The Great Green Wall

Desertification, land degradation, drought, climate change, food insecurity, poverty, loss of biodiversity, forced migration, and conflicts, are some of the key challenges facing Africa. The drylands of North Africa, Sahel and Horn of Africa extend over 1.6 billion hectares home to about 500 million people, i.e. slightly less than half of the entire population of the continent. Such rapidly deteriorating situation, exacerbated by climate change, has mobilised more than 20 African countries, NGOs, research institutes and grassroots organisations, to build together The Great Green Wall for the Sahara and the Sahel Initiative (GGWSSI). What is this Wall?

It is not a line or a wall of trees across the desert. The “Wall” is a metaphor to express a mosaic of sustainable land management and restoration interventions. It is a call for the sustainable management of natural resources, including soils, water, forests, rangelands; promotion of sustainable rural production systems in agriculture, pastoralism, and forestry, as well as sustainable production, processing and marketing of agricultural products and forest goods and services. The plan promotes:

• Long-term solutions to the pressing challenges of desertification, land degradation, drought and climate change,

• Integrated interventions tackling the multiple challenges affecting the lives of millions of people in the Sahel and Sahara, including restoration of production systems, development of rural production and sustainable development hubs,

• And an urgent call to development actors and policy makers to invest more on long-term solutions for the sustainable development of drylands in the Sahel and Sahara.

On November 16, FAO presented to the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change in Marrakech, Morocco a groundbreaking map of restoration opportunities along Africa’s Great Green Wall. at the UN climate change conference. Announcing that there are 10 million hectares a year in need of restoration along the Great Green Wall, it informs that restoration needs along Africa’s drylands have been mapped and quantified for the first time.

Uganda's ecological problem

Poverty and hunger will continue in Uganda unless the current rate of natural resources depletion is tamed. Agriculture is under attack from long dry spells, high temperatures and soil infertility, which experts attribute to deforestation and wetland degradation, among others.

Ms Almaz Gebru, the UN coordinator who also doubles as the United Nations Development Programme Uganda Country Director, said weather patterns are changing for the worse and there is no way millions of Ugandans trapped in poverty and hunger will be alleviated if natural resources continue to be depleted.

"Poverty and hunger will persist when we do not use our natural resources, including forests, in a sustainable manner," Ms Gebru said in a speech 

64 per cent of Ugandans derive their incomes and food from agriculture.

Protecting oil business not nature

The British government has offered support to a multi-billion pound plan to drill for oil in one of Africa’s oldest national parks. The UN has cautioned against drilling for oil in national parks due to the potential damage to ecosystems and the well-being of people living nearby.

The project, involving British company Tullow Oil; French firm Total and Chinese oil company CNOOC, could see dozens of wells drilled in Murchison Falls national park in Uganda. Tullow, together with its partners, would be investing $8 billion and drilling 500 wells in the three blocks, over the next 25 years. The park is home to one of the last remaining populations of the world’s most endangered species of giraffe, leading to warnings by experts that if the park is damaged the species could be at risk. Damage to the park has already occurred. The most intensive development lies within Exploration Area 1 (EA1), operated on behalf of the group by Total. Seventy percent of EA1 overlaps with the national park, including savannah habitat used by the endangered Rothschild’s giraffe, lions and elephants.

Small scale but irreparable damage has already occurred to the park as a result of a geological survey. An ecological compliance study found 283 instances of damage, 159 of which were found to be “non-restorable”. This included oil leakage; damage to trees and riverbanks and the destruction of termite mounds.

British trade officials have classed Tullow’s operations in the park as an “opportunity” worth over £1bn to UK businesses and have been keen to offer the firm financial backing. The government has held talks with Tullow about providing UK taxpayer-backed loans and insurance for its operations in the country.

Uganda is not the only example of British firms wishing to drill in national parks and other protected areas. British companies hold the rights to explore for oil in national parks and protected areas all over sub-Saharan Africa. Six British companies hold exploration licences covering at least 29 protected sites in eight countries.

This trend is at odds with the position of international institutions.

 A UN Environment spokesperson warned that: “Highly protected areas are protected because of their ecological value or vulnerability. In common with all industrial activity, mineral activity in such areas has the potential to impact this value adversely and/or enhance vulnerability with serious consequences to both biodiversity and human well-being.”

The International Union for Conservation of Nature (IUCN has a strict “no-go” policy regarding mining activities in protected areas. Kathy MacKinnon, Chair of IUCN’s World Commission on Protected Areas said the organisation: “encourages responsible companies not to seek exploration and production concessions within protected areas.”

Irene Ssekyana of Kampala-based NGO Greenwatch Uganda, stated, “It is a very sensitive ecosystem. We’re talking about a globally important area of biodiversity that supports a vibrant tourism industry. The government says they are going to minimise the footprint of the activities, but it’s not very convincing… as long as issues of corruption and governance are not dealt with, I do not think that the ordinary Ugandan will benefit…”

Tullow has refused to rule out drilling in protected areas, although it said it does have a policy against drilling in world heritage sites. The firm holds oil licence blocks overlapping 15 protected areas in Africa, said: “We don’t rule out drilling in protected areas full stop.” According to Tullow 40% of Uganda’s oil lies beneath Murchison Falls national park.

Protect Africa's Forests

Africa's tropical forests are threatened by a palm oil bonanza that has already razed millions of old-growth hectares in Southeast Asia, Greenpeace France warned.  The NGO called on European palm and rubber plantation giant Socfin, which controls vast tracts of tropical land in more than half-a-dozen African nations, to join other multinationals in adopted so-called "zero deforestation" policies. So far, Socfin—majority controlled by Belgian businessman Hubert Fabri, with French billionaire Vincent Bollore holding 38.8 percent of the company's shares—have failed to make a commitment.

 The core provision of a zero deforestation policy is to identify and protect so-called "high carbon stock" areas. These are forest regions that store huge quantities of carbon dioxide in living wood mass. Once it is cut down and burned, CO2 is released into the atmosphere, contributing to climate change. Another key provision is the protection of peatlands which—when drained to make way for a plantation—also spew CO2 into the air. Zero deforestation likewise includes guarantees that local populations are fairly compensated for lost land, and not otherwise adversely affected.

Palm oil, soy, paper pulp, and beef drive nearly three-quarters of deforestation in tropical areas, according to studies. Deforestation from all sources is responsible for 12 percent of the greenhouse gases driving global warming. Clear-cutting and burning to make way for palm oil plantations causes health-wrecking air pollution, exacerbates climate change, and destroys some of the planet's richest "hotspots" for biodiversity. The transformation of great swathes of rainforest to monoculture farming is also a mixed blessing for local populations, providing a source of low-wage employment but often displacing indigenous peoples and disrupting established livelihoods.

Currently, only a small percentage of palm oil comes from Africa, but Socfin operates numerous plantations there with others in the pipeline. "Africa has become the new frontier for palm oil, the new battleground of oil palm and rubber tree companies," the Greenpeace report said.

The company has sought a 150 million euro ($165 million) loan via the International Finance Corporation (IFC), an entity of the World Bank, to finance certification under environmental norms upheld by the IFC. But Socfin does not meet even these modest standards—described by Greenpeace as "insufficient to prevent deforestation"—according to the IFC, which signalled "major gaps" between the palm and rubber giant's operations and "good international industry practice." Greenpeace said "The IFC must urgently suspend the ongoing corporate loan procedure and condition the granting of this loan on the company's publication of a credible zero deforestation commitment."

