, Dec 28 2011 (IPS)

The sun never shone brighter on rural Bangladesh with low power solar systems transforming the lives of tens of millions of marginalised rural people who are unconnected to the national grid.

Nizamuddin Sheikh, 52, who runs a small eatery in Foilerhat market in Bagerhat district, thinks that the Bangladeshi Taka 1,900 (24 dollars) he paid for a 20 watt solar set, that includes solar panels, battery, regulator and a set of compact fluorescent lamps (CFL) and LED lights, is the best investment he ever made.

“Before I bought the set from GS (Grameen Shakthi, a sister concern of Grameen Bank) my restaurant was kept open only during the daytime, but now I have extended my business well into the evenings,” Nizamuddin told IPS. “My income has doubled.”

Nizamuddin has to repay the rest of the cost of the solar home system (SHS) over the next 36 months at five dollars per month, which, he says, is no burden.

“Once we demonstrate the benefits of SHS, people respond with tremendous interest,” said Habibur Rahman, GS regional manager in Bagerhat. “And then we offer easy and affordable monthly installment facilities.”

There are various packages on offer suited to different income groups of people in the rural areas. The very poor can own an SHS, paying as low as ten percent of the total cost with the rest payable in 36 equal installments.

Typically, people from the poorer sections opt for an SHS set that costs 124 dollars and capable of generating about 10 watts of electricity to light a five watt CFL for about three hours.

Better off people buy more powerful systems, paying 35 percent of the total cost of the SHS in advance and the balance over a 12-month period. Costs vary with energy output, with the most expensive model costing 925 dollars and providing 135 watts of uninterrupted power for four hours.

Acting managing director of GS, Abser Kamal, told IPS, “SHS units are in demand due to many advantages, but especially because it is far cheaper than conventional fuels like kerosene and diesel and has no maintenance expenses.”

“In the villages solar power provides extended working hours for students, shopkeepers and housewives. Now they can do things like conveniently charge mobile phones – which have already been changing lives,” Kamal said.

“Without solar power many villagers would probably have had to wait years to get electricity from the national grid,” he said. “Solar is transforming their lives – this is quick social and economical development.”

Only 41 percent of Bangladesh’s 142 million people have access to electricity from the sluggish national grid.

GS, a pioneer in promoting ‘green energy’, started out in 1996 as a lone player and today is the largest distributor of SHS – over 700,000 units out of a total of about 1.1 million in the country – contributing to the daily generation of about 60 Mw of solar power.

So successful was the initial programme of promoting SHS that the private sector sold 50,000 sets in about five years – two years ahead of the target of 2008.

In 2008, the government set a target of five percent of total energy from renewable sources and 10 percent by 2020.

Current power generation from some 81 power plants amounts to 6,700 Mw, with 95 percent of it coming from burning fossil fuels like coal, furnace oil, gas and diesel. Hydroelectric power accounts for another 3.3 percent

Bangladesh’s energy minister Muhammad Enamul Huq told IPS, “We want to promote solar system in every corner of the country and so we are giving huge incentives to the private sector to make solar affordable.”

Government incentives for companies setting up solar plants include a 15-year tax holiday and exemption from paying import duty on equipment.

Foreign investors get exemptions on royalties, technical knowhow, technical assistance fees and facilities for their repatriation of profits. Foreigners working in solar energy projects need pay no income tax for the first three years of their stay in this country.

Last year the government also made it mandatory for all newly constructed domestic and commercial buildings to have solar systems installed on rooftops.

“Today we are helping to change the lives of 7,000 rural people every day through solar technology,” said Islam Sharif, chief of the state-owned financier, Infrastructure Development Company Limited (IDCOL), which funds 90 percent of Bangladesh’s 1.1 million SHS – mostly in partnership with GS, but also with other companies and NGOs.

Speaking to IPS, Sharif said, “Through our 29 partners we are now helping to add 24 Mw of solar power in Bangladesh every year.”

M. A. Gofran, a leading Bangladeshi expert on renewable energy told IPS: “In ten years from now we want to celebrate the 50 years of independence of the nation by seeing all our villages using renewable energy.”

A multi-million dollar iron-ore reprocessing plant in the northern part of Swaziland, owned by Indian mining company Salgaocar, is threatening the water security of local communities and even the country’s capital city, Mbabane.

A multi-million dollar iron-ore reprocessing plant in northern Swaziland is threatening water security. Credit: Mantoe Phakathi/IPS

Residents here are worried that effluent from the mining factory, which is scheduled to start operating in January 2012 within a protected area inside the Malolotja Game Reserve, will contaminate the water quality of the nearby Hawane Dam.

The Swaziland Water Services Corporation (SWSC) draws water from Hawane Dam to supply Mbabane and the tourism hub of Ezulwini.

