Inside COP17
eco-business.com
By : James Fahn DURBAN, SOUTH AFRICA—It's not easy to be a climate reporter. You have to understand the science of climate change, as well as the politics and the economics. You need to cover energy policy, forest issues, agriculture, oceans, ...

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Bay Area Indymedia
This has implications particularly for action on climate change mitigation and adaptation with major impacts on sea level rise, ocean acidification and many other areas. The latest proposals and pledges from Durban put the world on the path of 4.3°C of ...

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Saving the rest of the rainforests
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AP pic SINCE the 13th round of climate change talks in Bali in 2007, the issue of reducing greenhouse gas emissions from deforestation and forest degradation in developing countries has moved from laggard to leader in the international climate change ...

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I have always been a Christmassy person. One of my friends calls me her Christmas friend for my propensity to tie bows and ribbons on everything all year long.

I think it’s the twinkle I love: the glisten of decorations and the golden glow of fairy lights. In the depths of darkest winter, the whole of life somehow seems more sparkly.

And I love Christmas foods; mountains of rich, boozy mince pies and heart-warming vats of cinnamon-scented mulled wine. I love the first deep breath of a fragrant Christmas tree, and the sweet tanginess of a freshly peeled tangerine fished from my stocking on Christmas morning.

And I love being with my family. Admittedly it’s not always peaceful or perfect, but there is always a great deal of jolliness.

But mostly I love the feeling of love that seems to infuse every heart in the world.

I am approaching Christmas 2011 with more sadness and a little less joy than usual though. It has been a year of loss for me and for my family; the loss of loved ones.

When I think of the people I have lost – whether through death or by other means – I remember the women who I met in Africa this summer. Most of them had suffered loss too – the loss of their husbands or their children. I spoke to one mother in Mandera county who had walked for 10 days from Somalia to find food and water in neighbouring Kenya. She carried her two year old son on her back for the entire journey. And then he died of malnutrition the day after she reached help.

I think about that woman and I wonder what she is doing now. It’s raining in Mandera at the moment – the longed-for rains, thankfully, have come. Is she still in Kenya? Or has she returned to her village in Somalia? Has she found her husband? Are the rest of her children healthy, or has she lost more? Has she been able to find enough food to sustain her family? I hope with every molecule of my body that she is safe and well, and that her family is thriving.

Christmas inspires both gratitude for what we already have and sparks a certain greater openness to generosity, kindness and compassion. Charles Dickens wrote in the most festive of novels, ‘A Christmas Carol’, that Christmas is “a good time: a kind, forgiving, charitable pleasant time: the only time…in the long calendar of the year, when men and women seem by one consent to open their shut-up hearts freely, and to think of people below them as if they really were fellow-passengers to the grave, and not another race of creatures bound on other journeys.’

As I prepare to leave my desk for two whole weeks of festive celebration, my heart is with all the people I met when I was in Africa, and for every vulnerable, forgotten, underprivileged woman, man and child around the world. As the embers of 2011 settle and the bright lights of 2012 beckon, I am sending them all of my love and good wishes.

Next year I hope we can all do more to help build a fairer world, one which is free from poverty and injustice.  Two billion people live in abject poverty, with less than 80 pence a day. That’s two billion too many. People, please help the people.

Thank you – and happy Christmas.

PreventionWeb (press release)
Indonesia: Govt helps farmers, fishermen deal with climate change
PreventionWeb (press release)
The central government has also prepared a number of programs to mitigate the adverse impact of climate change which include education, capacity building and preparing a new school curriculum. by Flickr user Jeda Villa Bali Bart Speelman , Creative ...

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Much ado at Durban
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Diplomats win, but climate loses
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Nirmala Bogati and her husband Shyam Bogati are a sought after couple in their village. Both Nirmala and Shyam are dairy farmers from Chitwan District and are confident that they can earn better in their own village than their neighbours who often resort to foreign employment.

Recently, Nirmala and Shyam shared their story of success to Radio Audio’s Khulduli.com programme.  Through khulduli.com their stories were broadcasted to 35 districts in Nepal. This is a story of a regular couple who defied odds and ditched foreign employment to work on their farm instead. 

