An interesting conference is planned for Nov. 25, 2008 in the Netherlands on “how to operationalise adaptation to climate change in developing countries”. This is a follow-up to a conference organized last year by several Dutch humanitarian and development NGOs on adaptation to climate change in developing countries, with the goal of sharing experiences from NGO practitioners, scientists, government officials, and companies.
Last year’s conference used a thematic and regional approach to look at impacts and consequences of climate change for developing countries. Now this year, their focus is on how this knowledge should translate into action.
We know the possible threats that climate change can pose, but how do we translate this into our actions here and now? How to translate the general and long term climate scenario’s in information for decision-making at community level? How can climate change adaptation strengthen the MDGs? How can climate change adaptation improve existing disaster risk management structures and their connection with sustainable development strategies. It basically comes down to a simple question: “‘Now that we know that the climate is changing, what should we do different in our daily work in developing countries to adapt to the consequences of this change?”
I hope that they begin to look at involving communities in this approach, and find ways to support the locally-led activities in communities that already are addressing adaptation to climate change. I am always fascinated by how local people are leading the way on sustainability – see Stories of Sustainability. I also hope they look at some of the exciting work being done by Canada’s Farm Radio International to discover and share local knowledge about climate change adaptation in Africa.
We don’t need to always be reinventing the wheel; we need to build on what people already are doing locally. Of course, this may mean finding ways to provide financial support to small groups that do not have sophisticated project or financial management systems – but who are doing things that work.
The Financial Times reports Oct. 27, 2008 that Thailand, the world’s largest rice exporter, plans to barter rice for oil with Iran, which is one of the top 10 importers of rice. Apparently countries haven’t bartered like this for decades, but the UN’s Food and Agriculture Organization says it is likely to happen much more because of high commodity prices and scarce credit.
Sounds to me like a good thing. This is what small remote communities have been doing for years – swapping goods and services, because there is no available banking in their communities. Both sides get something valuable in exchange for something valuable – and people who need food get it. Perhaps such bartering will bring some reality back to financial markets.
I just discovered Global Voices, thanks to an article in the Washington Post.
“Global Voices seeks to aggregate, curate, and amplify the global conversation online – shining light on places and people other media often ignore. We work to develop tools, institutions and relationships that will help all voices, everywhere, to be heard.” Volunteer authors, editors and translators help make sense of the tens of millions of blogs being written all over the planet.“They are helping us to make sense of it all, and to highlight things that bloggers are saying which mainstream media may not be reporting.”
And here is one heartwarming example:
“Iran: Blogging from the Smallest School in the World
Here is another story about how blogging can change lives in a positive way and attract attention to invisible parts of this world.
Abdul Mohammad She’rani, a young Iranian teacher in a very remote village in Iran, blogged about his very small school and his four students in a small Iranian fishing village of Jamalabad Kalu near the southern port city of Bushehr.
Social media did something nearly miraculous: Iranian media and even CNN reported about this village and the government helped with road construction and other facilities. UNESCO recognised the school as the smallest in the world. You can see several photos of the school here.
CNN did a story on this school, that has made the rounds in a video on YouTube.”
Filed under: Environment | Tags: governance, solar cooking, sustainability
Sun Fire Cooking has been working to introduce solar cooking to communities in northeastern Somalia for a number of years. In 2005, they created the world’s first solar cooker village, at Bender Bayla on Somalia’s northern coast, which was heavily damaged by the Asian tsunami.
They are working in the disputed Sanaag District, which lies between Somaliland and Puntland in the north. Outsiders have been using this area as a base for piracy, as well as for illegal charcoal production.
Sun Fire Cooking’s recent update (October 28, 2008) reports some good news from the region.
“In June 2008 the people of Sanaag decided to do something about the lawlessness. They raised money from Somalis living in Western Europe and the United States, hired a General in the former Somali army who had local roots and paid for a 300-man security force to help maintain order. Subsequently there has been a huge improvement of security in Sanaag.
“Cutting of trees for charcoal production has been banned in Sanaag. Security forces have been ordered to arrest and to destroy illegal charcoal traders’ business. All charcoal products are publicly burned and the traders’ transport vehicles confiscated. Solar cooking is seen more and more as a viable alternative for household cooking.”
Sun Fire’s work is changing attitudes about using charcoal, which contributes heavily to deforestation. “In villages such as Badhan where Sun Fire Cooking has been working for several years there is now a ‘critical mass’ of households, which are using solar cookers. These households tell their neighbours about the advantages of solar cooking and stimulate demand. “
Community groups throughout Sanaag have seen Sun Film’s award-winning short film, Charcoal Traffic, about two brothers trapped in a cycle of environmental and cultural devastation, filmed on location in Somalia near Bosaso, using an all-local Somali cast. The film promotes community discussion about the devastating cultural and environmental effects of charcoal production.
