Farmer Crescencio Hernández checks seedlings in his chinampa in the San Gregorio Atlapulco collective land, in the Xochimilco municipality, in the south of the extensive metropolitan area of Mexico City. Credit: Emilio Godoy / IPS

By Emilio Godoy
SAN GREGORIO ATLAPULCO, Mexico , Sep 18 2024 (IPS)

Mexican Crescencio Hernández orders radishes, herbs and lettuce for shipment to an alternative market in west-central Mexico City.

The vegetables have been harvested from his chinampa, a pre-Hispanic wetland farming system that survives in three boroughs in the south of the Mexican capital, albeit surrounded by multiple threats.

Hernández, 44, married without children, attributed the success of the traditional technique to good practices. “We take care that there is no sewage in the canals, no construction in this area, we don’t use agrochemicals and reforest every year,” the owner of the Crescen de la Chinampa brand explained during a tour of his chinampa with IPS.

With three workers, Hernández harvests about 500 kilograms of vegetables each week, including tomatoes, peppers, chilli peppers and spinach, from a chinampa he owns and another he borrows in the town of San Gregorio Atlapulco, home to some 24,000 people and part of the borough of Xochimilco, known as ‘the land of flowers’.“We take care that there is no sewage in the canals, that there is no construction in this area, we don't use agrochemicals, we reforest every year": Crescencio Hernández.

Originally from the municipality of Acambay, in the state of Mexico (neighbouring Mexico City), Hernández has been a chinampa farmer (chinampero) for 28 years, an activity he shares with his brother, who rents another of these plots of land for agricultural production.

In 2017, he abandoned the use of agrochemicals and now uses compost from the organic matter produced by the farm. In June, he installed a greenhouse inside the chinampa to plant tomato, lettuce and cucumber.

“The basis of the system is water, it sustains it. I diversify production to meet the demand, as I am asked for several products, and also to take care of the soil,” he said.

But what he and other chinampa farmers protect, is destroyed in nearby areas, with the complicity of the authorities, who are responsible for protecting these unique sites.

Irregular urbanisation, the use of pesticides, the effects of the climate crisis, over-exploitation of the aquifer and neglect have dug their daggers into the bowels of the chinampa, according to a study by the World Cultural and Natural Heritage Zone Authority (AZP) in Xochimilco, Tláhuac and Milpa Alta.

The AZP, established in 2014, manages the preservation of the wetland’s special ecosystem in order to maintain the World Heritage designation.

Chinampa farmers in the municipality of Xochimilco, in the south of Mexico City. Credit: Fundación Tortilla

Ambiguity

The original peoples used chinampas, , a term that comes from chinampi, which in the indigenous Nahuatl language means ‘in the fence of reeds’, long before the arrival of the Spanish conquistadors in the 15th century.

The technique creates small, rectangular gardens in the wetlands of the micro-region, by means of fences made of ahuejote (willow) stakes, a tree typical of this ecosystem with the virtue of tolerating excess water.

The bottom of the chinampa is rich in mud and organic waste, which provide nutrients for the growth of plants, irrigated with water from the canals, in one of the most studied areas in the centre of the country.

The chinampas are the vegetable garden that partially feeds the 22 million people of Mexico City and its metropolitan area.

The chinampas system retains water, produces fish, vegetables, flowers and medicinal plants, and saves water compared to traditional irrigation, with a network of navigable canals of some 135 kilometres.

Luis Zambrano, doctor in basic ecology at the Institute of Biology de of the public National Autonomous University of Mexico, believes chinampas have had their ups and downs.

“There are chinamperos who… want to work the way they used to work, and that helps resilience and local food production. But it’s getting worse, because urbanisation, such as houses, football pitches and night clubs, is gaining ground,” he told IPS.

This, he said, because “Xochimilco is very threatened by local public policies that promote these activities, when the land’s vocation is to be productive”.

San Gregorio Atlapulco, part of the municipality of Xochimilco, in the south of Mexico City, lost conservation land between 2012 and 2024, victim of urbanization and the installation of greenhouses, as shown in the two satellite images from each of those years. Credit: Google Earth

In 1992, the Priority Zone for the Preservation and Conservation of Ecological Balance y was established as a Natural Protected Area (NPA), which covers the ejidos (community farms on public land under concession) of Xochimilco and San Gregorio Atlapulco, with a total of 2,507 hectares.

The chinampera area has 1,723 hectares, equivalent to 68 % of the NPA.

The borough hosts three zones in the ejidos Xochimilco, San Gregorio Atlapulco and San Luis Tlaxialtemalco, which still have canals and host 2,824 active chinampas out of the 18,524 existing ones.

Of the active points, 60% apply the chinampero system, 12.5% host greenhouses, recreational sites and football fields, 9.4% are dedicated to pastures and 16% were converted into residential areas.

In Xochimilco there are 864 active chinampas out of 15,864 registered over 1,059 hectares, corresponding to 47% of the total surface of the traditional system. This area preserves the largest number of chinampas that have potential for restoration.

San Gregorio Atlapulco has 1,530 operational chinampas out of 2,060 registered, over an area of 484 hectares (22% of the total), which makes it the locality with the greatest presence of these active sites.

San Luis Tlaxialtemalco is the smallest, with 103 hectares (5% of the territory), and 430 active chinampas out of 600 registered.

Xochimilco, with just over 442,000 people in an area of about 125 square kilometres, has been a United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organisation (Unesco) World Natural and Cultural Heritage site since 1987.

In addition, its lake system has been part of the Convention on Wetlands of International Importance, known as the Ramsar Convention, since 2004, especially as a habitat for waterfowl.

The Food and Agriculture Organisation of the United Nations (FAO) classifies the chinampas as part of the Ingenious Systems of World Agricultural Heritage, as they conserve agrobiodiversity, adapt farmers to climate change, guarantee food security and combat poverty.

But these recognitions have not prevented the destruction, and restoration has been an ever-present promise, always unfulfilled.

The protected natural area has lost at least 173 hectares in recent years due to urbanisation, construction of greenhouses and spaces for mass events, such as festivals, according to calculations by Zambrano and his scientific team. The ANP’s 2018 management plan bans those activities.

Compounding the despair, in 2021 the capital’s government built a vehicular bridge over a wetland, which increases the threats to the ecosystem and has led to several complaints to Unesco, which have yet to be resolved.

The canals between the chinampas provide sediment, the base for planting, and water for irrigating vegetable crops, in a wetland located in three localities in the south of Mexico City. Credit: Emilio Godoy / IPS

A possible future

In this adverse context, the chinamperos also sow optimism that flows through the canals of the area.

Biologist Zambrano leads a project that includes research, maintenance of the sites and protection of the axolotl, working with 25 farmers and 40 chinampas that distribute their produce to shops and restaurants with the ‘chinampera label’.

In 2024, the restoration project has a budget of around USD 250,000 from private donations.

The amphibian axolotl (Ambystoma mexicanum) is endemic to the area and is at risk of extinction due to habitat loss.

At the moment, they are analysing profitability and increased production, in order to encourage more farmers to join.

Farmer Hernández highlighted collective work and government support as hopeful elements.

“I see solutions, but it depends on the government giving money. We need farmers to be aware of water use,” he said.

Zambrano called for a ‘social force’ to compel the regional and national governments to restore Xochimilco.

“Today they need subsidies, the value is very low and competition is high. This is a race against the dynamics we have brought in the last decades,” he argued.

He predicted a future with possibilities. “There are going to be places crowded with tourists, a lot of urbanisation and deterioration. But if we manage to change the balance and increase production, if the government supports it, we could have a very profitable area,” he concluded.

An aerial view of Hacendita Cafubá, on the north shore of Piratininga, a lagoon in southeastern Brazil, when ponds that serve as a spillway and to collect sedimentation of polluted water were being built and filter gardens that clean the water of the Cafubá River before discharging its waters into the lagoon were being planted. CREDIT: Alex Ramos / Niterói City Government

By Mario Osava
NITERÓI, Brazil , Oct 20 2023 (IPS)

Houses with balconies facing the street or the surrounding hills, when they are not hidden behind high walls, reflect a neighborhood where people live on the shore of a lagoon but reject the landscape it offers.

Piratininga, a 2.87 square kilometer coastal lagoon in the southern part of the Brazilian city of Niterói, began to change after several decades of uncontrolled urban growth with no care for the natural surroundings, in what has become a neighborhood of 16,000 inhabitants."I saw fish where there was nothing living before, I saw flowers where there was only mud, I saw life where nature was already dead without any hope." -- Local beneficiary of the PRO project

Garbage, polluted water, construction debris and bad odors hurt the landscape and the quality of life that is sought when choosing a lagoon and green hills as a place to build a year-round or weekend residence.

The accumulated sludge at the bottom of the lagoon is 1.6 meters thick, on average, resulting from both pollution and natural sedimentation.

“That’s what explains those houses that turn their backs to the lagoon,” explained Dionê Castro, coordinator of the Sustainable Oceanic Region Program (PRO Sostenible) of the city government of Niterói, a municipality of 482,000 people separated from the city of Rio de Janeiro only by Guanabara Bay.

Oceânica is one of the five administrative zones of the municipality, locally called regions, which includes 11 neighborhoods in the southern part, on the open sea coast, in contrast to others on the shore of the bay or inland areas without beaches. With two lagoons and a good part of the Atlantic Forest still preserved, the area stands out for its nature.

PRO Sostenible, which was founded in 2014, seeks to restore environmental systems and to ensure better and more sustainable urbanization in the area. Its actions are based on a systemic approach and nature-based solutions.

Dionê Castro is head of the Sustainable Oceanic Region Program of the municipality of Niterói, on the edge of the Piratininga Lagoon in southeastern Brazil. Gardens and piers jutting into the lagoon have replaced the garbage dumps, polluted water and construction debris that had led local residents to reject the landscape, leading houses to be built with their “backs to the lagoon.” CREDIT: Mario Osava / IPS

Natural clean-up of the water

The program’s flagship project is the Orla Piratininga Alfredo Sirkis Park, which pays homage to a leader of the environmental movement, former national lawmaker and former president of the Green Party, as well as journalist and writer, who died in 2020.

The park, known by its acronym POP, has the mission of recovering and protecting the ecosystems associated with the Piratininga Lagoon, in addition to fostering a sense of belonging to the environment and its surroundings. For this reason, the participation of the local residents in all stages of the project has been and continues to be a basic principle.

It comprises an area of 680,000 square meters, the largest in Brazil in nature-based solutions projects, with 10.6 kilometers of bicycle paths, 17 recreational areas and a 2,800 square meter Ecocultural Center.

To bring residents and visitors closer to the local environment, the plan is to complete three three-story lookout points – two of which have already been built – and piers reaching into the lagoon, part of which can be used for fishing, as fish still inhabit the lagoon despite the pollution of recent decades.

The first section, known as Haciendita Cafubá, was inaugurated on Jun. 17, with a water filtration system for the Cafubá River, one of the three that flow into the lagoon, a lookout point, piers, a bicycle path and even a nursery for newborn crocodiles in a special fenced-in area.

A view of ponds and, in the background, filtering gardens after their inauguration in June 2023. Hills covered by native vegetation surround the Piratininga lagoon and the neighborhood that grew up over half a century around it and now has 16,000 inhabitants, in Niterói, a neighboring city of Rio de Janeiro in southeastern Brazil. CREDIT: Mario Osava / IPS

“I went to see if I could find the crocodiles, my son made me walk down the street, he loves animals… I never thought I would see what I saw… I went to the beginning of the Haciendita, I saw fish where there was nothing living before, I saw flowers where there was only mud, I saw life where nature was already dead without any hope. Congratulations for tolerating us, that community is tough.”

