Tag: Biodiversity

Collaboration for Conservation in Cyprus — Global Issues

During UN-organized beach and buffer zone clean-ups, though, youth from both the north and south of Cyprus work side-by-side with peacekeepers. Credit: UNFICYP
  • by Abigail Van Neely (united nations)
  • Inter Press Service

UNITED NATIONS, Sep 27 (IPS) – Along the 180-kilometer-long buffer zone separating the north and south of Cyprus, there is a surprising sign of unity: recycled ammunition boxes no longer hold bullets. They are home to baby birds.

Over the past five years, United Nations police have collaborated with local authorities to place 100 boxes throughout the uninhabited border area. An alternative to harmful pesticides, the man-made nests attract barn owls who prey on rodents. By supporting these kinds of projects, United Nations peacekeepers in Cyprus are helping to facilitate conservation efforts that impact communities on both sides of the island’s divide.

The UN peacekeeping mission in Cyprus (UNFICYP) is one of the world’s oldest active missions. Following violence between Greek and Turkish Cypriots in the 1960s, Cyprus was split in 1974 into a northern third run by a Turkish Cypriot government and a southern two-thirds run by an internationally recognized Greek Cypriot government. UN forces monitor the dividing militarized buffer zone.

UNFICYP peacekeepers have a double mission, environmental conservation and ensuring peace between north and south Cyprus. Credit: UNFICYP
UNFICYP peacekeepers have a double mission, environmental conservation, and ensuring peace between north and south Cyprus. Credit: UNFICYP

Fresh Tensions Persist

In August, UN peacekeepers were seriously injured by Turkish Cypriot security forces during a controversy over unauthorized construction work in an UN-controlled area, Reuters reports. According to the BBC, reunification talks remain slow.

Still, peacekeepers are trying to bring the two communities together through a shared interest in protecting the environment.

A small Mediterranean island, Cyprus is an important breeding, nesting, and foraging area for many animals. While activists say sensitivity to the importance of sustainability has increased, climate change is a greater threat than ever throughout Cyprus. Development from wealthy investors has fragmented habitats and led to the loss of natural areas.

Tourism has exacerbated water scarcity. Record high temperatures have aggravated social inequities for people who cannot afford air conditioning. Wildfires across the island have threatened to trigger minefields in the buffer zone. When everyone breathes the same air, air pollution is everyone’s problem.

“Environment doesn’t really know boundaries or borders and different nationalities,” Cyprus advocate Meryem Ozkan says. “But how we are acting, protecting, and preserving everywhere all around the island is affecting us all living on it.”

UNFICYP Senior Police Advisor Satu Koivu strives to practice environmentally responsive policing in line with UN environmental management mandates. Patrols of the buffer zone have reduced illegal waste dumping and helped curb the long tradition of bird poaching along the island’s famous bird migration routes.

Meanwhile, mission-level initiatives include installing solar panels, driving hybrid vehicles, and using reusable water bottles.

Ultimately, Koivu says supporting local people is her priority. Partnerships with local authorities, civil society organizations, and community members are essential. Communication and outreach are critical tools, especially for bringing people together.

Many kids would cringe at the thought of enduring an hour-long bus ride on a hot summer day just to spend hours collecting trash. During UN-organized beach and buffer zone clean-ups, though, youth from both the North and South of Cyprus learn to appreciate the importance of their conservation efforts while working side by side with uniformed peacekeepers. The explicit goal is to discuss environmental solutions. Peacebuilding is a happy bonus.

Ozkan, the current operations manager for the North Cyprus Society for the Protection of Turtles (SPOT), collaborated with the UN on a couple of beach clean-ups. SPOT’s sea turtle conservation project centers aim to raise awareness through firsthand experiences. “If people don’t love what you love and feel the need to protect, they will not want to put the effort in,” Ozkan said.

Ozkan sees the UN’s open community events as important platforms for NGOs from both sides to communicate on equal footing without misunderstanding. Ozkan says engagement between organizations in the north and south has become more common in the last decade. Recently, SPOT partnered with NGOs around Cyprus to collect data about when sea turtles are trapped in fishing nets and engage fishermen through outreach activities.

UNFICYP Senior Police Advisor Satu Koivu strives to practice environmentally responsive policing in line with UN environmental management mandates. Here is admires a young barn owl; the population has been introduced into the buffer zone between north and south Cyprus. Credit: UNFICYP

Youth Activists for Climate Change

Youth activists who helped coordinate Cyprus’ second Local Youth Conference on Climate Change say the UN has helped them connect with each other and a wider audience. At one UN event, their team presented a draft policy proposal to install solar panels in the buffer zone to Cyprus government officials. They welcome not only the voices of both Greek and Turkish Cypriots but the perspectives of other minority and migrant communities as well.

“There is a huge need for environmental action across the aisle at the moment,” Victoras Pallikaras, a former UNFICYP Champion for Environmental Peace, stressed. Different governmental regulations on either side of the island can make coordination and compliance a challenge. While the south follows and receives support from the European Union’s environmental directives, Pallikaras notes, the north has different policies.

“The UN is kind of a pressure for both communities to bring them back together,” Pallikaras said. Even if it’s imperfect, “the most important thing is that the UN is making a huge effort.”

At first, Nicolaos “Nikos” Kassinis, one of the Cyprus Game and Fauna Service staff responsible for coordinating the barn owl nesting project, found it strange to be escorted by foreign UN officers in his own country. Over the past years, they’ve developed a “great trust.”

“Without these people, it will be impossible to do work in the buffer zone,” he now says.

“Wildlife doesn’t recognize fences and divides that are on the map,” the conservationist emphasizes. In the future, he would like to see the barn owl project expand to include the Turkish Cypriot side of the island — pesticide residue has been found in birds of prey that travel across Cyprus.

Koivu hopes that her environmental work will help the public also associate police with positive initiatives.

“As an individual, I cannot change the world. But I can start the ball rolling, and then together, we can make this difference and impact. So, I try to be positive,” she says. Less serious, her crisp blue uniform crinkles with her grin when she emphatically talks about the magic of seeing a new owlet.

“They are so cute, these babies!”

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Dangerous Scramble for Renewable Energy Resources — Global Issues

  • Opinion by Jomo Kwame Sundaram (kuala lumpur, malaysia)
  • Inter Press Service

KUALA LUMPUR, Malaysia, Sep 20 (IPS) – The growing and changing material requirements for new technologies have triggered natural resource scrambles for strategic minerals, generating dangerous rivalries fought out in the global South.

Scrambles for resources
Jayati Ghosh, Shouvik Chakraborty and Debamanyu Das have analyzed these new scrambles for mineral resources in developing countries triggered by major new innovations since the electronics boom.

Jomo Kwame SundaramNatural resources here refer to naturally occurring solid, liquid or gaseous materials in or on the Earth’s crust. When extracted and exported commercially, they are considered primary commodities.

All technologies – both peaceful and military – have specific material requirements. For example, energy transitions need particular minerals for renewable energy generation, transmission and storage.

