New World Bank lending plan could avoid environmental concerns

The World Bank has a new plan set in place on how they are going to lend money out to poorer countries. Many environmental NGOs are criticizing the new plan because it does not take into account how the loans will effect the planet.

The World Bank wants to use the results a project achieve as the biggest determining factor on if the money is lent out. The environmentalists say that this could include projects that could harm the natural resources.

From the Guardian, writer John Vidal explains the controversy further.

The proposal, called A New Instrument to Advance Development Effectiveness: Programme-for-Results Lending (P4R), would lend money according to results achieved by projects. The proposal was published in February, and phase II consultations ended recently. Board approval is expected by the end of the year. Some of the NGOs that keep an eye on the bank's activities – International Rivers, Friends of the Earth US and Bank Information Centre – say the clear intention is to allow countries to sidestep dozens of tough, and expensive, social and environmental safeguards which recipients of World Bank loans must normally meet.

According to the proposals, the new instrument would eliminate or greatly dilute 25 existing safeguards and policies. They include those that apply to forced resettlement, natural habitats, physical and cultural resources, indigenous peoples, forests, safety of dams, natural habitats, and environmental action plans. Most of these policies have taken years of pressure by NGOs to secure.

The bank, which lends more than $50bn a year, is one of the world's largest providers of loans for mega-projects, many of which are particularly damaging to local people, the environment and the climate. If countries wanting to build giant dams, roads, power and water projects are to be largely freed from acting in a socially responsible way, the NGOs fear bank lending could lead to more forced evictions and human rights abuses.

Green light for health, wealth.... and the environment

Selling green sources of light to the under-developed world is not just an environmental issue it is also a health, and financial issue. The poor spend more than they need to for the fuel for lighting. On top of the cost, the people also breathe in the fumes from the burnt off kerosene or indoor wood fires.

The New York Times cites a statistic that says that 40 billion dollars is spent by those on the "bottom billion" of the wealth pyramid on kerosene. To help save the poor money and improve their health in the long run some entrepreneurs are offering to sell the green solar or LED lamps. Writer Lisa Friedman introduces us to their efforts.

"If you compare what the poor spend on kerosene, it's 10,000 times more than what we pay when we use basic electricity from the grid. It's crazy when you think that the poorest people spend the most, and get so much poor light and poor health in return" said Patrick Avato, an energy specialist in Kenya with the International Finance Corp. (IFC).

Avato manages a 3-year-old program called Lighting Africa, based in Kenya, that tries to help the private sector provide clean and affordable lighting on the electricity-starved continent. The organization -- like the Lumina Project, which is based out of Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory -- is part of a small but growing field of market-based initiatives targeting what economists call the "bottom of the pyramid" consumers.

Ned Tozun, president and co-founder of the portable solar lighting company D.Light, said nonprofit groups have done tremendous work bringing solar lighting to poor villages. But he also argued that the charity route can't sustain the infrastructure communities need -- like maintenance education or supplies of new batteries -- if they are going to stick with the clean lighting.

"It's inherently non-scalable," Tozun said. He described visiting villages where people had been given free solar lamps, only to return to kerosene when the batteries ran out and no one in the village sold new ones.

"What we're seeking to do is to create a sustainable, long-scale solution to the problem," he said. "This is a very high-tech product for people living in rural areas, so it requires a lot of education and monitoring."

Tozun said he his partner Sam Goldman have delivered solar lamps to about 1.7 million customers at an average price of $20 apiece. The company's goal is lighting the homes of 50 million people by 2015.

Avato said he's convinced it can happen. Companies already are well on their way to helping Lighting Africa meet its short-term goal of delivering 500,000 high-quality lanterns by 2012. World Bank officials note that just two years ago, there were only a handful of products available for the African market, most costing more than $50. Today, there are 79 products, a growing number of them costing less than $25.

According to a marketing trends report issued this year, the World Bank estimates that the African market for off-grid renewable lighting will double by 2015, and as many as 6 million households on the continent will own solar portable lights.

Bringing green power to the poor

Many in the under-developed world who live in poverty are not linked into an energy grid. Living without a steady source of power means they have to spend a good part of their time gathering energy sources for cooking, light and heat. Firewood takes time to gather, and kerosene and charcoal can be expensive for those who live on less than one dollar a day.

In a new commentary, Hugh Whalan says that bringing green sources of energy to those in poverty can help them climb out of it. Whalan is a part of Energy In Common that specializes in green mcrocredit services. We found Whalan's commentary at the Huffington Post.

Small scale green energy projects, starting with something as simple as a $10 LED lamp, represent an exciting opportunity to quickly make a real difference to energy access for the poor.

Consider the hypothetical story of Ophelia who lives in West Africa on the fringe of a city. She runs a small bakery and earns an average of $4 per day. She buys kerosene for light, charcoal for cooking, and every day she spends a few hours collecting firewood. The purchase of a LED lamp eliminates the need for her to buy kerosene, and because the lamp can provide many hours of light at no cost, she can open her bakery for longer hours - meaning more revenue for her. The LED lamp pays for itself in less than two months. Ophelia then purchases a fuel efficient cook stove for her bakery. The cook stove uses half as much firewood as her older cook stove, and because the stove gets hotter faster, it saves Ophelia 1 hour a day of cooking time and she is able to serve her customers quicker. Ophelia really likes the stove because it doesn't produce smoke, which hurt her eyes and irritated her customers, and it is built well so it does not burn her children's hands when they touch the exterior.

Anecdotal stories of the financial, health, and productivity benefits of small scale energy projects, such as Ophelia's, are supported by the emergence of an industry which focuses exclusively on selling energy to the very poor - people who earn $1 to $6 a day. Companies, such as Barefoot Power and D. Light, focus on manufacturing and selling small scale LED lamps and solar systems to the poor. Both intend to reach tens of millions of people in the coming years. Other organizations, such as StoveTec, are pioneering the introduction of extremely affordable and fuel efficient cook stoves. These efforts not only provide enormous value to the populations buying them, but also bring a climate dividend by reducing reliance on fuels that generate greenhouse gases.

As the bulk of global greenhouse gas emissions increases over the next three decades are projected to come from developing countries, green energy represents a way to bring the poor out of poverty in an environmentally friendly way. This is important because climate change is projected to disproportionately affect the poor, and further hinder efforts to eradicate poverty.

Oxfam warns against raiding funds for climate change

Oxfam is warning against diverting funds away from poverty fighting to pay for climate change funding.

A new report from Oxfam estimates that 4.5 million children could die if funds are raided from poverty fighting measures, and are used instead for global warming. Oxfam is calling for the international community to raise another $50 billion dollars a year for environment measures.

From this Press Association article that we found at The Guardian, we read more of Oxfam's warning against aid "raiding".

And it says the money must be provided in addition to the 0.7% of GDP developed nations have pledged as aid to improve the lives of people in some of the world's poorest countries – or efforts to tackle poverty will stall.

A report by Oxfam warns that diverting $50bn from existing aid pledges to fund climate measures would lead to the death of 4.5 million children, while 75 million fewer youngsters would be likely to go to school and 8.6 million fewer people would have access to HIV/Aids treatment.

It could prove a major setback to efforts to meet the Millennium Development Goals which aim to end hunger and poverty and boost education, health, gender equality and environmental sustainability by 2015, the report warns.

Oxfam said it was already seeing people going without food, pulling their children out of school or selling livestock to pay for debts caused by failing crops and other climate-related problems.

According to the aid agency, just three countries including the UK are in favour of additional funding for climate measures – and the issue could prove to be a deal breaker in the upcoming crunch talks aimed at agreeing global emissions cuts in Copenhagen in December.

A failure by developed countries to address the problems surrounding adaptation funding has led to distrust between the two sides and could undermine efforts to secure a deal to cut emissions.

2009 World Development Report from the World Bank

This year's Global Development Report from the World Bank has a lot to say about global warming. The Bank is calling on the world to act differently in regards to climate change and begin to put development money into green energy sources. The Bank says that the effects of climate change through higher temperatures, flooding and natural disasters will be felt first by under-developed nations.

However, the Bank does this while admitting it funds coal-fired plants for development. This enters the Bank onto a double edged sword of development. Sometimes, coal-fired plants could be the most viable option for development. When the costs of bringing green energy to an under-developed nation are too great, and the need for energy by those who don't have it is even greater. However, the coal plants could do harm to developing nations if they do contribute to climate change.

From The Times analysis of the report, writer Ben Webster looks into coal projects the World Bank funds. For the full report, you can download it from the World Bank's website.

The 260-page report advises against “locking the world into high-carbon infrastructure” but makes no mention of the bank’s plans to subsidise coal power plants in India, South Africa, Botswana and other developing countries.