This is the testimony of a resident, addressed to the head of PRO Sostenible. The park has had a large number of visitors since before its inauguration, attracted by flora and fauna that had long since disappeared from the shores of the lagoon.

The technology used to clean the waters is known around the world but has not been widely used in Brazil. It is based on filter gardens, in which layers of gravel and permeable substrates serve as a base for macrophytes, aquatic plants that live in flooded areas and are visible on the surface.

The plants filter the water in a process that does not require chemical inputs.

A special spillway receives the waters of the Cafubá, which conducts and controls them to give greater efficiency to the next pond, the sedimentation pond, the first step in cleaning the polluted waters by reducing the solid material produced by erosion and garbage thrown into the riverbed.

After the sedimentation basins, the water passes through three filtering gardens before flowing into the lagoon.

Biologists and environmental managers Heloisa Osanai and Andrea Maia are photographed at the Tibau Island lookout point at the western end of the Piratininga Lagoon in southeastern Brazil. The vegetation, dominated by the exotic and invasive white lead tree, is gradually being replaced by local species as part of the restoration and clean-up process. CREDIT: Mario Osava / IPS

Plant filters

Twelve species of macrophytes are used in the filtration process, but the variety has been reduced due to maintenance difficulties. “We use only Brazilian species, and no exogenous species,” said Heloisa Osanai, a biologist specialized in environmental management and one of the 17 employees of PRO Sostenible.

Examples include water lettuce and water lilies with orange flowers.

“One of the effects of the water treatment is the reduction of mosquitoes, which is important to local residents, who used to burn dry vegetation in an attempt to drive away the insects. People no longer build bonfires in the evenings. The filter gardens attract dragonflies that eat the mosquitoes,” said Osanai.

In the larger Jacaré River, 11 filtering gardens were created, which operate in sequence and whose size was designed for greater efficiency, said Andrea Maia, another biologist and environmental manager of the team.

Filter gardens beautify the environment and expel mosquitoes, with macrophyte aquatic plant species that clean the water, in addition to decontaminating the Piratininga lagoon, restoring fishing and local tourism in a long-neglected ecosystem of Niteroi, in southeastern Brazil. CREDIT: Mario Osava / IPS

Awards and results

PRO Sostenible has already won several national and international awards. It was named one of the three best environmental sustainability programs in Latin America and the Caribbean in the Smart Cities 2022 award.

This year it won another award from Smart Cities Latin America, as the best in Sustainable Urban Development and Mobility. The Park also won awards for valuing biodiversity, from the Federation of Industries of Rio de Janeiro, and another as an environmental project, from the São Paulo city government, for contributing to the Sustainable Development Goals of the 2030 Agenda.

In addition to the Park, the program has inaugurated a Sports and Leisure Center on the island of Tibau, on the other side of the Piratininga Lagoon, closer to the sea.

As part of this project, sports fields, a playground and a lookout point have been built, while an invasive tree, the white lead tree (Leucaena leucocephala), native to Mexico and Central America, which dominated the island’s vegetation, has been gradually replaced with local species.

The systemic thinking that guides PRO Sostenible is based on three pillars, explained Dionê Castro.

First is the complexity of local ecosystems and of the projects being implemented, focusing on the environmental, natural, social and cultural dimensions.

In second place is what is called “intersubjectivity”, which takes into account new paradigms of science, leaving behind “simplistic and Cartesian views…The changes do not come from outside, but from local residents, with public input from the conception of the project to its execution,” said the geographer who holds a doctorate in environmental management.

The third pillar is irreversibility. The lagoon and its ecosystems will not return to their original state, “to zero,” but will be cleaned up as much as possible to reach a “new equilibrium,” she said.

Local support for the environmental project led to solutions in different areas, such as the regularization of real estate in the favelas or shantytowns, the improvement of health, the revitalization of fishing, and even the creation of a fishermen’s association.

“It’s environmental justice on the march,” Castro summed up.

Young mangrove plants, Puttalam Lagoon, Sri Lanka. Credit: Amantha Perera/IPS

By Baher Kamal
MADRID, Feb 2 2022 (IPS)

This is about Wetlands, which are considered as a natural solution to the global threat of climate change. They absorb carbon dioxide, help slow global heating and reduce pollution, hence they are often referred to as the “Kidneys of the Earth”.

Specifically, peatlands alone store twice as much carbon as all the world’s forests combined. However, when drained and destroyed, wetlands emit vast amounts of carbon, adds the UN on the occasion of the World Wetlands Day, marked 2 February.

“Wetlands also provide a buffer against the impacts of floods, droughts, hurricanes and tsunamis, and build resilience to climate change.”

And though they cover only around 6% of the Earth’s land surface, 40% of all plant and animal species live or breed in wetlands.

The World Day also reports that:

• Coastal wetlands sequester and store carbon up to 55 times faster than tropical rain forests.
• Rice, grown in wetland paddies, is the staple diet of 3.5 billion people.

But… what are wetlands?

Wetlands are ecosystems where water is the primary factor controlling the environment and the associated plant and animal life, explains the UN.

A broad definition includes both freshwater and marine and coastal ecosystems such as all lakes and rivers, underground aquifers, swamps and marshes, wet grasslands, peatlands, oases, estuaries, deltas and tidal flats, mangroves and other coastal areas, coral reefs, and all human-made sites such as fishponds, rice paddies, reservoirs and saltpans.

In the Ciénaga de Zapata, Cuba, the biggest wetlands in the Caribbean. Credit: Jorge Luis Baños/IPS

Where?

“Although present in all world’s regions, about 30% of the world’s wetlands are located in North America. Some of them developed after the previous glaciation created lakes. Asia and North America combined contain over 60% of the world’s wetland area.”

Critical to people and nature

The World Day also explains that these lands are critical to people and nature, given the intrinsic value of these ecosystems, and their benefits and services, including their environmental, climate, ecological, social, economic, scientific, educational, cultural, recreational and aesthetic contributions to sustainable development and human wellbeing.

“Wetland biodiversity matters for our health, our food supply, for tourism and for jobs. Wetlands are vital for humans, for other ecosystems and for our climate, providing essential ecosystem services such as water regulation, including flood control and water purification.”

A billion people depend on wetlands

“They are vital habitats for wildlife, as well as important tools for mitigating the effects of climate change. They help to manage extreme weather events like floods and storms, and can store 10-20 times more carbon than temperate or boreal forests on land.”

“Add to all that, more than a billion people across the world depend on them for their livelihoods – that’s about one in eight people on Earth.”

Why are they in danger?

Wetlands are among the ecosystems with the highest rates of decline, loss and degradation, explains the World Day.

Indicators of current negative trends in global biodiversity and ecosystem functions are projected to continue in response to direct and indirect drivers such as rapid human population growth, unsustainable production and consumption and associated technological development, as well as the adverse impacts of climate change.

The most threatened ecosystem

But not only are they disappearing three times faster than forests–they are the “Earth’s most threatened ecosystem.” In just 50 years — since 1970 — 35% of the world’s wetlands have been lost.

“Human activities that lead to loss of wetlands include drainage and infilling for agriculture and construction, pollution, overfishing and overexploitation of resources, invasive species and climate change.”

In the specific case of the Mediterranean, for example, the region has lost 50% of its natural wetlands since 1970 – and we continue to destroy them, warns the Union for the Mediterranean (UfM).

The vicious circle

This vicious circle of wetland loss, threatened livelihoods, and deepening poverty is the result of mistakenly seeing wetlands as wastelands rather than life-giving sources of jobs, incomes, and essential ecosystem services, the World Day concludes.

A stream meanders through a wetland in Wakkerstroom, Mpumalanga. The region is a Strategic Water Source Area, the segments of South Africa, Lesotho and Swaziland that make up 8 percent of land area but account for 50 percent of water supply. Credit: Mark Olalde/IPS

By Mark Olalde
JOHANNESBURG, Oct 4 2016 (IPS)

The dam supplying Johannesburg’s water sits less than 30 percent full. Water restrictions have been in place since November and taxes on high water use since August. Food prices across South Africa have risen about 10 percent from last year, in large part due to water shortages.

“If you’re going to have a large coal mine in [a protected area], what’s the point really?” -- Melissa Fourie
In the midst of one of the country’s worst droughts in recorded history, the government continues to permit new coal mines and coal-fired power plants. One mine in particular is gaining increased scrutiny, as it has been given nearly all the permits necessary to mine in a high yield water area called the Mabola Protected Environment in the Mpumalanga province.

Indian mining company Atha-Africa Ventures (Pty) Ltd’s proposed Yzermyn Underground Coal Mine would sit 160 miles southwest of Johannesburg in the catchments of three major rivers: the Vaal, the Tugela and the Pongola. The surrounding area also falls within a Strategic Water Source Area, the eight percent of land in South Africa, Lesotho and Swaziland that accounts for 50 percent of water supply.

The proposed mine site is in the midst of numerous other protected and high importance demarcations such as the endangered Wakkerstroom Montane Grassland and the South Eastern Escarpment National Spatial Biodiversity Assessment Priority Area. The Mpumalanga Biodiversity Sector Plan labels the habitat of the proposed site as “Irreplaceable and Optimal Critical Biodiversity Areas.”

A southern masked weaver sits on a branch in the Wakkerstroom Wetland Reserve and Crane Sanctuary, a local tourist destination. The area is known for several endemic crane species, and the Mpumalanga Biodiversity Sector Plan identifies it as “Irreplaceable and Optimal Critical Biodiversity Areas.” Credit: Mark Olalde/IPS

Because the mine would tunnel underneath Mabola, the Protected Areas Act prohibits mining unless a company obtains written permission from the directors of both the Department of Mineral Resources, DMR, and Department of Environmental Affairs, DEA.

The DMR signed off on the project when it granted a mining right in September 2014, just eight months after Mabola was declared protected. However, at a September hearing of the South African Human Rights Commission, a representative of the DMR falsely asserted under oath that the department would not allow mining in the area. The DEA has given no indication of Minister Edna Molewa’s plans regarding the mine.

Neither the DMR nor the DEA responded to requests for comment by the time of publication.

Melissa Fourie is the director of the Centre for Environmental Rights, which is spearheading litigation to slow the mine’s progress through the permitting procedure. She said the whole process has been “slight of hand” and “a lot of smoke and mirrors.”

“If you’re going to have a large coal mine in [a protected area], what’s the point really?” Fourie told IPS. “It affects not just that area, but it affects the whole country’s water resources and a whole lot of downstream users.”

The Vaal River System ultimately provides water for most of the country’s coal-fired electricity generation, as well as the country’s most populous province of Gauteng, and Fourie fears pollution from the mine would impact the system.

The underground Yzermyn mine would cover about 2,500 hectares of Atha-Africa’s 8,360 hectare mining right. Surface infrastructure would be kept to a minimum, although plans indicate a pollution control dam is to be built on a wetland.

Atha-Africa’s senior vice president Praveer Tripathi said, “The evidence that mining in that area is going to disturb the functionality of the wetland as well as any apprehensions about acid mine drainage were very, very scant.” According to Tripathi and the environmental authorisation, mitigation will include recharging wetlands, onsite water treatment and sealing of the shafts post-closure.

