DURBAN, South Africa, Dec 9 (IPS) – For the Laibon community, a sub-tribe of Kenya’s Maasai ethnic group, the 33,000-hectare Loita Forest in the country’s Rift Valley Province is more than just a forest. It is a shrine.

Olonana Ole Pulei’s community is a sub-tribe of Kenya’s Maasai ethnic group. Credit: Isaiah Esipisu/IPS

“It is our shrine. Our Gods live there. We gather herbs from the place. We use it for bee- keeping. It therefore forms part of our livelihood,” said Olonana Ole Pulei, who is in Durban, South Africa, to represent his community at the ongoing 17th Conference of Parties under the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change.

According to Nigel Crawhall, the Director of Secretariat for the Indigenous Peoples of Africa Co-ordinating Committee (IPACC), different African communities have incredible indigenous knowledge that they use in the conservation of forests and biodiversity in general, and this should be recognised during the negotiations in Durban.

“Different communities have different practices that they use in forestry conservation,” he said.

Crawhall gave an example of how the Bambuti and Batwa pygmy communities, in the eastern Democratic Republic of Congo, conserved the forest using traditional methods. Both communities depend on the biodiversity of animal life in the equatorial forests in order to survive.

“Usually, they know how to identify particular trees that can be cut down in order to create a unique opening on the canopy, which attracts light in the closely-packed Congo forests. The light then attracts animals, birds and insects, thus giving them an opportunity to hunt,” Crawhall told IPS.

This helps conserve the biodiversity, as well as the forests because this method can only work if the forest canopy is intact.

In Kenya, the Maasai culture forbids any community member from cutting down a tree, either for firewood or any other purpose. People are also forbidden from interfering with the taproots or removing the entire bark of a tree for herbal extraction.

According to their cultural belief, one can only use tree branches for firewood, and fibrous roots for herbs. If the bark of a tree has medicinal value, then only small portions of it can be removed by creating a “V” in the bark. The wound is then sealed using wet soil.

“We believe that the soil helps in healing the wound on a tree. This is cultural, and we all believe that it is an abomination for one to injure a tree, and not help it heal,” said Ole Pulei.

It is a practice that has been passed down from generation to generation among Maasai community members. Among the Laibon community, it is this indigenous knowledge that has aided in the conservation of the Loita Forest.

“All logging activities observed on Maasai land, including the destruction of the Mau Forest, are done by foreigners because the Maasai culture does not allow such activities. This is the indigenous knowledge that helps in forest conservation,” Ole Pulei told IPS.

Such beliefs make the forests part of the community, where community members have feelings for the trees, and where cutting down a tree could amount to an offence against the Gods and their culture.

“We have several other communities all over the continent who co-exist with forests. They include the Tuareg community in Algeria, Yiaku community in Kenya’s Laikipia region, the Ogiek community also in Kenya, the Kung community in Botswana among others,” said Crawhall.

Though according to Crawhall, all Africans are indigenous although there are some groups who live by hunting and gathering, while other groups practice pastoralism, and others practice dry-land farming.

Despite the fact that there is no standard definition of indigenous people, the 2007 United Nations Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples recognises that particular communities, due to historical and environmental circumstances, have found themselves outside the state system and underrepresented in governance.

“The Bushmen of the Southern African region, or the Ogiek community in Kenya who live in forests are a typical example of groupings categorised as indigenous,” said Crawhall.

He points out that Africa has more than 40 groupings in different countries that survive entirely on hunting and gathering. However, IPACC works closely with 155 communities from 22 African countries who are recognised as indigenous because of their historical and environmental circumstances.

As a result, representatives from these communities have joined the rest of the world in Durban to have their voices heard, so that their contributions to forest conservation are recognised as part of the climate change mitigation and adaptation efforts.

“We believe that African traditional ecological knowledge is the foundation for appropriate and effective national adaptation policies,” said Crawhall.

Through the IPACC secretariat, the 155 community-based organisations in Africa have drafted their position for the Durban negotiation platform. They want the negotiators to come up with a position that is representative to African parties, indigenous African people’s organisations, traditional institutions, traditional authorities and value systems.

They are calling for the formation of a regional body that is legally binding under the United Nations, to handle issues on conservation that are difficult to deal with at national level.

“One of the prevailing gaps in most of the IPACC-member countries is that there is no land tenure for communities who live in forests, or depend on forests,” said Crawhall.

However, different countries have started responding to the needs of their local communities by including them in their national climate change adaptation strategies, with Kenya taking the lead.

The country is in the process of drafting the Climate Change Adaptation Bill. And the indigenous communities will have their say on the bill because according to the constitution, they must be consulted on draft legislation so that they can make contributions.

“We have traversed the entire country seeking views on this bill, where local communities have been able to give their contributions. Our vision is to participate and lead in the development and implementation of climate change sensitive policies, projects and activities within and outside our Kenyan borders,” said John Kioli, the chairman for the Kenya Climate Change Working Group, who is attending the Durban climate change negotiations.

* This article is one of a series supported by the Climate and Development Knowledge Network (END)

DURBAN, Dec 8 – (TerraViva) “One mosquito can’t do anything against a rhino, but a thousand mosquitos together can make a rhino change its direction,” said Kjell Kuhne of Global Plan Foundation under the Plant For The Planet Academy.

The academy has been doing many workshops in and around Durban, including in townships such as Inanda and Chatsworth, where they have been working at primary schools and other public institutions to expose children to be aware of the environment.

Climate justice ambassadors. Children plant trees while the adults negotiate. Credit: Khanyisile Xulu/TerraViva

Their aim is to expose children to what the future might hold for them so that they can become more environmentally conscious and fight for their future.

Plant For The Planet Academy has been explaining to children what climate change is, how it is caused and what they can do to slow it down. Planting trees is an important part of this process.

Once the children have completed the course, they become “climate change ambassadors” said Khune. As such, they are also allowed to be voted onto the board.

“Worldwide, we are already active in over 100 countries. We want to have empowered one million children in about 20 000 academies to become Climate Justice Ambassadors by 2020. As a large network of global citizens, we can change the world,” he said.

* Community media coverage of COP 17 is being supported by the Media Development & Diversity Agency of South Africa, which is promoting the participation of local journalists through a programme of training and reporting on climate change.

(END)

Credit: Yanethe Gamboa/IPS

Joshua Kyalimpa Interviews JOAO SAMUEL CAHOLO, Deputy Executive Secretary, Southern African Development Community (SADC)

DURBAN, Dec — The Southern African Development Community (SADC) has devised a plan to mainstream water resources management. On the sidelines of the U.N. climate change conference taking place in Durban, there have been efforts to establish water as an agenda item in its own right in climate change negotiations.

Water experts say this will lead to greater focus on developing policy, and attract more resources into the water sector through adaptation programmes.

Q: SADC has been part of efforts to get water into the United Nations on the agenda of the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change – thus far without success.

A: Questions of climate change are matters of global responsibility, so we shall continue with the issue. There is the Rio+20 conference next year,  there is also COP 18 next year: we should continue to discuss within our constituencies and plan for how the issues of water can be brought to the larger agenda of climate change.

Q: What is SADC’s next step?
A: We already have political consensus, enshrined in the SADC Protocol on Shared Watercourses, so the political commitment in SADC is already there. The next step is for us to establish real institutions to address the issues at the national level and also develop transboundary  water resources.

Q: But how are you going to achieve this when water is not mainstreamed? Where will you get the financial resources to have develop water resources?

A: For us, money is not actually the issue. It’s a question of a commitment to implement what we have agreed upon, because money can be found in different ways. It can come from various international sources, but also it can come from our own treasuries and SADC has best practices in this regard.

Q: What are you doing to raise the general awareness of water issues in the region?

A: As SADC, we have the protocol which recognises the need for transboundary water resources to be managed jointly. That program is being implemented. I don’t want to say that SADC is singling out just one issue with water, but we are confident it will be accorded due attention in future negotiations.

Camino en la selva amazónica de Acre para transportar árboles caídos. Crédito: Mario Osava/IPS

Por Fabiana Frayssinet

RÍO DE JANEIRO, 7 dic (IPS) El Senado de Brasil aprobó un nuevo Código Forestal en medio de críticas ecologistas y elogios de sectores vinculados a la gran agricultura. El proyecto debe volver a la cámara baja y ser sancionado por la presidenta Dilma Rousseff para convertirse en ley.

Para los ambientalistas, el texto constituye un estímulo a la tala de la Amazonia, mientras el poderoso sector agropecuario ve en él un avance para garantizar la seguridad alimentaria de este país de 192 millones de habitantes.

La reforma, aprobada el martes 6 por 59 votos a favor y siete en contra, reglamenta la preservación de los bosques en relación a las actividades económicas que utilizan el suelo y los recursos naturales.

Se modifica así el Código Forestal vigente desde 1965, convirtiéndolo no en una “ley ambiental, sino en una ley más de uso agropecuario del suelo”, lamentó en un comunicado la organización Greenpeace.

El texto “tiene tres problemas: estimula la deforestación, amnistía delitos del pasado y disminuye la protección de las selvas todavía en pie”, resumió para IPS el coordinador de la campaña de Amazonia de Greenpeace Brasil, Márcio Astrini.

El punto más polémico es el que amnistía a los propietarios que hayan deforestado las  áreas de preservación permanente (APP) hasta 2008, si bien para evitar las multas el responsable tendrá que recuperar parte de lo talado y registrar su propiedad para futuras fiscalizaciones. En Brasil hay unos cinco millones de propiedades rurales.

Según al actual Código Forestal, las APP son aquellas que, “cubiertas o no por vegetación nativa, (tienen la) función de preservar los recursos hídricos, el paisaje, la estabilidad geológica, la biodiversidad, el flujo genético de fauna y flora, proteger el suelo y asegurar el bienestar de las poblaciones humanas”. Por ejemplo, las márgenes y nacientes de ríos y las cumbres y laderas de cerros.