Last year the bank and its partner, the Asian Development Bank, approved $850million in loans to finance a coal-fired plant in Gujarat, western India.

The Environmental Defence Fund, a US lobby group, said that the plant, the first of nine planned in India, would be one of the biggest new sources of greenhouse gases on Earth, emitting 26.7million tonnes of CO2 a year for the next 50 years.

The bank is also contributing $5billion towards South Africa’s power generation expansion plan, which includes six coal plants.

Marianne Fay, the bank’s chief economist for sustainable development, said that coal was the cheapest and most secure way to deliver electricity to the 1.6billion people without it. She said: “There are a lot of poor countries which have coal reserves and for them it’s the only option. The [bank’s] policy is to continue funding coal to the extent that there is no alternative and to push for the most efficient coal plants possible. Frankly, it would be immoral at this stage to say, ‘We want to have clean hands, therefore we are not going to touch coal’.”

Tim Jones, policy officer of the World Development Movement, which campaigns to reduce poverty, said: “The World Bank is acting in the interests of Western countries and companies and not in the long-term interests of the world’s poor.

“It is an absolute disgrace that money meant for clean technologies will actually be used for building new coal power stations. Every pound of green aid that will be spent on funding coal power through the World Bank is money that should be spent on supporting renewable energy in developing countries.”

The bank said that it had lent $5billion for fossil fuel projects in the past three years and $11billion for “low-carbon” alternatives.

Oxfam blames poor farming yields in Nepal on climate change

The charity Oxfam says extreme food shortages in Nepal are to due to climate change. Oxfam says that weather pattern changes has effected farmers yields in the country.

The poverty fighting charity calls on government and NGO's to provide assistance to rural farmers during the upcoming planting season by introducing new crop varieties and assistance with irrigation.

From this Associated Press story hosted at Google, writer Binaj Gurubacharya details Oxfam's statement.

Changing weather patterns have dramatically affected crop production in Nepal, leaving farmers unable to properly feed themselves and pushing them into debt, Oxfam International said in a report released in Katmandu.

The British aid agency described the situation as "deeply worrying."

"Communities told us crop production is roughly half that of previous years ... Last year many could only grow enough (food) for one month's consumption," said Oxfam's Wayne Gum, adding that less precipitation has been forecast this winter, which will make the situation worse.

More extreme temperatures, drier winters and delays in summer monsoons have all compounded the situation, the report said.

More than 3.4 million people in Nepal are estimated to require food assistance, and food stocks in farming communities will last only a few months, it warned.

Oxfam said Nepal will likely suffer more frequent droughts because of climate change. River levels will decline due to the reduced rainfall and glacial retreat, making it harder to irrigate crops and provide water for livestock.

"The predicted impacts of climate change will heighten existing vulnerabilities, inequalities and exposure to hazards," the report said.

Comment: Climate change effects on food security

President of the Society of Landscape Architects of Nigeria, Niyi Kehinde, analyzes the effects of climate change on African food production. Kehinde observes that a couple of countries have already experienced a decrease of rainfall that is attributed to the climate change theory. We found Kenhinde's analysis at All Africa.

The topical issue now is the alarm raised on food shortage. Africa indeed is in trouble. Africa has been a continent of drought in parts for decades. Climate change may in fact be the last straw that will break the camels back. This is so because food supplement from other lands may not be readily available any more due to global shortage. Can Africa indeed survive the onslaught of global food shortage and global warming. Here is the answer.

"Because of its poverty, its dependence on locally grown food, recurrent droughts and floods, the civil unrest and political instability of failed states and diseases like malaria and AIDS pandemic, parts of Africa are in crisis or live on the edge of crisis. Global warming will make coping with these problems worse in some cases much worse"(EEN)

Since Africa largely depends on rain fed agriculture for her existence, any disruption in the amount of rainfall available to Africa will definitely spell doom.

The reality though scary, is that global warming (climate change) has been projected to reduce rainfall in even areas now known as water-scare environment by between 5% - 20%.

Countries like Niger, Chad, Sudan, Burkina Faso are definitely endangered already. The situation will be exacerbated if further reduction in these countries are experienced.

Countries like Nigeria, Cameroon, Ghana are already bearing a lot of burden on behalf of the sub-Saharan countries. This writer believes that until a country like Nigeria includes Chad, Niger, Burkina Faso in her food budget and production, she (Nigeria) will continue to experience the hunger -induced influx of citizens of the named countries in to Nigeria. Now that food scarcity is predicted for the next decades, how many of these 'aliens' will Nigeria support. The Xenophobia going on in South Africa has to do with the matter of the stomach. South Africans believe that foreigners especially Zimbabweans who flee their country to avoid hunger are dislocating them from their own livelihood. Africa has been described as a top notcher among the failed states of the world.

World Bank Criticized on Environmental Efforts

from the New York Times

By ANDREW C. REVKIN

The World Bank and its partners need to do a far better job of considering the environmental effects of projects they finance in poor countries, its internal review group concludes in a new report.

The review, released Tuesday, examined some of the $400 billion in investments in nearly 7,000 projects from 1990 to 2007. It found that recent pledges for environmental sustainability by the bank and sister institutions, including the International Finance Corporation, were often not put into practice when dollars were turned into dams, pipelines, palm plantations and the like.

The report is available at worldbank.org/oed.

The authors of the 181-page environmental report, the first by the bank’s Independent Evaluation Group since 2002, said it was crucial for the bank and its partners to intensify their focus on measurable environmental protection, given rising vulnerability to environmental risks and the increasing flow of financing for projects related to climate change.

“They need to begin to see the inextricable link between sustaining environment and reducing poverty,” Vinod Thomas, the director general of the evaluation group, said in an interview. “It is clear now from the Amazon to India that if environmental sustainability is not raised as a priority, then all bets are off.”

The report by the internal group included a response from the bank’s management that acknowledged some of the gaps while asserting that in many areas it was already moving to improve its environmental accounting and find ways to make sure that beneficiaries — developing countries and private banks and businesses — changed practices as well.

Cheryl Gray, the director of the review group for the World Bank, said the lack of consistent internal tracking of the environmental facets of projects was an indicator of how much work needed to be done.

The World Bank Group approved its first set of common environmental standards in 2001, for the first time making environmental stewardship part of its core mission of reducing poverty.

But the new evaluation found a persistent lack of environmental focus in each step along the lending chain, from the priorities that shape development projects to the environmental standards and monitoring required in the field.

Link to full article. May expire in future.

Water crisis in Bangladesh

from the Guardian

The Guardian is running an International Development Journalism competition. This is an excerpt from one of the semifinalists. - Kale

by Luke Tredget

On an expanse of muddy beach in the Chittagong region of Bangladesh, a twisted mess of metal and concrete stands alone and adrift from any human development, as if a relic from a lost civilization. This is the brutalised remains of what only 10 years ago was a bold symbol of humanitarian development in the area.

One of dozens of Red Cross anti-cyclone shelters built throughout the acutely vulnerable coastal regions, the stilted concrete structure towered proudly over a village and offered potential shelter to 1,000 people. Before it was built people had to battle tropical storms by clinging to trees while the scattered remains of corrugated iron shacks blew around their heads whilst their livestock drowned below. Now the shelter lies ruined, and the village it served has disappeared completely, its inhabitants forced to join the growing number of "climate refugees" that have helped make Dhaka the second fastest-growing city in the world. The beached shelter, once a symbol of progress, exists now only as a stark reminder that the best efforts of aid agencies and the international community to alleviate poverty in Bangladesh could well be completely overshadowed by the effects of climate change.

Eight years on from the declaration of the Millennium Development Goals, Bangladesh may well have stood as an example of the ability for preventative action to seriously blunt the severity of mass human suffering. Nowhere in the world are large-scale disasters more frequent, varied and devastating. Since independence in 1971, the country has endured almost 200 disaster events that have caused more than 500,000 deaths and adversely affected approximately 500 million people - so many of its 140 million population will have experienced multiple disasters. Bangladesh suffers cyclones, storm surges, droughts, tornadoes, earthquakes, epidemics, famines and floods. Unsurprisingly, exposure to these multitudinous risks are not distributed evenly but are heaped on the 60 million Bangladeshis that live in extreme poverty, and in particular the women, children and elderly.

As well as problems, Bangladesh does not lack the presence of organisations intent on providing solutions. Although a burgeoning export industry has allowed the country to shrug off its aid-dependant label, it remains something of a hearth for the agents of international development. Of the 13 UK-based charities that make up the Disasters and Emergency Committee, 12 have major projects in the country, and these are joined by dozens of other bodies from across the world that are committed to tackling the constant threats that hang over the Bangladeshi people.