Shyam states, “I had been raising cows and selling milk for the past 15 years. I lost four cows in a month and that is when we hit the lowest point in our lives. I thought of going to a foreign country but luckily our future had something better in store for us.”

Nirmala heard about the MASF-Dairy component Project providing series of training sessions on livestock management, shed management, techniques to increase milk production, feed and fodders, mineral blocks as well as practical knowledge on overall dairy value in Nepal. She immediately shared the information with her husband and decided Nirmala would attend the training classes.

“As soon as I attended the classes I was confident I could improve our living standard. My husband and I started growing quality grass for our livestock, we kept our livestock clean, we sought timely medical care, and we provided the livestock with the mineral blocks which helps in digestion and provides essential nutrients. And in time the milk production increased and our income too. In a year we have added two cows which totals to four milking cows. We sell NPR 200,000 worth milk and our net profit is NPR 120,000. Our monthly income is around NPR 20,000,” said Nirmala.

Through the radio programme both Nirmala and Shyam share the importance of home grown opportunities. They also state that they are earning much more and are happy that the whole family is together. Nirmala and Shyam encourage those seeking foreign jobs to work and seek opportunities in Nepal and Shyam hands out his mobile number to those seeking information on good practices of dairy farming.

You can listen to their story at http://www.aradioaudio.com/index.php?pageName=taaza&nid=255

Nirmala and Shyam have shown that if there is a will there is a way out. 

 

A recent study by Practical Action indicates that about 61 per cent households in Nepal do not have access to minimum energy required for lighting. Addressing Nepal’s energy problems requires an increase in access to modern form of energy.

Devi has three children to look after. All day long she has many chores to complete – cook and clean. By the time she finishes her daily chores its already dark. She does not have kerosene left to light her room and she cannot afford it either. She wants to comb her hair, wash her face, and change into something comfortable for a good nights sleep but she cant because she cannot see a thing; forget finding anything. You and I can still do many things after dark but Devi’s day ends once the sun sets.

The only source of lighting left is the kitchen fire, once the fire is out there is not even a single source of light left in the house. You and I have access to many kinds of energy to light our homes as we have the resources but Devi does not.

Devi has to walk an hour to get to the nearest motor able road access and wait for a taxi (which may or may not come) to take her to the nearest market which is an hour drive. But she also needs money to buy kerosene and money is scarce. With little money she has she purchases basic necessity such as salt, sugar and cooking oil. Devi’s life is hard. Can you imagine living like her in the dark after the sun sets?

Recently, Practical Action installed a 400 watt vertical axis wind turbine (VAWT) in her village of six households. All six households now have access to clean energy.

“My life is so much better now that we have clean energy for lighting in our homes. We could barely afford the trip to buy kerosene,” s aysDevi.

The newly installed wind turbine supplies energy equivalent to 2 light bulbs for each 6 households in Devi’s village. She is happy with the change and say “We can also charge our mobile phones and watch TV.”

Devi’s niece now has light to study and complete her homework.

 

This is a power station operator showing us how he controls the flow of power to each household. The wind turbine is integrated with 260 watt peak of solar energy system.

“I am so happy now,” says Devi. “I can do so much even after the sun sets. I don’t have to hurry and finish my chores and we don’t eat dinner at 5pm anymore. We have the luxury of eating when we want. Time is no more a restriction, all thanks to the wind energy.”

Most of the rural hilly villages in Nepal are not connected to the national grid. Go to www.practicalaction.org and see how you can donate and change the lives of women like Devi.