Tripathi argued that a nearby abandoned mine is dry, which would suggest Yzermyn might not flood and cause acid mine drainage. However, it took several iterations of consultants’ reports to reach the conclusion that the mine would have minimal environmental impacts. “There was concerns raised by our own specialists about some of the negative effects of some activities,” Tripathi said.

Farmer and chairman of the Mabola Protected Environment Oubaas Malan points out his farm from the proposed mine site. Because the mine would tunnel under a legally protected environment, it requires the written approval of the ministers of both the Department of Mineral Resources and the Department of Environmental Affairs. Credit: Mark Olalde/IPS

Angus Burns, senior manager for the Land and Biodiversity Stewardship Programme at WWF-SA, was active in the movement to demarcate protected areas. “The precedent that can be set by the allowance of this kind of activity within a protected environment opens up, I believe, a floodgate of opportunities for any mining company to challenge protected environments,” he said.

The water use license granted to Atha-Africa allows the company to use 22 Olympic size swimming pools-worth of water annually, dewater the underground area it would mine and pump a limited amount of treated effluent into wetlands.

In a statement, Tsunduka Khosa, the director of water use licensing at the Department of Water and Sanitation said: “The water use licence granted contains a set of conditions aimed at mitigating the possible impacts…South Africa is water scarce country. Therefore all activities that have a potential to impact water resources are considered serious to the Department and all available water resources are sensitive.”

Mining opponents also claim political ties helped push this mine through a stringent permitting process. One of Atha-Africa’s Black Economic Empowerment partners called Bashubile Trust has several trustees with connections to President Jacob Zuma. Sizwe Zuma, one of the trustees, is alleged to be the president’s relative – although Atha-Africa denies this – and in court documents Sizwe Zuma listed his residential address as the presidential estate in Pretoria.

Bashubile did not respond to requests for comment. Mpumalanga’s Department of Agriculture, Rural Development, Land and Environmental Affairs, which acknowledged all the protected areas yet still granted the environmental authorization, also did not respond.

Regardless of permits, much of the population in nearby Wakkerstroom, Mpumalanga, is afraid that mining would severely impact the current economy, which is reliant on livestock farming and ecotourism.

Johan Uys works on his family’s farm near Wakkerstroom and said his children will be the sixth generation to farm there. “Most of the people that are from Wakkerstroom are against mining, but there are the people that don’t have jobs that are for the mining because there are these promises that are made,” he said, citing the racial disparity between wealthy white landowners and poor black communities in town.

Wakkerstroom residents from the black community said they would only want mining if Atha-Africa pledged environmental protection and sustainable job growth. The company estimates that 500 direct jobs will be created and 2,000 indirect, although the mine is only expected to operate for 15 years.

“We know from very bitter experience that this hardly ever transpires,” Fourie said of the job creation estimates. “So often those jobs are not local jobs.”

Mark Olalde’s mining investigations are financially supported by the Fund for Investigative Journalism, the Fund for Environmental Journalism and the Pulitzer Center on Crisis Reporting. Additional support was provided by #MineAlert and Code for Africa.

Studies show that indigenous fish species in Uganda – here being caught on Lake Victoria – have shrunk in size due to an increase in water temperature as a result of climate change. Credit: Wambi Michael/IPS

By Wambi Michael
KAMPALA, Aug 22 2015 (IPS)

Climate change is reducing the size of several species of fish on lakes in Uganda and its neighbouring East African countries, with a negative impact on the livelihoods of millions people who depend on fishing for food and income.

Studies conducted on inland lakes in Uganda, including Lake Victoria which is shared by three East African countries, indicate that indigenous fish species have shrunk in size due to an increase in temperatures in the water bodies.

“What we are seeing in Lake Victoria and other lakes is a shift in the composition of fish. In the past, we had a dominance of bigger fish but now we are seeing the fish stocks dominated by small fish. This means they are the ones which are adapting well to the changed conditions,” said Dr Jackson Efitre, a lecturer in fisheries management and aquatic sciences at Uganda’s Makerere University.

“So if that condition goes on, he added, “the question is would we want to see our fish population dominated by small fish with little value?”

“We need to provide lake-dependent populations with an alternative for them to survive … If measures cannot be agreed and implemented quickly, then we are condemning those communities to death” – Dr Justus Rutaisire, responsible for aquaculture at Uganda’s National Agriculture Research Organisation (NARO)
In Uganda, the fisheries sector accounts for 2.5 percent of the national budget and 12.5 percent of agricultural gross domestic product (GDP). It employs 1.2 million people, generates over 100 million dollars in exports and provides about 50 percent of the dietary proteins of Ugandans.

Efitre was one of the researchers for a study on ‘Application of policies to address the influence of climate change on inland aquatic and riparian ecosystems, fisheries and livelihoods”, which examined the influence of climate variability and change on fisheries resources and livelihoods using lakes Wamala and Kawi in the Victoria and Kyoga lake basins as case studies.

It also looked at the extent to which existing policies can be applied to address the impacts of and any challenges associated with climate change.

The study’s findings showed that temperatures around the two lakes had always varied but had increased consistently by 0.02-0.03^oC annually since the 1980s, and that rainfall had deviated from historical averages and on Lake Wamala – although not Lake Kawi – had generally been above average since the 1980s.

According to the study, these findings are consistent with those reported by the United Nations Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) in 2007 and 2014 for the East African region.

Mark Olokotum, one of the study’s researchers, climate changes have affected the livelihoods of local fishing communities.

“These are fishers who depend on the environment. You either increase on the number of times you fish to get more fish or get more fishing gear to catch more fish. And once that happens, you spend more time fishing, earn much less although the price is high, and there are no fish so people have resorted to eating what is available,” he said.

Olokotum told IPS that the water balance of most aquatic systems in Uganda is determined by rainfall and temperature through evaporation.

He said that about 80 percent of the water gain in Lake Wamala was through rainfall while 86 percent of the loss was through evaporation, resulting in a negative water balance and the failure of the lake to retain its historical water levels.

“Therefore, although rainfall in the East African region is expected to increase as a result of climate change, this gain may be offset by increased evaporation associated with increases in temperature unless the increases in rainfall outweigh the loss through evaporation,” Olokotum explained.

These changes have made life more difficult for people like Clement Opedum and his eight sons who have traditionally depended on lakes as a source of food and income.

Opedum’s living has always come from the waters of Lake Wamala. In the past, sales of tilapia fish from the lake to neighbouring districts were brisk; and some would be bought by traders from the Democratic Republic of Congo, sustaining his family and other fishermen.

Those days are now gone. Over the years, the lake has steadily retreated from its former shores, leaving Opedum and his neighbours high and dry, and faced with the prospect that the lake could vanish entirely.

Charles Lugambwa, another fisherman in the same area, has been obliged to turn to farming, and he now grows yams, sweet potatoes and beans on land that was previously under the waters of the lake.

Lugambwa told IPS that apart from tilapia fish, other species have started disappearing from the lake in 30 or so years he has lived there.  “In 1994, the lake dried up completely but came back in 1998 following heavy rains,” he told IPS. “We used to catch very big tilapia but now they are quite tiny even though they are adult fish.”

Scientists and researchers argue that the causes of lake shrinking include water evaporation, increased cultivation on banks, cutting down of trees and destruction of wetlands, while the reduction in the size of tilapia has been linked to increased lake water temperature as a result of global warming.

Dr Richard Ogutu-Ohwayo, senior research officer at the National Fisheries Resources Research Institute (NaFFIRI) told IPS that the response to the impacts of climate change in Uganda had been concentrated on crops, livestock and forestry with almost no concern for the fisheries sector.

“It is high time government took the bold step to bring aquatic ecosystems and fisheries fully on board in its climate change responses,” he said.

According to Ogutu–Ohwayo, the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) and the East African Community Policy on Climate Change commit states to building capacity, generating knowledge, and identifying adaptation and mitigation measures to reduce the impacts of climate change, however these have barely been implemented.

Ogutu-Ohwayo who was part of the lake study research team, told IPS that Uganda has a water policy which provides for protection and management of water resources, and “we must apply these policies to manage the water resources of lakes Wamala, Kawi and other lakes through integrated approaches such as protecting wetlands, lake shores and river banks and controlling water extraction.”

Like other East African nations, Uganda has relied heavily on capture fisheries, or wild fisheries, with a tendency to marginalise aquaculture as far as resource allocation and manpower development is concerned.

With climate change leading to a decline in the size and stocks of wild fish and capture fisheries, fisheries experts are saying wild fish and capture fisheries from lakes alone can no longer meet the demand for fish, both for local consumption and export.

Fish processing plants around Lake Victoria, for example, are now operating at less than 50 percent capacity, while some have closed down.

Dr Justus Rutaisire, responsible for aquaculture at Uganda’s National Agriculture Research Organisation (NARO), told IPS that aquaculture could be used as one of the adaptation measures to help communities that have depended on fish to supplement capture fisheries.

He noted, however, that the development of aquaculture in most Eastern African countries is constrained by low adoption of appropriate technologies, inadequate investment in research and inadequate aquaculture extension services.

“We need to provide lake-dependent populations with an alternative for them to survive and that is why we are asking government to invest in aquaculture,” said Rutaisire. ”If measures cannot be agreed and implemented quickly, then we are condemning those communities to death,” he warned.

Edited by Phil Harris   

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

Africa’s wetland areas are experiencing immense pressure from commercial development and agriculture, settlements, excessive exploitation by local communities and improperly-planned development activities. Credit: Creative Commons CC0

By Tonderayi Mukeredzi
HARARE, Mar 12 2015 (IPS)

African wetlands are among the most biologically diverse ecosystems on the continent, covering more than 131 million hectares, according to the Senegalese-based Wetlands International Africa (WIA).

Yet, despite their importance and value, wetland areas are experiencing immense pressure across the continent. Commercial development ranks as the major threat for the draining of wetlands, including for tourism facilities and agriculture, where hundreds of thousands of hectares of wetlands have been drained.

Other threats to Africa’s wetlands are commercial agriculture, settlements, excessive exploitation by local communities and improperly-planned development activities. The prospect of immense profits from recently discovered oil, coal and gas deposits has also led to an increase in on-and offshore exploration and mining in sensitive ecological areas.Commercial development ranks as the major threat for the draining of [Africa’s] wetlands, including for tourism facilities and agriculture … Other threats are commercial agriculture, settlements, excessive exploitation by local communities and improperly-planned development activities

In Nigeria, Guinea-Bissau and Mozambique, for example, wetlands and estuaries coincide with fossil fuel deposits and related infrastructure developments.

In northern Kenya, port developments in Lamu are set to take place in the West Indian Ocean Rim’s most important mangrove area and fisheries breeding ground.

In KwaZulu-Natal and the Eastern Cape of South Africa, heavy mineral sands are located in important dune forest ecosystems, and gas is being prospected for in the water-scarce and ecologically unique Karoo.

In East Africa, oil discoveries have been made in the tropical Congo Basin rain forest and the Virunga National Park – a world heritage site and a wetland recognised under the Ramsar Convention.

The Okavango Delta in Botswana, one of Africa’s most important wetlands and designated as the 1,000th world heritage site by UNESCO, has been home to many threatened species and the main water source of regional wildlife in Southern Africa. Yet it is shrinking due to drier climate, increased grazing and growing pressure from tourism.

“This delta is a true oasis in the middle of the bone-dry Kalahari Sand Basin, a rare untouched wilderness that’s been preserved by decades of border and civil wars in the Angolan catchment,” said National Geographic explorer Steve Boyes in an interview. “Many people along the Okavango River live like communities did some 400 years ago – and from them I think we can learn a lot about how to be better stewards of the natural world.”