Given the abundance of problems and committed agencies it seems reasonable to imagine that serious inroads would have been made into the levels of poverty and acute suffering, but the opposite is the case. Any analysis of the complex interchange between aid, development and poverty alleviation in Bangladesh points to the same worrying conclusion; that the progress made on several fronts stands to be completely overshadowed by successive problems that have their origin not in the vicissitudes of politics but in the insurmountable power of nature.

Although estimates differ, there is a degree of scientific consensus that Bangladesh is rapidly disappearing into the sea. Increasing world temperatures are causing sea levels to rise and eat away at the southern mouth of the Ganges delta at a rate that will inevitably lead to the displacement of millions of people. A single degree celsius increase in world temperatures - which many predict over the next 50 years - would distort the shape of Bangladesh beyond recognition, but already the effects of rising sea levels are rendering coastal regions inhospitable. The salinisation of farmland caused by tidal surges have made the growth of rice - the traditional staple both in trade and sustenance - impossible. Salt is also seeping relentlessly into fresh water supplies, intensifying scarcity problems in a country where nearly a quarter of deaths are attributed to water-borne diseases. These issues are compounding the problems faced by people who are already exposed to frequent and large-scale natural disasters, and as such the massive movement of people from the coastal regions to the cities seems set to increase.

Link to full article. May expire in future.

Fight against poverty, climate change through forest: Experts

from the Hindu

Mumbai (PTI): Calling for a new kind of forest partnership, experts have said that a real breakthrough in the World Bank-nurtured idea of global forest partnership is possible only if it reflected the views and needs of local stakeholders including forest dwellers.

An emerging initiative could pave the way for fundamental change in forest management, boosting efforts to fight both poverty and climate change, according to research published today by the U K-based International Institute for Environment and Development (IIED) said.

The World Bank-nurtured idea is of a global forest partnership that links local and global processes and promotes decision-making on the international stage that reflects the view and needs of local stakeholders such as forest dwellers.

IIED consulted widely on the WB's idea and the 72 page report is based on responses from more than 600 forest experts to IIED's survey or those participated in focus groups in Brazil, China, Ghana, Guyana, India, Russia and Mozambique, as well as at international meetings.

A majority agreed a new partnership was needed to protect forests and forest-based livelihoods, but pointed out ways that should diverge from the bank's initial idea if it is to really serve local needs on an equitable basis with the rapidly changing global forestry agenda.

IIED also reviewed more than 50 existing initiatives to identify the proposed alliance's potential partners and the gaps it could fill. The consultation identified key features that would make a global partnership and truly progressive way for international forestry to work. It should focus on empowering primary 'stakeholders' including forest dwellers so that their rights, knowledge and needs are centre-stage.

"It should greatly improve flows of finance to activities that support local needs alongside global public goods such as carbon storage. It should interact effectively with other sectors such as water and agriculture, where the underlying causes of forest problems and the seeds of sustainable solutions are often lodged," the report said.

Bass, one of the authors of the study, said: "Without these building blocks, the ambitious partnership idea is unlikely to succeed. This is a new opportunity to develop an empowering stakeholder-focused partnership that can attract real investent to manage forests sustainably. It has potential to harness an enormous groundswell of energy to manage forests so they can help address local poverty and global climate change."

"Right now, Western governments are planning large climate and forest funds. The partnership could identify the best ways to invest these funds for long-term good," he said. Existing efforts to make forestry work for the poor have not generated the results expected, he said, adding the desire to create a new global forest partnership that connects local and global processes and people is an ambitious break from tradition that could create new ways to do business in the forest sector.

Another author Mayers, who is also head of IIED's Natural Resources Group, said, "World Bank should be praised for breaking with normal practice and supporting the independent scrutiny of its plans through engagement with a broad range of stakeholders."

"What the bank must now avoid is trying to drive the partnership from the top down. Instead it must act as the facilitator, providing financial and other support in a hands-off way to enable an independent alliance to be built from the bottom up, bringing together local and regional partners with global organisations."

The report urges the formation of a 'development group' of forest, environment and development leaders, mainly from the South and credible to government, civil society and the private sector, who can come together and contribute to the development of the initiative.

They would be supported by a small group of progressive international institutions in their efforts to forge a new kind of local-global partnership. Welcoming the report, World Bank's Forest Advisor, Gerhard Dieterle said, "World Bank is happy to hear there is consensus on a new approach from a broad variety of forest stakeholders from around the world."

Link to full article. May expire in future.

[comment] A way of life is feeling the heat

from the BBC

International development policies are undermining the long term survival of some of the globe's poorest communities, argues Masego Madzwamuse. In this week's Green Room, she says the skills and knowledge needed to survive in the world's harsh drylands are being sacrificed in the name of progress.

The world's poorest of the poor live in the toughest areas of the planet - the drylands.

These areas all have key factors in common: water is scarce, and rainfall is unpredictable - or it rains only during a very short period every year.

Drylands cover more than 40% of the Earth's surface and are home to more than two billion people.

These areas are also home to a disproportionate number of people without secure access to food.

Why are 43% of the world's cultivated lands found in dry areas? And why have decades of development not led to significant improvements?

Rather than improving, it would appear that the situation is getting worse, with more frequent droughts, such as those in Ethiopia and Northern Kenya.

Another important issue that strikes me about drylands is that these areas have been completely neglected despite being the world's home of the poor.

While one international agreement - the United Nations Convention to Combat Desertification (UNCCD) - has been dedicated solely to the drylands of this world, little attention has been paid by the media, development or conservation organisations, or the international donor community.

The only time attention is paid is when droughts (a regular climatic phenomenon in such lands) are allowed to proceed to famine, which in this day and age can only be the result of political failure.

Humanitarian and food relief follow the TV headlines, creating more dependencies rather than developing viable and sustainable economies.

Dry heat

It is expected that these areas will be hardest hit by climate change in the future.

The influential Stern Review noted that a 3C (5.4F) increase in global temperature was likely to result in an extra 150-550m people becoming exposed to the risk of hunger.

The review also said that climate change was likely to result in up to four billion people suffering water shortages.

The world's drylands are likely to bear the brunt of this gloomy prognosis.

In my opinion, the world will only successfully fight poverty and achieve the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs) if we pay more attention to these unique ecosystems and learn from the mistakes of the past.

This means moving away from a colonially biased view of drylands.

It is unfortunately still common to equate drylands with deserts and wastelands, as these areas might not look at first sight very productive, especially during a period of drought.

So, what are the ingredients for success in developing the poorest regions of this world?

First of all, development interventions need to be adapted to the realities of drylands.

Crop production, whether rain-fed or irrigated, will always be a limited opportunity. Yet the major effort in "development" is a green revolution for the desert.

Has half a century of development not taught us the reality for cultivation in the drylands?

Livestock is much more suitable to arid environments and more likely to support rural livelihoods in arid regions.

For instance, Turkana pastoralists of Kenya know that livestock is their mainstay, even though they have some of the fastest maturing varieties of sorghum in the world.

Secondly, we should work with the knowledge and institutional systems of the people who have lived there for centuries.

We need to understand why they have complex common property systems for land and resource management that may span and cover very large territories, and guarantee that a variety of stakeholders can use these scarce resources and survive.

It is important to also understand why they place more emphasis on livestock than crops. Livestock is a better converter of biomass in such harsh lands.

We must not sweep aside this knowledge and experience. Instead, we should build on those systems and support them with so-called "modern and scientific knowledge" to improve productivity and create market opportunities.

Yet we ignore their complex risk management and resilience enhancement strategies.

One classical example has been the numerous efforts to use inappropriate policies to settle nomadic people and restrict their movements.

Nomadic livestock herding has been a key sustainable survival strategy in the more arid areas. Once grass and water become scarce, these communities move with their animals to the next area.

Thus, they are able to use resources sustainably without leaving themselves exposed to the effects of droughts.

While livestock farming in drylands contributes significantly to national economies, most subsidies go to unsustainable ranching projects rather than the small livestock holders.

National treasures

Pastoralism is one of the few land use systems that can be compatible with wildlife conservation.

Yet where are many of the world's national parks? More than 70% of Kenya's are in drylands, which includes a number of important dry season grazing areas for pastoralists.

Dryland peoples depend on the surrounding environment, and they should be able to benefit from conservation through community conserved areas and tourism, rather than having their best lands taken away from them in the name of conservation.

Thirdly, nature's contribution to the survival of the poor needs to be recognised as an important asset.

It is nature that provides food, fodder for livestock, construction material for shelter, medicinal plants, emergency food and climate regulation (shade is highly valued in 40C).

Opportunities for sustainable development exist.

Sudan is the world's largest producer of gum arabic, a principal ingredient of colas and chewing gum, which stems from a 2,000-year agroforestry tradition.

And the arid lands of the Horn of Africa produce the highest quality frankincense and myrrh in the world.