Socfin currently has 50,000 hectares (124,000 acres) in rubber plantations, and 80,000 hectares (198,000 acres) in palm oil trees in Africa. The forests in the Congo basin cover some 200 million hectares (500 million acres) across six countries, and are home to more than 500 species of mammals, 400 reptiles and thousands of plants. Between 1990 and 2010, at least 3.5 million hectares of natural forests were converted into palm oil plantations, mainly in Southeast Asia.

 http://phys.org/news/2016-02-africa-forests-menaced-palm-oil.html

Heritage or Profit?

Mining, oil and gas exploration poses a threat to 61% of Africa's Unesco-approved Natural World Heritage Sites.

"We are going to the ends of the earth in pursuit of more resources," said David Nussbaum, chief executive of WWF in Britain, adding that minerals, oil and gas "are becoming more difficult and more expensive to extract."

World Wildlife Fund's findings flagged Tanzania's 50,000km2 Selous game reserve, a World Heritage Site since 1982 that "covers an area larger than Denmark and is one of the few remaining examples in Africa of a relatively uninhabited and undisturbed natural area." But legislation passed in 2009 allowed licensing of mineral extraction inside Tanzania's game reserves. Since then, five active mines, more than 50 mining concessions and six oil and gas concessions have sprung up that "could potentially impact the Selous game reserve," according to the report. "The reserve was added to the World Heritage danger list in 2014 in part due to concerns regarding extractive activities within the reserve," it said.

Poisoned African Air

West Africa’s air pollution is reaching dangerously high levels—and we don’t know the worst of it. Air pollution in fast-growing West African cities is reaching dangerous levels. But the worst part, according to a new study published by Nature magazine this week, is that we know almost nothing about the pollutants emerging from these new urban centers and their impact on weather systems, crops, and public health at large. There’s little monitoring of pollution, no emissions inventories, or statistical information on things like fuel consumption. Researchers say that they struggle to find funding to study the issue. While air pollution in India, China, and other emerging economies has become a major area of focus for scientists and policymakers, it has gained little traction in Africa where it’s a growing problem across the continent.

In Lagos, smog has quickly become another aspect of city life. In the city of more than 21 million people—known to some as “Africa’s first city”—the majority of residents live near industrial plants, breathing in exhaust from thousands of cars and millions of generators providing power to the city. As much as 94% of Nigeria’s population is exposed to levels of air pollution that exceed what the World Health Organization deems as safe. Gaborone in Botswana was the seventh-most polluted city in the world, according to WHO data in 2013. And pollution within homes, often from fuel stoves and diesel generators, is believed to have contributed to as many as 600,000 deaths in Africa in 2012, the highest deaths per capita from indoor pollution of any region in the world.

“Not only is pollution in these cities killing local residents, we found these emissions may even be altering the climate along the coast of West Africa, leading to changes in the clouds and so potentially to rainfall with devastating effects,” wrote the study’s co-author, Matthew Evans, a professor atmospheric chemistry at the University of York. Evans and the study’s lead author, Peter Knippertz, from the Karlsruhe Institute of Technology in Germany, worry that these pollutants will change the West African monsoon, a sensitive atmospheric circulation system that controls everything from wind and temperature to rainfall across huge swathes of the region. (Scientists have previously linked aerosols to changing rainfall patterns in Asia and the Atlantic Ocean.) Population growth in West Africa, expected to reach 800 million by 2050, will exacerbate these effects, they say. 

Renew Africa by Renewable Energy

Africa has huge renewable energy potential to cover the energy needs of the continent as it has six of the world’s sunniest countries on earth in its continent, the technology exists and the human resources are also in abundance but cannot tap it due to its cost. With the notable exception of South Africa, Morocco and a few others, progress in scaling up solar energy in Africa has been disappointingly slow.

The Norwegian Ambassador to Ghana, Hege Hertzberg said “Africa must exploit other sources of energy in order to drive its industrial expansion. Solar is the solution to so many challenges. The raw material is here, and it will last longer than oil and gas”.

According to IT power (1987), Government and ministries in Africa suffer from a shortage of qualified renewable energy personnel for example in Kenya, there is lack of general expertise in all aspects of wind pumps in the relevant ministries and NGO’s. In Zambia, only one engineer was responsible for coordinating all renewable energy activities of the government reported by Sampa and Sichone (1995).

Renewable energy can directly contribute to poverty alleviation by providing the energy needed for business and employment. It can also indirectly contribute to alleviating poverty by providing energy for cooking, space heating and lighting.

http://www.ghanaweb.com/GhanaHomePage/features/How-Africa-and-rich-countries-can-both-profit-from-renewable-energy-374600

Climate Change Means Changing

Sipian Lesan bends to attend to the Vangueria infausta or African medlar plant that he planted almost two years ago. Sipian tells IPS that some decades ago, before people he calls “greedy” started felling trees to satisfy the growing demand for indigenous forest products, his community used to feed on their readily available wild fruits during extreme hunger. 

Lekuru is a remote village located in the lower ranges of the Samburu Hills, an area dotted by Samburu homesteads commonly known as ‘manyattas’, some 358 km north of Kenya’s capital Nairobi. Here, the small villages are hot and arid, dominated by thorny acacia and patches of bare red earth that signify overgrazed land. Samburu County is one of the regions in Kenya ravaged by recurrent drought, with most of the population living below the poverty line. Climate change has made pastoralism an increasingly unsustainable livelihood option, leaving many households in Samburu without access to a daily meal, let alone a balanced diet.

“Animals have and will continue to die due to severe drought,” said Joshua Leparashau, a Samburu community leader. “The community still wants to hold on to the concept that having many livestock is a source of pride. This must change. If we as a community do not become proactive in curbing the menace, then we must be prepared for nature to destroy us without any mercy.”

Now, through a concept new to them – dubbed food or garden forest, and brought to Kenya by Israeli environmentalist Aviram Rozin, founder of Sadhana Forest, an organisation dedicated to ecological revival and sustainable living work – the locals here are adopting planting of trees and shrubs that are favourable to the harsh local weather in their manyattas. On a voluntary mission to help alleviate the degraded land and food insecurity in this part of northern Kenya, Rozin said that his vision would be to see at least each manyatta owning a food forest.

“The rate at which the community is embracing the concept is positive,” he said. “We hope that every manyatta will have a small food forest and that these will grow in concentric circles until they meet and touch each other and expand, creating a continuous food forest.”

According to Rozin, Sadhana Forest’s initiative to help the Samburu community plant the 18 species of indigenous fruit trees which are drought-resistant and rich in nutrients is also part of a major conservation effort in that the combination of “small-scale food security and conservation of indigenous trees will also create a linkage between people and trees and they will protect them. We produce the seedlings and then supply them to the locals at no charge for them to plant in their manyattas,” said Rozin. Then, with careful management of the land and water-harvesting structures (swales or ditches dug on contours), water is fed directly into the plants.

The quality of the soil on the swales is improved by planting nitrogen-fixing plants such as beans, while the soil is watered and covered with mulch to prevent evaporation, thus remaining fertile. One of the tree species being planted to create the food forests is Afzelia africana or African oak, the fruits of which are said to be rich in proteins and iron.  Its seed flour is used for baking. Another species is Moringa stenopetala, known locally as ‘mother’s helper’ because its fruit helps increase milk in lactating mothers and reduces malnutrition among infants.

“Residents here understand that their semi-nomadic life has to be slightly adjusted for survival,” noted George Obondo, coordinator of the NGO Coordination Board, who played a role in ensuring that Sadhana received 50,000 dollars from the U.N. Development Programme (UNDP) to jump start its Samburu project. “Things are changing,” said Obondo, “and Samburus know that their lifestyle needs to be altered and also tied to greater dependence on plant growing and not just livestock.” This is why the Sadhana Forest initiative is important, he added, because it is training people and giving them the knowledge and ability to create the resilience that they will need to avoid a harsh future.