New technologies, with specific material requirements, are changing the nature of rivalries – among states, corporations and individuals – seeking to control these mineral resources.

Feasible mass use of renewable energy requires extracting needed natural resources, which incurs costs and has adverse consequences. Commercial feasibility implies profitable extraction of desired minerals.

Thus, addressing global warming by generating more energy from renewable sources – while desirable and necessary – in turn generates new problems and challenges which need to be addressed.

Rare earths
Despite their name, rare earth elements (REE) may not actually be scarce. But most REE are difficult and costly to extract as they are usually found together with other minerals. Unsurprisingly, REE demand and supplies have changed greatly in recent years.

For the time being, demand for at least 17 ‘rare earth’ minerals is expected to grow. The inter-governmental International Energy Agency (IEA) projects supplies of some critical minerals will increase at least 30-fold over the next two decades.

Extracting lithium and other such minerals also has very problematic environmental implications. Mined all over the world, REE are usually processed and separated by several stages of often complex and costly extraction and chemical processing, with many harmful to the environment.

China currently leads the world in rare earth production, with over a third of the world’s known REE reserves. While Chinese companies dominate some supplies, China’s rare earth imports currently exceed its exports.

Nevertheless, China dominates ‘downstream’ processing of REEs. Chinese companies control over 85 per cent of the costly REE processing processes. Unsurprisingly, China also accounts for over 70% of the world’s photovoltaic solar panel production and over 90% of its silicon wafer manufacturing.

Lithium
Lithium is one of the minerals over which control has been hotly contested. Lithium is particularly needed for processes to replace mechanical energy generation using fossil fuels. It is also needed for many industrial, office and household appliances, including rechargeable batteries, electric vehicles and electronic goods.

Batteries – including rechargeable lithium-ion electrical grid storage devices – account for three-quarters of current supply. The IEA’s Sustainable Development Scenario expects demand to rise 42-fold in less than two decades!

In 2021, there were almost 89 million tons of known lithium resources, mainly in developing countries. For decades, lithium mining has been very controversial, largely due to increasingly better known adverse environmental impacts.

As pure lithium is very chemically reactive, it is often mined as ore, as in West Australia. It is also obtained from salt flats and brine pools in the southern cone of South America, particularly in Bolivia, Chile and Argentina.

For decades, China has led the world in lithium mining. Australia and the US were second and third by the start of the pandemic, with 12% and 9% respectively. While Australia is the world’s largest exporter, lithium is mainly and increasingly mined in developing countries by a relatively few companies.

Undermining communities
REE mining has adversely impacted various ecosystems and communities. Mineral deposits may have to be raised from subterranean sources, or ‘concentrated’ by evaporation.

Such techniques typically deplete, contaminate and otherwise reduce access to fresh water. Local water systems – used by people, animals, including livestock, and plants, including crops – are often badly compromised as a consequence.

Extractive mining and related operations have worsened such environments. But mining companies can often get their way with impunity, often intimidating communities with the help of local politicians, government officials and police.

Such ecological damage has devastated forest and vegetation cover, caused biodiversity loss, and compromised hydrological systems. Thus, extractive operations often involve abuses, with adverse effects for local communities.

Economic gains to local communities are typically modest compared to mining’s adverse consequences. Benefits largely accrue to local ‘enablers’ while costs vary within communities with circumstances.

The authors also urge majority government ownership of mineral extracting and processing companies. This will reduce foreign reliance and meddling, including by big powers such as the United States and China.

Government transparency and accountability, including independent audits, can help ensure less adverse consequences and fairer compensation for all involved.

This also prevents elite capture, abuse and deployment of mineral rents in their own interest. Avoiding such abuses is necessary to ensure resource rents actually advance sustainable development, as Bolivia is striving to do.

Sustainability undermined?
New frontiers for mineral extraction are emerging, especially as innovation creates new extraction and processing possibilities. This implies a vicious circle as global warming becomes both cause and effect of such mineral extraction.

Mining practices threaten ecological fragility and vulnerability. Similarly, polar and seabed exploration and mining may well trigger disastrous environmental consequences, including mass extinctions of vulnerable polar and marine life.

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Diversify American Cropping and Food Systems — Global Issues

The time is ripe to transform American agriculture from monoculture heavy farming and food systems to diversified cropping and food systems with a variety of crops including specialty crops. Credit: Bigstock.
  • Opinion by Esther Ngumbi (urbana, illinois, usa)
  • Inter Press Service

URBANA, Illinois, USA, Sep 08 (IPS) – A few weeks ago, my husband and I drove from Illinois to Iowa to visit a friend. I was excited about my over 5 hours’ drive. Sadly, 60 minutes into the drive, my excitement fiddled out. I was bored.  Field after field, as far as my eyes could see, all I saw was either corn or soybean. I also noticed that the field margins were empty-with no sight of wildflowers.

Unfortunately, growing singular crop species, also known as monocropping, in which, all plants are genetically similar or identical over vast acres of land, is prevalent across the U.S. Midwest and North America because of current problematic policies that incentivizes the overproduction of crops such as corn, soybeans, cotton and wheat.

In 2023, for example, over 90 million of acres of corn and 82 million acres of soybean are being grown, accounting for almost over 70% of the planted farmland in the United States according to the United States Department of Agriculture.

Not only has this system resulted into the overproduction of a few crop species, it has also resulted in a biodiversity loss including a reduction in insect diversity.

In addition, monoculture cropping systems have led to increases of many unsustainable and environmental damaging practices by farmers including the use of pesticides and fertilizers. Furthermore, monocropping contributes to pollinators death and reduces the biodiversity of soil dwelling microorganisms, including beneficial soil microbes that underpin soil and crop health while harming the U.S. waterways. Undoubtedly, the current monocropping agricultural system prevalent in North America is unsustainable.

The time is ripe to diversify U.S. Midwest farms and farms across America. Diversified agriculture and farming systems are a set of methods and tools developed to produce food sustainably by leveraging ecological diversity at plot, field and landscape scales.

There are several strategies including incorporating diverse crop rotations, intercropping, cover cropping, and agroforestry.

Indeed, the time is ripe to transform American agriculture from monoculture heavy farming and food systems to diversified cropping and food systems with a variety of crops including specialty crops. The time is ripe to consider planting pollinator strips and filling the field margins with wildflowers. There are many benefits that can emerge if American agriculture were to diversify.

First, there is long-term evidence that shows that diversifying crop systems can increase agricultural resilience to the extremities and disturbances that come along with a changing climate including drought, heat waves, insect pest outbreaks and flooding.

Second, diversified cropping systems can improve soil fertility and soil health, lower pressure of pests and weeds.

Third, diversified agroecosystems will also become home to biologically diversified species including insect species that predate on insect pests. This will ultimately become a strategy to reduce the usage of harmful pesticides and support sustainable insect control.

Indeed, recent scientific evidence reaffirms that diversification promotes multiple ecosystem services including pollination, pest control and water regulation without compromising yields.

There is glimmer of hope that a wave of change is beginning.

