Uganda faces agriculture output drop

Paul Tentena in East African Business Week: Agriculture is repeatedly described as the backbone of Uganda’s economy. But in terms of productivity, it has the lowest output per worker researchers say. According to Edward Bbaale, a researcher with Centre for Basic Research and School of Economics at Makerere University, it  implies that the majority of workers in Uganda are holders of low paying jobs.

This is an issue, which means that there are low prospects of overcoming the problem of poverty by those employed in agriculture. “Even when Uganda records growth in the agricultural and manufacturing sectors, youths remain jobless while growth in the services and industrial sectors is generating jobs for them. So, is it necessary for so many Ugandans to engage in agriculture? Especially, at this point in time, when the demographic changes of the population are generating a window of opportunity to raise per capita income and thus reduce poverty?” Bbaale said.

Bbaale, in his research paper entitled ‘Is Uganda’s Growth Profile Jobless?’, points out that more people should be engaged in other productive activities and sectors rather than agriculture if Uganda has to reduce on its poverty levels and create jobs for the young people.  He however, cautions that agriculture still remains important because it is a major employer in Uganda.

...Overall, the promising sectors for poverty reduction through productivity and employment generation in Uganda by order of importance are; services sector, industrial sector and manufacturing. If adults manage to engage in these sectors, the demographic shift will have an important poverty reducing impact.

The services sector was employing over 2 million Ugandans, that is 19% in 2006 and 22% in 2011 of the labor force. It had all its contributions positive; contributed 39% to output per worker and 14% to the growth in employment. Since agriculture generates low income for its workers this puts a policy question on the productivity of jobs held in the agricultural sector....

A handful of millet in Uganda, shot by Pete Lewis/Department for International Development (UK), Wikimedia Commons, under the Creative Commons Attribution 2.0 Generic license

Lives of danger, poverty on Philippines' typhoon coast

Terra Daily via AFP: Life is a constant throw of the dice for farmer Nilo Dilao and other residents of the Philippine island of Samar, the ground zero for many of East Asia's deadliest storms. Homes, boats, crops, livestock and jobs are all on the line each time the monster winds roar in from the Pacific Ocean, leaving survivors to mourn their dead and pick up the broken pieces, year in and year out.

"Life is a struggle here," Dilao, 43, told AFP a few days after Typhoon Hagupit destroyed his shanty and killed more than 20 people this month. He likened the plight of local people to those of stray chickens. "We're scratching at the soil non-stop in hopes of finding a scrap to eat," he said.

Hagupit came a year after Super Typhoon Haiyan, the strongest ever storm recorded on land, killed 7,350 people on Samar and neighbouring islands.

Samar, about half the size of Belgium, is often the first major Asian landmass hit by the more than 20 tropical storms or typhoons that are born in the Pacific Ocean each year.

With much of the mountainous island stripped by deforestation, most of its 1.8 million residents live on narrow, sea-level strips along the coast, at the mercy of the storms' ferocious winds and tsunami-like ocean surges....

In Samar, after 2013's Typhoon Haiyan. US Department of Defense photo

Focus on poverty: Take the gender factor seriously

Roger Williamson in SciDev.net: As climate change takes effect, the time taken to collect food and water will increase, and women and girls will bear the brunt of this, argues Janna Tenzing in a recent article on gender equality through a climate change lens.

All aspects of poverty eradication have a gender dimension — climate change is no exception.

To account for this, there have to be specific gender-related development goals at international level. Gender analysis must be part of all the post-2015 targets that follow the Millennium Development Goals — but there also need to be stand alone targets on gender, as there are in the latest draft. This is because gender-based violence will not be as clearly targeted under a general human rights or violence-reduction goal. One new research report on Sudan — launched just before this week’s global summit to end sexual violence in conflict — shows how terrifying and prevalent gender-based violence is, comparing it with a “bush fire” which can suddenly engulf you.

There are two convincing types of reason why everyone — therefore also men — has to take gender equality and inclusion seriously. One is economic: not recognising the work of women (including caring for children and family members) and preventing women from reaching their full potential damages productivity and well-being, and so undermines poverty-reduction efforts. The other set of arguments is about justice and human rights: gender-based violence is wrong and would be wrong even if there were no economic arguments against it....

