Sánchez: Putting money where the green is

 By Benedicto Q Sánchez,  SunStar

PLACING economic value on environmental services might be politically incorrect for some environmentalists. That's like "commodifying" natural resources, as Bolivian President Evo Morales warned.

Morales's warning is not limited to Bolivian mountains, however. They have found a home in the Philippines. I have had some heated debates with colleagues on the concept of the green economy currently being promoted by the United Nations at last year's Rio + 20 summit on Agenda 21, its blueprint for sustainable development.

From where I sit as an advocate of sustainable mountain development, however, I can understand the UN position.

During my community forestry days, the mountain communities of barangays Bagong Silang in Salvador Benedicto and Marcelo, Calatrava have long graduated from the hunting and gathering social development phase of the "pure" Aetas in Cádiz that have been forced to resettle to change their nomadic lives.

Mountain peoples are now engaged in the market economy. While many still till the mountain slopes for their food consumption, they also need cash to buy their cooking oils, salt, salted fish, or even to pay to watch the neighborhood DVD shows of Philippine movies.

Understandably, they use natural resources to sell poached timber or wildlife and illegal charcoal making to earn cash. In the end, survival means risking their freedom to play a cat-and-mouse game with our local governments and the DENR.

Frankly speaking, I doubt that when it comes to survival and subsistence, no amount of environmental education can convince most mountain people to change their ways.

The government option now is to involve mountain-based people's organizations to plant native tree species under the National Greening Program (NGP). For every seedling raised, nursed, and planted, the DENR pays them P12.

I have no problem with that. In fact, I worked with people's organization to enable them to qualify for the NGP program. My problem is that government subsidies are not sustainable. Eventually, program funds will dry up after 2016 when PNoy's administration comes to an end. What then?

I hold that market-based instruments will enable mountain peoples to sustain their livelihoods, but along the lines of the green economy.

"The biodiversity of Earth is our biological wealth, our biological capital. The savings are every gene, every population, every species and every natural community that inhabits the oceans, the land, and the air. ... Biodiversity is, as far as anyone knows, totally irreplaceable," says the Wildlife Conservation Research Unit of the University of Oxford.

It cited some figures. In 1997, the global market for natural-product derived pharmaceuticals derived was estimated at US$75-$120 billion, where 1 in 125 plant species screened has produced a major drug, each with a value of US$200 million.

However, species losses have led to a huge loss of "option value" (opportunity cost): loss of 1 tree species per day translates into a loss of 3 potential drugs per year, or an opportunity cost of US$600 million.

WildCRU's Jerwood Business and Biodiversity Initiative have organized seminars and courses, designed to present the business case to executives for investment in biodiversity initiatives, and to provide practical advice to companies on how to integrate biodiversity into their business practices, how to engage with mountain-based stakeholders, and how to inform their employees about these issues.

Sánchez: Putting money where the green is

New Agriculturist: Developments - Restoring Peru's lost cloud forests

"There is nothing more tragic than seeing families suffer in swathes of wasted, burnt land," says Alfonso Carrasco. As the South American regional director for the UK development charity, Practical Action, Carrasco has responsibility for a programme that aims to reverse deforestation currently taking place on a massive scale in the tropical rainforests - known as the cloud forests - of Peru. Over the last seven years, the charity has trained 5,000 Peruvian and Ecuadorian farmers to practise a form of agroforestry known as layer farming, safeguarding 100,000 hectares of forest and transforming agricultural productivity.

In August 2012, research to investigate the drivers of deforestation round the world found that clearing of land for agriculture is responsible for as much as 80 per cent of lost tree cover. Subsistence farming carried out by poor families is one of the key components, and the situation in Peru's cloud forests is typical of many: "The farming communities we train do not have the skills or simple technology required to make a sustainable and productive living," says Carrasco. "Trees are slashed and burnt to make way for crops like corn and cocoa, robbing the soil of its nutrients and forcing families to abandon the land after each harvest."