De acuerdo con el Fondo Mundial para la Naturaleza (WWF) la superficie de las APP sujetas a indulto suma 79 millones de hectáreas, equivalentes a los territorios combinados de Alemania, Austria e Italia.

“Será una tragedia para Brasil y para el mundo si ahora el país da la espalda a más de una década de conquista y vuelve al tiempo de las tinieblas de la deforestación catastrófica”, advirtió WWF en un comunicado.

El nuevo texto mantiene porcentajes de protección de la reserva legal, una zona “ubicada dentro de una propiedad o posesión rural, con excepción de la APP, necesaria para el uso sustentable de los recursos naturales”, según el código vigente.

En la Amazonia legal –delimitación política que incluye los estados parcial o totalmente cubiertos por ese bioma– la proporción de reserva legal en los predios agrarios en zonas selváticas es de 80 por ciento.

Si la propiedad se encuentra en zonas de sabana tropical de la Amazonia legal, la reserva es de 35 por ciento, y de 20 por ciento en el resto del país.

El proyecto, que debe volver a la cámara baja y después ser sancionado por Rousseff, exime de la reforestación a todos los predios de entre 20 y 400 hectáreas, según la región.

Si la propiedad se encuentra en estados amazónicos con más de 65 por ciento de su territorio ocupado por tierras indígenas o por unidades de conservación –parques naturales, áreas protegidas, etcétera– la superficie que debe preservar el productor disminuye de 80 a 50 por ciento.

“La legislación ambiental de Brasil era considerada como una de las más avanzadas. Esta alteración del Código Forestal destruye totalmente esta noción”, dijo a IPS la abogada ambientalista Rachel Biderman, consultora senior en Brasil del World Resources Institute.

“Este momento en que Brasil vive un gran crecimiento económico es acompañado por la banalización y debilitamiento de la legislación ambiental”, añadió.

El gobierno, que intentó mejorar algunos puntos aprobados previamente en la cámara baja, considera que el proyecto no es ideal pero es “el mejor posible”.

El senador Jorge Viana, del gobernante Partido de los Trabajadores y relator del proyecto, estimó que se cumple la misión de dar tranquilidad a los brasileños que necesitan tanto de alimento como de preservación ambiental.

“No conozco actividad como la agrícola que necesite más del ambiente para crear y producir. Así que no tiene sentido este enfrentamiento entre ruralistas y ambientalistas”, opinó.

Las autoridades creen que con controles más estrictos, ya en marcha, se conseguirán restaurar 24 millones de hectáreas deforestadas en reservas legales o APP.

Adriana Ramos, secretaria ejecutiva adjunta del Instituto Socioambiental, sostuvo que la ley “permite actividades agropecuarias en áreas críticas que en cambio tendrían que ser recuperadas”. Se trata de  un “mal proyecto” que “refuerza la cultura de la impunidad”, dijo a IPS.

Brasil es uno de los principales productores de alimentos, y es el primer exportador mundial de carne vacuna, café y jugo de naranjas. También es un gran productor de soja y maíz.

Para los representantes del agronegocio, como la senadora Katia Abreu del Partido Social Democrático, empresaria ganadera y presidenta de la Confederación Nacional de Agricultura y Pecuaria, se “pone fin a años de dictadura ambiental”.

El lunes 5, el Instituto Nacional de Investigaciones Espaciales (INPE) reveló que la deforestación amazónica sigue cayendo. La registrada entre agosto de 2010  y julio de 2011 fue de 6.238 kilómetros cuadrados, 11 por ciento menor a la del período 2009-2010.

Es, además, la menor tala registrada desde que el INPE inició estos controles satelitales, en 1988. Por entonces, la deforestación era de 29.000 kilómetros cuadrados por año.

Por eso Abreu insistió en que es posible compatibilizar la producción de alimentos con la preservación de la selva.

Pero esto no convence a los ambientalistas.

“Brasil pierde la oportunidad” de construir “un código de desarrollo sostenible” basado en prácticas modernas “como el pago por servicios ambientales y promoción de sistemas agroforestales sostenibles, con apoyo y desarrollo de comunidades locales”, opinó Biderman.

Astrini apuntó que el país podría incumplir tratados ambientales internacionales y socavar los esfuerzos para frenar el cambio climático.

Las organizaciones que integran el Comité de la Floresta se movilizarán para exigir un veto de la presidenta Rousseff. “Le cobraremos el compromiso que hizo por escrito de que no aceptaría un texto que tuviese amnistía y promoviera más deforestación”, recordó Astrini.

Este país adoptó la meta de reducir sus emisiones de gases de efecto invernadero entre 36 y 39 por ciento para 2020, dependiendo del crecimiento del producto interno bruto, para lo cual necesita disminuir en 80 por ciento la deforestación amazónica respecto del período 1996-2005.

Brasil es el sexto mayor emisor de gases invernadero en el mundo. Y la principal fuente es la pérdida de su selva tropical, causada en gran medida por la expansión agropecuaria. (FIN)

Credit: Tinus de Jager/IPS

By Stephen Leahy

Civil society said negotiations are going backwards with no nation willing to step up and lead the way forward here at the United Nations climate change conference Wednesday.

“No-one is a champion here. Who will step forward and call the other countries’ bluffs?” asked Tove Ryding of Greenpeace International.

Without that champion stepping forward in the next two and half days, “the world is heading to four degrees Celsius of warming while countries are playing a game of poker,” said Ryding.

“We are going backwards here. The EU put out a new mandate today that suggest a 10 year delay for increasing emissions reductions,” said Bobby Peek of Friends of the Earth South Africa.

“Corporate power is in charge here. Governments must act for the benefit of their people,” said Peek.

“There is still time to break the deadlock but need clear commitments from the members,” said Srinivas Krishnaswamy of the Climate Action Network – South Asia.

Big decisions at previous meetings were often made in the final hours, he noted.

China has made an “unprecedented” proposal to agree to binding commitments but the US and European Union are pretending this is nothing new, said Samantha Smith of WWF International.

China, as well other large developing nations, are waiting for the US and other developed countries to fulfill their promises made in the Bali (2008) and Copenhagen (2009) climate talks, Smith said.

But even those aren’t good enough to ensure less than two degrees of warming. Greater emissions cuts are needed from the developed that current pledges. “The climate can’t wait for that in 2020 as the US suggests.”

(Ends)

By Kristin Palitza

DURBAN (IPS) – The goal of a comprehensive and binding agreement may be beyond the reach of the 17th United Nations climate change negotiations, says the organisation’s secretary-general Ban Ki-moon.

Ban was speaking at the official opening of the high-level talks on climate change in Durban, South Africa, on Tuesday.

He cautioned delegates not to set their hopes too high. “We must be realistic about expectations for a break through in Durban,” Ban said. The reasons for more cautious expectations were well known, he added, such as the global financial crisis, which has led to fiscal austerity with countries prioritising national budgets before international needs.

“But none of these uncertainties should prevent us from making real progress here in Durban,” Ban urged, noting that serious proposals and persistence were needed to proceed. “It’s like riding a bicycle. As long as you move forward you keep your momentum,” he explained.

“The future of our planet is at stake,” Ban warned. “Time is not on our side. We are reaching the point of no return and must walk away from the abyss.”

South African President Jacob Zuma stressed that climate change was a global challenge that required worldwide solutions. He said it was critical to find common ground to reach an agreement.

“Different positions still prevail on different points,” he concluded after more than a week of often staggering negotiations, reminding delegates “we all agreed that the earth is in danger and that we must do something about it.”

“We need to show the world that parties are willing to solve problems in a practical manner and forego national interests, at times, for the interests of humanity, no matter how difficult this may be,” Zuma added. He demanded that delegations rebuild trust in each other.

The South African president said that the 17th Conference of Parties is still a decisive moment for the multilateral system, which has evolved over many years under the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change(UNFCCC) and the Kyoto Protocol.

“The first period of the Kyoto Protocol is about to come to an end. The question left unanswered is the second commitment period. It is clear that if this question is not resolved, the outcome on other matters will become extremely difficult,” Zuma said.

Industrialised nations needed to adopt a second period of the Kyoto Protocol, while developing countries needed to agree on voluntary pledges. “All parties will have to collectively do more, with common but differentiated responsibility,” explained Zuma.

With twelve heads of states and 130 ministers having arrived at the summit on Tuesday, the last three days of the climate change summit are expected to bring about important, far-reaching political decisions. “For the first week, negotiators have been hard at work, but the ministers will have to take leadership,” said Maite Nkoana-Mashabane, South Africa’s Minister of International Relations and Cooperation and the summit’s chair.

She noted that it was important for political leaders to consider the memorandums written by thousands of concerned citizens, which were handed to the conference leadership throughout the summit: “They expect leadership from us. We have a responsibility not to disappoint them.”

Christiana Figueres, the executive secretary of the UNFCCC, said “good progress” had been achieved on a number of issues, which included headway on financial support to developing countries, particularly regarding adaptation projects, the Green Climate Fund and deforestation. She was also confident that the Durban conference would fully operationalise the Cancun agreements before it ended on Dec 9.

However, Figueres stressed that a number of issues still needed progress and further guidance on a ministerial level. “The time has come to address the thorny political issues before us, such as long-term funding, a second Kyoto Protocol and the framework under the Convention,” she said.

From today on, it was up to the government ministers to develop solutions to the issues at hand. “They need to ensure there is clarity on contours of a second Kyoto Protocol and that gaps are ruled out. We also need clarity on how to avoid an ambition gap and on how funds will be scaled up from now until 2020.”

Connie Hedegaard, commissioner for climate action at the European Commission who represented the European Union (EU) spoke about the need for a new, comprehensive, legally binding international framework. “Only then can we bring the actions to the scale we need, with the speed we need,” she noted. “We would like the D in Durban to be a D for decisions and a D for delivery.”