A 1913 image of Waziri women carrying water

New towns going up in developing nations pose major risk to the poor

A press release from the University of Colorado at Denver: Satellite city projects across the developing world are putting an increasing number of poor people at risk to natural hazards and climate change, according to a new study from the University of Colorado Denver.

Throughout Asia, Africa and Latin America `new towns’ are rapidly being built on the outskirts of major cities with the goal of relieving population pressures, according to study author Andrew Rumbach, PhD, assistant professor of planning and design at CU Denver’s College of Architecture and Planning.

The towns often sit in high flood risk zones but designers have minimized the dangers through land elevation, new building codes and quality construction. The problem, Rumbach says, are the informal settlements that invariably crop up beside these new cities and supply their labor force. When cyclones or monsoons occur, they suffer flooding along with diseases like cholera, hepatitis and dysentery. “Clearly, we need to expand the scope of planning for these new cities to include the communities where the poor will live,” said Rumbach, who specializes in dealing with natural hazards.

The study will be published in the July 2014 issue of the journal Habitat International and is already available online at ScienceDirect.

Many nations are aggressively creating new towns. In India, the government has set an ambitious plan to build 100 of them with a million people each by 2020. Rumbach focused his research on Salt Lake, a fully mature new town on the outskirts of Kolkata (formerly Calcutta)...

A map of Salt Lake, a suburb of Kolkata, created by Planemad, Wikimedia Commons, under the Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 3.0 Unported license

Why climate change threatens Peru's poverty reduction mission

Dan Collins in the "povertymatters" blog at the Guardian (UK): The Peruvian Amazon became a net emitter of carbon dioxide rather than oxygen for the first time in 2012, according to the UN Development Programme's (UNDP) latest human development country report. The reversal of the rainforest's usual role as a carbon sink is a direct result of the droughts in the western Amazon in 2005 and 2010 – and a stark reminder, say scientists, that this mega-biodiverse country is highly vulnerable to climate change.

Peru, which has four of the five geographical areas most vulnerable to climate change – ranging from fragile mountain ecosystems to low-lying coastal areas – will host the 20th UN climate change conference in 2014.

The 2013 UNDP report warned that Peru's climate change vulnerability could undo the advances it has made in channelling economic growth into sustained poverty reduction. Peru's poverty rates have been more than halved over the past decade, dropping from 48.5% of the population in 2004 to 25.8% in 2012, according to the World Bank.

"If we disregard [environmental] sustainability, whatever progress we have made in poverty reduction or improvement of human development will just be erased due to climate change," cautioned Maria Eugenia Mujica, one of the UNDP report's authors.

Peru has already lost 39% of its tropical glaciers due to a 0.7C temperature rise in the Andes between 1939 and 2006. But, the report noted, with a predicted temperature rise of up to 6C in many parts of the Andes by the end of this century, there will be "harmful impacts on human development"...

Quelccaya Glacier located in southern Peru in the Cordillera Vilcanota, shot by Edubucher, Wikimedia Commons, under the Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 3.0 Unported license 

Char people in Bangladesh wetlands adapt to climate change impact

Dhaka Tribune: Thousands of distressed women have successfully adapted them with adverse impacts of climate change in remote char [wetland] villages after struggling with natural disasters and abject poverty for decades together.

Side by side adapting with adverse situations in the riverine island chars on the Brahmaputra basin, they have achieved socioeconomic success to lead better life with their family members through various income-generating activities, reports BSS.

All these became possible following successful implementation of the comprehensive Chars Livelihoods Programme (CLP) aiming at improving life standard of the extremely poor people living in the char areas since 2004. Under the programme, thousands of the have-nots group landless families have adapted with adverse situations to achieve self-reliance bidding good-bye to the century-old seasonal ‘monga’ during the past nine years.

The UKaid through the Department for International Development and Australian Government through Australian Agency for International Development have been funding implementation of the programme. Under the sponsorship of the Ministry of Local Government, Rural Development and Cooperatives, CLP is being executed by the Rural Development and Cooperatives Division with the management through Maxwell Stamp Plc.