Farming in layers

The layer farming technique aims to combine short, medium and long term gains for farmers, creating a farming system that produces food from year one and generates long term, sustainable income from cash crops, while also protecting the forest environment. Instead of clearing of land for agriculture, the system is based on farmers growing crops beneath the forest canopy, in a series of five layers which complement and support each other.

The first layer is a crop such as cassava, which provides food and an income for the first few years. The second layer consists of coffee plants, which take four years to fruit, but then provide good quality coffee beans, which fetch a good price at market. The coffee plants are protected from the sun by the third layer, consisting of banana plants or laurel, which offer fruit or timber. Above that, is a layer of the native Inga tree which provides additional shade and also produce edible seeds, rich in minerals. As well as providing food and shade, leaf-fall from the Inga trees enriches the soil and keeps it fertile. They take four years to reach a height of ten metres. Finally, Cedar trees are grown up to 40 metres tall. They are planted for the long-term and provide shade and protection in addition to a supply of timber for future generations

Forest champions

In San Francisco de Asis, in the Cajamarca region of Peru, 57 year old Catalino Chanta Neyra, known locally as Don Cata, has been leading efforts in his community to adopt the layer system. "We have been trained, which is why we know how to work in an organized manner. They gave me some tubes so that I could sow laurel seeds. They taught me how to take care of the seedlings. I used to plant trees too closely together, so they would wither. Now I even have a fumigator and pruning shears and I know how to prepare organic fertilizers to preserve the earth."

Beyond the benefits Don Cata has seen on his own land, he is also excited that increasing numbers of local people are following his lead. "The nicest thing is that I am not the only one benefiting. My friends in San Francisco de Asis are also managing a community plot. It is looking beautiful and besides, the community is united and that is good for everyone," he says. Answering a call from a coffee buyer on his mobile phone, he smiles: "They want five quintals for the end of the month," he tells his partner.

Paulos Carlos Hurtado, who lives in Namballe district on the edge of the rainforest, is another local champion for replanting. In less that two years he, his wife and children have planted more than 1,000 laurel, romerillo and latero trees on their land. He has also formed an environmental association with others in his community, which has recently bought a plot and planted a further 500 trees. "My life has changed a lot since 2006," he says. "Before that, I had no idea about reforestation. Moreover, even though I had a plot, I never imagined that it could be so fruitful. It is all very different now."

Leaving a legacy

Paulo and his family are hoping that as time goes by, the entire settlement will be involved in reforestation, converting all of their land into agro-forestry plots. They are aware that they will not see all the fruit of their labour, but are serious about leaving a legacy and encouraging the conservation of native species. "There are timber species among these trees, but cedar for example will produce raw material in 100 years," he says. "I would never have been interested in planting these before, but although I will not reap the benefits of this work, the entire community will and maybe even the whole country, which is why my young children are already aware of the importance of reforestation. That knowledge makes me feel better."

New Agriculturist: Developments - Restoring Peru's lost cloud forests

Dark side of the green economy

By Rina Saeed Khan 

The Heinrich Boll Stiftung (HBS) Foundation, a German green political foundation, on Friday hosted an expert talk by its President, Barbara Unmuessig, on the “Green Economy.”

Barbara is based at the headquarters of the HBS in Germany and has written many papers and articles critiquing the green economy.

A small audience of journalists, academics, NGO representatives and government officials attended the joint talk.

The event was supported by the Sustainable Development Policy Institute (SDPI) with Shafqat Kakakhel, who is on their Board of Governors, asking the questions at the end.

Since the current global economic recession began, presidents and prime ministers of different countries have been talking about the “green economy”, a term that was first coined by the United Nations Environment Programme in 2008. Scientists are now calling for a major shift to clean energy technologies and energy efficiency in order to curb carbon emissions that are causing disastrous climate change.

In the run up to last year’s Rio conference on Sustainable Development, the green economy was used to attract different actors.

According to Barbara the term was used for “business to buy into the conference… It was felt that ‘sustainable development’ was becoming meaningless, 20 years after Rio (the Earth Summit held in 1992).”

Clearly our resources are finite and we are now living in a rapidly changing climate constrained world with an increasing loss of biodiversity, she said.

