CLOSE UP Photo Documentary: HAITI: Poor and under Hurricane Threats

A SUPERB photo-documentary by the young, award winning Belgian photographer Alice Smeets, bringing life up THIS || close in one of the poorest, hardest-hit countries in the world (in material terms). It allows an opportunity to SHARE and CONCERN OURSELVES with the stark, present reality of these people, who are knocking desperately at the doors our privileged and CAPABLE societies for opportunities to educate their children - our human heritage and the promise for a better future; to study, work, and "carry forward an ever-advancing civilization." We can all make a difference by, one, KNOWING their condition; two, finding the WILL to do something; three, deciding to ACT locally in each our small ways -

"O YE RICH ONES ON EARTH! The poor in your midst are My trust; guard ye My trust, and be not intent only on your own ease." (Baha'u'llah)

The Documentary:

Haitians Fear Next Big Storm - The New York Times > Americas > Slide Show > Slide 1 of 10

http://www.nytimes.com/slideshow/20...

Haiti, while recuperating from last summer's hurricane season, is already bracing for the start of this year's rainy season.

An approach to sustainable development projects: http://info.bahai.org/article-1-8-1-2.html


Original article:
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/03/24/world/americas/24haiti.html?_r=1

March 24, 2009

Gonaïves Journal

Living in a Sea of Mud, and Drowning in Dread

By NEIL MacFARQUHAR

GONAÏVES, Haiti — Even now, well before hurricane season, Jean Hubert tries to tamp down the panic that wells up in his chest whenever dark clouds mass overhead.

His unease multiplies if even stray raindrops splatter through his corrugated roof. Its seemingly robust support boards snapped like matchsticks in the cascading floodwaters last year, puncturing random holes in the flimsy tin.

"I live with one foot out the door," explains Mr. Hubert, a 35-year-old high school teacher ready to run for the hills at the slightest suggestion of a storm.

Outside his four-room, cinder block shanty, the havoc visited across this city in central Haiti by a string of hurricanes six months ago remains readily apparent.

Mr. Hubert's home now sits four or five feet below the narrow street. The mud that choked every house, excavated by hand and carted into the road, has hardened into an uneven chain of mounds, solid like concrete. Pedestrians negotiating its choppy surface look down on the tin roofs while trampling household items jutting out of the dirt — here a woman's bright red pump, there a turquoise plastic comb.

The fear of the next big storm infects the whole town. Everyone knows that the rains should start in April, and that by June hurricanes can begin to form out in the Atlantic — the deadly season lasting until November. Mr. Hubert complains that the city has no evacuation plan, that the same chaos that left him sitting on a neighbor's roof the last time for three days, his five children crying from hunger, could well unspool all over again like a recurring nightmare.

City Hall, basically a two-story house on the main square, lacks the bustle one might expect in a city still recuperating from storms that hit like a battering ram. Fay, Gustav, Hanna and Ike — all but the first one were hurricanes — landed within the space of a month last August and September. It was Hanna that really pummeled Gonaïves, the fourth largest city in Haiti, with 300,000 inhabitants.

No other city in Haiti absorbed so much punishment. More than 30 inches of rain fell overnight. The deforested hills, less than 2 percent of them covered by trees, sent the spill-off crashing down into La Quinte River, the wall of water and mud eventually cresting at 15 feet above its banks.

By the time it receded from the city streets, the flood had killed 466 inhabitants; another 235 just disappeared and are presumed dead. Of the city's 33,000 buildings, 5,441 collapsed and some 22,300 others were damaged. Nationally, damages came to a total of $900 million, or nearly 15 percent of the gross domestic product.

"All it takes is one cloud, and everyone asks me when they will be evacuated," groused the deputy mayor, Jean-François Adolphe, when asked about the mood here. The City Council tried to develop a plan, he said, but readily admitted it was basically fruitless. The city does not have a place to shelter anyone, not to mention the means to ferry its inhabitants to higher ground.

Mr. Adolphe rated the chances of a hurricane hitting this year at 30 percent, and flatly denied a rumor that the mayor and his two deputies had bought houses in the hills. He noted brightly that the national toll from the 2008 storms was under 800 dead, down from 3,000 when Hurricane Jeanne struck in 2004, which meant officials must be doing something right.

The main hangover is the mud. Estimates of just how much mud slithered into Gonaïves range up to a square mile filled with a bit more than three feet of goop.

Mr. Adolphe thought the city had hit on a happy solution to getting rid of it — neighborhood teams paid for the work as they moved from one quarter to the next. But, he said, residents cleaned their own streets and shrugged off other areas, appearing only every two weeks to collect a small salary. "They are not really interested in doing community work," he said.

For their part, residents complain bitterly that the government is missing in action. They reserve praise for Venezuela alone. It paid for the new Simón Bolívar power plant, which provides the city with some 16 hours of electricity daily.

The United Nations also hired 21,000 people to build terraces in the hills around the city, paying them $2 cash and $3 in food for each day worked. But less than 2 percent of what needs to be done to shore up the watershed has been completed, said Alex Ceus, the director of the terracing program.

"The little that has been done is insufficient to protect the city," he said. On the hill next to the fresh terraces, experienced hands point out the smooth bumps of previous efforts. The force of water spilled by Hurricane Hanna erased terraces too.

Right after the floods, the United Nations organized a worldwide appeal for $127 million for recovery efforts, but only about half has been donated.