Boyes calculated the abundance of life in the delta: more than 530 bird species, thousands of plant species, 160 different mammals, 155 reptiles, scores of frogs and countless insects.

“Everywhere you look you find life. We surveyed bats and we found 17 species in three days. We started looking for praying mantises and found 90 different species,” he said.

A recent survey by the Botswana Department of Wildlife and National Parks and the environmentalist group BirdLife Botswana concluded that that the wetland’s historical zones of dense reed beds and water fig islands were largely destroyed by hydrological changes and fire. Bush fires and a high grazing pressure further reduced the natural shores of the Okavango Delta.

Studies by BirdLife Botswana also showed that the slaty egret, a vulnerable water bird living only in Southern Africa, with its main breeding grounds in the wetlands of Zambia, Mozambique and Botswana’s Okavango Delta, is now estimated to have a total population of only about 4,000 birds.

The egret, which is listed on the IUCN Red List of Threatened Species as vulnerable, seems to be losing its main breeding sites in the Okavango.

Environmentalists hope that they can still save the wetland, and pin their hopes on a “Slaty Egret Action Plan” which will be used by the Botswana’s Department of Wildlife and National Parks, BirdLife and other environment stakeholders to guarantee the survival of the Okavango Delta as a safe haven for the birds.

In a further step to save the wetlands, the Botswana government announced this month that from now on, seekers of mobile safari licences would be prohibited from operating in the Okavango Delta because the area in now congested.

The Botswana Guides Association, which represents many of the mobile safaris, is threatening to appeal.

Another example of the devastation of major wetlands occurred in Nigeria with pollution of farmlands linked to the Shell oil company.  The Niger Delta Natural Resource Damage Assessment and Restoration Project, an independent team of scientists from Nigeria, the United Kingdom and the United States, has characterised the Niger Delta as “one of the world’s most severely petroleum-impacted ecosystems.”

In 2013, a Dutch court found the Nigerian subsidiary of Shell culpable for the pollution of farmlands at Ikot Ada Udo in Akwa Ibom state in the coastal south of the country.

The Niger Delta is Africa’s largest delta, covering some 7,000 square kilometres – one-third of which is made up of wetlands. It contains the largest mangrove forest in the world.

Assisted by environmental organisation Friends of the Earth, the court ruling was a victory for the communities in the Niger Delta after years of struggle against the oil company dating back 40 years, although the clean-up still has far to go.

“Destruction of wetlands is prevalent in almost all countries in Africa because the driving factor is the same – population pressure – many mouths to feed, ignorance about the role wetlands in playing in the ecosystem, lack of policies, laws and institutional framework to protect wetlands and in cases where these exist, they are hardly enforced,” John Owino, Programme Officer for Water and Wetlands with the International Union for Conservation of Nature (IUCN)  told IPS from his base in Nairobi, Kenya.

Owino said that the future of African wetlands lies in stronger political will to protect them, based on sound wetland policies and encouragement for community participation in their management, which is lacking in many African countries.

But very few African governments have specific national policies on wetlands and are influenced by policies from different sectors such as agriculture, national resources and energy.

Edited by Lisa Vives/Phil Harris   

Lesser Flamingos in flight, Credit: ©Mark Anderson

By Jacques Trouvilliez
BONN, Jan 31 2015 (IPS)

The first global treaty dealing with biodiversity was the Ramsar Convention – predating the Rio processes by 20 years.

Ramsar aims to conserve wetlands, the usefulness of which has been undervalued – even the eminent French naturalist of the 18^th century, the Comte de Buffon, advocated their destruction – and which have suffered large losses in recent decades.Wetlands are vital for birds – and especially waterbirds – but it is also the case that the birds are vital to the wetlands, playing a major role in maintaining nature’s balance.

Far from being wastelands, wetlands provide invaluable services, replenishing aquifers that supply drinking water and filtering out harmful pollutants. By maintaining a healthy environment, wetlands help ensure human well-being.

While the Ramsar Convention has had to deal with a broader spectrum of wetland issues over the years, it should be remembered that its full title includes “especially as waterfowl habitat”, and in AEWA, Ramsar has a strong ally with a clear focus on waterbird conservation in the African-Eurasian Flyway.

The areas designated as Ramsar Sites form an important part of the network of breeding, feeding and stopover grounds that are indispensable to the survival of the 255 bird populations of listed under AEWA.

Ramsar Sites are vital “hubs” in the network of habitats that constitute the African-Eurasian flyway along which millions of birds migrate in the course of the annual cycle. They include habitats as diverse as the Wadden Sea in Europe and the Banc d’Arguin in Mauritania, both also designated as UNESCO World Heritage Sites and important staging posts for birds migrating between Arctic breeding grounds and wintering sites deep in Africa.

Despite being often far apart geographically and different morphologically, these sites are inextricably linked by the birds that frequent them.

The definition of “wetland” extends to fish ponds, rice paddies, saltpans and some shallow marine waters, so Ramsar has sites of significance to other species covered by the Convention of Migratory Species, under which AEWA was concluded.

Examples are the Franciscana dolphin (the only dolphin species to inhabit wetlands) found in the estuary of the River Plate and along the coast of South America; and the European eel – a recent addition to the CMS listings – which spends most of its life in rivers but spawns and then dies in the Sargasso Sea.

But it is waterbirds that have the strongest links to wetlands and the future of many species is in doubt as a result of the continuing reduction in area of these most productive of habitats. Of great concern is the fate of the mudflats of the Yellow Sea which are under increasing pressure from human developments because tied to them is the fate of a number of threatened shorebirds.

Lake Natron in the United Republic of Tanzania is the only regular breeding site of over two million Lesser flamingoes. Applications have been made to exploit the area’s deposits of soda ash leading to fears that irrevocable damage would be done to the site resulting in the species’ extinction.

The habitats of Andean flamingoes – the Puna and Andean Flamingoes – are facing similar problems as illegal mining activities have eroded the nesting sites and contaminated the water, exacerbating other threats such as egg collection.

Fragile wetland ecosystems also fall victim to man-made accidents – the explosion of the Deepwater Horizon oil platform in the Gulf of Mexico and the Sandoz chemical works fire in Basel, Switzerland in 1986 being just two examples of countless incidents, both leading to the death of thousands of birds and fish.

Wetlands are vital for birds – and especially waterbirds – but it is also the case that the birds are vital to the wetlands, playing a major role in maintaining nature’s balance.

Government representatives will gather in Paris later this year in the latest effort to seek agreement on the steps necessary to arrest the causes of climate change. Wildlife is already feeling the effects and one of the best ways to ensure that animals can adapt is to ensure that there are enough robust sites providing the habitat and food sources at the right time and in the right place.

The theme chosen by the Ramsar Convention for this year’s campaign is Wetlands for Our Future and there is a particular emphasis being placed on the role of young people. While wetlands are of course vital for humans, they are no less important for the survival of wildlife and to a great extent also depend on the birds that live in them.

It is the role of AEWA to provide a forum where the countries of Europe, West Asia and Africa can work together to maintain the network of sites making up the African-Eurasian flyway.

Edited by Kitty Stapp

Excerpt:

Part of the Nordelta gated community in the Paraná river delta, which led the new trend of building private neighbourhoods on the rivers and canals of Greater Buenos Aires. The community is made up of 11 neighbourhoods and is dubbed a “city-ville”. Credit: Elinmobiliario.com

By Fabiana Frayssinet
BUENOS AIRES, Nov 24 2014 (IPS)

The construction of gated communities on wetlands and floodplains in Greater Buenos Aires has modified fragile ecosystems and water cycles and has aggravated flooding, especially in poor surrounding neighourhoods.

In the 1990s a high-end property boom led to the construction of private neighbourhoods in vital ecosystems, and the emergence of barriers – actual walls – between social classes in the suburbs of Buenos Aires.

In the first week of November, the “sudestada” or strong southeast wind left 19 municipalities in and around Buenos Aires under water.“But in the last five years we have seen a new phenomenon: flooding from rainfall, and it’s no coincidence that it happens mainly in neighbourhoods located next to gated communities built over the last decade.” -- Martín Gianella

The sudestada is a phenomenon that affects the Rio de la Plata basin. It consists of a sudden rotation of cold southern winds to the southeast, bringing strong winds and heavy rain. In the first week of November the wind gusts reached over 70 km an hour and more rain fell in two days than the total forecast for two months. Rivers overflowed their banks, large areas were flooded and cut off, and more than 5,000 people were evacuated.

Jorge Capitanich, President Cristina Fernández’s cabinet chief, attributed the floods to “a combination of sudestada, heavy rains, and the saturation of the water basins.”

But Patricia Pintos of the University de la Plata’s Centre of Geographic Research said this confluence of factors was aggravated by the growing urbanisation and the proliferation of “barrios náuticos” – closed private neighbourhoods built on the water.

These gated communities are built near or on artificial or natural bodies of water, Pintos, a geographer who is co-author of the book ”La privatopía sacrílega. Efectos del urbanismo privado en la cuenca baja del río Luján” (Sacrilegious privatopia: Effects of private urbanism on the lower Luján river basin), told Tierramérica.

Many of these wealthy private neighbourhoods have been built on floodplains and wetlands, ecosystems that are vital to water drainage.

The new urban developments have advanced on areas that play a crucial role in managing floods, she said.

“Wetlands are getting stopped up by housing developments that ironically promote a lifestyle associated with enjoying water and nature,” Laila Robledo, an urban planner at the General Sarmiento National University, told Tierramérica.

Four of the municipalities in the lower stretch of the Luján river basin most affected by the growth of high-end neighbourhoods on floodplains and wetlands are Pilar, Campana, Escobar and Tigre, which cover more than 7,000 hectares.

Traditional houses on stilts in Tigre along the Arias canal in the Paraná river delta. These traditional neighbourhoods have suffered the environmental and social impacts of the construction of gated communities for the wealthy that are built on land prone to flooding. Credit: Fabiana Frayssinet/IPS

“The emergence of 65 housing developments of this kind modified the terrain at the mouth of the river and blocked drainage during weather events like the ones we experienced this month,” Pintos said.

These neighbourhoods, which the expert described as “polderised closed housing developments” – a reference to polders or low-lying tracts of land enclosed by dikes – “entail major modifications of the natural topographical characteristics, not only to raise the level of the ground in order to build housing but also to create new bodies of water.”

That involves, for example, excavating to build artificial lakes and using the dirt to fill in low-lying areas.

And because these housing developments are in flood-prone areas, embankments six to 10 metres high are built around them to keep water out.

“They protect these developments but they work as dikes that contribute to flooding in surrounding neighbourhoods…What protects them hurts those who are outside,” Pintos said.

Ten percent of the 350,000 inhabitants of Tigre live in gated communities, which cover half of the municipality’s land area, Martín Gianella, the municipal general secretary, told Tierramérica.

“This is what we call a model of socio-territorial segregation,” he said. “Walls are dividing the territory and society.”

Gianella said that Tigre, on the north side of Greater Buenos Aires, has historically suffered from flooding during the sudestadas.

“But in the last five years we have seen a new phenomenon: flooding from rainfall, and it’s no coincidence that it happens mainly in neighbourhoods located next to gated communities built over the last decade,” he added.

The official urged the municipal government to oversee and regulate the construction of private neighbourhoods “and to levy a special tax on these mega-developments, to invest in the necessary hydrological works.”