According to official sources, the CLP has been working with the extremely poor households living on the riverine island chars to improve their livelihoods through raising plinths and providing assets and other assistances....

Erosion on the Padma River in Bangladesh, shot by Afzal Hossain Noman: The copyright holder of this file allows anyone to use it for any purpose, provided that the copyright holder is properly attributed. Redistribution, derivative work, commercial use, and all other use is permitted

Building climate expertise in poor countries

Roger Williamson in SciDev.net: A Nature study published this month shows, as SciDev.Net reported, that the tropics are likely to be the first region to face dramatic temperature rises. This is clearly terrible news. Many of the tropical African nations that will be hit by these increases are also among the world’s least developed countries (LDCs).

This news should focus our thinking. The problems the LDCs face in a climate-constrained world are complex and urgent.

In particular I am worried about one way of dealing with these problems: ‘participatory approaches’, which seek local people’s views about what development should look like. The problem is that, unless applied intelligently, such techniques could be a distraction from efforts to equip LDCs to deal with poverty and climate-related issues.

Take, for example, the participatory initiative A Million Voices, which sources views on sustainable development via the UN-created World We Want website. We do need a groundswell of support for new development goals beyond 2015, but the populism of such schemes is no substitute for scientific expertise.

No amount of conversation will decide which crops will produce food under which conditions. The stubborn reality is that, beyond a certain temperature and level of soil degradation, traditional crops simply will not grow. For advice on that, farmers don’t need A Million Voices — they only need a few. They need local experience and input from the crop specialist and the climate scientist.

But the LDCs are where climate science is the least robust. This is because, inevitably, meteorological data are weak in these countries. They have yet to devote considerable resources to collecting climate data, training (and retaining) staff and building expert national institutions, partly because they face many competing demands on limited budgets....

A peanut vendor in Ouagadougou, Burkina Faso, shot by Roman Bonnefoy (  Romanceor, Wikimedia Commons, under the Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 3.0 Unported, 2.5 Generic, 2.0 Generic and 1.0 Generic license

No record of drought related deaths in Namibia

Tonateni Shidhudhu in AllAfrica.com via New Era (Namibia): The Omusati Region is currently one of the hardest hit region in the country, with thousands of people suffering a lack of food and a number of livestock dying due to a lack of grazing and water, Prime Minister Dr Hage Geingob informed parliament yesterday in his update on the devastating drought.

Geingob said he spoke to Omusati Governor Sophia Shaningwa who identified that the water flow from Angola has also drastically reduced. Shaningwa is expected to meet with Angolan authorities at the end of this month to discuss the provision of water from Angola to Namibia. The premier also quashed reports of deaths due to the drought saying no person has died as a result of drought and government's distribution of drought relief in the regions is progressing well.

Geingob said he is in touch with all the regional governors on the latest drought situation and its impact on people and was informed that since the declaration of the drought emergency no governor has reported any death in their regions due to a lack of food. "I therefore would like to state that we should make a distinction between malnourishment and hunger caused by poverty and malnourishment and hunger caused by a lack of rain due to drought," he said.

The problems with food distribution in Omusati have been resolved and the region now has 12 vehicles and two NDF trucks delivering food to people in the 12 constituencies. In Omaheke Region, Governor Festus Uitele had informed the prime minister that Aminuis has received water, except for the delay at Otjinene due to limited drilling equipment.

Geingob said Otjozondjupa and Kunene regions have also reported good progress. It was however reported that a certain community in Kunene Region had moved back into the mountains, making it difficult to reach them with food supplies. But Geingob said plans are underway to use a helicopter to deliver food to the community in the mountains....

Deal with ‘everyday disasters’ to eradicate poverty

A press release from Act Alliance: Small-scale disasters are so frequent that we can call them routine disasters, everyday disasters. And of course, losses from disasters are also increasing, but it is poor communities that bear the brunt of disasters, they are more likely to be affected by a disaster, and less able to recover. And we expect that climate change will continue raising the frequency and intensity of natural disasters.