Each storm seems to compound the previous lashing. Right outside the southern approach to Gonaïves, a sprawling lake several miles across now covers a once arid plain. Water laps against the windowsills of abandoned houses, their curtains flapping in the stiff breeze.

The water hides a raised highway that was being built because the same area flooded in 2004. Most Haitian roads are abysmal moonscapes, but the 25-minute detour that National Route 1 now takes around the lake is a particularly rough, unpaved road, with muscular buses barreling along giving no quarter to smaller vehicles.

At first, people forced from their homes thought the lake might at least provide fish to eat. But after a couple of men drowned when their skiff capsized in the strong winds, the nearby residents, still living in tents, said they no longer ventured near the water.

Drowning is not a fear only by the lake.

In the downtown communal market, Pierre Exante, a mattress seller, grimaced as his eyes darted over the oozing cesspool of black water and garbage abutting his store, the foul stench and worse reputation keeping customers away. Four people have drowned in it, Mr. Exante said.

Not that the rest of the market is very busy. One stall owner said she got more beggars than customers — the storm killed the local economy. Residents say endless such problems fill their days and nights with dread.

Nicole J. Clervius is the local director for Fonkoze, a microcredit lender that is helping businesses struggle back to life. "People cannot sleep, they are always on alert," she said. "It's like they are always waiting for something to come."

Copyright 2009 The New York Times Company

Africa aid prevents self-sufficiency, Zambian economist charges

There is certainly much truth in the assessment of this prominent African economist about the erstwhile effectiveness of foreign aid to Africa.

http://www.newsweek.com/id/190375

BELIEF WATCH

Lisa Miller

Thanks, Bono, but No Thanks

Photos of celebrities with poor African children don't 'help me raise a child who believes she can be a doctor or an engineer.'

Published Mar 21, 2009

From the magazine issue dated Mar 30, 2009

 

Dambisa Moyo is having her moment. The beautiful Zambian economist, formerly of Goldman Sachs and educated at Harvard and Oxford, arrives in New York this week to launch her new book, "Dead Aid." The billionaire publisher Steve Forbes is throwing her a party at the Four Seasons. She is scheduled to appear on "Charlie Rose." These titans of the media establishment are not pursuing Moyo for her beauty or her résumé (though these don't hurt). What attracts them is her provocative argument. "Dead Aid"—a tiny volume, forcefully written—insists that foreign aid (a trillion dollars over the past 60 years) is a waste: it's bad for Africa, she says—and for Africans. Aid, Moyo argues, keeps Africa in a supplicant's role when its governments need to become self-sufficient. She recommends shutting off all foreign aid to African within 10 years.

Moyo believes this dependency relationship is perpetuated by Western governments and glorified by the celebrities who have made Africa their cause du jour. The book takes special aim at the rock star Bono, who has become the world's most prominent spokesperson for the people of Africa. "The problem that Africa is really suffering from," she told me, "is negative PR. If there is a criticism I would level against celebrities—they have tended to perpetuate negative stereotypes. They always tend to portray Africa as a horrendous basket case. They want to portray the war, the poverty, the disease, the corruption. As an African, I'm tired of it." Doesn't a photograph of a celebrity with an impoverished child raise the world's consciousness? Moyo says no. "Taking a picture with a starving African child—that doesn't help me raise an African child to believe she can be an engineer or a doctor." Instead of aid, Moyo recommends other paths to financial and democratic independence: bond issues, trade, foreign investment. "We know what works. We've seen China do it. We've seen India do it."

To anyone who has ever thought that those celebrity shots with impoverished children are vaguely creepy, Moyo presents a refreshing view. But even before the official publication of "Dead Aid," the development world is in an uproar. Jamie Drummond, who together with Bono founded the advocacy group One, is incensed. Good aid—what he calls "smart aid," which helps people build businesses and take care of their own children—is not only beneficial, it's necessary. Without it, people would die. "Dead Aid," he believes, is "a poor polemic, with nothing new of substance, filled with anecdotal micro examples which ignore mountains of evidence." Further, he accuses Moyo of using Bono to her own advantage: "By putting these highly visible figures in the cross hairs she knows she can market her book." Moyo responds that the book really has nothing to do with Bono: "The African issue should be championed by the African leaders charged with delivering long-term growth for their people. Anyone else offering opinions is pretty much moot."

Moyo does not explicitly address the question of faith-based aid in her book. But religion, she says, "doesn't highlight the most positive and productive aspects of Africa," and she is unmoved by the vogue among American churchgoers for mission work: "What's the point of going to Africa and saying, 'Oh, my God, I'm so traumatized by the poverty there'? … People like to pity Africans." One sees her point—but it's easy to be sympathetic to the other side as well. Rich Stearns, the president of World Vision, a Christian aid organization, says his religious faith moves him to want to assist others. "I always think, what if they were my children? I refuse to turn my back on people who need help." Amid these conflicting perspectives, some clarity emerges. The question—for Moyo and for Bono, for governments and for celebrities—is not really about whether to help. It's how to help better.

URL: http://www.newsweek.com/id/190375

Related articles:
http://www.newsweek.com/related.aspx?subject=Dambisa+Moyo

Haiti - educational statistics for region's poorest country

From ipsnews.net (IPS), Mar 16

 

[The aid organization] HELP's most recent statistics show that, with a population of 9 million people, almost half under 20 years old, just 60 percent of Haitians attend primary school, 20 percent make it to high school and 5 percent graduate.

