Senor Robiay, cluster coordinator of Laubonu. Credit: Silvino Gomes
Opinion by Jharendu Pant (penang, malaysia)
Inter Press Service
PENANG, Malaysia, May 03 (IPS) – Dr. Jharendu Pant is Senior Scientist – Sustainable Aquaculture Program, WorldFishFor Timor-Leste, as with most other islands in the Pacific, fortunes are to be found in fish – an equity food available to all regardless of status.
Nevertheless, the island is highly exposed to the impacts of climate change, hampering domestic food production and contributing to Timor-Leste’s ranking of 110th out of 121 countries for malnutrition. Meanwhile, the country is highly dependent on imported foods – including aquatic foods.
But a national strategy to prioritise the sustainable growth of fish production, particularly through farming of Genetically Improved Farmed Tilapia (GIFT), is helping not only to reverse these trends, but also to provide new economic and livelihood opportunities throughout the entire aquaculture value chain.
And its successes offer economies of scale for development agencies and donors looking to maximise impact by replicating the strategy across other Pacific states with similar environments and challenges.
Jharendu PantTimor-Leste’s National Aquaculture Development Strategy (NADS) began in 2012 and has taken some years to start yielding results because a lack of infrastructure, resources and know-how meant the model had to be developed from scratch. Now, though, the country is steadily progressing towards building a more sustainable and resilient aquatic food production system.
Timor-Leste is on track to double fish consumption between 2010 and 2030, with all the benefits for improving nutrition this holds, having already generated returns by tripling productivity while reducing culture period by half. Timor-Leste’s farmers are now able to produce more nutritious aquatic food in less time.
The ripple effects of these successes are already spreading in the region: representatives from the Solomon Islands travelled to Timor-Leste for training in 2018 and 2019 to learn from the model, which offers a blueprint for addressing similar challenges faced by other island nations.
Small island developing states (SIDS) are collectively among the countries most affected by malnutrition, with 75 per cent of adult deaths in the Pacific caused by non-communicable disease – many of them diet-related. At the same time, small island states are among the most exposed to climate risk, which impacts the production of nutritious, indigenous foods.
But based on Timor-Leste’s learnings, other small island nations can also boost nutrition security and livelihoods through a similar dedicated strategy for aquaculture.
The approach starts with prioritising and deploying locally adapted solutions and technologies. WorldFish, working together with the Government of Timor-Leste, helped to introduce a public-private partnership (PPP) model for Genetically Improved Farmed Tilapia (GIFT) hatcheries across the country, ensuring that farmers have access to high quality fish fingerlings in their local area.
Senor Robiay, cluster coordinator of Laubonu. Credit: Silvino Gomes
This improved breed of tilapia is ideal for addressing nutrition gaps for protein, essential fatty acids and micronutrients, while also minimising the burden on the environment, due to its relatively lower carbon footprint. The hatcheries were also established following rigorous environmental standards, which limits the release of effluence and observes biosecurity measures.
However, one of the challenges remaining for Timor-Leste and other resource-poor countries is the development of effective regulations and compliance monitoring. Alongside greater capacity for upholding environmental standards, subsequent phases of the strategy would also look to ensuring the benefits of increased production are shared equitably. This includes addressing issues of gender equality as well as youth employment opportunities.
Secondly, other countries with similar contexts can learn from Timor-Leste’s example of prioritising growth in production to drive increased consumption. Timor-Leste’s new fish hatcheries have helped increase production threefold between its first and second phase, paving the way for the successful scaling of aquaculture across the country.
And by prioritizing the production of monosex (all male) tilapia – which grow faster than female tilapia – Timor-Leste’s approach allowed the country’s farmers to maximize growth and the rate at which domestic production could meet the nutrition needs of the population. This resulted in increased availability and accessibility of nutritious fish to support higher levels of consumption.
Finally, Timor-Leste’s commitment to an ongoing aquaculture strategy over a decade and counting has also allowed the initiative to evolve over time. Such a long-term approach has also enabled the testing and validation of technologies and practices, making the scaling and replication elsewhere comparatively straightforward.
But ongoing funding is critical, both to develop the long-term capacity needed to maintain economic and nutritional gains in Timor-Leste, and to jumpstart similar initiatives elsewhere. The Partnership for Aquaculture Development in Timor-Leste (PADTL2) has been funded by the Ministry of Foreign Affairs and Trade (MFAT) New Zealand since 2014, with complementary financing from USAID in recent years, offering more solid and lasting gains than ad hoc interventions that last just a couple of years.
The sustainable growth of aquaculture production offers many benefits for small island nations. Over the last decade, Timor-Leste’s aquaculture strategy has become a model for developing more inclusive and secure food systems for all, helping to combat the challenges of malnutrition and exposure to climate change that impact Pacific Islands.
Partners including WorldFish are standing by to replicate this success and support other island governments to sustainably increase fish production and consumption to unlock blue fortunes for all.
Seoin Yang (left) and Rosanna Claudia Luzarraga. Credit: Paul Virgo/IPS
by Paul Virgo (rome)
Inter Press Service
ROME, May 03 (IPS) – When pupils from the Chadwick International School went on an exchange trip to their math teacher’s homeland the Philippines they were faced with a mystery. The kids from their twin school were warm, friendly and fun hosts.
But when lunch time came around, instead of sitting down with their South Korean guests and joining them to eat, they would stay away and watch from a distance.
It seemed uncharacteristic – almost rude.
Coming from prosperous families, it did not immediately dawn on the visitors that their hosts were foregoing lunch not out of impoliteness, but because of poverty.
“That was an utter shock to us. They couldn’t afford food,” Seoin Yang, a high-school student at the Chadwick International School in the Korean city of Songdo, near Seoul, told IPS.
“As sixth graders and as people who had never witnessed such situations in real life, we couldn’t really say anything or do anything.
“Our temporary solution was to not eat and give our food to them. But that wasn’t really a solution”.
It would have been easy for the group to put this ‘shock’ behind them once they returned home and concentrate on their busy lives of study, hobbies, sports and social activities, like most teens.
Instead, they decided to try to do something that would make a difference, launching a programme to provide their new Filipino friends with breakfast and lunch at their school in Labo, in the province of Camarines Norte.
It is not easy to set up a programme in the Philippines from South Korea and they ran into a host of difficulties.
But they managed to get the project off the ground, raising money and working with the school in the Philippines, with volunteer teachers and parents doing the cooking.
“We started off by serving 50 students and the response was really positive because a lot of the students had had to drop out of school because they couldn’t afford food,” said Yang.
“But then they could continue with school. We also used a local market for the food so that we helped the local economy and the local farmers there”.
They raised the money by doing things like selling snacks during school events, applying for grants and getting private-sector partners on board.