Ngwenya Iron Ore Mine, where the plant is being established, is the oldest mine in the world according to the Swaziland National Trust Commission and the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organisation. Mining has been banned in the area since 1972 and the spot was declared a world heritage site and tourism attraction.

However, Minister of Commerce and Trade Jabulile Mashwama told parliament in 2005 that the government could not depend on the site economically because very little revenue was generated from tourism.

Early this year the government gave Salgaocar Swaziland a seven-year license to reprocess the iron ore dumps here.

But residents from the nearby New Skom have approached Salgaocar management to request the company supply the community with clean potable water. Nothing has been forthcoming, so far.

“We don’t have access to clean water, and the little that we have from the stream is likely to be contaminated with iron ore when the factory, which will be established close to the stream, starts,” said Princess Hlatshwayo, a local resident.

The community has never had potable water because, Hlatshwayo said, the SWSC said it was difficult to install pipes here because of the difficult terrain and lack of established roads.

“So for years we’ve been collecting water for drinking and cooking from the stream, which we treat by boiling it,” she said.

When IPS visited the mining site, trucks loaded with iron ore were transporting the substance to Mozambique for reprocessing until the factory here opens in January.

Rex Brown, a local environmentalist and resident of Mbabane, is concerned about the direct threat to Hawane Dam and Mbuluzi River from the runoff of the reprocessing factory site and ore stockpiles.

He points to a number of discrepancies in the Environmental Impact Assessment (EIA) prepared by Sustainable Technologies, a consulting company that wrote the report. He said the EIA lacked clearly defined measurable mitigation targets, and will put thousands of people’s water supplies at risk if not reviewed.

“The EIA gives a shallow description of the waste water treatment process and what will become of the disposal facilities post factory,” said Brown. “The possible chemical composition of the waste water is not described despite the use of a range of chemicals and flocculants and additives to separate the haematite from the soil mass.”

He said the EIA presents limited factual or operational information on the type, size and capacity of proposed water treatment facilities.

However, SWSC public affairs manager Jameson Mkhonta said as far as the organisation was concerned there will be no threat to the water quality at Hawane Dam.

“All rivers feeding to Hawane Dam start from way below the other side of the mining activity, which means the dam is safe,” said Mkhonta.

He said the outflow from the mine would go to Motshane River, which does not feed into Hawane Dam. He also said the dam could only be contaminated if there is seepage from the mountain.

The Swaziland Environment Authority (SEA), which initially raised objections during the EIA process, said that their concerns have been addressed.

“The mitigation measures provided in the report on water pollution are sufficient to address any possible water contamination by the processing activities,” said SEA acting chief executive director Steven Zuke.

“Given the potential catastrophic consequences of such possible contamination, this issue is being treated as a high priority by the SEA and all parties involved,” said Zuke.

The SEA had been concerned about the use of chemicals but Zuke said that Salgaocar assured all parties that only lime would be used for iron ore screening.

“SEA is not aware of any other chemicals that will be used,” said Zuke.

However, general manager at Ngwenya Glass, Gary Hayter, said that the EIA was carried out over a short period during the dry season without any consideration or mitigation factors to cope with large fluctuations in the levels of the streams and rivers during summer thunderstorms.

Ngwenya Glass is a tourist attraction site operating close to the mine and Hayter was one of the people asked to make comments during the EIA scoping meeting.

“The quantity of water drawn from the existing water reserves will impact on the communities surrounding the site, as the project will be drawing water from the already limited drinking water for the communities as well as polluting these water reserves,” he said.

In response, Salgaocar acknowledged that the EIA could not be conducted over an entire year because of limited time.

“However, through monitoring, more data will be collected covering more parameters, which will help inform the project in a progressive manner,” reads a response from Salgaocar.

“Regular compliance reports, whose frequency will be determined by the Swaziland Environment Authority, will be complied through the duration of the project.”

Brown disagrees, arguing that the EIA for the most part ignores the physical reality of the reprocessing plant being located within a nationally protected area.

“The EIA … appears to completely ignore the national and international significance of having an iron ore reprocessing factory located within a nationally protected area.

“This precedent makes this project highly significant to the future management and status of protected areas nationally,” Brown said.

He said that although less than four percent of the country’s critical ecosystems have been formally protected, “this relatively small area is regionally and globally significant in terms of its biological diversity.”

The Swaziland Environment Justice Agenda, a non-governmental organisation running a Participatory Environment Education Course in partnership with Rhodes University, is also worried about the aquatic life in the pit of the mine.

“The EIA exercise was too fast for us to even make any meaningful contribution,” said Torch Dlamini, the coordinator of the course, which is held at the Malolotja Nature Reserve.