 

http://ipsnews.net/news.asp?idnews=46125

Logging - irresponsible, illegal, destructive continues [ENVIRONMENT], [DEFORESTATION]

From http://www.ipsnews.net.

ENVIRONMENT-NAMIBIA: Ten Dollars for a 200-Year-Old Tree By Servaas van den Bosch Last man standing: Jamba Joseph from Ncumcara Community Forest is not about to give up despite disappointing revenues from the project. Credit: Servaas van den Bosch/IPS Mile 20, NAMIBIA, Mar 18 (IPS) - Despite the investment of millions of donor dollars, the permit system in Namibia's Community Forests has failed dismally, say biodiversity experts. Illegal logging in the inland Kavango is more alive than ever. Namibia is a pioneer in community-based natural resource management. These projects see communities managing wildlife, natural resources and tourism in their areas. Over 50 Community Conservancies have been gazetted, covering 120,000 square kilometres and involving 220,000 people. In addition 16 Community Forests were established in the Kavango and Caprivi Regions. Hailed as a benchmark in African conservation and supported by dozens of NGOs and government departments, they are the cornerstone of Namibia's rural development, wildlife, and nature conservation. But while some conservancies generate a substantial return - mainly through agreements with private operators - many others are failing. Last year the 16 Community Forests together earned about 30,000 U.S. dollars, down from $47,000 in 2007. As much as 25 percent goes to the Traditional Authority. The remainder is spread over the 40,000 or more beneficiaries, mostly through Forest Management Committees and Village Development Funds. This translates to just over 50 cents per person, per year. This return is a mere trickle compared to the massive amounts that donors have poured into the Community Forestry in North-Eastern Namibia project. Critics point out that Community Forests and their bigger cousins, the Community Conservancies, are a money pit and will collapse as soon as donors pull out. Disappointing return Jamba Joseph struggles with the door of a storeroom at the office of Ncumcara Community Forest, some 35 kilometres outside Rundu in northern Namibia. Inside the sparsely-lit space some furniture adorned with carvings of elephants and other obligatory 'big five' animals awaits a buyer. Ordered by a wealthy expat, but never collected, the assortment is still hopefully shown by Joseph to anyone who cares to have a look. He somehow hopes to get compensated for the months of meticulous work. It sums up the predicament of Community Forests in a nutshell. In a documentary shot after the opening of Ncumcara in 2006, the community members are enthusiastic about the idea of turning natural resources in a sustainable enterprise. But the dreams didn't come true. Last year the entire profits for the community of Ncumcara were a mere $1,600. In Mile 20, the central kraal of the 15,218 hectare reserve, Joseph explains to IPS that some members of the Forest Management Committee have left disillusioned. Under a huge kiaat tree in the middle of the village, he stubbornly works on, sawing, chipping, carving and polishing. And in the community centre across the highway bowls, chests, baskets and carved animals pile up, waiting for the accidental tourist. Even communities that are sitting on gold are hardly bathing in richness. Four forests in the Caprivi Strip, wedged between Zambia and Botswana, last year made about $20.000 from selling devil's claw. This plant is the basis for medicines against rheumatics and arthritis. The revenues from the laborious harvesting process are a trickle, compared to the overseas profits that are made from Devil's Claw. Meanwhile, the insatiable hunger of a multi-million dollar industry poses a real risk of over-harvesting. Still, it is not the question of livelihoods that worries scientists most. Despite the Forestry Act of 2001 which saw the establishment of Community Forests, illegal logging has continued. Community Forests are supposed to calculate extraction rates based on the available trees. They then get a block permit from the Ministry, which they sell on to companies or harvest themselves. But because of high demand, in 90 percent of the cases the loggers exceed the permit. As a consequence many undersized trees are cut down, argues Michael Pröpper, a scientist with the Biodiversity Transect Analysis (BIOTA) project who researched the ongoing deforestation in the Kavango. Worse, the highly inefficient - and illegal - practice of illegal pit-sawing leaves large parts of the tree to rot in the forest. Since trees can take 200 years to reach harvestable size, these practices severely affect the regeneration of the forests. Jamba Joseph, from Ncumcara Community Forest, affirms the observations of the scientists. "We have to be there to keep an eye on the loggers. Otherwise they will just start hammering away and take out twice as much." But even with community members monitoring, offtake numbers from Ncumcara - some 300 trees in 2008 - are still much higher than is sustainable. According to Pröpper, in a soon to be published article on Kavango timber, only 30 trees should have been taken from Joseph's Community Forest. This not only threatens biodiversity but also potential opportunities under international carbon trading agreements, such as the Kyoto Clean Development Mechanisms. Developing nations are holding their breath as the integration of Reduced Emissions from Deforestation and Degradation (REDD) mechanisms into global carbon markets is being hotly debated. Recently the scientific journal Nature published a study that puts African forests on par with the Amazon rainforest as a potential carbon sink. A drawback of the REDD proposals is that unless the rights of indigenous people are protected, forest communities are believed to suffer under the scheme. If accepted into the global carbon trading regime, REDDs could arguably assist to alleviate poverty in the communities. A condition, however, is that legal requirements for logging are strictly enforced. Pröpper argues that currently the major part of the harvesting happens illegally due to a 'leaky' permit system. According to him, the Department of Forestry is unable to patrol the region, which measures 43,418 square kilometres - roughly the size of Switzerland. Outside the Community Forests there is no effective control, but even within the reserves "it is very questionable trees will remain untouched, considering the current attitude towards timber values", he states. Robert Mukuya is a Biota field worker and narrator of Wiza Wetu! (Our Forest), a documentary that aims to create awareness among forest users. He explains how illegal timber gets mixed with 'permitted' timber and sold on. "The operators get the timber from as far as Angola where there is no real law enforcement. Once loaded on the truck it is very hard for forestry officials to estimate if the size of the shipment corresponds with the paperwork." Three quarters of the wood is exported, explains Pröpper. "Though the profits are made at the end of the supply chain, the harvesters bear the risks, relying on minimal short-term cash income, earned by hard labour." While a full-grown tree is chopped down for as little as $10 by the loggers, at the other end of the market high quality timber can fetch up to $800 per cubic meter. "The most the illegal loggers will get paid is $40 for a week of hard labour, but often it is way less," says Mukuya. "Many of them get paid in foodstuffs, for instance a large bag of mealie meal and 10 kilogrammes of fish." Because of the dynamics in the timber market, corruption is widespread and involves Traditional Authorities and headmen. "The idea that loss of biodiversity has long lasting impacts is not grounded in people's understanding", experiences Robert Mukuya, as he travels around the area to show his documentary. Although the Forest Act aims to stimulate local ownership and sustainable use of resources, Clever Mapaure, who has researched the legal difficulties surrounding forest conservation, signals a possible conflict between the different parties. The beneficiaries in the Community Forest, the Traditional Authorities that own the land and the State, responsible for conservation and law-enforcement, have different priorities. "This uneasy relationship creates a silent conflict between the state and communities, with communities sometimes back-pedalling on government policies", comments Mapaure. For the forest communities in the Kavango to make a living at $10 a tree requires enormous amounts of timber. "But a monetary value for the tree, measured according to market prices, is only one part of the story", says Pröpper. "In a system where nobody values irreplaceable resources yet - and neighbouring countries literally throw them away for peanuts - it doesn't mirror the real ecological value and the rising costs once the ecological function is destroyed." (END/2009)