In one district in Botswana that has an average annual rainfall of just 200mm, dryland ecosystem services contributed $190,000 (£95,000) to the national income. Almost 50% of this came from wild plants such as the medicinal devil's claw.

Instead of building on this natural capital, development and government interventions tend to replace and disregard them.

Even worse, they are not reflected in the national GDP figures. As a consequence, most policy frameworks provide incentives for their exploitation rather than their sustainable use.

Masego Madzwamuse is the IUCN's regional programme development officer and focal person for southern African drylands

The Green Room is a series of opinion pieces on environmental topics running weekly on the BBC News website

'State of the Planet' Summit Concludes Climate Change Causes Poverty

from the Voice of America

By Victoria Cavaliere

International concern is mounting that global warming could put millions of people at risk through drought, floods and other extreme weather. A group of economists, scientists, and international leaders met in New York recently to discuss how climate change poses a particular risk to developing countries, and what solutions can be taken by rich and poor countries alike. Victoria Cavaliere has more from VOA's New York Bureau.

Rich and poor countries generally agree that climate change must be addressed, but often differ on how to go about it. Developed nations, including the United States, Britain and Japan, have focused on curbing their own greenhouse gas emissions, caused mainly from burning fossil fuels for energy. Poor countries are calling for assistance in dealing with climate-related impacts, like food shortages and drought, while also meeting energy needs to spur economic growth.

A summit on "the State of the Planet" hosted by Columbia University examined the link between poverty and climate change, and called for a new, global plan of action to deal with the two issues.

Conference participants argued that poor countries remain especially at risk to the effects of global warming. They say if left unchecked, global warming could spur conflict and puts millions of people at risk drought, mudslides, food shortages and illness.

Former United Nations Secretary General Kofi Annan said climate change is exacerbating the problems faced by poor nations.

"The international community must work to arrest this downward spiral," said Kofi Annan. "Developed countries carry the greatest responsibility for climate change yet the least developed suffer its impact the most. Developed countries must accept their responsibility to help poor countries deal with these changes, and must do so as a matter of urgency."

Economists at the conference focused on what steps could be taken to lessen the impact of climate change as the population expands and energy needs rise around the world.

Topping the list of recommendations was the promotion of clean energy technology, including solar, wind and hydrogen power.

Jill Shankleman, a consultant to the World Bank's political risk insurance arm, says global hunger for oil and gas will not decrease in the near future. She said eradicating poverty and addressing conflict in developing countries requires new energy initiatives and a new approach to managing resources.

"Although the awareness of climate change is expanding, for the next few decades we are also going to see the expansion of the oil and gas industry in many, many new places," said Jill Shankleman. "This will happen until the emerging, developing countries secure access to the oil and energy they need. So what's to be done? We need a new paradigm that explicitly links resource extraction with development."

Economist Jeffrey Sachs said addressing climate change requires a firm commitment by rich countries to also address extreme poverty and the growing global population.

He said current benchmarks set by rich countries for cutting greenhouse gas emissions are insufficient. He also argues the international community is unprepared for the changes that are taking place in the world, like soaring energy and food prices.

He says economic systems need to be revamped and more money and attention should go toward pursuing sustainable, renewable energy sources.

"But, the science only takes us part of the way," said Jeffrey Sachs. "Linking the science to all of the rest that has to happen involves government, business, international organizations, civil society and each of us in our own communities and our own households. That's an extraordinarily complex challenge."

A mountain to climb? How pico-hydro helps rural development in the Himalayas

from Renewable Energy World

by Alex Zahnd and Kimber McKay

A pico-hydro power plant for elementary lighting in a remote and impoverished Himalayan village in Nepal shows just what can be achieved with rural electrification using renewables. Alex Zahnd and Kimber McKay explore one of the four pillars of rural development.

Nepal, with a population of 28.5 million, is a developing country that the UN Development Programme (UNDP) ranks 138th of 177 countries using the Human Development Index. Some 80% of the population live in rural areas that are difficult to access and, with an estimated US $1500 annual GDP per capita, Nepal ranks among the lowest of the word’s economies at 197th out of 225.

Urban Nepalis earn many times more than people in rural areas, and there is minimal cohesion between them. In the context of this diversity of living standards, at a rural electrification project in Humla in north-west Nepal, per capita GDP stands out at just $72 annually.

In terms of energy, traditional biomass fuel consumption in Nepal represents 93% of total usage nationwide, and 100% in remote mountain areas such as Humla, some 17 days walk away from the nearest road. With an average annual per capita electricity consumption of only 91 kWh, accessible only to about 25% of the nation’s population, Nepal ranks very low globally in terms of the population’s articulation with the grid. Furthermore, compared to developed nations infant mortality is high, ranging from 86 to 53 per 1000 live births for the poorest and richest 20% respectively. Humla district is known as a permanent food shortage area and surveys estimate that 65% of Humla’s children under five are malnourished.

A holistic approach to development

A Holistic Community Development (HCD) approach for the people and communities living in the remote, impoverished Karnali region of Humla has been developed.

The conceptual basis of HCD projects is that various needs, as identified by the target population, cannot be addressed simply using a single approach. Rather, primary health and resource-dependent needs have to be addressed in a comprehensive, multi-pronged approach. Villagers articulate their primary needs and help to design projects that efficiently, sustainably and holistically address them.

For instance, installing small scale electricity projects benefit health through the reduction of indoor atmospheric pollution from open fire cooking, heating and lighting. They also benefit education, with light for non-formal-education evening classes for mothers and out-of school children, and the environment through the reduction of usage of biomass. However, by only attending to one piece of the overall picture, other critical needs can be neglected, such as a lack of a human waste removal system, and contaminated drinking water. In such an eventuality, the installation of lights will be of marginal benefit and the potential health benefits resulting from the new lighting system could not be clearly demonstrated.

The Family of four

Community development experience of over a decade shows that villagers define their most urgent, regular household needs as: minimal electric light inside the home, a smokeless stove for cooking and heating, a toilet nearby, and clean drinking water accessible in the village for every person. These four demands evolved into the ‘The family of four’ concept. The ‘family’ is a set of innovations that are installed, as a group, into each home in a target village, and includes a smokeless metal stove, solar lighting, a pit latrine, and access to a safe drinking water system. Common and easily treated conditions prevail in the target communities, and render life in this already challenging biophysical environment utterly miserable for many villagers. Scabies and other skin conditions due to unhygienic living conditions, chronic and often severe upper and lower respiratory chest infections primarily due to indoor air pollution from cooking over open fires, gastro-intestinal worms and other parasites due to a lack human waste disposal systems, and dysenteries and giardia infections from polluted drinking water are some of the primary conditions affecting people in these remote mountain communities.

To address only one of these problems with a technical solution might be attractive to a donor with a limited mandate, time-frame, or budget. While recognizing that limitations such as these are a reality for many donors, experience shows that a single-pronged approach is neither sustainable nor beneficial in the long-term. The lure of the single-pronged approach – its simplicity, the possibility of completing the project within a single fiscal year for results to be reported back to the donor, and so on – must be resisted. The ‘family of four’ HCD approach addresses the key features of village life which are responsible for primary health problems. The synergetic benefits of the components are consequently many times more powerful than individual projects, such as ‘just’ light, or ‘just’ clean water, or ‘just’ better sanitary conditions when implemented alone.

Electricity, one of the family of Four

Any rural village electrification, in order to be relevant and sustainable, needs to be embedded in a long-term holistic community development project, as electricity is ‘just’ one of the four pillars of the ‘family’ concept.

With no grid connection in sight, the communities in Humla need to tap their locally available renewable energy resources. In the target village for this project, water flowing year-round in a nearby stream, plus an average of 5–6 kWh/m2 per day of sunshine, provide significant potential renewable resources suitable for remote area power supply purposes, in this case providing minimal indoor lighting services. In order to understand the local population’s need for indoor lighting, it is important to understand how homes were lit previously and what activities occurred in homes after dark.

In Humla, all families traditionally use jharro – a resin-rich wooden stick from high altitudes – to light indoor living spaces. Burning jharro provides very smoky and minimal indoor lighting. Keeping this history in mind, it would be inappropriate to plan and design an electrification system for this context using the conventional approach. Despite the fact that typical systems supplying 100 W power consumption per family and using incandescent light bulbs are conventionally pursued in Nepal and elsewhere, such a project, for a remote and impoverished area like Humla, cannot be sustainable.The sheer amount of equipment and machinery that would need to be air lifted into the village makes such a project difficult. Additionally, initial project costs and the ongoing maintenance costs would be far beyond the local community’s economic capacity, making this approach infeasible in the long-term.

Example after example of development projects worldwide have shown that local people have to grow into technological and subsequent behavioural changes slowly, for the simple, and perhaps obvious – but rarely admitted – fact that traditions and cultures change much more slowly than new technologies can be introduced. Project planners, in collaboration with local people, have to understand and openly discuss the local cultural milieu, attitudes toward change and the various factors that may predict the ability of each householder to accept and integrate new technologies into their daily lives.