In the second year they helped build a school kitchen and subsequently expanded the programme to more schools.
Then the COVID-19 pandemic made adjustments necessary.
“When COVID hit and the students stopped going to school, we decided to modify our programme and provide a food packet for them, still incorporating the local economy, still putting in all the nutritious food, but in a packet,” said Yang.
“The parents could come to school every week on a Monday to pick up these packets,
“They shared the food with their families and so we not only fed the students but the families too”.
The cost-of-living crisis had an impact too. Indeed, after five years the programme had to be suspended for a period due to soaring prices.
Image provided by Chadwick School
But the group recently managed to get it going again, raising money to provide meals for 155 students in three different schools. A Chadwick party is going back to the Philippines this month.
The programme might be relatively small-scale but it has made a big difference to the young people who have benefitted from it.
Last year 32 students who had been having school meals thanks to the programme since grade seven graduated from high school.
Five of them got scholarships and are now studying engineering at university.
“We believe that we are not just solving hunger (for the pupils we help), we are also trying to solve education, health and wellbeing issues,” said Yang.
“Often children have to work with their family to earn money if they are poor, rather than staying at school. As children don’t have a lot of skills, the only job they can do is labouring, which doesn’t pay them a lot.
“It’s just like a cycle. They can’t go to school if they don’t have food, so they have to give up on their education, which means the poverty continues”.
Rosanna Claudia Luzarraga, the math teacher who first took the students to the Philippines, said she is “honoured” to have the kids who launched the programme.
But she also stresses that the South Korean kids have been enriched by it too, building skills, making friendships and learning to appreciate what they have.
“We go to the Philippines every year and, during that time, there is a consultation, we call it a student congress, so the student leaders there meet the South Korean students and they discuss what is good about the programme and what we can improve,” Luzarraga told IPS.
“Part of it is shadowing. So they follow one of the recipients at home, they see their house, and walk with them.
“In one case we walked 14 km because the kids went home and it was seven kilometres going home and seven kilometres going back.
“You develop empathy for someone. They are learning from the other students. It’s not just a case of us doling out aid.
“It’s not simply giving. It’s always two way.
“From what I have seen from my students and from the students in the Philippines, there’s a connection.
“You take care of each other. They are building relationships and this is the most important thing”.
Both Yang and Luzarraga think the programme is a model for solidarity that can easily be replicated by other institutions.
“The first step is always the hardest. In the beginning it all seems so intimidating,” Yang said.
“People say solutions have to be innovative. Sometimes they do, but sometimes they don’t.
“Even the simplest solutions can work the best.
“For us it was that the students couldn’t afford food and we provided them with food.
“That was our solution. It wasn’t innovative at all but it had a huge impact on the students.
A doctor talks to a TB survivor at a clinic in Manilla,
Philippines. Credit: Getty Images for TB Alliance
by Ed Holt (bratislava)
Inter Press Service
BRATISLAVA, May 02 (IPS) – While there is no established causal relationship between climate change and tuberculosis (TB), studies have begun to highlight the potential impact its effects could have on the spread of the disease.
Undernutrition, HIV/AIDS, overcrowding, poverty, and diabetes have all been identified as TB risk factors that are worsened by climate change. Worryingly, many countries with high burdens of TB, including, for instance, drought-hit Ethiopia, Indonesia, Kenya, and Peru, have suffered from the kind of extreme weather associated with a heating planet.
But despite vying with COVID-19 for the grim distinction of the world’s deadliest infectious disease, claiming 1.6 million lives in 2021, TB is not often talked about in connection with climate change, with the link often overlooked by policymakers.
TB experts say this must change as the climate crisis accelerates.
“The effects of climate change, such as its impact on migration, for instance, are getting attention. What we want to see is for that attention to also get drawn to its effects on TB,” Maria Beumont, Chief Medical Officer at TB Alliance, a global nonprofit organisation developing TB drugs, told IPS.
In recent years, disease experts and climatologists have sounded increasingly dire warnings about the potential impact of the climate crisis on the spread of lethal diseases.
The latest report from the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) warned of the health impacts of global heating, including an increase in the incidence of infectious diseases. Meanwhile, other research has shown how changes in climate have aggravated the risks of hundreds of infectious diseases worldwide.
But much of the discussion around that has focused on how higher temperatures and increased incidence of flooding and drought could drive more vector, food and water-borne diseases with diseases.
What has often been overlooked in these conversations, say Beumont and others, is how the effects of the climate crisis could worsen what is de facto a global TB pandemic.
Part of this is because of the nature of those effects in relation to TB.
“The potential impact of climate change is more indirect than with some other infectious diseases,” Dr Mohammed Yassin, Senior Disease Advisor, TB, at the Global Fund to Fight AIDS, Tuberculosis and Malaria, told IPS.
TB experts point to how more frequent and more devastating natural disasters linked to climate change, or simply places on the planet becoming too hot to be habitable, are leading to mass displacement, which can create ideal conditions for TB to spread.
“Mass displacement can lead to overcrowding and poor living conditions of those displaced. If some of those people already have symptoms of TB, there is a higher chance of it spreading. There would also be people living under stress, and facing malnutrition, which are factors adding to the potential for TB to spread,” said Yassin.
Displacement also raises issues with access to healthcare for the displaced, which can negatively affect the management of treatment for those with TB because patients need to take treatment daily. Interruption of treatment can leave them infectious for longer and at risk of developing drug-resistant TB, which in turn is much more difficult and expensive to treat.
But displacement would also impact the treatment of those with other conditions, such as HIV and AIDS and diabetes, which weaken immune systems and leave people more susceptible to TB.
Meanwhile, displaced people are likely to find themselves living in crowded areas where, in the absence of adequate screening and diagnostic procedures, TB could spread.
But displacement is far from the only problem. Both extreme droughts and flooding can impact food security, devastating crops and killing livestock and leading to malnutrition and undernutrition—known risk factors for TB.
The impact of extreme weather on health, particularly TB, is already being seen in some parts of the world.
Somalia is in the grip of severe drought following five consecutive failed rainy seasons—something which the UN has said has not been seen for four decades—with five million people facing acute food shortages and nearly two million children at risk of malnutrition, according to the UN.
TB is a major cause of death in Somalia, and late last year, with TB services largely non-existent in settlements for displaced persons, the Global Fund committed USD 1.9 million for food support for thousands of TB patients and outreach activities in settlements. Officials at the time emphasised the importance of such action to help reach the most vulnerable and stop TB from spreading.
Meanwhile, the devastating floods in Pakistan last year, which affected an estimated 33 million people, not only brought an immediate threat of diseases such as malaria and dengue but interrupted vital vaccination programmes, including TB.