China - a key player in environmental game, CO2 emissions [ENVIRONMENT], [CLIMATE], [CHINA]

From http://climateprogress.org/.

China's argument du jour for finishing off a livable climate

The United States has been the primary obstacle to saving a livable climate for a long while now. And that has given cover to countries — most notably China — that also wanted to ramp up emissions unfettered by any restrictions or the world's moral condemnation. No one expected China to build coal plants at a rate that would more than double their CO2 emissions in the past several years. But they have, putting the world on an emissions trajectory worse than even the most pessimistic IPCC scenario, one reason M.I.T. doubled its projection of global warming by 2100 to 5.1°C, which would be the end of life as we know it on this planet (see impacts here).

Now as this country appears poised to take serious action, China has announced plans to keep expanding coal use at a pace so rapacious it would single-handedly finish off the climate no matter what we and the other rich countries do. This forces the Chinese to construct ever more elaborate arguments to defend their ever more indefensible actions (much as Bush did for most of his presidency). I have been intending to blog on China's latest excuse for doing nothing. But instead, we are fortunate to have analysis from a guest blogger with far more first-hand knowledge about the Chinese: Charlie McElwee, an international energy & environmental lawyer and Professor at Shanghai Jiao Tong University's School of Law who writes the blog China Environmental Law where this post first appeared.

China's public pronouncements on its Copenhagen position are becoming increasingly clumsy and shrill. I suspect that the Obama victory, the speed with which his administration has moved to engage China on climate change issues, the unified position of the US and Annex 1 countries that China needs to do more, and the crumbling of the unified front initially maintained by the "developing" countries, has caught China flat footed.

In an effort to stave off any kind of binding commitments, it has been forced to play a hastily cobbled together defense which has consisted of throwing up an array of increasingly unpersuasive and contradictory arguments in the hope that one or two may stick.

The latest such defense was advanced by Li Gao, China's chief climate negotiator, who is in Washington to hold talks with the Obama's administration.

In widely reported remarks, he argued that the carbon produced by China as a result of making products for export, should be credited to the importing nation and not carried on China's books. As we've noted before, this argument is not unreasonable, but is patently unworkable and inconsistent with the way in which emissions have been allocated in the past according to international agreement. It would require a complex analysis of world trading patterns in order to be implemented, which (even if agreement were made today to change the emission accounting formula) could not possibly be completed in time for Copenhagen.

Li's remarks met immediate skepticism, with other negotiators saying it would be a logistical nightmare to find a way to regulate carbon emissions at exports' destination.

Asking importers to handle emissions "would mean that we would also like them to have jurisdiction and legislative powers in order to control and limit those," top EU climate negotiator Artur Runge-Metzger said.

"I'm not sure whether my Chinese colleague would agree on that particular point," he said.

If China were serious about its argument–that importers should bear the cost of emissions generated abroad– it should support an import tax (or impose an export tax) to place the cost of carbon emissions on importers and the ultimate consumers of the product. But, here's where China's use of this "defense" becomes suspect. Reportedly,

Li also criticized proposals by the U.S. to place carbon tariffs on goods imported from countries that do not limit the gases blamed for global warming.

"If developed countries set a barrier in the name of climate change for trade, I think it is a disaster," Li said.