Barbara had pointed out earlier that she was not opposed to the idea of the green economy for one cannot continue with “business as usual” but what is important is “what kind of green economy are we asking for?”

Although there are different perspectives of the green economy, depending on whether one comes from the north or south. The south is where the impacts of climate change are being felt the most.

Interestingly, Barbara comes from the north and she calls for “the north to reduce resource consumption” which is rare.

“All the reports are saying that we cannot continue with business as usual, we have to de-carbonise our economies, so the message is good”, explained Barbara.

“But when you look into the details, what do they mean…You see the dark side of the green economy… an arena for political battles,” she said.

The green economy is already being contested in several countries for lacking social safeguards and rights based policies.

Through clean large scale investments can arise conflicts of interest, said Barbara.

Barbara gave the example of Southern Mexico, where renewable policy had led to massive wind investment. “Large wind farms were set up, but on land belonging to the indigenous people. The wind parks were not benefiting the local people and they suffered,” she emphasised.

The local people did not receive any profits, not even electricity from the wind farms. “The green economy has to benefit the people, not big business,” explained Barbara.

The questions to ask are who owns it and who benefits from it? Similarly, in India, a recent study by the Centre of Science and Environment on renewable energy described who was getting the share of the investments, and it was certainly not the poor who have been left out.

In the North, Barbara explained that there was a strong axis of technology innovation and efficiency and the tendency was to “go big”. Under the green economy, they are looking at ideas like mirrors in space, ocean fertilisation, big dams and even nuclear power, she said.

“The context is to have a technological fix for big things… But we have to consider the social and environmental impacts,” she added.

Then there is the new idea of placing an economic value on nature by putting “a price on trees you won’t cut”.

But this “new economy for nature” is triggering a debate and countries in Latin America are rejecting the idea of a market based trade of trees and soil.

“The global concept of the green economy has to be better”, pointed out Barbara.

“Also, the North has to change its lifestyle and consumption patterns. Efficiency is not enough,” she said. Barbara concluded her talk with the advice that “the green economy offers a chance if we are able to hold decision makers accountable” and that “if we want to live in a better future then human rights and the participatory process must be respected”.

It was hoped that at the Rio Summit held last year, the world would come together to formulate an urgent action plan for a global green economy.

However, that did not happen and really if one look’s back at the first Rio conference held in 1992 and what happened subsequently in terms of massive carbon emissions and the staggering loss in biodiversity, the green economy is indeed beginning to look like the “new magic bullet” as Barbara described it.

According to Shafqat Kakakhel “the outcome of Rio (1992) was not positive”. He pointed out that Barbara, who had been involved with environmental issues for more than two decades, was one of the few environmentalists to have questioned “the mythological way in which Rio had been praised”.

He described that the green economy had its “advocates in the north and its skeptics in the south.”

He added that currently there was “no political will to do away with business as usual and there were no major initiatives that came out of the Rio+20 summit.”

In Mr Kakakhel’s view, “profligate and wasteful lifestyles must be abandoned” if the world is to have a chance. Unfortunately, rapidly developing India and China are currently aping western lifestyles, he said.

Also, the multi-lateral process of international negotiations is also going nowhere.

According to Barbara, “we need to reconsider the strategy, go back and think how to mobilise people at home. People at home need to put pressure on politicians to go in the right direction”. Ultimately, perhaps what is needed is to question the entire capitalistic growth model.

“We don’t have to follow business as usual,” said Barbara, adding, “we have to try our best by implementing good solutions along with less consumption of resources”.

What we need is a “de-growth movement” in which people look for local, and national solutions, she said.

Is the world ready to re-think development? Barbara thinks we have no choice unless we want to live in a significantly warmer world, where we can no longer take our survival for granted.

Dark side of the green economy

"Sustainable development in action" Post-Rio+20 Hangout, 12 February 2013

Bhutan set to plough lone furrow as worlds first wholly organic country | marketspace

By John Vidal and Annie Kelly

Bhutan plans to become the first country in the world to turn its agriculture completely organic, banning the sales of pesticides and herbicides and relying on its own animals and farm waste for fertilisers.