Several agencies, including Sustainable Agriculture Research and Education (SARE), the US Forest Service, National Sustainable Agriculture Coalition, are promoting different crop diversification strategies and highlighting the benefits that come with cropping systems diversification.

According to SARE, for example, diversifying cropping systems can lead to many benefits including spreading farmers economic risks, exploiting profitable niche markets and creating new industries based on agriculture that can make communities competitive while strengthening and enhancing quality of life, and ultimately, aid the domestic economy.

It is encouraging that research funding agencies such as the United States Department of Agriculture are funding research aiming to diversify cropping systems in the Midwest and across America. Purdue University, for example, was awarded a $10 million grant to diversify the Corn Belt.  Corteva recently posted a call for proposals that propose novel solutions to enable intercropping practices for agricultural intensification.

Complementing funding is the beginning of curation of datasets and comprehensive meta-analysis studies documenting outcomes of diversified farming practices including for biodiversity, yields, and economic returns.

These datasets that also showcase diversification as a pathway to more sustainable agricultural production serve as a resource for researchers, farmers, and practitioners since they pinpoint where diversified systems have effectively contributed to sustainable food production outcomes without compromising the economic returns.

Of course, to facilitate the shift in paradigm from monocropping to diversified cropping systems, we must confront the barriers to cropping system diversification  including lack of equipment to facilitate farming of other crops and  lack of a niche market for alternative crops.

At the root of this wave of change is the need to change the agricultural policies to promote diversified farming. Removing commodity crop subsides and reallocating the money to farms that practice diversified farming is one strategy that can accomplish this.

Changing these systems will take everyone including farmers, legislators, scientists, and advocates.

Diversifying America’s cropping and food systems is critical to meeting American food security needs and strengthening it in the face of climate change. Diversifying American agriculture will also help in keeping America as a model country to be emulated. It is a win-win for everyone.

© Inter Press Service (2023) — All Rights ReservedOriginal source: Inter Press Service

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Toothless Global Financial Architecture Fuelling Africas Climate Crisis — Global Issues

This goat died of starvation while surrounded by an inedible invasive plant. Lives hang in the balance as Kenya’s dryland is ravaged by a severe prolonged drought. Credit: Joyce Chimbi/IPS
  • by Joyce Chimbi (nairobi)
  • Inter Press Service

NAIROBI, Sep 05 (IPS) – Africa needs approximately USD 579.2 billion in adaptation finance over the period 2020 to 2030, and yet the current adaptation flows are five to 10 times below estimated needs.  As thousands convene in Kenya’s capital, Nairobi, for the Africa Climate Summit, the first time the African Union has summoned its leaders to solely discuss climate change under the theme ‘Driving Green Growth and Climate Finance Solutions for Africa and the World’, the backdrop is a country on the frontlines of a climate crisis.

The severe, sharp effects of climate change are piercing the very heart of an economy propped up by rainfed agriculture and tourism – sectors highly susceptible to climate change. After five consecutive failed rainy seasons, more than 6.4 million people in Kenya, among them 602,000 refugees, need humanitarian assistance – representing a 35 per cent increase from 2022.

It is the highest number of people in need of aid in more than ten years, says Ann Rose Achieng, a Nairobi-based climate activist. She tells IPS that Kenya is hurtling full speed towards a national disaster in food security as “at least 677,900 children and 138,800 pregnant and breastfeeding women in Kenya’s arid and semi-arid regions alone are facing acute malnutrition. Nearly 70 per cent of our wildlife was lost in the last 30 years.”

Despite Kenya contributing less than 0.1 per cent of the global greenhouse gas emissions per year, the country’s pursuit of a low carbon and resilient green development pathway produced a most ambitious Nationally Determined Contribution (NDC) to cut greenhouse gasses by 32 per cent by 2030 in line with the Paris Agreement.

But as is the case across Africa, there are no funds to actualise these lofty ambitions. Africa needs approximately USD 579.2 billion in adaptation finance over the period 2020 to 2030, and yet the current adaptation flows to the continent are five to ten times below estimated needs. Globally, the estimated gap for adaptation in developing countries is expected to rise to USD 340 billion per year by 2030 and up to USD 565 billion by 2050, while the mitigation gap is at USD 850 billion per year by 2030.

After five consecutive failed rainy seasons, food insecurity is expected to escalate as maize crop has failed to flourish due to erratic weather patterns. Credit: Joyce Chimbi/IPS
As dams and rivers dry up, Kenya will continue to be on the frontlines of a climate crisis unless climate change adaptation and mitigation efforts are escalated. Credit: Joyce Chimbi/IPS

Frederick Kwame Kumah, Vice President of Global Leadership African Wildlife Foundation, tells IPS a big part of the problem is Africa’s burgeoning gross public debt which increased from 36 per cent of Gross Domestic Product (GDP) to 71.4 per cent of GDP between 2010 and 2020 – a drag on its development progress and a disincentive for climate finance flows.

“There is a concern that climate finance, if and when provided, will be used to first service Africa’s debt burden. The first step to addressing Africa’s Climate Finance must be action towards debt relief for Africa. Freeing up debt servicing arrangements will release resources for continued development and climate finance purposes,” Kumah explains.

He says there is an urgent need to challenge the existing unfair paradigm for financing by developing countries. It is very expensive for developing countries to borrow for development purposes. Africa must then leverage its natural capital towards seeking innovative financing mechanisms such as green bonds and carbon credits to address its development and climate change challenges.

Nearly half, 23 out of 47 counties in Kenya, are classified as arid and semi-arid. Livelihoods are at risk as pastoralists are unable to cope with drastic weather changes. Credit: Joyce Chimbi/IPS
This waterfall is on the verge of drying up. Kenya’s economy is heavily dependent on tourism and agriculture. The two sectors are highly susceptible to climate change. Credit: Joyce Chimbi/IPS

“Climate finance was, as expected, a key part of COP27. It is a grave concern for Africa that developed countries’ commitment to provide $100 billion annually has yet to be met, even though the need for finance is becoming increasingly obvious. In COP27, we noted that new climate finance pledges were more limited than expected. Countries such as those in Africa are still waiting for previous pledges to be fulfilled,” says Luther Bois Anukur, Regional Director, IUCN (International Union for Conservation of Nature).

Meanwhile, Anukur tells IPS negotiations on important agenda items, most notably the new finance target for 2025, stalled. In COP27, Parties concentrated on procedural issues – deferring important decisions about the amount, timeframe, sources, and accountability mechanisms that may be relevant to a new finance goal in the future. African countries and many other vulnerable countries are in the fight for our lives, and sadly they are losing.

Anukur stresses that Africa’s natural resources are depleted, eroded, and biodiversity lost due to extreme effects of climate change leading to loss of lives and ecosystem services and damage to infrastructure at an alarming rate. Yet climate finance pledges have not materialised. The Africa Climate Summit should be the platform for Africa and developing partners to address existing finance gaps with clear programmatic and project approaches.

