There are an estimated 13,000 pieces of plastic litter afloat every single square kilometer of ocean. Credit: Bo Eide Snemann/CC-BY-2.0

By Manipadma Jena
ATHENS, Oct 10 2014 (IPS)

Imagine a black-footed albatross feeding its chick plastic pellets, a baby seal in the North Pole helplessly struggling with an open-ended plastic bag wrapped tight around its neck, or a fishing vessel stranded mid-sea, a length of discarded nylon net entangled in its propeller. Multiply these scenarios a thousand-fold, and you get a glimpse of the state of the world’s oceans.

With an average of 13,000 pieces of plastic litter estimated to be afloat every single square kilometer of ocean globally, and 6.4 million tonnes of marine litter reaching the oceans every year according to the United Nations Environment Programme (UNEP), researchers and scientists predict a bleak future for the great bodies of water that are vital to our planet’s existence.

A conservative estimate of overall financial damage of plastic to marine ecosystems stands at 13 billion dollars each year, according to a press release from UNEP released on Oct. 1.

“To entirely rid the ocean of litter is an aspiration not expected to be achieved in a lifetime, even if we stop waste inputs into the sea, which we still have not. The cost is too much. Much of the waste has been broken down and is beyond our reach. To clean the sea surface of [floating] litter itself will take a long time." -- Vincent Sweeney, coordinator of the Global Programme of Action for the Protection of the Marine Environment from Land-based Activities (GPA).
With the 12^th Conference of the Parties to the Convention on Biological Diversity (COP12) currently underway in Pyeongchang, South Korea, the issue of marine health and ocean ecosystems is in the spotlight.

Of the 20 Aichi Bioiversity Targets agreed upon at a conference in Nagoya, Japan in 2010, the preservation of marine biodiversity emerged as a crucial goal, with Target 11 laying out the importance of designating ‘protected areas’ for the purpose of protecting marine ecosystems, particularly from the harmful effects of human activity.

Speaking to IPS on sidelines of the 16^th Global Meeting of the Regional Seas Conventions and Actions Plans (RSCAP) held in Athens from Sep. 29-Oct. 1, Tatjana Hema, programme officer of the marine pollution assessment and control component of the Mediterranean Action Plan, told IPS that marine debris results from humane behaviour, particularly land-based activities.

The meeting drew scientists and policymakers from around the globe to chart a new roadmap to stop the rapid degradation of the world’s seas and oceans and set policies for their sustainable use and integration into the post‐2015 development agenda.

There was a near unanimous consensus that marine littler posed a “tremendous challenge” to sustainable development in every region of the world.

The issue has been given top priority since the Rio+20 Earth Summit in Brazil in 2012, and Goal 14 of the 17 proposed Sustainable Development Goals – which will replace the MDGs as the U.N.’s main blueprint for action at the end of this year – set the target of significantly reducing marine pollution by 2025.

“We did not have any difficulty pushing for the explicit inclusion of this goal in the proposed SDGs,” Jacqueline Alder, head of the freshwater and marine ecosystems branch at the Division of Environmental Policy Implementation for the UNEP told IPS. “After all, oceans are everyone’s problem, and we all generate waste.”

Wastes released from dump-sites near the coast or river banks, the littering of beaches, tourism and recreational use of the coasts, fishing industry activities, ship-breaking yards, legal and illegal dumping, and floods that flush waste into the sea all pose major challenges, experts say.

Similarly, plastics, microplastics, metals, glass, concrete and other construction materials, paper and cardboard, polystyrene, rubber, rope, fishing nets, traps, textiles, timber and hazardous materials such as munitions, asbestos and medical waste, as well as oil spills and shipwrecks are all defined as marine debris.

“Organic waste is the main component of marine litter, amounting to 40-80 percent of municipal waste in developing countries compared to 20-25 percent in developed countries,” Hema said.

Microplastics, however, emerged as one of the most damaging pollutants currently choking the seas. This killer substance is formed when plastics fragment and disintegrate into particles with an upper size limit of five millimeters in diameter (the size range most readily ingested by ocean-dwelling organisms), down to particles that measure just one mm in diameter.

“Micro- and nano-plastics have been found [to have been] transferred to the micro-wall of algae. How this will affect the food chain of sea creatures and how human health is going to be affected by ingesting these through fish, we still do not know,” UNEP’s Vincent Sweeney, who coordinates the Global Programme of Action for the Protection of the Marine Environment from Land-based Activities (GPA), told IPS.

Fishermen haul in their catch on a beach in Sri Lanka’s eastern Trincomalee District. Experts say a large portion of marine litter is a by-product of the global fishing industry. Credit: Kanya D’Almeida/IPS

“The extent of the microplastic problem till now is somewhat speculative; we still do not have a sense of how much of the oceans are affected,” he added.

Ocean SDG targets have to stand up to four criteria: whether they are ‘actionable’, ‘feasible’, ‘measureable’ and ‘achievable’.

Unlike, for example, the target of reducing ocean acidification (whose only driver is carbon dioxide), which easily meets all four criteria, the issue of marine debris is not as simple, partly because “what shows up on the beach is not necessarily an [indication] of what is inside the ocean,” Sweeney asserted.

“Marine litter can move long distances, becoming international. Ownership is difficult to establish,” he added. Litter also accumulates in mid-ocean ‘gyres’, natural water-circulation phenomenon that tends to trap floating material.

“The risk in not knowing the exact magnitude of marine litter is that we may tend to think it is too big to handle,” Sweeney said, adding, however that “momentum is building up with awareness and it is now getting priority at different levels.”

“To entirely rid the ocean of litter is an aspiration not expected to be achieved in a lifetime, even if we stop waste inputs into the sea, which we still have not. The cost is too much. Much of the waste has been broken down and is beyond our reach. To clean the sea surface of [floating] litter itself will take a long time,” Sweeney asserted.

“Though there are different drivers for marine pollution in each country, the common factor is that we are consuming more and also generating more waste and much of this is plastic,” he concluded.

Aside from insufficient data and the high cost of cleaning up marine litter, the Means of Implementation (MoI) or funding of the SDG ocean targets is yet another challenge for most regions.

Northwest Pacific countries like China, Japan, Russia and Korea, however, have established replicable practices, according to Alexander Tkalin, coordinator of the UNEP Northwest Pacific Action Plan.

“Korea and Japan are major donors and both have introduced legislation specifically on marine litter,” Tkalin told IPS on the sidelines of the meeting.

“Japan has changed legislation to incentivise marine debris cleaning, tweaking its law under which, normally, one pays for littering, but the government now pays municipalities for beach-cleaning after typhoons, when roots and debris from the sea-floor are strewn on beaches,” Tkalin explained.

The Dutch and the U.S. also have strong on-going programmes on marine debris, as does Haiti, according to Sweeney.

The extent of the crisis was brought home when Evangelos Papathanassiou, research director at the Hellenic Centre for Marine Research in Attiki, 15 kilometres from Athens, told visiting regional journalists about his experience of finding a sewing machine at a depth of 4,000 feet in the Mediterranean Sea.