“The impact of flooding on TB is usually seen sometime later, but it, of course, has an immediate impact in disrupting treatment which can lead to problems such as drug-resistant TB,” said Yassin.
TB experts are calling for governments and leaders within the TB community itself to begin paying more attention to the issue and start thinking about current TB programs and where changes need to be made to deal with these potential impacts.
Some groups, like TB Alliance, are looking to mitigate some of these impacts through treatment developments. The group recently developed a new TB treatment regimen, BPaL, with a much shorter treatment length and fewer of the sometimes very toxic side effects of previous regimens.
An oral-only regimen involving only a few pills a day, it has been widely praised by patients and experts for the relative ease with which it can be taken, notably in Ukraine, where it has recently been rolled out programmatically and used among the many millions displaced there because of the Russian invasion.
“What we are focusing on is trying to find solutions to make treatment safer and shorter, which would overcome some of the negative effects of climate change related to TB, for instance, displacement, as there would be less chance of treatment interruption with shorter treatment,” said Beumont.
A doctor studies x-rays of a TB survivor at a clinic in Kyiv, Ukraine. Credit: Getty Images for TB Alliance
Yassin said that investment in health systems, especially in low-income countries which have some of the world’s highest TB burdens and where healthcare is already under-resourced, is also crucial.
“We learnt from Covid that health systems can’t cope with a pandemic, and TB is actually a pandemic. It is very important for countries to think about strengthening their health systems and making them more resilient. There needs to be investment now to prepare the systems for a pandemic, including climate change-driven TB,” said Yassin.
“There was a collapse of some healthcare systems during Covid, and because of that, all resources in some countries went to dealing with that, and TB was forgotten, and the TB burden of those countries rose. We need to invest now, not wait for another pandemic. We need more resources,” he added.
Meanwhile, others say that alongside these measures, individual, non-climate-specific interventions could help.
Dr Krishnan Rajendran of the ICMR-National Institute for Research in Tuberculosis (NIRT) in India, which has the highest burden of TB in the world according to the World Health Organisation, told IPS that lessons learnt from the Covid pandemic could be used to reduce TB spread.
“National and local authorities could take preventive measures, such as at least encouraging people to wear masks in seasons where TB incidence is high,” he said.
Whatever efforts are made to deal with the impact of climate change on the disease, they need to be made soon, said Yassin.
“We shouldn’t wait for climate change impacts before we act—we should do something now and deal with TB to prevent more deaths and disabilities,” he said.
BRUSSELS, Belgium, Apr 28 (IPS) – On May 1, United Nations member states’ special envoys on Afghanistan will meet in Doha, Qatar to discuss how to address the Taliban’s latest restrictions on humanitarian operations.
The two-day meeting follows a week of confused messaging from the UN that could directly affect next steps for helping Afghans in need of aid.
On April 18, the UN Development Programme Administrator (UNDP) Achim Steiner warned that unless the Taliban revoked their ban on Afghan women working for the UN, the UN was “ready to take the heartbreaking decision to pull out of the country.”
The next day, UN Deputy Secretary-General Amina Mohammed suggested member states use what little leverage they have to explore “baby steps” that could put the Taliban “on the path to recognition.”
Surely there is a solution between the threat of total UN withdrawal and the dangled carrot of recognition. And it seems the special envoys are expected to find it.
Unfortunately, divisions among the special envoys on approaches to the Taliban mirror those on the UN Security Council. China, Russia, and Japan want the UN to focus on aid and Afghanistan’s economic crisis. The United States, United Kingdom, and France have pushed a hard line with the Taliban on human rights.
In March, when the Security Council passed a resolution extending the mandate of the UN Assistance Mission in Afghanistan, it passed a second resolution calling for an independent assessment of the UN’s operations aimed at finding “an integrated and coherent approach … to address the current challenges.”
Meanwhile, the Taliban’s latest restrictions have been catastrophic for the Afghan people, two-thirds of whom are dependent on food aid, most of them women and girls.
The Taliban’s increasingly repressive stand banning women from working for humanitarian organizations (except in health and primary education) and the UN, has forced aid agencies and organizations to have to choose between ending their programs or negotiating ways to provide life-saving assistance without compromising principles. This is not a choice they should have to make.
The special envoys should make this clear in Doha and maintain a firm line that only a reversal of the Taliban’s oppressive policies will open the door to further engagement.
Patricia Gossman is an associate director for the Asia division of Human Rights Watch. Prior to joining HRW, Dr. Gossman was Director of the Afghanistan Program at the International Center for Transitional Justice on Afghanistan, and was the founder and director of the Afghanistan Justice Project, an OSI-funded project to document war crimes committed during the Afghan conflict, 1978-2001.
A group of drivers push a car at the end of a long line to refuel in Havana. The Cuban authorities say the fundamental cause of the shortage of diesel and gasoline has to do with breaches of contracts by suppliers. CREDIT: Jorge Luis Baños/IPS
by Luis Brizuela (havana)
Inter Press Service
HAVANA, Apr 27 (IPS) – Long lines of vehicles outside of gas stations reflect the acute shortage of diesel and gasoline in Cuba, which has had negative impacts on an economy that is highly dependent on fuel imports and has only a small proportion of renewable sources in its energy mix.
“They don’t sell you enough fuel at the gas stations and the line barely creeps forward because there are also many irregularities and corruption. It’s exhausting,” said engineer Rolando Estupiñán, who was driving an old Soviet Union-made Lada. When he spoke to IPS in Havana, he was still a long way from the pumps at the station and had given up hope of working that day.
Lisbet Brito, an accountant living in the Cuban capital, lamented in a conversation with IPS that “the public buses take a long time. Private cars (that act as taxis) are making shorter trips and charging more. Nobody can afford this. It’s very difficult to get to work or school, or to a medical or any other kind of appointment.”
Brito said another fear “is that food prices will rise further or supplies will decrease, if the shortage of oil makes it difficult to supply the markets.”
External and internal factors, including the fuel shortage, contribute to low levels of agricultural production, which is insufficient to meet the demand of the 11.1 million inhabitants of this Caribbean island nation.
The outlook is made even more complex by the macroeconomic imbalances, marked by partial dollarization, high inflation and depreciation of wages, salaries and pensions which have strangled household budgets.
Asiel Ramos, who uses his vehicle as a private taxi in this city of 2.2 million people, justified the increase in his rates “because the cost of a liter of diesel skyrocketed” on the black market, where it ranges from a little more than a dollar to three dollars, in sharp contrast to the average monthly salary of around 35 dollars.
“I pay taxes and I have to keep the car running so my children and wife can eat. I can’t spend days stocking up on fuel, and when it’s over, go back again. If I buy ‘on the left‘ (a euphemism for buying on the black market) I have to raise my prices,” Ramos told IPS.
