Negotiators at the United Nations Environment Assembly (UNEA) in Kenya. African countries have been encouraged to adopt circular plastic policies which will lower greenhouse emissions. Credit: UNEA

By Aimable Twahirwa
Nairobi, Kenya, Mar 1 2022 (IPS)

Environmental experts gathered in Nairobi, Kenya, have urged African governments to take advantage of ‘circular plastic opportunities’ to lower greenhouse gas emissions and stop environmental degradation. They were speaking to IPS on the sidelines of the fifth session of the United Nations Environment Assembly (UNEA).

The key approach to a circular economy for developing countries in Africa and elsewhere, according to experts, should focus on addressing plastic pollution by reducing the discharge of plastics into the environment by covering all stages of the plastic life cycle. Plastic waste would be reduced through restorative and regenerative projects using the material without allowing leakage into the natural environment.

Inger Andersen, the Executive Director of the United Nations Environment Programme (UNEP), outlined critical steps on halting plastic pollution, stopping harmful chemicals in agriculture, and deploying nature to find sustainable development solutions by 2024.

“Ambitious action to beat plastic pollution should track the lifespan of plastic products – from source to sea – should be legally binding, accompanied by support to developing countries, backed by financing mechanisms, tracked by strong monitoring mechanisms, and incentivizing all stakeholders – including the private sector,” Andersen said.

The main challenge is how countries should move towards a more circular economy that benefits from reducing environmental pressure. Scientists stress the need for most African governments to strengthen the science and knowledge base on plastic pollution and improve their policies.

Mohammed Abdelraouf, chair of Scientific and Technological Community Major Group UNEP, told IPS that while there are many solutions to plastic pollution, research should complement these efforts by developing cost-effective measures to prevent environmental degradation.

“It is important for governments to make decisions that stimulate innovations,” he said.

According to the draft resolution being debated at UNEA, signatories to an internationally legally binding agreement would commit to reducing plastic pollution across the entire lifecycle of plastics, from preventive measures in the upstream part of the lifecycle to downstream ones addressing waste management. Rwanda and Peru drew up the resolution.

For a smooth implementation and compliance by stakeholders, the UN agency in charge of environmental protection is engaged with stakeholders, including governments, the business community, researchers, and civil society. The engagement aims to understand priorities, challenges, what’s needed to foster a plastics circular economy that works for industry, economies and meets environmental and social objectives.

Experts describe private sector support as crucial in managing plastic waste. Some business community members will benefit during implementation from grant financing to encourage the move towards the circular economy.

Inger Andersen, Executive Director of the United Nations Environment Programme (UNEP), says ambitious action is needed to beat plastic pollution. Credit: UNEP

With different industries across the plastic value chain now facing a shifting dynamic, Andersen noted that company shareholders and consumers are increasingly paying attention to the pollution challenges arising from their investments and purchasing decisions.

For example, one waste management initiative has supported public-private investment projects in three African countries, including Algeria, Ethiopia, and Rwanda, to advance sustainable waste management and the circular economy.

Margaret Munene, a Kenyan woman entrepreneur and chair of Business and Industry Major Group of UNEP, told delegates that the successful reduction of plastic pollution requires testing solutions.

“The private sector remains critical to creating innovative and technological solutions to address plastic waste,” she said.

Norwegian Minister of Climate and Environment, Espen Barth Eide, has initiated a project to identify requirements and options for designing a science-policy interface. The project aims to develop different proposals on how to create the interface to operate as effectively as possible, especially for developing countries.

“Plastic pollution has grown into an epidemic of its own. Paradoxically, plastics are among the most long-lasting products we humans have made – and frequently, we still just throw it away. Plastic is a product that can be used again, and then over and over again, if we move it into a circular economy. I am convinced that the time has come for a legally binding treaty to end plastic pollution,” Eide said.

Bérangère Abba, French Secretary of State in charge of Biodiversity is convinced that for increased recycling of plastic waste to be legally enforceable, it is important to negotiate to bring contentious parties together to address emissions.

“There is still a need to have an independent science-policy interface that would help monitor the progress and priorities of this ambitious goal dedicated to enabling a circular economy for plastics,” she told IPS.

Beyond plastics, experts say other major interventions needed concern the design of buildings that make efficient use of limited materials and use building processes that are less energy-intensive to lower greenhouse gas emissions and stop environmental degradation.

Official estimates show that Africa is the second most populous continent globally, and its urban population is expected to nearly triple by 2050 to 1.34 billion.

It’s estimated that between 60% and 80% of the built environment needed by 2050 to support this growing population has yet to be laid.

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Drone visual of the area in Upper East Region, Ghana prior to restoration taken in 2015. According to the United Nations Environment Programme (UNEP), inaction on land degradation in Africa costs 286 billion dollars annually as 280 million tons of cereal crops are lost each year. Credit: Albert Oppong-Ansah /IPS

By Tharanga Yakupitiyage
UNITED NATIONS, Jan 22 2019 (IPS)

One month on since the Global Compact for Migration was approved, civil society has highlighted the need to turn words into action, supporting those who have been displaced or forced to migrate as a result of environmental degradation.

In December, over 160 countries adopted the landmark Global Compact for Migration (GCM) which recognised environmental degradation and climate change as drivers of migration. It is the first time a major migration policy has specifically addressed such issues.

While there have been some hiccups along the way, including the withdrawals by the United States and most recently Brazil, the next steps are even more uncertain.

“Now we have the recognition in the GCM, now we need to move from text to action,” Norwegian Refugee Council’s (NRC) Senior Advisor on Disaster Displacement and Climate Change Nina Birkeland said to IPS.

“Because people are moving, we can’t pretend that it is not happening,” she added.

According to the Global Humanitarian Forum, approximately 135 million people may be displaced by 2045 as a result of land degradation and desertification.

A study by the University of Oxford estimates that up to 200 million may be displaced due to climate change by 2050.

