Escaping to Ecovillages in Argentina

February 17, 2013 by

Global Geopolitics & Political Economy / IPS

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Ecovillages, where people grow their own produce and live sustainably with nature, are mushrooming across Argentina. Credit: Natalia Ruiz Díaz/IPS

By Marcela Valente

BUENOS AIRES, Feb 14 (IPS) – Almost imperceptibly, sustainable settlements that combine community living with the preservation of natural resources have mushroomed across Argentina as an alternative to rampant consumerism.Ecovillages, where people grow their own produce in community gardens and live sustainably in close contact with nature, are a growing trend in the provinces of Buenos Aires, Santa Fe and Misiones (east and northeast), Córdoba (centre-north), Catamarca (northwest), San Luis (west), Río Negro (south), and even in the capital city of Buenos Aires.

Some of these initiatives — which operate as living laboratories — have sprung from successful family projects that planted the seed of an eco-friendly community. Others started out as an idea conceived by a group of friends who share a common worldview.

"It’s sort of like regaining your freedom," said Tania Giuliani, a biologist with a Master’s degree in sustainable development who is participating in the establishment of a new ecovillage on an island in the district of El Tigre, on the last stretch of the Paraná Delta, in northeastern Buenos Aires.

[pullquote]3[/pullquote]Giuliani has not given up her teaching position in Buenos Aires but, even though the project is still in the early stages, she left her apartment in the city and moved to the island so she can work on her house.

The project is called ‘i-tekoa’ (which means "water village" in Guarani) and in addition to Giuliani it involves seven other friends who decided to embrace this alternative way of life. A total of eight houses will be built using natural materials found on the land and based on designs in harmony with the marshland environment.

The group also to plans to erect a community centre to hold art, gardening and permaculture workshops.

Permaculture — a contraction of "permanent agriculture" or "permanent culture" — originated in the 1970s in Australia and "involves designing sustainable development models where people can live in harmony with nature", Carlos Straub told Tierramérica.

Straub was among the first to introduce permaculture in Argentina back in the 1990s, along with the founders of Gaia, the first ecovillage in the country, which has operated since 1996 in the Navarro district of the province of Buenos Aires.

Gaia consists of cottages built with natural materials and it houses the Argentine Institute of Permaculture, which offers training workshops for anyone interested in replicating this experience.

Workshop participants are taught the basics of organic cooking, eco-farming, seed production, natural building techniques, renewable energy and alternatives for sustainable sanitation and community living.

Gaia is part of the Global Ecovillage Network (GEN) that connects thousands of similar initiatives.

Straub is currently the head of Cidep (Centro de Investigación, Desarrollo y Enseñanza de la Permacultura), a permaculture research and teaching centre, located on a small farm near El Bolsón, in the southwest province of Río Negro, which has offered workshops since 2004.

Twenty families are establishing a new ecovillage next to Cidep’s facilities, which provide temporary shelter for eight members of the project while they build their houses.

Straub also teaches courses in different communities in the Patagonia region, both in Argentina and Chile.

"There’s a very large movement of people migrating away from cities and looking to purchase land with others for initiatives like this," he said.

Before starting the i-tekoa project, Giuliani lived in an ecovillage in New Zealand. For her, capitalism imposes an individualistic, consumerist and anti-natural way of life that people are increasingly turning away from.

"People live solitary and materialistic lives, working all day, coming home to an apartment and buying chemical-laden foods," she told Tierramérica.

She joined a group of friends who were as unhappy as she was with their way of life and bought a plot of land where they are now building their houses and a community centre. The buildings are being constructed without filling or drying the plot, which is marshland, so as to preserve the natural purification role played by wetlands.

Non-native trees are being cut down and their wood used to build the houses. Native species will be planted in their place. Project participants are still debating whether to use dry toilets or biodigesters as a sewage treatment solution.

"Living solely off the land seems a bit idealistic. Our goal is to live off what we produce in our gardens and (the money we raise in) the centre’s workshops, and gradually, if we can, we’ll give up our jobs in the city," Giuliani said.

According to Straub, ecovillages are multiplying as a reaction against a way of living that is exhausted. "People want a simpler life that will allow them to fulfil old dreams without having to wait until they retire," he said.

"It’s not about going back to primitive times or the Stone Age; it’s about recovering the capacity to make our own decisions. Ecovillages may not be the solution for everyone, but the project helps bring back a more humane way of looking at life," he added.

The idea is to "change our perspective. The miracle has to occur within us, and if that happens it doesn’t matter whether you live in an ecovillage or in the middle of the city, what matters is that your life is not governed by the system," Straub said.

Straub himself lives 15 kilometres from Cidep, in El Bolsón, and is not sure he wants to live in an ecovillage. But he does believe he can play a role in the process as seed producer.

Most importantly, he says, more and more people are choosing to go down this road. "When I started in Gaia there was only 15 or 20 of us, but at an event I attended recently there were 500 other people who had joined this experience."

*This article was originally published on Feb. 9 by the Latin American network of newspapers Tierramérica.

All rights reserved, IPS – Inter Press Service, 2013.

This article may not be republished, broadcast, framed, or redistributed without the written permission of IPS – Inter Press Service. Republication of this material without permission from IPS, the copyright holder, constitutes a violation of United States and international copyright laws and may result in legal action.


Filed Under: Development, Environment, Latin America, Report Tagged With: , ,

New Era of Food Scarcity Echoes Collapsed Civilisations

February 7, 2013 by

Global Geopolitics & Political Economy / IPS

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Tikal Mayan ruins in Guatemala. The Sumerians and Mayans are just two of the many early civilisations that declined apparently because they moved onto an agricultural path that was environmentally unsustainable. Credit: cc by 3.0

Lester R. Brown

WASHINGTON, Feb 07 (IPS) – The world is in transition from an era of food abundance to one of scarcity. Over the last decade, world grain reserves have fallen by one third. World food prices have more than doubled, triggering a worldwide land rush and ushering in a new geopolitics of food.Food is the new oil. Land is the new gold.

This new era is one of rising food prices and spreading hunger. On the demand side of the food equation, population growth, rising affluence, and the conversion of food into fuel for cars are combining to raise consumption by record amounts.

On the supply side, extreme soil erosion, growing water shortages, and the earth’s rising temperature are making it more difficult to expand production. Unless we can reverse such trends, food prices will continue to rise and hunger will continue to spread, eventually bringing down our social system.

Can we reverse these trends in time? Or is food the weak link in our early twenty-first-century civilisation, much as it was in so many of the earlier civilisations whose archeological sites we now study?

This tightening of world food supplies contrasts sharply with the last half of the twentieth century, when the dominant issues in agriculture were overproduction, huge grain surpluses, and access to markets by grain exporters. During that time, the world in effect had two reserves: large carryover stocks of grain (the amount in the bin when the new harvest begins) and a large area of cropland idled under U.S. farm programmes to avoid overproduction.

When the world harvest was good, the United States would idle more land. When the harvest was subpar, it would return land to production. The excess production capacity was used to maintain stability in world grain markets. The large stocks of grain cushioned world crop shortfalls.