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A large scale project to send one million messages a day to South African mobile phones, encouraging South Africans to be tested for HIV/AIDS, will go live December 1, after a pilot project showed that the messages led to a dramatic increase in calls to counselors at the National AIDS helpline in Johannesburg.
The BBC reports that Project Masiluleke will send one million free text messages a day – many in local languages such as Zulu – in what may be the largest ever use of mobile phones for health information purposes. Its developers hope it will encourage hundreds of thousands of people to go for an HIV test in the first year.
The system sends the messages using a “Please Call Me” (PCM) service – a free form of text messaging, found across Africa, that allows someone without any phone credit to send a text to a friend asking them to call. Each sent PCM message has the words “Please Call Me,” the phone number of the caller, and space for an additional 120 characters. The extra space is normally filled with advertising, which helps offset the cost of running the service. About 30m PCM messages are sent every day in South Africa.
The system, which will also eventually be used to provide information about tuberculosis, has been developed and funded by a group of technology firms such as Nokia Siemens Networks, HIV charities, design firms and educational organisations such as National Geographic. It was launched at the Pop!Tech conference in Camden, Maine, BBC says.
Filed under: Livelihoods | Tags: agriculture, donor policy, food aid, self-sufficiency
The international community must stop treating food like a commodity and instead focus on increasing the ability of countries to feed themselves, former US president Bill Clinton told a United Nations gathering on October 16, World Food Day. The Associated Press reports that he said “we all blew it” by treating food crops “like color TVs” instead of a vital commodity for the world’s poor.
“Food is not a commodity like others,” Clinton said. “We should go back to a policy of maximum food self-sufficiency. It is crazy for us to think we can develop countries around the world without increasing their ability to feed themselves.” He said food aid from wealthy nations could bolster agriculture in poor countries. Canada, for example, requires that 50% of its aid go as cash — not as Canadian grain — to buy crops grown locally in Africa and other recipient countries. U.S. law, however, requires that almost all U.S. aid be American-grown food, which benefits U.S. farmers but undercuts local food crops.
Bush proposed earlier this year that 25% of future U.S. aid be given in cash. “A bipartisan coalition (in Congress) defeated him,” Clinton said. “He was right and both parties that defeated him were wrong.” Clinton also criticized the heavy U.S. reliance on corn to produce ethanol, which increased demand for the crop and helped drive up grain prices worldwide.
U.N. Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon told the gathering that prices on some food items are “500% higher than normal” in Haiti and Ethiopia, for example. The U.N. Food and Agriculture Organization estimates the number of undernourished people worldwide rose to 923 million last year.
Responding to Clinton’s suggestions for an increase in fair-trade provisions, direct marketing schemes and other policies designed to level the playing field between agricultural producers in developed countries and small farmers in developing countries, FAO Director-General Jacques Diouf stressed the need for “new international relations” that would guarantee adequate incomes for farmers of developed countries, without penalizing the farmers of developing countries. He proposed a World Summit on Food Security to be held during the first half of 2009, to reach consensus to eradicate hunger from the world.
Filed under: Uncategorized | Tags: agriculture, aid, donor policy, food security
A study just released by the United Nations Conference on Trade and Development and the United Nations Environment Program, Organic Agriculture and Food Security in Africa, provides a resounding vote of support for organic agriculture as a way of addressing food insecurity in Africa. Its conclusions have significant implications both for international donors and for African governments themselves.
The study notes that food security is not just a question of producing enough food to meet demand; more food does not automatically mean food security for everyone. “What is important is who produces the food, who has access to the technology and knowledge to produce it, and who has the purchasing power to acquire it.” (emphasis added).
Key conclusions of the study::
- Organic agriculture can increase agricultural productivity and can raise incomes with low-cost, locally available and appropriate technologies, without causing environmental damage. Furthermore, evidence shows that organic agriculture can build up natural resources, strengthen communities and improve human capacity, thus improving food security by addressing many different causal factors simultaneously.
- All case studies which focused on food production in this research where data have been reported have shown increases in per hectare productivity of food crops, which challenges the popular myth that organic agriculture cannot increase agricultural productivity. Organic production allows access to markets and food for farmers, enabling them to obtain premium prices for their produce (export and domestic) and to use the additional incomes earned to buy extra foodstuffs, education and/or health care. A transition to integrated organic agriculture, delivering greater benefits at the scale occurring in these projects, has been shown to increase access to food in a variety of ways: by increasing yields, increasing total on-farm productivity, enabling farmers to use their higher earnings from export to buy food, and, as a result of higher on-farm yields, enabling the wider community to buy organic food at local markets.