To get around, most Cubans depend on the public transport system, based mainly on buses, which are less expensive than private taxis. But the chronic deficit of equipment, spare parts, lubricants and other inputs, added to the fuel shortage, means service is irregular, the most visible expression of which is the packed bus stops.
A group of people try to board a minibus on a central avenue in Havana. Public transport in Cuba faces a chronic deficit of equipment, spare parts, lubricants and other inputs, which, added to fuel shortages, means service is irregular and bus stops are crowded. CREDIT: Jorge Luis Baños/IPS
Measures
The fuel shortage drove the authorities to announce on the night of Apr. 25 the cancellation of the traditional parades for May 1, International Workers’ Day, and other activities such as political rallies or workplace, community or municipal events, as a rationing and austerity measure, and to declare that only essential transportation would be available.
In the capital, instead of the workers’ march through the José Marti Plaza de la Revolución, a rally was called for May 1 along the Havana Malecón or seaside boulevard, which expects some 120,000 people coming on foot from five of the 15 Havana municipalities.
On Apr. 17, the Minister of Energy and Mines Vicente de la O Levy said on television that the fundamental cause of the shortage of diesel and gasoline is related to breaches of contracts by suppliers.
He said the U.S. embargo “makes it very difficult to obtain ships to transport the fuel, to seek financing and to meet the normal requirements of these contracts.”
In November, during President Miguel Díaz-Canel’s tour of Algeria, Russia, Turkey and China, agreements were signed with some of these countries for the stable supply of hydrocarbons, power generation and the modernization of thermoelectric plants.
Venezuela and Russia appear to be the country’s main energy suppliers.
On Apr. 23, the general director of the state company Unión Cuba Petróleo (Cupet), Néstor Pérez, told national media outlets that “one of the closest suppliers despite having innumerable production limitations… has guaranteed the supply of some products (refinable crude and derivatives) that somewhat alleviate the existing situation, but do not cover all the demands of the economy and the population.”
Presumably Pérez was referring to Venezuela, although he did not specifically say so, because that country has been the largest supplier of hydrocarbons this century, although due to its own internal crisis its exports to Cuba have clearly declined.
De la O Levy noted that, based on negotiations with international suppliers, an improvement is expected in May, although the availability of fuel will not reach the levels seen in 2017 or 2018, when the country was in a more favorable situation.
The priorities in the use of the reserves are the health and funeral services, public transportation and transport of merchandise, as well as the potato harvest, the official said.
The government of Havana, which as a province encompasses the 15 municipalities that make up the capital, limited the sale of diesel to 100 liters per vehicle and 40 liters of gasoline. In the remaining 14 provinces, rationing measures were also ordered.
Several universities postponed the entry of scholarship students until the first week of May, and announced online classes and consultations.
Sales of liquefied petroleum gas (LPG) are also affected, used by more than 1.7 million consumers, although the next arrival of a ship with the product should bring back stability to the service, according to officials.
Two men shine a mobile phone flashlight while fixing a car during a blackout in Havana. Breakages and repairs in some of the country’s thermoelectric plants lead to power shortages that trigger blackouts that last several hours in some parts of the country. CREDIT: Jorge Luis Baños/IPS
Electricity generation deficit
This situation coincides with breaks and repairs in some of the 20 thermoelectric generation plants, which have operated for an average of more than 30 years.
These plants process, for the most part, heavy national crude oil, with a sulfur content between seven and 18 degrees API, which requires more frequent repair cycles that are sometimes postponed due to a lack of financing.
Around 95 percent of the electricity generated in Cuba comes from fossil sources.
This country consumes some 8.3 million tons of fuel per year, of which almost 40 percent is nationally produced.
President Díaz-Canel explained on Apr. 14 that due to the number of thermoelectric blocks under repair “we have had to depend more on distributed generation that basically consumes diesel” in the country’s 168 municipalities.
The generation deficits cause blackouts, although of a lesser magnitude than the 10 to 12-hour a day cuts that for a large part of 2022 affected different parts of the country and sparked demonstrations and pot-banging protests in poor neighborhoods of several municipalities.
The rest of the electricity generation comes from gas accompanying national oil, and floating units rented to Turkey, while renewable energy sources account for only five percent of the total.
The current energy situation is occurring as summer looms, when temperatures above 35 degrees Celsius increase the use of fans and air conditioners, while a majority of the 3.9 million homes in Cuba depend on electricity for cooking food.
Members of the Electric Motorcycle Club gather in Havana for recreational activities. Customs measures have facilitated the importation of electric vehicles which reduce carbon emissions. CREDIT: Jorge Luis Baños/IPS
Promoting renewable sources
“We must further promote renewable sources and stimulate a change from fuel-guzzling, polluting vehicles that are more than half a century old to more modern and efficient ones,” computer scientist Alexis Rodríguez told IPS from the eastern city of Holguin, where he lives.
The transformation of the national energy mix is ??considered by the government a matter of national security, and as part of its plans it aims for 37 percent of electricity to come from clean energy by 2030.
Since 2014, Cuba has had a policy for the prospective development of renewable energy sources and their efficient use, and in 2019 Decree Law 345 established regulations to increase the proportion of renewables in electricity generation and gradually decrease the share of fossil fuels.
Such a significant transformation will require investments of some six billion dollars, authorities in the sector estimate, which constitutes a challenge for a country whose main sources of revenue are dwindling, and which has pending a restart of interest payments on its debt to international creditors.
“It is also important to encourage the use of bicycles and electric vehicles, but they must be sold at reasonable prices, on credit as well, with guarantees of spare parts and the improvement of infrastructure,” Rodríguez added.
In addition to hybrid buses, a hundred light electric vehicles have been added to the capital’s public transport system that contribute to citizen micromobility and to reducing carbon emissions.
In recent years, the customs agency made provisions more flexible for citizens and companies to import solar panels. Although official data are not available, the measure has not had a significant influence.
Measures for the import and assembly on the island of bicycles, motorcycles and three and four-wheel electric vehicles – more than half a million of which circulate in Cuba – also bolster the mobility of people and families.
However, the high prices and sales only in hard currencies curb the expansion and use of more environmentally-friendly vehicles. Another hurdle is the dependence on the national power grid to recharge the batteries and the absence of service stations for electric vehicles.
An aerial photograph of a busy roundabout in Lusaka Zambia. Credit: UNRSF.
Opinion by Nneka Henry (geneva)
Inter Press Service
GENEVA, Apr 27 (IPS) – Nneka Henry is Head of UN Road Safety FundCrises may be a centuries-old phenomenon, but so too is human resilience.
The high number of road deaths and life-changing injuries in the global south is a crisis that affects millions of people every year. In 2018 alone – the year that the UN Road Safety Fund was established – 1.3 million people died on the world’s roads, and another 50 million were injured or disabled.
