Water security vital to unlocking African prosperity says SAB Miller

Business Day Online: With coordinated action, better water provision in Africa will strengthen economic growth and unlock the path to prosperity for millions, according to SABMiller’s Chief Executive Alan Clark.

Speaking today at the W
orld Economic Forum (WEF) on Africa in Cape Town, Alan Clark highlighted that water security and resource efficiency have become and will remain a priority for SABMiller in Africa as climate change exarcebates competition for resources. This year’s WEF Global Risks Report ranked water scarcity as the biggest single risk to societies and economies.

While growing production volumes, SABMiller has cut its global carbon emissions by 35 percent since 2008, reducing absolute emissions by nearly one million tonnes. Over the same period it cut water use per litre of beer by 28 percent, now using 3.3 litres of water to make one litre of beer, exceeding its 2015 target. In the last year alone, the company reduced its water use by 29 million hectolitres – the equivalent to the water used by over 116,000 Africans each yeari.

This has translated into tangible gains for the company –  SABMiller saved US$117million in the last financial year compared with 2010 through water and energy related initiatives as a key part of its overall cost reduction plans.

Leading a panel discussion on the Future of Water, Alan Clark said: “The business case for conserving water both within our own operations and in the communities where we work is clear and compelling. Companies from all sectors are facing up to the risks that water scarcity poses to their business – even more so with the impact of climate change. Now is the time to step up and make clear commitments to reduce overall water use and improve efficiency.”...

An oasis in Libya, shot by Sfivat

Don’t put irrigation above drinking water

Joe Turner in SciDev.net: Water policies and technologies aiming to help meet sustainable development goals (SDGs) must rebalance the attention given to agriculture over drinking water, a UN report issued last week (15 May) has found.

The Water for Food Security and Nutrition report comes from the Committee for World Food Security, a UN body based in Rome. It makes eight recommendations, saying that better access to technologies could make water use in farming more efficient, as well as improving access to drinking water for disadvantaged people.

The report warns that population growth and climate change will put more strain on freshwater supplies, particularly in low-rainfall areas like Central Asia, the Middle East and North Africa. Much of the available groundwater in these regions has already been extracted, with 80–90 per cent being used for irrigation in agriculture, leaving lakes and groundwater at historically low levels.  Using techniques such as rain-fed agriculture, and introducing better technologies to harvest and store water, and reduce losses through evaporation, could go some way towards ensuring enough drinking water remains, the report says.

Toby Bruce, a crop scientist at Rothamsted Research, an agricultural research institute in the United Kingdom, says water-efficient crop varieties and agricultural systems will form part of the solution. “Agriculture uses 70 per cent of the world's freshwater extraction, which means improvements in efficiency could make a big difference,” Bruce says.

However, conflict between using water for agriculture or for drinking would remain, according to Raul Pacheco-Vega, a geographer at the Centre for Economic Research and Education in Mexico. He says that the concept of water for food security and nutrition needs to be extended beyond agriculture, as the existing focus on farming could leave urban communities without enough....

A disaster-resilient Sindh

Islamic Relief: New Islamic Relief research and a roadmap to resilience have added momentum to disaster risk reduction in Sindh, Pakistan.

The research into disaster vulnerabilities and capacity in Sindh – a province that is particularly prone to both flooding and drought – was launched at Islamic Relief Pakistan consultation held last month. The workshop included the director general of the Provincial Disaster Management Authority, UN agencies, as well as national and international NGOs and members of civil society. It aimed to bring decision-makers together to minimise the risk disasters pose to the people of Sindh.

Islamic Relief’s interim head of programme Summaya Sajjad explained how the study assessed community and institutional engagement and what they do when disasters strike. “We also want to identify the challenges and issues faced by the government and communities at the time of disaster,” she said. “As well as the steps communities take to overcome the losses sustained in three districts: Sanghar, Dadu and Thatta.”

Sharing the key findings of the study, our area programme manager, Sajjad Khan, pointed out the far-reaching impact of disasters. Livelihoods, health and living conditions are badly affected, and people may be traumatised by the experience, he said. In the drought-hit areas covered by the study, essential groundwater has been depleted by 30-40 feet. With no easy way to access water sources, malnutrition and disease outbreaks were rife among poor communities.

Whilst most community efforts focused on disaster-response, the research revealed, these were not informed by knowledge of community-level initiatives or emerging practices to prepare for disasters and reduce their impact when they occur....