But this is not simply a phenomenon that will happen in the future—it is already a reality for some.

As migrant caravans from Guatemala, Honduras, and El Salvador continue to make their way towards the U.S., many have pointed to climate change and years of crop failure as the main drivers.

Lesser known is the role of deforestation and land degradation in prompting such movements.

Between 1990 and 2005, almost 20 percent of Guatemala’s rainforests were cut down for palm oil plantations and cattle ranches. This has since lead to soil degradation and eroded land in a country where one-third of the population is employed by the agricultural industry.

Across Africa, agriculture accounts for 80 percent of employment but land degradation is leaving families and young people without food or income security and thus forcing them to search for greener pastures.

According to the United Nations Environment Programme (UNEP), inaction on land degradation in Africa costs 286 billion dollars annually as 280 million tons of cereal crops are lost each year.

“If land is degrading and the productive capacity of the land is degrading and there are no income opportunities anymore, there is no reason for people, young people in particular, to stay in the village,” World Resources Institute’s (WRI) Sustainable Land Management Specialist Chris Reij told IPS.

“The general lesson is: fight land degradation, improve living conditions and more young people will stay rather than leave,” he added.

According to the U.N. Convention to Combat Desertification (UNCCD), restoring just 12 percent of degraded agricultural land could boost smallholders’ incomes by 35-40 billion dollars per year.

Reij pointed to the case of Burkina Faso which saw promising results after villages invested in sustainable land management practices.

According to a study by Reij and his team, Burkina Faso’s Ranawa village saw a decline in land productivity, prompting almost a quarter of its population to leave between 1975 and 1985.

Once the village began improving soil and water conservation techniques, there was no recorded outmigration and some families even returned due to restored productivity. 

Comparing villages that implemented sustainable land management and those that did not, the study found that rural poverty decreased as much as 50 percent in the former while poverty increased in the latter.

‘‘In 1980 only two families had cattle, now all families have cattle. Almost no one had a roof of corrugated iron…just look around you and you’ll notice that almost every family has such roofs…the land where we stand used to be barren, but now it has become productive again,” one farmer from Ranawa told Reij’s team.

In 2016, UNCCD implemented a similar project known as the 3S initiative which aims to restore 10 million hectares of land in areas most impacted by land degradation in Africa. It also hopes to provide 2 million green jobs to the 11 million young Africans who enter the job market each year.

Though it is not the silver bullet and migration will of course still continue to some capacity, investing in land restoration and providing economic opportunities is certainly a part of the solution.

While many countries focus on border security as part of their migration policy, Birkeland urged governments to look at reduction and prevention of displacement.

“We need to look at where this is actually happening and why it is happening. Before you even start to talk about border control, you need to look at how you can try to reduce displacement,” she said.

This includes investments into projects in developing countries, especially with climate change or environmental degradation-induced displacement in mind, and increased protections for those who are forced or choose to leave. 

While it is an enormous challenge, Reij highlighted the need for donors and governments to focus action on improving livelihoods and economic well-being as well as supporting land restoration.

“If you look at the most extreme scenario, unless the economic perspectives of young people can be improved in the next decade, what choice do they have? They can migrate to cities and maybe continue subsequently to Europe, or they can join Boko Haram and similar groups,” he told IPS.

“I think donors and governments have an interest in supporting the scaling of existing restoration success so that millions of smallholders will be able to improve their lives and livelihoods, and that will help reduce migration….we know what to do, we know how to do it. We now need to do it,” Reij concluded.

Erik Solheim participates in the largest beach clean-up in history at Versova Beach Clean-Up in Mumbai, India, in October 2016. Photo courtesy of UNEP

By Manipadma Jena
NAIROBI/NEW DELHI, Dec 1 2017 (IPS)

“Political resolve is the key for succeeding in our fight against oceans pollution,” Erik Solheim, head of UN Environment, who is leading hands-on the organisation’s global campaign to clean up seas and oceans of plastic litter, agricultural run‑off and chemical dumping, told IPS.

“It’s about building capacity for strong environmental governance and bolstering political leadership on these issues,” said Solheim, who previously served as Norway’s Minister of the Environment and International Development.“If action is not taken today, we’re lining ourselves up for the ultimate cost – the destruction of our oceans – down the line."

“One of the big changes has been an understanding of the issue (of marine pollution) and a realization that we are facing an extremely serious problem. As a result, we’re starting to see a range of initiatives,” he said.

“On the community level, there are people like Afroz Shah and Mumbai’s Versova Beach clean-up team, for example. They’re really doing an amazing job of drawing attention to the problem.

“Then we’re seeing the “private sector begin to take serious action,” he said. “For example, Dell is changing its packaging. Certain big national and international chains are changing their practices – for example by using paper instead of plastic, or cutting out plastic straws.

“Then we have government action, which is crucial. Certain countries have banned microplastics, some have banned plastic bags. Kenya, Rwanda and Bangladesh, for example, are recognised global leaders on plastic pollution,” he added.

“This points to a growing understanding of the marine litter problem and a resolve to take concrete action. Ultimately, the problem of marine litter is upstream. We need industries to change. We need people to exercise their power as consumers,” Solheim said.

In what Joachim Spangenberg of Germany’s Helmholtz Centre for Environment Research called the “political economy” of pollution, where vested-interest lobbies profit by externalizing costs of production and discharging unwanted waste into the environment, anti-plastic law-makers are up against a global plastic industry worth 654 billion dollars by 2020. Dow Chemicals, Du Pont, BASF, ExxonMobil, and Bayer are key players invested in the sector.

But Spangenberg too says that heads of government have great power to address this “political economy” of pollution.

Oceans are the new economic frontier, but ill health eating into its potential

Between 2010 and 2030 on a business‑as‑usual scenario, the ocean economy could double its global value added to 3 trillion dollars and provide 40 million jobs, the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development’s (OECD) major 2016 study said.