Robledo, the urban planner, stressed that changes in the hydrologic regimes don’t only affect the areas near the gated communities, because Buenos Aires was built on a plain crisscrossed by rivers.

“The city is part of an urban metabolism – what happens in one place affects the rest,” she explained. That is why solutions must be “interjurisdictional,” she added.

According to Robledo, the construction of these gated communities “favours the privatisation of the city and real estate speculation, to the detriment of the rest of the population.”

Driven by the profit motive, “the companies buy up historically cheap land prone to flooding, fill it in to make it inhabitable, and earn extraordinary profits,” she said.

Pintos said “this is the result of the growth of a model of urban development followed by municipalities that are prone to favouring big investment flows.”

Pintos and Robledo agreed that while regulations and maps of socio-environmental risks posed by this kind of housing development exist, they are not enforced.

Big real estate entrepreneurs in the province of Buenos Aires, like Gonzalo Monarca, the president of the Grupo Monarca, deny that they are responsible for the problems, which they blame on climate change.

“That’s a fallacious argument,” Robledo said. “Climate change is happening at a global level, but the consequences are stronger or weaker depending on the way cities have been built and inhabited.”

“If we build in a drainage basin that receives overflow when the water level in the river goes up, it’s obvious that the water is going to run off into other areas,” she said.

Robledo stated that if this kind of housing development is not banned or regulated, cities will be flooded more frequently and for longer periods of time, even when the rainfall is not particularly heavy.

Pintos went even further, calling for solutions that are “not very popular” in political terms, and which may be complex and burdensome, but which she said should not be ruled out if the problem continues to grow.

As an example, she cited the relocation of families from the banks of the Mississippi river in New Orleans, after Hurricane Katrina in 2005.

Other intermediate solutions, she said, would be to prohibit the construction of new private neighbourhoods in fragile ecosystems, and a review of the permits already granted.

She also said companies should assume the costs of remediation of environmental problems, although such works would be a “bandaid in the face of a critical situation that could have been avoided if rationality had prevailed.”

Leandro Silva, the head of environment at the Defensoría del Pueblo de la Nación – Argentina’s ombudsperson’s office – pointed out to Tierramérica that in 2010 his office warned the municipalities of Zárate, Campana, Escobar, Tigre and San Fernando about the risks posed by the expansion of gated communities in the ecosystem of the Paraná river delta, and urged them to respect environmental impact studies and to impose strict controls.

“The recurrent flooding and the impact on the most vulnerable segments of society make it necessary to reinforce these mechanisms and proactively exercise prevention, implementing in the watersheds all of the environmental management instruments required by our legislation: environmental impact assessments, citizen participation, environmental zoning and access to public information,” he said.

This story was originally published by Latin American newspapers that are part of the Tierramérica network.

Edited by Estrella Gutiérrez/Translated by Stephanie Wildes

Environment ministry park rangers survey one of the channels through the mangroves in the Barra de Santiago wetlands along the coast of the department of Ahuachapán, in western El Salvador. Credit: Edgardo Ayala/IPS

By Edgardo Ayala
BARRA DE SANTIAGO, El Salvador , Nov 5 2014 (IPS)

Carlos Menjívar has been ferrying people in his boat for 20 years in this fishing village in western El Salvador surrounded by ocean, mangroves and wetlands, which is suffering the effects of environmental degradation.

Siltation in the main channel leading to the town has hurt his income, because the buildup of sediment has reduced the depth and sometimes it is so shallow that it is unnavigable.

“This channel used to be deep, but it isn’t anymore,” Menjívar told Tierramérica, standing next to his boat, La Princesa, anchored at the town’s jetty. “On the bottom is all the mud that comes from upstream, from the highlands…sometimes we can’t even work.”

Barra de Santiago, a town of 3,000 located 98 km west of San Salvador, can be reached by dirt road. But some tourists prefer to get there by boat across the estuary, through the lush mangrove forest.“It’s obvious that we can’t keep doing things the same old way…we can’t continue to carry the burden of this degradation of the environment and the impact that we are feeling from climate change.” -- Lina Pohl

Despite the natural beauty of the area, the mangroves run the risk of drying up along some stretches, because the siltation impedes the necessary irrigation with salt water.

In the Barra de Santiago wetlands, which cover an area of 20 sq km, there are many species of animals, a large number of which are endangered, said José Antonio Villedas, the chief park ranger in the area.

The economic effects also hurt the local residents of Barra, “because 99 percent of the men are dedicated to fishing,” he told Tierramérica, although ecological tourism involving the wetlands has been growing over the last two years.

“The loss of depth in the estuary has affected fishing and shellfish harvesting, because we are losing the ecosystem,” said Villedas.

The buildup of sediment in the estuary is one of the environmental problems facing this coastal region, which is linked to the degradation of the ecosystem occurring in the northern part of the department or province of Ahuachapán, where Barra de Santiago is located. Other factors are erosion and the expansion of unsustainable agriculture.

Local organisations and the environment ministry launched a plan aimed at tackling the problem in an integral manner.

The National Programme for the Restoration of Ecosystems and Landscapes (PREP) seeks to restore ecosystems like forests and wetlands and preserve biodiversity, as part of what its promoters describe as “an ambitious national effort to adapt to climate change,” whose impacts are increasingly severe in this small Central American nation of 6.2 million.

One illustration of the changing climate was seen this year. In July, during the rainy season, El Salvador suffered a severe drought, which caused 70 million dollars in losses in agriculture, according to official estimates, mainly in the production of maize and beans, staples of the Salvadoran diet.

But in October the problem was not too little, but too much, water. Moderate but steady rainfall caused flooding and landslides in several regions, which claimed three lives and displaced the people of a number of communities.

Carlos Menjívar, standing next to his boat La Princesa on the Barra de Santiago estuary on El Salvador’s Pacific coast, says the buildup of sediment has made it impossible at times to navigate in the channels because they are too shallow. Credit: Edgardo Ayala/IPS

PREP aims to address the problems by region. It is currently focusing on the Ahuachapán southern micro-region, an area of 592 sq km with a population of 98,000 people.

The area covers four municipalities: San Francisco Menéndez, Guaymango, San Pedro Puxtla and Jujutla, where Barra de Santiago is found.

The approach makes it possible to tackle environmental problems along the coast, while connecting them with what is happening in the north of Ahuachapán.

Much of the pollution in the mangroves comes from the extensive use of agrochemicals on the maize and bean crops in the lower-lying areas and on the coffee plantations in the highlands.

Inadequate use of the soil dedicated to agriculture produces erosion, which washes the chemicals down to the rivers, and thus to the sea.

“Twelve rivers run into the Barra mangroves, and all of that pollution ends up down here with us,” said Villedas.

But the local communities have not stood idly by. For several years now community organisations have been working in the area to raise awareness about the importance of preserving the environment, and are running conservation projects.

Rosa Lobato, director of the Barra de Santiago Women’s Development Association (AMBAS), explained to Tierramérica that they are currently working with an environment ministry programme for the sustainable exploitation of mangroves for wood, which requires that for each tree cut down 200 mangrove seedlings must be planted.

They are also working for the conservation of sea turtles and have set up five blue crab nurseries.

“We are trying to raise awareness of the importance of not harming our natural surroundings,” the community organiser said.

In July, Barra de Santiago became the seventh Ramsar Wetlands of International Importance site in El Salvador and the first coastal site. The designation commits the authorities to step up conservation of the area.

These efforts are combined with measures taken in the nearby El Imposible National Park, one of the most important tropical forests in this Central American country.

El Imposible, which covers 50 sq km, has the highest level of diversity of flora and fauna in El Salvador, according to the Salvanatura ecological foundation. It is home to 500 species of butterflies, 13 species of fish, 19 species of lizards, 244 species of snakes, 279 species of birds and 100 species of mammals, as well as 984 plant species and 400 tree species.

In the middle- to high-lying areas in Ahuachapán small plots of farmland are being developed in pilot projects with a focus on environmentally friendly production, which does not involve the slash-and-burn technique, the traditional method used by small farmers to clear land for planting.

In addition, crop stubble – the stems and leaves left over after the harvest – is being used to prevent soil erosion and keep sediment from being washed towards the coast.

In the highlands, where coffee production is predominant, efforts are also being carried out to get farms to use the smallest possible quantity of agrochemicals and gradually phase them out completely.

“It’s obvious that we can’t keep doing things the same old way…we can’t continue to carry the burden of this degradation of the environment and the impact that we are feeling from climate change,” Lina Pohl, the environment minister, told correspondents who accompanied her on a tour through the area, including Tierramérica.

PREP will last three years and will receive two million dollars in financing from Germany’s agency for international cooperation.

In the micro-region of the southern part of the department of Ahuachapán, which is part of the project, the plan is to restore some 280 sq km of forest and wetlands over the next three years, but the long-term goal is to cover 10,000 sq km.

This story was originally published by Latin American newspapers that are part of the Tierramérica network.

Edited by Estrella Gutiérrez/Translated by Stephanie Wildes

The town of Taboga viewed from the sea. Credit: Creative Commons

By Emilio Godoy
TABOGA, Panama, Oct 16 2014 (IPS)

Fermín Gómez, a 53-year-old Panamanian fisherman, pushes off in his boat, the “Tres Hermanas,” every morning at 06:00 hours to fish in the waters off Taboga island. Five hours later he returns to shore.

Skilfully he removes the heads and scales of his catch of sea bass, snapper, marlin and sawfish. He delivers the cleaned fish to restaurants and hotels, where he is paid four dollars a kilo, a good price for the local area.

“I use baited hooks, because trammel nets drag in everything. That’s why the fishing isn’t so good any more: the nets catch even the young fry,” said this father of three daughters, who spent years working on tuna-fishing vessels.

Gómez lives 200 metres from Taboga island’s only beach, in a town of 1,629 people where the brightly painted houses are roofed with galvanised iron sheets. Located 11.3 nautical miles (21 kilometres) from Panama City, the mainstay of the island is tourism, especially on weekends when dozens of visitors board the ferry that plies between the island and the capital twice a day.

Gómez, who comes from a long line of fishermen, tends to go out fishing at midnight, the best time to catch sea bass. On a good day he might take some 30 kilograms.

“The fishing here is good, but we are dependent on what people on the other islands leave for us,” said Gómez, tanned by the sun and salt water.

The island of Taboga, just 12 square kilometres in area, lies in the Gulf of Panama and is the gateway to the Las Perlas archipelago, one of the most important nodes of coral islands in this Central American country of 3.8 million people.

From the air, they appear as mounds emerging from the turquoise backdrop of the sea, surrounded by what look like dozens of steel sharks, the ships waiting their turn to pass through the Panama Canal.

The isthmus of Panama possesses 290 square kilometres of coral reefs, mostly located on the Atlantic Caribbean coast, which harbour some 70 species. Coral reefs in the Pacific ocean host some 25 different species.

What the fisherfolk do not know is that their future livelihood depends on the health of the coral reefs, which is threatened by rising sea temperatures, maritime traffic, pollution and illegal fishing.

 Seabed corals on underwater mountains in Coiba National Park in Panama. Credit: Smithsonian Tropical Research Institute

In Coiba National Park, in western Panama, and in the Las Perlas islands, “the diversity of the coral and associated species has been sustained in recent years. We have not detected any bleaching, but a troublesome alga has appeared,” academic José Casas, of the state International Maritime University of Panama (UMIP), told IPS.