When India’s monsoon failed in 1965, for example, the United States shipped a fifth of its wheat harvest to India to avert a potentially massive famine. And because of abundant stocks, this had little effect on the world grain price.

When this period of food abundance began, the world had 2.5 billion people. Today it has seven billion.

From 1950 to 2000 there were occasional grain price spikes as a result of weather-induced events, such as a severe drought in Russia or an intense heat wave in the U.S. Midwest. But their effects on price were short-lived. Within a year or so things were back to normal. The combination of abundant stocks and idled cropland made this period one of the most food-secure in world history.

But it was not to last. By 1986, steadily rising world demand for grain and unacceptably high budgetary costs led to a phasing out of the U.S. cropland set-aside programme.

Today the United States has some land idled in its Conservation Reserve Program, but it targets land that is highly susceptible to erosion. The days of productive land ready to be quickly brought into production when needed are over.

Ever since agriculture began, carryover stocks of grain have been the most basic indicator of food security. The goal of farmers everywhere is to produce enough grain not just to make it to the next harvest but to do so with a comfortable margin. From 1986, when we lost the idled cropland buffer, through 2001, the annual world carryover stocks of grain averaged a comfortable 107 days of consumption.

This safety cushion was not to last either. After 2001, the carryover stocks of grain dropped sharply as world consumption exceeded production. From 2002 through 2011, they averaged only 74 days of consumption, a drop of one third. An unprecedented period of world food security has come to an end. Within two decades, the world had lost both of its safety cushions.

In recent years, world carryover stocks of grain have been only slightly above the 70 days that was considered a desirable minimum during the late twentieth century. Now stock levels must take into account the effect on harvests of higher temperatures, more extensive drought, and more intense heat waves.

Although there is no easy way to precisely quantify the harvest effects of any of these climate-related threats, it is clear that any of them can shrink harvests, potentially creating chaos in the world grain market. To mitigate this risk, a stock reserve equal to 110 days of consumption would produce a much safer level of food security.

The world is now living from one year to the next, hoping always to produce enough to cover the growth in demand. Farmers everywhere are making an all-out effort to keep pace with the accelerated growth in demand, but they are having difficulty doing so.

Food shortages undermined earlier civilisations. The Sumerians and Mayans are just two of the many early civilisations that declined apparently because they moved onto an agricultural path that was environmentally unsustainable.

For the Sumerians, rising salt levels in the soil as a result of a defect in their otherwise well-engineered irrigation system eventually brought down their food system and thus their civilisation. For the Mayans, soil erosion was one of the keys to their downfall, as it was for so many other early civilisations.

We, too, are on such a path. While the Sumerians suffered from rising salt levels in the soil, our modern-day agriculture is suffering from rising carbon dioxide levels in the atmosphere. And like the Mayans, we too are mismanaging our land and generating record losses of soil from erosion.

While the decline of early civilisations can be traced to one or possibly two environmental trends such as deforestation and soil erosion that undermined their food supply, we are now dealing with several. In addition to some of the most severe soil erosion in human history, we are also facing newer trends such as the depletion of aquifers, the plateauing of grain yields in the more agriculturally advanced countries, and rising temperature.

Against this backdrop, it is not surprising that the United Nations reports that food prices are now double what they were in 2002-04. For most U.S. citizens, who spend on average nine percent of their income on food, this is not a big deal. But for consumers who spend 50-70 percent of their income on food, a doubling of food prices is a serious matter. There is little latitude for them to offset the price rise simply by spending more.

Closely associated with the decline in stocks of grain and the rise in food prices is the spread of hunger. During the closing decades of the last century, the number of hungry people in the world was falling, dropping to a low of 792 million in 1997. After that it began to rise, climbing toward one billion. Unfortunately, if we continue with business as usual, the ranks of the hungry will continue to expand.

The bottom line is that it is becoming much more difficult for the world’s farmers to keep up with the world’s rapidly growing demand for grain. World grain stocks were drawn down a decade ago and we have not been able to rebuild them. If we cannot do so, we can expect that with the next poor harvest, food prices will soar, hunger will intensify, and food unrest will spread.

We are entering a time of chronic food scarcity, one that is leading to intense competition for control of land and water resources – in short, a new geopolitics of food.

*Lester Brown is the president of Earth Policy Institute. For further reading on the global food situation, see Full Planet, Empty Plates: The New Geopolitics of Food Scarcity, by Lester R. Brown (W.W. Norton: October 2012).

All rights reserved, IPS – Inter Press Service, 2013.

This article may not be republished, broadcast, framed, or redistributed without the written permission of IPS – Inter Press Service. Republication of this material without permission from IPS, the copyright holder, constitutes a violation of United States and international copyright laws and may result in legal action.


Filed Under: Agriculture, Environment, Lead Tagged With: ,

Fishers Fight Over Dwindling Catch

February 7, 2013 by

Global Geopolitics & Political Economy / IPS

Edgardo Ayala

PUERTO DE LA LIBERTAD, El Salvador, Feb 07 (IPS) – Boats were tying up at the jetty and there was a bustle of activity as vendors cried their wares, offering shellfish to potential buyers, while young people, sharp knives in hand, filleted sea bass and red snapper. Meanwhile, on the promenade, octogenarian musicians played old-style cumbias and boleros for restaurant patrons.But the lighthearted atmosphere belied a sombre reality here in Puerto de la Libertad, a small town on the Pacific coast in the southwest of El Salvador.

Standing next to his small boat, fisherman Víctor Flores gazed with disappointment at the fruits of two days’ labour: just 10 fish heaped in the safe at the bottom of his boat.

"I went to sea happy, thinking I was going to feed my family, but today I don’t want to go home, I am so ashamed and sad," said Flores.

The 44-year-old man, browned by the sun, told IPS that some years ago there was always catfish, red snapper, sea bass and mackerel on the family table.

But small-scale fishing no longer yields the same results, artisanal fishers in Puerto de la Libertad and other coastal areas told IPS.

In their view, the blame lies squarely on trawling, practised for decades by large shrimp boats that drag their nets across the bottom of the sea, gathering along the way species other than the intended catch and very young specimens that have not yet matured.

A ban on bottom trawling is vital to preserve marine life in this small Central American country, experts say. But the fall in fish stocks is also due to other factors, such as pollution and climate change, they say.

"There are various reasons; it cannot be said for certain that it is only due to overfishing," said Enrique Patiño, head of Fundación ProPesca, an NGO based in the U.S. city of Seattle, Washington, which supports sustainable use of aquatic resources in Central America and the Caribbean.

But the most urgent action is to stop trawling, because it will have an immediate impact, Patiño told IPS.

Not just fish but other sea creatures too are at risk. Shrimp, for example, is less abundant now than it was eight years ago. The shrimp catch fell by 35 percent between 2005 and 2011, according to a report on shrimp fisheries and aquaculture published in May 2012 by the Fisheries and Aquaculture Sector Organisation of the Central American Isthmus (OSPESCA) together with the United Nations’ Food and Agriculture Organisation (FAO).