These numbers are even more sobering against the backdrop of multiple global crises that range from the coronavirus pandemic to the climate emergency, the cost of living crisis to geopolitical conflicts. As daunting as the mounting crises facing the world may be, the millions of lives and livelihoods lost to road crashes has made the Fund as resolute as ever to continue to mobilize and coordinate effective responses to very real road safety needs.
Recognizing the world’s state of increasing complexities, the Fund has been meeting the global road safety challenge head-on. It has done this through a coordinated and multi-faceted approach that addresses the underlying cause of unsafe roads whilst also addressing interconnections with other global development crises.
As the only United Nations body solely dedicated to channelling resources and expertise to tackling the root cause of the crisis, preventing further loss of life is, and will always be, our ultimate goal.
How could it not be – considering that road traffic crashes take the lives of around 3,700 people each day; the equivalent of losing a large cruise ship of passengers at maximum capacity. Through annual Calls for Proposals, the Fund coordinates and finances projects that help ensure road safety is treated as the significant public health issue that it is.
In Brazil, our project partner, the UN Economic Commission for Latin America and the Caribbean, worked with the Department of Transport to correct and improve speed control operations including with the use of portable equipment on all of the Pará State highways. The project resulted in a doubling breathalyzer tests to over 78,000 carried out in 2022 and contributed to decreasing the rate of traffic deaths by a third, down from 6.13 per 10,000 vehicles in 2021 to 4.13 in 2022.
Underpinning the Fund’s ability to effectively address the road safety crisis is our comparative advantage of encouraging international collaboration and cooperation through pooled financial resources and technical knowledge. The more financial and technical partners that participate in the Fund the more comprehensive our response has been, spanning road safety-related legislation, enforcement, education, use of technology and implementation of international regulations and standards.
In the case of West Africa – led by our project partners the UN Environment Programme and UN Economic Commission for Europe – the Fund collaborated on an initiative with the UN Economic Commission for Africa, FIA, and the International Motor Vehicles Inspection Committee.
This has supported the 15 ECOWAS members states to adopt and roll out a regionally-harmonized vehicle directive and technical inspection system, which sets a common standard to safeguard the safety and environmental-friendliness of used vehicles on West African roads. It is now helping to decrease the number of vehicles involved in fatal crashes due to technical defects by 50%, saving thousands of lives.
Nneka Henry, Head of UN Road Safety Fund
Key to strengthening the Fund’s global outreach and engagement is our commitment to communicate clearly and effectively with the public, stakeholders, and decision-makers to ensure that everyone is up-to-date and engaged in the response efforts.
In addition to project planning information sessions which encourage knowledge exchange, and building synergies and complementary financing opportunities before projects are finalized; the Fund also delivers three main flagship events. These include the virtual Open Day for project partners to share project results, the launch of the Annual Impact Report, which takes place on the margins of the International Transport Forum Summit, and the Highlights Country Visit for stakeholders to deep dive into projects that the Fund is supporting.
As global citizens we are all facing a crossroads of crises. The Fund’s response has been to invest in supporting interconnections with other development priorities as a way to build resilience and preparedness for future crises.
Mindful of economic crises, the Fund’s investment in safe transport and road infrastructure is vital. This is what we have been doing in support of the Tanzanian government – with project partners the International Road Assessment Programme, International Road Federation and the UN Economic Commission for Africa.
This initiative has been helping to reduce traffic crashes that place a heavy additional economic burden on families, governments and employers – spanning medical expenses, lost income, and reduced productivity – all of which costs the global economy US$ 1.85 trillion each year.
Low- and middle-income countries devote considerable public personnel and other resources to the treatment and rehabilitation of people injured in road crashes. There is, therefore, a compelling need to reduce the road crash burden on national healthcare systems freeing up critical resources to address other pressing health issues.
Considering ongoing health crises, the Fund is investing in effective post-crash responses – a focus area for the 2023 Call for Proposals and an issue we address in countries like Bangladesh and Azerbaijan, which suffer high rates of road casualties.
Mitigating the effects of climate change, the Fund also invests in cleaner ways of moving safely, including through the Reclaiming the Streets project across Africa to prioritize safe walking and cycling lanes for pedestrians and cyclists who also happen to be our most vulnerable road users.
During these years of polycrises, the Fund has relied on the global solutions approach to rise to the global road safety challenge. And, this month, as the Fund celebrates five years, I challenge more nations, companies and individuals to invest in the only global response comprehensively addressing the root causes of poor national road safety systems across the world. Join us in our sustained effort and rise to meet the serious and interconnected challenges that is the global road safety crisis today.
The replanting of palm oil plants aimed at producing better trees through good agricultural practices. The UNDP’s Good Growth Partnership (GGP) in Indonesia included several projects under one umbrella. Credit: ILO/Fauzan Azhima
by Cecilia Russell (johannesburg)
Inter Press Service
JOHANNESBURG, Apr 27 (IPS) – Smallholder farmers are critical to the success of Indonesia’s efforts to address deforestation and climate change. Creating an understanding and supporting this group, internally and abroad, is a crucial objective for those working towards reducing deforestation and promoting good farming practices, especially as smallholders often work hand-to-mouth and are vulnerable to perpetuating unsustainable farming practices.
Musim Mas, a large palm oil corporation involved in sustainable production, says smallholders “hold approximately 40 percent of Indonesia’s oil palm plantations and are a significant group in the palm oil supply chain. This represents 4.2 million hectares in Indonesia, roughly the size of Denmark. According to the Palm Oil Agribusiness Strategic Policy Initiative (PASPI), smallholders are set to manage 60 percent of Indonesia’s oil palm plantations by 2030.”
Since last year a new World Bank-led programme, the Food Systems, Land Use and Restoration (FOLUR), incorporates the United Nations Development Programme Good Growth Partnership (GGP). It will continue to be involved in the success of palm oil production and smallholders’ support—crucial, especially as a study showed that the “sector lifted around 2.6 million rural Indonesians from poverty this century,” with knock-on development successes including improved rural infrastructure.
Over the past five years, GGP conducted focused training with about 3,000 smallholder farmers, says UNDP’s GGP Global Project Manager, Pascale Bonzom:
“The idea was to pilot some public-private partnerships for training, new ways of getting the producers to adopt these agricultural practices so that we could learn from these pilots and scale them up through farmer support system strategies,” Bonzom says.
Farmer organizations speaking to IPS explained how they, too, support smallholder farmers.
Amanah, an independent smallholder association of about 500 independent smallholders in Ukui, Riau province, was the first group to receive Indonesian Sustainable Palm Oil (ISPO) certification as part of a joint programme, right before the start of GGP, between the Indonesian Ministry of Agriculture, UNDP, and Asian Agri. This followed training in good agricultural practices, land mapping, high carbon stock (HCS), and high conservation value (HCV) methodologies to identify forest areas for protection.