South Africans Against Climate Change

The battle against climate change is a world war. South Africa is in the front lines. Anti-nuclear energy activists are up in arms, and have taken to vigils outside South Africa’s parliament in Cape Town to protest against President Jacob Zuma’s push for nuclear development. The protest has been building since September 2014 when Zuma struck a deal with Russia’s Rossatom to build up to eight nuclear power stations in South Africa. The stations would cost the country around 1 trillion South African rands (84 billion dollars). The Southern African Faith Communities’ Environment Institute (SAFCEI), an interdenominational faith-based environment initiative led by Bishop Geoff Davies, has said the government’s nuclear policy is not only foolish but immoral.

“SAFCEI does not believe that nuclear energy is an answer to climate change but is a distraction likely to bankrupt the country [South Africa] and lead to further energy impoverishment” – Liziwe McDaid, energy advisor for the Southern African Faith Communities’ Environment Institute. SAFCEI is demanding that the government take a fresh look at its drive for nuclear energy. Liziwe McDaid, SAFCEI’s energy advisor argues for a much greater rollout of renewable energy is the key to shifting the carbon-intensive energy sector towards a sustainable low carbon future. “SAFCEI does not believe that nuclear energy is an answer to climate change but is a distraction likely to bankrupt the country and lead to further energy impoverishment.”

David Hallowes researcher and editor of Slow Poison for groundWork, another climate change pressure group, feels South Africa is not doing enough on adaptation. “Government is still allowing mining and industry to poison water and land in key catchments and agricultural areas,” adding that the result is that climate impacts will be amplified. The same plants and developments that are driving climate change are poisoning and killing people, animals and plants that are in the path of pollution, “so the people’s struggles for an environment not harmful to their health and wellbeing are also climate struggles.” According to Hallowes, “there are different views on what can be achieved with renewable energy. We do not think it can power infinite economic growth and hence we do not believe it can sustain a capitalist economy. In the short term, we think we should be looking for a reduction in energy consumption. The question is who gets it for what.” He goes on to explain “We think we should have a programme that creates democratic ownership and control of renewable energy at different levels from community or settlement, to municipality to national. We call it energy sovereignty.  The National Union of Metalworkers of South Africa calls it social ownership. It’s the same thing.” The groundWork researcher said that CSOs want to see an end to new coal developments, such as new mines or power stations. “I think everyone agrees but don’t necessarily mean the same thing. For some, it’s just a matter of jobs. We think it means the transformation of the economy towards equality and freedom that is democratic control rather than plutocratic control.”

Muna Lakhani, founder and national coordinator of the Institute for Zero Waste in Africa (IZWA), is equally concerned that government is not doing enough to fight climate change.

 “Our government sees too much of ‘business as usual’ and is very lax in implementing even the minimal legislation, such as air quality permits, carbon taxes and the like,” he says. According to Lakhani, CSOs are mostly united on key issues, such as the call for no more fossil fuel, a bigger push for renewables, and promoting local resilience especially of poorer communities and the generally disadvantaged.

http://www.ipsnews.net/2015/07/one-tune-different-hymns-tackling-climate-change-in-south-africa/

Wildlife Before People

The international reputation of Boston-based Thomson Safaris, a sister company of the long-established Thomson Family Adventures, has soared. The outfitter and its trips have won almost a dozen recent awards and accolades, including a citation in the National Geographic Best Adventure Travel Companies on Earth list, Condé Nast Traveler's World Savers Award, Outside magazine's Active Travel Award, and for Wineland, Thomson Safaris' director, a lifetime-achievement award from the Adventure Travel Trade Association. The company is a three-time honoree of the Tanzania Tourist Board: 2001's Tour Operator of the Year, 2005's Humanitarian of the Year, and 2009's Tanzania Conservation Award.

The company's website includes a promotional video for a 12,000-acre tract called Enashiva, a Maasai word for "happiness"owned by an American couple named Rick Thomson and Judi Wineland, who paid $1.2 million for the property's lease under the name of their Tanzanian-registered company, Tanzania Conservation Ltd.—leasing it because Tanzania does not allow foreigners to own property, only extended land titles and where now at the property's luxury tent complex tourists pay $535 a night for an all-inclusive safari package, shows smiling Maasai dance and sing as they give thanks for the community projects—including building classrooms and a medical dispensary—that the company has enabled. It was set on the doorstep of Serengeti National Park, and human encroachment had driven away what had once been a rich wildlife population, including giraffe, wildebeest, and big cats. Thomson and Wineland were enticed by the challenge of bringing the animals back. Their first step was to put limits on grazing for the health of the environment, to control overgrazing and grazing was prohibited during much of the year, particularly during tourist high seasons—which happened to be when most grazing there occurred. Some local residents in the area obeyed. Many did not. Tourist development and droughts, made more intense by the effects of climate change, have left his villagers with few viable options for their herds. The Thomson land was the best, and only, reasonable option. For pastoralists, there is no need more fundamental than sufficient land to feed their animals—cows and, recently, sheep and goats—which function both as an economic foundation and as a social system (in crude terms, the Maasai with more cows have more power).

The wilful trespass drew consequences: frequent dispersal or temporary confiscation of herds by Thomson guards, beatings and arrests, prolonged detention in the local jail, and two shootings to date, according to locals' testimony. Residents speaking out against Thomson Safaris were routinely called in for police questioning. Journalists and aid workers who went to Loliondo to investigate started getting kicked out by local authorities. In 2009 and again in 2011, the UN Committee on the Elimination of Racial Discrimination ordered the Tanzanian government to look into human-rights-abuse allegations on the property, but the requests went nowhere. Rumors of a conspiracy between Thomson Safaris and the Tanzanian government began to circulate. In 2008, a New Zealand reporter was murdered under suspicious circumstances, shortly after investigating the company's operations in Loliondo.

Loliondo elder Tulito Olemguriem Lemgume’s boma was just inside the property newly titled to Thomson Safaris. According to Lemgume, local authorities told him and a handful of neighbors that "the land now belonged to an investor and we could no longer live there. We told them we have nowhere to go. We said, 'This is our place. This is our home.'" So the police arrived with gasoline, he said. The bomas went up in flames. Then "the police shot at us," Lemgume recalled. "It's like we were the animals and they were chasing us away."

Tourism was also touted as the best way for Maasai to benefit economically from the land without "harming" it any longer. They could sell handicrafts and charge for tours through their homes or for performing traditional dances. In Loliondo, tour companies arrived in the early 1990s with their own objective of luring zebras, rhinos, and lions back to the areas where pastoralists had once lived. The region had appeal for developers because by setting up just outside the Serengeti there was access to wildlife populations—which don't respect park boundaries—but with lower fees and fewer bureaucratic hassles than operating in the park would have entailed. The Ortello Business Corporation (OBC), an ostentatious Dubai-based outfitter that flies in Arab royalty to hunt and kill rare cats for pleasure, was apportioned vast "hunting blocks," giving the company the right to conduct its expeditions throughout virtually the entire Loliondo territory. OBC, the largest tour operator in the area, had been under fire for years for land grabbing and political corruption. Maasai resistance and foreign attention helped to thwart a bill that would have turned 40,000 square miles of Maasai land into a protected "wildlife migration corridor," with the company as its new lease holder.