Of even greater concern is that "since 2005 it has been impossible to calculate the fishable biomass of shrimp," says the report by Lilián Orellana. "Lack of research monitoring and estimates of reserves of this species make it difficult to determine present stocks."

The decline in fish catches threatens the ability of the 128 coastal communities spread along El Salvador’s 320-kilometre-long coast to feed themselves.

Fish is an essential part of the diets of some 28,000 artisanal fisherfolk and their families, and also of those who depend on related activities, such as small-scale fish vendors.

Coastal dwellers are happy when they sit down to a plate of fried fish, boiled beans and a sliced tomato, said 47-year-old fisherman Fredy Pérez.

"In El Salvador, 95 percent of the artisanal fish catch is for domestic consumption," said Patiño, so "naturally, it is important for food security."

Fish consumption in Latin America and the Caribbean is the second lowest in the world after Africa, at only 9.9 kilogrammes per person per year, according to the "State of World Fisheries and Aquaculture 2012” report published by the FAO.

In North America, by contrast, annual consumption is 24.6 kilogrammes per person.

And if bottom trawling is not stopped, access to the high quality protein in fish will continue to fall.

In April 2011, after a decade of lobbying, two federations of artisanal fisherfolk were able to persuade parliament to establish an exclusion zone of three nautical miles for industrial shrimp trawlers.

In response, the companies represented by the Salvadoran Chamber of Fisheries and Aquaculture (CAMPAC) lodged a constitutional challenge in the Supreme Court against the new law.

The new law "is forcing companies to shut down their operations, because they cannot survive the restriction", Waldemar Arnecke, head of CAMPAC, told IPS.

Waning catches are also noticeable in the industrial shrimping sector. And the three-mile coastal strip represents 61 percent of the productive area. At present, only 30 CAMPAC trawlers are working, while an estimated 5,800 small boats are active in artisanal fishing.

The shrimpers argue that the law violates the principle of equality. "Exclusive use of the sea should not be given to some while leaving others out," said Arnecke.

The economic importance of shrimp exports has been declining since the 1990s, replaced by the new stellar export, tuna; CAMPAC’s clout has fallen commensurately.

Orellana’s report estimates that industrial fishing provides 175 direct jobs and a further 210 indirectly.

According to Arnecke, the federations of cooperatives that promoted the legal reform do not represent the whole spectrum of artisanal fishers. In fact, CAMPAC entered into an alliance with the recently created Federación de Cooperativas de Pescadores Artesanales de la Bahía de Jiquilisco in Puerto El Triunfo, an umbrella group for 12 associations, to work on environmental projects in that southeastern area of the country.

Meanwhile, members of the Federación de Asociaciones Cooperativas Pesqueras Artesanales de El Salvador (FACOPADES) and the Federación de Cooperativas de Producción y Servicios Pesqueros de La Paz (FECOOPAZ), two federations of fishers’ cooperatives, travelled to the capital on Jan. 23 to present their arguments in favour of the law to the Supreme Court.

"We are defending food security, and for that we need to insist on the three-mile zone," fisherman Armando Erazo, head of the oversight board of FECOOPAZ, told a press conference.

The small-scale fisherfolk complained that the shrimp industry is continually breaking the law, which remains in force.

Arnecke admitted that some boats may have trespassed into the restricted zone, and the authorities have already recorded several incidents. IPS was unable to confirm this – several attempts to contact officials at the Centro de Desarrollo de la Pesca y la Acuicultura (Fisheries and Aquaculture Development Centre), the regulatory body for the sector, yielded no response.

All rights reserved, IPS – Inter Press Service, 2013.

This article may not be republished, broadcast, framed, or redistributed without the written permission of IPS – Inter Press Service. Republication of this material without permission from IPS, the copyright holder, constitutes a violation of United States and international copyright laws and may result in legal action.


Filed Under: Economy, Environment, Latin America, Report Tagged With: , ,

Solar Streetlights Light the Way Toward Green Energy in Caribbean

February 4, 2013 by

Global Geopolitics & Political Economy / IPS

Desmond Brown

St. Kitts residents welcome solar streetlights in areas they say have been too dark and prone to crime. Credit: Desmond Brown/IPS

BASSETERRE, St. Kitts, Feb 02 (IPS) – The tiny federation of St. Kitts-Nevis and its larger neighbour to the north, Jamaica, are leading the Caribbean’s search for new ways to become more energy efficient by installing new solar streetlights, a green alternative to traditional ones.In St. Kitts, the project is a collaborative effort between the government of Denzil Douglas and Taiwan, which have had diplomatic relations for the past 28 years. The Federation of St. Kitts-Nevis is one of a handful of Caribbean Community (CARICOM) countries to have diplomatic relations with Taiwan, as most of the others have diplomatic relations with mainland China.

"During the past year, we have successfully placed solar panels on the roof of Government Headquarters and set smart LED lights on the Kim Collins Highway and Frigate Bay Road," the resident Taiwanese ambassador, Miguel Tsao, told IPS. "Both ventures are significant and important. Also these projects were initiated with our joint efforts to tap into the unlimited clean energy source."

Instead of relying on fossil fuel, Tsao wants to see citizens doing their part to harness renewable energy to help make the vision of a green island a reality. The diplomat added that there are other important initiatives planned for the island, including the establishment of the first ever solar-farm and the second phase of an Agro-Tourism Demonstration Farm early in 2013.

Benefits of solar lights

The solar streetlights were installed by the Taiwanese company Speed Tech Energy. "It’s a unique Cobra design. The lamp pole is solid steel and type and it can resist wind speeds of up to 250 kilometres per hour," Lucas Chiu, the company’s general manager, told IPS.

Solar panels convert the sunlight into electricity during the day, and the generated electricity is stored in a battery.

Chiu explained that in cloudy or rainy days the batteries will still charge at 15 to 30 percent. Streetlights will function for three nights (for 13 hours each night), even during periods of continuous rainy days.

Orville Liddie, a 29-year-old local resident, told IPS that there were no lights in those areas for several years and that the solar streetlights could not have come at a better time. "To me it’s a benefit to the communities where the lights have been installed because before the lights there were extremely dark spots," he said.

"I am a driver and I have always been concerned that when you are driving through those areas at night people could jump out into the road and put road blocks or there could be very serious accidents. I was particularly concerned for the bus drivers because criminals could hold them up at those dark spots at knife point or even at gunpoint," Liddie added.

Nevis, the smaller island in the twin-island federation, is also showing its neighbours in the Organisation of Eastern Caribbean States (OECS) that it is a leader in the area of generating clean and efficient energy and reducing energy costs, in spite of its small geographic and population size.

In 2010, the 13-kilometre-long island with a mere 12,000 residents, launched the first wind farm ever to be commissioned in the OECS with a promise to provide jobs for islanders, a reliable supply of wind energy, cheaper electricity and reduction in surcharge and the use of imported oils.