“Even though man-made marine pollution from aquaculture, tourism and transportation are most pressing in the Mediterranean and Black Sea, they are not getting the deserved attention,” he added.

If the new development era is to be a successful one, experts conclude, we terrestrial beings must urgently turn our attention to the seas, which are crying out for urgent assistance.

Edited by Kanya D’Almeida

Children from families displaced by the drought line up to receive food at a feeding centre in Mogadishu. Credit: Abdurrahman Warsameh/IPS

By Genevieve L. Mathieu
ROME, Jun 13 2014 (IPS)

The Millennium Development Goals (MDGs) will expire in 2015 and be replaced with the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs), which are intended to strengthen the international community’s engagement with eradicating poverty and hunger.

In the run-up to the drafting of the SDGs, the importance of food and nutrition security remains crucial. “In a world that produces enough food to feed everyone, there is no excuse for anyone to go hungry,” David Taylor, Economic Justice Policy Advisor for Oxfam International, told IPS.

Yet, the World Food Programme (WFP) estimates that there are still 842 million people who are under-nourished, representing one in eight globally.

While the first MDG “target of halving the percentage of people suffering from hunger by 2015 appears to be within reach, chronic hunger persists in many areas, particularly in sub-Saharan Africa, with marked disparities in progress,” Taylor remarked."In a world that produces enough food to feed everyone, there is no excuse for anyone to go hungry" – David Taylor, Economic Justice Policy Advisor for Oxfam International

For these reasons, he believes that “major challenges in food and agriculture remain” and, consequently, “the post-2015 agenda must chart a new pathway towards a target of zero hunger.”

The discussion surrounding the SDGs as a successor framework to the MDGs began in June 2012 at the Rio+20 Conference. Subsequently, in January 2013, “an Open Working Group (OWG) was established to steer the formulation of the proposal on SDGs,” Dorian Kalamvrezos Navarro, Food and Agriculture Organisation (FAO) Post-2015-SDGs coordinator, told IPS.

On 2 June, the OWG, made up of member states from all five continents, released the Zero Draft on SDGs with 17 proposed goals to be attained by 2030. The group is also supported by a U.N. System Technical Team, which comprises 40 U.N. entities.

Many of the targets of the OWG’s Zero Draft are welcomed by Oxfam, said Taylor, “including the target to end rather than merely reduce hunger, and the emphasis on supporting small-scale producers, women and other marginal groups.”

“If we’re to have an effective framework we need to identify applicable indicators. This is very challenging,” Jomo Kwame Sundaram, Assistant Director-General for Economic and Social Development and FAO lead for post-2015, told IPS.

Previously, critics such as Olivier de Schutter, U.N. Special Rapporteur on the Right to Food, have argued that the 18 targets of the MDGs had been decided on the basis of the most easily compiled data available, neglecting the deeper causes of poverty and hunger.

Sundaram pointed out that in drafting the SDGs, the international community needs to identify suitable goals and targets that are easy to measure, for which we have available data and, of course, that are meaningful.

“A welcome step forward is the inclusion of goals on reducing inequality and on climate change – and of course on food security,” Taylor noted.

This is especially important, he said, considering that “two major injustices continue to undermine the efforts of millions of people to escape poverty and hunger: inequality and climate change.”

But “as member states discuss the next drafts and refine the number of goals and targets, the goals on inequality and climate are at risk of being cut,” he told IPS.

While the MDGs have succeeded in mobilising public and political momentum in supporting development effects, the aim of the post-2015 agenda is to strongly amplify it, explained Navarro.

The challenge is important because the level of Overseas Development Aid (ODA) is plummeting. According to the Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD), it fell by 4 percent in real terms in 2012, following a 2 percent fall in 2011.

Additionally, agricultural investment in developing countries has decreased dramatically over the last decades although it has been shown that it is positively correlated with food security and poverty reduction, according to FAO.

The intended shared responsibility of the SDGs could help keep the momentum going. “The MDGs were essentially targeted only at developing and least developed countries, while the SDGs will instead be universal, placed within a global agenda,” Navarro told IPS.

Amid criticism that the design process of the MDGs was not inclusive enough, a “more engaged participation by, and effective partnerships with, the full spectrum of relevant stakeholders has been underlined as a key element of the post-2015 framework,” said Navarro.

For instance, in an attempt to bridge the gaps between all stakeholders and favour global exchange and dialogue, “the United Nations Development Group (UNDG) organised a series of stakeholder consultations at national and regional levels as well as a set of 11 global thematic consultations,” Navarro told IPS.

This is key according to Manish Bapna, Managing Director of the World Resources Institute (WRI). Considering changing climate, rapidly increasing rates of urbanisation and changing demographics, the post-2015 agenda “must be a shared, universal [one] that leaves no one behind – one that elicits action from developed and developing countries, North and South,” Bapna told IPS.

As such, “food security is a perfect example of an area that can be universally relevant and a ‘triple win’ for [the post-2015 agenda] by integrating social, environmental and economic aspects,” he said.

Navarro explained further that “a new global partnership must emphasise triangular or South-South cooperation and focus on the exchange of good practices, institutional and otherwise,” in order to achieve worldwide food security.

An example of such a partnership is the Beyond 2015 coalition, of which Oxfam International is a member. Beyond 2015 is a global campaign mainly made up of civil society organisations from the North and the South that advocates a strong and legitimate post-2015 framework that is based on shared values, such as environmental sustainability, human rights, equity and global responsibility.

The U.N. Secretary-General is expected to report on the post-2015 agenda towards the end of 2014, taking into account the different contributions received throughout the process. The intergovernmental negotiations on the post-2015 development agenda, which will lead to a high-level Summit in September 2015, are expected to coincide with the unveiling of the final version of the SDGs.

In 2007 Ecuador’s president, Rafael Correa, sponsored the Yasuni Initiative to end oil prospecting in the vast Yasuni National Park, thereby preventing some 400 million tonnes of carbon emissions, if the international community or the United Nations would compensate Ecuador for half of the unrealised oil revenues (an estimated 13 billion dollars over 13 years).

Hazel Henderson

Spain donated 1.4 million dollars, Italy cancelled 51 million dollars of Ecuador’s debt, following Norway’s 20 million-dollar cancellation. Germany and France contributed token amounts along with Chile, Colombia, Georgia and Turkey. U.S. and European NGOs added their support.

Sadly, however, this innovative effort is faltering because of the ongoing world financial crisis. The deeper reason lies in the murky secrets of money-creation and how this financial sleight-of-hand enabled financial players to take control of politicians even in democracies.

Saving Yasuni and averting further social, financial, and environmental crises now urgently requires unmasking the mysteries of money.

Worldwide, we see thousands of sensible proposals ­ for re-vitalising communities, investing in new infrastructure, re-training, and green jobs, preventive health, public education, restoring ecosystems, protecting public parks ­ all blocked by politicians, economists, and financiers with the same cry: Where’s the money going to come from?