A little while later, Wineland and Thomson read a newspaper ad for a plot of land with a title for sale. They were enticed not only by the possibility of reestablishing wildlife populations but also by the property's proximity to the Maasai themselves. Pioneers in the global-adventure-travel business, the couple had been specializing in "community-based tourism" for decades in more than a dozen countries. Rather than attracting business with exotic animals, Wineland said, they had always placed "pictures of people on the front cover of [our] brochures." They had done some charitable work in other Maasai areas of Tanzania and were excited to bring their business model to Loliondo. For Wineland and Thomson, making their business benefit the local Maasai was a prime objective. "We believe in a symbiotic relationship," Wineland has said. "Tourism has to benefit us, our guests, the wildlife, and the communities." They hoped this land would be the newest jewel in the company's emerging ecotourism empire, "a beautiful thing for us and our mission."

"The problem is not tourism," Ndekerei said "That can be OK. Sure, let women sell jewelry to foreigners. Build a school. The problem is when others make decisions without including us. If someone comes to your land and there is no conversation and they didn't get the land in the right way, that man cannot fit into your society. It's not right that they decide what is right for everyone."

In 2010, three villages adjacent to the Enashiva property filed a case arguing that the land's former titleholder, TBL, the state brewing company, abandoned the property so long ago that it legally reverted to village land long before the sale to the safari outfitter. Since Maasai villagers had not been consulted regarding the sale, this would make the 2006 transaction invalid under Tanzanian law. The case is based on a legal principle known as adverse possession. If an owner of a land does not prohibit someone coming in, doesn't do anything to dispute them using the land for a certain period of time—in Tanzania it's twelve years—then that piece of property reverts to that person. It's like squatter's rights, but much stronger. They  argue that the brewery that sold the title to Thomson Safaris' owners abandoned the property 16 years before Wineland and Thomson ever saw the ad in the newspaper. The sale was therefore illegal, they argue, and the land title should be returned to its rightful owners, the villages.

"We are victims of our own conservation," Maanda Ngoitiko explained. Ngoitiko is the founder of Pastoral Women's Council (PWC), a Maasai women's organization that provides scholarships for girls and organizes women's rights groups nationwide. But the arrival of tourist operators in Loliondo has pulled her into the land struggle.

An expert in Arusha on land issues. "There is no question the government is on the side of Thomson Safaris," he told me. "The government gives a kind of respect to investors so long as they pay taxes and bring in tourist dollars. For the public, the government uses the reasoning of putting the environment above all else. Investors can even violate human rights and the government is not going to look into it or punish them for it."

The court battle holds significance far greater than the fate of 12,000 square acres in the geographic center of Africa. "This is not an exceptional story of evil conservation," said Ben Gardner, an anthropologist who chairs the African studies program at the University of Washington. What's unique, he said, is that the plaintiffs are arguing in favor of the most controversial idea in conservation politics: giving the land back to its original owners. "If something is for sale and you buy it, how could you possibly be culpable of wrongdoing? Investors get a veil of moral cleanliness. You don't have to account for any history of dispossession or colonialism or the consequences of conservation work."

There are community-based tourism models in Tanzania and elsewhere in the world in which locals retain land rights so that they can negotiate whatever matters most to them, be it grazing rights or farming acreage or fishing access. ‘&Beyond’ leases acreage from a local community on which they operate tours. Members of the community limit their herding and police themselves. It's not a perfect arrangement, the company and villagers told us, but both sides benefit from a peaceful coexistence. There are also conservation models in which native groups administer their own business projects—touristic or otherwise—on protected land. Success of these projects will be essential for the health both of natural environments and indigenous communities in an era of climate change and growing populations.

http://www.vice.com/en_se/read/casualties-of-conservation-0000649-v22n5

Drought and HIV

In California, the drought is serious. Shortages mean short showers, brown lawns and empty swimming pools. But in sub-Saharan Africa, drought spreads disease, including the still-rampant HIV virus. The phenomenon is more sociological than ecological: Slim harvests slash farmers’ incomes, forcing them to find new ways to earn money. Some turn to sex, according to a new study in The Economic Journal. In a recent article from Stanford’s Center on Food Security and the Environment (FSE):

Analyzing data on more than 200,000 individuals across 19 African countries, the research team finds that by changing sexual behavior, a year of very low rainfall can increase local infection rates by more than 10 percent. That means condoms and sex education aren’t all that’s needed to thwart the epidemic’s spread. Affected farmers also need economic change to help them weather the dry period, without sacrificing their health.

“These are the people who really suffer when the rains fail, and who are forced to turn to more desperate measures to make ends meet,” co-author Marshall Burke, PhD, a fellow at the FSE, said. 

Conservation for who?

Baka “Pygmies” of Central Africa eat 14 kinds of wild honey and more than 10 types of wild yam. By leaving part of the root intact in the soil, the Baka spread pockets of wild yams – a favorite food of elephants and wild boar – throughout the forest. The Baka are taught not to overhunt the animals of the forest. A Baka woman said, “When you find a female animal with her young, you must not kill her. Even worse, when the little animals are walking next to their mother, it is strictly forbidden to kill them.” But despite their intimate knowledge of their environment, Baka in southeast Cameroon face arrest and beatings, torture and even death at the hands of wildlife officers funded and supported by the conservation giant World Wide Fund for Nature. Survival International, the global movement for tribal peoples’ rights, has uncovered serious abuses of Baka “Pygmies” in southeast Cameroon, at the hands of anti-poaching squads supported and funded by the World Wide Fund for Nature (WWF). The Baka are being illegally forced from their ancestral homelands in the name of “conservation” because much of their land has been turned into “protected areas” – including safari-hunting zones. Rather than target the powerful individuals behind organized poaching, wildlife officers and soldiers pursue Baka who hunt only to feed their families.

Cameroon’s Ministry of Forests and Fauna, which employs the wildlife officers, is funded by WWF. WWF also provides officers with technical, logistical and material assistance. Without this support the anti-poaching squads could not function. UN standards require WWF to prevent or mitigate “adverse human rights impacts directly linked to its operations” even if it has not contributed to them, but the giant of the conservation industry appears reluctant to acknowledge this. Despite the evidence that the anti-poaching squads have grossly abused the rights of the Baka, WWF continues to provide its crucial support. As a result of the loss of their land and its resources, many Baka have reported a serious decline in their health and a rise in diseases such as malaria and HIV/AIDS. And they fear going into the forest that has provided them with everything they need for countless generations.

A Baka man told Survival, “The forest used to be for the Baka but not anymore. We would walk in the forest according to the seasons but now we’re afraid. How can they forbid us from going into the forest? We don’t know how to live otherwise. They beat us, kill us and force us to flee to Congo.”

The Bushmen consume over 150 species of plant and their diet is high in vitamins and nutrients. Yet Africa’s last hunting Bushmen in Botswana are abused, tortured and arrested when found hunting to feed their families. A Bushman said, “I know how to take care of the game. That’s why I was born with it, and lived with it, and it’s still there. If you go to my area, you’ll find animals, which shows that I know how to take care of them. In other areas, there are no animals.”