Hedegaard acknowledged that not all developing countries were ready to commit to legally binding agreements immediately. The EU had therefore made the “significant offer” of a roadmap, which suggests emerging economies come on board by 2020 at the latest.

“All major economies need to commit, of course respecting common but differentiated responsibilities. If they will not commit to an agreement in the foreseeable future, they take on an unbearable responsibility,” she warned.

Speaking on behalf of the African Union, Ethiopian Prime Minister Meles Zenawi urged the EU not to abandon the Kyoto Protocol, no matter what commitments other countries were prepared to make: “The Kyoto Protocol is too important to be sacrificed for tactical advantages on negotiating table.”

Another “top priority” should be ensuring that the agreements reached at the previous climate talks in Cancun, Mexico, will be implemented, Zenawi added, because, for the African continent, funding for climate change mitigation and adaptation programmes were of “utmost importance”. “We are deeply disappointed that fast-track funding promised to us in Copenhagen has largely failed to materialise,” he complained.

Argentina’s Vice-minister of Foreign Affairs Alberto Pedro D’Alotto agreed with Zenawi, while speaking on behalf of the Group of 77 plus China, a bloc of 131 developing countries. He said he was seriously concerned about the “key lack of financial resources” made available to developing countries.

Nauru’s President Sprent Dabwido, who spoke on behalf of the small pacific island states, brought home the urgency of tangible decisions being made at this year’s summit. “For us, climate change is a matter of life and death,” he said. “Unless action is taken, a large part of my region could be rendered uninhabitable within the lifetime of my grandchildren. The time for small incremental steps ended long ago. Great strides must be made.”

The high-level talks will be concluded on Dec 9.

(END/2011)

Jolene Beukes. Credit: Andre Marais/TerraViva

DURBAN, Dec 7 – (TerraViva) Cape Town couple Johannes and Jolene Beukes travelled across the country to Durban at their own expense to attend an assembly of the world’s indigenous peoples at the Peoples’ Space, the alternative conference taking place in conjunction with the U.N. Climate Conference.

Dec. 1 had added importance for the Beukes because it marks the day known as Emancipation Day in South Africa – a commemoration of the date in 1834 when slaves in the Western Cape were legally freed from their bondage.

Cape Town was for several centuries a slave port, where the buying and selling of human cargo endured for several centuries. Many people in the Cape can trace their ancestry to this period, when slaves were brought from places like Indonesia, Malaysia, Ceylon, Mauritius, India and Mozambique and mixed with the original nomadic Khoisan herders. These diverse origins can still be seen in the faces and features of most Black Capetonians who were classified as Coloured or “mixed race” under apartheid.

Commemoration of emancipation has recently been revived, mostly thanks to the efforts of people like the Beukes; there is a renewed determination not to let South Africans forget about this shameful chapter of their history. People linked to the District Six Museum (itself marking a major forced removal of some 60,000 Black people from near Cape Town’s city centre beginning in 1966) have organised an annual vigil and night march through the city, despite regulations prohibiting the event in recent years,

“We insist that this march be held at night, because during slavery, slaves were subject to curfews and forbidden to venture out at night,” Jolene Beukes says angrily.

Turning to the question of climate change, Beukes talks about indigenous people as aardmense – people of the soil – with a strong connection to the land and conservation which has often been broken by dispossession in many places around the world.

Many of the solutions to climate change that have been put forward ignore indigenous people or even worse, threaten them with further dispossession, for example by blocking people’s use and access to forests in the name of conservation.

Along with other indigenous people gathered in Durban, Beukes wants to see a restoration of the land and sustainable use of it: an emancipation of the original inhabitants goes hand in hand with an emancipation of ecosystems from destructive development.

But how will you mark Emancipation Day at COP17 – so far away from Cape Town? I ask her.

“By spiritually connecting with others, by talking about the threats to our planet and the remaining indigenous communities in other parts of our country, with people concerned about these issues,” she replies.

“We still live with different kinds of slavery – alienated from our environment, trapped in alcohol and drugs… COP 17 gives me the opportunity to reflect with others about my past and my remarkable ancestry, but also connect with other First Nation indigenous people from around the world who have experienced similar dispossession – the details may be different but the suffering is the same.”

* Community media coverage of COP 17 is being supported by the Media Development & Diversity Agency of South Africa, which is promoting the participation of local journalists through a programme of training and reporting on climate change.

(END)

By Stephen Leahy

DURBAN, South Africa, Dec6 – The United States has become the major stumbling block to progress at the mid point of negotiations over a new international climate regime say civil society and many of the 193 nations attending the United Nations climate change conference here in Durban.

“The U.S. position leads us to three or four degrees Celsius of warming, which will be devastating for the poor of the world,” said Celine Charveriat of Oxfam International.

“They are proposing a 10-year time out with no new targets to lower emissions until after 2020,” Charveriat said.

At COP 15 in Copenhagen the U.S. committed to reducing its emissions 17 percent from 2005 by 2020. This is far short of what is widely agreed as necessary: cuts in fossil fuel emissions 25 to 40 percent below those in 1990 by U.S. and all developed nations.

Scientists have repeatedly warned that global emissions must peak by mid-decade and then decline every year thereafter. But U.S. negotiator Jon Pershing said their Copenhagen emission reduction pledge is sufficient until 2020.

“There is a huge failure of ambition. Nothing here will keep us out of catastrophic climate change,” said Jim Leape, Director General of the World Wide Fund for Nature International. The U.S. has already suffered record-breaking losses due to severe weather this year with only 0.8 degrees Celsius of warming, Leape said.

“If they (U.S.) won’t moderate this stance they should step aside,” Leape.

That sentiment was echoed by Greenpeace’s Kumi Naidoo who also said: “Delegates must listen to the people not to certain corporate interests.”

The Obama White House is betraying the American people, as well as the municipalities and companies in the U.S. who are taking serious action to reduce their emissions, Naidoo said.

Pa Ousman Jaru of The Gambia, a delegate representing the Least Developed Countries block, also asked the U.S. to step aside and stop blocking progress for the rest of the final week.

Jaru reiterated the developing world’s commitment to a second phase of the Kyoto Protocol after the first one expires in 2012. Under the Kyoto Protocol all industrialised nations, with the exception of the U.S., are legally bound to reduce emissions five percent from 1990 levels.

Canada’s emissions are close to 30 percent higher than in 1990 and said they will not participate in a second phase. Japan and Russia will also not participate leaving the Kyoto Protocol to regulate only about quarter of current global emissions.

There had been expectations that the Kyoto Protocol would die here in Durban but United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change climate chief Christiana Figueres said it would live on.

Nadioo agreed that the Kyoto Protocol would live but it would be on “life support for the next two years” of additional negotiations.

Jaru said that the other “track” of negotiations to regulate and reduce the remaining 75 percent is vitally important and must result in ambitious reductions. That is the track the U.S. is reluctant to participate in beyond its Copenhagen commitments because China, the world’s largest carbon emitter, refused to agree to binding reductions for itself.

Now, for the first time China said it will agree, a move that Figueres called “very positive”. She said it was part of the progress being made in Durban, which she expected to escalate with the arrival of ministers for the high level negotiations beginning Tuesday.

Another major issue includes the establishment of a Green Climate Fund, which is to scale up to 100 billion dollars a year in funding to help developing countries adapt to climate change. That is bogged down in how to set up and structure the fund. The more difficult issue of where the money is going to come from is on the back burner.

There was progress on talks to reduce deforestation, a major source of emissions. The United Nations programme on Reducing Emissions from Deforestation and Forest Degradation in Developing Countries (REDD+) negotiation focused on thorny details of how to verify reductions with progress expected by end of the week. Decisions on financing for REDD+ have been postponed until COP 18 in Qatar next year.

By Kristin Palitza

DURBAN, South Africa, Dec 5 (IPS) – Emerging economies China, South Africa and Brazil have indicated their openness to legally-binding carbon emission reduction targets from 2020 during the United Nations climate change summit in Durban, South Africa.

Climate experts say the three countries’ willingness to consider legally binding commitments, even if they will not take immediate effect, was potentially “a great step” to unlock one of the big political issues of this year’s climate change talks.

Only India continues to refuse to commit.

The European Union (EU) proposed a “roadmap” last week, which stipulates that all major economies, including emerging countries like South Africa, Brazil, India and China, generally called the BASIC group – and not only industrialised nations as currently under the Kyoto Protocol – will be subject to legally binding carbon emission targets.

BASIC countries all face developmental challenges but are at the same time significant contributors to greenhouse gas emissions. Major emerging economies and other developing nations already emit more than half of current carbon emissions. Within the next 20 years, they are projected to account for two- thirds.

The 194-nation climate talks, which will wrap up on Dec. 9, are abuzz with speculation on the prospect of emerging economies agreeing on the proposed roadmap.

In a move that surprised many after a tough week of negotiations that brought to the fore deep rifts between different countries’ demands and expectations, China announced for the first time it would accept a legally-binding climate deal after 2020, when current voluntary pledges will run out. After first insisting the demands of the EU roadmap were “too much,” China now seems open to finding a middle ground, especially with Europe.

“But there are pre-conditions,” said China’s top climate negotiator Xie Zhenhua. “A second Kyoto commitment period is a must for rich nations. After (the second period has ended), we need to review what has been done. Based on this assessment can we start negotiating what we shall agree after 2020.”

China laid out five conditions under which it would consider a legally-binding carbon reduction deal. Apart from a second commitment period of carbon-reduction pledges by industrialised nations under the Kyoto Protocol, they include hundreds of billions of dollars in short- and long-term climate financing for developing countries.

China also wants to see the Green Climate Fund signed off during the summit and demands the implementation of a range of agreements outlined at the 2009 Copenhagen summit, which were integrated into the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) at last year’s climate gathering in Cancun. These include initiatives for technology transfer, adaptation to climate change and new rules for verifying that carbon-cutting promises are kept.