Africa must use the Summit to assess and prepare their position for the COP28 in the United Arab Emirates towards strengthening partnerships for the delivery of desired climate finance. Kumah adds that the principle of equal but differentiated responsibilities of nations must be adhered to for climate justice and to enable developing countries, who are least responsible for the effects of climate, to have much-needed resources to cope and adapt to biodiversity loss and climate change.

“In that respect, the creation of a dedicated funding mechanism to address loss and damage and another for adaptation and mitigation to redress historical and continued inequities in contributions towards biodiversity loss and climate change. We must rethink how private investments can be reshaped and harnessed for the benefit of biodiversity and climate action,” Kumah expounds.

“Private investments can be scaled through green bonds, carbon markets, sustainable agricultural, forestry and other productive sector supply chains.  Transformative financing architecture is necessary at the domestic and international levels to bring the private and public sectors together to secure the critical backbone of Africa’s natural infrastructure.”

Climate finance gap. Graphic: Joyce Chimbi & Cecilia Russell

While developing countries submitted revised and ambitious National Adaptation Plans and NDCs as requested, Anukur says complicated processes to access financing for their climate actions persist. Stressing the need for reforming the international financial architecture, starting with multilateral development banks.

“The 2023 Summit for New Global Financing Pact held in Paris committed to a coalition of 16 philanthropic organizations to mobilize investment and support UN’s SDG priorities by unlocking new investment for climate action in low- and middle-income countries while reducing poverty and inequality,” Anukur observes.

Civil society organizations and activists such as Achieng have expressed concerns that such announcements are insufficient considering the scale of the challenges facing planet Earth. The Summit will have failed if the global financial architecture is not overhauled in line with the needs of the African continent, she says.

Anukur says the Summit must therefore propel Africa to new heights of climate financing to help reduce Africa’s vulnerability to climate change and increase its resilience and adaptive capacity in line with the Global Goal on Adaptation. Ultimately expressing optimism that the opportunity to unlock the potential of climate financing – breaking the shackles of debt and building a climate-resilient and prosperous Africa is, at last, in sight.

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Invasive Species, a Fast-Riding Horsemen Galloping the Biodiversity Apocalypse — Global Issues

Wild boar female (Susscrofa) walking on mud beside a river with her piglets. The wild boar is an invasive Alien Species in countries such as South Africa, Vanuatu, and Uruguay. Credit: Budimir Jevtic/Shutterstock
  • by Busani Bafana (bulawayo and bonn)
  • Inter Press Service

BULAWAYO AND BONN, Sep 04 (IPS) – Mango farmer Eufria Nyadome used to earn USD 60 from selling a 20-litre bucket of fresh mangoes and now can barely make USD 20 even though her mango trees are giving a good yield. She is throwing away buckets of rotten mangoes.

Nyadome, from Mhondiwa Village in Ward 9 Murehwa District of Zimbabwe, has lost her income to an invasive Oriental fruit fly all the way from Asia. The fruit fly is classified as an invasive alien species, flagged by scientists as one of the leading causes of biodiversity loss around the world.  Invasive alien species could be plants, animals or microorganisms that are introduced intentionally or unintentionally into areas where they are not native.

The Oriental fruit fly is one of the 3,500 harmful invasive alien species that a new report by the Intergovernmental Platform on Biodiversity and Ecosystem Services (IPBES) finds are seriously threatening nature, nature’s contributions to people and good quality of life.

Assessment Report on Invasive Alien Species and their Control.

According to the Assessment Report on Invasive Alien Species and their Control launched by IPBES this week, more than 37,000 alien species have been introduced by many human activities to regions and biomes around the world. The report finds that the global economic cost of invasive alien species exceeded USD 423 billion annually in 2019, with costs having at least quadrupled every decade since 1970.

From the European shore crab (Carcinus maenas), Lantana (Lantana camera), the Fall Army Worm, (Spodoptera frugiperda), Nile Perch (Lates niloticus) to the water hyacinth (Pontederia crassipes), alien species invasive species have changed and destroyed global biodiversity and ecosystems, causing harm to global economies, human health and wellbeing as well as impacting on food and nutrition security.

Scientists say the conservative estimate of global economic costs is now rising at unprecedented rates.

“Invasive alien species are a major threat to biodiversity and can cause irreversible damage to nature, including local and global species extinctions, and also threaten human wellbeing,” said Helen Roy, co-chair of the assessment report.

In 2019, the IPBES Global Assessment Report found that invasive alien species are one of the five most important direct drivers of biodiversity loss – alongside changes in land- and sea use, direct exploitation of species, climate change and pollution.

Aliens Are Coming

The report warned of increasing invasive alien species worldwide on the back of a growing global economy, intensified and expanded land- and sea-use change combined with demographic changes.

Even without the introduction of new alien species, already established alien species will continue to expand their ranges and spread to new countries and regions, the report said, noting that climate change will make the situation even worse.

“What we demonstrated in this assessment is that the number of alien species is increasing by a huge margin where 200 invasive alien species a year get into an ecosystem; if nothing is done, these numbers are going to increase dramatically and impact food security and human health,” Sebataolu Rahlao, a Coordinating Lead Author of the report, told IPS in an interview.

Boat crossing a river with water hyacinth (Pontederia crassipes). This is an Invasive Alien Species in countries such as Egypt, Kenya, South Korea, and Mexico. Credit: CANVA

“We are also saying there are interactions with global changes, including climate change, pollution which all increase the likelihood of invasive alien species increasing in particular areas, for example, climate change has provided opportunities for invasive alien species to thrive like the river red gum (Eucalyptus camaldulensis Dehnh) trees in South Africa have increased because their suitable habitat has increased due to climate change.”

While the IPBES experts confirm that there are insufficient measures to tackle these challenges of invasive alien species, with only 17 percent of countries with national laws or regulations specifically addressing invasive alien species, effective management and more integrated approaches were available solutions.

An invasive Oriental fruit fly on an unripe mango. Credit: Busani Bafana/IPS

“The good news is that, for almost every context and situation, there are management tools, governance options and targeted actions that really work,” co-chair of the Assessment chair Anibal Pauchard said, noting that prevention was the best and most cost-effective option in addition to eradication, containment, and control of invasive alien species.

Commenting on the report, Inger Andersen, Executive Director United Nations Environment Programme (UNEP), said humanity has been moving species around the world for centuries, but when imported species run rampant and unbalance local ecosystems, indigenous biodiversity suffers.

“As a result, invasive species have become one of the five horsemen of the biodiversity apocalypse that is riding down harder and faster upon the world,” Andersen said in a statement, adding that, “While the other four horsemen – changing land- and sea use, over-exploitation, climate change and pollution – are relatively well understood, knowledge gaps remain around invasive species.

Impacts on society of alien species. Credit: IPBES

Fighting the aliens

In Zimbabwe, farmers have taken the fight to the alien invasive species.

“We learnt about the fruit fly that was attacking our mangoes, and we were trained on how to control it from ruining our fruit,” said Nyadome, who is one of 1200 smallholder farmers in the Murehwa District who was trained in Integrated Pest Management (IPM) practices four years ago. IPM involves the use of various pest management practices which are friendly to humans, animals, and the environment.