Ocean is the new economic frontier, it said, its growth driven by traditional and emerging ocean-based industries, marine food, energy, transport, minerals, medicines, tourism and innovations.

But OECD warns the oceans’ undermined health would cut into its full growth potential.

“We need governments to make polluters pay, and to ensure we work harder on recycling, reuse and waste management. The solution is stopping the waste ending up in the ocean in the first place,” Solheim told Inter Press Service.

UN Environment chief Erik Solheim. Photo courtesy of UNEP

Pollution from plastic waste in oceans is costing 8 billion dollars

“Pollution from plastic waste being dumped in the ocean is costing the world at least 8 billion dollars every year, but this estimate is certain to be an underestimate when we factor in the cumulative, long-term consequences,” said the UNEP chief.

Between 4.8 million tonnes and 12.7 million tonnes of plastic waste enter the ocean every year, 80 percent of it from land sources due to inadequate waste management.

According to the Worldwatch Institute, plastic production is increasing 4-5 percent annually.

Plastic pollution is everywhere; even a tiny uninhabited island in the Pacific Ocean far from human contact had 18 tonnes of plastic washed up on it. Plastic waste was found at 36,000 feet in depth – the deepest spot in the ocean in the Mariana trench, he points out.

Plastic aside, land-based sources pump in the maximum waste and pollutants into oceans and coastal waters, mostly through rivers. Farming, food and agro-industry, fisheries and aquaculture, oil and energy sector, waste, wastewater, packaging sector, extractives and pharmaceuticals are major sources.

In coastal regions where 37 percent of the global population lives, these pollutants can stunt neurological development, cause heart and kidney disease, cancer, sterility and hormonal disruption.

Among the little know impacts on marine creatures, ingestion of microplastics (size less than 5 mm) by fish can affect female fertility and grow reproductive tissue in male fish causing their feminization. Chemicals in plastic cause thyroid disorder in whales, physiological stress, liver cancer, and endocrine dysfunction, says UNEP’s 2017 pollution report.

“Then of course we have to look at waste to the economy of plastics being produced, used for a few seconds or minutes and then dumped,” Solheim said.

Why are many law-makers still dragging their feet on strong anti-plastic policies?

Environmental activists say regulating marine pollution needs bold and several restrictive, unpopular policies that on which elected law makers are seen to be dragging their feet.

“It’s a case of presenting environmental action in a positive, constructive way. We need to stop looking at it as a cost or sacrifice, but as an opportunity, a win for health, benefits for the economy and for the planet,” Solheim counters the critics.

The Kenyan government recently banned single-use plastic bags. “There were inevitably complaints from some manufacturers, but we have to consider what the benefits are from making the switch to more sustainable packaging.

“There are business opportunities. There are benefits to tourism, as nobody wants to go on a safari and see plastic bags blowing across the savannah, or spend a holiday on beaches littered with plastic. There are benefits to the food chain too. We’ve seen cows whose stomachs were filled with plastic,” he added.

Actions don’t need to be unpopular. For example, “does any country have a policy to throw rubbish into the sea?” “Certainly not! If that was a real policy, people would be justifiably furious.” he said. But that is what has happened, in the absence of strong policies.

“For too long, the relationship between prosperity and environment has been seen as a trade-off. Tackling pollution was considered an unwelcome cost on industry and a handicap to economic growth,” Solheim says in his ‘Vision for a Pollution-free Planet,’ in the run-up to the UN Environment Assembly. “(But) it’s now clear that sustainable development is the only form of development that makes sense, including in financial and economic terms,” he adds.

“If action is not taken today, we’re lining ourselves up for the ultimate cost – the destruction of our oceans – down the line. It’s cheaper to prevent pollution now than clean up in the future,” he told Inter Press Service.

“That’s the message we really need to get across, so that governments can feel inspired and emboldened to take action.

“After that, what price do we put on our oceans? They sustain human life in such a way that surely we need to look at the oceans as priceless,” Solheim said.

“We have to look at pollution as a factor alongside climate change and over-fishing. We have to look at oceans as interconnected,” Solheim said.

Keeping marine litter high on national environmental policy agendas of the 193 member nations, pollution is the focus of the 2017 UN Environment Assembly 4-6 December at the UN headquarters of Nairobi.

The UN Environment Assembly is attended by 193 member states, heads of state, environment ministers, CEOs of multinational companies, NASA scientists, NGOs, environmental activists, and celebrities to discuss and make global commitments to environmental protection.

Excerpt:

Canadian economist Eric Usher, director of the United Nations Environment Finance Initiative (UNEP FI), explains to financial sector executives from Latin America and the Caribbean their ideas for its institutions to promote the Sustainable Development Goals, atn a meeting in Argentina´s capital. Credit: Daniel Gutman/IPS

By Daniel Gutman
BUENOS AIRES, Sep 8 2017 (IPS)

Is it possible for the financial sector of Latin America and the Caribbean not only to think about earning money but also to contribute to the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development? The answer was sought in Buenos Aires, Argentina, at a regional roundtable on sustainable finance, the United Nations Environment Finance Initiative.

“How to mobilise sufficient funds is obviously one of the critical aspects of the agenda for sustainable development,” said Eric Usher, a Canadian economist with experience in the renewable energies sector and current director of the initiative, known as UNEP FI.

“Of course, profit maximisation is a tool for delivering economic development and it should be. But there’s a role for governments to play, to create the right framework and the enabling environment, to make sure that the private sector makes money doing the right things,” he told IPS, during the roundtable on Sept. 5-6, which brought together dozens of representatives of banks, investment funds and international bodies.

“I don’t think there is any discrepancy or problem with making money on sustainable development. The public and private sectors need to work together so we can deliver in a way that creates the most benefits,” said Usher.