Clearing rubble from a flood-damaged home in Sindh, shot by Russell Watkins, UK Department for International Development, Wikimedia Commons, under the Creative Commons Attribution 2.0 Generic license

That sinking feeling: Developing nations speak out on climate change

Thom Mitchell in New Matilda: Developing nations around the world - rarely big emitters of carbon emissions - are ramping up their calls for radical global action to tackle the climate threat that is already looming large for low-lying countries.

As Vanuatu grapples with the fall out of category five Tropical Cyclone Pam which struck the Pacific nation on March 15, developing nations’ calls for action from high-emitting nations like Australia are being amplified.

At the United Nations Third World Disaster Risk Reduction conference in Sendai, Japan, calls to action from Vanuatu’s President and other highly exposed nations came at a grimly ironic time - March 14 to 18 - as Pam bore down on, then battered, the Pacific.

“Overnight a devastating disaster can wipe out years of development and reduce people [to] a state of increased poverty,” Baldwin Lonsdale, the President of Vanuatu, said at the conference.

"According to the World Bank report of 2012 it places Vanuatu on the map as the most prone country in the South Pacific region in all natural hazards such as earthquakes, volcanic eruptions, tsunami, drought, floods, landslides, tropical cyclones and impacts of climate change and rising sea level,” he said....

Hideaway Island on Vanuatu, shot by Graham Crumb, Wikimedia Commons, under the Creative Commons Atribution-Share Alike 3.0 Unported license 

Rapid coastal population growth may leave many exposed to sea-level rise

Science Daily: The number of people potentially exposed to future sea level rise and associated storm surge flooding may be highest in low-elevation coastal zones in Asia and Africa, according to new projections published March 11, 2015 in the open-access journal PLOS ONE by Barbara Neumann from Kiel University, Germany, and colleagues.

Many coastal areas are densely populated and exposed to a range of coastal hazards, including sea level rise. As coastal population density and urbanization continue to increase, researchers are investigating how coastal populations may be affected by potential environmental impacts at global and regional scales in the future. Based on four different sea-level and socioeconomic scenarios, the authors of this study assessed future population changes by the years 2030 and 2060 in the low-elevation coastal zone and estimated trends in exposure to 100-year coastal floods.

From the scenario-based projections, the researchers estimated that the number of people living in the low-elevation coastal zone, as well as the number of people exposed to flooding from 100-year storm surge events, was highest in Asia
. China, India, Bangladesh, Indonesia, and Viet Nam had the largest numbers of coastal population per country and accounted for more than half of the total number of people living in low-elevation coastal zones, both now and in the future scenarios. However, Africa was estimated to experience the highest future rates of population growth and urbanization in the coastal zone, particularly in Egypt and sub-Saharan countries in West and East Africa. While the authors' research method does not explicitly consider possible population displacement or out-migration due to factors such as sea level rise, the results highlight countries and regions with a high degree of potential exposure to coastal flooding, and also help to identify regions where policies and adaptive planning for building resilient coastal communities are essential....

NASA image of Haiphong

Improved electricity access has little impact on climate change

A press release from the International Institute for Applied Systems Analysis: Expanding access to household electricity services accounts for only a small portion of total emission growth, shows a new study from the International Institute for Applied Systems Analysis (IIASA), shedding light on an ongoing debate on potential conflicts between climate and development.

Improving household electricity access in India over the last 30 years contributed only marginally to the nation’s total carbon emissions growth during that time, according to a new study published in the journal Nature Climate Change.

“Energy access is fundamental to development: it brings improvements to all aspects of life, including education, communication, and health,” says IIASA researcher Shonali Pachauri, who conducted the study.

While increased energy access is widely agreed to be an important goal for development efforts, such as the UN Sustainable Energy for All Initiative, the climate impacts of increased access to electricity have been unclear. The new study is the first to examine the impact of electricity access on carbon dioxide emissions using two sources of retrospective data.

“This study shows that the climate impacts of expanding access are in fact very small,” says Pachauri. However, she adds, expanding low-carbon energy technologies in developing countries would bring many co-benefits beyond climate mitigation.