Ah I see, China's argument has a catch: developed countries should be charged with both their domestic (non-exported) carbon production and the carbon production associated with their imports, but they should be required to enact all reduction goals on the back of their domestic industries. Developing country exporters should be permitted to continue their exports unencumbered with carbon emissions costs. That's a patent non-starter, of course, and the fact that China is even proposing it highlights the clumsy feel of its current climate change negotiating posture.

There are signs that the US and the EU (as evidenced by the above quotes from Runge-Metzger) are becoming frustrated:

China's chief climate official, Xie Zhenhua, was also in Washington where he met with US global warming pointman Todd Stern, who praised Beijing's "broad work" on climate change but sought greater cooperation.

China has many very persuasive arguments as to why it should not be in the same boat with developed nations; perhaps it is making these arguments privately. It's beginning to lose its poise in the public arena (Li during the same press opportunity took a snide swipe at Japan's climate negotiator), however, and is not aiding its cause. It should start to float proposals for interim limits (which may only be reductions in "business as usual" emissions as opposed to hard and fast caps), if it wants to be a responsible player in the achievement of a successful agreement or initial framework at Copenhagen. The problem may be that there is no consensus yet within the Chinese leadership as to what these "interim limits" should look like. If that's the case, it should move swiftly to achieve internal agreement. Time is running out.

– Charlie McElwe

[JR: The unfortunate fact of life in this century millennium is that while the rich countries are responsible for the vast majority of cumulative greenhouse gas emissions and must reduce their emissions some 85% or more by mid-century, China's rapid emissions growth coupled with our new understanding of climate science, means that preserving a livable climate will require China to cap its CO2 emissions by 2015-2020 — and not at double current levels. They cannot be forced to do so, of course, but if their leaders don't understand — or can't be made to understand — that the Chinese will suffer more than most from failing to do so, then the climate problem can't be solved.]

Related Posts:

• What will make Obama a great president, Part 2: A climate deal with China
• Chinese Premier: Rich nations should ditch 'unsustainable' lifestyles … and stop buying all the crap we make
• Can China go green?
• Who will be the biggest obstacle to climate action in the next decade — China, Russia, India, or us?
• Chapter Nine Excerpt: The U.S.-China Suicide Pact on Climate
• Are China's Carbon Emissions China's?
• Taking on the "China Excuse" for inaction
• Bush-like doubletalk from Chinese foreign minister
• China's immoral energy policy — Part II: The efficient alternative
• The immorality of China's coal policy is breathtaking (literally) — Part I

This entry was posted on Thursday, March 19th, 2009 at 7:49 amand is filed under international. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.

Agriculture: Holisitic Thinking Put Into Practice & a Cooperative Enterprise [AGRICULTURE], [SUSTAINABLE DEVELOPMENT], [ENVIRONMENT]

Two articles: One a remarkable report about a sustainable agricultural enterprise in India; the other about the success of a cooperative in Malawi.

ENVIRONMENT-INDIA: Women Farmers Ready to Beat Climate Change

By Keya Acharya

Dalit women in Zaheerabad intersperse crops and use farmyard manure with good results. Credit:Keya Acharya/IPS

ZAHEERABAD, Andhra Pradesh, Mar 17 (IPS) - A collective of 5,000 women spread across 75 villages in this arid, interior part of southern India is now offering a chemical-free, non-irrigated, organic agriculture as one method of combating global warming.

Agriculture accounts for 28 percent of Indian greenhouse gas emissions, mainly methane emission from paddy fields and cattle and nitrous oxides from fertilisers. The 2007 report by the United Nations Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) says India's rainfall pattern will be changing disproportionately, with intense rain occurring over fewer days, leading directly to confusion in the agricultural scenario.

Decreased rain in December, January and February implies lesser storage and greater water stress, says the report, while more frequent and prolonged droughts are predicted.

The report cites, as example of impacts, that a 0.5 degrees Celsius rise in temperature will reduce wheat production in India by 0.45 tonnes per hectare.

Research at the School of Environmental Sciences in New Delhi projects crop losses of 10-40 percent by 2100 despite the beneficial effects of higher carbon dioxide on growth, with the dynamics of pests and diseases significantly altered.

Adaptation is both necessary and unavoidable, says the IPCC.

In Zaheerabad, dalit (the broken) women forming the lowest rung of India's stratified society, now demonstrate adaptatation to climate change by following a system of interspersing crops that do not need extra water, chemical inputs or pesticides for production.

The women grow as many as 19 types of indigenous crops to an acre, on arid, degraded lands that they have been regenerated with help from an organisation called the Deccan Development Society (DDS).

DDS, working in this area of India for the last 25 years, has helped these women acquire land through government schemes for 'dalits', and form 'sanghas' or local self-help groups that convene regularly and decide their own courses.

The women plant mostly in October-November, calling up the family's help for 7 days for weeding and 15-20 days for harvesting. Farmyard manure is applied once in two or three years depending on soil conditions.

In Bidakanne village, 50 year-old Samamma, standing in her field, points out the various crops, all without water and chemical inputs, growing in between the rows of sunflowers: linseed, green pea, chick pea, various types of millets, wheat, safflower and legumes.

The sunflower leaves attract pests and its soil depletion is compensated by the legumes which are nitrogen-fixing.

"In my type of cropping, one absorbs and one gives to the soil, while I get all my food requirements of oils, cereals and vegetable greens,'' says Samamma.

Samamma's under-one-acre plot produces, amongst other crops, 150 kg of red 'horsegram', 200 kg of millets and 50 kilos of linseed. She keeps 50 kg of grains and 30 kg of gram and sells the rest in the open market.