Local people in Chile fight forest fires where a mix of invasive alien species, including shrubs and trees, increase fire intensity and extent. Credit: Guillermo Roberto Salgado Sanchez

The International Centre of Insect Physiology and Ecology (ICIPE), based in Nairobi, Kenya, together with various donor agencies and partners, developed an IPM package to manage the invasive fruit fly, which has been promoted under the Alien Invasive Fruit Fly project, a multi-stakeholder initiative under The Cultivate Africa’s Future Fund (CultiAF) by the International Development Research Centre (IDRC) and the Australian Centre for International Agricultural Research (ACIAR).

ICIPE developed bio-based holistic solutions to address the fly problem in East and Southern Africa, such as the male-annihilation technique, which involves mass trapping the male fruit flies using attractants combined with insecticide and the use of “bait stations” — small plastic containers that hold food bait for fruit flies which has an insecticide that kills the flies.

“There is a 100 percent loss in fruit yields when the fruit fly is not controlled, but we have seen that for those farmers who consistently used the IPM package, the fruit fly damage has been reduced, and farmers in most cases have had mango fruit yields of up to 70 percent,”  said Shepard Ndlela, an Entomologist with ICIPE and Project manager of the Invasive Fruit Fly project.

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Civil Society Organizations Unite to Urge Public Development Banks to Change the Way Development Is Done — Global Issues

  • Opinion by Bibbi Abruzzini (cartagena, colombia)
  • Inter Press Service

CARTAGENA, Colombia, Sep 04 (IPS) – In the midst of a complex web of crises, spanning climate change, biodiversity depletion, constraints on civic space and mounting debt burdens, civil society organizations and human rights defenders from over 50 countries have united their voices to call for immediate and impactful action from Public Development Banks (PDBs).

The global coalition’s message is clear: when it comes to financing for development, principles of rights, justice, sustainability, transparency, accountability and dignity for all cannot remain mere slogans. They must form the core of all projects undertaken by all Public Development Banks.

The Finance in Common Summit has become a pivotal platform for Public Development Banks from around the world. The fact that this year’s summit is taking place in Cartagena, Colombia, the deadliest country in the world in 2022 for human rights, envrionmental and indigenous activists, development banks must acknowledge and integrate the protection of human rights into their projects.

“Development banks are advocating to play an even bigger role in the global economy. But are they truly fit for this purpose? Unfortunately, the stories of communities around the world show us that development banks are failing to address the root causes of the very problems they claim to solve. We need to hold them accountable for this,” says Ivahanna Larrosa, Regional Coordinator for Latin America at the Coalition for Human Rights in Development.

“When PDB projects cause harm to people and the environment, PDBs must remedy these harms. All PDBs should implement an effective accountability mechanism to address concerns with projects and should commit to preventing and fully remediating any harm to communities,” adds Stephanie Amoako, Senior Policy Associate at Accountability Counsel.

The ongoing crises demand a transformation in the quality of financing and a power shift to include the voices of communities. The existing financial architecture not only impedes governments’ ability to safeguard both their citizens and the environment but also contributes to the escalating issue of chronic indebtedness. Policy-based lending and conditionalities enforced by International Financial Institutions have steered countries toward privatization of essential services, reduced social spending and preferential treatment for the private sector. This burdens the population with higher taxes, inflation, and weakened social safety nets.

“The same multinational companies that have polluted and violated human rights in Latin America are now obtaining financing from development banks for energy transition projects. Another example is the development of the green hydrogen industry in Chile, which carries a very high environmental and social risk,” says Maia Seeger, director of the Chilean civil society organization Sustentarse.

Addressing these issues requires a comprehensive and sustainable transformation of the financial architecture as well as holistic reforms and synergies with civil society and communities. Environmental and neo-colonial debts need to be a thing of the past and equitable reforms the thing of the present.

Global civil society, in response to these challenges, demands bold and decisive actions in a collective declaration signed by over 100 organisations. The demands are the result of a 4-year process in which a coalition of civil society organisations has come together to call on all PDBs at the Finance in Common Summit to embrace tangible actions that genuinely prioritize and protect people.

Just last month we have seen that change is possible when communities are involved, as the people of Ecuador voted to ban oil drilling in one of the most biodiverse places on the planet, the Yasuní National Park in the Amazon rainforest.

“The global financial system needs not just a rethink but a surgical operation, and that requires bold action. Governments and institutions such as the Public Development Banks must cancel the debt of the countries that require it and put in place concrete and immediate measures to put an end to public financing of fossil fuels, to have financing based on subsidies so as not to fall into the debt trap once again. It is time for the rich countries, the biggest polluters and creditors, to offer real solutions to the multiple crises we are currently experiencing,” says Gaïa Febvre, International Policy Coordinator at Réseau Action climat France.

“Public and Multilateral Development Banks must divest from funding false climate solutions and projects that harm forests, biodiversity and communities. Instead, they should redirect finance to support gender just, rights based and ecosystems approaches that contribute to transformative changes leading to real solutions that address climate change, loss of biodiversity and create sustainable livelihoods for Indigenous Peoples, women in all their diversities and local communities. Public funds must support community governed agroecological practices, small scale farming and traditional animal rearing practices instead of large scale agri-business which perpetuates highly polluting and emitting industrial agriculture and unsustainable livestock production, the root cause for deforestation and food insecurity,” adds Souparna Lahiri, Senior Climate and Biodiversity Policy Advisor at the Global Forest Coalition (GFC).

The call to action emphasizes that achieving the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs), effective climate action aligned with the Paris Agreement and successful implementation of the Kunming-Montreal Global Biodiversity Framework require Public Development Banks to pivot from a top-down profit-driven approach to one that prioritizes community-led involvement and human rights-based approaches.

“It is important that civil society participation be strengthened at the Finance in Common Summit (FICS). In previous years, civil society has been sidelined. Clearly, there is still some room for improvement for civil society participation to become truly meaningful. The lack of civil society representative on the opening panel this year is just one example of that. PDBs should promote and support an enabling environment for civil society and systematically incorporate civic space, human rights and gender analysis. This year, we are working towards ensuring that civil society voices, including those from communities are heard at the FICS. In collaboration with the FICS Secretariat, Forus seeks to establish a formal mechanism between civil society and PDBs and to ensure that civil society is recognised as an official engagement group,” says Marianne Buenaventura Goldman, Project Coordinator, Finance for Development at the global civil society network Forus.

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IPBES Third Season of Hit Podcast Nature Insights Speed Dating with the Future Takes Listeners Inside Humanitys Relationship With Nature

‘Nature Insights – Speed Dating with the Future’ aims to explain human connectedness and impact with nature. CREDIT: Joyce Chimbi/IPS
  • by Joyce Chimbi (nairobi)
  • Inter Press Service

NAIROBI, Aug 29 (IPS) – If you’ve ever heard that 1 million species are at risk of extinction and wondered what that means for you, your family, and your future – there’s a podcast you won’t want to miss.