UNEP FI is a global partnership between U.N. Environment and more than 200 financial entities – 129 banks, 58 insurance companies and 26 investment funds – from some 60 countries, created in the context of the 1992 Rio de Janeiro Earth Summit. The meeting in Buenos Aires meant a return, after 25 years, to the region where the initiative first emerged.“If the risk assessment is comprehensive, it should not be purely financial and short-term. For example, when a bank carries out an analysis before investing in a renewable energy project, it should take into account the kind of energy mix the country is moving towards.” -- María Eugenia Di Paola

The Latin America and Caribbean round table will be followed by four other regional roundtables this year: North America (in New York), Europe (Geneva), Africa and the Middle East (Johannesburg) and Asia and the Pacific (Tokyo).

Financial bodies and business chambers from many countries explained in Buenos Aires the progress they have made in recent years with regard to the introduction of questions such as environmental and social risk or the calculation of carbon footprints in the assessment prior to granting loans, as well as their own energy efficiency goals or the reduction of paper consumption.

It became clear, nonetheless, that the certainties are still outweighed by the unanswered questions regarding the financial sector’s participation in the 2030 Agenda, which the U.N. member countries have been working towards since 2016, through the 17 Sustainable Development Goals (SDG).

“We are barely at the start of the journey and this is not easy,” admitted Mario Vasconcelos, director of institutional relations of the Brazilian Federation of Banks (Febraban), which represents 123 financial institutions, 29 of which, he explained, have committed to finance productive projects to contribute to reducing carbon emissions.

“There are many business opportunities in the transition towards a low-carbon economy, which has already begun,” Vasconcelos said with enthusiasm.

Forty financial institutions in the region have signed the UNEP Statement of Commitment by Financial Institutions (FI) on Sustainable Development. UNEP FI has been working mainly towards building expertise in the sector about how to identify social and environmental risks in investment projects, so that these can be considered along with the economic risks.

This is perhaps the most difficult task, as Beatriz Ocampo, manager of Sustainability of Grupo Bancolombia, the most important private bank in Colombia, acknowledged to some extent.

“If you tell bankers they have to finance projects that contribute towards the fight against climate change, they will not understand what you are talking about. That is why it is important to establish what sustainable finance means,” she said.

In this sense, the region still has a long way ahead.

In Argentina, for example, questions related to sustainable finance are not a priority for most banks, due to the fact that there is no involvement by the state, and the adoption of these criteria is completely voluntary.

This was the conclusion of a report carried out in 2016 by UNEP FI together with CAF – the Development Bank of Latin America – on the basis of a survey which found that only 39 per cent of Argentine banks have implemented social environmental management systems.

One of the most commented topics during the meeting in Buenos Aires was the speech by Javier González Fraga, president of the Banco de la Nación Argentina, the largest public financial entity in the country.

He was the first speaker in the meeting and was critical of the financial sector while he praised environmentalists, which took many by surprise.

“The financial logic of these days does not allow us to protect the environment. We must not let economists, and especially not financial experts, express their opinion about the planet we are going to leave to our grandchildren,” he said.

González Fraga is a centre-right economist with vast experience, who presided over Argentina’s Central Bank during the presidency of Carlos Menem (1989-1999) and was appointed by the current president Mauricio Macri as head of Argentina’s only national bank.

In dialogue with IPS, González Fraga, who has postgraduate degrees from Harvard and the London School of Economics, expressed a conviction that “we must go about finance a different way, especially public banks.”

“Many years of experience have shown me that the classical or neoliberal theory will in no way solve environmental problems. The government must lead the way and have institutions such as state banks head up the process of change in approach,” he said.

González Fraga also condemned the U.S. government’s decision to pull out of the Paris Agreement on climate change.

“We see on TV what happened in Texas with Hurricane Harvey and it is clear that there is no need to explain what the future might hold, because it is already happening today. Donald Trump can say many things, but the reality in the U.S. can’t be denied, and people on the streets are starting to play an increasingly important role in the environmental issue,” he said.

For María Eugenia Di Paola, coordinator of Environment for the U.N. Development Programme (UNDP) in Argentina, financial institutions in the region should not find it so difficult to add social and environmental criteria to economic factors, in risk assessment.

“If the risk assessment is comprehensive, it should not be purely financial and short-term. For example, when a bank carries out an analysis before investing in a renewable energy project, it should take into account the kind of energy mix the country is moving towards,” she told IPS.

“This way, the financial sector will acquire a perspective more attuned to the 2030 Agenda. And the climate catastrophes are already occurring, so that the concepts of medium and long term are very relative,” Di Paola said.

The impacts of fire and ecosystem fragmentation on a community can be devastating. Credit: Cheikh Mbow/ICRAF/Flickr

By Sam Otieno
NAIROBI, Kenya, Aug 29 2017 (IPS)

Africa’s population continues to grow, putting intense pressure on available land for agricultural purposes and life-supporting ecosystem services even as the scenario is compounded by the adverse impacts of climate change.

But the adoption of land degradation neutrality (LDN) measures is helping ensure food and water security, and contributing to sustainable socioeconomic development and wellbeing, especially for Eastern African countries that face immense challenges.With over half of sub-Saharan Africa consisting of arid and semi-arid lands, the livelihoods of over 400 million people who inhabit these areas are at risk.

LDN will also help to achieve some of the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) and Africa’s Vision 2063, launched in 2013 a strategic framework for the socioeconomic transformation of the continent over the next 50 years.

According to Economics of Land Degradation Initiative, a report by the United Nations Convention to Combat Desertification (UNCCD) and others, land degradation and desertification are among the world’s greatest environmental challenges. It is estimated that desertification affects approximately 33 per cent of the global land surface. Over the past 40 years, erosion has rendered close to one-third of the world’s arable land unproductive.

Africa is the most exposed, with desertification affecting around 45 per cent of the continent’s land area, out of which 55 per cent is at high or very high risk of further degradation. Dry lands are particularly affected by land degradation and with over 50 per cent of sub-Saharan Africa being arid and semi-arid lands, the livelihoods of over 400 million who inhabit these areas are at risk.