But rather than accept that this will mean farmers of the small Himalayan kingdom of 1.2 million people will be able to grow less food, the government expects them to be able to grow more – and to export increasing amounts of high quality niche foods to neighbouring India, China and other countries.

The decision to go organic was both practical and philosophical, said Pema Gyamtsho, Bhutan’s minister of agriculture and forests, in Delhi for the annual sustainable development conference last week.

“Ours is a mountainous terrain. When we use chemicals they don’t stay where we use them, they impact the water and plants. We say that we need to consider all the environment. Most of our farm practices are traditional farming, so we are largely organic anyway.

“But we are Buddhists, too, and we believe in living in harmony with nature. Animals have the right to live, we like to to see plants happy and insects happy,” he said.

Gyamtsho, like most members of the cabinet, is a farmer himself, coming from Bumthang in central Bhutan but studying western farming methods in New Zealand and Switzerland.

“Going organic will take time,” he said. “We have set no deadline. We cannot do it tomorrow. Instead we will achieve it region by region and crop by crop.”

The overwhelmingly agrarian nation, which really only opened its doors to world influences 30 years ago, is now facing many of the development pangs being felt everywhere in rapidly emerging countries. Young people reluctant to live just by farming are migrating to India and elsewhere, there is a population explosion, and there is inevitable pressure for consumerism and cultural change.

But, says Gyamtsho, Bhutan’s future depends largely on how it responds to interlinked development challenges like climate change, and food and energy security. “We would already be self-sufficient in food if we only ate what we produced. But we import rice. Rice eating is now very common, but traditionally it was very hard to get. Only the rich and the elite had it. Rice conferred status. Now the trend is reversing. People are becoming more health-conscious and are eating grains like buckwheat and wheat.”

In the west, organic food growing is widely thought to reduce the size of crops because they become more susceptible to pests. But this is being challenged in Bhutan and some regions of Asia, where smallholders are developing new techniques to grow more and are not losing soil quality.

Systems like “sustainable root intensification” (SRI), which carefully regulate the amount of water that crops need and the age at which seedlings are planted out, have shown that organic crop yields can be doubled with no synthetic chemicals.

“We are experimenting with different methods of growing crops like SRI but we are also going to increase the amount of irrigated land and use traditional varieties of crops which do not require inputs and have pest resistance,” says Gyamtsho.

However, a run of exceptionally warm years and erratic weather has left many farmers doubtful they can do without chemicals.

In Paro, a largely farming district in south-west Bhutan, farmers are already struggling to grow enough to feed their families and local government officials say they are having to distribute fertiliser and pesticides in larger quantities to help people grow more.

“I have heard of the plan to turn everything organic. But we are facing serious problems just getting people to grow enough”, said Rinzen Wangchuk, district farm officer.

“Most people here are smallholder farmers. The last few years we have had problems with the crops. The weather has been very erratic. It’s been warmer than normal and all the chilli crops are full of pests. We are having to rely on fertilisers more than we have ever had to in the past and even these are not working as well as they initially did.”

Dawa Tshering, who depends on his two acres of rice paddy and a vegetable garden, says that for decades his farming was chemical free.

“But its harder now because all our children are either in the capital or studying. Nobody wants to stay, which means we have to work harder. It’s just my wife an myself here. We cannot grow enough to feed ourselves and take crops to the market, so we have to use chemicals for the first time. We would like to go back to farming how we used to, where we just used what nature provided.”

But in a world looking for new ideas, Bhutan is already called the poster child of sustainable development. More than 95% of the population has clean water and electricity, 80% of the country is forested and, to the envy of many countries, it is carbon neutral and food secure.

In addition, it is now basing its economic development on the pursuit of collective happiness.

“We have no fossil fuels or nuclear. But we are blessed with rivers which give us the potential of over 30,000megawatts of electricity. So far we only exploit 2,000 megawatts. We exploit enough now to export to India and in the pipeline we have 10,000 megawatts more. The biggest threat we face is cars. The number is increasing every day. Everyone wants to buy cars and that means we must import fuel. That is why we must develop our energy.”