Pachauri used India as a case study because while the country still lacks electricity access for much of its population—around 400 million people—it has vastly increased access in the last 30 years. From 1981 to 2011, household electricity access in the country improved from around 25% to between 67-74% of the population, an increase of approximately 650 million people.  “India is at a similar stage to many other developing countries in terms of energy access” says Pachauri, “So we believe that these findings will be applicable on a broad scale to other developing countries.”...

Electricity meters in Kolkata, shot by Jorge Royan, Wikimedia Commons, under the Creative Commons 3.0 license

Brazil must target smallholders to curb rising deforestation

Anastasia Moloney in the Guardian (UK) via the Thomson Reuters Foundation: Farmers with smallholdings are not responsible for most of the destruction of Brazil’s Amazon rainforest, but their contribution to deforestation is rising and must be addressed if the country is to hold on to recent gains, according to an environmental research group.

Government efforts led to a 77% fall in deforestation in the Amazon between 2004 and 2011, but progress has slowed and deforestation is rising, the Stockholm Environment Institute (SEI) said in a report.

The report said that between 2004 and 2011, landowners with more than 500 hectares (1,235 acres) of property were responsible for about 48% of the deforestation. Areas owned by smallholders accounted for 12% of the forests destroyed during the same period.

However, since 2005, the contribution to annual deforestation by the largest landowners has fallen by 63%, while that of smallholders has increased by 69%, the report said. “Despite the gains made to stem deforestation from 2004 onwards … the outlook today is not all positive,” said Javier Godar, a research fellow at SEI and lead author of the study.

In 2013, deforestation increased by 28% compared with the previous year. Godar said part of the reason for the rise was that many conservation areas had been scaled down or had their protection status changed, and flagship public-private initiatives, such as a moratorium on trading soya beans from newly deforested areas in the Amazon, were about to end. A boom in infrastructure projects in the Amazon since 2009, including the building of new roads and dams, may also be contributing to Brazil’s rising deforestation rates, Godar said....

A logging truck in the Mato Grasso, shot by Herr Klugbeisser, Wikimedia Commons, under the Creative Commons 3.0 license 

Burkina Faso’s poorest farmers leading fight against climate change

A press release from the Overseas Development Institute (ODI): Burkina Faso’s subsistence farmers are leading the fight against climate change despite getting almost no outside help, reveals a new report from the Overseas Development Institute (ODI) – the UK’s leading think-tank on development issues.

The report A greener Burkina- Sustainable farming techniques, land reclamation and improved livelihoods will be launched in Ouagadougou, on Wednesday 8 October, and reveals that poor farmers on the edge of the Sahel in the Central Plateau have restored up to 300,000 hectares of degraded land by using traditional farming practices.

These consist of careful land preparation, water conservation and enriching the soil with natural nutrients rather than expensive fertilisers. These farmers have managed to provide food for half a million people in the area who otherwise would have likely starved. While they have received some help from international aid agencies and the government, most of the success has been accomplished on their own.

Burkina Faso is experiencing increasingly unpredictable rainfall and severe droughts as a result of climate change, threatening the lives of millions of people. Decades of over-farming and overgrazing, has also resulted in huge tracts of fertile lands changing into desert, with up to 65% of land degraded in some areas.

Despite the scale of this crisis, international support for the whole of sub-Saharan Africa to adapt to climate change has averaged only $130 million annually, lending weight to what Archbishop Desmond Tutu calls ‘adaptation apartheid’.

The report authors hope that the example of Burkina Faso’s poor farmers in the Sahel region will empower others in the region to confront the effects of climate change, adapting their agriculture methods to offset some of its worst shocks, despite getting almost no outside help....

A village granary near Fada, Burkina Faso, shot by TREEAID, Wikimedia Commons via Flickr, under the Creative Commons 2.0 license 

Resilience goes mainstream

Rolf Rosenkranz in Devex: Resilience has been an international development buzzword for years. This week’s 2nd World Reconstruction Conference in Washington suggests that it’s more than a fad: Resiliency programs have gone mainstream around the globe.

Two documents released on the fringes of the conference, which is hosted by the Word Bank and ends Friday, underscore that notion: The disaster recovery framework and post-disaster needs assessment guide are both meant to increase the ability of communities to prevent and, if necessary, weather environmental and man-made shocks.

Nancy Lindborg, the assistant administrator at the U.S. Agency for International Development, drove that point home during a panel discussion I moderated on Thursday: The concept of resilience, she said, allows the international community to “layer” humanitarian and development action into a “complete package.” It’s a way to synthesize multifaceted goals into one word that’s easy to rally around — a pathway to shared goals.