In an interview with IPS, Ermias Betemariam, a land health scientist at the World Agroforestry Centre (ICRAF) with research interest in land degradation, landscape ecology, restoration ecology, soil carbon dynamics and spatial science, said that increasing population is an important driver of the rising demand for natural resources and the ecosystem services they provide, including food and energy.

“Africa, in particular, faces the critical challenge of its population continuing to grow at a rapid rate while natural resources, arable, grazing, forest lands, and water resources become increasingly scarce and degraded,” he said.

Betemariam noted that food is mostly produced by small-scale farmers who may not have the resources, or be in an enabling economic and policy environment, to close the “yield gap” between current and potential yields.

Hence the increase in food needs of the rising population in Africa has been met by expanding agriculture into new lands which are often marginal, semi-arid zones that are climatically risky for agriculture – changing the local landscape, economy and society.

Such change in land use has been recorded as a major cause of land degradation in Africa.

Betemariam explained that achieving SDG 15.3 (a land degradation neutral world by 2030) is critical for Sub-Saharan African countries. LDN is about maintaining and improving the productivity of land resources by sustainably managing and restoring soil, water and biodiversity assets, while at the same time contributing to poverty reduction, food and water security, and climate change adaptation and mitigation.

UNCCD says that so far 110 countries have committed to set LDN targets. The Secretariat and the Global Mechanism of the UNCCD are supporting governments in this process, including the definition of national baselines, targets and associated measures to achieve LDN by 2030 through the LDN Target Setting Programme (TSP).

“LDN is a target that can be implemented at local, national and even regional scales,” Betemariam told IPS. “At the heart of LDN are Sustainable Land Management (SLM) practices that help close yield gaps and enhance the resilience of land resources and communities that directly depend on them while avoiding further degradation.”

For example, he cited the farmer-managed natural resources in Niger and livestock enclosure management and soil conservation at the Konso Cultural Landscape in Ethiopia which is registered by UNESCO.

Oliver Wasonga, a dryland ecology and pastoral livelihoods specialist at the University of Nairobi, Kenya, says there is little investment in sustainable land management, especially in the drylands, and yet many communities living in rural Africa increasingly lose their livelihoods due to loss of land productivity resulting from land degradation.

Wasonga told IPS that land degradation costs Africa about 65 billion dollars annually, around five per cent of its gross domestic product. Globally, the cost of land degradation is estimated at about 295 billion dollars annually.

Investment in restoration of degraded land is critical in enhancing household food and income security, he said, especially for the majority of Africa’s rural populace that relies almost entirely on natural resources for their livelihoods.

“This is more so for the millions of pastoralists and agro-pastoralists who inhabit the dry lands of Africa that form more than 40 per cent of the continent’s land surface. Any attempt to attain LDN is therefore key to achieving both poverty reduction and development goals,” said Wasonga.

He said there is a need to create a platform to showcase success stories that may motivate land users, decision makers, development agencies, and private investors to act better. And also to reward individuals, communities, and institutions for their outstanding efforts towards a LDN continent as an incentive to engage and invest in sustainable land management (SLM) practices.

Investment in SLM provides opportunities for not only enhancing the current productivity of land, but also offers solutions that go beyond technological approaches by including aspects of social participation and policy dialogue.

Levis Kavagi, Africa Coordinator, Ecosystems and Biodiversity at the United Nations Environment Programme, said SLM ensures that maximisation of benefits from land resources do not cause ecological damage, economic risks and social disparity. The approach combines maintaining and enhancing condition of land which is still in good health, as well as restoration of the already degraded land.

However, the success of any SLM programmes is dependent upon the governance system. A governance system that recognises and integrates customary institutions and practices is shown to yield better results than statutory interventions.

“African governments need to develop policies that promote SLM and specifically those aimed at restoration of degraded lands. There is need for ‘win-win’ approaches with multiple short- and long-term benefits in combating land degradation, as well as restoring or maintaining ecosystem functions and services, thereby contributing to sustainable livelihoods and rural development,” said Kavagi.

Involvement of land users and communities is key to success of any attempt to promote SLM and restoration of degraded lands, he stressed. Such approaches should seek integration of low-cost customary institutions and practices that are familiar to the communities as a way of decentralizing governance.

There is also a need to sensitize and motivate the private sector to invest in SLM. Payment for ecosystem services should be promoted as way of giving incentive to the communities to use land in a sustainable manner, he concluded.

Young mangrove plants tended by women beneficiaries from the Small Fishers Federation of Lanka have helped the Puttalam Lagoon regain some of its lost natural glory. The success of the programme has prompted the government to support an island-wide project worth 3.4 million dollars. Credit: Amantha Perera/IPS

By Amantha Perera
KALPITIYA, Sri Lanka, Jun 17 2015 (IPS)

Weekends and public holidays are deadly for one of Sri Lanka’s most delicate ecosystems – that is when the island’s 8,815 hectares of mangroves come under threat.

“The mangroves are a part of our life, our culture. We destroy them, we destroy ourselves.” -- Douglas Thisera, also known as Sri Lanka's Mangrove Master
With public officials, forest rangers and NGO workers on holiday, no one is around to enforce conservation laws designed to protect these endangered zones. Except the locals, that is.

Residents of the Kalpitiya Peninsula in the northwest Puttalam District are no strangers to the wanton destruction of the area’s natural bounty. Kalpitiya is home to the largest mangrove block in Sri Lanka, the Puttalam Lagoon, as well as smaller mangrove systems on the shores of the Chilaw Lagoon, 150 km north of the capital, Colombo.

For centuries these complex wetlands have protected fisher communities against storms and sea-surges, while the forests’ underwater root system has nurtured nurseries and feeding grounds for scores of aquatic species.

Perhaps more important, in a country still living with the ghosts of the 2004 Asian Tsunami, mangroves have been found to be a coastline’s best defense against tidal waves and tsunamis.