Nature Insight: Speed Dating with the Future, produced by IPBES (the Intergovernmental Platform on Biodiversity and Ecosystem Services), tells the very human stories behind the science and policy of the global nature crisis, and its new third season starts today! 

Human activity is pushing other species off planet Earth at a rate never before seen in human history. One million species of plants and animals, out of an estimated total of eight million species, are at risk of extinction, many within decades.

“We are now in what some scientists consider the Anthropocene – a geological era based on the impact of humans on Planet Earth. We have touched the Earth in ways that will seemingly last forever. With that comes our impact on every other species with which we share the Earth, millions upon millions of species, many of which we do not even know yet. While we might not see it all the time, we are deeply connected and rely heavily on these species for our own well-being. These are the many values of nature, and we have a great responsibility to preserve them,” says Brit Garner, Science Communicator and one of the two co-hosts of the podcast.

IPBES, often described as “the IPCC for biodiversity”, is an independent intergovernmental body. Its mandate is to compile the best available evidence on nature to inform decision-makers, and it brings together experts from around the world to create reports that are often thousands of pages long. But IPBES knows that not everyone will read a 1,000-page report, so the IPBES secretariat has found other ways of bringing biodiversity science to all kinds of decision-makers around the world.

Rob Spaull, the Head of Communications at IPBES, is the other co-host of the podcast. He tells IPS the podcast provides a platform and an opportunity for people from every corner of the world to peer into the “box of science and policy on nature”, to engage with complex issues that impact their daily lives, and to assess how their own choices and decisions impact nature and in return, how these choices affect nature’s capacity to meet their needs. Nature Insight seeks to engage with a wide variety of decision-makers in finance, business, health, and energy and to make clear our own interlinkages with nature and biodiversity.

Explaining the podcast’s title, Spaull says, “Every time you listen to Nature Insight, you are speed-dating with nature and with what the future may bring. Speed dating is about having a short time to communicate things that could change your life, and in this podcast, we try to do so by introducing listeners to people with unique insight into humanity’s relationship with nature.”

The podcast was started at the height of the COVID-19 pandemic, and it is now entering its third season, which will be available today, with new episodes dropping every Tuesday over the next five weeks on all the platforms where people usually engage with podcasts. Listeners should expect to meet incredible individuals whose experience can help people in every part of the global community to see solutions for the future of humans and nature but from different perspectives.

“From the great heights of the Himalayas to the farthest reaches of Antarctica, we have lined up a lot of exciting new topics and an array of experts to take us on these journeys together. In the first episode of our new season, we feature a mushroom scientist from Nepal who climbed Mount Everest and has been climbing the Himalayas in search of new species of fungi and mushrooms and for new discoveries for science, such as never-before-described species, to help fill existing knowledge gaps. We will also hear from an incredible and groundbreaking expedition that went to the South Pole, a place not known for its biodiversity and usually considered to have very little biodiversity,” explains Spaull about Season 3.

“We will also speak to two very prominent environmental journalists, one from the global North and another from the South, on changes, challenges, and opportunities to reporting on nature and biodiversity over the years. There will be an episode on youth and youth engagement and another on stakeholders and the IPBES stakeholder network. Importantly, there will be an episode on invasive alien species following the launch of the new IPBES report, to be released on September 4, 2023. It’s a season of great excitement, extensive travels, and unmissable insights.”

Nature Insight Season 3 builds on the success already achieved in the past two years, when the podcast explored topics such as zoonotic diseases and pandemics, indigenous and local conservation, achieving transformative change, protecting coral reefs and coastal ecosystems in the context of climate change, the links between business and biodiversity, and the diverse ways in which communities attach different values to nature.

“With time and policy having passed and the pandemic having transitioned, so much has changed in three years since we started the podcast. In the third season, we are really widening the idea of what, where and who nature is and getting stories from those expansions. We get to hear from geographical locations and stakeholders we have not heard from before. We have considered the values of nature in ways we have not done in the past,” Garner expounds.

Spaull points out the relevance of the podcast to implementing the new Global Biodiversity Framework, the outcome of the landmark 2022 UN Biodiversity Conference, in which nations adopted four goals and 23 targets for 2030 as a concrete plan to halt and reverse nature loss. Over six widely varied episodes of the podcast, listeners will hear from experts on the frontlines of biodiversity research and action about cutting-edge science and vibrant personal insights about some of the most critical issues facing people and the planet.

“Making the podcast has been a very exciting experience, with me in the United States, Rob in Germany, the producer in the UK and guests from all over the world. The diversity of people, places and topics has created some profound experiences for me. During the lockdown, I was in my attic at 3 a.m. speaking to an indigenous leader from Western Australia on water rights, and I realised, though isolated, we are still very much connected, and it is this connection to people and nature that enables us to do and achieve great, meaningful things,” Garner recounts.

Spaull says that the podcast has only scratched the surface. In subsequent episodes and seasons, there is still new ground to capture nature in its many unique elements. Season one started during the COVID-19 lockdown, season two as the world was coming out of lockdown, and season three is happening when governments are engaging with new targets for nature. As the world moves on, it is unlikely that Nature Insights will run out of topics to discuss anytime soon.

You can subscribe to Nature Insight on all major podcast platforms or by clicking here.

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Flooding, Water Insecurity Looms as Indian Kashmirs Titanic Water Bodies Shrink — Global Issues

Both the Wular Lake and Dal Lake (pictured here) are crucial for the Kashmir region’s flood management and livelihood generation, however, both are reducing in size with implications for water security. CREDIT: Athar Parvaiz/IPS
  • by Athar Parvaiz (srinagar, india)
  • Inter Press Service

SRINAGAR, INDIA, Aug 24 (IPS) – Sadiq Dar, 68, is surprised how the heavy siltation of Wular Lake has turned many of its areas into land masses. “When we were growing up, we would only see water in this lake. Now, we see cattle grazing in it while a large portion is also being used by children for playing cricket,” he tells IPS.

Overlooked by magnificent mountains, Wular Lake is one of the largest freshwater lakes in Asia and the largest flood basin of Kashmir in Bandipora district, some 34 km north of Srinagar, the summer capital of Indian Administered Kashmir.

An international Ramsar site under the Ramsar convention, this beautiful lake has served the people of Kashmir for centuries earning praises from all, including its poets.

“How long will they remain hidden from the world … the unique gems that Wular Lake holds in its depth,” 20th century Urdu poet Sir Muhammed Iqbal once wrote about Wular Lake’s depth and water expanse.

Almost a century after Iqbal’s inquisitiveness, the depths of Wular have become heavily silted, its size reduced, and its pristine waters suffer from heavy pollution. This large Himalayan water body and Dal Lake in Srinagar play a key role in flood management, water security and livelihood generation in the region.

But a NASA report recently revealed that both these lakes — Dal Lake and Wular Lake — have witnessed a large reduction in size due to land conversions, urbanization, and deforestation in recent decades. This not only poses a threat of repeated flooding in Kashmir but will negatively influence livelihood generation and the availability of water for the communities.

“The conversion of forests to paved urban areas is a major driver of the change in water quality. Land conversion has delivered heavy sediment and nutrient loads into the lake, and untreated sewage from urban areas has also contributed,” says the NASA report.