These routine and everyday disasters do not attract media interest or government response though they cause major loss of livelihoods. Roads are damaged, children cannot go to school, and homes, crops and livestock are lost.

“These everyday disasters hold development back, they undermine development.To eradicate poverty there needs to be a greater emphasis on reducing disaster risks and reducing their impact on the most vulnerable. We have to improve the resilience of poor communities to disasters”, says John Nduna, General Secretary of ACT, in his message for International Day for the Eradication of Poverty.

The post 2015 development agenda needs to reduce the impact of everyday disasters as well as major disasters. This will help ending crisis-induced poverty and stop people being pushed below the resilience threshold and would enable communities to cope with shocks without being pushed into poverty, says Nduna.

In developing the post 2015 development agenda, ACT Alliance is working to ensure the participation of the people most at risk to ensure that the future development agenda represents the realities of those directly affected by disasters...

Road damage from Hurricane Elena in 1985, from the State Archives of Florida, public domain

Vulnerable nations have less climate change news

Wagdy Sawahel in SciDev.net: Countries that are particularly vulnerable to climate change do not have above-average coverage of this issue in their media, according to a global analysis published in Global Environmental Change last month (21 August).

Most media studies in this area have been conducted in developed nations, the authors say, calling for more research of media coverage in developing nations, where they find climate change is covered but less so than in industrialised countries. The reasons may be country-specific, but they say that one possible cause is a lack of resources for science and environmental journalism in developing countries.

The researchers analysed media coverage of climate change from 1996 to 2010 in 37 leading newspapers in 27 countries, including 14 developing nations in Africa, Asia and Latin America. “Developing countries in general are not obliged to pursue climate mitigation policies and therefore domestic political events or debates triggering media coverage are missing.”

Andreas Schmidt, University of Hamburg Overall, they found that climate change coverage accounted for 0.62 per cent of all articles under study, with a trend of growing media attention. On average, media coverage was lower in particularly vulnerable developing countries, such as Algeria, India and Mexico....

A newsstand in Oranie, Algeria, shot by Maya-Anaïs Yataghène, Wikimedia Commons via Flickr, under the Creative Commons Attribution 2.0 Generic license

US debates climate impact of development investments

Carey L. Biron in IPS: A debate is heating up [in Washington] over the extent to which U.S. government-facilitated private-sector development investments should be required to take into account how those ventures impact on climate change.

The discussions focus on a small and relatively little-known federal agency, the Overseas Private Investment Corporation (OPIC), the government office in charge of mobilising private capital in pursuit of international development priorities. While OPIC generally receives high marks, in recent years some groups have been particularly impressed by the agency’s focus on investments in small-scale, de-centralised renewable energy projects.

 “Outside of USAID” – the government’s main foreign aid arm – “OPIC is investing pretty much the only U.S. [government] money specifically for off-grid clean energy that directly supports clean energy access for the poor,” Justin Guay, a Washington representative for the Sierra Club, a conservation and advocacy group, told IPS.

“Any energy investment today by most agencies is about ‘energy access’, but this is disingenuous because that energy goes into the grid and the vast majority is then consumed by the rich and by large companies. Without associated infrastructure to rural areas or to make energy affordable for the poor, most of these investments are just increasing the general supply.”

OPIC’s mandate is set to run out soon, and Congress is currently tasked with figuring out the details of its re-authorisation. The Sierra Club and some other groups are warning that new legislation could undermine the agency’s unique coupling of climate-related and anti-poverty aims.

...Last week, OPIC and 14 other development institutions agreed for the first time to “substantially scale up” their green investments in developing countries, with the aim of collecting 100 billion dollars a year for the effort by 2020.  “The challenges of transitioning to a green economy are far outweighed by benefits of job creation, innovation and poverty alleviation,” Elizabeth Littlefield, OPIC’s president, said following the meeting....