Many poor fisher families in western Sri Lanka also rely heavily on mangroves for sustenance, with generation after generation deriving protein sources from the rich waters or sustainably harvesting the forests’ many by-products.

But in Sri Lanka today, as elsewhere in the world, mangroves face a range of risks. The United Nations Environment Programme (UNEP) says that the unique ecosystems, capable of storing up to 1,000 tonnes of carbon per hectare in their biomass, are being felled at three to five times the rate of other forests.

Over a quarter of the world’s mangrove cover has already been irrevocably destroyed, driven by aquaculture, agriculture, unplanned and unsustainable coastal development and over-use of resources.

On the west coast of Sri Lanka, despite government’s pledges to protect the country’s remaining forests, the covert clearing of mangroves continues – albeit at a slower rate than in the past.

But a small army of land defenders, newly formed and highly dedicated, is promising to turn this tide.

Douglas Thisera, better known as the Mangrove Master, has spent the last two-and-a-half decades protecting the mangroves of Sri Lanka’s northwest Puttalam District. Credit: Amantha Perera/IPS

When residents become rangers

They call him the ‘Mangrove Master’, but his real name is Douglas Thisera. A fisherman turned vigilante, he is the director for conservation at the Small Fisheries Foundation of Lanka (Sudeesa) and spends his days patrolling every nook of the Chilaw Lagoon for signs of illegal destruction.

“Suddenly we will see earth movers and other machinery clearing large tracts of mangroves – by the time pubic officials are alerted, the destruction is already done,” he tells IPS.

This pattern follows decades of state-sanctioned deforestation that began in the early 90s, when an aggressive government-backed prawn-farming scheme was taking root around the lagoon and private corporations as well as politically-linked business enterprises were eyeing and clearing the mangroves indiscriminately.

For years Thisera tried to draft the local community into conservation efforts, but they were up against a Goliath.

He recalls one instance, back in 1994, when a powerful politician cleared a 150-metre stretch of forest almost overnight. “We were helpless then, we did not have the organisational capacity to take on such figures.”

By 2012, prawn farming, salt panning, solid waste disposal and hotel construction for the country’s thriving tourist sector had conspired to cut Sri Lanka’s mangrove cover by 80 percent, according to some estimates.

Today, under the aegis of a major mangrove conservation programme in the region, Thisera not only has financial backing for his efforts – he has a network of residents just as dedicated to the task as he is.

The project is led by Sudeesa, whose chairman, Anuradha Wickramasinghe, believed that only “community-based” action could hope to save the disappearing forests.

But this was easier said than done.

Poverty stalks the population of Sri Lanka’s northwest coast, and the most recent government statistics indicate that the average income among fisher families is just 16 dollars a month, with 53 percent of the population here living below the national poverty line.

Unemployment is roughly 20 percent higher than the island-wide average of 4.1 percent, and most families spend every waking moment struggling to put food on the table.

So Sudeesa created a micro-credit scheme to incentivize conservation efforts, and tailored the programme towards women. Women are offered a range of loans at extremely low interest rates to start home-based sustainable ventures. In exchange, they care for young saplings, help replant stretches of mangrove forest and take it upon themselves to prevent illegal clearing for commercial purposes.

Together they have planted 170,000 saplings covering an area of 860 hectares in the district – and they are working to multiply this number.

Futures tied to the land

The entire scheme relies on community action.

Women are put in charge of designated locations, mostly close to their homes. When encroachment or illegal harvesting takes place, they use local networks and cell phones to get the word out.

Here, the Thisera plays a pivotal role, acting as an intermediary between local watchdogs and networks of public officials, which he can activate when the women raise a red flag.

Last year this rudimentary conservation machine managed to halt encroachment by a private company with a stake in prawn farming by forcing it to dismantle fencing around the mangroves and retreat to demarcations laid down in government maps of the area.

Thisera says powerful business interests present the biggest menace to locals. Although an epidemic in the late 1990s decimated most of the prawn farms, leaving large, empty man-made tanks in place of mangrove ecosystems, companies have been reluctant to retreat and many continue to pay taxes on former areas of operations.

“They want to keep a legal hold on the land for other purposes,” Thisera explains, such as tourism on the northern ridge of the Puttalam Lagoon that has seen a revival since the end of the country’s civil war in 2009.

Already two islands have been leased out to private companies, though no major construction operations have yet begun.

When they do, however, they will be forced to reckon with Thisera and his unofficial rangers.

“The mangroves are a part of our life, our culture,” Thisera explains. “We destroy them, we destroy ourselves.”

Self-confidence and self-reliance

Cut off from the country’s commercial hubs and major markets, women in this district have long had to rely on their wits to survive.

Take Anne Priyanthi, a 52-year-old widow with two children who until three years ago had struggled to feed her family. She tried to lift herself out of poverty by applying for a bank loan – but was refused on the basis that she did not “meet the criteria”.

In 2012 Sudeesa granted her a loan of 10,000 rupees – about 74 dollars – which she used to start a small pig farm. Today, she earns a monthly income of 25,000 rupees, or 182 dollars.

It seems a pittance – but it means her kids can stay in school and in these impoverished parts that is a monumental success.

Another beneficiary of Sudeesa’s conservation-livelihood project is 58-year-old Primrose Fernando, who now works as a coordinator for the NGO. The widow has three daughters, one of whom has a minor disability.

With her loan she was able to set up a small grocery shop for the disabled daughter and also invest in an ornamental fish breeding business.

“Without this assistance I would have been left destitute,” Fernando tells IPS.

Since 1994 Sudeesa had given out loans to the tune of 54 million rupees (over 400,000 dollars) to 3,900 women in the Puttalam District. Officials say that the loans have a repayment rate of over 75 percent.

By conserving the mangroves, thousands of women have also carved out a better life for themselves and their families and no longer spend every waking moment wondering where their next meal will come from. Credit: Amantha Perera/IPS

Now the loans scheme falls under a registered public organisation called Sudeesa Social Enterprises Corporation, of which 683 of the most active women are shareholders.