Even worse, we see central banks printing money to bailout past mistakes of financiers instead of directing it to the real economy while politicians crush taxpayers with budget and job cuts demanded by bond vigilantes and their rating agency allies.

Saving Yasuni can help us finally connect all the dots by revealing the truth: money is not wealth and only has value if we believe and trust it. Currencies are simply information systems that track and keep score of human priorities and interactions with each other and with nature’s riches.

Yet this money symbol system has morphed from a useful accounting tool into a fetish that dominates our minds, our communities, and national decision-making while hampering sustainable forms of development and more realistic global policies ­including protecting Yasuni and other ecological treasures for our common future.

The United Nations Rio+20 Earth Summit of July, 2012, helped its 193 country members and many city and provincial governments to connect many of the dots needed to overcome faulty economics and its money-based paradigm. Its outcome document, “The Future We Want”, articulated their vision for people-centred, just, green economies based on ecological sustainability and renewable energy and resources and on the protection of the biodiversity on which all humanity relies.

However, the conference did not illuminate the money paradigm standing in the way of these goals.

Once we clearly affirm that while money is a useful tool it is not real wealth, we can see how it can be re-directed away from all the mal-investments in fossil fuels, nuclear weapons, and subsidising such destructive technologies of the past. As the Green Transition Scoreboard shows, some 3.3 trillion dollars has already been re-directed by private investors worldwide since 2007 into renewable solar, wind, geothermal, water energies and far greater efficiencies, as well as green buildings, public transport, and smarter cities and land-use, proving how humans can change their minds and redirect their money towards a cleaner, greener, more equitable future.

To similarly change the minds of our politicians requires directly confronting financial centres, economists, and business schools and re-training asset managers that still control our pensions, public and private.

The Occupy movement and the Arab Spring demanded that we create true democracies and end the dictatorship of money and finance. We are changing our scorecards of progress from money-based gross domestic product (GDP) and stock markets to broader indicators of health, education, infrastructure, poverty gaps, and the environment such as the Integrated Wealth Index (IWI) released at Rio+20, the Better Life Index of the Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD), Canada’s Index of Wellbeing, Bhutan’s gross national happiness index (suitable mainly for small Buddhist countries), and the Calvert-Henderson Quality of Life Indicators.

We are auditing the U.S. Federal Reserve and calling central bankers and their allies in finance to account, confronting the errors in their core business models and metrics.

Many challengers see beyond the money-game rigged by insiders and the powerful, based on scarcity, fear, and competition and instead point to the unpaid Love economies, gifting, and the new open source movements, all based on sharing, cooperation, creating community wealth and abundance powered by the sun. These unpaid sectors of the global economy are now larger than the paid economies officially measured by GDP. We can think beyond the paradigms of the Washington Consensus, the International Monetary Fund, the World Bank and the World Trade Organisation (all based on money measures like GDP). We can shift to Life’s Principles and Ethical Biomimicry Finance and invest in all such companies waiting for our re-directed focus on holistic, healthy investing.

We can envision a Gaian League of small countries that have rejected the Washington Consensus and are transitioning to healthier forms of local development, opting out of the global casino, such as Iceland, Bhutan and Ecuador, where they already value their Yasuni National treasure.

We and many NGOs support this kind of alternative, also promoted by the World Social Forum: Another World Is Possible. The breakdown of the corrupt, malfunctioning global casino is driving these new breakthroughs! Come join us!
(END/COPYRIGHT IPS)

* Hazel Henderson is president of Ethical Markets Media (U.S. and Brazil), publisher of the Green Transition Scoreboard and author of “Building a Win-Win World” and other books.

This column is available for visitors to the IPS website only for reading. Reproduction in print or electronic media is prohibited. Media interested in republishing may contact romacol@ips.org

Multilateralism is at a crossroads. This is a crucial matter for environmental and sustainability issues, as we have seen in the Rio+20 Summit, and for trade and other economic matters. The G20 Summit in Los Cabos, Mexico, focused precisely on improving our collective response to the current economic turbulence, which is at the heart of developments in the European Union (EU) as well.

More than three years have passed since the beginning of the 2008-09 crisis and the world economy remains very fragile. World Trade Organisation (WTO) projections indicate that trade growth will further decelerate this year to 3.7 per cent, down from 5 percent in 2011. Moreover, WTO economists believe that downside risks of an even sharper slowdown in trade growth remain high. Many of the achievements in poverty reduction over the past decade could be threatened with unravelling.

The impact of the crisis is being felt not just in developed countries but also in the developing world. China’s dynamic economy is expected to grow more slowly in 2012. India’s growth is decelerating. Many poor countries are seeing their exports to major markets such as the EU and the U.S. slow down.

Pascal Lamy. Credit: Courtesy of WTO.

While the crisis continues to loom, the world has not remained static. New economic players and new patterns of trade have emerged, dramatically changing the nature of trade and resulting in greater economic interdependence.

In the past decade, developing and emerging economies’ share of global gross domestic product (GDP) has risen from one-third to half. Developing countries’ share of global exports has jumped from 33 to 43 percent over the last decade.

Global trade patterns are also changing rapidly. Not too long ago, goods were referred to as “made in China” or “made in Germany”. Today, the expansion of global value chains means that most products are assembled with inputs from many countries. In other words, today’s goods are “made in the world”. At a growth rate of six percent a year, trade in intermediate goods now comprises close to 60 percent of total trade in goods and has become the most dynamic sector in international trade.

The map of global greenhouse gas emissions has also changed. Emissions of the developing world are rising fast, and China’s emissions are said to be either equal to, or to have actually overtaken, those of the U.S.

The same can be said of macroeconomic cooperation. As subsequent G20 summits have demonstrated, whether monetary policies, fiscal policies, currencies, the fight against tax havens or regulation of financial activities, a virtuous path requires global cooperation.

However, the rules governing multilateral cooperation have not kept pace with these changes. We are to a large extent living by the global rules created in the 90s.

The last couple of years have seen the emergence of a worrying attitude towards multilateralism. In stark contrast to the calls for greater and improved international regulatory coherence that dominated the headlines during the outbreak of the global financial crisis in 2008, international cooperation has slumped into an ever more precarious state.

Cynical observers would say that over the past decade international efforts to forge legally binding agreements have continued to set the threshold of expectations so low that even an agreement to continue to talk is considered a successful outcome.

Such cynicism ignores the fundamental lessons about international cooperation that we have learned over the past century. Most of all, it disregards the fact that for most countries more multilateralism and more international cooperation remain the only sustainable way forward.

Certainly, the changes of the past few years demand a re-configuration, rethinking and adjustment of traditional multilateral cooperation, including in the WTO. The proliferation of different informal coalitions and groups of countries and civil society ­the G8+, G8+5, G20, B20 and L20, to name but a few­ are symptomatic of the constantly evolving nature of international relations.

However, their effectiveness will depend on whether they are representative enough to address the increasingly complex challenges on our agenda. A stable global economy cannot be built without including all key stakeholders in the decision-making process.