Watch more success stories from rural Nepal at http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Fgg3s3m-7sQ

We are attending two great science conferences early next year

The ASE conference is an annual must for all science teachers interested in finding out what the latest science resources available are for keeping up to date on current policy and practice.  On 5-7th January we will be there to show teachers the great resources we produce and how they can enhance their science teaching.  If you are attending do please come and see us, we’d love to find out what you like about our work and what else you’d like us to produce,  go to http://www.ase.org.uk/conferences/annual-conference/

Then on 25th February if’s off to the ‘What is science for? ’ conference in Widnes , which will focus on the importance of global issues in science teaching. Sessions will include:

• Andrew Hunt – Making sense of our global interdependence through science
• Prof Malcolm Dando – Bioethics and biological weapons
• Eric Fewster – Science and engineering for relief and development
• Prof Justin Dillon – “Doing” science versus “Being” a scientist: Making sense of young people’s aspirations and attitudes to science
• Prof Justin Dillon (Workshop) – Climate change education within the new National Curriculum: threats and opportunities for teachers and students.

To book for this conference please go to  www.whatissciencefor.eventbrite.com

 

Buried amongst the acres of coverage of the financial crisis and whether or not the UK is in the EU any more, it’s hard to tell exactly what the outcome of the Durban Climate Change Summit really is. That is the problem. Hardly anyone cares any more – or so you would be led to believe. Green house gas emissions are still shooting up despite this global economic crisis. According to the World Bank’s 2010 World Development Report, if all the coal-fired plants scheduled to be built worldwide in the next 25 years come into operation, their lifetime CO2 emissions will equal those of all coal burning since the start of the Industrial Revolution. It hardly bears thinking about.

Flooding in Bangladesh

Durban seems to have set us off on a journey towards a legally binding agreement to reduce greenhouse gas in a decade’s time, but to get everybody even to start seems to have involved accepting delay and avoiding the key decisions about who should make cuts and when. This is in a context where even the International Energy Agency, reckons that we need to have got our investment in low carbon energy infrastructure sorted by 2017 at the latest to have any prospect of hitting the 2°C limit on global temperature rises.

The Durban agreement doesn’t look to me as if it has done anything to help us achieve that. Once again we have ducked the issues and planet and people will pay for it.

Around dawn today, Sunday 11th December, the COP President banged the gavel down on the final session of negotiators at the climate summit in Durban. What was agreed? well, it isn’t a complete disaster. The Kyoto Protocol, the only legally binding agreement to reduce emissions, will continue into a second commitment period. In parallel, a process for building a more comprehensive and ambitious treaty regime was launched – one that will include all countries in binding commitments to reduce emissions. Important decisions were made on adaptation, finance, and technology. On adaptation (the negotations track I have been following for 6 years) there is now a clear framework for supporting developing countries in accessing information to help them adapt, in preparing national adptation plans, and in working towards arrangements for loss and damage following climate change-related disasters such as droughts, floods and hurricanes in the most vulenrable countries. On finance, while arrangements for the Green Cllimate Fund are now agreed – there was no agreement on how to raise money for the fund! and without strong commitments on reducing emissions from the largest polluting countries, no amount of arrangements for adaptation will be effective, in the face of rising temperatures.

So, while the Durban conference avoided total failure, and has perhaps staved off future climate disaster, governments by no means responded adequately to the mounting threat of climate change. The decisions adopted here fall well short of what is needed. It’s high time governments stopped catering to the pressure of the oil and coal lobby, and started acting to protect people and planet.

The climate negotiations, also here at COP17, are based on the understanding that first the industrialised countries should reduce, then the developing countries shall reduce later, as they should not be constrained in their development because they need to solve their poverty problems first.

A side-event  on Friday at the end of the first week of the COP showed a somewhat different side of the big picture: climate mitigation with reduced emissions can go hand in hand with poverty reductions in many developing countries.

At the event, seven representatives from NGOs in the INFORSE network showed successful solutions from their countries on local solutions that can help the poor to get better access to energy and at the same time mitigate climate change.

They told about improved cookstoves from Mozambique that saves 40% of the wood for cooking, Indian biogas plants that replace other fuel for cooking and retain the fertiliser in cow dung, solar lanterns that replace kerosene lamps, Jatropha plants for oil for local power production in Mali, and several other good examples.