The island has been lauded by officials of the Bill Clinton Climate Change Initiative for its efforts towards a "Green Nevis". During a recent visit, a delegation from the Clinton Climate Change Initiative led by Councilor Jan Hartke and Ambassador Paoli Zampolli held discussions with island officials on work that has already been done to move from fossil to alternative energy on Nevis.

"We have been delighted to see how the government has taken the lead and has mobilised the endeavor to bring geothermal to Nevis, and we will help the government with consultation in an effort to make alternative energy a reality on the island," said Hartke.

He noted that the Bill Clinton Climate Change Initiative aims to bring down the enormous electricity rates in small island states through alternative resources, with the assistance of wind, solar or waste energy.

Jamaica’s efforts

Jamaica is implementing its streetlight energy-saving initiative jointly with the United States-based technology and engineering solutions firm, Green Energy RG LLC.

A government statement said the aim is to significantly reduce the cost to the budget to maintain the country’s approximately 93,000 streetlights, which totals upwards of 2 billion Jamaican dollars per year.

On Jan. 8, the first set of solar-powered light emitting diode (LED) fixtures were installed at Osbourne Store, a community in the central parish of Clarendon.

"We hope to be able to proceed to install lights all over Clarendon and then into other parts of Jamaica. We hope that we will be able to complete the programme…by midyear, and then we can evaluate the results and determine where we go from there," the country’s local government and community development minister, Noel Arscott said.

Arscott said the pilot phase will see some 5,000 LED panels being installed in Clarendon as well as sections of St. Catherine and Kingston and St. Andrew. Additionally, he said the ministry’s offices at Hagley Park Road in the capital Kingston would also be retrofitted with energy saving solutions.

All rights reserved, IPS – Inter Press Service, 2013.

This article may not be republished, broadcast, framed, or redistributed without the written permission of IPS – Inter Press Service. Republication of this material without permission from IPS, the copyright holder, constitutes a violation of United States and international copyright laws and may result in legal action.


Filed Under: Americas, Development, Energy, Featured Tagged With: , ,

Daunting Development Challenges Ahead

December 28, 2012 by

Global Geopolitics & Political Economy / IDN

By Richard Johnson

IDN-InDepth NewsReport

PARIS (IDN) – Despite development successes over the past 20 years and the progress of many emerging economies, inequality is increasing in all countries and 1.4 billion people still live in absolute poverty. This gloomy situation was acknowledged by development ministers from industrial and emerging economies, who met in London on December 4 and 5 for the High Level Meeting (HLM) of the Development Assistance Committee (DAC), which comprises 24 of the 34-nation Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD).

A communique emerging from the meeting points out there is unequivocal evidence of absolute poverty having been halved, and progress achieved on all Millennium Development Goals (MDGs), agreed at a summit in September 2000 at the turn of the millennium. Economic growth has been a key factor in reducing absolute poverty, in the success stories of many

Yet daunting challenges persist: 1.4 billion people are mired in absolute poverty; food insecurity affects 850 million people, and 1.3 billion of the world’s people – including many women – have no access to electricity. Social inequalities are increasing in all countries – developed, emerging and developing – and are a growing concern given the threat they pose to social, political and economic stability, the ministers agreed.

The HLM also recognised important risks. The world’s population will reach 9 billion people in 2050 which, when coupled with changing consumption patterns, is estimated to require a 70% increase in food production by 2050. Within that same timeframe, global GDP may quadruple.

Given current trends and policies, this will result in an 80% increase of primary energy consumption which will impact on climate change and, as a consequence, global health, water management, food security, and poverty reduction prospects – and the protection of natural capital for future generations.

"Sustainable development and green growth are key approaches to address these challenges, and participating governments welcomed the Rio +20 commitment to integrate sustainable development goals in the post-2015 agenda," the development ministers stressed in a communique.

They also recognised that the context for development co-operation has now irrevocably changed. Shifting global wealth is breaking down the former division between North and South.

Co-operation among South-South partners, as well as triangular co-operation, is complementing North-South co-operation, thereby increasing the scope, reach and effectiveness of the international development assistance system. Likewise, civil society and the private sector are playing an increasingly important role as partners in development co-operation.

To address these challenges and opportunities, the ministers said, a new and ambitious global partnership has been established. They expect the Global Partnership for Effective Development Co-operation – launched at the Fourth High Level Forum on Aid Effectiveness from November 29 to December 1, 2011 in Busan. South Korea – to pave the way forward by providing a forum of equal partners with shared principles and differentiated but well-defined commitments.

"This Partnership will enable all providers and partners to focus on results at the country level in support of both national and global goals. For too long a lack of coordination, the fragmentation of efforts and failure to honour country ownership have inhibited the pursuit of goals to which all are committed. The Global Partnership offers a space within the international community to discuss these matters as full and equal partners," the communique stated.

Summarizing the outcomes, DAC Chair J. Brian Atwood stated: "This high-level meeting was a reflection of the changing world of development co-operation: DAC members and developing countries working in tandem with civil society, the private sector and other partners; strong support for a UN-led process for determining development goals; and innovative finance for development at a time of constrained budgets."

The ministers committed to make the effort to connect different agendas – MDGs, financing for development, development effectiveness and policy coherence for development – and thereby ensure that these vital elements are more in sync in the cause of development progress. They recognised that this broader agenda engages a larger set of partners who can contribute in different ways to development progress.

They also recognised that the international community is at an historic juncture. Work on post-2015 development goals will define development co-operation for years to come. In fact the agenda for the meeting provided for briefings by members of the United Nations (UN) High Level Panel on the Post-2015 Development Agenda, providing important insights from their contributions.

ODA

According to the communique, the ministers engaged in forward-thinking on development finance and the importance of official development assistance (ODA) and other flows that impact on development. They set out below their views and agreed on next steps regarding each of these important topics.

In their discussions about the future of ODA the ministers and agencies agreed that it must be directed to where it is most needed and can best catalyse other flows. They asked the DAC to work with the UN system together with the IMF and the World Bank on proposals for new measures of total official support for development, including defining what constitutes ODA.

With a view to ensuring that ODA is directed to where it is most needed and where it can catalyse other flows and promote accountability, the DAC will:

- Elaborate a proposal for a new measure of total official support for development.

- Explore ways of representing both “donor effort” and “recipient benefit” of development finance.

- Investigate whether any resulting new measures of external development finance (including any new approaches to measurement of donor effort) suggest the need to modernise the ODA concept.

- Undertake this work in close collaboration with other interested international agencies, in particular the United Nations, and also the IMF and World Bank, while engaging others in this exercise. A first report should be completed in 2013.

According to the communique, DAC members discussed the reporting of ODA loans in light of multiple views on the interpretation of "concessional in character" in relation to such loans. They agreed about a number of key principles that ODA measurement should meet. These are that ODA reporting should:

- Withstand a critical assessment from the public;

- Avoid creating major fluctuations in overall ODA levels;

- Be generally consistent with the way concessionality is defined in multilateral development finance;

- Maintain the definition of ODA, and only attempt to clarify the interpretation of loans that qualify as ODA;

- Prevent notions that ODA loan schemes follow a commercial logic: this includes the principle that financial reflows should be reinvested as development resources.