A solar panel has replaced a windmill powering a water pump in Augrabies National Park in South Africa, shot by NJR ZA, Wikimedia Commons, under the Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 3.0 Unported license

Over 50 shanties washed away in a flooding disaster at Kroo Bay in Sierra Leone

Memunatu Bangura in AllAfrica.com via the Concord Times (Freetown): As Freetown residents continue to battle with the monsoon, slum dwellers are coming worse off in the desperate human efforts to cope. Heavy rains on Wednesday swept away over fifty (50) homes, predominantly makeshift homes constructed with corrugated zinc (pan-bodies), and property worth millions of Leones at Kroo Bay community, just the back of the Prince of Wales Secondary School at Kingtom.

A victim, Salamatu Bangura, narrated that she woke up around 6:30amthat fateful day to a flooded room. She was however able to rescue her children but not quite successful in her bid to protect her property, as everything was swept away by water. "Since I have been living here for the past three years, we have not seen this type of flood and our important belongings are gone," Salamatu lamented.

According to Sinneh Kallon, he was woken up by the sound of the flood water which had taken over the house and completely destroyed his shelter.

Kallon, who has been staying in the Kroo Bay community for more than six years, complained that life has not been pretty good for them in the environment, but was quick to say that they have no alternative shelter in the city, as rents charged for houses are very high....

A street in Freetown, shot by Radamanth, Wikimedia Commons, under the Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 3.0 Unported license

Global warming may keep millions "trapped in poverty": World Bank

CNTV via Xinhua: A global temperature rise of 2 degrees Celsius in the next few decades could cause widespread food shortages, unprecedented heat-waves, and more intense cyclones in tropical regions, threatening to "trap millions of people in poverty," the World Bank said.

A report released by the World Bank on Wednesday looked at the likely impacts of global warming on agricultural production, water resources, coastal ecosystems and cities across Sub-Saharan Africa, South Asia and South East Asia.

If current trends continue, by the 2030s, droughts and heat could leave 40 percent of the land now growing maize unable to support that crop, while rising temperatures could cause major loss of savanna grasslands threatening pastoral livelihoods in Sub-Saharan Africa, the report said.

By the 2050s, the proportion of the population undernourished in the sub-region is projected to increase by 25 percent to 90 percent compared to the present, it said.

In South Asia, the potential change in the regularity of monsoon could precipitate a major crisis in the region. Events like the devastating Pakistan floods of 2010, which affected more than 20 million people, could become common place. More extreme droughts in large parts of India could lead to widespread food shortages and hardship, it said.

The report said that rural livelihoods across South East Asia are faced with mounting pressures as sea level rise, tropical cyclones increase in intensity, and important marine ecosystem services are lost. In addition, sea level rise has been occurring more rapidly than previously projected and a rise of as much as 50 cm by the 2050s may already be unavoidable as a result of past emissions....

A busy street in Hanoi, shot by Heiko Carstens, Wikimedia Commons via Flickr, under the Creative Commons Attribution 2.0 Generic license

Environmental threats could push billions into extreme poverty, warns UN

Claire Provost in the "globaldevelopment blog" at the Guardian (UK): The number of people living in extreme poverty could increase by up to 3 billion by 2050 unless urgent action is taken to tackle environmental challenges, a major UN report warned on Thursday. The 2013 Human Development Report hails better than expected progress on health, wealth and education in dozens of developing countries but says inaction on climate change, deforestation, and air and water pollution could end gains in the world's poorest countries and communities.

"Environmental threats are among the most grave impediments to lifting human development … The longer action is delayed, the higher the cost will be," warns the report, which builds on the 2011 edition looking at sustainable development. "Environmental inaction, especially regarding climate change, has the potential to halt or even reverse human development progress. The number of people in extreme poverty could increase by up to 3 billion by 2050 unless environmental disasters are averted by co-ordinated global action," said the UN.

"Far more attention needs to be paid to the impact human beings are having on the environment. Climate change is already exacerbating chronic environmental threats, and ecosystem losses are constraining livelihood opportunities, especially for poor people. A clean and safe environment should be seen as a right, not a privilege."

...The proportion of people living under $1.25 a day is estimated to have fallen from 43% in 1990 to 22% in 2008, driven in part by significant progress in China. As a result, the World Bank last year said the millennium development goal to halve the proportion of people living in extreme poverty by 2015 had been met ahead of schedule....