“It is the shareholders who run the orgainsation now, who decide on loans, repayments and follow-up action in case of defaulters,” explains Malan Appuhami, a Sudeesa accountant.

The operation is not your average micro-credit scheme – interest rates are less than three percent, and since the women are all part of the same community, they are more interested in helping each other succeed than hunting down defaulters.

For instance during the months of June to September, when rough seas limit a fisher family’s catch, the shareholders create more flexible repayment plans.

In a country where the female unemployment rate is over two-and-a-half times that of the male rate, and almost twice the national figure of 4.2 percent, the conservation-livelihood scheme is a kind of oasis in an otherwise barren desert for women – particularly older women without a formal education, as many in the Puttalam District are – seeking paid work.

Suvineetha de Silva, a Sudeesa credit officer, tells IPS that there has been a visible shift in women’s outlooks and attitudes – no longer ragged and shy, they now ripple with the confidence of those who have taken matters into their own hands.

Some have even been able to send their kids to university, de Silva says, something that was “unheard of” a decade ago, when the simple act of completing primary school was considered a luxury for youth whose parents needed the extra labour to help feed the family.

Other women are spending more time at home, with the result that sustainable cottage industries like home bakeries, dress making ventures and even hairdressing operations are thriving.

Best of all is that Puttalam’s mangroves now have a fighting chance, with determined women keeping watch over them.

Globally, an estimated 100 million people live in the vicinity of mangrove forests. What would it mean for the future of biodiversity if all of them followed Sri Lanka’s example?

Edited by Kanya D’Almeida

This article is part of a special series entitled ‘The Future Is Now: Inside the World’s Most Sustainable Communities’. Read the other articles in the series here.

This reporting series was conceived in collaboration with Ecosocialist Horizons

David Njeru, a farmer from central Kenya, attends to his cabbages. This community is at risk of being displaced from their land by powerful real estate developers. Credit: Miriam Gathigah/IPS

By Miriam Gathigah
NGANGARITHI, Kenya, May 11 2015 (IPS)

Vegetables grown in the lush soil of this quiet agricultural community in central Kenya’s fertile wetlands not only feed the farmers who tend the crops, but also make their way into the marketplaces of Nairobi, the country’s capital, some 150 km south.

Spinach, carrots, kale, cabbages, tomatoes, maize, legumes and tubers are plentiful here in the village of Ngangarithi, a landscape awash in green, intersected by clean, clear streams that local children play in.

“I am not fighting for myself but for my children. I am 85 years old, I have lived my life, but my great-grandchildren need a place to call home.” -- Paul Njogu, a resident of the farming village of Ngangarithi in central Kenya
Ngangarithi, home to just over 25,000 people, is part of Nyeri County located in the Central Highlands, nestled between the eastern foothills of the Abadare mountain range and the western hillsides of Mount Kenya.

In the early 20^th century, this region was the site of territorial clashes between the British imperial army and native Kikuyu warriors. Today, the colonial threat has been replaced by a different challenge: real estate developers.

Ramadhan Njoroge, a resident of Ngangarithi village, told IPS that his community’s worst fears came to life this past January, when several smallholder families “awoke to find markers demarcating land that we had neither sold nor had intentions to sell.”

The markers, in the form of concrete blocks, had been erected at intervals around communal farmland.

They were so sturdy that able-bodied young men in the village had to use machetes and hoes to dig them out, Njoroge explained.

It later transpired that a powerful real estate developer in Nyeri County had placed these markers on the perimeters of the land it intended to convert into commercial buildings.

The bold move suggested that the issue was not up for debate – but the villagers refused to budge. Instead, they took to the streets to demonstrate against what they perceived to be a grab of their ancestral land.

“We cannot have people coming here and driving us off our land,” another resident named Paul Njogu told IPS. “We will show others that they too can refuse to be shoved aside by powerful forces.”

“I was given this land by my grandmother some 20 years ago,” he added. “This is my ancestral home and it is also my source of livelihood – by growing crops, we are protecting our heritage, ensuring food security, and creating jobs.”

But Kenya’s real estate market, which has witnessed a massive boom in the last seven years, has proven that it is above such sentiments.

Those in the business are currently on a spree of identifying and acquiring whatever lands possible, by whatever means possible. It is a lucrative industry, with many winners.

The biggest losers, however, are people like Njoroge and Njogu, humble farmers who comprise the bulk of this country of 44 million people – according to the Ministry of Agriculture, an estimated five million out of about eight million Kenyan households depend directly on agriculture for their livelihoods.

Land: the most lucrative asset class

Last September, Kenya climbed the development ladder to join the ranks of lower-middle income countries, after a rebasing of its National Accounts, including its gross domestic product (GDP) and gross national income (GNI).

This woman, a resident of Ngangarithi village in central Kenya, uses fresh water from the surrounding wetlands to irrigate her crops. Credit: Miriam Gathigah/IPS

The World Bank praised the country for conducting the exercise, adding in a press release last year, “The size of the economy is 25 percent larger than previously thought, and Kenya is now the fifth largest economy in sub-Saharan Africa behind Nigeria, South Africa, Angola and Sudan.”

According to the Bank, “Economic growth during 2013 was revised upwards from 4.7 percent to 5.7 percent [and] gross domestic product (GDP) per capita changed overnight, literally, from 994 dollars to 1,256 dollars.”

The reassessment, conducted by the Kenyan National Bureau of Statistics, revealed that the real estate sector accounted for a considerable portion of increased national earnings, following closely on the heels of the agricultural sector (contributing 25.4 percent to the national economy) and the manufacturing sector (contributing 11.3 percent).

David Owiro, programme officer at the Institute of Economic Affairs (IEA), a local think tank, told IPS, “Kenya’s land and property market is growing exponentially.”