The Bushman tribes of the Central Kalahari Game Reserve are the last Bushmen to largely depend on hunting in Africa. They were illegally evicted from their ancestral homelands in the name of “conservation”. Although the tribes won an historic legal battle to return to their land, the government is using hunger as a weapon to ensure it gets its way. Government officials have admitted that the Bushmen do not hunt with guns and there is no evidence that their hunting is unsustainable. Despite this, in 2014, President Khama acted against the constitution, and imposed a nationwide hunting ban; international conservation organizations have heaped praise on him. Private game ranches, however, are exempt from the ban. The Bushmen are accused of “poaching” because they hunt their food. And they face arrest, beatings and torture, while fee-paying big game hunters are encouraged. The Bushmen, as hunter-gatherers, are being starved off their land. With no way to feed themselves in the reserve, they are forced once more to return to return to government resettlement camps or “places of death,” as they call them. Racism among the governing elite in Botswana means the Bushmen are typically treated as second-class citizens, their human rights trampled on. Their way of life is entirely compatible with conservation: the Bushmen, more than anyone, are motivated to protect the wildlife on which they depend. Bushmen tribes have inhabited the region since time immemorial. They know how best to look after their environment. Why have they been excluded from the conservation process? Not a single conservation organization stood up for the Bushmen’s human rights when they were evicted and, shamefully, the conservation industry has lauded President Khama. For example, he has been invited to host a prestigious event for the new global campaign against poaching called United for Wildlife, a coalition of the most powerful conservation NGOs. Its president is Prince William.

The Central Kalahari Game Reserve lies in the middle of the richest diamond-producing area in the world. For years, the government claimed that the eviction of the Bushmen was motivated by conservation and had nothing to do with mining. Yet in 2014, a diamond mine worth billions of dollars opened inside the reserve, on the Bushmen’s ancestral land. Conservation, it seems, was just an excuse for removing the Bushmen. Khama is also on the board of Conservation International, which ignores his atrocious human rights record. It similarly turns a blind eye to the diamond mining and fracking exploration he encourages on Bushman land.

There are many more examples of how tribal peoples are the best conservationists and guardians of the natural world – satellite images and academic studies have shown that indigenous peoples provide a vital barrier to deforestation of their lands. Yet tribal peoples are being illegally evicted from their ancestral homelands in the name of “conservation.” It’s often wrongly claimed that their lands are wildernesses even though tribal peoples have been dependent on, and managed, them for millennia.

Survival’s Director Stephen Corry said, “Tribal peoples are better at looking after their environments than anyone else – after all, they have been dependent on, and managed, them for millennia. If conservation is actually going to start working, conservationists need to ask tribal peoples what help they need to protect their land, listen to them, and then be prepared to back them up as much as possible. A major change in thinking about conservation is now urgently required.”

Nigeria - The Growing Desert

With about 14 million Nigerians in the northern part of the country and 43 percent of the country’s land mass affected by desertification, Nigeria is in danger and have an emergency at hand, the Permanent Secretary, Federal Ministry of Environment, Mrs Fatima Nana Mede, has said. She explained “Our greatest challenges is that the most vulnerable are the less privileged in our society who cannot on their own mitigate the emerging multifaceted problems of desertification”.

She also said, “The recommended forest cover for Nigeria is 25 percent but currently Nigeria has less than six percent forest cover meaning that we contribute to factors that can cause climate change and we know the implication of that in our lives and the future of our children. This is a clarion call for us to get up and do something, we must take concrete actions to combat desertification”.

Desertification threatens human security by depriving people of the means of decent livelihood and undercuts food production, access to water and means to economic activity.

http://www.ngrguardiannews.com/2015/06/14m-nigerians-threatened-by-desertification-says-govt/

Protect the Planet

Soil is one of the most important resources we have, if not the most important. It sustains all our agricultural and livestock food production, wood for fuel production, filters water so that we can drink it and fish can live in it. We also use it for construction - therefore it sustains our homes and infrastructure.  Despite this, soil is endangered. The UN estimates that nearly a third of the world’s soil is degraded and in sub-Saharan Africa, that figure is closer to two-thirds. 34 of Africa's 54 countries reported over 20% in either the amount of land degraded or the amount of population affected by land degradation. 

In Africa, the issue of land degradation (a decline in land quality caused by human activities) and soil fertility decline is deeply complex with intertwining and cyclical causes. These range from poverty, inadequate farming techniques, poor inherent soil qualities to population pressure, to insecure land tenure and climate change, amongst other factors. If these are issues are not addressed the cycle of poor land management will result in higher barriers to food security, agricultural development for smallholder farmers and wider economic growth for Africa.

In terms of soil degradation, the usual suspects would be the dry land African countries around the Mediterranean and Middle East - but in actuality, degradation (measured in terms of its net primary productivity) here was represented by only relatively small areas in the Maghreb and the Nile delta. In more than seven African countries, half their population was affected by land degradation, and in nine countries over half their land area was affected.

The countries with the largest percentages of their territories affected were; Swaziland (95.22%), Angola (66.2%), Gabon (64.58%), Zambia (60.41%) and the Congo (58.95).

The countries with the highest percentage of their populations affected were; Swaziland (98.77%), Angola (60.74%), Djibouti (59.3%), Congo (54.93%) and the Democratic Republic of Congo (53.49%).

These results show that it is not necessarily high population density that is related to land degradation, but rather what a population does to the land that determines the extent of degradation. Soil nutrient depletion is an important concern directly linked to food insecurity in developing countries due to the intensification of land use for agricultural production.

In fact, it is estimated that nutrient depletion accounts for about 7% of the agricultural share in the average Gross Domestic Product (GDP) of sub-Saharan Africa, with national values ranging up to 25%!

In some cases, notably in the East African highlands, the rate of depletion is so high that even drastic measures, such as doubling the application of fertiliser or manure or halving erosion losses, would not be enough to offset nutrient deficits.

Heavily affected countries include; Burundi, Rwanda and Kenya. This could be in part due to the high altitudes, which have been for many centuries favourite settlement areas because of a relatively healthy, mild climate and sufficient rains. Erosion has also certainly been a cause of major nutrient depleting in this area.

In terms of nutrient depletion, other concerning cases include Tanzania, Mozambique and Niger where nutrient depletion accounts for up to 25% of the Agricultural Gross Domestic Product.

One of the most worrying cases today however is Ethiopia. Over one-quarter of the country’s land is degraded, affecting about 20 million people, almost a third of the total population. To make matters worse, according to agriculture for impact, Ethiopia has one of the highest rates of soil nutrient depletion in sub-Saharan Africa. To address this, under Ethiopia’s five year growth and transformation plan, there is a dedicated sustainable land management project that focuses on the conservation of soil and water in arid zones. However, an estimated $8 billion is still required over the next ten years, in particular for irrigation development.

As environmental activist, Vandana Shiva explains:
“History provides ample evidence that civilizations which ignored the health and well-being of the soil, and exploited it without renewing its fertility, disappeared along with the soil… We are forgetting that life grows from soil, not concrete and tarmac… Money might grow from speculative real estate development, but not life… We can avert the collapse of our civilization if, in this year of soil, we collectively and democratically commit ourselves to protecting and rejuvenating the soil and, thus, our future.”

The Theft of the Forests

In Kenya, the future of indigenous forest cover is under threat but has little to do with poverty and ignorance – experts say that it is greed which allows unsustainable practices, such as the lucrative production of charcoal and logging of wood. Armed with branches and placards, enraged residents from a semi-pastoral community 360 km north of Kenya’s capital, Nairobi, protested this week against wanton destruction of indigenous forest – their alternative source of livelihood.

With climate change a new ordeal that has caused frequent droughts, leading to suffering and death in this part of Africa, the community from Lpartuk Ranch in Samburu County relies on livestock which is sometimes wiped out by severe drought leaving them with no other option other than the harvesting of wild products and honey. Samburu County, in Kenya’s semi-arid northern region, hosts Lerroghi, a 92,000 hectare forest reserve that is home to different indigenous plants and animal species. Lerroghi, also called Kirisia locally, is among the largest forest ecosystem in dry northern Kenya and was initially filled with olive and red cedar trees. Harvesting of cedar regardless of whether forest was privately or publicly owned was banned in 1999, and that over 30,000 hectares – yet one-third of the Lerroghi forest has been destroyed.