The first time that an electrification system is introduced into a community, a step-by-step approach needs to be taken, starting with minimal, low-level energy services, initially providing indoor lighting only.

Such an approach cuts down on equipment size and weight, saves on infrastructure and transport costs, and increases the chance that local people’s participation will be effective and sustainable. Because the step-by-step approach begins small, it also means that misuse of the system has a relatively small and easily addressed set of consequences. It is much easier to teach people who are not familiar with the basic concepts behind the electrification technology how to use, maintain, and trouble-shoot simple, small systems than large, complex ones. Futhermore, through the participatory planning, building and installation of the rural electricification system with local people, villagers learn new skills and competencies, and develop a strong sense of ownership for the new technology. That allows a more seamless transfer of the project to the local community, which is considerably better prepared and able to run and maintain the system.

Starting small – pico-hydro

The basic village electrification system is a small, embedded power generation unit just sufficient for minimal lighting purposes, utilizing and converting the locally available, renewable energy resources. A typical project is a pico-hydro power plant installed in the village of Kholsi in December 2006. This machine generates 1.1 kW at a maximal water flow of 83 litres/s, with a negative head and a conical draft tube of 2.7 metres long. Working in the pico range means that the chosen lighting technology’s energy demand must be small. Therefore, the ISIS/RIDS-Nepal project, in collaboration with the local Nepali company Pico Power Nepal (PPN), developed white light emitting diode (WLED) lamps, each lamp holding 12 diodes (Nichia NSPW510CSE), with the unit consuming just over 1 W. These lamps are almost unbreakable, and last more than 50,000 hours, some 20 years if used for 7 hours a day.

The entire hydro power plant infrastructure, including the power house and the water canals, are built with locally available materials such as stones and wood, provided by villagers as part of their voluntary contribution to the project. In addition to providing these materials, individuals from every household in the village contributed labour and skilled assistance to the building and installation process.

Buy-in, participation and local sense of ownership were prioritized and openly acknowledged by project participants. While these issues are not a guarantee for long-term sustainability, they are important steps in the direction of a new paradigm of development.

At the completion of the project, villagers were proud of their achievement and described a strong sense of ownership in the entire endeavour. This stood in stark contrast to a hydro scheme several villages to the north, which was conceived of, designed by and implemented by foreign aid workers. Few, if any, local people were involved in a buy-in to the system that could have been achieved by contributing materials or labour of their own accord, nor, according to villagers in that region, were any local people trained on the maintenance of the system. It quickly fell into disrepair.

Kholsi village has 67 homes and one school, each house now has three WLED lamps, while schoolchildren in class read under an additional nine. A total of 210 WLED lamps are supplied.

The generator’s 225 V AC output is transformed to 615 V AC, travels via an armoured underground copper cable to the village, and is again transformed to 225V AC. Upon realizing that householders’ usage of the system for lights consumes a maximum of only 250 W at any time, the system was modified so that 850 W or more can be diverted full-time by a specially developed electronic load controller (ELC) to a water heater. This heats water in a 500 litre plastic tank that is insulated with pine needles and nestles within a larger, 1000 litre plastic tank.

The warm/hot water generated by this system is used for showering, improving hygienic conditions. It can also be used to prepare meals, reducing firewood consumption even more than already reduced by use of efficient smokeless metal stoves also installed in each family home as part of the ‘Family of four’ HCD approach.

From small acorns, mighty oaks

Experience in the field shows that in the context of remote and impoverished mountain villages in Nepal, small power generation systems are on a locally comprehensible, locally sustainable scale, and are therefore highly suitable for such communities, at least as a first step in a rural village electrification process.

It is crucial to include all the stakeholders in projects such as this, from the initial concept/design stage through to its official hand-over to the local end-users. The commitment of the project partners beyond the implementation phase is compulsory, to continue to support end-users on the use and maintenance of their new power system. This may demand a commitment to provide local, on-the-ground staff, who remain in the community for some defined period beyond the implementation phase. Although this demand is rarely heeded in development efforts that are occurring in other settings around the globe, it is certainly worth the investment.

Furthermore, unless there is a paradigm shift toward retooling development efforts in the direction of many small scale, bottom-up, grassroots-involved, holistic community developments, there is little hope for reaching noble – but so-far unobtainable – millennium development goals.

Even so, while there is no silver bullet solution to the challenges of international development, the ‘family of four’ concept, integrated in a long-term HCD approach, has been shown to be a significant step in the right direction for new development, at least in the context of such remote and inaccessible areas as Humla in Nepal. With time, both sides of the development divide – those offering assistance and those receiving it – will see and experience the practical and mutually beneficial, synergetic benefits that an HCD approach is able to bring forth. However, this process will not occur in a year or two, but will most likely unfold over the course of two generations of intensive living and working with the people who are being helped to escape the vicious circle of poverty and hopelessness. This is the cost of dignified and respectful development.

Kimber McKay is Associate Professor at the Department of Anthropology, University of Montana, USA and The ISIS Foundation Nepal Humla Project. Alex Zahnd is Assistant Professor at the Department of Mechanical Engineering for Kathmandu University, Nepal and co-founder and Project Director of RIDS-Nepal (www.rids-nepal.org).

You can contact Kimber McKay at Kimber.mckay@mso.umt.edu or Alex Zahnd at azahnd@wlink.com.np

[Comment] Flying out of poverty

from the New Statesman

Gareth Thomas

Boycotting goods flown from developing nations to the UK will jeopardise their chance of earning a fair living

Shoppers should not assume that buying food from abroad is worse for the environment than buying from the UK. It's not that simple. Furthermore, the livelihoods of a million African farmers are threatened by misunderstandings about the "food miles" debate.

Certainly, the environmental footprint of what people consume does matter, but so does the development footprint. It seems a dilemma: whether we in rich countries should help poor countries trade their way out of poverty by buying their exports, or boycott them and only buy local.

But even if the debate is muddied, the facts are clear. In Kenya, for example, carbon emissions are 200kg per head of population, while in the UK they are almost 50 times that. Air-freighted fruit and vegetables from Africa account for less than one-tenth of 1 per cent of the UK's greenhouse-gas emissions. Why should developing countries be punished for the damage that our lifestyles cause?

If we boycott goods flown from developing countries to the UK, we jeopardise one of the best chances these countries have to earn their way out of poverty. This would seem to fly in the face of what the public vocally demanded three years ago, when the world pledged to make poverty history. Not only that, but it runs counter to global efforts in the so-called Doha round to lower trade barriers for the world's poorest countries.

Food miles do have an environmental and social cost, but most of that cost - about 85 per cent - comes from UK roads. We have to consider the entire life cycle of a product in order to assess its environmental impact, and not just the transport element. To this end, the UK is working towards a global system for pricing carbon so that the price of food and other products will fully reflect their impact on the environment.

Many products flown in from developing countries such as those in Africa have lower carbon emissions than produce that relies on energy-intensive farming techniques used in Europe, such as heated greenhouses. Producing roses in the Netherlands, for example, can use more energy than producing them in Kenya. Driving six miles to shop may emit more carbon than the cost of flying food to the UK.

A few months ago, the Soil Association sought opinions on whether it should remove organic status from air-freighted foods. But 80 per cent of the trade affected would be from developing countries, so such a move would harm business from African countries whose organic production is on the rise. Such exports to the EU now represent $100m a year.

The result has been a sad compromise. While the good news is that air-freighted produce from developing countries can keep its organic status, it must also meet "Fairtrade" standards, adding extra costs of certification.

I recently met Ernest Abloh of Blue Skies Ghana, who is against a ban. He provides support to more than 150 farmers, over half of them organic, and claimed damage had already been done by focusing on only one stage of production, airfreight, and not the wider issue.

It is clear that consumers and industry want to help boost developing countries' trade. The rise of fair trade and membership of the Ethical Trading Initiative are positive trends. Another very positive trend is the commitment of the Co-op "to reduce carbon but never at the expense of the world's poorest''.

The government, too, is stepping up our work on ethical trade. As well as supporting ethical and fair-trade initiatives, it is nurturing business partnerships between the UK and Africa.

Last month, directors from the UK's main supermarkets and food manufacturers got around the table, apparently for the first time, to discuss their role in tackling global poverty. The Department for International Development set up this series of meetings with the aim of getting discussions going on opportunities to scale up trade with poor countries that is both sustainable and fair. Another DfID initiative is its new £2m fund to nurture UK-African retail and food partnerships. This should also serve to stimulate investment, ideas, and better information for shoppers about food miles.