The 5,000 women in 75 villages are now in various stages of adopting this method of agriculture.

"In the climate change framework, this system of dryland agriculture has the resilience to withstand all the fallouts of elevated temperatures", says P.V. Satheesh, the director of DDS.

Multiple stresses from global warming in India and the Asian continent are foreseen in water scarcity, groundwater salinity, food insecurity and hunger, loss of livelihoods and problems in downstream agriculture that depend on glacial melts.

The women now run a uniquely evolved system of 'crop financing' and food-distribution that they have mapped out themselves.

Subscription to the Sangha is by a fistful of grain. Those borrowing grains from this community grain bank then pay back five times the borrowed amount in grain.

The collected grains are then sifted for good seed and the rest is either sold in the open market, sold to members in crisis at low rates, or distributed to poor families in the village.

"I check the earheads of grain for good seed", says 55 year old Akkama, seed bank manager in Hulugera village. "It's a system handed down to me from my ancestors." The women have stored over 50 different varieties of seeds from local cereals such as millets, wheat, red gram, linseed and sorghum.

The money collected from open market sales every year is deposited in regular banks and the interest earned from them is used to finance loans for members who again complete the cycle by paying back their loan in grain over five years.

DDS has now involved the women in a monitored system of organic produce that is certified by the global Participatory Guarantee Scheme (PGS)'s Organic India Council.

The method is a system of third party certification by organic growers themselves, initiated in India in 2006 by the Food and Agriculture Organisation (FAO) and the Indian ministry of agriculture in consultation with farmers and NGOs.

PGS groups are a worldwide phenomenon, operating in countries like the United States, New Zealand, Brazil and France. New initiatives are coming up in Vietnam and South and East Africa.

In Zaheerabad, the organically certified staples and grains are packed and labeled with the PGS certification, taken by a mobile van to be sold in retail to consumers in Hyderabad city 150 kms. Satheesh says the women are swamped with orders.

And yet, these women have come from the poorest rungs of society. Narsamma, 55, says she worked as a labourer 25 years ago, earning a pittance.

She heard about DDS's self-help group in a neighbouring village and approached the organisation for help.

She has now provided education for five children, two of whom work in NGOs, built a new house and bought cattle and land with DDS and government-support.

" Now, when landlords come to me for borrowing seed, now I can laugh,'' says the feisty woman who has traveled to London, Peru, Sri Lanka and Bangladesh, talking to local farmers about the ecologically sound agriculture practiced by the women of Zaheerabad.

(END/2009)


AGRICULTURE-MALAWI: Water Makes the Difference


By Pilirani Semu-Banda

Irrigation and cooperative farming have improved the livelihoods for the Ngolowindo Horticultural Cooperative Society Credit: Pilirani Semu-Banda/IPS

LILONGWE, Mar 20 (IPS) - Water has become the very essence of economic development for a rural community of Ngolowindo, in Malawi’s lake district of Salima, where households are reducing poverty thanks to irrigation.

Ninety percent of Malawi's agriculture is rain-fed but government is now pushing for more diversification into irrigation farming which allows farmers to grow crops even in the dry season and allows for additional harvests.

Taking advantage of the fresh water from Lake Malawi, the people of Ngolowindo are using simple irrigation methods to grow such produce as tomatoes, cabbages, mustard, onions, okra, green pepper, green beans, lettuce and maize on 17 hectares of land.

A vibrant agricultural cooperative, the Ngolowindo Horticultural Cooperative Society, has since emerged in the area and 159 people are now members. Each individual farmer is allocated a small piece of communal land and assigned a specific crop to grow. The produce is collected into one lot and is put on the market.

Eluby Tsekwe, the cooperative’s chairperson, proudly told IPS that her community has become the largest supplier of fresh produce to the residents of the country’s capital city, Lilongwe.

"We supply all the main supermarkets and individual vendors in the capital city with fresh produce which they sell to residents of the city. We make a substantial sum of money from there and this sustains our livelihoods," she said.

Tsekwe said that members have to be 18 years and above. "We don’t want to get children into the cooperative since we believe they should be in school and not be involved in any type of child labour," said Tsekwe.

For Tsekwe, a single mother of five, the financial benefits of this collective endeavour are evident; all her children, aged between four and 19, are in school. Despite her divorce leaving her alone as head of her household, she is also able to provide three meals every day to all her children in a country where, according to the United Nations, seven out of 10 households typically run out of food before every harvesting season.

Tsekwe has also managed to build a house of bricks with an iron sheet roof and cement floors. "A typical house here is one with mud walls and floors with a grass-thatched roof but I can afford to live better and I am very proud of myself," she said.

But it has not been all rosy for the Ngolowindo project, according to Coordinator of Ngolowindo Horticultural Cooperative Society, Mercy Butao.

The cooperative coordinator explains that the agricultural initiative started at Ngolowindo in 1985 as an irrigation scheme and only became a cooperative in 2001. She said the project was initially driven by the government’s departments of water and agriculture through traditional leaders and community members.

"As a scheme, individual farmers worked in their own fields. They could only benefit from communal irrigation systems, but they were each others' competitors when it came to marketing their produce," Butao told IPS. During this time, the maintenance of irrigation structures such as drainage canals and irrigation canals was suffering.

The scheme was turned into a cooperative to improve marketing of the produce and for a more organized management of the project, according to Butao, but this also solved problems of maintenance.