“The majority of independent smallholders in Indonesia do not have the capacity to implement best practices in the palm oil field. Consequently, it is important to provide assistance and training on good agricultural practices in the field on a regular and ongoing basis,” Amanah commented, adding that the training included preparing land for planting sustainably and using certified seeds, fertilizer, and good harvesting practices.
A producer organization, SPKS, said it was working with farmers to implement sustainable practices. It established a smallholders’ database and assisted them with ISPO and Roundtable on Sustainable Palm Oil (RSPO) certifications.
Jointly with High Conservation Value Resource Network (HCVRN), it created a toolkit for independent smallholders on zero deforestation. This has already been implemented in four villages in two districts.
“At this stage, SPKS and HCVRN are designing benefits and incentives for independent smallholders who already protect their forest area (along) with the indigenous people,” SPKS said, adding that it expected that these initiatives could be used and adopted by those facing EU regulations.
SPKS sees the new EU deforestation legislation as a concern and an opportunity, especially as the union has shown a commitment to supporting independent small farmers—including financial support to prepare for readiness to comply with the regulations, including geolocation, capacity building, and fair price mechanisms.
Amanah also pointed to the EU regulations, which incentivize independent smallholders to adhere to the certification process.
“As required by EU law, the EU is also tasked with implementing programs and assistance at the upstream level as well as serving as an incentive for independent smallholders who already adhere to the certification process. The independent smallholder will be encouraged by this incentive to use sustainable best practices. Financing may be used as an incentive. The independent smallholders will be encouraged by this incentive to use sustainable best practices,” the organization told IPS.
SPKS would like to see final EU regulations include a requirement for companies importing palm oil into the EU to guarantee a direct supply chain from at least 30 percent of independent smallholders based on a fair partnership.
“In the draft EU regulations, it is not yet clear whether the due diligence is based on deforestation-related risk-based analysis. Indonesia is often considered a country with a high deforestation rate, and palm oil is perceived to be a factor in deforestation. Considering this, we hope the EU will consider smallholder farmers by ensuring that EU regulations do not further burden them by issuing Technical Guidelines specifically designed for smallholder farmers.”
In April 2023, the European Parliament passed the law introducing rigorous, wide-ranging requirements on commodities such as palm oil. The UNDP is now researching how it should step up its assistance to producers to meet the criteria.
Setara Jambi, an organization dedicated to education and capacity building for oil palm smallholders for sustainable agricultural management, says that while they are concerned about the EU regulations, small farmers have “many limitations, which are different from companies that already have adequate institutions.
“This concern will not arise if there is a strong commitment from both government and companies (buyers of smallholder fresh fruit bunches) to assist smallholders in preparing and implementing sustainable palm oil management.”
The next five years with FOLUR will face significant challenges. There is a need to ensure that the National Action Plan moves to the next level because it is going to expire at the end of 2024. It will require updating and expanding.
Traceability and Deforestation
In Indonesia, there are 26 provinces and 225 districts that produce palm oil. And at the time of writing, eight provinces and nine districts have developed their own versions of the pilot Sustainable Palm Oil Action Plan and developed their own provincial or district-level Sustainable Palm Oil Action Plans.
There is a lot to do, including supporting the Indonesian government’s multi-stakeholder process, capacity building for the private sector, supporting an enabling environment for all, and working with financial institutions to make investment decisions aligned with deforestation commitments.
The biggest issue is to get the smallholder farmers on board. Because they live a life of survival, often they are vulnerable to “short-termism.”
On the positive side, the FOLUR initiative has the government’s backing. At the launch in Jakarta last year, Musdhalifah Machmud, Deputy Minister for Food and Agriculture at the Coordinating Ministry for Economic Affairs, said that the implementation of the FOLUR Project was expected to be able to create a value chain sustainability model for rice, oil palm, coffee, and cocoa through sustainable land use and “comprehensively by paying attention to biodiversity conservation, climate change, restoration, and land degradation.”
At that launch workshop in Jakarta, the World Bank’s Christopher Brett, FOLUR co-leader, noted: “Healthy and sustainable value chains offer social benefits and generate profits without putting undue stress on the environment.”
Bonzom agrees: “At the end of the day, they (smallholders) will need to see the benefits—better market terms, better prices, better, more secure contracts—that’s what is attractive for them.”
A harvester checks the ripeness of oil palm fresh fruit. The UNDP’s Good Growth Partnership has worked with all sectors of the palm oil supply chain to reduce deforestation. Credit: ILO/Fauzan Azhima
by Cecilia Russell (johannesburg)
Inter Press Service
JOHANNESBURG, Apr 27 (IPS) – Indonesia finds itself in a delicate balancing act of uplifting people from poverty, managing climate change and biodiversity, and satisfying an increasingly demanding international market for sustainable farming practices—and at the pivot of this complexity is the management of its palm oil sector.
As the UNDP-led Good Growth Partnership (GGP) joins a new World Bank-led project with similar objectives—the Food Systems, Land Use, and Restoration (FOLUR) Impact Programme, it acknowledges that the government of Indonesia has made considerable advancements in improving the sustainability of the industry and the value chain over the past five years with GGP support.
The GGP, using a multi-stakeholder approach, included several projects under one programmatic umbrella, linking production, demand, responsible sourcing, traceability, and transparency, with supporting financial institutions and investors in relation to reducing deforestation from land use change. The project aimed to connect all components of the supply chain—which, in the case of Indonesian palm oil, represents 4.5 percent of the country’s GDP and 60 percent of global exports.
Late in 2022, Trase, in its report From Risk Hotspots to Sustainability Sweet Spots, confirmed Indonesia had reversed its deforestation trends in 2018-2020; deforestation for palm oil was 45,285 hectares per year—only 18 percent of its peak in 2008-2012. The improvement is attributed to strengthened law enforcement, moratoria, certification of palm oil plantations, and implementation of corporate zero-deforestation commitments.
“Importantly, deforestation has fallen during a period of continued expansion of palm oil production. Although the decline in deforestation has been linked to a drop in the market value of crude palm oil, the recent spike in palm oil prices has not yet been accompanied by a boom in palm-driven deforestation—a cause for cautious optimism,” Robert Heilmayr and Jason Benedict commented on Trase’s website.
However, CDP Palm Oil Report 2022 notes that while companies are adopting a wider range of actions to end deforestation, these “actions are not yet robust enough to end commodity-driven deforestation in the palm oil value chain.”