Agriculture minister Gyamtsho remains optimistic. “Hopefully we can provide solutions. What is at stake is the future. We need governments who can make bold decisions now rather than later.”

Bhutan set to plough lone furrow as worlds first wholly organic country | marketspace

Advocates shocked by president's veto of Kenyan climate authority bill - AlertNet

Kenya’s hopes of becoming one of the first countries in sub-Saharan Africa with a body legally empowered to advise on mitigating the effects of climate change have hit a dead end, after President Mwai Kibaki rejected a law that would have created a Kenya Climate Change Authority (KCCA).

The Kenya Climate Change Authority Bill was passed by the country’s parliament in December. The KCCA would have advised national and regional governments on how to cope with climate change, punish environmental offenders and implement local and international agreements on climate issues.

The body would have been authorized to formulate policies on adaptation and response, besides setting regulatory measures to control activities that would impact the environment and climate.

Under the bill, a Climate Change Trust Fund would have been established, managed by a board of trustees, to source funds from within and outside government to finance mitigation and adaptation activities by KCCA and civil society.

But in January President Kibaki refused to sign the bill, citing lack of public involvement in its creation.

The president said that although the law was important to the country to deal with climate change and ensure a clean environment for citizens, public participation in the formulation of laws by the national assembly was enshrined in the constitution, and had to be observed.

“There was no public input in formulation of the bill in accordance with article 118 of the constitution. I recommend that the bill be referred back to parliament to allow for public input,” Kibaki’s statement said, effectively denying the country its first-ever climate law.

PRESIDENT’S VIEW DISPUTED

The president’s assertion about lack of public input has been disputed by groups involved in crafting the law, including the Kenya Climate Change Working Group (KCCWG), a nongovernmental organisation.

The group’s chief executive, Cecilia Kibe, called the president’s decision shocking.

 “We have held hearings across the country prior to the tabling of this bill in parliament for debate and adoption,” said Kibe. “We are all shocked by the turn of events.”

Documents provided by KCCWG indicate the involvement of the public in consultations, including  grassroots groups such as farmers and livestock keepers.

The prime mover of the bill, former legislator and leading climate scientist Wilbur Otichillo, said he was also taken aback by the president’s move. He asserted that the Network on Renewable Energy and Climate Change, a lobbying group, had sought and incorporated the public’s views on the bill.

“We can only hope the next parliament to be elected on March 4 will rectify the anomaly and make the president understand that the Kenyan people were exhaustively involved,” Otichillo said.

It is unlikely that the new parliament will look at the matter afresh before June, since there will be a month-long break after members are sworn in. The bill will also compete with other pending bills related to the country’s recently adopted constitution and those left unfinished by the previous parliament.

Climate-related matters in Kenya are currently handled by a small unit of experts from different government ministries, based in the prime minister’s office.

However, the unit is poorly funded by the government, and climate initiatives are mainly spearheaded by civil society and non-governmental organizations, experts said.

Advocates shocked by president's veto of Kenyan climate authority bill - AlertNet

IPS – Saving a Shrinking Lake | Inter Press Service

By Ngala Killian Chimtom

Approaching the Lake Chad basin from Gulfe, a small locality 45 kilometres from Cameroon’s Far North Regional capital Maroua, the atmosphere of despair is palpable: dusty air, fierce and unrelenting winds, wilting plants and sand dunes suggest that this once lush area is undergoing a terrible change. 

Nothing breaks the expanse of sparse vegetation but the occasional withered tree and some scorched shrubs.

Bordered by Chad, Cameroon, Niger and Nigeria, Lake Chad once spanned 25,000 square kilometres but in the last half century it has shrunk by 90 percent, its total surface area now covering a mere 2,500 square kilometres.

As a result of feeble rainfall, the Chari and the Logone – the two main rivers that feed the lake – are bringing less and less water each year.

Herders, fisherfolk and farmers who have relied for generations on the rich soil of this basin are now struggling to survive, as the great lake dries up before their very eyes.

On the banks of the lake, Mahamat Aboubakar is disentangling a tiny black catfish from a large net.