"The farmers applied for funding from the European Union soon after forming the cooperative, and they used the money to upgrade their agricultural skills in irrigation farming and modern ways of crop production," said Butao.

The Ngolowindo farmers have also been trained in marketing fundamentals, financial management, organisation management and agro-processing.

The Cooperation for the Development of Emerging Countries (Cospe), an Italian non-governmental organisation, has also assisted the Ngolowindo Horticultural Cooperative Society in the constructing irrigation structures and in human resources. Butao, for instance, is an agricultural expert, employed by Cospe since 2002 to provide technical support to the cooperative.

"The Ngolowindo project has grown so much and it is now moving into agro-processing," Butao told IPS. She said in the absence of a processing project, there had been a lot of wastage of produce since the crops being grown are perishables.

"The cooperative has now diversified into the production of tomato juice and tomato sauce," said Butao.

The project has 18 people working in agro-processing, using hand-powered machines to process the agricultural products. "We are yet to make it big in the agro-processing business. Our products are not developed enough to compete on market but we are working hard towards advancing further," said Butao.

The cooperative is also working towards diversifying into livestock farming so as to use excess produce from the farming to feed the animals. "We also want to promote the use of animal manure in our farm," Butao said.

Another member of the cooperative, Ginacio Kamoto, explains that he has benefited a lot from the cooperative. "I am able to provide employment to some people in my area. I employ them as casual labourers to assist me with farming. I employ up to six people per growing season," said Kamoto.

But people like Tsekwe and Kamoto are still the exception in Malawi where up to 65 percent of the 13.1 million people live below the poverty line of less than a dollar per day.

According to the Ministry of Agriculture, the country is only irrigating 72,000 of 400,000 hectares of irrigable land. The country is yet to fully utilise Lake Malawi, a fresh water length which stretches the length of the country is the ninth largest lake in the world.

(END/2009)



Focus quotation:

"...the following...constitute the fundamental principles for the administration of the affairs of men:
..."Fifth: Special regard must be paid to agriculture. Although it hath been mentioned in the fifth place, unquestionably it precedeth the others."

- Bahá'u'lláh

Farming methods central to sustainable development, preserving environment

This article from The Christian Science Monitor on a viable, environmentally friendly agricultural method highlights the importance and potential impact of this sector for implementing effective strategies in dealing with climate change and carbon emissions.

A focus quotation from a Bahá'í topics page on Processes of Development:

"The integration of efforts across various fields, such as health, education, agriculture, and environmental preservation, is essential for real progress in a region."

New way to farm boosts climate, too

'Organic no-till' combines best of two methods and sequesters most carbon. But can it work consistently?

By Jared Flesher  |  Contributor of The Christian Science Monitor/ March 12, 2009

Kutztown, Pa.

Some scientists say an ice age was prevented thousands of years ago by the dawn of human agriculture – deforestation and farming released enough greenhouse gases into the atmosphere to prevent another global cool down, the theory goes.

Now, millennia later, researchers hope new farming techniques will put some of that carbon back into the ground and help stem the rising tide of global warming.

No-till agriculture, in which farmers don't plow their fields anymore, is one practice said to promote carbon sequestration in the soil. Organic farming is another. Researchers here at the nonprofit Rodale Institute are now developing a hybrid "organic no-till" farming system that they say could sponge up more carbon than any other way of growing food.

The claim: If organic no-till agriculture were used successfully on all of the earth's 3.5 billion tillable acres, it would absorb and sequester more than half of all present-day CO2 emissions every year, according to Rodale Institute research director Paul Hepperly.

At the same time, the practice would also curb soil erosion and the dangers of chemical runoff.

"No-till organic is probably one of the best systems for helping to sequester carbon," says John Reganold, a soil scientist who has studied sustainable agriculture at Washington State University at Pullman for 25 years. "What Rodale is doing is the best of both worlds."

Jeff Moyer, farm director at The Rodale Institute, says his quest for organic no-till began as a fortuitous accident 18 years ago. As part of an agricultural experiment, researchers had planted a field with a cover crop called hairy vetch. One end of the field wasn't part of the experiment, though, so they just drove over it with tractors, crushing down the cover crop in the process.

Some time later, after the field had been planted with corn, Mr. Moyer noticed something interesting was happening where the tractors had trampled everything: Corn plants were growing through the crushed vetch crop, which now looked like a mat of brown cardboard and was acting as a sort of mulch.

"Everybody stood there and looked at it and went, 'Wow, you did organic no-till,' " says Mr. Moyer. "So we've spent the last 18 years trying to figure out a system that will allow us to replicate that accident over and over and over again."

The paradigm shift represented by organic no-till is that it strives to eliminate the use of both herbicides and tillage. But for it to work effectively, the cover crop suppressing the growth of weeds must be knocked down in just the right way and at just the right time. This lets a farmer plant cash crops directly through the cover crop at the same time it's being rolled down.

In 2002, after experimenting for more than a decade with existing farm equipment, Mr. Moyer custom-engineered a corkscrewed roller-crimper that does the knockdown job from the front end of a tractor. The first roller-crimper proto­type was built in a neighbor's weld shop and now, seven years later, they are being sold commercially by an independent manufacturer. Dozens are being used across the country by agricultural researchers and early-adopter farmers.