A girl selling snacks in Cambodia, shot by McKay Savage, Wikimedia Commons via Flickr, under the Creative Commons Attribution 2.0 Generic license

What silent disasters are saying - Red Cross

From a blog post at AlertNet by Kristalina Georgieva and Bekele Geleta: ... Many people may not know that across the Caribbean, Hurricane Sandy claimed the lives of 135 people and caused equal, and in some cases, more damage than in the USA. People are even less likely to know about the tropical cyclones that also struck Asia, or may have scarcely caught a whisper of the floods in Argentina, Somalia or Indonesia during the same period.

October 2012 reflects a reality that our global village is facing. Over 90 percent of disasters around the world go unnoticed - in silence. They’re too small, inconvenient or overshadowed by other events. Without the attention of the public and the media, they often pass under the donor community's radar.

But these disasters are not silent for the millions of people they affect. For example, around two million people - 12 percent of the population - are facing a food crisis in Malawi right now. And in Lesotho, 725,000 people - representing one-third of the country - are dealing with the same disaster.

The figures are truly alarming. The Centre for Research on the Epidemiology of Disasters reported 221 disasters in 1992 affecting 78 million people and causing economic damage estimated at 70 billion US dollars. Almost 20 years later, in 2011, these figures soared to 336 natural disasters worldwide, 209 million victims and a bill for nearly 366 billion US dollars. How many years does that add up to in terms of lost development for countries and their citizens?

In a nutshell, disasters around the world are growing in frequency, severity and cost each decade with no end in sight. With the effects of climate change, urbanization and environmental degradation, by 2015 an estimated 375 million people - a 79 percent increase from 2011 - will suffer the ravages of devastating weather events....

A flood in Gonaives, Haiti, after Hurricane Jeanne in 2004, USAID photograph

Science key to reducing impacts of future natural hazards in developing countries

University of Cambridge Enterprise: The use of science to reduce the effects of future natural hazards such as floods, droughts and earthquakes must be stepped up and adopted more widely, according to a newly published Foresight report.

The report, 'Reducing Risks of Future Disasters: Priorities for Decision Makers' sets out how the threat of future disasters resulting from natural hazards can be stabilised if decision makers make better use of technological developments and existing risk assessment methods. This will save lives, livelihoods and resources in developing countries.

The report also urges that disaster risk reduction is routinely built in to developments as diverse as urban infrastructure, ecosystem protection and mobile telephone regulation. These measures would help reduce the cost of disasters, which has outstripped the total international aid investment over the past 20 years and has led to the loss of 1.3 million lives and $2 trillion of damage.

Professor Peter Guthrie, Thalia Konaris and former PhD student Faye Karababa, all from the Department of Engineering, have been involved in the report. The work was undertaken through Consultancy Services at Cambridge Enterprise.

“Death and destruction are not the inevitable consequences of natural hazards,” said Government Chief Scientific Adviser Sir John Beddington, who led the research. “We need to grasp this. Urbanisation over the next three decades, particularly in Africa and Asia, will continue. While this could lead to greater exposure and vulnerability, it also presents the greatest opportunity to protect large concentrations of people....

Rich nations alone can't halt global warming

Space Daily via AFP: Poor nations must make haste to curb greenhouse gas emissions as even an impossible zero-percent pollution target for the developed world by 2030 won't stop calamitous climate change, a report warned Tuesday.

Co-authored by former World Bank chief economist Nicholas Stern, the document said that while rich countries are responsible for the bulk of Earth-warming gas emissions since the industrial age, the world could not afford to play the blame-game.

All countries, rich and poor, were moving "recklessly slow" on reducing emissions, said the report issued on the sidelines of UN climate talks in Doha, Qatar.

"There is a deep inequity in that rich countries grew wealthy on high-carbon growth, and poor countries will be hit particularly hard by climate change," it said.

"Recognition of that inequity must play a strong part in building international collaboration, but must not be allowed to block progress: that would be the most inequitable of all outcomes"....