“People here are ready to take up spears and machetes to guard the forest. They have been provoked by outsiders who are out to wipe out our indigenous forest to the last bit,” Mark Loloolki, Lpartuk Ranch chairman, who led the protesting community members told IPS. They threatened to set alight any vehicle caught ferrying the timbers or logs suspected to be from their forests. Unscrupulous merchants smuggle the endangered red cedar products to the coastal port of Mombasa for shipping to Saudi Arabia where they are sold at high prices. “This is a business that involves a well-connected cartel of merchants operating in Nairobi and Mombasa,” said Loloolki. According to Samburu County’s Kenya Forest Service (KFS) Ecosystem Controverter Eric Chemitei, “as a government parastatal, we [KFS] do not issue permits for transportation or movement of cedar posts. However, we do not know how they get to Nairobi, Mombasa and eventually to Saudi Arabia as alleged.”

The protest came barely a week after counterparts from Seketet, a few kilometres away in Samburu Central, held a similar protest after over 12,000 red cedar posts were caught on transit to Maralal, Samburu’s main town. Last year, students walked for four kilometres during International Ozone Day to protest against the wanton destruction of the same endangered forest tree species.

A report titled Green Carbon, Black Trade, released by the U.N. Environment Programme (UNEP) and Interpol in 2012, which focuses on illegal logging and its impacts on the lives and livelihoods of often some of the poorest people in the world, underlines how criminals are combining old-fashioned methods such as bribes with high-tech methods such as computer hacking of government websites to obtain transportation and other permits. Reports from INTERPOL and the World Bank in 2009 and from UNEP in 2011 indicate that the trade in illegally harvested timber is highly lucrative for criminal elements and has been estimated at 11 billion dollars – comparable with the production value of drugs which is estimated at around 13 billion dollars. In a report on organised wildlife, gold and timber, released on Apr. 16, UNEP Executive Director Achim Steiner said: “There is no room for doubt: wildlife and forest crime is serious and calls for an equally serious response. In addition to the breach of the international rule of law and the impact on peace and security, environmental crime robs countries of revenues that could have been spent on sustainable development and the eradication of poverty.”

Of the 3.4 million hectares (5.9 percent) of forest cover out of the Kenya’s total land area, 1.4 million are made up of indigenous closed canopy forests, mangroves and plantations, on both public and private lands. Kenya’s annual domestic demand for wood is 37 million cubic metres while sustainable wood supply is only around 30 million cubic metres, thus creating a deficit of seven million cubic metres which, according to analysts, means that any projected increase in forest cover can only be realised after this huge internal demand is met. The policy acknowledges that indigenous trees or forests are ecosystems that provide important economic, environmental, recreational, scientific, social, cultural and spiritual benefits. Nevertheless, illegal harvesting of forest products is pervasive and often involves unsustainable forest practices which cause serious damage to forests, the people who depend on them and the economies of producer countries. Forests have been subjected to land use changes such as conversion to farmland or urban settlements, thus reducing their ability to supply forest products and serve as water catchments, biodiversity conservation reservoirs and wildlife habitats.

Conservation Agriculture - The Pros and Cons

More than 80 per cent of the population depends on farming. Agriculture also makes up a significant proportion of their GDP: as much as 45 per cent in Ethiopia and 37 per cent in Malawi. (By comparison, two per cent of Canadians live on a farm and the sector accounts for eight per cent of this country’s GDP.) So the agricultural sector is critical. The foundation for real agricultural growth starts with healthy soils. The Montpellier panel, an elite group of European and African scientists commissioned to analyze development issues on the continent, published a report last December that characterizes two-thirds of Africa’s soils as degraded, along with 30 per cent of the grazing lands and 20 per cent of the forests. That degradation affects the food security of 180 million people and cuts productivity to the tune of US$68 billion annually. You don’t have to be a soil scientist to know Africa’s soils are in trouble.

"The burdens caused by Africa’s damaged soils are disproportionately carried by the continent’s resource-poor farmers," said the panel’s chairman, Sir Gordon Conway, in releasing the report No Ordinary Matter: Conserving, restoring and enhancing Africa’s soil. The Montpellier panel was critical of Africa’s continental agricultural strategy, the Comprehensive African Agriculture Development Program, and of international donors for not placing a high enough priority on soil health in their strategies to improve the continent’s food security.

"The decline in fertility exists everywhere," Sheleme Beyene, a soil scientist with Ethiopia’s Hawassa University, said in an interview. "In areas where there is a dense population, the land holding is so small that everything from that land is utilized — removed." Grazing animals are turned out after harvest to clean up anything that is left. From the road, they appear to be grazing on dust. We mine the nutrients from the soil. The assumption was that some amount would be returned to the soil through chemical fertilizer.” Beyene said. Across the continent, governments have initiated campaigns to encourage farmers to switch to improved hybrid seeds and use more fertilizer. The continental goal is to increase fertilizer use from an average of eight kilograms per hectare, which is the lowest in the world, to at least 50 kg/ha. “But chemical fertilizer will not return all the nutrients," she added.

The problem is badly degraded biological health in the soil, a declining capacity to bind and create humus, to absorb water and nutrients, and to build organic matter as evidenced by the washed-out roads, deep crevices dividing farmers’ fields, plants left dying with roots exposed after heavy rainstorms and rivers laden with rich, red silt. The Montpellier report identifies water erosion as the single biggest cause of soil loss on the continent, an irony every bit as sad as Africa’s hungry farmers. Rain, moisture so desperately needed to sustain life in this land, is simultaneously at war with its exposed and degraded soils. It pulverizes them before taking them hostage and carrying them away to the sea. All the fertilizer in the world won’t fix that.

The conservation agriculture message is, at its core, an approach which emphasizes minimal soil disturbance to prevent erosion and conserve moisture while employing strategies that support healthy soil biology. Some farmers use oxen and what is known as a "ripper," a device that slices a narrow opening for the seed, instead of a plough. While many use a combination of chemical and organic fertilizers, just as many produce some of their own fertilizer by growing nitrogen-fixing legumes, sometimes intercropped with staple cereal crops. Farmers typically farm with a hoe. They plant crops into rows and then pull those rows into ridges, like we would hill potatoes, sometimes a foot high, leaving deep gullies between rows. It’s back-breaking work. Under conservation agriculture, farmers do away with those ridges. They instead make planting basins into which they put a small amount of manure and later poke their seed in with a stick. Without the ridges, they can plant their rows closer together, which increases the ground cover, paving the way for higher yields. They use mulch made from past crop residues or composted plant material between the rows to help suppress weeds, hold in moisture and build organic matter. In this environment, higher-yielding hybrid seeds have a better chance of meeting their yield potential. The extra moisture and organic matter have resulted in a doubling of maize yields. More stable production of maize, the staple crop, means farmers can sow less of their farm to it, opening the door to better crop rotations.

Christian Thierfelder, a senior agronomist, explained how the soil changes under conservation agriculture management. "When you look at the soil, the soil (under Conservation Agriculture) is very loose, and when you get a heavy rainfall, the water can infiltrate because there is a lot of biological activity — earthworms, beetles and ants and so on that create these bio pools, like a sponge," he said. "The rainfall hits the soil surface and infiltrates, whereas on the conventional system, it just runs off or stands there." The traditionally farmed soil was hard and gravelly. "The conventional system can only make use of the water that is in the ridge and not further down in the soil," he said. Plant roots grown using conservation agriculture techniques are able to penetrate deeper into the soil and reach for added moisture. "And also, because of the residues on top, there is less evaporation of water — it just has more water available for plant growth." That’s "climate-smart" in a region where sporadic rainfalls can wreak havoc with food production.