And many governments — as well as aid organizations — are doing just that. On the panel I moderated, for instance, Jorge Melendez, El Salvador’s secretary for vulnerability issues, spoke of efforts to incorporate risk reduction and prevention into the country’s development strategy.

“Vulnerabilities need to be identified in order to be able to reduce the associated risk and undertake mitigation measures,” he said in prepared remarks. “Investing in the resilience of infrastructure and communities is more effective. Action needs to take place before the disaster strikes; this means investing in sound development to reduce the consequences of a disaster.”

His conclusion: “We are resilient if there is development. Development, in turn, should generate resilience.” ...

A Sim City screen, shot by Xardox, Wikimedia Commons, public domain

The key to drilling wells with staying power in the developing world

Space Daily via SPX: What happens after a well is drilled, fitted with a hand pump, and a community celebrates having access to clean water for the first time? Half of them break down in a year.

When a community lacks sufficient resources and training, these wells would be rendered unusable; however, a new study by the University of North Carolina-Chapel Hill's (UNC) Water Institute and Water and Sanitation for Africa, a Pan-African humanitarian agency, found that if local water communities collect fees for repairs and train community members to fix the wells, they can remain in use for decades.

The study found that nearly 80 percent of wells drilled by the Christian humanitarian organization World Vision - which integrates local water committees, usage fees and repair teams into its model of delivering clean water - were still operational after more than two decades.

The research, funded by the Conrad N. Hilton Foundation, will be presented at the World Water Week meeting in Stockholm, Sweden. The foundation has provided $80 million over more than two decades to enable water access to an estimated 2 million people.

"The results of this study are very encouraging," said Steven M. Hilton, Chairman, President and CEO of the Hilton Foundation. "Strategic investments targeted at developing the capacity of local communities ensure that water systems remain reliable and long-lasting."...

A man draws water at a well built in Ghana in 2012 by USAID

How to adapt disaster management to an urban context

Lean Alfred Santos in Devex: When we think about cities, we consider  high-rise buildings, highway roads, public services including schools and hospitals, and — arguably — progress and development. But when a natural or man-made disaster strikes, do most urban communities, given their perceived “progress and development,” fare better than their rural counterparts, especially in rapidly urbanizing Asia-Pacific?

Given recent natural catastrophes in the region, the simple — albeit hasty — answer is no. Every community can prove to be equally vulnerable to the negative effects of natural calamities if stakeholders do not formulate and implement appropriate disaster management strategies, and this was precisely the theme of a workshop conducted this week in Manila by the International Federation of Red Cross and Red Crescent Societies.

“There is a growing concern worldwide that rapid urbanization, changing patterns in vulnerability and the increased intensity and frequency in weather-related disasters, poses new challenges for risk reduction and effective response [including the region],” IFRC stated in the pre-event report obtained by Devex.

While emergency response and disaster risk management is not a new development discussion, especially in Asia-Pacific, many of the strategies and best practices currently available in the international development landscape pertain to frameworks focused on rural contexts — a gap that needs to be bridged to have a comprehensive disaster management strategy.

“Most disaster risk reduction [and management] programs were designed for rural communities or adopted from rural experiences,” Jerome Zayas, technical manager at international scientific group Earthquakes and Megacities Initiative, said during the panel discussion, adding that urban communities face different challenges than rural ones including informal settlers and livelihoods, among others.

Zayas added that while existing rural-focused strategies can be seen as slightly inappropriate when implemented in urban settings, these documents, however, can be a springboard — and foundation — for the formulation of a separate urban disaster management strategy especially on the lessons learned and recommendations....

2012 flooding in Manila, shot by the Australian Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade, Wikimedia Commons via Flickr, under the Creative Commons Attribution 2.0 Generic license

NOAA analysis reveals significant land cover changes in US coastal regions

A press release from NOAA: A new NOAA nationwide analysis shows that between 1996 and 2011, 64,975 square miles in coastal regions -- can area larger than the state of Wisconsin -- experienced changes in land cover, including a decline in wetlands and forest cover with development a major contributing factor.