“It’s threatening the reef,” said the expert, who is taking part in a project for the study and monitoring of reef communities and key fisheries species in Coiba National Park and the marine-coastal Special Management Zone comprising the Las Perlas Archipelago. The study’s final report is due to be published in November.

Algal growth blocks sunlight and smothers the coral, which cannot survive. Experts have also detected the appearance of algae in Colombia and Mexico.

The project is being carried out by UMIP together with Fundación Natura, Conservation International, the Autonomous University of Baja California, in Mexico, and the Aquatic Resources Authority of Panama (ARAP).

Researchers are monitoring the coral in Coiba and Las Perlas in Panama. They took measurements in March and August, and they will repeat their survey in November.

There are differences between the two study zones. Coiba is little disturbed by human activity; it is a designated natural heritage area and a protection plan is in place, although according to the experts it is not enforced. Moreover, Coiba Park is administered by the National Environmental Authority (ANAM).

A protection programme for Las Perlas, to be managed by ARAP, is currently in the pipeline.

Reefs are essential for the development and feeding of large predators like sharks, whales, pelagic fish such as anchovy and herring, and sea turtles, the experts said.

In Panama’s coral reefs, ARAP has identified species of algae, mangroves, sponges, crustaceans, molluscs, conches, starfish, sea cucumber, sea urchin, as well as groupers, snappers, angelfish and butterflyfish.

Fishing generates some 15,000 jobs in Panama and annual production is 131,000 tonnes, according to the National Institute of Statistics and Census.

An Environmental Agenda for Panama 2014-2019 (Agenda Ambiental Panamá 2014-2019), published by the National Association for the Conservation of Nature (ANCON),

Fundación MarViva, Fundación Natura and the Panama Audubon Society, proposes the passage of a law for wetlands protection, emphasising mangroves, mudflats, marshes, swamps, peat bogs, rivers, coral reefs and others.

On the Caribbean coast, coral reefs around the nine islands of the Bocas del Toro archipelago, 324 nautical miles (600 kilometres) west of Panama City, are experiencing bleaching caused by high water temperatures.

This was a finding of a study titled “Forecasting decadal changes in sea surface temperatures and coral bleaching within a Caribbean coral reef,” published in May by the U.S. journal Coral Reefs.
Angang Li and Matthew Reidenbach, of the U.S. University of Virginia, predict that by 2084 nearly all the coral reefs they studied will be vulnerable to bleaching-induced mortality.

They simulated water flow patterns and water surface heating scenarios for the present day and projections for 2020, 2050 and 2080. They concluded that reefs bathed by cooler waters will have the greatest chances of future survival.

Bocas del Toro adjoins the Isla Bastimentos National Park, one of 104 protected areas in Panama covering a total of 36,000 square kilometres, equivalent to 39 percent of the national territory.

“Local communities need education in resource management, sustainable use, fisheries zoning and fisherfolk organisation,” Casas said.

The next phase of the corals project, financed with 48,000 dollars this year and requiring about 70,000 dollars for 2015, will involve quantifying the value of ecosystem services provided by coral reefs.

Gómez has no plans to change his trade, but he can see that his grandchildren will no longer follow the same occupation. “Fishing is going to be more complicated in future. They will have to think of other ways of earning a living,” he told IPS, gazing nostalgically out to sea.

Edited byEstrella Gutiérrez/Translated by Valerie Dee

Mangroves in the Marismas Nacionales Biosphere Reserve, which has the most extensive mangrove forest system along Mexico’s Pacific coast, could be lost if the Las Cruces hydroelectric dam is built, warn environmentalists and local residents. Credit: Courtesy of WWF

By Emilio Godoy
MEXICO CITY, Jun 5 2014 (IPS)

The Las Cruces hydroelectric project in the northwestern state of Nayarit is one of the threats to biodiversity in Mexico, according to activists.

“It will have an impact on the Marismas Nacionales wetlands reserve, because the dam will retain 90 percent of the sediment which is necessary for the survival of the ecosystem,” said Heidy Orozco, executive director of the non-governmental organisation Nuiwari.

Besides, “the hydrological regime would be modified and the low-lying jungle would be flooded,” she told IPS.

Nuiwari, which forms part of the Free San Pedro River Movement, has been dedicated since 2006 to protecting the San Pedro river basin, where the dam would be built.

The Federal Electricity Commission plans to build and operate the hydropower plant 65 km north of the city of Tepic, in Nayarit. It will have an installed capacity of 240 MW and a 188-metre high dam, with a reservoir covering 5,349 hectares.

The environmental impact study for the dam acknowledges that subsistence-level farming and small-scale livestock production will be replaced by fishing activities in the reservoir.

The Marismas Nacionales Biosphere Reserve, the most extensive mangrove forest system along Mexico’s Pacific coast, is the year-round habitat for 20,000 water birds and is a winter home to more than 100,000 migratory birds.

The reserve is recognised as a Wetlands of International Importance under the Ramsar Convention.

In the Marismas – which means marsh – Reserve more than 300 species of animals have been reported, 60 of which are endangered or threatened, especially due to overuse and destruction of habitat, and 51 of which are endemic, according to the Ramsar Convention, in effect since 1975.

Fishing activity that depends on the wetland ecosystem generates between 6.5 and 13.5 million dollars a year for local communities, according to official figures.

Furthermore, the dam would destroy 14 sacred sites and ceremonial centres of the
Náyeri or Cora, Wixárica or Huichol, Tepehuano and Mexicanero indigenous communities.

Protection of biodiversity and the distribution of benefits are the core focuses of the Nagoya Protocol on Access to Genetic Resources and the Fair and Equitable Sharing of Benefits Arising from their Utilisation, signed in Nagoya, Japan in 2010.

The protocol, which complements the Convention on Biological Diversity, in force since 1993, stipulates that every signatory must adopt measures to ensure access to traditional knowledge associated with genetic resources and held by indigenous and local communities.

The protocol establishes that such knowledge must be “accessed in accordance with prior informed consent” and under “mutually agreed terms”.

“Parties shall in accordance with domestic law take into consideration indigenous and local communities’ customary laws, community protocols and procedures, as applicable, with respect to traditional knowledge associated with genetic resources,” the protocol adds.

Pedro Álvarez-Icaza, general coordinator of Biological Corridors and Resources in the government’s National Commission for the Knowledge and Use of Biodiversity (CONABIO), described the difficulties in complying with these stipulations.

“The big problem is how the benefits are to be distributed,” he told IPS. “Who do they go to – the community? The person providing the information? A group of people? I’m also worried about false expectations – about the idea that a plant could give rise to a medicine, and people spend 10 years waiting for that to happen.”

The government official also said “the legal framework is not necessarily the most up-to-date. The key is to strengthen the capacity of local and indigenous communities and raise their awareness of their right to the fair distribution of benefits.

“The important thing is information, so that if a country wants to patent a resource, it has to demonstrate that the information was obtained through a benefit-sharing agreement, with prior, informed consent,” he said.

With financing from Germany’s technical cooperation agency, GTZ, CONABIO is carrying out the project “Governance on Biodiversity: Fair and Equitable Benefit-Sharing Arising from the Use and Management of Biological Diversity”, to establish a group of pilot cases to serve as reference points.

The initiative, which has a budget of six million euros (8.2 million dollars), is to run though 2018.

“As long as the autonomy of indigenous peoples is not recognised and traditional knowledge is not valued, it is a mere expression of good intentions. There will be no fair and equitable distribution of benefits,” independent consultant Patricia Arendar told IPS.

Mexico is one of the 12 most biologically diverse countries in the world. The country has identified 2,692 species of fish, 361 amphibians, 804 reptiles, 1,096 birds, 535 mammals and over 25,000 plants, according to CONABIO statistics.

The Commission also indicates that there are 127 officially extinct species, 475 endangered, 896 threatened and 1,185 species subject to special protection in Mexico.

The Sectoral Programme of Environment and Natural Resources 2013-2018 indicates that natural ecosystems have been lost in nearly 29 percent of Mexican territory while the ecosystems in the remaining 71 percent are surviving with different levels of conservation.

Natural capital is one of the issues on the agenda of the Jun. 6-8 Second World Summit of Legislators of GLOBE International (the Global Legislators Organisation) in Mexico City, which will draw nearly 500 parliamentarians from more than 80 nations.

With financing from the Global Environment Facility (GEF), Mexico’s environment ministry is leading the analysis of options for adapting the country’s legal framework to the Nagoya Protocol. The alternatives are modifying the law on wildlife, passed in 2000, or creating a specific new law.

So far, 92 countries have signed the Nagoya Protocol. But only 36 of the 50 needed for it to enter into force have ratified it. The only Latin American countries to have done so are Honduras, Mexico and Panama.

“Without a state policy for the protection of biodiversity, it is very difficult to develop strategies around the Nagoya Protocol, for example,” Arendar said. “It’s not a priority in today’s politics. There are more natural land and marine areas, and greater knowledge about biodiversity, but we’re still losing biodiversity.”

“The dam shouldn’t be built,” argued Orozco. “It is unacceptable from any point of view; the few benefits don’t justify the terrible permanent impacts. We demand that Mexico live up to international environment and human rights treaties, but experience from other cases indicates to us that this doesn’t always happen.”

The El Bosque children’s theatre group singing a song about protecting the wetlands, for which Cuba is seeking World Heritage Site status. Credit: Jorge Luis Baños/IPS

By Ivet González
CIÉNAGA DE ZAPATA, Cuba , Nov 28 2013 (IPS)

The 18 communities in Cuba’s Ciénaga de Zapata, the largest wetlands in the Caribbean, have long survived on the abundant local hunting and fishing and by producing charcoal. But that is no longer possible, due to climate change.

Years ago it was inconceivable that the people living in the Zapata Swamp, a UNESCO-recognised biosphere reserve in western Cuba, would one day stop using the forest here to make charcoal, extract precious wood, or hunt crocodile and deer.

“We used to pillage the flora and fauna,” said one local resident, Mario Roque, who lives on the small secluded bay of Batey Caletón, 200 km southeast of Havana. “I even poached as a fisherman. But I learned how to make a better living while causing less damage to nature,” he told IPS.

Enterprising residents of the wetlands like Roque have been spontaneously exploring green-friendly ecotourism initiatives, small animal production and small gardens, none of which were common in this area, where people have always been hunters, gatherers and fishers.

Roque, or “Mayito”, as he is known to everyone, started renting out four rooms in his house to tourists after Cuba’s communist government expanded the scope of private initiative in 2010.

Like him, many local residents in Playa Girón, Playa Larga, Caletón and other coastal communities in the wetlands have hung up “Rooms for rent” signs on the front of their homes.

Just 9,300 people live in the 4,322-sq-km Ciénaga de Zapata, the most sparsely populated municipality in this country of 11.2 million people.

The area’s wealth lies in its vast forests, swamps that cover 1,670 sq km, and more than 165 migratory and autochthonous species, like the Cuban crocodile (Crocodylus rhombifer).

In 2000, UNESCO – the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organisation – declared the wetlands, which occupy the entire Zapata peninsula and surrounding areas, a biosphere reserve. A year later, the Ramsar Convention included it on its list of wetlands of international importance.

“The tourists who come here are nature lovers, and they feel happy when they see we love nature too,” said Roque, who serves his guests lionfish (Pterois antennata), an exotic invasive species that is damaging the peninsula’s marine ecosystem.

“Every day I have to dive deeper to find a lionfish,” he said proudly.