Despite the promotional efforts of hundreds of projects offered uptake of conservation agriculture by smallholder farmers in Africa has been slow — less than five per cent in most countries. That’s given rise to a debate over whether this approach, which relies on a complex understanding of how soil, water and plants interact, is the answer to productivity issues facing resource-poor farmers who have little education and a pressing need for immediate boosts in yield. In a 2009 study titled Conservation agriculture and smallholder farming in Africa: The heretic’s view, four U.S.-based researchers challenged the notion conservation agriculture is a solution for all sub-Saharan African farmers. In their view, the empirical evidence supporting these campaigns is lacking and contradictory. As well, they argue the claims for the potential of the technology in Africa are based on the experience in the Americas, "where the effects of tillage were replaced by heavy dependence on herbicides and fertilizers."

Yet, "it is actively promoted by international research and development organizations, with such strong advocacy that critical debate is stifled," wrote study authors Ken Giller, Ernst Witter, March Corbeels and Pablo Tittonell. "Concerns include decreased yields often observed with Conservation Agriculture, increased labour requirements when herbicides are not used, an important gender shift of the labour burden to women and a lack of mulch due to poor productivity and due to the priority given to feeding of livestock with crop residues."

Research published in the journal Nature in 2014 concluded that simply eliminating tillage from these systems might actually reduce yields and increase food insecurity. "The common assumption that no-till is going to play a large role in the sustainable intensification of agriculture doesn’t necessarily hold true, according to our research findings," said Cameron Pittelkow, who co-authored the Nature study as a post-doctoral scholar at University of California-Davis. These researchers concluded the only way conservation agriculture works is when it is part of a system that also includes crop rotation and mulches that retain water, suppress weeds and improve soil quality. Those aren’t always available to resource-poor farmers. The authors also pointed out some of the promised benefits, such as increased fertility and weed suppression, take years before they become noticeable.

In January, the Journal of Sustainable Development published an article documenting high abandonment rates of conservation agriculture once NGO support is withdrawn. Some have suspected smallholder farmers who participated in the projects were only there for the free fertilizer, seed and food served on the extension days. But that article also noted persistent adoption was more prevalent among the poor, which "supports claims that Conservation Agriculture is a pro-poor technology."

Chris Woodring, a researcher and small-scale farmer from Kentucky, was assigned to interview 50 farmers across five African countries about their experiences with conservation agriculture, documenting where it is working, where it is not and identifying the challenges smallholders face in adopting the soil-saving methods. Conservation agriculture proponents believe it offers the best opportunity to stave off a looming environmental and human catastrophe in Africa. But the diversity of these farmers, their remote locations and cultural and language barriers make theirs a difficult story to tell. People don’t necessarily measure the success of their farming in yield per hectare or map out their plots with laboratory precision. Rather, it is based on whether their farm produced enough to feed the family from one crop to the next, whether their diets have become more diverse and whether there is enough money to send the kids to school or buy sugar, soap or a cellphone. Understanding the cultural context and why there is a difference between what they say and what they do can also be difficult.

It is hard to find enough of the mulch they use to cover the ground between the rows of maize, especially in the early years. During the dry season, farmers with livestock often allow their cattle to roam freely looking for forage. Landowners have no fences to keep them from eating the mulch. As well, the decaying crop residues attract mice, which brings the "mice-catchers," children who set the field on fire so they can catch the rodents as they flee. Once caught and their entrails removed, the critters are boiled and roasted until they are crispy and consumed as a delicacy. Then there is what one farmer described as the "man problem," a gender-based competition within families over resource allocation. "It is customary here that the husbands are in control of the land, so they are the ones who share a portion for them to practise Conservation Agriculture," an interpreter explained. "Most of them are not interested, because they are not seeing instant benefits, so they just give small portions to their wives, because it is mostly the wives who have adopted the technology."

"In Malawi, food production is done by women, and so you find that food becomes a gender issue. Men would prefer to grow a cash crop where women would like to look after their families. So hunger becomes the main issue for the women,’ said Sain Mskambo, a project officer with the NGO Find Your Feet, based in Mzuzu, Malawi. The tobacco industry began contracting with smallholder farmers here in the early 2000s after large commercial tobacco-producing companies went bankrupt. Farmers are provided with inputs and advance cash payments to tide them over until their crop can be sold. Local extension workers say farmers sometimes don’t get enough from their crop to pay those loans back. But they also say that when prices are good, businesses and the booze halls in the region do a booming trade when the tobacco is sold in May. Cellphones, televisions and new clothes don’t do much for food security, and many of these families still struggle to find enough food to eat during the lean months. But they do bring with them a certain status. Hunger here is often hidden behind a flashy dress shirt. It’s a conundrum for NGOs that have been championing conservation agriculture as a means of improving food security. Helping farmers sustainably produce tobacco isn’t what most donors have in mind when they send cheques to help alleviate poverty and hunger.

Woodring’s work, now completed, reveals interesting patterns. Weeds are by far the biggest challenge for these farmers. Many have started using pesticides, but with mixed results.

"When they use mulching to control weeds or hand-hoeing to control weeds, then that really limits their adoption of conservation agriculture to the amount of labour they have to put the system into practice," Woodring said.

Consistent with the North American experience, pesticides offer a less labour-intensive alternative to hand-weeding, which makes them exceedingly popular with women, who do most of the weeding. But many smallholders can’t afford to buy pesticides, and if they do, they often don’t know how to use them safely. We watched as a young woman wearing no protection measured out the insect killer cypermethrin from a bottle of concentrate into a backpack sprayer to mix. When she donned the backpack sprayer and began spraying a field of cowpeas, most of her skin was exposed. As well, how well these products work depends on rainfall. Farmers can lose their investments — and their crop. That spells hunger. "If you spray and it doesn’t rain for five days, it won’t work," said Wilfred Hamakumba, who has been practising conservation agriculture on his farm near Choma, Zambia, for 13 years.

Woodring heard repeatedly from conservation agriculture farmers that their yields increased, which has improved the quality and quantity of the family diet, as well as their income. That has positive implications for child nutrition, the family’s overall health and access to education. It is an investment that pays off in spades. "I think the potential for CA is somewhat greater than actual adoption," Woodring said Woodring, who has been monitoring the progression of reduced-tillage agriculture across Africa for the past seven years, said the issue isn’t whether conservation agriculture is the right approach, it is how best to make it happen. The more we work the soil conventionally, the worse our soils will become, the less productive they become… With conservation agriculture, your soil improves, it improves dramatically in many cases."

From here

The water wars?

The population of Nairobi is projected to rise from about 5 million now as to as many as 8 million residents by the end of the decade, and 14 million by 2050.  This type of growth is typical of Africa’s cities. Over the next 20 years, the urban population of Sub-Saharan Africa is set to double and at 3.9% per year, urban population growth rates in Africa have been and will continue to be the highest in the world. Currently Cairo, Kinshasa and Lagos are the only mega-cities in Africa, but three more are expected to emerge by 2030, as Dar es Salaam (Tanzania), Johannesburg (South Africa), and Luanda (Angola) are each projected to surpass the 10m mark.

Needless to say, considering the vast number of Africans living in urban slums, and the majority of cities in the continent that have poorly-run utilities and lack solid waste management, and have poor drainage the population growth will put an increasing strain on water availability which is already an area of concern as industry, climate change and declining quality has already seen water demand increase at a higher rate than population growth. There are certain scenarios that could emerge when water taps begin to run increasingly dry across Africa’s major cities.