Overall, 8.2 percent of the nation’s ocean and Great Lakes coastal regions experienced these changes. In analysis of the five year period between 2001-2006, coastal areas accounted for 43 percent of all land cover change in the continental U.S. This report identifies a wide variety of land cover changes that can intensify climate change risks, such as loss of coastal barriers to sea level rise and storm surge, and includes environmental data that can help coastal managers improve community resilience.

"Land cover maps document what's happening on the ground. By showing how that land cover has changed over time, scientists can determine how these changes impact our plant’s environmental health," said Nate Herold, a NOAA physical scientist who directs the mapping effort at NOAA's Coastal Services Center in Charleston, South Carolina.

Among the significant changes were the loss of 1,536 square miles of wetlands, and a decline in total forest cover by 6.1 percent. The findings mirror similar changes in coastal wetland land cover loss reported in the November 2013 report, Status and Trends of Wetlands in the Coastal Watersheds of the Conterminous United States 2004 to 2009, an interagency supported analysis published by the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service and NOAA.

...Development was a major contributing factor in the decline of both categories of land cover. Wetland loss due to development equals 642 square miles, a disappearance rate averaging 61 football fields lost daily. Forest changes overall totaled 27,515 square miles, equaling West Virginia, Rhode Island and Delaware combined. This total impact, however, was partially offset by reforestation growth. Still, the net forest cover loss was 16,483 square miles.

Growth, global warming threaten African species

Moki Edwin Kindzeka in Voice of America: Researchers meeting in Cameroon say Africa may lose up to 30 percent of its animal and plant species by the end of the century due to global warming, population growth and unregulated development. The researchers from 20 African, American and European universities say sub-Saharan Africa is losing forest land faster than any place on Earth.

Loggers are cutting down trees to meet unrelenting timber demand from China, Europe and the United States. Meanwhile, countries are recording 3 percent population growth per year, and land that was once covered by forests is being used for homes, industries and plantations for cash crops. That means a loss of habitat for many types of African animals and plants, that are already under pressure from the rise in greenhouse gases in the atmosphere and ensuing global warming.

Thomas Smith, from the Center for Tropical Research at the University of California, said, "With a 1.5 degree rise in global temperature, Africa may lose 30 percent of its animals and plants. And unfortunately with the increase in CO2 that has been now estimated to be up to three degrees in terms of rising global temperatures --  that means we may lose 40 percent of all mammal species in Africa by the end of the century."

An example of the animals disappearing is the African chimpanzee. Mary Katherine Gonder of the Department of Biology at Drexel University, said the chimps' forest home is disappearing, and the animals themselves continue to be hunted and sold as food in and around the Congo Basin forests.

"What will happen over the next 20 years, the distribution of those chimpanzees will change," said Gonder. "Their habitat will change fundamentally and they will no longer be around. So it is a real threat. The habitat for those chimpanzees will be gone."....

Sulky chimpanzee (drawn by T. W. Wood). Figure 18 from Charles Darwin's The Expression of the Emotions in Man and Animals. Caption reads "FIG. 18.—Chimpanzee disappointed and sulky. Drawn from life by Mr. Wood."

Haiti witnesses declining cholera rates, significant gains in development

UN News Centre: Haiti, often cited as one of the least developed countries in the Western Hemisphere, has reached – or nearly reached – several of the Millennium Development Goals ahead of the 2015 deadline, according to a report launched by the United Nations Development Programme (UNDP) a month ago.

Among other achievements, the country has seen a steady boost in enrollment rates in primary education from 47 per cent in 1993 to nearly 90 per cent, achieving equal participation of boys and girls in education. Haiti has also halved the number of underweight children under the age of five some three years ahead of the 2015 deadline.

As Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon wrapped up a visit to the Caribbean nation earlier this week, poverty reduction was a central theme in his discussions with UN officials and Haitian authorities. It is also a priority for the Government. Haitian Prime Minister Laurent Lamothe recently remarked, “Our initiatives will be increasingly strengthened and we invite civil society to join us in the fight against poverty and to improve Haitians’ living conditions.”

Since the quake, which killed at least 200,000 people, UNDP reports that 97 per cent of the debris has been removed from the streets; 11,000 displaced families have been relocated and 50 camps housing the displaced have been closed; and more than 4,000 metres of river bank protection structures have been constructed to guard against flooding.

Haitian and international efforts have succeeded in significantly reducing the toll from the cholera epidemic, reflected in a 74 per cent decrease in the number of new cases so far this year, while Haitian communities are rebuilding, recovering and becoming more resilient to future catastrophes four years after the devastating 2010 earthquake....