More fundamentally, I believe that while the crisis continues to hit national systems hard, it will be very difficult to achieve high-standard multilateralism.

Contrary to conventional wisdom, international agreements necessitate a high quantum of political energy at home. They require strong political leadership because they are about bringing domestic constituencies on board.

This situation is a dangerous one and risks turning into a vicious circle: exiting the crisis sooner rather than later implies strong leadership to craft the necessary international cooperation agreements. But governments’ legitimacy is weakened by popular discontent generated by economic and social hardships. This erodes the ability to act together, which in turn further prolongs the crisis, leading to the syndrome of “too little, too late”.

For these reasons, I believe that multilateralism is at a crossroads. Either it advances in the spirit of shared values and enhanced cooperation, or is allowed to falter, at our own peril. Without global cooperation on finance, security, trade, the environment, and poverty reduction, the risks of division, strife and war will remain dangerously real. Waiting for better times will simply not suffice. A consensus on inaction would simply mean a consensus on more pain for all. We must, together, be bolder if we are to cope with the growing risks of today’s world. (END/COPYRIGHT IPS)

* Pascal Lamy is the director-general of the World Trade Organisation (WTO).

This column is available for visitors to the IPS website only for reading. Reproduction in print or electronic media is prohibited. Media interested in republishing may contact romacol@ips.org

By Busani Bafana
BULAWAYO, Zimbabwe, Jul 18 2012 (IPS)

The Global Environment Facility (GEF) is ready to be a catalyst for transforming the way the global environment is managed, said the next CEO and chairperson of the multilateral institution, Dr. Naoko Ishii, in this interview with Tierramérica *.

The GEF recognizes the inseparable linkage between environmental and economic well-being, which was reaffirmed at the Rio+20 summit held in late June in Brazil, stressed Ishii, who will take up her new position on Aug. 1, after holding a number of high-level posts in the government of her native Japan and various international institutions.

Dr. Naoko Ishii will be the second woman to lead the Global Environment Facility. Credit: Busani Bafana/IPS

Against the backdrop of the current global economic recession, the GEF is placing emphasis on “multi-focal area projects” that address a number of different problems at the same time, explained Ishii, who has a B.A. in economics and a Ph.D. in international studies from the University of Tokyo.

“We no longer view the global environment as a series of environmental ‘silos’ – divided up between the issues of climate change, biodiversity, and so forth,” said Ishii, who spoke with Tierramérica by electronic mail and telephone.

The GEF was created as a financing mechanism for the three major environmental conventions born at the 1992 Earth Summit on Rio de Janeiro, on climate change, biodiversity and desertification.

Today it is the largest public funder of projects to improve the global environment. It provides grants for projects related to biodiversity, climate change, international waters, land degradation, the ozone layer and persistent organic pollutants.

In June it approved the largest work program to date for addressing global environmental challenges, allocating 507 million dollars and leveraging 4.4 billion dollars in co-financing for projects in 111 countries.

Q: What does “The Future We Want”, the outcome document of the United Nations Conference on Sustainable Development (Rio+20), mean for the work of the GEF?

A: The final communiqué of the summit reaffirms the linkage between environmental and economic well-being. We view these two aspirations as inseparable. While the main goal of the GEF is supporting projects and programs in the developing world and in countries with economies in transition that will deliver global environmental benefits, a key component of those benefits is the economic component.

We don’t just want to preserve forests, we want to preserve them so that they can continue in their life-sustaining and livelihood-sustaining role – providing food and fuel, cleaning our air, holding soil in place, regulating our climate, and so on.

We protect biodiversity not just because it’s a good thing to do, but because doing so protects life forms that are key links in the overall global fabric of life that sustains economic growth.

Specific to the GEF, the language of the communiqué endorses the policy direction of the GEF in terms of making GEF resources more readily accessible, simplifying procedures and enhancing coordination with other instruments and programs that support sustainable development.

Q: What particular challenge have you identified facing the GEF?

A: The challenge facing the GEF is how to scale up the good results that have been achieved in projects at the national and regional level so as to deliver sustainable impacts at a scale to meet major looming challenges in the global environment.

I believe it is critical to enhance the leverage of the GEF by strengthening our constructive partnerships with stakeholders. My approach will integrate good results achieved to date at the project level with the formulation of policy for achieving sustainable impacts at scale.

Q: How do you intend to strengthen the GEF’s success in raising international funding given the global recession and the increased demand for value-for-money programming?

A: I have represented the Government of Japan in very difficult replenishment negotiations such as the discussions of the Asian Development Fund just concluded in May 2012. My hands-on experience tells me that securing continued robust funding support requires first, clearly assessed needs and goals; second, a clearly articulated strategy to achieve those goals; and third, obtaining and maintaining the confidence of donors in our ability to deliver results.

Even as we pursue this strategy, we may need to explore all options available to us given the very difficult global economic situation and the evolving environmental financial architecture.

Q: How do you see the GEF transforming the way in which the global environment is managed?

A: The big trend in the work of the GEF is in the direction of multi-focal area projects, that is, projects that simultaneously address multiple environmental challenges in a single project. We no longer view the global environment as a series of environmental “silos” – divided up between the issues of climate change, desertification, biodiversity, chemical pollution, international waters and so forth.

Increasingly we understand that these categories are integrally connected and that the most effective programs are those that address multiple focal areas at once. A single program aimed at combating desertification, for example, can also have a powerful impact on maintaining biodiversity while also reducing greenhouse gas emissions.

Another key feature is the move towards what we call the programmatic approach (partnerships between the GEF, one or more countries, and other stakeholders, such as the private sector, the scientific community and civil society). This has enabled the GEF to mainstream the results of its work.

The GEF has already moved strongly in these directions and I plan to continue this positive momentum.

Q: What future do you want for the GEF?

A: I want the GEF to play an integral leadership role in transforming the way the global environment is managed. Incremental change will not be enough, given the magnitude of the challenge we are facing. In order for the GEF to play that critical role, it is critical for it to continue to be a promoter of innovation, an honest champion of global commons, a catalyst of transformational change and a partner of choice.

We need to be hard-headed in how we evaluate the success of our projects. Importantly, we need to achieve sustaining impacts by scaling up GEF-funded projects that have proved successful. The money the GEF invests generates many times that amount in additional investment – or co-financing – in support of environmental and sustainable development projects.

The impacts are also augmented not only by the amount of money but also by the ideas and new ways of doing business brought by partners. I believe the GEF is best positioned to play a leading role in bringing transformational change by forming a catalytic and constructive partnership with stakeholders.

* 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.

Excerpt:

At this Bonaire reef, the olive-green coral is alive, but the mottled-gray coral is dead. Credit: Living Oceans Foundation/IPS

By Thalif Deen
UNITED NATIONS, Jul 6 2012 (IPS)

When South Korea, one of Asia’s rising economic powerhouses, decided to host the international exhibition Expo 2012 in the coastal town of Yeosu, it picked a theme high on the agenda of the just-concluded Rio+20 summit on sustainable development: the living ocean.