“Some of the bright green areas on the eastern side of Wular Lake used to be open water. Nutrient-rich sediment and aquatic vegetation have filled in parts of the lake and contributed to its shrinking in recent decades,” the report further says and adds: “In a 2022 study, researchers in India—using data from the Indian Space Research Organization’s (ISRO) LISS-IV instrument—found that Wular Lake’s open water area had shrunk in size by about one-quarter between 2008 and 2019.”

In a detailed study of the lake, Wetlands International, a Netherlands-based not-for-profit that works to sustain and restore wetlands globally, had also revealed earlier that there was a 45 percent reduction in the lake area mainly because parts of the lake were converted for agriculture and willow tree plantations.

Wular Lake is crucial for saving Kashmir from floods. In recent years, the region has witnessed repeated flood-like situations following the devastating 2014 flooding. The recent IPPCC reports have predicted that there will be an increase in floods and other extreme weather events across South Asia in the coming years as the climate crisis deepens.

The Dal Lake, says the NASA report, has suffered a similar fate in response to land cover change. Researchers in Srinagar found that land conversion to urban development in the basin had worsened the lake’s water quality and contributed to its reduced size, the report says. They found that between 1980 and 2018, the lake shrunk in area by 25 percent, it added.

The marshy and water body area of Dal Lake, a major tourist attraction in Srinagar, has shrunk from 2,547 hectares in 1971 to 1,620 hectares in 2008, another study titled Impact of Urban Land Transformation on Water Bodies found earlier.

How to Stop the Lakes from Shrinking?  

Wular Lake and Dal Lake are crucial for the region’s flood management and livelihood generation. Besides acting as a flood absorption basin for Kashmir during high flows in the region’s major river, Jhelum, Wular, and Dal Lake provide livelihood support to over 100,000 families dependent on tourism and fishing, said Samiullah Bhat, senior Assistant Professor at Kashmir University’s Environment and Science department.

To stop further shrinkage of Wular and Dal Lakes, Bhat said that soil erosion in the catchment area of these water bodies, which is resulting in these lakes becoming silted up, must be stopped. “It is because of the massive soil erosion that parts of water bodies are turning into landmasses,” Bhat told IPS.

Regarding encroachments in these lakes, Bhat said that geofencing is one way to mark the boundaries of these lakes, followed by close monitoring. “It has been done recently in the case of Wular Lake, and the same can be done for Dal Lake as well,” Bhat said.

“It is a matter of proper governance, management and effective enforcement of laws for the protection of environmental assets,” he further said, adding that land ownership records and revenue records are also not that transparent, which also need to be addressed for protecting these lakes from further damage.

According to a study, Dal Lake represents a case of a threatened ecosystem in dire need of management, with land use changes, erosion, enhanced nutrient enrichment and rising human population in its catchment as the major threats to its existence.

“Regulation of a proper land use plan in the Dal Lake catchment is vital for preventing the further nutrient enrichment and sedimentation of the lake waters,” the study says.

Aijaz Rasool, an engineer who has worked on these water bodies previously, said that all the areas of Dal Lake and Wular Lake need to be prioritised for complete conservation work. “For years, I have observed that only those areas of the lakes get attention which are visited by tourists, the other sides get least or no attention and keep deteriorating and encroaching. For example, the north-western parts of Dal Lake and Wular,” Rasool said and added that once all the areas of these lakes receive equal conservational treatment, conserving them will get easier.

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With Quality Education, Youth are Empowered with the Green Skills to Save Our Planet — Global Issues

  • Opinion by Yasmine Sherif (new york)
  • Inter Press Service

NEW YORK, Aug 12 (IPS) – International Youth Day Statement by ECW Executive Director Yasmine SherifTo save our people and our planet from the life-threatening risks of the climate crisis, we must invest in the education of today’s youth. They will be the climate activists, climate scientists, climate innovators, game-changers and leaders of the 21st century green economy.

On International Youth Day, ECW and our global partners urge world leaders in the public and private sectors to ensure today’s youth have the green skills they need to save our planet. The climate-change challenges and the detrimental impact are enormous – severely affecting the planet, as well as basic services and our very survival.

According to the recent position paper by the United Kingdom Foreign, Commonwealth & Development Office (FCDO): “Addressing the climate, environment, and biodiversity crises in and through girls’ education”, the climate crisis is impacting the education of 40 million children every year. “Education is an assumed, but hugely undervalued, component of responses to climate change impacts, and efforts to mitigate and adapt to them. It is essential for reducing vulnerability, improving communities’ resilience and adaptive capacity, identifying innovations, and for empowering individuals to be part of the solution to climate and environmental change,” states the position paper.

Recent global estimates from Education Cannot Wait (ECW) – the United Nations global fund for education in emergencies & protracted crises – indicate that the number of crisis-impacted children who urgently need education support has spiked by as much as 25 million over the past year.

According to the new ECW Global Estimate Study: “Climate change interacts with underlying crisis drivers to increase crisis severity and worsen education outcomes. For example, droughts in East Africa deplete livelihoods, boost displacement, and undermine food security, worsening access to education and learning and accelerating protection needs.”

As we ramp up efforts to deliver on the Paris Agreement, Sendai Framework for Disaster Risk Reduction and Sustainable Development Goals at this year’s SDG Summit and Climate Talks (COP28), we must ensure that quality education, as a critical response to climate change adaptation, mitigation and resilience – especially for children and adolescents caught in emergencies – is inserted into the climate agenda, funding decisions and global policy. Because, climate change is not a stand-alone sector. It impedes and prevents the education of 224 million children and youth today, and their ability to survive and protect our planet tomorrow.

As we build toward COP28, ECW will work closely with the Green Climate Fund, Global Environment Facility, Adaptation Fund and other multilateral and bilateral funds – along with the private sector – to develop solution-oriented and actionable commitments to ensure that education in emergencies both responds to immediate crises, while also equipping communities with the knowledge and skills they need to adapt, mitigate, and build resilience in the face of an uncertain future.

For today’s youth, this means ensuring they receive a quality education in some of the highest-risk climate disaster areas on the globe. It also means to empower them with the knowledge and skills they need to develop, access and advance the green economy, and have the capacity to lead and make sustainable decisions for their communities and countries.

Youth are the human power of a green economy and of climate action and climate resilience. Financial investments in climate change mean financial investments in the education of 224 million children and adolescents. Empowered with an education, they will save their communities, their countries and our planet. If not them, who? Without them, how?

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Grey Market Charcoal East Africa Why Prohibitionist Interventions Are Failing — Global Issues

Some people in parts of Uganda have depended on small-scale charcoal production for livelihoods, but the trade has been taken over by illicit charcoal traders. Credit: Wambi Michael/IPS
  • by Wambi Michael (kampala)
  • Inter Press Service

KAMPALA, Jul 10 (IPS) – At Kampala’s Nakawa market, Lovisa Nabisubi scoops charcoal from a bag and packs it into tins ready for customers. Her bare hands, feet, and clothes are stained black from hours of dealing in this popular household fuel which some equate to “black gold” not just in Uganda but in most of East Africa.