- Organic and near-organic agricultural methods and technologies are ideally suited for many poor, marginalized smallholder farmers in Africa, as they require minimal or no external inputs, use locally and naturally available materials to produce high-quality products, and encourage a whole systemic approach to farming that is more diverse and resistant to stress.
- The recent food-price hike and the contribution rising fuel prices have made to it highlight the importance of making agriculture less energy and external input dependent. Enhanced transition to sustainable forms of agriculture in general, and organic agriculture in particular, needs to be part of an effective response strategy to escalating food prices.
- Certified organic production for the export market, with its premium prices, can undoubtedly reduce poverty among farmers, which is a major contributor to food insecurity. However, monocropping farming systems for the export market, whether conventional or organic, still leave farmers vulnerable to export price fluctuations and crop failure. Where organic farming principles are adopted as a holistic approach for the whole of an integrated agricultural system, “organic” can be synonymous with “sustainable”, and increased food security in a region is more likely to occur, while also building up natural, human and social resources.
The study notes that its conclusions are confirmed by the April 14, 2008 report of the International Assessment of Agricultural Knowledge, Science and Technology for Development (IAASTD) panel. This intergovernmental process, supported by over 400 experts under the co-sponsorship of the FAO, GEF, UNDP, UNEP, UNESCO, the World Bank and WHO, said that “the way the world grows its food will have to change radically to better serve the poor and hungry if the world is to cope with growing population and climate change while avoiding social breakdown and environmental collapse.”
Filed under: Livelihoods | Tags: agriculture, food aid, international development
Probably because I’m Irish by birth, I have always enjoyed eating potatoes. My father, who grew up in Belfast, used to call mashed potatoes “champ” and always welcomed seeing it on his plate. So I have been interested in the UN’s attempts to bring more attention to the potato as a way of improving food security in much of the world. The recent food price crisis looks to make the potato a star, once again, which is fitting as 2008 is the International Year of the Potato.
The New York Times reports that while 10 years ago, potatoes were mostly grown and eaten in Europe and the Americas, China and India now are first and third in global potato production and in 2005, for the first time, developing countries produced most of the world’s potatoes. Potatoes are now the second most important calorie source in Rwanda, after cassavas, and potato growing and eating is rapidly increasing in Nigeria and Egypt.
There are many good reasons for this expansion. A medium potato, boiled with the skin on, provides about 100 calories, 26 grams of carbohydrates, zero cholesterol, about 4 grams of protein, 3 grams of fibre, about half the daily adult requirement of vitamin C, as well as significant amounts of iron, potassium, zinc, thiamin, niacin and vitamin B6 and such essential trace elements as manganese, chromium, selenium and molybdenum. It takes less water and energy to grow potatoes than wheat, and potatoes mature quickly. They aren’t used to produce biofuels and, when grain prices rose dramatically, potato prices stayed stable – they aren’t traded on world financial markets because they are heavy and do not transport well, the Times notes.
Encouraging greater potato production and consumption thus means encouraging local potato production – and that helps to support a major shift in international food aid that will help developing countries in ways that food aid has not done in the past. Earlier this year, when food prices skyrocketed, the World Food Program began to focus on buying food locally for its food aid programs. This paradigm shift is helping to support the growth of local economies in the developing world, and the new potato promotion strategy seems likely to do the same thing.
The Times quotes FAO expert NeBambi Lutaladio as saying that: “Increasingly, the potato is being seen as a vital food-security crop and a substitute for costly grain imports. Potato consumption is expanding strongly in developing countries, where potato is an increasingly important source of food, employment and income.” Since 2004, the International Potato Center (CIP) in Peru has been working on a 10-year research program “aimed squarely at contributing to the achievement of selected targets of the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs)” by improving the livelihoods of the poor.
The current food price crisis has brought attention to this mandate in a new way. CIP director Dr. Pamela Anderson told the Times that until recently, she was most commonly asked for her favourite potato recipe. “Now the food system is so fragile that people have stopped laughing. People are asking, ‘How can potatoes help solve the problem?’ And she believes the answer is twofold: planting potatoes gives food security, and it strengthens the local economy in ways that sending in food aid from outside does not do.
“The potato has come a long way since it was blamed for causing everything from lust to leprosy, yet many misconceptions—and a lack of information—still surround the crop,” Dr. Anderson says in an article entitled Let them eat potatoes. “We firmly believe that this healthy tuber will increasingly play a vital role in alleviating hunger and improving the livelihoods and health of different populations around the world. In this way we can contribute to achieving fair, healthy and sustainable human development.”