The entire focus of Expo 2012, which completes its three month run Aug. 21, is on the protection of the world’s maritime resources, including overfishing, chemical pollution and warming oceans.

And by accident or by design, the protection of the world’s oceans was one of the few key success stories to come out of the Rio+20 summit in its final plan of action titled “The Future We Want” adopted by world leaders last month.

Nathalie Rey, political advisor on oceans at Greenpeace International, told IPS one of the few concrete things on the table at Rio that went beyond business-as-usual was an agreement to launch an “Oceans Rescue Plan” to protect the high seas.

“Despite the alarm bells ringing by scientists on the need to protect the oceans, Rio pressed the snooze button on agreeing to initiate a new agreement under the United Nations that would protect high seas marine life,” she said.

However, the overwhelming support from the majority of countries – including Brazil (the host country), South Africa, Argentina, the Pacific Islands and members of the European Union (EU) – to give the green light for action was not enough to throw off the opposition from a handful of countries, she added.

With the United States leading the charge, and closely backed by Canada, Russia, Japan and Venezuela, these countries successfully blocked progress, Rey told IPS.

Instead of launching the agreement in Rio, governments postponed a decision for another two and a half years, booting the issue back to the U.N. General Assembly.

“Every day that we delay an oceans rescue plan, we bring our oceans ever closer to tipping points, jeopardising the health of the oceans and the future of the millions of people that depend on them for food and jobs,” Rey said.

Those countries that stood in the way of progress at Rio must stop defending short-term economic interests and join the rest of the world in supporting high seas protection to benefit future generations, Rey added.

At the Expo 2012 U.N. Pavilion in Yeosu, about 20 U.N. agencies and international organisations are showcasing their collective work in helping to protect the world’s oceans and maritime resources.

Under the theme “Oceans and Coasts: Connecting Our Lives, Ensuring Our Future”, the United Nations is highlighting the various contributions made by marine life to humans, including biodiversity, food security and renewable energy.

“What we know is that oceans are fragile and that there are many signs that marine ecosystems are experiencing unprecedented environmental change driven by human activities and climate change,” warns the United Nations.

A visit to the U.N. Pavilion ends up at a virtual “Pledge Wall” where visitors make a commitment to protect the world’s oceans and coasts.

Meanwhile, in a statement issued at the end of the three-day summit in Rio Jun. 22, members of the High Seas Alliance (HSA) said the ocean received “an unprecedented level of attention during the Rio+20 Conference becoming one of the most high visibility issues and the last piece of text to be resolved”.

In contrast to the 1992 Earth Summit in Rio, attention on the ocean was significant and led to protracted and heated debate within the negotiations.

“Some of the ocean outcomes were positive, while others fell a long way short of what marine scientists and campaigners had hoped and worked for, it was, nonetheless, a breakthrough year for the cause of conservation of 70 percent of our planet,” HSA said.

Although much of the text is a re-affirmation of existing promises and commitments, Susanna Fuller, coordinator of the HSA said, “If Rio+20 achieves nothing else, it should mark the end of empty promises and the beginning of strong ocean action.”

If it catalyses actual change, along with implementation of and compliance with the measures already promised, she said, then it will have achieved something.

The HSA identified six clear areas for international and national action:

Fulfillment of the U.N. resolution to end deep sea bottom fishing; an end to overfishing, including the suspension of fishing in some cases until stocks have recovered; requirement that regional fisheries management bodies be accountable to the United Nations; national action to eliminate harmful fisheries subsidies; closure of ports to illegally obtained fish; and the establishment of national and high seas marine protected areas, including reserves.

Professor Alex Rogers of the marine science body, International Programme on the State of the Ocean (IPSO), said: “There will never be the future we want without the ocean we need.”

“We have to use Rio+20 to draw a line under the talking and start the doing. These decisions are all urgent, important and game changing measures which should be immediately implemented by governments as a direct response to the oceans text,” he added.

As stated in the 1972 United Nations Conference on the Human Environment and the 1992 Earth Summit, human beings are at the centre of sustainable development. However, even today, over 900 million people still suffer from hunger. Poor populations worldwide, especially in rural areas, are among those most vulnerable to the food, climate, financial, economic, social and energy crises and threats the world faces today.

We cannot call development sustainable while this situation persists, where nearly one out of every seven men, women and children are left behind, victims of undernourishment. It would be a contradiction in terms.

Hunger and extreme poverty also exclude the possibility of sustainable development because the hungry and extremely poor need to make use of the resources they have at hand in whatever way they can to make ends meet. For people who are chronically hungry and malnourished, meeting their immediate needs is their paramount concern – planning for the future is often a luxury they cannot afford.

Paradoxically, over 70 percent of the world’s hungry people depend on agriculture, fisheries and forestry for at least part of their livelihoods, so their daily choices also help determine how the world’s natural resources are managed.

We cannot expect a poor farmer not to chop down a tree for fuel if he does not have another source of energy; we cannot ask a fisherman not to fish during spawning time if that is his only way to feed his family.

Hunger puts in motion a vicious cycle of reduced productivity, deepening poverty, slow economic development, resource degradation and violence. Hunger and natural resources are, increasingly, factors of internal conflicts and conflicts between nations. Even when these conflicts are internal, their impacts frequently breach national borders. So, there is also a direct link between food security and national security.

The quest for food security can be the common thread that links the different challenges we face and helps build a sustainable future. At the United Nations Conference on Sustainable Development (Rio+20) we have the golden opportunity to explore the convergence between the agendas of food security and sustainability to ensure that happens.

Both require changes towards more sustainable production and consumption models. To feed a growing population that is expected to top the nine billion mark in 2050, the Food and Agricultural Organisation (FAO) projects the need to increase agricultural output by at least 60 percent in the next decades. To do so, we must save and grow agricultural production while preserving the environment.

But even then the pressure on our natural resources will be extreme. So we must also change the way we eat and find ways to feed the world without the need to produce as much. We can do this by changing to healthier diets in the richer segments of our population and by diminishing the food loss and waste that exist in industrialised and developing countries: on average, we throw away 1.3 billion tonnes of food every year, between production and consumption.

However, even if we do increase agricultural output by 60 percent, the world would still have 300 million hungry people in 2050 because, like the hundreds of millions today, they would still lack the means to access the food they need. For them, food security is not an issue of insufficient production; it is an issue of inadequate access.

The only way to ensure their food security is by creating decent jobs, paying better wages, giving them more access to productive assets – especially land and water – and distributing income in a more equitable way.

We must bring them into society, complementing support to smallholders and income generation opportunities with the strengthening of safety nets, cash for work and cash transfer programmes that contribute to strengthening local production and consumption circuits, in an effort that must contribute to our sustainable development goals.