Nicholas Stern in 2000

Step up climate action to reduce poverty

Helen Clark in AlertNet: The devastation wrought by Hurricane Sandy reminds us once again of the destructive potential of extreme weather - even in a developed country such as the United States, and even with ample warning and swift emergency response. From Kingston, Jamaica to Jamaica, Queens, this “perfect storm” exacted a deadly toll that New York’s mayor reckoned was even higher as a result of climate change.

But while developed countries dig ever deeper to fund elaborate flood defense systems, compensate farmers, and adjust thermostats to accommodate hotter summers, the consequences of climate change in Africa can be catastrophic: Crops fail. People go hungry. Girls spend less time in school and more time collecting increasingly scarce water for their families.

With little ability to plan for disasters or adjust to shifting weather patterns, poor people and poor countries bear the brunt of more frequent droughts, intense storms, and floods - dramatically undercutting hard-won gains in human development and productivity.

Without more coordinated global action to tackle climate change, now, addressing global poverty - and all its associated risks - will become exponentially more difficult, and costs associated with adapting to and mitigating climate change will rise sharply.

Significant finance already exists for climate change adaptation and mitigation. Applied to smart strategies, we could, as a global community, make the transition to green and inclusive economies that tackle inequality, advance development, and stop the ongoing assault on our ecosystem...

Women carrying water in Afghanistan in 1976, shot by Ian Alexander, Wikimedia Commons, under the Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 3.0 Unported license 

Indonesian president fears that disasters could push millions into poverty

UN Office for Disaster Risk Reduction: The President of Indonesia, Dr. Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono, said today that the UN High-Level Panel of Eminent Persons on the Post-2015 Development Agenda which met last month for the first time, shares the view that "natural disasters and other crises could push millions of people back into poverty."

Speaking at the opening of the 5th Asian Ministerial Conference on Disaster Risk Reduction, President Yudhoyono, who co-chairs the UN High-Level Panel with President Ellen Johnson-Sirleaf of Liberia and Prime Minister David Cameron of the UK, said: "I am glad that there was a common view in the Panel during the first meeting on the importance of factoring in natural disasters in the development agenda.

"The Panel viewed that natural disasters and other crises could push millions of people back into poverty. The Panel also underlined that we must safeguard the MDG gains from setbacks caused by natural disasters and climate change." Global economic losses from disasters last year were $380 billion. The Panel meets again in London next month.

...President Yudhoyono, who is also the first UNISDR Global Champion for Disaster Risk Reduction, said that Indonesia was committed "to ensure that the post-2015 development agenda takes into account the natural disaster dimension."...

A land rights protest in Jakarta by farmers in 2004, shot by Jonathan McIntosh, Wikimedia Commons, under the Creative Commons Attribution 2.5 Generic license

Tackling the climate information void in developing countries

IRIN: Services to inform communities about the climate are available in higher-income countries, but are not reaching the people most in need of them in developing countries due to lack of government investment and a disconnect between experts and communities facing extreme weather. 

“Those parts [that] are worst covered are some of the most disaster prone regions where the most vulnerable live,” said Jan Egeland, deputy director of Human Rights Watch. “There is a big disconnectedness between [scientists] who know and those who need to know. [They are] the farmers, the health workers, the water managers [and] the vulnerable communities.”

In May 2011 the World Meteorological Organization (WMO) endorsed the Global Framework for Climate Services (GFCS) to increase and improve interactions between climate service providers - those who research, gather, interpret and diffuse information about the climate - and those who make use of the information.

The goal is to boost “tailor-made” climate services, especially for the most vulnerable. Initial priority will be given to food security, water management, disaster risk reduction and health sectors.  If the people most vulnerable to the dangers of climate change are not provided with information to prepare, natural disasters will claim more lives, warned Egeland.

One way is for governments to boost investments in services that provide information on climate variability such as satellites, high-speed telecommunications, supercomputers and other scientific innovations....

A mobile phone ad in Uganda, shot by futureatlas.com, Wikimedia Commons via Flickr, under the Creative Commons Attribution 2.0 Generic license