The side event went on with proposals for scaling up the successes to national level,  for instance, with reduced investments with subsidies and reduction of taxes & import duties (for solar photovoltaiq panels), with easier permissions to make mini-grids in off-grid areas, and with feed-in tariff for renewables in areas with electric grid. This could partly be financed with climate financing, and could give basic energy access to all for just a fraction of the 100 billion US$/year that the industrialised countries have committed to give to climate mitigation and adaptation in developing countries in 2020.

It is very promising that basic energy access and reduction of poverty  does not need the large increases in CO2 emissions that it caused in industrialised countries during the last 200 years. And if universal energy access with renewable energy could be part of climate agreements, it would give enormous benefits for some of those that need it the most.

On the other hand, universal energy access will not solve the climate crisis. For that we need sharp reductions in the industrialised countries and also actions by the large emitters in the global South. Only then global emissions can peak in the next few years and then be reduced.

The presentations of the side event are online at http://www.inforse.org

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

New Alliance for Food Sovereignty in Africa (AFSA) launches to African beats

It certainly wasn’t an event typically seen during the fortnight of UN climate negotiations here in Durban.  An audience singing joyfully along with women farmers, Southern African youth grinning as they performed traditional dances, and the whooping and ululations ringing around the room, would have been enough to make you remember this day as something rather special and different.

But what really made the 4th of December launch of the Alliance for Food Sovereignty in Africa (AFSA) stand out, was the feeling of inspiration, optimism and empowerment, as 14 Pan-African networks joined together to demand and implement Food Sovereignty for Africa.  After a week of increasingly depressing climate negotiations, with corporate false solutions, and a steady grinding down of expectations, AFSA’s launch and message reminded us all that we are together, we have the solutions, and there is nothing to stop us making them happen.

Of course, it is precisely because of the multiple threats to Africa’s food systems, farmers, communities and ecoystems, that this alliance has come together.  “There are so many challenges facing our continent,” said Anne Maina of the African Biodiversity Network (ABN), one of AFSA’s member networks. “Together AFSA’s member networks represent a huge constituency and we are all in agreement that Food Sovereignty is the way forward to ensure resilient food systems and ecosystems in the face of climate change and destructive development.”

Million Belay of Melca Mahiber, an Ethiopian member of ABN, explained that  “food Sovereignty is an approach to agriculture that is radical, but self-evident too. It holds the interests of small-scale food producers, their communities and ecosystems, as critical to strengthening resilient food systems.  For too long, food policy has focused on yield at any cost – and undermined the very systems and people on which food production depends.  Food Sovereignty is a powerful concept and framework that is clear about embracing solutions, and challenging the threats.”

Agnes Yawe of Participatory Ecological Land Use Management (PELUM), a network with members in 10 countries elaborated further: “The Alliance for Food Sovereignty is working to promote agroecology as a solution for climate change, feeding people, biodiversity, livelihoods and healing the soils.  It is about using and conserving the resources that are freely available to communities. These are appropriate for our economies, and our small scale farmers, who don’t need the expensive chemical inputs that are being pushed on us.”

Food Sovereignty also recognises the enormous value of indigenous knowledge about agriculture and ecosystems.  Mphatheleni Makaulule, an indigenous community leader from Venda in the North of South Africa, expresses the clarity with which her people see climate change and industrialised food systems: “We cannot have health in a sick climate.  In our territories, the soil, water and indigenous forest is already in disorder, and that affects the ecosystem.  The indigenous seeds from the indigenous knowledge are our hope to adapt with this climate change, and this is why we want food sovereignty.”

Amid the celebrations, the groups shared sobering information about the way that false solutions to climate change and hunger are actually a key cause of Africa’s problems. Simon Mwamba of the East African Farmers’ Federation (ESAFF) told the room “The COP17 negotiations should not be used to advance the push for the Green Revolution in Africa, which traps farmers into cycles of debt and poverty.  The green revolution will just enhance the corporate grip over agriculture and farmers, thereby threatening food sovereignty.  Such practices force smallholder farmers to be dependent on agrochemicals, while eroding the seed diversity that Africa needs for resilience to climate change and a food secure future. Genetically Modified (GM) crops will be even worse ”

Nnimmo Bassey of Friends of the Earth Africa added “Climate Change is killing our continent and peoples, but so are the so-called solutions proposed by profit-hungry corporations.  This is why we are coming together as AFSA, to speak out for African solutions to the problems caused by the industrialised North.”