In this spirit, they agreed to: transparency regarding the terms of individual ODA loans; ensure equal treatment of all DAC members; establish, as soon as possible, and at the latest by 2015, a clear, quantitative definition of "concessional in character", in line with prevailing financial market conditions.

They also agreed to recognise development loans extended at preferential rates – whether "concessional in character" under a future post-2015 definition or not – as making an important contribution to development.

Post-2015 development goals

Participating governments in the London meeting committed to keep their focus on achieving the existing MDGs. "These unique development goals have rallied the global community behind a common vision that has had lasting impact on the lives of hundreds of millions of people. The establishment of a common global development agenda has been an immensely important force for galvanising support, mobilising resources, focusing efforts and making it possible to assess progress," the communique stated.

The ministers pledged to go forward, and agreed to:

- Focus their efforts on achieving the MDGs by 2015, and to work together with partners and new providers to enhance effectiveness, improve co-ordination of development activities and apply innovative methods to reach these goals.

- Strongly support the High Level Panel and the UN-led process to define a successor set of goals and a framework around which the global community can unite. This process should be inclusive of all partners, not donor-driven. Participating governments were greatly encouraged to hear of the active participation of all regions and of both state and non-state actors in this endeavour. They expressed support for goals that would expand and amplify the overall development impact of the current set of goals, including measurable targets for the global partnership as expressed in MDG8.

- Recognise that global goals were vital in establishing a common accountability agenda for development, and that national goals should be owned by all members of society and reflect the context of a particular country, its state of development and the particular needs of society as determined through the full participation of citizens.

- Recognise the importance of supporting enhanced goals for the future. Participating governments focused on the centrality of poverty reduction, with many expressing support for its eradication. They expressed concern about evidence of growing inequality, and acknowledged the special needs of fragile states.

- Support, in line with the agreement reached at the Rio +20 UN conference on sustainable development, the full integration of the sustainability dimension in the new set of goals, as essential in any development context.

- Emphasise that human rights principles will be important in developing any set of viable goals and the means for achieving them. Development of these goals should also take account of the role of democratic institutions, human security and references to the quality of life as a complementary measure to traditional benchmarks such as national income measures.

- Express the hope that, like their predecessors, future goals will be clearly defined, realistic, politically salient and measurable.

The London High Level Meeting was attended also by the International Monetary Fund, the World Bank, the United Nations Development Programme and other UN representatives, the African Development Bank, the Asian Development Bank, the Inter-American Development Bank and co-Chairs of the Global Partnership for Effective Development Co-operation. Invited high-level representatives from Brazil, China, India, Indonesia and South Africa were also present as observers to this meeting. [IDN-InDepthNews – December 19, 2012]

2012 IDN-InDepthNews | Analysis That Matters

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Filed Under: Analysis, Development, Diplomacy, Poverty Tagged With: , ,

Indigenous Chileans Still Fighting Pinochet-Era Highway Project

December 28, 2012 by

Global Geopolitics & Political Economy / IPS

Marianela Jarroud

PUERTO SAAVEDRA, Chile, Dic 27 (IPS) – For more than two decades, Mapuche indigenous people in the Chilean region of Araucanía have been fighting the construction of the Ruta Costera (Coastal Highway), a megaproject initially conceived during the Augusto Pinochet dictatorship (1973-1990) which has already caused significant archeological and cultural losses and damages.The Coastal Highway is meant to connect one end of Chile’s long, narrow territory to the other, running north to south as close to the Pacific Ocean as possible. The completed highway would be more than 3,340 km long, of which more than 2,600 km have already been built.

This highway project has become one of the main challenges facing numerous successive governments in Chile, who have consistently come up against the opposition of native communities.

In the Araucanía region, 674 km south of Santiago, the Coastal Highway would encompass 41.6 km of the Puerto Saavedra-Toltén section, precisely where the Budi Indigenous Development Area is located.

The authorities maintain that the initiative will help to integrate isolated areas, decrease travel times and promote the development of new tourism destinations.

Studies by the Universidad de la Frontera note that the area is home to “a long cultural history and clear links to this history through archeological testaments and continued cultural practices, with a high prevalence of aspects that reflect the identity and world vision of the region.”

The ancestral inhabitants of the area are the Lafkenche, a branch of the Mapuche indigenous people whose name means “people of the sea”.

Leonardo Calfuneo is a Lafkenche “lonko” (chief) in the community of Konin Budi, made up of some 60 families.

“We are opposed to this megaproject because, for the Mapuche people, it will not bring progress or development, but rather the irreparable destruction of our culture,” he told Tierramérica*.

Calfuneo lives with his wife on a small parcel of land in a cozy wood house, where they offer the bitter herbal tea known as “mate” and “sopaipillas” (deep-fried flatbread) to their guests.

“We make a living from small-scale farming, we are peasants, we are a people with a centuries-old culture and we have always lived off of the land,” he said.

Calfuneo has personally confronted the advances made by the highway project, which is not being undertaken by a construction company, but rather by the Military Work Corps, a branch of the Chilean armed forces.

In March, the military corps and their machinery carried out work on his land without authorization, destroying hedges made up of medicinal plants as well as one of the community’s sacred religious sites.

“They are coming through here and destroying everything in their path to widen the road. We are not only losing our lands, but also medicinal plants and drainage areas,” he reported.

In his community, “each family has three, five or 10 hectares to live on,” a small area of land considering that only a few decades ago this entire area was made up by Mapuche communal lands.

Through Decree Law 2568, passed in 1979, the Pinochet dictatorship divided up these communal lands into individual properties. Many of these were acquired by private parties, largely companies in the tree plantation, energy and fish farming sectors.

Local authorities claim that the Coastal Highway will enhance interconnection along the coast and thus promote the economic development of the region.

“This is a project that has taken a long time to complete, and we would like to be able to overcome the obstacles it has faced,” Andrés Molina, the governor of Araucanía, told Tierramérica.

“We support this project for various reasons. But, in practice, we have not been able to conduct an assessment of the social and economic profitability of these roads,” he admitted.

Although the quality of roads in the area has improved, “now we are working towards a social profitability study in order to be able to move forward with paving. We won’t be able to do anything until we have internally conducted a social assessment that will make it possible for us to invest as a country,” he said.

Molina’s goal is to “move forward with this as soon as possible and hopefully get the project started by the end of 2013.”

These deadlines frighten Luis Aillapán, who is the “gempin” of the community of Konin Budi – the guardian of knowledge on the culture, religion and philosophy of the Mapuche people. For him, the construction of the highway represents “great suffering”.

“We are used to our natural surroundings, to walking a short distance to the sea and fishing for the resources we need,” he told Tierramérica.

Aillapán grows crops and raises a few animals. He and his family feed themselves with what the land and sea provide for them. From his house he looks out to the Pacific Ocean on one side, green fields on the other, and a few hills that form part of the coastal mountain range.

But on the edge of his lands, the military workers and their machinery are clearing the way for the highway.

“Some of our own people have turned against us, and during the night we hear gunshots that are meant to intimidate us,” he charged.

