AFRICA: Going rural and green
ADDIS ABABA, 15 October 2010 (IRIN) – As rural Africa experiences an increasingly moody climate which will erode resilience, drive up hunger and threaten economic growth, it is time countries got serious about development, participants at the seventh African Development Forum in Addis Ababa were told.
Africa’s Rural Futures (RF) programme, an initiative of the African Union’s New Partnership for Development (NEPAD) and the World Wide Fund for Nature (WWF), sets out plans to boost rural development, and is an attempt to adapt to the impact of climate change.
At the same time, organizations such as the UN Environment Programme (UNEP) and the World Bank are backing the UN’s Green Economy Initiative, which is more focused on mitigation.
In his address, Ibrahim Assane Mayaki, NEPAD’s chief executive officer, called RF a “new way of thinking about development”.
But is it new? At a policy level, Lindiwe Sibanda, head of the Food Agriculture and Natural Resources Policy Analysis Network, a think-tank, explained: “Well, what they are talking about is integrated rural development with agriculture as the driver. It will get all the ministries to look at their sectors with a rural lens. It moves beyond the sectoral approach.”
This would do agriculture in Africa some good, she hoped. “Development of agriculture has suffered because of the sectoral approach.” Departments of transport, infrastructure and agriculture have not worked in consort in many countries, affecting food production and supply.
In a bid to revive their failing rural economies, some developed countries have been running RF programmes for some years. WWF, which has been involved in some of these programmes, had been looking at an initiative to improve rural livelihoods with a link to improving biodiversity in Africa, when they found NEPAD.
Urbanization
| African countries need to bring their own money to the table – then only will they be able to decide what development path or programmes they want to implement |
The RF programme is guided by the fact that 60 percent of the population in Africa is rural, though UN projections indicate that the number of urban dwellers is likely to treble over the next four decades.
“Urbanization is a part of the natural evolution of a society, but what conditions will these new urban dwellers live in – slums?” asked Estherine Lesinge-Fotabong, NEPAD’s programme implantation head.
By providing new impetus to agriculture, the RF programme also hopes to create jobs, absorb the growing population, and tackle food security and gender empowerment. Most subsistence farmers in Africa are women.
Fine-tuning
RF was launched at the Forum, but is still being fine-tuned and is currently at a “strategic document stage”. It envisages a two-year period of consultation with countries and civil society across Africa.
RF talks about developing linkages between local and regional markets, but stops short of any connections to industry. “That is its shortcoming, but the programme is still evolving,” said Mersie Ejigu, head of the Partnership for African Environmental Sustainability, an international NGO.
Ejigu, a development economist and former minister of development and planning in the Ethiopian cabinet, added: “I am not saying we need to have big investments in massive agro-based industries. It could be small-scale, home-based industries but when you are looking beyond agriculture and adding value, you have to look at processing the primary product.”
Donor-dependent
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But money, and especially donors, decide the future of any programme in Africa, said Mamadou Cissokho, honorary president of the Network of West African Farmer and Producer Organizations. “African countries need to bring their own money to the table – then only will they be able to decide what development path or programmes they want to implement.”
This concern was also voiced by WWF’s Gabriella Richardson-Temm: “We are happy with the way this is shaping up and that Africa wants to design their own programme – but then donors, who bring in the funds, come with their own sets of conditions.”
RF could also be one of the components of the UN’s Green Economy Initiative, which is assisting governments to “green” their economies by reshaping policies to ensure growth on the basis of non-fossil fuel-based energy, backed by sustainable agriculture (with the help of investments in clean technology and public transport that runs on renewable energy). It also focuses on greening other sectors such as waste management and water services.
“You don’t want us to grow,” said a participant when UNEP’s Achim Steiner spelt out the initiative. Coal is still the cheapest source of energy in developing countries. Another said: “But Africa is already green – most of our people use biomass to produce energy.”
But you need money to access these alternative green technologies, pointed out Moussa Ould Hwedna, a technical adviser to Mauritania’s Ministry of Water and Sanitation. “Ours is a dry country and we need solar power to pump water from underground and the cost of solar energy is prohibitive.”
“We would like to adopt these technologies but developed countries should look at making it cheaper for us,” he added.
This is one of the issues at the UN climate change talks, the next round of which will take place in Mexico later this year.
jk/cb Source: IRIN
Theme(s): Economy, Environment, Food Security, Gender Issues, Governance, Migration, Natural Disasters, Aid Policy, Urban Risk, Water & Sanitation,
[This report does not necessarily reflect the views of the United Nations]
Sawdust with Brains
The Kisangani Smith Group has developed two types of efficient biomass stoves, which can be fabricated by local smiths. One stove is targeted at charcoal and replaces the widespread use of charcoal in towns. This stove burns sawdust, which is readily available as waste in the Njombe region of Tanzania, or agricultural residues. The other stove is an improved woodburner, designed for rural areas. The Kisangani Smith Group and its trainees have sold over 3,500 stoves so far.