For those living in slums the challenge of water will revolve around water storage. In cities around the tropics, there will be outbreaks of dengue fever and higher levels of malaria from water that has not been adequately stored. If they do not have the ability to store water, there will be incredibly long water queues to distribution areas and, without the guarantee that water will in fact even be available when they get to the front, tensions will be high. Outbreaks of violence in and around these areas will be common. Without running water, residents will be forced to find alternative methods of keeping clean. For those who live near a body of water, such as the Ocean or a lake, people will start moving in droves in the early morning and evening to wash - as was the case in 2013 in Dakar, during a water shortage, caused by faulty infrastructure; residents were bathing in the ocean and dug makeshift wells along the beach. This will lead to outbreaks of illnesses. In many, aside from Namibia, Senegal, and South Africa that report universal coverage by sewerage systems, in most other African countries, sewerage serves less than 10% of urban areas. In some cities there isn’t even a mechanism to cope with wastewater. For example Luanda, a city of over 4 million people, discharges all the collected wastewater untreated into the sea outfall.

For the wealthier inhabitants of a city, when the taps run dry there will be a few more options. Wet wipes will be a major business, and expected to sell-out, and swimming pools will be quickly emptied to flush toilets.  Bottled water will also be used for household chores which will cause their prices to skyrocket. The wealthier residents will also fuel a water black market which will give rise to water mafias. This has been seen in cities like New Delhi. Every year the Indian city experiences a hot season water shortage that results in an estimated 2,000 illegal tankers driving round the city, providing millions of inhabitants with loads of dubious water drawn illegally from the city’s groundwater. We are already beginning to see this trend on the continent; in Maseru, Lesotho, household resellers provide water to 31% of the population.

 These mafias fuel high-level corruption, paying off officials and police officers to access water, and can lead to water wars between mafias and residents.

Instead of bringing the people together, the lack of water will perpetuate chaos. Neighbours turn against one another in apartment blocks when discussing payments of water bowser services, with some suggesting older people should pay more because they are home longer. The lack of water will also drive inhabitants of Africa’s cities to all sorts of water theft, as was seen occurring in California where residents are stealing thousands of gallons of water from schools, clinics, and fire hydrants.

The lack of water is going to come at a high price at all levels, but particularly to the most vulnerable - and to the economy of the city itself. The notion of Africa rising, built on the back of its growing urban population, vibrant cities, looks to be severely challenged unless coping strategies and effective infrastructure is put in place.

Coal’s “Airpocalypse”

Coal is the single largest contributor to climate change, which threatens to put 400 million people in the poorest countries at risk of severe food and water shortages by 2050. The coal industry seems determined to fight for profits at the expense of the global environment. Perversely, it is furiously attempting to capture the moral high ground by claiming that coal is essential to ending energy poverty. Coal companies and their allies argue that limiting coal production would keep the lights off in rural communities by preventing poor countries from building big, cheap power plants.

 “Let’s have no demonization of coal,” Australian Prime Minister Tony Abbott, put it. “Coal is good for humanity.”

 Speaking at an event hosted by the Global Warming Policy Foundation, a think tank that is skeptical of climate change, the United Kingdom’s former environment secretary, Owen Paterson, accused climate-change activists of having “African blood” on their hands.

The coal industry is posing a false choice: end the use of coal or end poverty. But, though energy is indeed central to efforts to end poverty, one must be clear: at this point in history, coal is not good for anyone.

Coal is a deadly and kills some 800,000 people per year and sickens millions more. Beijing’s ongoing battle with smog – a problem that has become known as the “airpocalypse” – provides a potent reminder of coal’s impact on air quality. But China’s capital is hardly unique in that respect. Many Indian cities have air pollution that is just as bad – and in some cases far worse.

The coal industry is seeking to burden developing countries with the same unsustainable growth model that has brought the earth to the brink of climate disaster. As the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change has repeatedly warned – and as the experience of countries like the Marshall Islands increasingly demonstrates – climate change is no longer a distant threat. The terrible consequences of burning fossil fuels are already upon us, and those suffering the most are the world’s poor. Most people understand that coal is a dirty business. That is why we are witnessing such resistance from the industry. Coal’s day is over, but it is trying desperately to hang on.

The world needs away from dirty energy sources. It also means working with developing countries to help them develop modern, clean energy sources that provide cheap, locally produced power, and do not oblige them to use fossil fuels. We must stop telling the poor in developing countries what they should do and start listening to what they want. And what they want – unfortunately for the coal industry – is clean, affordable energy that powers their present, without costing them their future.

Taken from here

Protecting Forests - Profits Prevail

Across the Congo Basin it is more profitable to cut down the forest and replace it with cash crops, and REDD+ (Reducing Emissions from Deforestation and Forest Degradation) schemes are of little help to reverse this trend, according to a new study. Enforcing sustainable logging and assigning a monetary value to the carbon stored in forest concessions managed under the REDD+ mechanism will not be enough to curb deforestation in Central Africa. Given the importance of the forests in the Congo Basin in mitigating climate change, a study highlights that even when the value of the carbon stored by a hectare of sustainably managed forest concessions is added to the value of the timber, the economics of the production don’t change. The net present value of carbon stored on a hectare of forest concessions is just USD 113, still not enough to give sustainably managed forest concessions a financial edge over agro-industrial expansion in the Congo Basin.

Research from the Center for International Forestry Research (CIFOR) and CIRAD, a French agricultural and development research center revealed the extent to which concessions in Cameroon and Congo are threatened by the push for agro-industrial plantations, primarily rubber and oil palm.  In Cameroon, for example, 10 forest logging concessions, 14 forest reserves and six protected areas are under threat from existing industrial plantations seeking to expand. The threat is smaller and less immediate in Congo, involving just two significant projects to promote cocoa and oil palm plantations. But it is likely that in both countries, future agro-industrial projects will intensify the risk to and the loss of, permanent forests.

There are many reasons for the dramatic expansion of cash crop production—both industrially and by smallholders—in the two countries.

“First of all, industrial agriculture is seen as a major driver of economic development strategies that countries in the Congo Basin have adopted in recent years,” Lescuyer said. “It’s seen as a way to generate formal employment opportunities, increase government revenues and exports, and as a contribution to national development.”

Many national and multinational companies are ready to invest large amounts of money in agro-industrial oil palm and rubber projects in the region and profit from rising prices for these commodities on international markets. But there is more to it than that. Cash crops also offer the opportunity to secure—and sometimes to grab—land holdings, with the aim of making a profitable investment.  As a result, projects involving agro-industrial expansion can garner favor with national authorities and other potential investors. Cash crops are generally more profitable than logging if the timber from a forest concession is harvested sustainably, the study found. In Cameroon, for example, the rubber from one hectare of an industrial plantation was nearly six times as valuable, at USD 8,045, as the timber from a hectare of a sustainably managed forest concession, with a value of USD 1,408. With the exception of smallholder cocoa production in Cameroon, cash crops were more profitable than timber harvested from sustainably managed concessions. Since 2009, Cameroon has witnessed a sharp rise in the number of investors seeking land for palm oil plantations. At least 6 companies are applying for the allocation of over 1 million hectares of land in the forest areas of the southern part of the country, which is about 4.7 per cent of the country’s total forest area of 21,245,000 hectares, says a 2012 report. With industrial palm oil production being a key element of the Cameroonian government’s poverty reduction strategy, it is willing to offer concessions to companies demanding large acreages of land in forested zones for oil palm production. http://blog.cifor.org/10285/palm-oil-development-in-cameroon-an-urgent-need-for-a-national-strategy#.VOLYavmUeJY

http://blog.cifor.org/26824/redd-central-africa-forests-cash-crops#.VOLYNPmUeJa