His wife, Catalina Marileo, and their four-year-old son were charged in 2002 with assaulting civil servants from the Ministry of Public Works who were carrying out feasibility studies for the project.

Later, Aillapán, his wife, his sister-in-law Margarita Marileo and Marileo’s husband were charged and tried under the country’s anti-terrorism law, which was passed during the dictatorship and is now used almost exclusively to penalize Mapuche resistance.

The municipality of Saavedra, covering some 401 sq km between the Pacific Ocean and Lake Budi, a saltwater lake, had a population of 13,481 in 2009. More than 80 percent of its inhabitants live in rural areas, and 73.2 percent identify themselves as Mapuche.

There are 3,295 people living in the Budi Indigenous Development Area, who make up 24.4 percent of the municipality’s total population. And on Huapi Island, located in Lake Budi, there are 43 communities inhabited by some 5,000 Mapuches.

A study by the Universidad de la Frontera commissioned by the government in 2001 reported that 45.2 percent of the population was in favor of the Coastal Highway while 52.9 percent opposed it.

The situation changed when the former mayor of Puerto Saavedra, Ricardo Tripainao, traveled around the communities to explain the benefits of the highway, such as the higher prices they could charge for their products and the millions that the government would pay them for expropriating their lands.

Tierramérica observed that today, many people are angered over the government’s failure to comply with these payments and by the increase in the width of the land to be expropriated, which was initially 13 meters, but in many parts has reached 20 or even 25 meters.

But among the inhabitants of the municipal capital of Puerto Saavedra, an urban area with numerous tourist attractions, feelings towards the highway are favorable, since it will attract more visitors and reduce the town’s isolation.

The Military Work Corps camp in charge of the highway construction is moving to one of the shores of Lake Budi, a cultural heritage protected area.

Governor Molina says that there are “plans” for consultation with the indigenous communities, as established by International Labour Organization Convention 169, since “the idea is for the project to be carried out on a participatory basis.”

Convention 169, which was adopted in 1989 and entered into force in Chile in 2009, establishes guarantees for indigenous communities, and in particular the right to be consulted on activities or projects in their territories.

However, said Molina, “We are not going to carry out consultations until the project has been fully approved.”

* This story was originally published by Latin American newspapers that are part of the Tierramérica network. Tierramérica is a specialised news service produced by IPS with the backing of the United Nations Development Programme, United Nations Environment Programme and the World Bank.

All rights reserved, IPS – Inter Press Service, 2012.

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Filed Under: Development, Environment, Human Rights, Latin America, Report Tagged With: , ,

Rio Summit’s Legacy Still a Question Mark

September 14, 2012 by

Global Geopolitics & Political Economy / IPS

Zoha Arshad

WASHINGTON, Sep 14 (IPS) – Academics gathered in Washington on Wednesday suggested that the mixed experience at the U.N. Conference on Sustainable Development, held in Rio de Janeiro in June, has increased the importance of citizen engagement and consumer accountability in issues of environment, renewable energy and sustainability.At a panel discussion, participants explored why there had been such a lack of progress after the June conference, known as Rio+20, one of the largest international summits on the issue in decades.

Particular emphasis was also paid to the fact that the private sector, particularly large-scale corporations, was being allowed to make sustainability-related promises and voluntary commitments without being held accountable for those pledges.

“The one commodity that politicians care about are people, and if people care the politicians will follow,” Michelle Lapinski, the director of corporate practices at the Nature Conservancy, an advocacy group, said Wednesday. “People should mobilise, demand a change and ask what’s happening about the future of sustainable development.”

Lapinski believes not only that consumers can alter the behaviour of companies, but that companies that cave in to consumer pressure will ultimately lead by example, setting trends for other companies to follow.

An example of corporations doing their part for the environment is PUMA, which published an environment-focused profit-and-loss report every quarter. The group as a whole agreed with Lapinski’s analysis, calling attention to Chevron, whose entire public relations campaign revolves around sustainable development and renewable energy.

Twenty years ago, the participants pointed out, this would have been unimaginable.

As with government, citizen pressure holds great potential over corporations.

“If people go on a particular website and saw that Coca-Cola promised A, B and C, and haven’t delivered, that’s a very good basis for campaigns, for boycotts,” Reid Detchon, the vice-president for energy and climate at the United Nations Foundation, said. “They have to believe someone is watching – you have to hold (corporations’) feet to the fire.”

This concept of monitoring progress is why Jacob Scherr, the director of strategy and advocacy at the Natural Resources Defense Council, a research and watchdog group, is optimistic about the future, even after realising the lukewarm success of the Rio summit.

Scherr’s project, cloudofcommitments.com, is specifically designed to use social media to get the youth involved, to get their voices heard, and to make sure that they hold big corporations, business leaders and politicians accountable.

“The politicians didn’t feel pressured to act at the Rio summit,” Scherr said. “The people didn’t make them feel the pressure, but there were lots of young people who wanted to be heard. There were young business leaders with sustainable development plans and economic plans that need to be put out there and shared.”

Social media may hold out promise in this regard, particularly as a way to promote activism among the youth. Pop bands such as Linkin Park have also pledged support for sustainable development initiatives, with the power to mobilise tens of millions of followers into action.

Participants at Wednesday’s discussion also pointed to the new collaboration between the World Bank and the United Nations, which are co-chairing a new joint committee on sustainable development.

Still, many suggest, the issue will come down to citizen participation and consumer responsibility, initiatives hold out the promise of force a change in corporate culture, at least over time.

“Let’s face it. Our reality is we’ve been buying and selling nature for years – corporations do it, and now individuals do it,” Lapinski said, suggesting that the only real change that can be introduced on how corporations view their profits – the nature of how the transaction takes place.

If Coca-Cola uses water, she says, it needs to take the dual responsibility of giving back to nature and making a profit.

All of the participants emphasised that there will be no miracle solutions to the issue of sustainability.

But Scherr warns that the world doesn’t have another two or three decades to wake up and realise that the depletion of natural resources, waste dumping, and deforestation have almost killed the planet.

All rights reserved, IPS – Inter Press Service, 2012.

This article may not be republished, broadcast, framed, or redistributed without the written permission of IPS – Inter Press Service. Republication of this material without permission from IPS, the copyright holder, constitutes a violation of United States and international copyright laws and may result in legal action.


Filed Under: Development, Diplomacy, Environment Tagged With: ,

Small Islands Push for New Energy

September 14, 2012 by

Global Geopolitics & Political Economy / IPS

Vanya Walker-Leigh

ST. JULIAN’S, Malta, Sep 14 (IPS) – Most islands are well endowed with one or more renewable energy source – rivers, waterfalls, wind, sunshine, biomass, wave power, geothermal deposits – yet virtually all remain heavily or entirely reliant on imported fossil fuels to produce electricity and power transport.With rising oil prices, fuel import bills now represent up to 20 percent of annual imports of 34 of the 38 small island developing states (SIDS), between 5 percent to 20 percent of their Gross Domestic Product – and even up to 15 percent of the total import bills of many of the European Union’s 286 islands.