The transition to a sustainable future also requires fundamental changes in the governance of food and agriculture and an equitable sharing of the transition costs and benefits. In the past, the poorer have paid a greater share of transition costs and received a smaller share of benefits. This is an unacceptable balance and one that needs to change. The speed of change should also be our concern, so that the vulnerable population can adapt and be part of the changes instead of widening the gaps that exist today.

Eradicating hunger and improving human nutrition, creating sustainable food consumption and production systems, and building more inclusive and effective governance of agricultural and food systems are at the heart of achieving a sustainable world.

As world leaders meet in Rio, we are at a crossroads. In one direction is the path to further environmental degradation and human suffering; in the other direction lies the future we all want. The Rio summit offers a historic opportunity we cannot afford to miss.

We know how to end hunger and manage the earth’s resources in a more sustainable way. But we need a stronger political will to do it.

We should look to Rio+20 as the beginning of a new process rather than the finish line, and as a path that we cannot travel alone.

Sustainable development, including ending hunger, is a goal to which every one of us must contribute: citizens, companies, governments, social movements, civil society, non-governmental organisations and regional and international bodies and institutions. Together, working from the local to the global level, we can build the future we want. And this future needs to start today.

(END COPYRIGHT IPS)

(*) Jose Graziano da Silva is the Director-General of the United Nations Food and Agriculture Organisation (FAO).

In the forest in Gbarpolu County, northwest Liberia, a group of men work on a surface gold mine unaware of the environmental impact their work has. Credit: Travis Lupick/IPS

By Travis Lupick
MONROVIA, Jun 15 2012 (IPS)

Deep in the forest in Gbarpolu County, northwest Liberia, a group of men working a surface gold mine are asked what will happen to the land when they are finished with it.

They laugh, and shoot each other confused glances.

Gbessay Musa, who says he left Sierra Leone in search of work three years ago, delivers a cheerful response.

“We will leave the place when there is nothing left,” he exclaims. “We will find another site where there is money. The land here, it will just be here.”

Happy for a break from digging under the day’s hot sun, the young men are in good spirits, and more laughter follows. Musa is asked if he cares about the land, or just his gold.

“The people down here, they are getting by,” he answers, not fully understanding the question; his only consideration is for the livelihoods of the men who work with him.

The miners’ indifference is understandable. After 14 years of civil conflict that only ended in 2003, opportunities for education and meaningful employment in Liberia remain limited. The war devastated this West African nation.

A March 2011 World Bank report  states that Liberia’s energy infrastructure was “completely demolished,” that piped water access fell from 15 percent in 1986 to less than three percent in 2008, and that the national road network was left in “a state of severe disrepair.”

To say that the government of Liberia has a number of competing priorities would be an understatement. It could easily share the attitude of the miners in Gbarpolu and forego concerns for the environment amid the rapid development of the country’s natural resources.

Yet ahead of the Rio+20 United Nations Conference for Sustainable Development scheduled for Jun. 20 to 22, the impoverished nation is leading a push out of Africa that calls for economic prosperity and environmental sensitivity, and asks that the two no longer be treated as mutually exclusive.

As executive director of the Liberia Environmental Protection Agency (EPA), it is Anyaa Vohiri’s job to ensure that Liberia’s natural resources are managed in a sustainable manner. The task can be a challenge, she tells IPS.

“You’re looking at immediate needs. So my role at the EPA is to say, ‘Okay, yes, we need all of the economic benefits, but not in a way that shoots our self in the foot,’ ” Vohiri says.

On May 25, Liberian President Ellen Johnson Sirleaf gave Vohiri’s office a major show of support.

Delivering the plenary address at the Summit for Sustainability in Africa  in Gaborone, Botswana, Sirleaf said that striking a balance between immediate needs and long-term sustainable development is a top priority. She warned that the continent must ensure it does not deplete its natural resources while trying to meet short-term needs. She also stressed that in order to plan and implement a sustainable economic future, policymakers must take the future into account.

“How do we ensure that our watersheds, forests, fisheries and other ecosystems are protected from overuse and degradation because we need one more hospital or one more school?” Sirleaf asked. “Development and conservation can go hand in hand, provided we develop a framework for action around a shared vision.”

At the end of the two-day summit the Gaborone Declaration  was drafted. It states that “urgent, concerted actions be undertaken to restore and sustain the ability of the Earth to support human communities…and thereby contribute to the prosperity of future generations.”

Vohiri says that the Gaborone Declaration will be carried to Rio+20 and defended there.

“What we give the world right now is our biodiversity,” she emphasises. “So if we do not get support for sustainably managing our ecosystem, we are in trouble. The world is in trouble.”

According to data supplied by the EPA, Liberia’s mean annual temperate is projected to rise between two and four degrees Celsius by 2100. An EPA presentation on climate change dated May 2012 lists key climate hazards for Liberia as increases in temperature, changes in rainfall patterns, tropical storms, and rising sea levels and coastal flooding.

An August 2010 United Nations Development Programme report  states that Liberia has already started to experience the effects of climate change, “which include reduced soil moisture, shifts in temperature, erratic rainfall and heat waves.” The document emphasises that 70 percent of Liberia’s labour force is employed in agriculture, and that that sector is the most vulnerable to the impacts of climate change.

“This desk study revealed that the increase in heat intensity and erratic rainfall patterns could be symptoms of climate change which have an adverse effect on crop yields and livestock production beyond the impacts expected,” the document continues.

One of Liberia’s most outspoken advocates for climate change mitigation is Sieane Abdul-Baki, a special assistant to the Minister of Gender and Development. She says that specific attention needs to be given to the disproportionate impact that climate change is expected to have on women and children.

Abdul-Baki says that her hope for Rio+20 is to see strategies for sustainable development incorporate considerations for gender sensitivity. She notes that in developing countries, household tasks such as food production and the procurement of water are largely the responsibilities of women, and those are areas where the effects of climate change can most acutely be felt.

“Women usually make decisions when it comes to what kind of fuel they will use for lighting their homes,” Abdul-Baki says. “So they may be driving deforestation. But when you have them informed about the impacts of climate change, they may be able to change their attitudes. So when it comes to adaptation and mitigation, we have to build women’s capacity.”

Abdul-Baki concedes that at an international summit as big as Rio+20, the priorities of developing countries can be overlooked.

“The smaller countries, we usually align ourselves into groups, or blocs,” she says.

“Because when we put ourselves into groupings, our voices become louder than when we negotiate on an individual basis.”

Abdul-Baki notes that at Rio+20, Liberia will be participating in negotiations and workshops as part of several coalitions, including the Africa Group, the Group of 77 and China, and the Least Developed Countries Group.

Vohiri says that such stakeholders have the opportunity to do development right and in a way that is sustainable. But the support of the rest of the world is needed.

“Smaller countries may not feel that they have the power to make change,” Vohiri says. “That is why we have to be there, that is why we have to speak.”

By Stephen Leahy
VANCOUVER, Mar 1 2012 (IPS)

The Earth’s life support system, which generates the planet’s air, water and food, is powered by 8.7 million living species, according to the latest best estimate. We know little about 99 percent of those unique species, except that far too many are rapidly going extinct.