One example of how it can do that is the Peruvian potato project T’ikapapa, which won The World Challenge 2007. T’ikapapa is a marketing social concept that enables resource-poor farmers from the Andean highlands to sell their distinctly labeled native potato crop in Lima’s supermarkets.
31 of 48 sub-Saharan African states show improved governance, Ibrahim Index finds
The 2008 Ibrahim Index of African Governance, a comprehensive ranking of sub-Saharan Africa’s 48 countries released Oct. 6 in Addis Ababa, shows improved governance performance in many African countries. The Index assesses national progress in five key areas – safety and security; rule of law, transparency and corruption; participation and human rights; sustainable economic development; and human development – that together constitute a holistic definition of good governance. The 2008 Index is based on data from 2006.
“Obscured by many of the headlines of the past few months, the real story coming out of Africa is that governance performance across a large majority of African countries is improving,” said Foundation chair Mo Ibrahim. “According to this comprehensive analysis, progress is being made across the continent against a range of key governance indicators. I hope that these results will be used as a tool by Africa’s citizens to hold their governments to account, and stimulate debate about the performance of those who govern in their name.”
For the second year running, Mauritius tops the Ibrahim Index, scoring 85.1 this year. Membership of the top five remains unchanged and is comprised of Seychelles, Cape Verde, Botswana and South Africa, all of which score over 71.0. Specifically, the Index shows that:
- Almost two thirds of sub-Saharan African countries – 31 out of 48 – have improved governance performance. Liberia improved the most with a 10.4 point improvement to rank 38th with a final score of 48.7 out of 100.
- In Participation and Human Rights; Rule of Law, Transparency and Corruption; Human Development; and Sustainable Economic Opportunity, most countries in sub-Saharan Africa improved their scores between 2005 and 2006.
- Participation and Human Rights shows the greatest improvement, with 29 countries showing progress. Many have demonstrated improved participation in elections generally deemed free and fair by international observers. However, many issues remain across Africa in this area, particularly with regard to women’s rights.
- 30 countries improved their scores in the sub-category of Macroeconomic Stability and Financial Integrity.
- In the Educational Opportunity sub-category (within Human Development), 32 countries improved their scores between 2005 and 2006. Only five countries regressed in this area over this period.
- Nearly all countries have recorded progress in generating greater access to technology, with 40 countries improving their scores for internet usage and 44 for phone subscribers.
- On average the regional groupings of the Southern African Development Community, the Economic Community of Central African States, the Economic Community of West African States, and the East African Community all improved governance performance between 2005 and 2006. The Horn of Africa was the only region to see an average decrease in score during this period.
- Only two of the countries in the bottom ten places improved their overall scores compared to last year.
“It is particularly fitting that during the sixtieth anniversary of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights we are seeing the most notable improvement in governance take place within the category of participation and human rights,” said Foundation board member Mary Robinson, former President of Ireland and UN High Commissioner for Human Rights. “More sub-Saharan African countries than ever are holding democratic elections, and I am hopeful that this will help form the platform for continued progress across the continent.”
The Ibrahim Index assesses governance performance against 57 criteria divided into five categories which together make up the core obligations which governments have to their citizens. The Index, created to meet the need for a comprehensive and quantifiable method of measuring governance performance in sub-Saharan Africa, is produced by Professor Robert Rotberg, Dr. Rachel Gisselquist and their team at the Program on Intrastate Conflict and Conflict Resolution at the Kennedy School of Government, Harvard University, supported by an advisory council of African academics and corporate leaders.
See The Economist for a great chart illustrating the findings.
Filed under: innovation | Tags: Africa, innovation, livelihood, universities
Another story I’m working on for Hopebuilding wiki:
MIT researcher Dr. Nathan Eagle says the future of the mobile phone lies in developing countries, not in the developed world, and specifically in Africa, where mobile phone use is growing by 65% annually. He is living in Kenya, where he is involved with a variety of amazing projects, including:
“EPROM, part of the Program for Developmental Entrepreneurship aims to foster mobile phone-related research and entrepreneurship. Key activities include:
- the development of new applications for mobile phone users worldwide
- academic research using mobile phones
- the creation of a widely applicable mobile phone programming curriculum
Today’s mobile phones are designed to meet Western needs. Subscribers in developing countries, however, now represent the majority of mobile phone users worldwide. We believe the adoption of new technologies and services within this vast, emerging market will drive innovation and help shape the future of the mobile phone.” EPROM is teaching mobile phone programming within computer science departments in universities across East Africa.
Arguing that there will always be tasks that humans can do better than computers, Dr. Eagle developed a way that allows billions of mobile phone subscribers to earn small amounts of money by doing short text-based tasks using his txteagle system, which distributes and collates this work via SMS.