At the clinic in Haiti, shot by Alex Proimos, Wikimedia Commons via Flickr, under the Creative Commons 2.0 license

Who is responsible for climate change?

AlphaGalileo via Taylor & Francis: Calculating the cumulative cost of carbon dioxide emissions gives new insights into the question of who is responsible for climate change. ... Jan Kunnas from the University of Stirling and his colleagues from universities in the UK and New Zealand examined how to incorporate the environmental effects of fossil fuel use into the national accounts and measures of sustainability. They suggest using a single global price for carbon dioxide emissions, as there is in the long term no possibility for a single country to isolate itself from the impacts of climate change. Every country will be affected to some degree, say from increases in food prices as climate change has negative impacts on global food production or from climate refugees. Ethically speaking, the use of a global damage cost indicates a belief that we are all in the same lifeboat when it comes to the long-term effects of climate change. Furthermore, the calculated price should decrease as we move back in time to take into account that carbon dioxide is a stock pollutant, and that one unit added to the present large stock is likely to cause more damage than a unit emitted under the lower concentration levels in the past.

...The annual effects of carbon dioxide might be small, but the cumulative effects are not. For Britain the cumulative effects from 1800 to 2000 range from £100 to £1400 billion, and for the
USA from $960 to $13,600 billion (in 2000 prices). In other words at most the cumulative carbon debt exceeds, the annual GDP, which in 2000 were £916 billion in the UK and $9951 billion in the USA.

Calculating the cumulative cost of carbon dioxide emissions provides us an opportunity to finally settle the question of historical responsibility for the damages caused by climate change. The choice of price has a big influence on the accumulated costs, but it does not affect the relative position of different countries. With both a constant price and a declining price the USA has the highest cumulative cost of carbon emissions during the period 1902—2009, contributing 24–27% of the cumulative global cost, followed by the EU with 17–19%. China is nowadays the biggest source of carbon dioxide, but the cumulative costs of its emissions are still long behind with 10–12%.

These calculations support the notion that the main reason for a warming climate is the historical greenhouse-gas emissions of developed countries; 41–47% of the costs are due to the cumulative emissions of carbon dioxide from the USA and the EU alone. On the other hand, the emissions of the big four major contributors account for only 57–59% of the total cumulative costs, leaving over 40% to the rest of the world, supporting the need for a global treaty put forward by developed countries. The starting point for such treaty could be a mutual debt cancellation, developed countries’ carbon debts offsetting developing countries’ conventional monetary debt, leaving the dispute about historical responsibility behind.

Ecuador planned power plant in Yasuni national park, documents show

David Hill in the Guardian (UK): Ecuador’s government was moving to install a power plant to exploit oil fields under the iconic Yasuni national park at the same time as pursuing a high-profile international scheme not to exploit the oil, according to government documents seen by the Guardian.

Plans to install the plant further undermine claims by the government that it was seriously pursuing the “Yasuni-ITT Initiative” – a pioneering scheme to leave the oil in the ground in return for financial compensation from international donors.

The Yasuni national park is one of the most biodiverse places on the planet and home to indigenous peoples, some living in what Ecuador’s constitution law calls “voluntary isolation.” The ground-breaking initiative, publicly endorsed by the government in 2007, was widely praised by green and human rights groups and had been seen around the world as a novel attempt to protect forest and people. It was formally abandoned by the government last August after just 0.37% of the financial target was received from donors.

But the existence of a behind-the-scenes plan in 2010 to build energy infrastructure to power a drilling operation there casts doubt on the government’s commitment to the Yasuni-ITT initiative.

“In my opinion, these documents show that the government was actually preparing the extraction of the oil at the same time that it was officially promoting the opposite,” says Carlos Larrea, from the University Andina Simón Bolivar, who worked as an adviser between 2007 and 2011 to the government’s team promoting the Yasuni-ITT Initiative....

A green vine snake in Yasuni National Park, shot by Geoff Gallice, Wikmedia Commons via Flickr, under the Creative Commons Attribution 2.0 Generic license

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

Colombia can grow economy "through nature without destroying it" - environment vice minister

Anastasia Moloney at the Thomson Reuters Foundation: Colombia must tackle conflicts over land use and look for new ways to extract natural resources while protecting biodiversity as prospectors rush for territory in the country’s rainforests and mountains, says Colombia’s environment vice minister.