Rio+20 is not a major conference on biodiversity, but everything discussed there will relate to biodiversity, said Braulio Ferreira de Souza. Credit: Courtesy of CDB

What can be done to slow down this process, which could eventually lead to the extinction of the human species?

“The challenge is to find the middle ground between economic interests, livelihoods and conservation,” says Braulio Ferreira de Souza Dias, the newly appointed head of the Secretariat of the United Nations Convention on Biological Diversity (CBD), the international agency charged with helping countries slow and reverse the loss of plants, animals and other species.

A native of Brazil, Dias holds a doctorate in zoology from the University of Edinburgh, and worked for many years at the Brazilian Ministry of the Environment, where his last position prior to joining the CBD was as Secretary of Biodiversity and Forests.

In this interview with Tierramérica*, Dias called for biodiversity to be mainstreamed into all government policies and sectors.

Q: Why are species going extinct and why does it matter? 

A: I’ll give you an example. Agriculture has a lot of impact on biodiversity. Conversion of natural lands results in losses of services that natural ecosystems provide, like reducing flooding and cleaning and retaining water. We also lose genetic diversity, which means the loss of options for the future to combat diseases, and many other potentially useful things for humanity. Once a species goes extinct, it’s gone forever.

Q: How do you hope to slow the accelerating loss of species as the new executive secretary of CBD? 

A: One major goal is to mainstream biodiversity, which means involving all government departments at all national governments. We want them to understand and consider the impacts on biodiversity when they create rules and policies. Studies such as TEEB (The Economics of Ecosystems and Biodiversity) provide the data about the importance of biodiversity to all countries’ economies.

It’s not easy to do and there are no magic solutions.

Q: Does the controversy over Brazil’s Forest Code illustrate the challenge of mainstreaming biodiversity? (Changes to the Forest Code may allow increased logging and clearance of the Amazon rainforest.) 

A: It is a concrete example of the challenge. Governments have to deal with competing interests. In this case, farmers and environmentalists, agricultural interests and the general public. The challenge is to find the middle ground between economic interests, livelihoods and conservation.

In 2011 Brazil’s lower house adopted a version of the Code that seemed to favor the interests of agriculture. In December, the Brazilian senate made changes that offer a more balanced approach. That version will now go before the lower house in March.

Brazil has been successful in reducing deforestation over the last decade due to better education about the real value of conservation and natural ecosystems. The public has definitely increased pressure on the governments.

Q: How important is education? 

A: Information is key, but so are financial instruments. For example, I would like to see an agreement at our next Convention of the Parties meeting (COP 11 in Hyderabad, India) for governments to use sustainability criteria for any of their purchases.

Q: COP 10 in 2010 resulted in the Nagoya Protocol on Access to Genetic Resources and the Fair and Equitable Sharing of Benefits Arising from their Utilisation. What are countries now obligated to do as a result of the agreement? 

A: Nations made a strong commitment to reduce biodiversity losses at COP 10 in Nagoya. It was a major achievement. Each country now has a national strategy and an action plan to protect biodiversity in their countries. That commitment needs to be brought to sub-national levels and across all sectors so that there will be results on the ground. This is not easy for most countries to do and will require funding and technical assistance.

Q: The experts and diplomats who negotiated the Nagoya Protocol need to get their national governments to agree. When do you hope to have the Protocol ratified (and thus legally binding)? 

A: More than 90 countries have submitted a letter of agreement saying they intend to ratify the Protocol. However, it takes time to go through the various legislatures of every country. We do have some ratifications, but we will not get to the 50 required for the Protocol to be in force by COP 11 in October.

Q: What else will be on the agenda at COP 11 in Hyderabad? 

A: We will work on establishing a new funding mechanism and setting up a work program – that’s the “how to” part of meeting global biodiversity targets.

Conservation in the open oceans will be a special topic. No country has jurisdiction over these areas and so they are not part of any national plans. The open oceans are extremely important areas of biodiversity and ecological processes. (Ocean plankton provide much of the oxygen we breathe.)

Q: What about the Rio+20 conference this June? It is the 20th anniversary of the historic Earth Summit that gave birth to the CBD. 

A: There is a broad agenda about how to move to a green economy. This is not a major conference on biodiversity, but all of that will relate to biodiversity. If Rio+20 moves the agenda forward it will help with biodiversity.

*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. (END)

Excerpt:

Peruvian peasant women working in the potato fields. Credit: Milagros Salazar/IPS

By Sabina Zaccaro
ROME, Feb 24 2012 (IPS)

As the links between food security and climate change become increasingly inextricable, the necessity for sustainable agriculture is now a universal concern.

Smallholder farmers in the global South – who suffer most from changes in climate patterns and the degradation of natural resources, since they live and work in the most vulnerable landscapes – are in urgent need of sustainable agricultural technologies, a reality that was recognised at the annual meeting of the International Fund for Agricultural Development (IFAD), which drew to a close in Rome on Thursday.

Despite ongoing economic and financial crises, developed and developing countries alike – represented by hundreds of development leaders and heads of state gathered in Rome for the 35th session of the Governing Council – committed 1.5 billion dollars to finance agriculture and rural development projects throughout the developing world.

During the two-day event, representatives from IFAD’s 167 member states addressed the connection between overcoming poverty and food insecurity, and discussed how to ensure food security to a growing population while simultaneously protecting the environment.

In December 2011, member states gave a boost to sustainable agriculture with 1.5 billion dollars in new contributions to IFAD.

Now, the U.N. agency says it is scaling up its efforts even further to better link climate-smart technologies and sustainable agriculture in more than 40 countries.

“To help implement IFAD’s environmental policy and climate change strategy, we have developed a groundbreaking initiative called the Adaptation for Smallholder Agriculture Programme, or ASAP, which will help channel (funds) into climate-smart, sustainable investments in poor, smallholder communities,” IFAD’s president Kanayo Nwanze announced in his opening statement at the conference.

Representatives of smallholders, family farmers, pastoralists and fishers from all over the world who gathered here ahead of the meeting called on leaders to jointly address the global challenges of food insecurity and climate change, and asked IFAD to place the needs of smallholders on the international agenda.

“One thing people need to understand is climate-smart agriculture,” Lindiwe Majele Sibanda, CEO of the Food, Agriculture and Natural Resources Policy Analysis Network (FANRPAN), told IPS.

“We have the imperative to feed more mouths so we need to intensify our food production systems but this has got to be done in a sustainable way.”

She added that, though the agricultural sector is responsible for a huge percentage of greenhouse gas emissions, it also has the potential to retain some of those gases in the soil.

Though science has adapted many new techniques, there is no “one science fits all”; rather, technologies need to fit local needs and conditions in a kind of “package”, Sibanda said.

“There is no point in making seed available when (farmers) cannot afford fertilisers.We need to have a systematic approach,” she said, echoing the view of numerous farmers’ networks that economic investments and the transfer of knowledge to farmers need to be combined in order to affect change on the ground.