As the gathering sang their last round of the rousing South African soul song “that’s why I’m a farmer now,” we all knew that the challenges ahead are many.  But the energy that swelled around the room has filled all with the optimism that Food Sovereignty can show us the way.

 

 

 

AFSA outline their vision and the need for Food Sovereignty in Africa, in their new report “Food Sovereignty Systems: Feeding the world, regenerating ecosystems, rebuilding local economies, and cooling the Planet – all at the same time”. 

I have just received the annual report from Practical Action’s work in Nepal. It’s full of great facts, photos and some stories.

But for now I want to share the story of Bir, because I think it’s great and because it shows I think how hard people have sometimes to try before they succeed.

Bir’s home is in Nepal but he moved to India in search of a better job. He is still a young man and I imagine when he left it was with high hopes and dreams of a better future. He was there 9 years but even so returned home empty handed.
He says “having no opportunity and alternatives at home I migrated to India along with my neighbours. Despite working every day I failed to earn enough “
Back at home he once again tried every way to eke out a living from his small farm. He couldn’t get any other work.

After 8 months he started to work with Practical Action. He learnt about better forms of agriculture, compost making, nursery management and how to grow crops that could be sold.

After the training he wanted to test his skills so planted ginger, he was careful having so little he didn’t want to risk his money but “Fortunately my ginger turned out excellent and I sold 950KG of ginger for Nepalese rupee 28,000 (£244) in the market. I had never ever earned this much money at once.”

Bir has changed his life. He is now sharing his knowledge and currently helping 60 farmers also benefit from the learning and experience he has.

What I loved about this case study was the reality of the situation, the fact that Bir was helped but actually more importantly that he has gone on to help others – this pass it on approach is central to Practical Action. And the final part of the story where the person Bir has been talking to says that Bir now exudes confidence.

Someone who maybe came back from India with a feeling of failure is now a confident leader in his community able to help others.

Practical Action, Nepal annual report

Climate change for a long time now has stopped being a question of ‘if…’ and more a matter of ‘how much’ (and the answer to that currently isn’t very nice).

To deal with this, enter technologies. They fall into three categories:

1) Mitigation – reducing emission from human activities, from home efficiency devices to renewables and nuclear energy;
2) Adaptation – ways of dealing with the impacts of varying rainfall, temperature, sea level rise and increased frequency and magnitude of disaster events. Most urgent for the poorest groups and those in low lying states where the most vulnerability lies, but planning is also under way for London, Durban, and other developed cities.
3) Geo-engineering – large and unproven projects to remove carbon from the atmosphere or reflect the solar radiation. Includes; ocean iron fertilization projects; mirrors in space; pipes; dreams.

Arguably, the most iconic climate change related technology is the wind turbine, used for clean energy generation. Less is known about the possibility of mirrors in space, and probably for the best. But adaptation technologies are equally mysterious for many people in developed countries. This is springs from a lack of awareness that people in developing countries feel climate change most acutely – “first and worst”.

Nevertheless, adaptation is happening spontaneously as people respond to the altered conditions they find in their area. Technologies, whether used to diversify livelihoods or protect assets, can make this easier, but people will also have to adapt their technologies in order to keep them appropriate.

Enter climate uncertainty – not knowing precisely how climate change will manifest in a specific area over the next two-three decades – and you have a problem that requires new ways of thinking about technology and a new way of doing development.

Today’s Geek Club (Practical Action’s online discussion forum) from 10am to 4pm will discuss the issues of technology for adaptation. This is set against the back drop of the current round of climate negotiations in Durban, South Africa, where countries are discussing proposals for ‘technology transfer’ to developing countries to support adaptation. Come and join us as we consider the how, what, and why not of adapting to climate change.