South Africa and Brazil – two countries most vulnerable to the adverse effects of global warming, especially with regards to agriculture and biodiversity – have also shown interest in the roadmap.

South Africa’s Minister of Environment Edna Molewa said the EU roadmap was “seen favourably”, but noted that South Africa would, like China, want to place “conditionalities” on any binding agreements.

“We would like to work towards a legally binding outcome. As South Africa, we’re of the opinion that the seriousness with which we will deal with the level of contributions that South Africa can make in the global arena is understood in the context of articles 4.1 and 2 of the UNFCCC,” confirmed South Africa’s second negotiator Xolisa Ngwadla.

UNFCCC article 4.1 refers to “common and differentiated responsibilities” depending on the gross domestic product (GDP) of each country, while article 2 refers to the stabilisation of greenhouse gas emissions at a level that allows ecosystems to adapt naturally to climate change, to ensure that food production is not threatened and enable economic development to proceed in a sustainable manner – a point important for countries that heavily feel the effects of climate change.

“Our future commitments will also depend on finance, technology transfers and capacity building,” Ngwadla added.

Contrary to South Africa, Brazil said it is not placing any conditions on committing itself to an internationally legally binding instrument to reduce carbon emissions as long as such a treaty helped the fight against climate change based on scientific studies.

“We could agree already today on an internationally legally binding instrument, but not on any. It has to be robust, respond to what science is telling us is needed and therefore something that will make a difference in the fight against climate change,” explained Ambassador Luiz Alberto Figueiredo, head of Brazil’s delegation. “We would not adapt a legally binding instrument for the sake of it.”

Currently, Brazil has set voluntary carbon reduction targets, which have been passed into national law. Figueiredo said he is aware this commitment will have to increase over time: “We understand that this regime will have to evolve over time. We think voluntary actions alone usually don’t add up to the level of international response that science tells us is needed. We are willing to play our part in the future evolution of the international fight against climate change.”

As part of the Group of 77 and China negotiating bloc, a group of 132 developing countries, Brazil is pushing for the adoption for a second commitment period of Kyoto Protocol before the end of the climate change summit on Dec 9. The country is also lobbying for a sign off of a fully functional Green Climate Fund, which will have short-term and long-term financing mechanisms so that developing nations can adapt to climate change.

Delegates from BASIC countries have repeatedly noted that South-South cooperation is important to them, not only economically but also with regards to decisions made during the climate change summit, and have indicated that they would support each other’s positions.

India, however, the fourth member of the BASIC group, does not seem to fall into line. It has repeatedly expressed its opposition to the EU roadmap, as it is not willing to consider signing a legally binding agreement to cut carbon emissions.

India said it felt implementing its voluntary target of reducing the emission intensity of its GDP growth by 20 percent to 25 percent by 2020, compared to 2005, was sufficient. Having one of the smallest per-capita-carbon footprints in the world, tougher targets weren’t necessary, said India’s lead negotiator J.M. Mauskar: “We are not a major emitter.”

India was only willing to negotiate “mutual reassurances”, he said. “In terms of the Cancun pledges, developing countries’ voluntary pledges by 2020 amount to more mitigation in absolute terms than that of developed countries,” Mauskar further explained, insisting that rich nations, not developing countries and emerging economies must ramp up their commitments.

India has criticised industrialised nations, especially the United States, for not making firm commitments to cutting green house gas emissions. “We are deeply concerned that there has been hardly any progress in achieving a second commitment period of the Kyoto Protocol,” said Mauskar.

Russia, a signatory to the Kyoto Protocol, which belongs with South Africa, China, Brazil and India to the BRICS economic bloc, has blankly refused to consider a second commitment period.

(END/2011)

By Busani Bafana

Durban, 5 Dec. — Negotiators at the 17th Conference of Parties owe it to the world’s more than seven billion people to deliver a deal with a work plan for agriculture, a sector that is expected to be the worst affected by climate change.

Lindiwe Majele Sibanda, CEO of Food Agriculture Natural Resources Policy Advocacy Network told participants at the Agriculture and Rural Development Day (ARRD) event on the sidelines of COP 17 that what was need was a work programme for agriculture. She said she hoped that South Africa’s minister of Agriculture, Forestry and Fisheries Tina Joemat Patterson would take up the cause.

“We believe she will send the message to the right messenger to make sure we deliver a deal that will talk to farmers, the private sector and everybody who needs food to survive,” Sibanda said.

On behalf of a grouping of agriculture and advocacy organisations, Sibanda presented an open letter to Patterson calling for the inclusion of agriculture as an adaptation approach in the text to be agreed on by climate change negotiators. The groups have warned that COP 17 should be the show time for agriculture, which has been repeatedly taken off the agenda in two previous climate change negotiations.

“The turnout for COP 17 has been overwhelming and we believe we are on the right track,” said Sibanda. “This is a sign of commitment and sign of more ambassadors for our message that we are presenting to the minister to take to the boys and girls upstairs.”

Cash for crops
A work programme for agriculture is a blueprint for action that agriculture groups, farmers and development actors believe will unlock the cash to help agriculture, on which millions of smallholder farmers globally depend for their livelihoods, adapt to climate change.

In a firmly worded letter, the 16 agricultural groups said farmers have demonstrated their resilience to producing food in difficult conditions by experimenting with options for achieving climate-change adaptation and mitigation through more sustainable crop production, livestock rearing and management of soils, water, fish, forests, agro forestry species, and other biodiversity.

“The most vulnerable regions of the world – developing countries – are disproportionately affected by climate change, despite contributing little to carbon emissions,” said the letter. “People in developing countries depend heavily on agriculture for their livelihoods, yet are increasingly challenged in their ability to produce sufficient food for their families and for markets.”

Climate smart agriculture, the letter said, will enable the transformation of agriculture, especially in Africa.

The letter further said that despite agriculture’s potential to provide a solution to climate change, it was underfunded. As a percentage of total investment, agriculture has dropped from 22 percent in 1980 to approximately six percent today.

Fair deal
The groups including the World Bank, CGIAR Research Program on Climate Change, Agriculture and Food Security (CCAFS), FANRPAN, the Global Forum on Agricultural Research, Southern African Confederation of Agricultural Unions (SACAU) and the World Farmers’ Organisation, said nothing should be short of a fair deal that includes agriculture.

Accepting the letter, Pettersson said agriculture, climate change and food security were inseparable. She cited the need to scale up and transform food and farming systems which need to be supported by
policy change and investment.

“There are people around the world who have come to Durban with a lot of expectations,” Pettersson said. “We would request that whoever goes to the negotiation and who even has the slightest influence on any negotiations will help us make our ambitions a reality and help us make climate smart agriculture a reality.”

The United Nations Food and Agriculture Organization estimates that 925 million people in the world go hungry every day. As the ballooning world population set to hit the 10 billion mark in 40 years will need food, the focus is on climate smart agriculture to deliver even though the sector has the lion’s share of global water use.

Speaking at the same event, Ireland’s former President Mary Robinson, who is presentation her foundation which bears her name, said innovation and progress on practical tools for climate smart agriculture are emerging but knowledge gaps underlie the need for more agriculture research.

“This is the logic behind the call for a work programme on agriculture under the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change,” said Robinson adding that, “This COP must deliver action on the links between climate change and food and nutrition security. I hope that a high-level decision can be agreed which acknowledges the importance of agriculture to Africa and the rest of the world.”

Prior to the ARRD event, the agricultural organisations briefed negotiators on the need for a work programme. During the briefing, questions were raised on what comes first, the text or the work programme.

“We have had meetings on this and we are frustrated by the absence of a work programme,” SACAU CEO, Ishmael Sunga lamented. “We have discussed whether we need to have the content of the work programme before the text or not and we think it does not really matter. The fight for now is to have that defined and we can work on the details later.”

The International Federation of Organic Agricultural Movement (IFOAM) bemoaned that while the discussion of agriculture was important in the climate change negotiations, farmers had to be represented in person.

“How are farmers being involved so that they can actively inform this process?” asked an IFOM representative. “This is like discussing gender issues without having any women in the room that is what it feels like to us and we would really appreciate for a major effort that we are represented physically in this process.”

Senior trade policy advisor in the United States Department of Agriculture, Mark Manis, told the briefing of negotiators organised by the grouping of agricultural organisations that the issue of a work programme had been clearly articulated and agreed on the need to bring farmers into the dialogue through the work programme.

“In terms of the negotiating positions, we are here to get a deal and are willing to talk and will do our best to make that happen,” said Manis. “We can spend a lot of time on what we think should be in the work programme but this has been article and should not be an impediment to initiating the exercise. But if we do not get a decision here there is nothing and frankly that is not acceptable and on the basis of a positive note we are going upstairs to make it happen.”

Bruce Campbell, Director, CGIAR Research Program on Climate Change, Agriculture and Food Security told IPS that momentum is building for the inclusion of a Work Programme on agriculture at the climate negotiations this year. He said this was clear from the more than 500 participants at this year’s Agriculture and Rural Development Day that this is the single priority issue that needs to be addressed.

“Leading agricultural groups, from farmers and researchers to policymakers and development organisations, have all come together to call on COP17 negotiators to address the need for a Work Programme on agriculture,” Campbell said. “Now, it is up to negotiators to heed our joint call-to-action and allow agriculture to play its part in building resilience amongst vulnerable populations, helping farmers adapt to more unpredictable and extreme weather conditions and mitigating future climate change.”

End/

DURBAN, South Africa, Dec 4 (IPS) – The combined effects of ballooning populations, poor productivity and threatened water resources present fresh pressures on agriculture to deliver food, money and livelihoods in Africa.

The food system needs urgent reform in the face of climate change which accelerating the speed of change on the farms and on the livelihoods of smallholder farmers.

Kanayo F. Nwanze, President, International Fund for Agricultural Development (IFAD) told IPS reporter Busani Bafana that changing the course means a new agriculture revolution that delivers smart solutions to the current challenges posed by climate change.