CDP says while 86 percent of companies implemented no-deforestation policies, only 22 percent have public and comprehensive policies: “Traceability systems have been implemented by 87 percent of companies, but only 25 percent have the capacity to scale these to over 90 percent of their production/consumption back to at least the municipality or equivalent.”
One major challenge is the inclusion of smallholders in the supply chains—and while 44 percent of companies work with smallholders to reduce or remove forest degradation, less than a third support “good agricultural practices and provide financial or technical assistance to help them achieve this.”
It is precisely these challenges the GGP confronted in Indonesia.
“Systemic change in commodity supply chains is one of the essential transformations that must occur this decade to mitigate the combined threats of catastrophic climate change, biodiversity loss, and food insecurity and to achieve resilience for humanity globally,” GGP says in its assessment report, Reducing Deforestation from Commodity Supply Chains.
These deforestation commitments are not new and followed the New York Declaration on Forests (NYDF), adopted in 2014, which called for the end of forest loss and the restoration of 350 million hectares of degraded landscapes and forestlands by 2030. Then came the Paris Climate Agreement, which in terms of its Reducing Emissions from Deforestation and Forest Degradation (REDD+) agreements, was crucial for reducing emissions from deforestation and degradation in developing countries. More commitments flowed after the 2015/2016 fires, which were blamed on slash-and-burn agricultural practices, exacerbated by a dry El Niño; the fires raged for months, leading to deaths, respiratory tract infections, and cost, according to the World Bank, 16 billion US dollars.
The fires were also thought to cause a global rise in emissions and put wildlife, including the endangered orangutan population, at risk. Indonesia is a place where companies have been making commitments for some time, but implementing them with both direct and indirect suppliers is not easy.
Recognizing this challenge, the GGP supported the “improvement of sustainable production and land use policies and increased farmers’ capacities to shift to sustainable practices. At the same time, it has increased supply chain transparency and consumer demand for sustainable palm oil and built the awareness of financial institutions to invest sustainably and screen out deforesters in their portfolio.”
The GGP supported Indonesia’s National Action Plan—which is now being implemented at sub-national provincial, and district levels, too.
The action plan, along with Indonesia’s Enhanced Nationally Determined Contribution (NDC), recognizes the country’s climate change vulnerabilities, especially in the low-lying areas throughout the archipelago and its position in the so-called ring of fires. The Enhanced NDC has set ambitious deforestation and rehabilitation targets, including peat land restoration of 2 million hectares and rehabilitation of degraded land of 12 million hectares by 2030.
Despite good results, stress ratcheted up for the industry as a new European Union policy now excludes sourcing palm oil or produce from areas deforested and degraded after December 31, 2020.
The new regulation will require companies to prove their bona fides through recognized traceability techniques. The sector is still working out its detailed response to the requirements, which some see as a unilateral EU move that does not respect the rights of the producing countries.
While the EU is a small market for Indonesia compared with the domestic, Chinese, and Indian markets, the regulations put additional pressure on an industry still strongly associated with small-scale farmers. It is also likely that other large markets will eventually align themselves with these regulations.
Even before the regulations became an issue, the GGP involved itself in communication campaigns to sensitize the public to sustainable certification, from the Indonesia Sustainable Palm Oil (ISPO)to the Roundtable on Sustainable Palm Oil (RSPO) standards.
The communication campaigns worked to create awareness about sustainability issues among consumers, but also with large retailers (including one called Super Indo) to place RSPO-certified palm oil products on their shelves.
It’s critical to get all players in the supply chain on board, which is where multi-stakeholder tactics work effectively; the GGP believes that this multi-faceted approach is crucial to influencing companies.
“You influence companies through government policies, through the market, but you also influence them through the financial institutions,” says UNDP’s GGP Global Project Manager, Pascale Bonzom. “If the financial institutions that fund these downstream companies require them to show that they have no deforestation commitments, and they are implementing them with results, then they (the companies) are going to have to do something about it.”
Elaborating on the strategy, she said GGP and its partner World Wildlife Fund (WWF) worked at a regional level on building capacity in financial institutions to understand the impacts of their investments.
Now a scorecard is available—to equip and influence the investors to make better decisions and to use this kind of Environmental, Social, and Governance factors (ESG) screening for deforestation.
See Part 2: Smallholders Key to Indonesian Deforestation Successes
NEW YORK, Apr 26 (IPS) – For the last five years, the United Nations Development Programme has worked with some of the world’s biggest producers of commodities like beef, soy, palm oil, and cocoa to protect livelihoods and the planet.In 2015, just over 30 cocoa farmers from Padre Abad in Ucayali, a province in the lush and ecologically diverse Peruvian Amazon, formed an alliance to tackle long-standing concerns such as soil quality, access to markets, fair prices for their produce and a growing number of illegal plantations. The result was the Colpa de Loros Cooperative, and from the start, the goal was to produce the finest quality, export-ready cocoa.
Membership would grow to over 500 partners covering 200 hectares of land today.
For almost four years, the cooperative’s small producers worked tirelessly on the transition of the area from traditional but environmentally taxing cocoa harvesting to growing premium cocoa that could meet export demand in the chocolate industry. This was no easy feat, as fine-flavor cocoa production demanded significant investment in technical training for members, initiatives to monitor deforestation, and data systems to ensure cocoa traceability, production, and sales. On the education side, it demanded a change from centuries-long cocoa farming practices to the principles of agroecology.
Then in 2022, as the farmers worked to meet demanding international certifications, the European Parliament passed a new law that is introducing rigorous, wide-ranging requirements on commodities such as palm oil, soy, beef and cocoa. Now the United Nations Development Programme (UNDP) is researching how it should step up its assistance to producers to meet the new criteria.
New EU Requirements
Colpa de Loros sells 100 percent of its cocoa to a European buyer, the French company Kaoka. When word of the new European regulations hit, the cooperative had already achieved organic production and fair-trade certification. It had also attained ‘fair for life’ certification, a Kaoka-led initiative.
Attaining these credentials meant that members had been working on a blueprint for environmentally friendly agriculture systems. However, for Peru, the world’s third largest cocoa supplier to Europe, the new regulations triggered frenetic action to maintain contracts with buyers and protect the almost 100,000 small producers who depend on cocoa exports to sustain their households.
“The law affects not only Colpa de Loros, but all producers,’ said Ernesto Parra, Manager of Colpa de Loros Cooperative.
“We already have laws which require analysis of pesticides, which makes costs higher. To ensure compliance with this rule, they implement measures like regular audits. Every grain must be free of contamination. There are organizations bigger than Colpa that are experiencing difficulties to respond, and no actions have been taken by the government to support them,” he said.
The European Commission has now also introduced new forest conservation and restoration rules. The Commission said the deforestation regulation would promote EU consumption of deforestation-free supply chain products, encourage international cooperation to tackle forest degradation, reroute finance to aid sustainable land-use practices, and support the collection and availability of quality data on forests and commodity supply chains.