Action advocated under ‘The Malta Communiqué On Accelerating Renewable Energy Uptake For Islands’ adopted by a 50-nation two-day conference that ended here last week will hopefully slash, in some cases eliminate, reliance on fossils and related pollution, while increasing energy security, employment as well as economic and social wellbeing.

‘The Renewables and Islands Global Summit’ in Malta was co-hosted by the 100-nation International Renewable Energy Agency (IRENA) based in Abu Dhabi and by the government of Malta – a 316 sq km Mediterranean island republic of 410,000 inhabitants, and EU’s smallest member state.

The meeting represents a key milestone in IRENA’s initiative on renewables and islands launched by its governing council last January, as well as a follow-up to the Rio+20 conference in June and the ‘achieving sustainable energy for all in Small Island Developing States’ ministerial meeting in Barbados in May.

The communiqué invites IRENA to establish a global renewable energy islands network (GREIN) as a platform for sharing knowledge, best practice, challenges and lessons learnt while seeking innovative solutions.

GREIN will also help assess country potential, build capacity, formulate business cases for renewables deployment involving the private sector and civil society while identifying available finance as well as new ideas for innovative financing mechanisms.

In addition, the network will develop methodologies for integrating renewables into sustainable tourism, water management, transport, and other industries and services.

IRENA’s Kenyan director-general Adnan Amin told the 120 delegates that “we have confirmed the enormous potential for renewables in small island developing states as well as for developed island countries, not to mention coastal countries with remote, energy-deprived islands of their own. Ambitious policy targets appear increasingly attainable because of great strides forward in technology and cost-effectiveness.

“We are laying the groundwork for a business council to bring investors – from major energy companies to innovative SMEs (small and medium-sized enterprises) and also financial institutions – into the discussion,” Amin added. “Academics and NGOs can also contribute to the search for practical solutions. Developed island states can do much by sharing their experience with small-island developing states that face broadly similar challenges.”

Representatives (including 15 ministers) from 26 developing Pacific, Caribbean and African developing island nations and from coastal developing states with islands reported a wide range of renewables deployment, from detailed long-term plans and ongoing activities to reach up to 100 percent renewables, to admissions of very low deployment and no firm goals or plans yet.

West African Cape Verde, a 10-island 4,033 sq km archipelago with 491,000 inhabitants, has started working towards 100 percent, then possibly 300 percent renewables, according to José Brito, senior adviser to Cape Verde’s Prime Minister, José Maria Neves. Surplus energy remaining from meeting domestic needs (including seawater desalination) could either be stored or exported. Brito said Malta aims to become a renewables training hub for Africa.

Dominica in the East Caribbean (71,000 inhabitants, 754 sq km) could also become a net energy exporter, Crispin Grégoire, its former ambassador to the UN and now a United Nations Development Programme (UNDP) official in charge of Caribbean issues told IPS.

“With 325 rivers and mountainous terrain, we have huge hydroelectric potential. Moreover, Iceland and the EU are helping assess our extensive geothermal resources. We could export surplus electricity by interconnector seabed cable to Guadelupe and Martinique, each just 60 km away. We could also attract high-tech industries to use our surplus power.”

Reporting Caribbean-wide developments, Grégoire told delegates of numerous regional renewables opportunities, where electricity prices can reach 35 cents a kilowatt hour, several times those in the U.S. or Europe.

SIDS DOCK, launched by 10 SIDS nations in 2009, has started operations to mobilise finance for sustainable energy projects and to benefit from opportunities emerging from the global carbon markets. Seven projects are under development in the Bahamas, Belize, the Dominican Republic, Grenada and Jamaica, but far more financial resources are needed.

Under the Galapagos Zero Fossil Initiative, the Galapagos 10-island archipelago off Ecuador – home to world famous tortoises – will achieve 100 percent renewables by 2020, Pedro Carvajal, counsellor to Ecuador’s ministry of energy and energy efficiency told the conference. Half will derive from jatropha oil, made from seeds grown by 240 farming families in 40 communities on the mainland; most of the rest from wind energy, and the balance from photovoltaics.

In the Pacific, Tuvalu, Tokelau and the Cook Islands are rapidly moving towards 100 percent renewables. In contrast, Vanuatu, (82 islands totalling 12,190 sq.km) 67 percent of whose 224,564 inhabitants have no access to electricity, has not really started to develop its potential, William Sanlam, multilateral desk officer at Vanuatu’s ministry of foreign affairs told IPS.

All rights reserved, IPS – Inter Press Service, 2012.

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Filed Under: Energy, Environment, Report Tagged With:

Farming Among the Waste in Cameroon

August 30, 2012 by

Global Geopolitics & Political Economy / IPS

Monde Kingsley Nfor

YAOUNDÉ, Aug 30 (IPS) – Cameroonian urban famer Juliana Numfor has six plots of land where she grows maize, cassava, sweet potatoes and leafy vegetables, including cabbages, wild okra and greens.The soil in which her crops grow is moist and visibly marshy, and a stream of water runs near it. But if you take a closer look you will notice that the water is dark and smells unpleasant.

In fact it is wastewater, which comes from a student residential quarter in Yaoundé, popularly called “Cradat”, that is less than 400 metres away from her plots of land.

But it is precisely thanks to the wastewater that Numfor is farming on this public land.

She told IPS that she prefers planting her crops on urban wastewater sites because she can easily irrigate them by using the readily available wastewater. She said that this was because rainfall had become increasingly irregular – coming and going when she least expected.

“The kind of crops on this piece of land can grow on any fertile land if it is well watered. But during this period in August, which is supposed to be a very wet time of the year in Yaoundé, very little rainfall has fallen. It makes it impossible for vegetable crops to grow without proper irrigation,” Numfor said.

And Numfor is not the only farmer doing this. Smallholder farmers around the Yaoundé city centre are increasingly farming on urban wastewater sites.

While there are no official figures of how many people are farming in these areas, the Ministry of Agriculture and Rural Development (MINADER) admitted that the practice was overwhelming.

Smallholder farmers in and around Yaoundé can be seen planting their crops on public land, along railways, in conservation areas, and even near roads.

“This is a long-time practice that has only intensified due to a lot of causes, climate change being one. Many farmers have resorted to urban farming with wastewater,” Collette Ekobo, an agricultural inspector at MINADER, told IPS.

One 45-year-old woman told IPS that she knew 11 other women who cultivated crops on land near wastewater.

“All I know is that the ground is very fertile. I think when people empty their sewers and other household waste into this water, it makes the land very fertile for farming. And there is water all season round,” she said.

Rural-urban migration, aggravated by the adverse effects of climate change on rural farming, is thought to be one of the main reasons behind the growing number of urban farmers in the city.

In 2011, MINADER began warning farmers about the climate variability affecting agriculture across the country. Yaoundé, which is located in Cameroon’s Centre Region, experienced reduced rainfall.

“Over the years in Yaoundé, the rainfall pattern has been so variable and not easy to understand. Rainfall has become very irregular, unpredictable and reduced … this leads to prolonged dryness and the drying up of streams, accompanied by exceedingly hot climatic conditions – all of which provoke poor agricultural performance and low output,” the ministry said.