He feeds his guests eggs and rabbit meat from his own small livestock, as well as herbs, spices and vegetables that he grows in his ecological garden. On the rooftop terrace he has a solar water heater made out of recycled plastic bottles and cans. “I’ve been saving 500 pesos [20 dollars] a month since I installed it,” he said.

Almost without realising it, Roque has adopted adaptation measures to global warming, a phenomenon that could raise the water level in the sea here 85 cm by 2050, which would affect between 60 and 80 percent of the swamp, said geographer Ángel Alfonso.

The wetlands cover 9.3 percent of Cuba’s land surface, and are extremely vulnerable and at the same time crucial for mitigating the predicted rise in temperature, intrusion by the sea and increase in extreme weather events, he explained to IPS.

“They protect life inland,” he stressed, because they filter and purify contaminated water while serving as coastal barriers against high tides, hurricanes and the salinisation of fresh water. A full 25 percent of the net productivity of Cuba’s ecosystems and more than 40 percent of its environmental services depend on the wetlands.

The Ciénaga de Zapata, in the province of Matanzas, has weak points when it comes to weathering future threats, even though it is the best-preserved wetlands system in the Caribbean islands, Alfonso said.

Its surface and underwater water have been salinised, the swamp system has been fragmented, and there are imbalances in its ecological functioning, he said.

Nor have the felling of trees and poaching of protected or endangered species like the Cuban crocodile been completely eliminated, just as there are still illegal charcoal kilns that use wood from off-limits species such as mangroves.

“When you take a boat along the coast, you see crocodile hunters and charcoal ovens in the forest,” a biologist who spoke on condition of anonymity told IPS.

Leyaní Caballero with the science, technology and environment ministry’s delegation in the swamp said “there are laws and regulations that protect these resources, but they are not always enforced. Some people violate them out of ignorance or because it is the only way they know how to meet their needs.

“A management mechanism should be created so that people living in the reserve benefit from the forest, without being driven by the profit motive,” she said. “Nor is there an integral sustainable development plan, in line with the country’s general strategies.”

That and other problems were raised in the workshops organised by the project “Transformation for local development in small community groups in the Ciénaga de Zapata”, dedicated to training local leaders – 20 last year and 27 this year – most of whom were already running nature-friendly enterprises.

“We try to guide people a little towards a better kind of development,” one of the local leaders, Antonio Gutiérrez, told IPS. He combines his carpentry work with raising birds like cockatoos.

Gutiérrez is taking part in the project to get more people involved in his economic activity, “which creates awareness about taking care of birds.”

Once a month the project holds meetings with local craftspersons, people who raise livestock for family consumption, ecotourism promoters, and farmers who use agroecological techniques or grow ornamental plants, who have all come together with the hope of improving their own lives and those of their communities.

Together they assess the problems and learn about issues like leadership and marketing, to seek solutions.

“We don’t have to wait for all the food to be brought in from other parts of the country,” said Aliuska Labrada, a homemaker who rounds out her family’s diet with cassava, squash, guava, mango and other food grown in the rocky, saline soil of her garden, in Cayo Ramona (Ramona Key).

One of the most significant results of the project so far has been helping to create the first agricultural cooperative in the municipality, Caballero stressed. It joined the ranks of the 5,688 cooperatives operating in Cuba today.

The initiative was supported by the government’s local environmental delegation, with support from the Fundación Nicolás Guillén and the Swiss NGO Zunzún.

To strengthen the protection of the wetlands, the Cuban government made a submission to UNESCO in 2003 for the Ciénaga de Zapata to be declared a World Heritage Site.

There are an estimated 80 breeding pairs of wattled cranes remaining in South Africa, and the total population is less than 260. Credit: Ian White/CC By 2.0

By Brendon Bosworth
KWAZULU-NATAL MIDLANDS, South Africa, Aug 5 2013 (IPS)

On a winter’s afternoon in late July, potato farmer John Campbell and the Endangered Wildlife Trust’s Tanya Smith surveyed the Umgeni Vlei Nature Reserve from a hilltop on Ivanhoe Farm in the KwaZulu-Natal Midlands.

Separated from Smith’s binoculars by a swathe of golden brown grass, the water pooled in the wetland basin that sources the Umgeni River glistens in the mild sunshine as it winds its way for 265 km to meet the ocean at Durban’s coastline.

“We’ve got two pairs [of wattled cranes] nesting in here at the moment,” Smith, a senior field officer with the African Crane Conservation Programme told IPS. A week earlier she had flown over the wetland for an annual aerial survey of the critically endangered birds. The birds can grow taller than five feet and are characterised by a bumpy red patch of skin between their beaks and eyes.

There are an estimated 80 breeding pairs of wattled cranes remaining in South Africa. The total South African population is less than 260.

To maintain Umgeni Vlei’s biodiversity and protect the regal cranes’ habitat, the South African government declared the reserve a Ramsar Site in April this year, giving it special protection as a “wetland of international importance” under the Ramsar Convention, an international treaty on the protection of wetlands.

“On the Ramsar-designated wetland we’ve had up to seven breeding pairs of wattled cranes, but the number fluctuates every year,” said Smith. “If you include [the surrounding] wetlands we’ve had up to 13 breeding pairs – it’s a huge proportion of the country’s breeding population.”

Wetlands on the land owned by Ivanhoe Farming Company, of which Campbell is a director, serve as home to up to six breeding pairs of wattled cranes. To help conserve them, Campbell has designated 800 hectares of farmland which buttress the reserve.

This is a protected area with nature reserve status through the KwaZulu-Natal Biodiversity Stewardship Programme run by provincial government body Ezemvelo KwaZulu-Natal Wildlife.

“I think cranes and agriculture can co-exist,” Campbell told IPS. “Most farmers, I find, are conservation-minded.”

Wetland preservation key for wattled crane survival

South Africa’s population of wattled cranes dwindled through the 1980s, largely due to deaths related to flying into power lines, as well as intentional and unintentional poisoning, Smith said. Population numbers bottomed out in the early 2000s and have gradually increased since, thanks to conservation efforts and increased tagging of power lines, she said.

Tanya Smith, of the Endangered Wildlife Trust, looks for wattled cranes at the Ivanhoe Farm in KwaZulu-Natal, South Africa, while Ivanhoe Farming Company director John Campbell surveys the surrounds. Credit: Brendon Bosworth/IPS

The KwaZulu-Natal province is at the heart of wattled crane activity and is home to about 90 percent of the country’s population. Many of these cranes reside in the Umgeni iver’s upper catchment area.

“If we lose the birds in these territories then we won’t have a viable population in the country,” said Smith.

Since wetlands are the most threatened of all South Africa’s ecosystems, according to South Africa’s 2011 National Biodiversity Assessment, the cranes’ survival is closely tied to wetland conservation. At the same time, the birds serve as an “indicator species” – their presence signals good wetland health.

“If you have wattled cranes [on wetlands], you know you have good water quality and the biodiversity is in good stead,” Ann Burke, conservation projects manager at the KwaZulu-Natal Crane Foundation told IPS.

Stewardship protects wetlands and birds

While the Umgeni Vlei Nature Reserve’s designation as a Ramsar site offers protection to wattled cranes, it is only a small sliver of land of 958 hectares. Campbell is helping protect the birds, and ensure they have areas where they can breed unhindered. He has designated an 800-hectare segment of his farmland as reserve, and has agreed to manage it as such.

The reserve status granted to the designated land at Ivanhoe will be written into the title deeds of the farm. The protected land remains privately owned, and does not become government land, but the reserve status is binding if it is sold to new owners.

Such stewardship agreements offer longstanding protection against development and farming practices that could put fertiliser run-off into the wetland system, the World-Wide Fund for Nature’s (WWF) Susan Viljoen, who is facilitating negotiations between landowners and the government for the biodiversity stewardship agreements told IPS.

“It’s a far stronger guarantee that your land, and those farms, will be managed in a way that is compatible for the birds and for their breeding,” said Viljoen. “The main thing is that you’ve got this permanently open relationship and communication between conservation groupings and the landowner.”

Another landowner in the region has signed a similar stewardship agreement for 635 hectares of land, while the WWF is negotiating with six other landowners to protect portions of their lands, which total 7,569 hectares, said Viljoen.

“To someone who doesn’t really understand the detail of this process it almost might sound like that’s not very many,” she said. “But what I’ve learned through facilitating this process myself is stewardship is long and it’s slow, but the thing is – once it’s in place it’s forever.”

Two wetland areas on the Ivanhoe Farm that were drained and converted to pastures for cattle grazing decades ago will also be rehabilitated through the government’s Working for Wetlands programme. Although it could take up to 10 years for the wetlands to return to a state where they can support wattled cranes, Campbell hopes to see birds inhabiting them in future.

“We can see what we’ve done wrong in the past,” said Campbell. “And this is a chance to correct it.”

Excerpt:

A man hauls water at the Chico Mendes landless peasant camp in Pernambuco, Brazil. Credit: Alejandro Arigón/IPS

By Stephen Leahy
UXBRIDGE, Canada, May 21 2013 (IPS)

Everyone knows water is life. Far too few understand the role of trees, plants and other living things in ensuring we have clean, fresh water.

This dangerous ignorance results in destruction of wetlands that once cleaned water and prevented destructive and costly flooding, scientists and activists warn."We have accelerated major processes like erosion, applied massive quantities of nitrogen that leaks from soil to ground and surface waters and, sometimes, literally siphoned all water from rivers." -- GWSP's Anik Bhaduri

Around the world, politicians and others in power have made and continue to make decisions based on short-term economic interests without considering the long-term impact on the natural environment, said Anik Bhaduri, executive officer of the Global Water System Project (GWSP), a research institute based in Bonn, Germany.

“Humans are changing the character of the world water system in significant ways with inadequate knowledge of the system and the consequences of changes being imposed,” Bhaduri told IPS.

The list of human impacts on the world’s water – of which only 0.03percent is available as freshwater – is long and the scale of those impacts daunting.

“We have accelerated major processes like erosion, applied massive quantities of nitrogen that leaks from soil to ground and surface waters and, sometimes, literally siphoned all water from rivers, emptying them for human uses before they reach the ocean,” Bhaduri said.

On average, humanity has built one large dam every day for the last 130 years, which distorts the natural river flows to which ecosystems and aquatic life adapted over millennia. Two-thirds of major river deltas are sinking due to pumping out groundwater, oil and gas. Some deltas are falling at a rate four times faster than global sea level is rising.

More than 65 percent of the world’s rivers are in trouble, according to one study published in Nature in 2010. Those findings were very “conservative” since there was not enough data to assess impacts of climate change, pharmaceutical compounds, mining wastes and water transfers, Charles Vörösmarty of the City University of New York previously told IPS.

Recently, China’s First National Census of Water discovered they’d lost more than 28,000 rivers compared to just 20 years ago. Most experts blame the loss on massive overuse and engineering projects to shift water from one region to another.

“We treat symptoms of environmental abuse rather than underlying causes…by throwing concrete, pipes, pumps, and chemicals at our water problems, to the tune of a half-trillion dollars a year,” said Vörösmarty, who is also co-chair and a founding member of the GWSP.

As these problems continue to mount, the public is largely unaware of this reality or its growing costs, he said in a release.

Protecting and investing in natural infrastructure is far cheaper than concrete and pipes, representing the smarter solution to water security. This approach also benefits tourism, recreation and cultural benefits, improved resilience and biodiversity conservation.

World experts are meeting in Bonn, Germany this week to consolidate this understanding and offer policy makers solutions to prevent ongoing damage to the global water system.