One idea this fund might test is a "low-carbon pineapple" from Ghana. Pineapple farmers such as Kweku Ayuba are worried about the impact of the food miles debate on their trade. Such a project would aim to show that the pineapple export business can measure and reduce its carbon footprint, saving costs and improving competitiveness.

There is clearly consumer and industry support for farmers like Kweku. But we need more. Developing countries cannot afford to be silenced or lose out from a misinformed food miles debate. The development, environmental and ethical advantages of trade with Africa need to be heard. Otherwise, helping our neighbours fight poverty, rather than doing right, will be perceived as wrong.

Gareth Thomas is minister for trade, consumer affairs and development

Climate change: Polar bears versus people

from Reuters Alert Net

Written by: Megan Rowling

Not so long ago, climate change was regarded as an issue more likely to affect polar bears than people. Back then, campaigning on global warming was the territory of environmental groups like Greenpeace and their supporters. Other charities worried more about poverty, developing-country debt and unfair trade policies.

But now, as this Reuters feature points out, the public and policymakers have grasped the importance of climate change to people's lives and the potentially catastrophic consequences of turning a blind eye. And, as everyone gets in on the act, the impact of green groups may be in decline.

"The mainstream has moved towards us," Gerd Leipold, Greenpeace International's executive director, told Reuters in an interview. "But consciousness doesn't necessarily mean change. We have the awareness, but it doesn't mean we behave more as green, sustainable societies."

Environmentalists like Leipold believe they still have important work to do in terms of getting people to change their carbon-profligate behaviour. But the growing involvement of relief and development agencies in raising awareness about climate change is another factor that has shifted the goal posts.

"Please don't leave this issue to the environmental organisations. They have a development blind spot, particularly with relation to climate change," Christian Aid climate adviser Andrew Pendleton told aid workers at a discussion evening organised by Medecins Sans Frontieres late last year. "Climate change is a human issue; it doesn't just affect ice caps and polar bears. It impacts on the poorest people."

Over the past couple of years, aid agencies have woken up to the threat climate change poses to their projects and the vulnerable communities they work with. They're starting to take climate risks seriously in their activities, and many are campaigning for greater international assistance to help poor people cope with the consequences of climate change.

Without the impetus provided by environmental groups, this would probably never have happened. But it's well known in climate change circles that the relationship between the two types of organisation has been more than a little rocky.

For some time, environmental charities were unwilling to talk about the need to deal with the human impact of climate change. Essentially they saw this as admitting defeat. Their priority has been - and remains - motivating governments and people to cut greenhouse gas emissions sharply with the aim of stopping global warming.

But, as researchers at the International Institute for Environment and Development explained to me recently, coalitions like Up in Smoke - which brings both sides together to produce joint reports on the impact of climate change in developing countries - have gone some way towards nurturing tolerance of each other's viewpoints.

Aid agencies have a better grip on the science and technology, while green groups have started to understand the linkages between climate change and development. Environmental campaigners are now more willing to treat global warming as an issue of justice and equity, acknowledging that the solution is more complex than simply stamping out the use of fossil fuels.

A Greenpeace booklet called "How to Save the Climate" argues, for example, "...it is up to rich countries to take action - by using their technological lead and financial resources to curb their own emissions and help the poorer ones to achieve economic growth without destroying the climate. The objective is called 'climate equity'."

Nonetheless, while strictly humanitarian agencies seem fairly happy to let environmental groups argue the toss on emissions reductions, those that campaign on development issues are eager to ensure that people get as much prominence as polar bears in international climate negotiations.

"This is why we need to be involved in arguing about adaptation (to climate change)," Pendleton said at the MSF debate, urging more aid agencies to speak out on climate change. "If we leave it to the greenies, they may not cut a deal that's in the interests of the poorest."

UN blitz year on climate change is linked to poverty goals

from Earthtimes

New York - As the United Nations was awash with climate change studies and gatherings throughout 2007, a recurring question was whether it is too late to cut greenhouse gas emissions enough to save the world's poor from global warming. An end-of-the-year report by the UN prominently quoted Martin Luther King's sermon on social justice in the 1960s, saying that time ineluctably rushes on, deaf to man's plea for it to stop so humans can correct their errors.

"Over the bleached bones and jumbled residues of numerous civilizations are written the pathetic words: Too late," King said.

Since the UN-backed Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) began rolling out a series of damning reports in February, the UN has made climate issues its top priority. The 192-nation General Assembly held an unprecedented one-day climate change conference in September, attended by more than 80 world leaders.

Three IPCC reports, compiled by more than 2,000 scientists, said global warming was "unequivocal" and largely the result of human activity. They warned that the world had eight years left to begin reducing greenhouse-gas emissions or face the disastrous consequences that come with a planet heated by more than 2 degrees Celsius.

The World Meteorological Organization said the concentration of carbon dioxide - the chief pollutant - in the atmosphere reached the highest level ever recorded in 2006.

Water vapour, carbon dioxide and nitrous oxide - the three major greenhouse gases in the atmosphere blamed for global warming - can remain there for 100 years, the UN Development Programme and UN Environment Programme said in a November report.

"What we do today about climate change has consequences that will last a century or more," according to the study, titled Human Development Report. "The part of that change that is due to greenhouse gas emissions is not reversible in the foreseeable future."

But while scientists and government leaders focus on ways to fight climate change, the UN worries that the danger could derail its ambitious plans to reduce poverty on Earth.

It warned that conditions among the world's 2.6 billion poorest people - those living on less than 2 dollars a day - and the poorest countries will spiral downward as the earth heats up, sea levels rise and agricultural lands are flooded or wilted by droughts.

Another 600 million people will face malnutrition. The sub-Saharan region, with its large concentration of poverty would suffer potential productivity losses of 26 per cent by 2060.

By 2080, 1.8 billion people will face water shortage and large areas in South Asia and northern China will be hit by ecological problems as glaciers retreat and rainfall patterns change.

Flooding and tropical storms could displace up to 332 million people in coastal and low-lying areas, among them more than 70 million Bangladeshis, 32 million Vietnamese and 6 million Egyptians.

Diseases will spread amid global warming, putting an additional 400 million people worldwide at risk of malaria.

"For millions of people, these are events that offer a one-way ticket to poverty and long-run cycles of disadvantage," the report said.

The UN said the potential human costs of climate change have been underestimated. The shocks caused by droughts, floods, storms and other natural disasters have already driven up the number of poor, and global warming will only intensify those impacts.

The UN in 2000 set a goal of halving the number of poor by 2015, but the report said the results will be unequal: some countries are on track to reach the target while others have fallen far behind.

Vietnam has already halved the number of poor and provided universal primary education ahead of the 2015 goals. Mozambique has also significantly reduced poverty, improved education enrollment and cut down on child and maternal mortality rates.

But the report wondered whether climate change might derail those achievements.

"In today's world, it is the poor who are bearing the brunt of climate change," the report said. "Tomorrow, it will be humanity as a whole that will face the risks that come with global warming."

The report warned that the world was edging closer to "tipping points," which are events beyond human control that could lead to ecological catastrophes, including the melting of the Earth's ice sheets that could transform human settlement patterns.

The consequences of those ecological disasters may not be seen now, but future generations will have to live with them, the UN said.

The UN development report was published ahead of a major UN climate conference on the Indonesian island resort of Bali in December, where governments hoped to map out a strategy to complete talks by 2009 on a replacement for the Kyoto Protocol, which expires in 2012. The UN General Assembly plans to meet in February to review outcomes of the December Bali conference.

UN Secretary General Ban Ki-moon, who took up the climate change mantle since taking office in January, travelled to Antarctica for a first-hand look at the melting ice shelves and to Brazil's Amazon rainforest, where he reported that the so-called "lungs of the earth" are being "suffocated."

The UN itself plans to move towards "carbon neutrality" in its worldwide operations, starting with its headquarters in New York, which is scheduled to undergo a largescale renovation by the end of 2008.

Watching where they tread

from The Guardian Katine Project

John Vidal on how the fate of Katine's villagers lies in the hands of the leaders meeting this week in Bali to discuss climate change

Joyce Abuko in Katine treads as lightly as anyone on earth. She walks everywhere, or sometimes travels on the back of a friend's bike. Nothing she uses is wasted. Her home is made of mudbricks and grasses, her possessions total a couple of big yellow plastic jerry cans to collect water in, a mat to sleep on and some plates.

She burns a single candle at night and she cooks on wood which she collects from a nearby forest or, if she can afford it, charcoal. When she had a cow, it emitted a few climate-changing methane burps and farts, but that's about it.

Lifetime carbon dioxide emissions of this mother of five: a few kilos of carbon dioxide a year. Total lifetime carbon footprint: as near as dammit nil.

Similarly Katine, her community. The 24,000-odd people who live in the sub-county of the same name own one or two cars between them and almost certainly none have been up in an aeroplane.