Excerpts from the interview follow:

Kanayo F. Nwanze

A: The whole discussion we are having right now is basically how to achieve a climate smart agriculture which essentially means getting the maximum out of smallholder farmers who make up the large population of farmers in Africa and who are mostly women. They have to have access to basic inputs and financial services. If it will be climate smart, it has to respond to all the current issues that have to do with the impact of climate change on agriculture.

We have to talk about sustainable agricultural systems. The Green Revolution was successful because it focused on very clear messages: increase fertiliser use, increase improved seeds and irrigation. But we found out in the long term that it is not sustainable. So now we need to look for sustainable approaches to production that do not destroy the environment and are available to a wide spectrum of farmers in Africa and in the world as a whole and that help farmers to adapt to climate change and to be able to mitigate by their own activities. This is sustainable intensified agriculture.

A new green revolution is needed to meet the challenge of feeding more than nine billion people in 2050. There is no magic bullet for eliminating hunger overnight because I do not believe that ideas can feed people. Ideas for a new green revolution are needed and climate smart agriculture can deliver those ideas.

Q: Agriculture is threatened by many factors, what is the first step to make it sustainable?

A: The first step we need to take is on the policy agenda. We must have a commitment from the highest level of policy makers of government to say agriculture is a priority and they must put their money where their mouth is.

Q: You have expressed concern with the slow progress of negotiations. What are your expectations?

A: We are dealing with an issue that transcends what we call simple equations. You are dealing with an issue that brings a lot of political arguments and then people lose the sense of priority. It becomes very slow.

We are negotiating a political issue and there are a lot of things at stake. We are negotiating simple issues that are founded on facts and are fact-based arguments. Some people today are still denying there is climate change. How do you negotiate with someone who does not believe? That is the problem we have. We need real leadership. South Africa is doing a fantastic job leading this whole argument of putting agriculture on the agenda.

One sentence on agriculture is key. What is it? Agriculture drives economic growth and social development.

It is impacted by climate change but agriculture is also a solution to climate change because agriculture is at the cross roads of food security and climate change. So we cannot ignore it in climate smart business.

Q: Agriculture is facing challenges, but what have we done well in agriculture development in Africa?

A: Ten years ago you would not hear people talking about agriculture because it was always at the bottom of the pile but with the events of 2007/8 with the (food) price hikes and volatility, with riots, now people say agriculture equals food security, food security equals political stability and global peace. With that kind of linkage, you cannot ignore agriculture and that is something we have done well.

(Ends)

DURBAN, South Africa, Dec 3 (IPS) – The world’s oceans are becoming hot, sour and breathless – threatening a vital source of food for a billion people mainly in the developing world experts warned today at a special Oceans Day event at the UN climate negotiation.

Oceans are home 80 percent of all life on the planet and emissions from fossil fuels are turning them increasingly acidic, raising water temperatures and reducing the amount of oxygen in some regions said oceanographer Carol Turley from Plymouth Marine Laboratory in the UK.

“We don’t know what all the consequences will be. We suspect the combination of all three will be far worse than one alone,” Turley told IPS in an interview on the sidelines of climate treaty negotiations known as COP 17.

It was only a few years ago that researchers realised that human emissions of carbon dioxide (CO2) was making the surface waters of oceans more acidic. The oceans naturally absorb CO2 from the atmosphere and have now absorbed about a third of all human emissions. That has kept the climate from warming faster but the additional carbon is altering the oceans’ chemistry making them 30 percent more acidic.

One documented impact is that shell-forming creatures like plankton produce thinner shells in more acidic ocean waters. These species are often very important parts of the marine food chain. As emissions of CO2 into the atmosphere increase the more the ocean sours.

In less than ten years at least 10 per cent of the Arctic Ocean surface waters will be too acid for shell-forming species like plankton. By 2040 most of the Arctic Ocean will be too acidic as will significant areas of the Antarctic Ocean said Turley.

The cold waters of the polar regions allow more CO2 to be absorbed faster. The oceans haven’t seen a rapid change like this in 60 million years, she explained.

“But there will also be strange impacts. New research is showing changes in growth, behaviour and reproduction in a variety of non-shell forming species.” 

Estuaries and ocean upwelling zones that are often important fishing grounds are also regions where acidification is fastest. Those areas are also subject to low oxygen levels and increasing temperatures creating new conditions in the oceans that no marine species has ever had to cope with.

Oceans are also absorbing most of the extra heat trapped by the additional CO2 in the atmosphere. Again, without this land temperatures would far higher and extreme weather events far worse.

“There is some evidence that some crab species cannot tolerate higher temperatures when ocean is more acidic,” she said.

The changes in the oceans are very worrying for developing countries who will be most affected and have little capacity to cope with this she said.

The only solution is to cut emissions although it may be possible to grow algae to absorb carbon and then remove it and use it for food or biomass or some other purpose that keeps the carbon out of the ocean or atmosphere she said.

Despite their fundamental importance and role in the planet’s climate system, oceans have not been part of previous climate negotiations. Efforts are being made to include oceans in the formal negotiations of COP 17. Not that will help the oceans without commitment to make significant cuts in CO2 emissions which reached their highest level ever in 2010.

“Some countries are fighting like the devil here in Durban against emission targets that the science says we need. You have to ask in whose interests are they working for,” said Nick Nuttall spokesperson for the UN Environment Program (UNEP).

Those counties need to be publicly held to account for “not doing the right thing”, Nuttall said.

Another thing that needs to change are the more than 600 billion dollars a year in public subsidies governments spend on fossil fuels. Stop the subsidies and use the money to improve fuel efficiency and fund alternative energy Nuttall said.

“Ocean plankton provides 50 percent of the oxygen we breathe – far more than tropical forests,” said Philippe Vallette, co-President, World Ocean Network. 

Despite these huge environmental challenges humanity can find ways to live sustainably and ensure the health of the world’s ecosystems.

“This is very exciting moment for humankind. We need to reinvent a world taking into account the limits of the earth,” Vallette said.

(Ends)

By Joshua Kyalimpa

DURBAN, South Africa, 2 Dec (IPS) – Civil society organisations are urging Africa to remain steadfast in its demands for a commitment to the Kyoto Protocol and not to be bulldozed into a new agreement.

“The African nations are watching you,” Bobby Peek, of Friends of the Earth, told the Africa group during a press conference in Durban. The conference, led by Friends of the Earth and the Pan African Climate Justice Alliance, comes as negotiators continue to struggle to reach an agreement.

“People in Africa are already paying the price of two hundred years of industrial pollution by the developed world. Africa must fight to ensure that developed countries deliver on their legal and moral obligation to cut the emissions that are putting the lives of millions of people at risk,” said Peek.

Tetteh Hormeku, of the African Trade Network, says if Africa were to shift its position, the consequences could be grave. Hormeku says targets in the expiring protocol are not adequate and should have been raised, but the biggest emitters are looking to hinder the process.

There are also fears that South Africa, the biggest polluter on the continent, may attempt to side with the developed world. Michele Maynard, of the Pan African Climate Justice Alliance, says: “South Africa has a leading role to play, as the chair of these talks here in Durban.

“The South African chair of the talks must not let South Africa down. African nations must stand shoulder-to-shoulder to deliver radical action to cut emissions, and substantial finance to allow Africa to adapt to the impacts already being felt.”

Augustine Njamushi, of the Pan African Climate Justice Alliance, says Africa is already feeling the impacts of climate change and delays in agreeing to a legally binding document means the continent will continue burning as others benefit. “The future of African agriculture, food and survival is at stake that is why it’s important that the continent sticks to its position.”

Martin Khor, of the South Centre, says developing countries are already doing quite a lot compared to the developed world. “It’s not fair to treat the developing countries with big populations like developed countries when their per capita carbon is incomparable.”
(Ends)

By Kristin Palitza

Figueres expects the week to close with good progress on the negotiation package that will define ways to adapt to climate change – an instrument very important for developing countries, especially Africa, which will suffer most from climate change.

There has also been further clarification on the “how” of a second commitment period of the Kyoto Protocol, she noted.

Figueres’ statements sent a positive signal, and gave some hope that hurdles surrounding the Kyoto Protocol and Green Climate Fund can still be overcome.

This second commitment period to the Kyoto Protocol, which will expire at the end of 2012, was being considered even though the European Union (EU) had placed “certain conditions” on a successful agreement. “We have discussed this week what those conditions are and how they can be met. By Tuesday, we will bring all options on the table and converge on a limited number of options,” the executive secretary said.

Moreover, the EU proposed new amendments to the Kyoto Protocol this week to make it easier to increase countries’ “level of ambition” to reduce greenhouse gases. “We try to up the pledges, not only for the small numbers of countries that are included in the Kyoto Protocol already, but also for all other countries,” explained Artur Runge-Metzger, the European Commission’s lead negotiator.

The EU is pressing for firm commitments from all countries not only in the distant future, but starting today, he added: “It is not only important to think about a legally binding framework in the mid- and long-term, but also important to do something before then, because current pledges are not sufficient to keep temperature increases under two degrees Celsius.”

Scientists say global average temperatures may not rise by more than two degrees Celsius if the world wants to put a stop to further climate change.
Runge-Metzger argued countries had no more excuses not to reduce their carbon emissions, as there are numerous solutions available to help close the gap between the current level of carbon emissions and emission reduction targets, such as renewable energies and energy efficiency mechanisms, among others. “It is technologically feasible and economically affordable,” he said.

The argument that those new technologies are too costly and stand in the way of economic growth and development, urgently needed in some countries, did not hold, the chief negotiator said. The EU had already proven “that we can do both at the same time: grow economy and reduce emissions. Our emissions have been going down in EU, and are now lower than they were in 1990, while our gross domestic product has been going up,” said Runge-Metzger.