“Before, you needed to cast the net just a few times to get thousands of fish,” Aboubakar tells IPS. “But today, it may require a whole day’s work to get this,” he says, pointing to the miserable catch, which is worth about two dollars and is likely to be his only income for the day.

Back when the lake was healthy and teeming with life, the 64-year old fisherman could earn as much as 50 dollars. Now, he can only expect his catch to get smaller – and himself poorer – as the lake’s waters continue to recede.

“This is a disaster,” Sanusi Imran Abdullahi, executive director of the Lake Chad Basin Commission (LCBC) – a regional body created by the countries bordering the lake with the aim of regulating water use and other natural resources in the basin – tells IPS.

“It is already taking its toll on residents around the lake,” he adds. In order to prevent a potentially catastrophic situation, “we are working to save Lake Chad and the 30 million people whose livelihoods depend on the natural resources” of this water body.

It is impossible to blame the crisis on one single factor, experts say.

Environmentalist Paul Ghogomou of the University of Yaounde in Cameroon tells IPS, “Desertification, climate change as well as the continuous diversion of water from the rivers that feed the lake are responsible.”

He explains that water from Cameroon’s Chari River – which, fed by its tributary, the Logone, provides over 90 percent of Lake Chad’s water – is being diverted to irrigation projects in the surrounding area.

Meanwhile, dams built along the Jama’are and Hadejia Rivers in northeastern Nigeria are “partly responsible for the shrinkage”, he says.

LCBC’s Abdullahi adds that population pressure is also stretching the lake to breaking point.

“Forty years ago, the population within the Lake Chad area was about 17 million. Now, we number about 30 million. So rising demand by the population, the rising numbers of livestock as well as massive evaporation as a result of climate change have all combined to shrink the lake,” he notes.

For the time being, farmers and fisher folk are showing resilience, adapting as best they can to a looming crisis.

Ahmadou Bello, a fisherman in Gulfe, has simply turned to farming, producing such crops as cowpea, maize, rice and peppers without using fertilisers.

Showing off this thriving farm with a wave of his hand, he tells IPS the disappearing lake has “left behind very fertile land”.

But if the lake does not return, even the remaining humidity left by its receding waters will evapourate, and farmers will be left with few options for a livelihood.

Can the waters be replenished?

In an effort to implement more sustainable solutions, member countries of the LCBC – Chad, Cameroon, Niger, Nigeria and the Central African Republic (CAR) – have developed an ambitious plan to replenish the lake with water from the Obangui, a tributary of the Congo River.

Abdullahi says the project will involve the “construction of a retention dam at Palambo (upstream of the CAR’s capital Bangui) to serve as a catchment area. The high flow through pumping will then enter River Fafa – a tributary of Ouham – and by gravity through a 1,350-kilometre-long feeder channel (flow) in to the River Chari in Cameroon and then to Lake Chad.

“There is so much water in the Congo that goes into the ocean. We are just going to take a fraction of it to save the lives of 30 million people who depend on the lake for their survival,” he says.

He further explained that the project would also extend the electricity supply, ensure river transportation in order to move goods from east to west across Africa and develop irrigation and agro-industry in the region.

“So the programme isn’t only (designed) to bring water to Lake Chad, but also to improve economic activity and the livelihoods of people within the Congo Basin,” he tells IPS.

But a dearth of financial resources is likely to delay the project’s implementation – according to Abdullahi the scheme will cost a staggering 14.5 billion dollars

While heads of state in the region have shown some political commitment, the LCBC is primarily looking to the global community for help.

“We will host an international donors’ conference early this year to see what we can get, and from there we will (assess) what the member states will contribute,” he explains.

The bulk of the financing is likely to come from the private sector, as long as funders are guaranteed a return on their investment. “I am sure they will be interested,” says an optimistic Abdullahi.

The cost of the project may look frightening, but the cost of inaction could be even more devastating, experts say.

According to the Canadian firm CIMA-International, which carried out feasibility studies on the water transfer project, Lake Chad could disappear altogether by 2025 if nothing is done to save it.

Source: http://www.ipsnews.net/2013/02/saving-a-shrinking-lake/