“Then there is the key role of farmers themselves,” Sibanda said. “They must have the assets for farming but these have been depleted in most cases by recurring droughts and floods. We have not built enough mechanisms to make sure that we absorb the risk and empower the farmers.”

According to Sibanda, while the link between agriculture and food security is clear, there is too little talk about the farmer herself.

“We need to put people first, and those people are farmers, particularly women farmers.”

She stressed that investments must be targeted towards empower the people who form the nexus of the entire food production system.

“Without putting the people who do the farming at the centre of that dialogue there is no ‘agriculture’ to talk about,” she said.

“Since its mandate is to support small-scale and landless farmers, we have demanded that IFAD support agroecology as the model agricultural method to feed the people and to save the planet,” Henry Saragih chairman of the Indonesian Peasant Union (known by the acronym SPI) and coordinator of the global farmers’ network La Via Campesina, told IPS.

Saragih also believes that utilising farmers’ knowledge of sustainable technologies and innovations is crucial in order to empower and strengthen small family farmers and their markets.

On Tuesday, U.S. technology billionaire and philanthropist Bill Gates announced nearly 200 million dollars in grants to smallholder farmers, channelled through the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation.

These new grants will support a number of initiatives including breaking down gender barriers so women farmers can increase productivity; controlling contamination that affects 25 percent of world food crops; and creating an innovative system to monitor the effects of agricultural productivity on the population and environment.

In a discussion with delegates this week, Rwandan President Paul Kagame emphasised smallholder farmers’ key role in producing more food and overcoming environmental constraints in his country, where agricultural gross domestic product (GDP) has grown at an average of 8 per cent annually, ensuring food security and higher incomes for farmers.

Kagame challenged other African nations to do more to help the growth of their agricultural sector.

Listing the ingredients for “good agricultural policies” in Africa, Sibanda said that strong countries are “those who have committed to developing an investment framework; those who have met their 10 percent target of the national budget for agriculture (as laid out in the 2003 Maputo Declaration on Agriculture and Food Security); those who have allowed their agricultural sector to grow at a minimum of six percent per year; and those who have done infrastructure development and knowledge management, (supplying) farmers with the public services they need.”

With the next round of climate change talks scheduled for June at Rio+20, the United Nations Conference on Sustainable Development in Brazil, all delegates agreed on the critical importance of smallholder agriculture for climate solutions.

Rio+20 marks twenty years since the inauguration of the historical conference in the same city that first launched the multilateral agenda for sustainable development. For the first time in two decades, agriculture has emerged as a critical component in the climate change issue.

“As we go to Rio, let’s make sure that everybody appreciates that there (can be no) sustainable development without (sustainable) agriculture,” Sibanda said, adding that, though people have been “scared” of climate change for years, there is now ample evidence of the worst that is yet to come.

“The time for sustainable development talk is now,” she said.

“Whether you’re in a developed country or in a developing country you’re going to be impacted. The fact that food security is now on the global agenda means that we will all have to see how best can we make it happen despite the challenges we face. We’re calling for more investments in agriculture because food is a sovereign right of people,” she concluded.

(END)

Unless leaders act promptly, climate change and environmental degradation will only worsen and cause greater global problems, scientists warn. Crustmania/CC by 2.0

By Stephen Leahy
VANCOUVER, Feb 21 2012 (IPS)

Unless governments work actively to build a brighter future for humanity, climate change, poverty and loss of biodiversity will worsen and continue to exacerbate existing global problems, top scientists warned ministers attending the United Nations Environment Programme’s (UNEP) governing council meeting in Nairobi, Kenya, on Monday.

Replacing GDP as a measure of wealth, ending damaging subsidies, and transforming systems of governance are some possible steps they can take, the scientists said.

“The current system is broken,” declared Bob Watson, the UK’s chief scientific advisor on environmental issues.

“It is driving humanity to a future that is three to five degrees C warmer than our species has ever known and is eliminating the ecology that we depend on for our health, wealth and senses of self.”

Watson and 19 other past winners of the Blue Planet Prize, often called the Nobel Prize for the environment, presented their 23-page synthesis report, “Environment and Development Challenges”, at the UNEP meeting.

Ministers warned that because the adverse impacts of climate change and biodiversity cannot be reversed, “The time to (act) is now, given the inertia in the socio-economic system.”

“The good news is that (solutions) exist, but decision makers must be bold and forward thinking to seize them,” Watson said.

“We have a dream – a world without poverty – a world that is equitable… a world that is environmentally, socially and economically sustainable…” wrote Watson and his co-authors in their report.

Among the co-authors were James Hansen of NASA; Emil Salim, former environment minister of Indonesia; Nicholas Stern, former chief economist of the World Bank; M.S. Swaminathan; and José Goldemberg, Brazil’s Secretary of Environment during the Rio Earth Summit in 1992.

The Tipping Point

“There has been very little progress in the 20 years since the Rio Earth Summit,” said Harold Mooney, a biologist at Stanford University and 2002 winner of the Blue Planet Prize, adding that poor governance is one of the key issues.

“Decision makers and the public need to understand that we’re not going to make it,” he said.

The report recommended that leaders look beyond the interests of their own states. It also said that decision-making processes need fundamental reform, so that they empower marginalised groups and integrate economic, social and environmental policies instead of having them compete.

Mooney called preliminary plans and hopes for the Rio+20 conference in June this year tepid as well as vague, even thought the twentieth anniversary of the Earth Summit offers a major opportunity for world leaders to set human development on a new, more sustainable path.

“We are not getting to the crux of the matter. There is an urgent need to raise the stakes.”

“Weaning ourselves and the world off our fossil fuel addiction, moving on to clean energies, cannot be solved by the U.N. process,” said James Hansen of NASA, the 2010 Blue Planet winner, along with Watson.

Hansen told IPS that it is too easy for a country to refuse to meet its carbon reduction commitments, as Canada did with the Kyoto Protocol.

Fossil fuels are heavily subsidized and fossil fuel companies do not pay the huge costs of air and water pollution. Nor do they pay for the impact they have on the climate.

Hansen argued that the simplest way to address this problem would be to collect a fee from fossil fuel companies at the domestic source (mine or port of entry) and distribute the money uniformly, on a per capita basis, to legal residents, he said.

Fuel costs would rise under this “carbon fee and dividend” scheme, but the costs for the majority of people would be covered by their share of fees collected. It would also act as a financial incentive for individuals to reduce their carbon footprint, he said.

“This will have a tremendously positive impact on the economy, as entrepreneurs introduce carbon-free energies or energy efficiency.”

The Blue Planet Laureates’ paper also urged governments to replace GDP as a measure of wealth with metrics for natural, human and social capital, as well as how they intersect.

The paper also called on governments to eliminate subsidies in sectors such as energy, transport and agriculture with high environmental and social costs. In addition, it urged leaders to tackle overconsumption and address population pressure by empowering women, improving education and making contraception accessible to all.

(END)