The bloc also remains clearly opposed to a “bottom-up” approach to emission reductions, where countries are allowed to set targets themselves. “A ‘free for all’ is not going to work. Some countries are pushing [for this],” Runge-Metzger said in reference to the U.S. “What is important is to get enough political will next week to go against the ‘free for all’ approach.”

Instead, the EU is forcefully demanding clear timelines for setting new carbon emission reduction targets. “We need a new legally binding instrument with a clear perspective that will eventually have all emitters on board, [so that we can address] a hundred percent of emissions globally. The Kyoto Protocol on its own is not sufficient,” said EU negotiator and head of the Polish delegation Tomasz Chruszczow.

“The idea [of including all emitters into binding reduction targets] is getting a lot of traction with other parties,” he believed. “They can see that waiting until 2015 or longer to start discussing next steps [to reduce carbon emissions] would simply be too late.”

The EU also wants to introduce a midterm review of the Kyoto Protocol targets, which would take place between 2013 and 2015, so that parties’ progress can be assessed more frequently. “The current protocol has a terribly complicated amendment procedure. We propose an easier way so that it doesn’t take years and years until [changes] take effect. We want to make it as easy as possible for countries to raise the level of their ambitions,” explained Runge-Metzger.

To what degree the EU’s demands on the Kyoto Protocol and other discussion points will be met will only become apparent next week, when ministers and heads of state will arrive at the conference and take the discussions to the next – the political – level.

(Ends) 

Isak Kruiper fears his generation will outlive its home in the Kalahari desert. Credit: Ramatamo wa Matamong/TerraViva

DURBAN, Dec 2 — (TerraViva) Isak and Toppies Kruiper have made their way across the country with a message, travelling all the way from their home in the Kalahari Desert of South Africa’s Northern Cape Province to the United Nations Climate Conference taking place in the port city of Durban on the eastern coast.

The two men have come to the 17th Conference of Parties (COP 17) following in the footsteps of David Kruiper, the late headman of the Bushmen, who worked throughout his life to defend the rights and way of life of his people.

“Jy weet, ek was gebore in die Kalahari,” says Isak Kruiper. “I was born and bred in the Kalahari. I love the Kalahari and would like to someday die in the Kalahari. But what is busy happening now, it looks to me that the Kalahari will die before us. And that is the reason why we are here at COP17.”

The two men spoke to TerraViva outside Durban’s International Convention Centre, slightly awed by their surroundings but determined to get their message across.

“We don’t know all the fancy technology of today we are just ordinary people who wants ordinary things. Look after our kids and the Kalahari,” Kruiper continued.

“The Kalahari, where we stay, is hot and dry and getting increasingly hotter and dryer by the day. The natural resources that we had, like the vegetation, are dying out due to the very little rain and this makes food scarce for the wild (animals), so they move further and further away from us. You know we cannot jump over the fences but they can.”

According to a report from the U.N. Permanent Forum on Indigenous Issues, rising temperatures, dune expansion and increased wind speeds results in the loss of vegetation and impacts on traditional cattle and goat farming practices.

The Bushmen are in many cases forced to live near boreholes drilled by the government, dependent on these for water.

Global warming is also causing similar problems elsewhere – in the Namib Desert, indigenous people are struggling to make a living. Far away in Asia, herders in Mongolia are enduring winters with temperatures more than 30 degrees below zero, killing off livestock and driving them to settle in towns.

Back in the Kalahari, Isak Kruiper fears for his way of life. “It becomes impossible to transfer our indigenous knowledge to our kids, because we must always look for something to eat. We want the government and every concerned group to please listen and help us.”

“Met armoede gaan ons te gronde,” said Kruiper.  “Any help to the San communities would be welcome and appreciated.”

* Community media coverage of COP 17 is being supported by the Media Development & Diversity Agency of South Africa, which is promoting the participation of local journalists through a programme of training and reporting on climate change.

(END/2011)

(END)

The Southern African Development Community (SADC) wants to put water as a standalone agenda item on the COP17 agenda.

Farming in Gabon, West Africa

By Kristin Palitza

DURBAN, South Africa, Nov 30 (IPS) – Global climate change can now be observed from space. The UN Food and Agriculture Organisation (FAO) launched a new technology that can survey the world’s forests via satellites and provide a more accurate, global picture of common threats to the environment, such as deforestation, degradation or illegal logging.

Using a remote sensing surveying technology, FAO has taken and analysed more than 13,500 high-resolution satellite images in 102 countries. These images will help nations to accurately assess the state of their forests. Monitoring change in forests has important implications for biodiversity conservation, carbon storage and human livelihoods.

The losses in forests all around the world can now be quantified for the first time, FAO announced at the U.N. 17th Conference of the Parties climate change summit, which is taking place from Nov. 28 to Dec. 9 in Durban, South Africa.

“It’s a very comprehensive study of the world’s forests. For the first time we have consistent and comparable global and regional long-term data on forest loss land use. Up until now, most available data has come in numbers, not maps (based on satellite images),” explained FAO forest monitoring scientist Adam Gerrand.

As a result, very few countries have been able to monitor the impact of climate change and human intervention on their forests consistently over time.

“We have been lacking good data on deforestation and urgently needed more details about the dynamics of forest loss. We didn’t get the whole story until now,” Gerrand added.

The initial findings from the high-resolution satellite data show that the world’s total forest area shrank by an average of 14.5 million hectares per year between 1990 and 2005. It largely occurred in the tropics, likely attributable to the conversion of tropical forests to agricultural land.

“The rate of forest loss has increased from four million hectares in 1990s to six million hectares between 2000 and 2005,” said Gerrand. “We are losing vital carbon storage, biodiversity and other values forests provide.”

There is some good news, too, however. The survey shows that deforestation does not happen quite as fast as countries have been reporting. The new data showed a net loss of 73 million hectares between 1990 and 2005 compared to previous net loss estimate of 107 million hectares for the same time period.

During that time, the loss of forests was highest in the tropics, where just under half of the world’s forests are located, followed by Africa. Asia was the only region to show net gains in forest land-use area in both periods. Deforestation occurred here as well, but the extensive planting that has been reported by several countries in Asia, mainly China, exceeded the forest areas that were lost.

All satellite images are taken a hundred kilometres apart and comprise 10 square kilometres. They are classified, labelled and then passed on to the countries where they have been taken, so that governments can review and confirm the data.

“It’s a framework countries can use to improve forest resources,” explained Gerrand.

Some countries have already benefited from the new satellite technology. In Papua New Guinea, a small country in Oceania, for example, which is to 65 percent covered with forests, 41 satellite images were taken to establish the impact climate change had on its forest cover.

“Our country didn’t have the technology to assess forest degradation. The new satellite imagery improves the credibility of data,” said Dr. Joe Pokana, head of Papua New Guinea’s national climate change office. “We now plan to establish a robust national monitoring system that will help us to understand the level of degradation and inform policy.”

Similarly, Angola has started to survey the threat of deforestation via the photographic maps provided by the satellites. Forests currently make up 43.4 percent of the southern African country.

“We how have important information about how our forest resources are utilised, carbon stocks, environmental problems, causes of degradation and deforestation,” said Mateus Andre, the head of Angola’s forestry department. “For the first time, we have quality information on which we can base decisions.”

The new data are particularly important for developing regions like Africa, where existing information is often out-dated or of low quality due to lack of capacity. They differ from previous FAO findings in the Global Forest Resources Assessment of 2010, which were based on a compilation of country reports that used a wide variety of sources.

“Deforestation is depriving millions of people of forest goods and services that are crucial to rural livelihoods, economic well-being and environmental health,” said Eduardo Rojas-Briales, FAO assistant director-general for forestry. “The new, satellite-based figures give us a more consistent global picture. Together with the broad range of information supplied by the country reports, they offer decision- makers at every level more accurate information.”

Further remote sensing studies are expected to reveal changes occurring since 2005. “Eventually we will be able to assign biomass to each site for the estimation of forest carbon emissions,” explained Frederic Achard, a scientist from the Joint Research Centre of the European Commission who helped to develop the new imaging system.

Until then lies a long way ahead. Currently, the satellite technology can provide some important data, but not all. Admitted Gerrand: “We still have several decades worth of development ahead.”

(END/2011)

MIchelle Bachelet, directrice exécutive de l'ONU-Femmes. Credit: Sriyantha Walpola/IPS

Rousbeh Legatis s’entretient avec MICHELLE BACHELET, directrice exécutive de l’ONU-Femmes

NATIONS UNIES, 28 Nov (IPS) – Impliquer les femmes dans la prise de décisions et la gestion des ressources est une nécessité fondamentale pour toute mesure efficace visant à faire face aux conséquences multiformes, menaçant la vie, des changements climatiques, affirme la directrice exécutive de l’ONU-Femmes.Se tournant vers Durban, en Afrique du Sud, où les dirigeants du monde discuteront des politiques futures de lutte contre les changements climatiques du 28 novembre au 9 décembre, Michelle Bachelet demande aux dirigeants d’assurer que “les paroles deviennent réalité”, pour une participation totale des femmes à tous les niveaux des négociations, et une “conclusion qui répond aux besoins des femmes et fait la promotion de leur autonomisation”.

Les femmes et les filles – qui constituent la majorité des pauvres au monde – ont un accès beaucoup plus limité à l’information et aux ressources financières que les hommes; un fait qui les expose à un risque plus élevé des graves effets des changements climatiques, a souligné Bachelet.

Dans la conception et la mise en œuvre des instruments financiers comme le Fonds vert pour le climat, elle exhorte les délégués des gouvernements, les experts internationaux et les acteurs de la société civile réunis à Durban à retenir une approche sensible au genre pour améliorer le sens de la responsabilité.

“Le financement climatique devrait être équitable et répondre aux besoins pressants de tous les membres de la société, et les questions de l’égalité entre les sexes doivent être prises en compte à toutes les étapes du processus de financement”, a-t-elle déclaré à IPS.