Ekobo said that because of the changing climate, many farmers found it difficult to predict when to start planting.

“The month of March traditionally marks the start of the planting season in the Centre Region of Cameroon, following the start of the rains. But due to changing rainfall patterns, farmers have now readjusted their planting periods, a phenomenon which is rather difficult to grasp a perfect mastery of. It has caused a lot of confusion with the farmers,” she said.

She added that urban farming was integrated into the urban economic and ecological system of Cameroon.

“The land is rich with urban resources like organic waste, which is used as compost, and urban wastewater, which is used for irrigation. There are also direct links to urban consumers,” Eboko said.

But farming on urban wastewater sites is not a safe practice, according to Foongang Mathias, an agriculture expert at the Ministry of Environment, Nature Protection and Sustainable Development.

“Wastewater irrigation provides the necessary plant nutrients, especially nitrogen and phosphorous that are required by crops for ample growth. But farming in wastewater poses both health and environmental threats, not only to the urban agriculturalists, but also to the consumers of the crops grown on that field,” he said.

He told IPS that toxic waste from homes, hospitals and industries was probably deposited or carried into the wastewater.

“This water contains pathogenic organisms and disease vectors similar to those in human excreta. Pathogens that are brought in with the wastewater can survive in the soil or on the crop and are responsible for human diseases,” he said.

In addition, according to the World Health Organization: “Available evidence indicates that almost all excreted pathogens can survive in soil for a sufficient length of time to pose potential risks to farm workers.”

Despite the risks to her and her customers’ health, Numfor told IPS that the economic gains from farming in urban wastewater areas far outweighed the dangers.

She will continue to sell her produce to customers, who include restaurant owners and retailers. Numfor said that she earned an average of eight dollars a day, but sometimes made more when she sold her crop to women who export Cameroonian vegetables to the United States and Europe.

At a local market in Obili, a neigbourhood in Yaoundé, stallholders displayed large piles of vegetables that range in price from 200 CFA Francs (50 cents) to 300 CFA Francs (75 cents) per bunch. And consumers here did not care where the produce was grown.

“I totally ignore the fact that they are grown in wastewater because even if they contain germs, the organism cannot survive in the pot with very high temperature,” one woman, who bought three bundles of bitter leaf or Vernonia amygdalina, told IPS.

Another said she felt the vegetables were safe if cooked in hygienic conditions and besides, “no one has ever complained after consuming these vegetables.”

Meanwhile, Eboko said that the government did not plan to regulate farming near wastewater areas.

“Urban wastewater farming is not a regulated activity in Cameroon, although it is an important part of the urban food system. It is not yet considered as a potential problem, but is considered as a subsistence way of life for women.”

All rights reserved, IPS – Inter Press Service, 2012.

This article may not be republished, broadcast, framed, or redistributed without the written permission of IPS – Inter Press Service. Republication of this material without permission from IPS, the copyright holder, constitutes a violation of United States and international copyright laws and may result in legal action.


Filed Under: Africa, Agriculture, Development, Health, Report Tagged With: , , , ,

Biomass Plant Lights up Rural Senegal

August 30, 2012 by

Global Geopolitics & Political Economy / IPS

Koffigan E. Adigbli

KALOM, Sénégal, Aug 30 (IPS) – A new power plant in the eastern Senegalese village of Kalom is generating more than just electricity. Powered by agricultural waste, the station has lit up homes, lightened women’s domestic burdens and even put a little money in some residents’ pockets.The 32 kilowatt generator, which uses groundnut shells and dried millet stalks for fuel, was built with 245,000 dollars of funding from DEG (the German Investment Corporation) and German municipal power company Stadtwerke Mainz.

The local midwife, Ami Mbaye, is delighted to have electric lights in the village. She used to rely on storm lanterns when attending a birth at night, but with power in the health centre, it’s much easier to care for patients.

"It wasn’t easy for us to work at night. Now we don’t have any problems. But we do need the government to install some additional equipment to make us more effective," she told IPS.

"Everyone used to pay 100 CFA francs per device to charge our cellphone batteries," said Abdoulaye Faye, a teacher in Kalom. "We would give them to a young guy who would take them to the closest town, Fatick, more than 20 kilometres away. Then you had to wait a week to get them back. Now we just charge them at home."

Faye said the farm residue that was previously useless has become a source of income. "You get paid at least 125 CFA francs per kilo, depending on the quality of the waste – so collecting waste is keeping people busy, especially young people. I do it sometimes too."

Almami N’Diaye, who runs the plant, says that to begin with, it will generate only 15 percent of its total capacity.

"To light up the village for a week, we need three tonnes of shells and millet chaff. We’re not lacking in fuel because the villagers have the habit of saving these residues (after the harvest)," he told IPS.

François Sène, a farmer from the village, told IPS that since the power plant started working, he and his family have been going out every day looking for fuel for the plant.

"You can earn 5,000 CFA (around 9.50 dollars) a day. So after we finish on our own farm, I go out with my two wives and five sons to see what farm waste we can find before coming home. It’s a blessing to earn a little money like this…"

Wolla Ndiaye, a senator and resident of the village, said that each house pays for its consumption, depending on the number of bulbs and electrical appliances it uses, and the price per kilowatt-hour is 250 CFA (around 47 cents).

"All 1,300 residents living on the village’s 115 stands (lots) are connected to the grid, except for three houses that are still under construction. And more than 80 percent of the power generated is not (yet) being used."

But Ndiaye explained that in order to cover the monthly operating costs of the plant – which vary between 95 and 115 dollars – it will be important for the 15 other villages in the surrounding area to be connected to the power station.

During a visit to Kalom, the Senegalese minister for energy and mines, Aly Ngouille Ndiaye, promised to look into how the plant can be linked to adjoining areas. He promised to take up the question of transmission to neighbouring villages with the Senegalese Agency for Rural Electrification.

"Not only do you have the right to enjoy electricity just like people in the city," the minister told villagers," but as someone with rural roots myself, I know how lacking electricity can hinder development."

According to Alioune Diouf, head of monitoring for the National Biogas Programme at the energy ministry, the government initiated the programme in Senegal in 2006, with the objective of ensuring the sustainable supply of peri-urban and rural households with energy for lighting and cooking.

"Waste-based electricity generation projects were also launched in 2008 in the Kaolack, Fatick, Ziguinchor and Kolda regions," said Diouf. He told IPS that 325 biodigesters were set up in these regions in the western and southern parts of the country between June 2010 and mid-2012.

"We envisage (building) around 8,000 between now and 2013," said Diouf.

All rights reserved, IPS – Inter Press Service, 2012.

This article may not be republished, broadcast, framed, or redistributed without the written permission of IPS – Inter Press Service. Republication of this material without permission from IPS, the copyright holder, constitutes a violation of United States and international copyright laws and may result in legal action.


Filed Under: Africa, Agriculture, Development, Energy, Report Tagged With: , , ,
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