Bill Mason, a farmer on Maryland's Eastern Shore, is one such early adopter. His reason for the switch had nothing to do with carbon sequestration; he was drawn by another promise of organic no-till: better economics. Organic crops sell for more than conventionally raised ones, while no-till cuts down on tractor use, reducing a farmer's fuel and labor costs.

In 2005, Mr. Mason purchased a 15-foot roller-crimper for $4,000 and decided to give it a try with a field of soybeans. He felt he was taking a gamble.

"When you go out and roll a 120-acre field down and pray that it's going to work, it's a good portion of your income," he says. "You're taking a little bit of risk there."

Mr. Mason says his results for that first year were "excellent." His organic soybean yield was as good as his best conventional yields had been, and he was able to reduce his pre-harvest trips across the field in a tractor from eight passes (plowing, harrowing, planting, and multiple rounds of rotary hoeing and cultivation) to just one. He figures he is saving about $50 per acre in fuel and machinery costs alone. He has been using organic no-till for three years now, and says he would recommend it to anybody, at least for soybeans.

Corn has been a different story. His results so far with this crop have been disappointing, plagued by insects and poor yields. Across the country, USDA-sponsored research into organic no-till has been conducted in Georgia, Iowa, Michigan, Mississippi, Pennsylvania, North Dakota, and California. Experimenting with different variables of climate, soil, and crop variety, researchers have reported results ranging from excellent to abject failure.

The Rodale Institute and others have found it's only possible to no-till a field a few years in a row before more aggressive perennial weeds start to gain a foothold. Mr. Moyer has been tilling two or three times every five years at the Rodale farm. Still, that represents a reduction in tillage of 40 to 60 percent.

Research continues on perfecting organic no-till, which is still a work in progress.

The Rodale Institute made news in 2003 when it released research results from its Farming Systems Trial – the longest-running side-by side comparison of conventional and organic farming in the country – that showed its organic (tilled) cropland was sequestering 1,000 pounds of carbon per acre per year. The high number surprised soil scientists because it showed that organic farming – even though it relies on extensive tillage – was outperforming no-till farming in terms of storing carbon. Since then, additional studies by other soil researchers have arrived at the same conclusion.

Agricultural practices that promote carbon sequestration can be "stacked," says Moyer, so the idea now is to combine them into one farming system for the best results. Rodale researchers say stacking no-till farming, organic farming, and composting has the potential to sequester 3,000 pounds of carbon per acre per year, ten times the amount typically achieved through no-till farming alone.

Lee Burras, a soil scientist at Iowa State University, agrees that agriculture can help fight global warming, but he is tempered in his view of how large a role it might play.

"Can it help mitigate? Yes," he says. "Is it the long-term, major solution? No."

Part of the reason organic and no-till farming are only temporary solutions, he says, is that the ability of soil to sponge up more and more carbon eventually runs out.

"My own work shows [that] the more beat-up [the soil] is to begin with, the better response you get subsequently with carbon sequestration," he says. "But after 10 years, 20 years, maybe it's 50 years, we're going to plateau out."

Another important question is how to get farmers to embrace new methods.

"Farmers are very conservative people by nature," farm director Moyer says. "When you ask a farmer to adopt a new technology, they are literally risking the farm, their home, and their income on this new technology."

The allure of reduced fuel costs and better prices for organic produce may not be enough. Mr. Hepperly, the Rodale Institute research director, says that for a switch-over to occur in this country, the government must enact a system that pays farmers to sequester carbon. Carbon trading is already being experimented with at the Chicago Climate Exchange and elsewhere. The Rodale Institute is advocating that such a trading system be enacted in the next farm bill in 2012.

"This will allow farmers to see a real economic motivation to resolving these core issues," Hepperly says.

Mr. Burras concurs: "I strongly support the idea of green payments," he says. "Any practice that results in better carbon sequestration results in better environmental quality across the board."

How does organic no-till farming work?

One of the challenges of growing crops is controlling weeds, but different types of farmers come at the problem in different ways. "No-till" farmers use large amounts of chemical herbicides to kill weeds, but don't plow the soil. "Organic" farmers plow and cultivate extensively – another way to manage weeds – but don't use any herbicides. Although each method has its advantages, until recently it seemed they were incompatible: Organic farmers till often; "no-till" farmers use herbicides.

The key to organic no-till is that it relies instead on a third method of weed control: cover crops. Cover crops are planted between rotations of food crops and, besides holding soil in place and crowding out weeds, also serve to replenish soil nutrients.

For example, if an organic no-till farmer intends to plant corn in the spring, he might plant that field the previous autumn with a cover crop of hairy vetch. The hairy vetch will put nitrogen back into the soil (which is important, because corn requires a lot of nitrogen to grow) and also keep the ground covered through the winter.

In the spring, once the hairy vetch crop is in full bloom, the farmer will roll it down using a special piece of equipment called a roller-crimper attached to the front of a tractor. At the same time, a no-till planter attached to the back of the tractor will plant the corn crop.

When the cover crop dies, killed by the roller-crimper, it functions as a weed-suppressing mulch. If everything goes as planned, the corn will grow up through the mulch, while the weeds will be stifled.

Researchers point out that organic no-till is not necessarily an all-or-nothing proposition. No-till farmers can incorporate elements of it to reduce the amount of herbicide they use, and organic farmers can employ it to reduce their tillage.

The same concepts of organic no-till farming can be applied on a much smaller scale to home gardening, although the actual equipment and methods involved are different. Here's a link to an organic gardening blog that describes how to do it.