One of Latin America’s fastest-growing economies, Colombia is enjoying record foreign investment driven by a commodities boom and improved security. However, it needs to balance this growth and ensure natural resources are exploited in a sustainable way, while protecting indigenous land rights and ecosystems from the Amazon rainforest to Andean mountain glaciers, the vice minister said.

“I think that the development model Colombia has needs to be shifted towards a development model that’s more compatible in terms of how rich we are in natural resources,” Pablo Vieira told Thomson Reuters Foundation in an interview.

“Fifty percent of the country is covered with forests. We are probably the most biodiverse country in the world per hectare. Our economy is not really compatible with that.” The world's fifth-biggest coal producer and Latin America's fourth-largest oil producer, Colombia is attracting rising numbers of oil, coal and mineral companies looking to extract resources for export.

Furthermore, unexplored frontiers could open up and more investors come in if ongoing peace talks between the government and Colombia’s largest rebel group, the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia (FARC), succeed in ending 50 years of war.

Vieira urged innovation in the extraction of natural resources – so that it’s not just “cutting forests and extraction”. ..

A forest in Colombia, shot by icolasgalindo, Wikimedia Commons via Flickr,  under the Creative Commons Attribution 2.0 Generic license

How much fertilizer is too much for the climate?

Michigan State University Today: Helping farmers around the globe apply more-precise amounts of nitrogen-based fertilizer can help combat climate change. In a new study published in this week’s Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, Michigan State University researchers provide an improved prediction of nitrogen fertilizer’s contribution to greenhouse gas emissions from agricultural fields.

The study uses data from around the world to show that emissions of nitrous oxide, a greenhouse gas produced in the soil following nitrogen addition, rise faster than previously expected when fertilizer rates exceed crop needs.

Nitrogen-based fertilizers spur greenhouse gas emissions by stimulating microbes in the soil to produce more nitrous oxide. Nitrous oxide is the third most important greenhouse gas, behind only carbon dioxide and methane, and also destroys stratospheric ozone. Agriculture accounts for around 80 percent of human-caused nitrous oxide emissions worldwide, which have increased substantially in recent years, primarily due to increased nitrogen fertilizer use.

“Our specific motivation is to learn where to best target agricultural efforts to slow global warming,” said Phil Robertson, director of MSU’s Kellogg Biological Station Long-term Ecological Research Program and senior author of the paper. “Agriculture accounts for 8 to 14 percent of all greenhouse gas production globally. We’re showing how farmers can help to reduce this number by applying nitrogen fertilizer more precisely.”

The production of nitrous oxide can be greatly reduced if the amount of fertilizer crops need is exactly the amount that’s applied to farmers’ fields. Simply put, when plant nitrogen needs are matched with the nitrogen that’s supplied, fertilizer has substantially less effect on greenhouse gas emission, Robertson said.

Iurii Shcherbak, lead author and MSU researcher, noted that the research also informs fertilizer practices in underfertilized areas such as sub-Saharan Africa. “Because nitrous oxide emissions won’t be accelerated by fertilizers until crop nitrogen needs are met, more nitrogen fertilizer can be added to underfertilized crops with little impact on emissions,” he said...

A corn field in Hungary, shot by Hyena, public domain

Gaza province in Mozambique developing "positively", despite floods

AllAfrica.com via Mozambique Information Agency: Mozambican President Armando Guebuza on Wednesday gave a positive assessment of the economic and political situation in the southern province of Gaza, despite the repeated floods in the Limpopo valley.

Speaking at a press conference marking the end of his working visit to Gaza province, as part o
f his “open and inclusive presidency”, Guebuza said that the agricultural sector in Gaza had shown most progress in its performance. “My impression is that Gaza province is continuing to develop, continuing to grow, both politically and economically”, he said, “even though it has faced disasters in the shape of floods”.

Despite the floods, he added, the persistence of the farmers ensured visible results of economic growth. Guebuza said that the Limpopo river is the key to the economic development of Gaza, but the province lacks the infrastructures which could control the waters of the Limpopo.

“We all know the causes of the difficulties with the Limpopo - climate change, but also the lack of facilities that could help control the waters, such as more dikes and also dams”, the President said....

Rain over the Limpopo River in Mozambique, US military photo