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Sierra Leone’s Gola Rainforest remains a centre of contention as the local community here plan to take their chief to court next week over a controversial 50-year land lease to a mining company.

The Gola Forest is bisected by several of Sierra Leone's major rivers. Credit: Courtesy of David Zeller/Gola Programme

Mining companies have long coveted the land here for its iron ore potential as deposits in Bagla Hills are estimated to be worth 150 billion dollars.

The International Monetary Fund estimates that because of this natural resource, Sierra Leone’s small economy will have one of the biggest growth rates in the world at a staggering 51.4 percent in 2012, on the back of legal iron ore activity and exports.

But the community of Tonika remains furious about the deal.

“The chief is guardian of the land – he can’t sell it,” Alfred Williams, a member of the Tonkia Descendants Association, told IPS. Williams says the local community knew nothing of the sale until it appeared in the local media following Sable Mining’s statement to the London Stock Exchange.

Sable Mining issued a statement in May announcing its purchase of an 80 percent interest in Red Rock Mining, which had apparently bought the lease for 206 square kilometres of Bagla Hills from the local Tonkia Paramount Chief.

But the lease has become even more controversial as the country’s President Ernest Bai Koroma declared the 75,000-hectare rainforest a protected area and a national park in December. The forest type is one of the world’s 25 global bio-diversity hotspots.

The government has also launched an investigation into what they describe as an illegal land sale.

Kate Garnett, from the government’s Forestry Conservation and Wildlife Management Unit, says Bagla Hills “is a case of Sable Mining having been deceived by a local man.” The government issued a statement saying that any sale of Bagla Hills, as well as mining in the rainforest, is illegal.

The government’s Director of Mines Jonathan Sharkar said that the Ministry of Mineral Resources has never dealt with Sable Mining Africa.

“Sable Mining have never applied for a mining concession in this country – we have no dealings with them,” Sharkar says. He also points out that any land rights are also only surface rights – any minerals are owned by the government.

A Sable Mining spokesperson, who did not want to be named, confirmed that they do not hold a current mining licence for Bagla Hills.

Sable Mining would not comment on the land rights and referred IPS to their statements from earlier this year. These claim land registration documents proving ownership of Bagla Hills by Sable Mining have been filed at the land registry. The government, however, denies this.

But the case still dominates talk shows in this West African country. It led to a local demonstration, and in September the country’s Resident Minister William Juana Smith requested journalists refrain from reporting stories that had “the potential of creating conflict.” He had threatened that serious action would be taken against anyone doing so.

But the issue remains volatile as it concerns the livelihoods of the community. The Tonika community once made a good living mining gold in the forest, selling timber, farming and hunting. This will now stop because of the lease, says Williams.

“While the chief gets rich, people in Tonkia are left poor and aggrieved, without schools, hospitals and jobs. Young people need work – some of us say through mining, some say through the Gola reserve,” says Williams.

Augustine Sannoh, from the civil society movement, East Kenema, says that the chief has mobilised a small band of pro-mining individuals.

“He continues to galvanise support – even though there’s a court case to answer. The problem is that local people struggle to see the financial benefits of Gola Rainforest National Park. You can now only take firewood and fish for personal consumption. You can make honey or rattan products to sell, but these have a lower economic value than hunting and mining. It’s a big local dispute still.”

Williams also says the Gola Forest Programme (GFP) that manages the national park is yet to help people find alternative livelihoods as promised.

GFP’s Guy Marris denies this.

“We’ve supported with roads, bridges, culverts, and medical centres,” he says. Marris says the GFP recognises that providing alternative livelihoods to the community is a key strategy to forest preservation.

Plans are underway for various projects including carbon trading “which could earn tens of millions dollars,” as well as small enterprise development, and eco-tourism.

“It’s a process, it’ll take time, but in the meantime, we are mandated to represent government – no mining is permitted by individuals or by companies,” says Marris.

However, Garnett says communities still believe that mining will transform their lives.

“There are many examples where only environmental destruction has been left behind,” Garnett says.

She says the Forestry division was planning to take communities on visits to mined sites, “to show how mining can leave little positive community impact.”

“The law says no mining and we agree with conservation for now, but I have to say people want mining here because it is a quick way of getting money. No one wants to be poor, everyone wants to be rich,” Musa Taimeh, chairperson of the Tonkia Descendants Association, says.

Natalie Ashworth, from watchdog group Global Witness, says that people have an unrealistic expectation of what mining can offer them.

“People think it is going to change everything and provide thousands of jobs, which of course it is not. I doubt Sable Mining would have acquired Red Rock if they did not think they would be able to apply for a mining license at some point. As long as Sierra Leone is poor and has so few options, Gola Rainforest will always be threatened,” she says.  

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