Le risque de blessure et de décès dus aux catastrophes naturelles – telles que les inondations, les sécheresses et les glissements de terrain – est systématiquement plus élevé chez les femmes et les enfants, a-t-elle expliqué. “Dans les sociétés injustes, plus de femmes que d’hommes meurent des catastrophes”.

Spécialement les femmes et les filles des zones rurales dans des pays en développement “portent un fardeau particulièrement lourd des changements climatiques” en raison du stress environnemental et de leur responsabilité d’assurer l’eau, la nourriture et l’énergie pour la cuisine et le chauffage.

Elles passent plusieurs heures par jour à collecter et transporter de l’eau, par exemple, et cela devient beaucoup plus difficile dans les zones touchées par la sécheresse, a indiqué Bachelet. “Pour beaucoup de filles, cela signifie rater l’école et perdre une éducation”.

Entre 1980 et 2010, le nombre moyen d’événements météorologiques extrêmes a plus que doublé, soulignant le “besoin pressant d’investir dans les femmes et les filles et de promouvoir l’égalité des sexes”.

Bachelet a parlé au correspondant d’IPS à l’ONU, Rousbeh Legatis, des besoins des femmes dans le contexte des changements climatiques et de la manière de remodeler la politique mondiale sur le climat.

Voici quelques extraits de l’entretien.

Q: Quels sont les besoins des femmes, et ont-elles un rôle particulier à jouer quand il s’agit des changements climatiques et des stratégies d’adaptation?

R: Les femmes ont besoin de chances égales et de droits égaux. Cela comprend le droit de participer aux décisions relatives aux changements climatiques. Les femmes ont besoin d’être activement engagées dans les processus qui affectent leur vie – de l’urbanisme qui vise à renforcer la résistance des communautés aux chocs climatiques, en passant par la fourniture de services tels que l’eau potable et des projets d’irrigation dans une communauté rurale, au développement d’une technologie d’énergie propre qui vise à réduire les émissions de gaz à effet de serre.

Trop souvent, les femmes sont exclues des consultations. Elles ne sont pas à la table de prise de décisions et leur absence rend les programmes et stratégies moins sensibles et efficaces. Il existe des preuves empiriques pour montrer que l’implication des femmes dans la prise de décisions et la gestion des ressources peut produire des résultats environnementaux positifs.

Des preuves provenant de l’Inde et du Népal suggèrent que l’implication des femmes dans la prise de décisions soit associée à une meilleure gestion des ressources communautaires, telles que les forêts. Une étude menée dans 130 pays a révélé que les pays ayant une représentation plus élevée de femmes au parlement étaient plus enclins à ratifier les traités internationaux sur l’environnement.

En plus du fait d’engager les femmes dans la prise de décisions, les stratégies climatiques doivent intégrer des considérations de genre qui sont spécifiques à chaque situation. Dans des zones rurales en Afrique, par exemple, il faut tenir compte des besoins des femmes agricultrices, qui sont responsables de 60 à 80 pour cent de la production alimentaire ainsi que de la nutrition de leurs familles. Trop souvent, les femmes agricultrices n’ont pas accès aux droits à la propriété, la terre et au crédit, et cela réduit les rendements des cultures et menace la sécurité alimentaire.

L’Organisation des Nations Unies pour l’alimentation et l’agriculture souligne que l’élimination de l’écart entre les hommes et les femmes dans l’accès aux ressources et aux intrants agricoles augmenterait les rendements dans les fermes des femmes de 20 à 30 pour cent et accroîtrait la production agricole dans les pays en développement de 2,5 à 4,0 pour cent, ce qui pourrait à son tour réduire le nombre de personnes sous-alimentées dans le monde de 12 à 17 pour cent ou de 100 de 150 millions de personnes.

Q: Voyez-vous assez de sensibilisation sur la situation spécifique des femmes, et l’implication des perspectives et expériences des femmes lorsque les décideurs engagent des discussions sur la façon d’affronter les changements climatiques et sur comment s’adapter au changement des circonstances environnementales?

R: La sensibilisation s’est certainement intensifiée sur cette question, en particulier parmi les dirigeants et les décideurs politiques. Nous notons des changements dans les attitudes et les politiques. Le secrétaire général de l’ONU, Ban Ki-moon, a encouragé la participation égale des femmes pour relever les défis des changements climatiques en 2009; certains gouvernements parlent des dimensions relatives au genre dans les changements climatiques et l’égalité des sexes est incluse dans l’Accord de 2010 à Cancun.

La prochaine étape, c’est de s’assurer que les paroles deviennent réalité sur le terrain et que les femmes participent aux processus de prise de décisions. Si nous considérons le financement du climat, par exemple, les considérations relatives au genre ont une histoire de ne pas être systématiquement intégrées dans leur conception.

En réponse, l’ONU-Femmes travaille avec des partenaires pour s’assurer que le nouveau Fonds vert pour le climat ne répète pas cette erreur et intègre la question de genre dès le début en incluant le principe de l’égalité des sexes dans ses activités et son suivi des impacts et des résultats.

En plus du niveau de la politique internationale, les femmes doivent être pleinement engagées au niveau national, sur le ‘front intérieur’, où des stratégies nationales sont conçues et mises en œuvre, des budgets sont élaborés, et des services fournis afin d’atténuer ou de s’adapter aux changements climatiques.

Malheureusement, les femmes demeurent sous-représentées dans les parlements nationaux et spécialement dans les ministères qui sont au cœur de la prise de décisions sur les changements climatiques et leur viabilité. Globalement, les femmes occupent seulement 16 pour cent des postes ministériels et parmi celles-ci, seules 19 pour cent sont dans la finance et le commerce; sept pour cent dans l’environnement, les ressources naturelles et l’énergie, et seulement trois pour cent dans les sciences et la technologie.

L’absence des femmes dans les prises de décisions nationales entrave leur capacité à influencer les politiques et les budgets. Cela limite l’inclusion des considérations relatives au genre dans l’agenda sur la gestion environnementale, le développement durable et les changements climatiques. (FIN)

Credit: Claudius/IPS

DURBAN, Nov 28, 2011 (IPS)  Science tells us that we are heading for a climate crisis, yet it is within our means to change course.

However, some very worrying false solutions are on the table in the United Nations Climate talks (UNFCCC), for instance promoting the biofuels currently on the market, such as ethanol.

The term ‘biofuels’ is misleading. These plant-based fuels are better described as agrofuels for they are far from green.

Those who still argue that agrofuels emit much less greenhouse gases than fossil fuels mostly ignore the fact that emissions are released during production, as a result of land-use change, fertiliser application and processing.

Still, many governments, international financial institutions such as the World Bank and multinational agribusiness, oil and transport companies are promoting agrofuels as a solution to world energy needs.

Shifting from fossil fuels to agrofuels is not increasing the poor’s access to energy but aggravating existing problems such as land grabs, and creating particular challenges to food supplies due to a shift from food cropping to fuel cropping. Crucially, agrofuels can divert resources from clean, renewable energies like wind and solar.

Large-scale cultivation of agrofuels, unlike small-scale, locally produced and owned agrofuels activities, is usually accompanied by problematic activities such as intensive use of water, chemicals, fertilisers, and pesticides.

These often result in polluting, depleting and degrading available water resources, which can trigger famines.

Analysts have shown that there is not enough agricultural land on earth to grow agrofuels crops to meet the huge energy needs driven by our current and unsustainable ways of living.

It is worthy to note that a recent 2011 report on the ‘Global Hunger Index’ points to climate change, growing demand for biofuels, and increasing commodities futures trading in global food markets as the causes of price increases in food, which it says were also exacerbating the unfolding food crisis in the Horn of Africa.

Agrofuels are simply not a solution to the climate and energy crisis, although there is evidence that small-scale, locally produced and owned biofuels can be part of the solution when they help meet local needs.

In my country, Nigeria, the Nigerian National Petroleum Corporation (NNPC) and its foreign partners acquired large chunks of land, in almost all the 36 states of the country, for the production of ethanol, from staples like cassava, sorghum and sugarcane.

Some of the agrofuels plantations and production plants are located in communities with pre-existing water shortages, which leave the communities with almost nothing to live on. Researchers from Friends of the Earth Nigeria found during one field visit that local people had not even been consulted by the state government before community lands were appropriated.

Africa looms large on the radar of agrofuels promoters and African governments see in them potentially huge financial benefits for the political and financial elites of the country.

But a substantial and increasing amount of scientific research shows that agrofuels are fuelling deforestation, biodiversity loss and soil degradation, water pollution and depletion and even climate change.

Decision makers must acknowledge that, and the fact that agrofuels have also been proven to fuel food price increases, hunger, land rights violations, conflicts, displacement and human rights abuses.

The fact that agrofuels have triggered a new scramble for Africa is no longer news. Millions of hectares are being grabbed with little concern for the poor who are bound to face displacement and for the impact that this will have on family farms and other small-scale farms and food production on the continent.

Agriculture contributes to more than a fourth of the world’s greenhouse gas emissions. Unfortunately, the UNFCCC texts do not make it clear that the main culprit is industrial agriculture with its dependence on chemical fertilisers and damaging monocultures, including agrofuel crops.

Small-scale farmers, on the other hand, mostly use agro-ecological practices which cool the planet instead of warming it.

Many governments, lobbied by companies, are pushing the UN climate negotiations to support false solutions to the climate crisis, for instance shifting to agrofuels and trading carbon emissions instead of cutting them.

As a consequence, our planet is heading for an average global temperature increase higher than 2 degrees, and the catastrophic consequences that science tells us will come with it.

Addressing the climate crisis requires binding targets for emissions reductions, targets enforced without so-called carbon offsetting, which is just a smokescreen to hide pollution-as-usual.

Voluntary emissions reduction targets such as those included in the Copenhagen Accord and the Cancun agreement are simply ineffective.

We have to stop all false solutions, including large-scale agrofuels. We should instead urgently invest in the real solutions, such as reducing consumption, improving energy efficiency, switching to clean renewable energy and to sustainable local food production.