His analysis finds echo in a report by HassConsult and Stanlib Investments released in January this year, which found that the scramble for land in this East African nation is due to the fact that land has delivered the highest return of all asset classes in the last seven years, up 98 percent since 2007.

Land prices in the last four years have risen at twice the rate of cattle and four times the rate of property, while oil and gold prices have fallen over the same period, researches added.

Advertised land prices have risen 535 percent, from an average of 330,000 dollars per acre in 2007 to about 1.8 million dollars per acre today. Thus, equating land to gold in this country of 582,650 sq km is no exaggeration.

According to Owiro of the IEA, a growing demand for commercial enterprises and high-density housing in the capital and its surrounding suburban and rural areas is largely responsible for the price rise.

Government statistics indicate that though the resident population of Nairobi is two million, it swells during the workday to three million, as workers from neighbouring areas flood the capital.

This commuter workforce is a major driver of demand for additional housing, according to Njogu.

As a result, two distinct groups who see their fortunes and futures tied to the land seem destined to butt heads in ugly ways: real estate developers and small-scale farmers.

What is sustainable?

While the land rush and real estate boom fit Kenya’s newfound image as an economic success story, they run directly counter to the United Nations’ new set of Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs), due to be finalised in September.

The attempt to seize farmers’ land in Ngangarithi village reveals, in microcosm, the pitfalls of a development model that is based on valuing the profits of a few over the wellbeing of many.

A farmer shows off his aloe plants, popular among farming families in central Kenya for their medicinal value. Credit: Miriam Gathigah/IPS

Farmers who have lived here for generations not only grow enough food to sustain their families, they also feed the entire community, and comprise a vital link in the nation’s food supply chain.

Taking away their land, they say, will have far-reaching consequences: central Kenya is considered one of the country’s two breadbaskets – the other being the Rift Valley – largely for its ability to produce plentiful maize harvests.

In a country where 1.5 million people experience food insecurity every year, according to government statistics cited by the United States Agency for International Development (USAID), pushing farmers further to the margins by separating them from their land makes little economic sense.

Furthermore, encroachment by real estate developers into Kenya’s wetlands flies in the face of sustainable development, given that the U.N. Environment Programme (UNEP) has identified Kenya’s wetlands as ‘vital’ to its agriculture and tourism sectors, and has urged the country to protect these areas, rich in biodiversity, as part of its international conservation obligations.

For Njogu, the land rush also represents a threat to an ancient way of life.

He recounted how his grandmother would go out to work on these very farmlands, decades ago: “Even with her back bent, her head almost touching her knees, she did all this for us,” he explained.

“When she became too old to farm, she divided her land and gave it to us. What if she had sold it to outsiders? What would be the source of our livelihood? We would have nowhere to call home,” he added.

Already the impacts of real estate development are becoming plain: the difference between Ngangarithi village and the village directly opposite, separated only a by a road, has the villagers on edge.

“On our side you will see it is all green: spinach, kale, carrots, everything grows here,” Njogu said. “But the land overlooking ours is now a town.”

Various other villagers echoed these sentiments, articulating a vision of sustainability that the government does not seem to share. Some told IPS that the developers had attempted to cordon off a stream that the village relied on for fresh water, and that children played in every single day, “interacting with nature in its purest form,” as one farmer described.

“I am not fighting for myself but for my children,” Njogu clarified. “I am 85 years old, I have lived my life, but my great-grandchildren need a place to call home.”

Villagers’ determination to resist developers has caught the attention of experts closer to the policy-making nucleus in Nairobi, many of whom are adding their voices to a growing debate on the meaning of sustainability.

Wilfred Subbo, an expert on sustainable development and a lecturer at the University of Nairobi, told IPS that a strong GDP is not synonymous with sustainability.

“But a community being able to meet its needs of today, without compromising the ability of its children to meet their own needs tomorrow, [that] is sustainable development,” he asserted.

According to Subbo, when a community understands that they can “resist and set the development agenda, they are already in the ‘future’ – because they have shown us that there is an alternative way of doing business.”

“Land is a finite resource,” Subbo concluded. “We cannot turn all of it into skyscrapers.”

Edited by Kanya D’Almeida

This reporting series was conceived in collaboration with Ecosocialist Horizons

By Miriam Gathigah
NGANGARITHI, Kenya, May 11 2015 (IPS)

Vegetables grown in the lush soil of this quiet agricultural community in central Kenya’s fertile wetlands not only feed the farmers who tend the crops, but also make their way into the marketplaces of Nairobi, the country’s capital, some 150 km south.

Spinach, carrots, kale, cabbages, tomatoes, maize, legumes and tubers are plentiful here in the village of Ngangarithi, a landscape awash in green, intersected by clean, clear streams that local children play in.

Ngangarithi, home to just over 25,000 people, is part of Nyeri County located in the Central Highlands, nestled between the eastern foothills of the Abadare mountain range and the western hillsides of Mount Kenya.

In the early 20^th century, this region was the site of territorial clashes between the British imperial army and native Kikuyu warriors. Today, the colonial threat has been replaced by a different challenge: real estate developers.

Those in the business are currently on a spree of identifying and acquiring whatever lands possible, by whatever means possible. It is a lucrative industry, with many winners.

The biggest losers, however, are people like Njoroge and Njogu, humble farmers who comprise the bulk of this country of 44 million people – according to the Ministry of Agriculture, an estimated five million out of about eight million Kenyan households depend directly on agriculture for their livelihoods.

In a country where 1.5 million people experience food insecurity every year, according to government statistics cited by the United States Agency for International Development (USAID), pushing farmers further to the margins by separating them from their land makes little economic sense.

Furthermore, encroachment by real estate developers into Kenya’s wetlands flies in the face of sustainable development, given that the U.N. Environment Programme (UNEP) has identified Kenya’s wetlands as ‘vital’ to its agriculture and tourism sectors, and has urged the country to protect these areas, rich in biodiversity, as part of its international conservation obligations.

Edited by Kanya D’Almeida