They come and go by bus to the local town, Soroti, and some travel six hours to the capital, Kampala, once or twice a year.

Their cattle herds have a minimal impact, but altogether Katine is a minute contributor to the environmental problems of Uganda and the world.

Total emissions of 24,000 people? If all of them burn wood, then perhaps a few dozen tonnes of carbon a year – the equivalent of half a dozen two car UK families.

The report from the UN development programme last week set out the maths. Uganda's share of world carbon dioxide emissions was officially 0.0%, and its emissions share per person - remember that there are some very dirty industries and hundreds of thousands of old cars in Kampala - was 0.1 tonnes of carbon.

That compares with 20.6 tonnes for every person alive in the US - a 2000% difference. Put another way, one American emits the same amount of greenhouse gases as around 2,000 Katineans.

Three thousand miles away from Katine, in Bali, Indonesia, people like Joyce and places like Uganda are high on the international political agenda this week as world leaders start to thrash out a fair climate deal to follow on from the Kyoto agreement, which runs out in 2012.

Every day, Oxfam, the World Development Movement and other charities and scientists, ram home at the conference that those people with the lightest carbon footprint and the least means to protect themselves from climate change are inevitably going to be the first victims of developed countries' energy-rich lifestyles.

China may be the west's bogeyman, now emitting as much carbon dioxide as the US, but in per capita terms, each Chinese emits only one sixth of each American.

The damage that climate change will inevitably bring is not underestimated.

In the short term, says the UN, the effects of a 2C rise in temperatures - what scientists say is the absolute maximum that eco systems can tolerate - could be "apocalyptic" for the people of Katine and other poorest people.

People in rich countries can respond to climate change by adjusting their thermostats. In Katine, the crops fail, the seasons change, floods and droughts come when least expected, people go hungry, and women and children spend more hours collecting water.

The UN report was stark. Africa in 1992 emitted less than 3% of the world's emissions, but if average temperatures are allowed to rise by another two or three degrees an extra 600 million people in the continent will go hungry; more than 300 million more poor people could be flooded out of their homes, and 400 million more people could be exposed to diseases like malaria, meningitis and dengue fever. In other words, failure to act on climate change will have grave consequences in some of the poorest places in the world.

But there is some hope in Bali. Not only will any global agreement have to allow Uganda and other African countries to carry on developing, it will have to involve the rich countries helping the poor financially.

This might be done in different ways. Britain, for instance, may not be able to cut its emissions down, but it could pay Uganda to "offset" them by not cutting down its forests, which store carbon.

How much could that be? Uganda fells nearly 86,000 hectares (212,420 acres) of its forests a year, most of it for firewood and charcoal for people like Joyce. One analysis suggests that an "avoided deforestation" initiative could be worth nearly $172m a year to Uganda, depending on how much deforestation it could "avoid" and the market price for carbon offsets.

Rich countries are also under immense moral pressure in Bali to help Uganda and other developing countries adapt to the climate change that their actions over many years have created. In a minute foretaste of what could come, Katine lost perhaps one tenth of its crops this year in the huge rains that inundated 19 countries and did millions of pounds of damage.

On the outcomes of Bali and follow up conferences, hangs the fate of at least 10,000 places like Katine and more than 1 billion women in Joyce's situation. For the moment, they must go on helping themselves.

How Rising Heat Traps Millions in Poverty

from All Africa

The Nation (Nairobi)

By Jeff Otieno

Gains made in human development in Africa may be reversed if climate change is not checked, the UN now warns.

A document published by the United Nations Development Programme (UNDP) says the increasing global warming, threatening to average more than two degrees centigrade before the end of the century, may compromise gains made in developing countries, mainly African states.

It provides a stark account of the threat posed by global warming and argues that the world is drifting towards a 'tipping point' "that could lock the world's poorest countries and their poorest citizens on a downward spiral".

If this happens, the document warns, it will leave hundreds of millions facing malnutrition, water scarcity, ecological threats and a loss of livelihoods.

"Ultimately, climate change is a threat to humanity as a whole. But it is the poor, a constituency with no responsibility for the current ecological debt, who face the immediate and most severe human costs," says UNDP administrator Kemal Dervis after the launch of the Human Development 2007/08 entitled: Fighting Climate Change: Human Solidarity in a Divided World.

Low human development

Focusing on the 2.6 billion people surviving on less than two dollars a day, UNDP warns that forces unleashed by global warming could stall and then reverse progress built up over generations.

Kenya is one of the countries that would lose heavily if global warming, caused by massive pollution originated from the developed world, is not addressed.

The country is currently ranked 148, out of 177, on human development, meaning that it belongs to the category of those that have achieved medium human development.

However, it might be pushed to the low human development category if the aftershocks of global warming prevail.

The document ranks Seychelles the top African country with the highest human development score, occupying the 50th position. The researchers use the Human Development Index (HDI) to rank the UN member countries.

HDI measures achievements in terms of life expectancy, educational attainment and adjusted real income.

Libya comes second in position 56, followed by Mauritius at the 65th position.

All developed countries, some of them the biggest polluters, belong to the high human development category, occupying the top 20 positions.

Overall, Iceland tops as the best country in providing basic necessities to its population.

The island country is followed by Norway, which has also made tremendous progress in human development.

Australia occupies the third position, followed by Canada with Ireland.

Sweden takes the sixth position, followed by Switzerland, Japan and The Netherlands, with France occupying the 10th position.

The world's only superpower, the USA, takes the 12th position, behind Finland, while UK is ranked 16th.

Is the best overall

In the medium human development category where Kenya belongs, Tunisia is the highest ranked African country at 91, followed by Cape Verde at 102 and Algeria at 104.

Egypt is ranked 112th ahead of Gabon and Africa's economic powerhouse of South Africa at 119 and 121 respectively.

Other African countries that are placed above Kenya are Ghana, Mauritania, Lesotho, Congo and Swaziland.

Also performing better than Kenya are Madagascar, Cameroon, Papua New Guinea and Sudan at 147th position.

Kenya is the best, overall, in the East African Community (EAC), meaning it has achieved more in health, education and income levels. Uganda is the only other EAC member country in the medium human development category.

The remaining member countries, namely Tanzania, Uganda, Burundi and Rwanda, occupy the low human development tier, where all countries with the poorest human development standards are grouped.

The low human development category is occupied by African countries, some of which are the poorest in the world, and scientists believe that climate change will push them further down the ranks.

Among the threats to human development, that African countries may have to deal with, is breakdown of agricultural systems due to increased exposure to drought, rising temperatures and more erratic rainfall, leaving up to 600 million more people facing malnutrition.

Global warming also poses health risks, with an additional population of up to 400 million people threatened with malaria, which is one of the leading killers in the tropics.

Semi-arid areas of sub-Saharan Africa, with some of the highest concentrations of poverty in the world, face the danger of potential productivity losses of 26 per cent by 2060.

The document warns that if the status quo prevails, an additional 1.8 billion people in Africa and other areas will face water stress by 2080, a trend that is worrying considering the fact that water scarcity has been one of the limiting factors to agricultural production.

It is not only Africa that is in problems, areas of South Asia and northern China face a grave ecological crisis as a result of glacial retreat and changed rainfall patterns, which are partly attributed to global warming.

Up to 332 million people in coastal and low lying areas also face displacement through flooding and tropical storm activity.

In fact, more than 70 million Bangladeshis, 22 million Vietnamese, and six million Egyptians could be affected by global warming-related flooding, considering the typography of the areas.

Despite the evidence showing that all is not well, the authors of the report argue that the human costs of climate change have been understated.

The researchers involved in the publishing of the document say that climate shocks, such as droughts, floods and storms, which will become more frequent and intense with climate change, are already among the most powerful drivers of poverty and inequality-and global warming will strengthen the impacts.

"For millions of people, these are events that offer a one-way ticket to poverty and long-run cycles of disadvantage," say the researchers.

In Ethiopia, for example, the report finds that children exposed to a drought in early childhood are 36 percent more likely to be malnourished - a figure that translates into two million additional cases of child malnutrition.

"For millions of people, these are events that offer a one-way ticket to poverty and long-run cycles of disadvantage," says the report.

Going by the immediate threats on the world's poor, the scientists behind the publication of the report warn that failure to tackle climate change could leave future generations facing an ecological catastrophe.

They single out the possible collapse of the West Antarctic ice sheets, the retreat of glaciers, and the stress on marine ecosystems as systemic threats that cannot be wished away.

The UN warning comes at a time when the world is preparing to forge a new multilateral agreement for the period after 2012, the year when the current commitment period of the Kyoto Protocol comes to an end.

The major concern is that African countries, which are the least polluters, will be the most vulnerable, unlike the Western countries, which are technologically prepared to deal with the effects of climate change.