The sizes of Nabisubi’s measuring tins have been shrinking as charcoal gets scarcer and more expensive. While the price of charcoal is getting out of reach for some residents in Kampala, Nabisubi tells IPS that she may lose her only source of income if the situation persists.

“It is becoming difficult to find the suppliers of charcoal. We have been buying a bag of charcoal at ninety thousand shillings. The suppliers sell at one hundred and ten thousand shillings ($32). Sometimes I don’t get any stock, so I stay at home,” she said.

Charcoal is a popular source of cooking energy for urbanites in Uganda and most of East Africa. It also has immense social-economic importance, but it is getting scarce and expensive.

A household study by the Uganda Bureau of Statistics (UBOS) in 2021 found that charcoal provides the primary energy of up to 80% of Kampala’s population. While charcoal, wood, and other forms of biomass together provide more than 90% of the total primary energy consumed in Uganda.

Most of the charcoal supplies to Uganda’s capital Kampala, neighbouring municipalities, and districts have been from formerly war-torn Northern Uganda, but there has emerged pressure against it over environmental concerns.

In February this year, a former member of Parliament, Samuel Odonga Otto, and others mobilised vigilantes to enforce bans on charcoal burning and illegal trade in a region which has a tree cover relatively better compared to other parts of Uganda. The vigilantes would intercept trucks loaded with charcoal cutting off supplies to markets like Nakawa and others.

“Cutting (down) any trees should stop. It should stop if we are to protect our environment. You can see the rainfall patterns. We will not turn to politics; this is environmental,” said Odonga Otto.

As the vigilante group got more sympathizers, President Yoweri Museveni swiftly responded by issuing an order banning commercial charcoal trade in northern Uganda and districts bordering South Sudan and DRC and Kenya to the northeast of Uganda.

While the ban was celebrated by some in the region, a number of questions have emerged. What alternatives to charcoal? How can governments address the conflict between the charcoal ban versus lives and livelihoods?

Only 1.7 million of about 8 million households in Uganda are connected to grid electricity while small-scale charcoal burners, like Cypriano Bongoyinge, wondered how else to survive as the ban took effect.

Bongoyinge told IPS that traders from cities and towns should have been cut off because they were fueling large-scale production.

He told IPS that the traders from Kampala pay between $400-800 to clear an acre of land covered with trees and then hire labourers to burn into charcoal for transportation to the cities or across the borders.

Like Bongoyinge, Ceaser Akol, a politician based in Uganda’s northeastern district of Karamoja, told IPS that communities in the region were burning charcoal at a small-scale level, but they were invaded by large-scale commercial charcoal burners. “While the president came up with a ban, the challenge, as usual, is on enforcement and, of course, corruption.”

Denis Ojwee, a journalist based in northern Uganda’s Gulu city, told IPS that “Our ancestors used to use firewood for cooking but not charcoal. One tree cut for firewood would last longer. So fewer trees were cut for firewood than it is for charcoal.”

Ojwee said the war in northern Uganda may have saved the trees from unsustainable harvesting and that the times of peace have come with a negative impact on the region’s tree cover.

“As much as people died during the war, the environment got saved. But now, trees are getting finished. They have finished other types of trees now they are cutting shea nut trees (Vitellaria paradoxa). Rare species of tree which take very long to grow,”  said Ojwee.

Charcoal from Uganda’s Acholi and Karamoja regions is not only sold to cities in Uganda. It gets through the porous borders and is smuggled to Kenya and beyond.

The Wasteful Archaic Method of Making Charcoal

Charcoal in most of East Africa is produced under anaerobic conditions. That method cannot efficiently regulate the oxygen supply, leading to a lot of wastage.

Xavier Mugumya, a forestry expert, told IPS that the high demand for charcoal had escalated the levels of destruction of trees because people look at it as a source of income.

“If you take a thousand kilograms or a ton of wood and you want to convert it into charcoal using the methods which we normally see, you will only get 100 kilograms of charcoal. That means you are only able to utilize 10% of the original wood. Meaning that 90% of the trees go to waste and become carbon dioxide and ashes,” explained Mugumya.

Corruption and the Role of Organized Crime in the Charcoal Value Chain

The Global Initiative Against Transitional Crime 2021 released the findings of the study investigating the charcoal market in Kenya, Uganda, and South Sudan. It produced a report titled “Black Gold The charcoal grey market in Kenya, Uganda, and South Sudan”.

Michael McLaggan, one of the co-authors of the report, said they found what he described as “a classic grey market, where laws or regulations are flouted at some point in the value chain.”

“There are more organized criminal elements in the charcoal market. And while it is not pronounced in other trades such as drug trade or markets for animal parts, it is present,” said McLaggan

The report found that loose groupings headed by charcoal dealers or people with influence in charcoal value chains commission clandestine production of Charcoal to stay in the market.

Nyathon Hoth Mai, a South Sudanese Climate and natural resources expert, told IPS that small-scale charcoal is produced predominantly by the armed forces in South Sudan, while foreign traders were involved in large-scale production.

“We have seen a lot of traders that come from Sudan, Uganda, DRC, Ethiopia, and Eretria. And they exert a lot of pressure on forests. And then as well how this has the potential of corruption practices,” she said.

Can Charcoal Prohibitionist Policies Work? 

Kenya has since 2018 used sporadic bans on charcoal production. In Uganda, a number of bylaws against trade in charcoal have emerged, but there has not been a national moratorium. There exists a national moratorium in South Sudan on the export of Charcoal, but this has hardly been enforced.

The main shortcoming with prohibition, according to McLaggan, is that where there exists a commodity for which there is a sizable demand, that demand doesn’t disappear upon the commodity being outlawed.

“We noticed that when charcoal gets banned in a certain county, production shifts to another county. Or from one country to another country. So the problem is merely displaced,” he said

 Sustainability Interventions in the Charcoal Sector

At the end of March, the FAO released a study report, Are policies in Africa conducive to sustainability interventions in the charcoal sector? It assessed forestry, environmental and energy policies related to charcoal in 31 African countries.

The report found that more than half of the 31 countries assessed do not have policy frameworks that would encourage sustainable interventions in the charcoal sector.

In other countries, existing policies and regulations tended to be inconsistent and risk creating a confusing and unconducive environment to increase the sustainability of the sector.

The study found that five countries – Ghana, Kenya, Malawi, Rwanda and Uganda – provide favourable policy frameworks for interventions that would improve sustainability.

Another study, “Cross-border charcoal trade in selected East Central and Southern Africa Countries: A call for regional dialogue”, said although several governments in Africa have banned the cross-border trade of charcoal, making it effectively illegal, markets in border areas and beyond remain vibrant.

“Therefore, the issue of sustainable charcoal production and trade remain critical and must be addressed as part of broader efforts to manage forest-agricultural landscapes across national borders,” it suggested.

While policymakers and environmentalists lobby for change, those trying to make a living from it have uncertain futures.

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