The Water in the Anthropocene conference will also make recommendations on how decision makers can adapt to the multiple challenges of growing water use, declining ecosystems and climate change.

The public and policy makers are not aware of these huge water challenges, said water expert Janos Bogardi, senior advisor to GWSP. Education aside, there is an overwhelming need to have well-defined global water quantity and quality standards that meet the needs of people, agriculture and healthy ecosystems.

The upcoming U.N. Sustainable Development Goals are expected to include “water security”, which is huge step forward, Bogardi told IPS.

“Defining these interrelated needs is huge challenge for scientists and politicians alike,” he said.

Reasonable daily water use to meet sanitary needs and drinking is 40 to 80 litres, but U.S. per capita daily use is over 300 litres, while Germany is 120 litres. In urban Hungary, where water is relatively expensive, consumption is 80 litres/day.

But how much water does nature need?

GWSP scientists’ best guess at this point is that taking 30 percent to 40 percent of a renewable freshwater resource constitutes “extreme” water stress which could tip an ecosystem into collapse. This can be mitigated if water is returned and recycled in good quality. Mining fossil groundwater resources is by definition non-sustainable.

“We have to be careful that the water security goal is truly sustainable for ecosystems,” Bogardi said.

It is not clear that the Sustainable Development Goal on water will “simultaneously optimise water security for humans as well as for nature”, said Vörösmarty.

“The water sciences community stands ready to take on this challenge. Are the decision makers?” he asked.

The spoon-billed sandpiper (Eurynorhynchus pygmeus), seen here in Phetchaburi, Thailand, could be extinct within a decade. Credit: J.J. Harrison/cc by 3.0

By Silvia Romanelli
UNITED NATIONS, May 17 2013 (IPS)

Migratory birds, which play an important role in the complex web of life known as ecosystem services, are under threat as never before, with some species facing extinction within the next decade.

Ahead of the International Day for Biological Diversity on May 22, focused this year on water resources, experts are calling for greater international cooperation to find sustainable and cost-effective solutions to the problem of species loss and environmental degradation."Half of the world’s wetlands - natural water storage systems - have been lost over the past century." -- Nick Nuttall of UNEP

“Both water management boundaries and ecosystems rarely conveniently align with geopolitical boundaries,” notes the report Natural Solutions for Water Security, published by the Convention on Biological Diversity (CBD).

According to Francisco Rilla, information and capacity building officer at the Convention on Migratory Species (CMS), an intergovernmental treaty signed in 1979 in Bonn, Germany, “The ‘Big Five’ primary causes of biodiversity loss … are habitat destruction, overharvesting and poaching, pollution, climate change and introduction of invasive species.”

Migratory species are especially vulnerable “as they depend entirely on a network of well-functioning ecosystems to refuel, reproduce and survive in every ‘station’ they visit and upon unrestricted travel,” Rilla told IPS.

The U.N. Environment Programme (UNEP) notes that many migrating birds, such as cranes, storks, shorebirds and eagles, travel thousands of kilometres across flyways that span countries, continents and even the entire globe.

These birds use wetlands to rest, feed and breed along their migration routes.

However, “half of the world’s wetlands – natural water storage systems – have been lost over the past century,” Nick Nuttall, UNEP spokesperson, told IPS.

Because of the degradation of their habitats, some migratory bird species could lose up to nine percent of their populations, while others, like the spoon-billed sandpiper, could become extinct within a decade, leading to further ecosystem changes and ultimately impacting on human development.

Putting a price on biodiversity loss

In a statement ahead of World Migratory Bird Day on May 11-12, UNEP executive director Achim Steiner underlined that migratory birds “are part of the web of life that underpins nature’s multi-trillion-dollar ecosystem services,” which are the benefits and resources that nature offers to humankind. 

“[Migratory birds’] contribution to ecosystem services is increasingly starting to be measured in monetary terms,” Rilla told IPS.

In March 2007, at the request of the Group of Eight largest economies along with several developing countries, UNEP started an initiative called ‘The Economics of Ecosystems and Biodiversity’ (TEEB), aiming at studying the economic benefits of biodiversity and incorporating them into policy-making.

As an example of TEEB’s implementation, Nuttall explained how UNEP assisted Kenya in 2012 to calculate the economic value of the ecosystem services generated by the Mau forest northwest of the capital Nairobi.

The overall value was assessed at 1.5 billion dollars a year, a consideration that led to the restoration of the forest, as well as of other ecosystems supplying water to Kenyan cities.

The advantages of using natural infrastructure like forests and wetlands instead of human-built infrastructure, such as dams, pipelines, water treatment plants and drainage systems, are highlighted in CBD’s report.

For example, strengthened coastal ecosystems can function as buffer zones that protect coastal communities from storms; rehabilitating soil biodiversity and functions can enhance water availability to crops and hence improve food security; restoring forests can reduce erosion risks and help deliver better quality water.

This approach, known as “Ecosystem-based Adaptation” (EbA), which integrates biodiversity and ecosystem services in climate change adaptation strategies – though cheaper and more sustainable than building new artificial infrastructure – is still under-utilised, says the report.

Agricultural activities, which alone account for approximately 70 percent of global water use, could apply a similar approach.

“More sustainable forms of farming can … address water issues while enhancing biodiversity,” Nuttall told IPS. “A survey of thousands of small scale farmers in Africa by UNEP and the U.N. Conference on Trade and Development found that those who had switched to organic or near organic production had seen yields on average climb by 100 percent, in part because returning organic matter to the soils had increased water retention of the soil – like a sponge – and prolonged the growing season.”

Governance matters

“We live in an increasingly water-insecure world,” stresses the CBD report.

Although there is no global water scarcity as such, there is an imbalance in its regional distribution, with only 12 percent of the world’s population consuming 85 percent of the available water.

Sound governance and equity in the distribution of water-derived benefits seem therefore important questions in the debate.

Asked by IPS about sustainable water management strategies in South Asia, one of the most water-scarce regions of the world, Michael Kugelman, senior programme associate for South and Southeast Asia at the Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars, cited resource mismanagement as a root cause of problems.

He stressed the lack of interregional cooperation in the area, as well as of understanding of the connections between ecosystem protection and water resources.

“I think that at a government level that linkage is not made at all,” he said, “There are a lot of environmental NGOs that are bringing attention to these issues. … In some ways governments will take the lead from the NGO community.”

Water cooperation in South Asia is limited to some bilateral initiatives, such as the Indus Water Treaty between India and Pakistan.

At a global level, the main mechanisms dealing with biodiversity and water management are the Ramsar Convention on Wetlands (signed in 1971 in Ramsar, Iran) and the above-mentioned CBD, which was created at the 1992 Earth Summit in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil, and in 2010 adopted its Strategic Plan for Biodiversity for the period 2011-2020.

The United Nations declared 2013 the International Year of Water Cooperation.

Deforestation threatens the natural beauty of Punta de Manabique. Credit: Courtesy of Daniel Ariano/Consejo Nacional de Áreas Protegidas

By Danilo Valladares
GUATEMALA CITY, Dec 17 2012 (IPS)

“Many tourists come to this area for bird watching, but the terrible deforestation is leading to the disappearance of so much of our flora and fauna. The cleared land is used for cattle ranching,” said Haroldo Figueroa, who works as a guide in nature reserves along Guatemala’s Caribbean coast.

The statistics bear him out. The province of Izabal along Guatemala’s northeast Caribbean coast is one of the areas with the highest deforestation rates in the country, according to two government studies on forests, covering the 1991-2001 and 2006-2010 periods.

Forests in that province shrank from 373,000 hectares in the 1991-1993 period to just over 264,000 hectares in 2010, according to the two studies carried out by the National Institute of Forests and the National Council on Protected Areas, with the support of two private universities: Valle de Guatemala and the Jesuit-run Rafael Landívar.

“Deforestation is caused by people or landowners who don’t take into account the consequences that it has on global warming, fishing and tourism,” Figueroa told IPS. “And whoever has money can do whatever they want here.”

There are 12 nature reserves in Guatemala’s Caribbean coastal region, which local communities depend on for their survival because of the water, firewood, fish, wild fruits and nuts, and opportunities for tourism business activities provided by the jungle areas.

One of the protected areas is Punta de Manabique, declared a wildlife refuge by Congress in 2005. It is home to innumerable species of coral, fish, crustaceans, shellfish, birds, and mammals.

The 43-km Dulce River runs through the 151,878-hectare refuge, which is one of the most important coastal marine wetland systems in Central America.

Since 1955, the Dulce River National Park has been a sanctuary for species like the manatee – a large aquatic herbivorous marine mammal also known as the sea cow. The Chocón Machacas Protected Biotope was created within the park to protect one of the last remaining habitats of the endangered Caribbean manatee (Trichechus manatus).

The 47,500-hectare Cerro San Gil Protected Spring Reserve, whose 19 rivers supply more than 50,000 people in surrounding communities with water, is also found in the province of Izabal.

But deforestation is a major problem in the province, and is hurting the livelihoods of local communities.

According to the most recent data, from the 2011 National Survey on Living Conditions, 54 percent of Guatemala’s 15 million people are poor, and 13 percent are extremely poor, mainly in rural indigenous areas.

“The loss of these resources is irreparable for the country in terms of production, because these forests offer environmental goods and services, such as water, that are vital to the population,” activist Walter Chávez with the Foundation for Ecodevelopment and Conservation, a local NGO, told IPS.

The widespread, uncontrolled felling of trees also aggravates the threat to local populations posed by extreme weather events.

“The forest provides protection for the riverbanks in the face of catastrophic climate events,” he said. “Our country is at high risk of the effects of climate change, and the deforestation is increasing our vulnerability and destroying one of our most important barriers.”

Chávez said the deforestation affecting Izabal and threatening the province’s nature reserves was caused mainly by cattle ranching and “the profits it represents.”

“People think a forested area has no real value. That is sheer ignorance, but it is one of the idiosyncracies of the people who live in the area,” the environmentalist said.

He said there were mechanisms for protecting forests, such as the government’s Forest Incentives Programme, which fosters reforestation by means of economic compensation. But he pointed out that the programme “is voluntary.”

Chávez said the state presence in the protected areas “is very limited, and there is no specific prosecutor’s office to follow up on reports of destruction of our forests.”

Meanwhile, the agricultural frontier continues to expand.

“The only thing you see back there are cattle ranches,” the owner of a small local hotel, Carlos Bartolomé, told IPS. “I have no idea if there are any controls, or how things are managed. I suppose they cut down trees to plant pasture for their livestock.”

“Deforestation causes many problems like landslides and migration of birds,” he added, stressing that “it is nature that draws tourists to this place.”

Punta de Manabique, declared a wetland of international importance by the Ramsar Convention on Wetlands, is one of the places facing the most severe threats from deforestation.

Gerónimo Pérez, an agronomist at the Rafael Landívar University’s Institute of Agriculture, Natural Resources and Environment, told IPS that “This area offers protection for coral reefs in the Caribbean, is home to innumerable species of animals and plants, and provides environmental services, like water for local communities.”

But it is being destroyed. “Even though it is protected, deforestation is advancing quickly throughout Punta de Manabique because of the expansion of cattle farms,” he said.

Guatemala’s law on national protected areas states that the conservation and management of wildlife is “fundamental for achieving sustained social and economic development in the country.”

It also orders the protection of these areas by demarcating them, creating categories of management, and establishing controls over the exploitation of resources within their boundaries. But enforcing the law has proved difficult.