To minimise the mega-catastrophes, the UNDP document is now advocating for a twin track approach that combines stringent mitigation to limit the average warming in the current century to less than two degrees centigrade, with strengthened international cooperation and adaptation.

UNDP urges developed countries, to demonstrate leadership by cutting greenhouse gas emissions by at least 80 per cent of 1990 levels by 2050.

Though the world's major polluters, apart from the US, made commitments to reduce global pollution, many are yet to fulfil their commitments.

To ensure that the developed world keeps its promise, the document proposes a mix of carbon taxation, more stringent cap-and-trade programmes, energy regulation and international cooperation on financing for low-carbon technology transfer to update Africa's preparedness.

If the proposals are not considered, UNDP warns that inequalities in ability to cope with climate change will emerge as a powerful driver of wider inequalities between and within countries in the near future.

The document calls on rich countries to put climate change adaptation at the centre of international partnerships on poverty reduction.

"We are issuing a call to action, not providing a counsel of despair. Working together with resolve, we can win the battle against climate change. Allowing the window of opportunity to close would represent a moral and political failure without precedent in human history," says the lead author Kevin Watkins.

Mr Watkins describes the forthcoming talks on climate change in Bali, Indonesia, scheduled for next week, as a unique opportunity to put the interests of the world's poor at the heart of climate change negotiations.

The world will be waiting to see whether the developed world will this time round not only commit itself, but do more to fight the dreaded climate change.

UN report urges aid for world's poor on global warming

from The Hawk Eye

UN report urges aid for world's poor on global warming

By MICHAEL ASTOR


RIO DE JANEIRO, Developed nations must immediately help fight global warming or the world will face catastrophic floods, droughts and other disasters, according to U.N. report released Tuesday.

The report said rich nations will need to provide $86 billion a year by 2015 to "strengthen the capacity of vulnerable people" to cope with climate-related risks.

"The scenario is that our generation will experience reversals on a grand scale in the areas of health, education and poverty. For the future there is real threat of ecological catastrophe," Kevin Watkins, the report's lead author, told reporters in Brasilia, the country's capital.

Half the cost, $44 billion, would go for "climate-proofing" developing nations' infrastructure, while $40 billion would help the poor cope with climate-related risks. The other $2 billion would go to strengthening responses to natural disasters, the report said.

The report said the United States and other rich nations should pay the biggest share.

The Bush administration said in a statement that one of its top priorities is "to alleviate poverty and spur economic growth in the developing world by modernizing energy services."

The nearly 400-page Human Development Report comes just a week before the world's nations convene in Bali, Indonesia, to negotiate a new climate treaty.

At the report's release ceremony, Brazilian President Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva called on rich nations to do their part.

"In Bali we are going to very seriously discuss the price rich countries have to pay so that poorer countries can preserve their forests," Silva said. "Because you're not going to convince a poor person in any country that he can't cut down a tree if he doesn't have the right to work and eat in exchange."

Brazil is home to around 70 percent of the Amazon rain forest -- the world's largest remaining tropical wilderness.

Scientists believe the rain forest can act as enormous sponge to soak up greenhouse gases, but deforestation and burning in the rain forest releases millions of tons of carbon into the air each year making Brazilian one of the leading emitters of greenhouse gases.

The report also found that increased energy efficiency, alternative fuels and even the reduction of trade barriers could go a long way toward reducing greenhouse gas emissions.

The report suggested, among other measures, that a reduction of tariffs on Brazilian ethanol "would generate gains not just for Brazil, but for climate change mitigation."

Brazilian ethanol made from sugarcane is more efficient than the corn-based ethanol produced in the United States, but is subject high U.S. import taxes meant to protect American farmers.

"For Brazil to export ethanol, we have to pay an enormous tariff, almost twice the price, Silva said, adding the that oil producing countries pay no such taxes. "Where is the desire to depollute the planet. We could start taxing petroleum."

Without money from developed countries, the panel found, a warmer world "could stall and then reverse human development" in the countries where 2.6 billion people live on $2 a day or less.

Developed countries, meanwhile, are failing to meet their targets under the current climate treaty, the 1997 Kyoto Protocol, for cutting greenhouse gases by 2012, the report said. France, Germany, Japan and Britain have reduced their emissions somewhat, it said, but the European Union is falling short of its goal of a 20 percent cut by 2020.

Scientists have reported temperatures rose an average 1.3 degrees Fahrenheit over the past 100 years, bringing the prospect of a century of extreme weather, rising seas, widening drought and disease and harm to fisheries, forests and farmland.

"These impacts ... go unnoticed in financial markets and in the measurement of world gross domestic product," the panel's report said. "But increased exposure to drought, to more intense storms, to floods and environmental stress is holding back the efforts of the world's poor to build a better life for themselves and their children."

Olav Kjorven, head of the U.N. Development Program's bureau for development policy, said help is only natural "when we know that the frequency of droughts and floods is going up."

Because of global warming, he said, 600 million more people in sub-Saharan Africa will go hungry from collapsing agriculture, an extra 400 million people will be exposed to malaria and other diseases and an added 200 million will be flooded out of their homes.

Kenyan Farmers Versus Euro Environmentalists

from Time

In his shabby T-shirt and flip-flops, Peter Ndivo looks an unlikely combatant in a battle with environmentalists thousands of miles away. Yet, Ndivo's three-acre farm in rural Kenya is in the front-line of a dispute that pitches eco-minded Western consumers against poor African communities: The consumers, concerned by the global-warming effect of burning jet fuel to fly produce from distant lands to European supermarkets, are pressing supermarkets to curb such imports; the farmers see flying fashionable baby aubergines and mange tout peas to Europe as their ticket out of poverty.

"We have seen big changes," says Ndivo, taking time out from tending his crop of baby corn. "Some now are able to pay school fees, to save money and they can manage their homes in a way they couldn't before."

Ndivo is typical of Kibweze's farmers. Three years ago he pulled up his tomato and onion plants, replacing them with baby corn — a crop he had never seen, much less eaten. His crop is purchased by a distribution company, backed by the charity CARE, which sell on the produce to British supermarkets.

Exporting boutique crops to Europe has more than doubled the income of farmers like Ndivo, who now takes home 20,000 shillings ($300) a month from his three acres of land. It is enough to keep his daughter in school and buy another acre for development.

The signs of Kibweze's new-found prosperity are everywhere. Two banks have opened branches, shiny bicycles fill the dirt tracks that criss-cross the village and new buildings are appearing everywhere. Vegcare, the company that collects the produce and sells it on to Britain, estimates the trade is worth $46,000 to the village each month. And the same effect is visible elsewhere, as fresh flowers, fruit and vegetable now make up two-thirds of exports from Kenya to the European Union, according to the Fresh Produce Exporters Association of Kenya. Half of this goes to British supermarket shelves and is worth $200 million each year to Kenya, where it supports 135,000 jobs.

But the trade is under threat from Britain's environment lobby. Several supermarkets, including Tesco and Marks & Spencer, have already responded to pressure to reduce their "carbon footprint" by using an airplane logo on flowers, fruit and vegetables that have been air-freighted to alert environment-minded shoppers.

Last month Britain's Soil Association, which certifies produce as organic, toughened its rules for air-freighted food. Suppliers must show evidence that farmers in developing countries are being paid a fair price, and that there are no local markets for their produce. Anna Bradley, chair of the Soil Association standards board, explained: "It is neither sustainable nor responsible to encourage poorer farmers to be reliant on air freight, but we recognise that building alternative markets that offer the same social and economic benefits as organic exports will take time. Therefore, the Soil Association will be doing all it can to encourage farmers in developing countries to create and build organic markets that do not depend on air freight."

The people of Kibweze are baffled by the air-miles debate. They have certainly noticed the effects of climate change, with the traditional wet and dry seasons now becoming flood and drought seasons. "But I don't think it's my fault," says farmer John Muyu. His argument is supported by research at Cranfield University in the U.K., which found that the carbon footprint from flying flowers grown in Kenya to Britain can be less than one fifth of the figure for flowers grown in Dutch greenhouses.

Few farmers here can afford fertilizers, pesticides or electricity to heat greenhouses; most use environmentally friendly methods because they have no alternative. And then there's the development argument.

"It's about moving away from aid toward trade," says Jane Ngige, of the Kenyan Horticulture Association. "It is amazing the impact it can have producing more dignified and decent work for many rural people. It also serves as a conduit for bringing roads, power and so on."

Kenyan farmers are trying to hit back with a "Grown Under the Sun Campaign," using the label to remind shoppers in the West that the country's fruit, vegetables and flowers are produced with few inputs other than Kenya's plentiful rain and sunshine. Ngige says consumers need to have the whole supply chain not just one step. "To look just at air freight is short-sighted," she says.