While the official UN negotiations on climate change continue to progress at a snail’s pace, the World Peoples Conference on Climate Change and the Rights of Mother Earth in Bolivia in April 2010 made some headway and issued a ‘Peoples Agreement’ describing and demanding real solutions to the climate crisis.

* Nnimmo Bassey is the current Chair of Friends of the Earth International and the executive director and founding member of Environmental Rights Action.

PARIS, Nov 28, 2011 (IPS) – When firefighters arrived to put out a blaze that was engulfing the home of Elise Inversin on the French island of Corsica, the 66-year-old grandmother told firemen to forget about her house and save a neighbouring 900-year-old Mastic tree. The house could be rebuilt, she said.

The damaged Saint-Jean Oak tree near Paris. Credit:A.D.McKenzie/IPS.

Inversin traveled from Corsica to Paris last week to receive a Tree of the Year prize on behalf of her beloved Mastic (or pistacia lentiscus), which beat 25 other trees in a competition to mark the closing weeks of the United Nations’ International Year of Forests in 2011.

“All I want now is for this tree to be recognised so that it can be protected for generations to come,” Inversin told IPS. “It has meant a lot to me and my family but it will outlast us, so the mayor’s office now has the responsibility to protect it.”

Launched by France’s first nature magazine ‘Terre Sauvage’ in association with the National Forests Office (ONF), the inaugural Tree of the Year contest asked the public to nominate the country’s most remarkable trees based on beauty, history, biodiversity and their significance to the people around them.

Individuals and community groups recommended hundreds of trees, in areas from Alsace to Martinique, and voters finally chose 26 to represent the regions of France. They included a massive 1,600-year-old yew in Normandy, and a sprawling, gnarled 1,400-year-old juniper that grows at an altitude of 1,100 meters in the Alps.

The organisers said they had to “suppress” false voting that sought to increase numbers through “computer pirating”, but a jury selected the Mastic as the overall winner.

The jury also gave a special “prix du public” to another tree: a 200-year-old, 18-metre-high Pedunculate Oak that grows in Brittany. And organisers of the contest welcomed a “guest honoree” as well, a thousand- year-old oak of Palestine, known as the Oak of Sharafat. Photos of all these trees now adorn a part of the fence around the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organisation (UNESCO) here.

The competition was not just a green beauty pageant, however. Its aim was to highlight the importance of trees in the world, and the “alarming” rate at which forests are disappearing.

According to the United Nations, about 13 million hectares of forests are disappearing each year around the globe, mainly in tropical regions. The livelihoods of some 1.6 billion people are at stake, and some of the 300 million people that call forests home could become environmental refugees.

Deforestation also contributes to global warming, being responsible for about 20 percent of global greenhouse gas emissions, says the UN’s Food and Agriculture Organisation (FAO).

The FAO says that South America and Africa had the highest net annual loss of forests from 2000 to 2010, with four and 3.4 million hectares respectively. In Africa, the destruction of forests has led to reduced rainfall, contributing to the current drought. The FAO has started several replanting projects in an attempt to make land fertile again.

In Asia, ambitious replanting programmes in countries such as India and China have slowed deforestation, but the rate is still nearly 3 percent annually, the FAO says. In Malaysia forests are disappearing at nearly three times the combined Asian rate.

In France, forests cover more than 30 percent of the land surface, and the mission of the National Forests Office is to protect these regions as well as those in the country’s overseas territories such as French Guiana, Réunion, Martinique and Guadeloupe. It’s not an easy task, says Hervé Gaymard, president of ONF’s board of directors.

“The work for the sustainable management of these forests is very varied and wide-ranging because there’s really nothing in common in the management of forests in mainland France and in Guiana, for instance,” he told IPS.

He said the ONF was active “on the diplomatic front” in the protection of tropical forests, fighting against the trade in “Africa’s precious wood” especially in the Congo basin.

Gaymard said deforestation was not a real problem in France. But some of the country’s old trees are at risk, say environmentalists. For instance, in the Forest of Compiègne, about 50 kilometres from Paris, there is a 750-year-old oak tree known as the Chêne de Saint-Jean that has a huge gaping hole in its trunk. The hole was reportedly caused by a fire that a group of scouts started a few years ago to get rid of wasps.

“We try to do the best we can, but we cannot have a policeman beside every tree to protect it,” Gaymard told IPS. “Trees sometimes get hurt through malfeasance.”

Inversin of Corsica says that protecting the world’s forests starts with seeing and respecting individual trees. “You have to see the trees to save the forests,” she said. “When I told the firemen to save (the Mastic), it was a spontaneous reaction. I didn’t have time to think about it. But I know how many lives this tree has touched.” (END)

UNITED NATIONS, Nov 25, 2011 (IPS) – Involving women in decision-making and resource management is a basic necessity for any effective plan to address the multi- layered and life-threatening consequences of climate change, says the head of UN Women.

Looking to Durban, South Africa, where world leaders will discuss future climate change policies Nov. 28 to Dec. 9, Michelle Bachelet is calling on leaders to ensure “that words become reality”, for full participation of women at all levels of the negotiations, and an “outcome that responds to women’s needs and advances women’s empowerment”.

Women and girls – who make up the majority of the world’s poor – have much more limited access to information and financial resources than men, a fact which exposes them to a higher risk of severe climate change impacts, underscored Bachelet.

In devising and implementing financial instruments like the Green Climate Fund, she urges government delegates, international experts and civil society actors gathering in Durban to retain a gender- sensitive approach to improve accountability.

“Climate financing should be equitable and respond to the urgent needs of all members of society, and gender issues must be taken into account at all stages of the financing process,” she told IPS.

The risk of injury and death from natural disasters – such as floods, droughts and landslides – is systematically higher among women and children, she explained. “In inequitable societies, more women than men die from disasters.”

Especially rural women and girls in developing countries are “carrying a particularly heavy burden of climate change” due to environmental stress and their responsibility to secure water, food and energy for cooking and heating.

They spend many hours a day collecting and transporting water, for example, and this is becoming much more difficult in areas impacted by drought, Bachelet pointed out. “For many girls, this means missing out on school and losing an education.”

Between 1980 and 2010, the average number of extreme weather events more than doubled, underscoring the “urgent need to invest in women and girls and advance gender equality”.

Bachelet talked with IPS U.N. Correspondent Rousbeh Legatis about women’s needs in the context of climate change and how to reshape global climate policy-making.

Excerpts from the interview follow.

Q: What are women’s needs and do they have a particular role when it comes to climate change and adaptation strategies?

A: Women need equal opportunities and equal rights. This includes the right to participate in decisions related to climate change. Women need to be actively engaged in the processes that affect their lives – from urban planning that aims to build resilience of communities to climate shocks, to the delivery of services such as clean water and irrigation plans in a rural community, to the development of clean- energy technology that aims to reduce green-house gas (GHG) emissions.

Far too often, women are left out of consultations. They are not at the decision making table and their absence makes programmes and strategies less responsive and effective. There is empirical evidence to show that women’s involvement in decision making and the management of resources can have positive environmental outcomes.

Evidence from India and Nepal suggests that women’s involvement in decision-making is associated with better management of community resources such as forests. A study of 130 countries found that countries with higher female parliamentary representation were more prone to ratify international environmental treaties.

In addition to engaging women in decision-making, climate strategies need to integrate gender considerations that are specific to each situation. In rural Africa, for instance, consideration must be given to the needs of women farmers, who are responsible for 60-80 percent of food production as well as the nutrition of their families. Too often, women farmers lack access and rights to property, land and credit and this reduces crop yields and threatens food security.

The Food and Agriculture Organisation points out that eliminating the gap between men and women in access to agricultural resources and inputs would raise yields on women’s farms by 20-30 percent and increase agricultural production in developing countries by 2.5-4.0 percent, which could in turn reduce the number of undernourished people in the world by 12-17 percent or 100-150 million people.

Q: Do you see enough awareness of the specific situation of women, and the involvement of women’s perspectives and experiences when policy-makers enter into discussions about how to confront climate change and how to adapt to changed environmental circumstances?

A: Awareness has definitely increased on this issue, especially among leaders and policy-makers. We are seeing changes in attitudes and policies. U.N. Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon urged women’s equal participation in addressing the challenges of climate change in 2009, some governments are talking about the gender dimensions of climate change and gender is included in the 2010 Cancun Agreement.

The next step is ensuring that words become reality on the ground and women participate in decision-making processes. If we consider climate financing, for example, gender considerations have a history of not being systematically integrated in their design.

In response, UN Women is working with partners to ensure that the new Green Climate Fund does not repeat this mistake and integrates gender from the start by including the principle of gender equality in its operations and monitoring of impacts and results.

In addition to the international policy level, women must be fully engaged at the national level, on the ‘home-front’, where national strategies are designed and implemented, budgets are formed, and services delivered to mitigate or adapt to climate change.

Unfortunately, women remain underrepresented in national parliaments and especially in Ministries that are central to decision-making on climate change and sustainability. Globally women occupy only 16 percent of ministerial posts and of these only 19 percent are in finance and trade; seven percent in the environment, natural resources and energy; and a mere three percent in science and technology.

The lack of women’s presence in national decision-making hinders women’s ability to influence policies and budgets. This limits the inclusion of gender considerations in environmental management, sustainable development and the climate change agenda.

Q: What is needed to enhance women’s participation in climate policy- making and protection from adverse climate change impacts?

A: It is important to support women’s organisations to participate in consultative processes for the development of climate change strategies, especially at the local and national levels. This requires outreach to affected groups and targeted efforts to ensure inclusivity. Within formal processes, special measures such as quotas, even if temporary, can provide the impetus needed to increase women’s participation and leadership.

We also need better sex-disaggregated data to inform gender responsive climate policies. All too often that information and data cannot be found and this is blocking progress in disaster risk management, urban planning and agricultural reform.

(END)