Here’s their video:
Why Women are Better Conservationists
Through their unconscious actions, Women conserve the most important resources needed for sustainable development – forests, energy and water.
In my words, without putting natural resources in the picture, to conserve is to use frugally and cautiously. I’m saying today that women are much better at “using frugally and cautiously” natural capital, as compared to their male counterparts. In this case, conservation is the “wise use of natural resources.”
We use various natural resources on a daily basis, starting from food to the air we breathe. However, I will use the other resources that we put to use on daily basis at our homes, and have much more control over their use; water, electric energy and wood fuel. I’ll let you think about any other.
On average, men use more water that women in every activity that they undertake involving use of this resource. For drinking purposes, men are advised to drink three litres of water a day compared to women’s 2.2 litres. Even a pregnant woman is supposed to take just 2.4 litres a day, until they bare the child when they can increase intake to 3 litres (For your information, too much water is bad for your health). Now, whether we follow this advice or not, the fact is that generally men take more water than women.
Secondly, while a woman can comfortably use five litres of water to bathe, that is enough for a man’s head only. On average, men use more than ten litres of water when bathing, irrespective of their body sizes.
Think about this as well; given that a man is in the right mood to assist in the kitchen, especially with washing utensils, how much water would he use to wash five plates and five glasses plus a few forks? My answer is, whether under running tap or not, a man in the right mood of doing this chore would use much more water than a woman would.
It is the difference in these amounts that I call conserved water.
I do not want to go to figure facts about how much hydro-electric power we produce in our country, and how little this is to sustain all national requirements. What you need to know however, is that the current population size of people connected to electricity is a meager 20 percent – just about 7.5million of the 38million Kenyans- albeit insufficiently.
With all the rationing, you’d expect the figure to be somewhere at 70 percent! Now, women have proved to be better users of electricity.
It is the simple things that matter most; switching off lights in unoccupied rooms, switching off unused power sockets and unplugging unused gadgets. A man will leave his radio or television on while going to the market thinking that they won’t take long, but a woman will switch off everything. While cooking or ironing, a woman will most likely be more cautious not to leave the flat iron heating or food to burn on the cooker. You know this is waste of energy. And don’t tell me about society-roles-advantage here.
Over 90 percent of Kenyan households use wood fuel for various purposes. This is directly proportional to the extent of forest destruction in the country. Still, women have shown to be more conservative of the forests. I will not tell you that they use less firewood in cooking than men, not at all. I am thinking of a scenario where two people, a man and a woman have a task of going onto the forest to look for firewood.
Most likely, the man will carry an axe, but the woman will carry a machete/panga. It most likely is due to their physical abilities that when you watch these two people coming back home, one will be carrying/pulling almost a whole tree where as the other will be carrying smaller tree branches. The one who cut off small branches is the better conservationist.
I know what the man is thinking now; that women don’t do these things while thinking of conservation. I did not say they do. But through their unconscious actions, they conserve the most important resources needed for sustainable development – forests, energy and water.
The conserved forests aid in rain formation. Rain brings water and the conserved forests act as water catchment areas. They become the sources of the streams and rivers that supply us with water for our daily use. When the water reaches our homes, the women use it much more frugally, and enable other people to get their share as well.
It is the same waters from the forested catchment areas that are used to produce electricity, and women use this electricity better than men. Once again, it doesn’t matter whether they switch off all unused electric gadgets and sockets because they fear electricity-related accidents. The fact is that they end up conserving natural resources, and the challenge to men is whether they can do better.
Originally published at SmartBizAfrica
Bees to Monitor Pollution
German airports are employing bees to check their environmental impact. Beekeepers in Germany near airports are having their honey tested for toxins. All these unpaid bee workers have, in essence, reported back that there is not a significant problem with air quality, compared with other zones.
At Dusseldorf International Airport, the bees have reported that their honey exhibits the same toxin levels as those in a non-industrial area and better still, the honey is given away under the name of Dusseldorf Natural.
The usual main pollutants are nitrogen dioxide (NO2) and PM10, PM2.5 (small particulates). So how does this relate to Kenya? The answer could be supplied by Dr. Linsey C. Marr at Virginia Tech. Dr Marr has found that the running times in marathons are more affected by air pollutants in the case of women than in the case of men. Dr. Marr reported: “Although pollution levels in these marathons rarely exceeded national standards for air quality, performance was still affected.” And marathon performances? Now, they certainly are important.
Some of this information was originally reported in the New York Times.