Parra says this commitment to the environment complements the Cooperative’s core values.
“The cooperative aligns with this green pact signed by all actors in Europe to not buy chocolate from deforested areas or involving child or forced work. They not only promote the protection of the environment, but reforestation, land protection, recycling programmes, and biogas from cacao liquid. We agree that cocoa can’t come from deforested areas or make new plantations in protected areas.”
While the cooperative is firm in its environmental consciousness, Parra says the investment is needed in educational activities and technical support for rural farmers who are struggling to accept the realities of land degradation and climate change.
“Some of them are still burning forests. Organizations need to convince the base of producers and farmers to change. Not only their partners but all people in the communities. Incentives can help. For example, I can be carbon neutral, but I’m going to have a higher cost, and if the market does not recognize it, if I don’t have an incentive, the standard will be difficult to maintain. Our cooperative gives its own incentives: those who commit to the organic certification receive fertilizer produced by Colpa de Loros to increase production.
“It is a start, but this is not enough. The state or the market needs to offer incentives as well.”
UNDP Support – and Good Growth Partnership Scoping
The United Nations Development Programme (UNDP) has been working with the world’s commodity-producing countries to put sustainability at the center of supply chains.
From Brazil to Indonesia, the GGP has embraced an Integrated Approach, working with producers, traders, policymakers, financial institutions, and multinational corporations to build sustainability in soy, beef, and palm oil supply chains.
Peru has so far not been covered by GGP but is being scoped for possible assistance under a next phase of the programme.
In the meantime, the UN agency has been supporting Peru to achieve sustainable commodity production- a target that remains crucial in the face of the new EU regulation.
“The control and monitoring of all production processes had to be doubled, and UNDP is vital here. With its finance, the technical department was strengthened, agricultural technology was incorporated, and members received capacity building in sustainability and food security,” said Parra.
Each member of Colpa de Loros is responsible for 3-4 hectares of land. The GEF-financed Sustainable Productive Landscapes (SPL) in the Peruvian Amazon project, led by the Ministry of Environment with technical assistance from UNDP, has been supporting projects that enhance food production while protecting water and land resources.
“The organization’s cocoa is not conventional cocoa. It is a fine aroma cocoa. So, producers needed equipment for special analysis. Then all information needed to be organized in a digital platform. UNDP helped in these areas,’ he added.
“The GEF-financed SPL project provided US$150,000 to complement the work of the organization with maps, digital platforms, and traceability. As there is no global system of traceability, Colpa is using its own, which is expensive.”
Action Plans
The UN organization, working closely with the Ministry of Agriculture, has also been assisting the Government and industry partners to develop and implement national action plans for the cocoa and coffee sectors. The Peruvian National Plan for Cocoa and Chocolate was unveiled in November 2022. It breaks down divisions between production, demand, and finance issues in agriculture. It also contains clear strategies to increase sustainability based on science, technology, and tradition.
The plan complements the values of UNDP and represents a win for both farmers and the environment.
“It is important to recognize that many Peruvian farmers’ cooperatives and companies, regardless of the EU regulation, are concerned about the potential impacts of their production systems on the environment, and they are increasingly conscious of the impacts that climate change is having on their production systems,” said James Leslie, Technical Advisor Ecosystems and Climate Change at UNDP Peru.
“Now, the concern is the feasibility of complying with the EU regulation and in the timeframe required. This concern is directly related to the fact that the EU markets are important for Peruvian agricultural products, particularly coffee, and cocoa. There is a concern that with the new EU regulation, there can be restricted or more challenging access to the market.”
The UNDP official says meeting stringent sustainable production requirements comes at a hefty cost to owners of small and medium-sized farms.
“There is not necessarily a price premium for their products due to certification,” he said. Incentives are a key factor in GGP’s work in encouraging farmers to adopt sustainable practices.
“It’s important also to recognize that there is a difference within the farmer population. Some farmers are organized and are part of cooperatives. For example, roughly 20 percent of cocoa and coffee farmers are organized in some way, which means that 80 per cent are not. Those unorganized farmers are less likely to be certified, and they are less likely to be accessing stable markets that provide some price guarantee.”
According to the UNDP, Peru ranks 9 in the world’s top ten cocoa producers and tops the world in organic cocoa production. The majority of farmers are small-scale and medium scale. Leslie says many of these farmers are either living in poverty or vulnerable to falling below the poverty line.
“Add to that additional restrictions and costs in order to access markets, and it poses a risk for these farmers—for their wellbeing and livelihoods,” he said.
The Future of Sustainable Agriculture
Looking ahead, Leslie says access to traceability systems is important. The farmers will need to prove that their production has met the EU requirements.
He says the Government will also need to expand technical assistance, increase investment in science and technology, including the purchase of climate change-resistant crop varieties, and ensure that farmers can receive finance aligned with the EU regulation’s sustainability criteria.
Clear land use policies will also be needed to delineate land that is appropriate for agriculture and particular types of crops. Areas that must be regenerated should be clearly marked, along with those that should be conserved, such as watersheds and zones of high biodiversity value.
For Colpa de Loros, Parra says the goal must be to strike a balance between sustainable land use and livelihoods.
“For deforestation, there is a big relation to poverty. The majority of the time a producer cuts down a tree, it’s because of need.”
He says the challenge is to create a supply chain that is sustainable, competitive, and inclusive – a goal that is attainable with adequate support and buy-in from every link in the value chain.
UNITED NATIONS, Apr 25 (IPS) – Several years ago, on a visit to a village in rural Zimbabwe, I met a small group of women with a story to share.
Having participated in a UNDP-supported adaptation project – including drought-resistant seeds and education in climate-smart agricultural practices – the women had significantly increased the productiveness of their home gardens.
However, what really caught my attention was how the women, seeing an opportunity to help one another and scale up their returns, had set up a peer group to pool their savings and invest on a revolving basis in each other’s other livelihood ventures (some agricultural, some not).
In this way, they had essentially created an enterprising model to build on and sustain the investments of the project. Local innovations such as this are key to meeting the challenges of the climate crisis.
The innovations we need span technologies, practices, business models and behavioural changes. These innovations are to be found at all levels, from national research institutions in the world’s biggest cities to small villages, like the one I visited in Zimbabwe.
At UNDP, we are focused on scaling up and accelerating innovative adaptation approaches that have been proven to be effective. Many of the 220 projects we have implemented around the world since 2008 have broken, and are breaking, ground in numerous ways.
In Thailand, for instance, UNDP is supporting the government in transforming agricultural practices by harnessing the power of the Internet of Things. In Mongolia, we are collaborating with herders to track livestock products from source to end to ensure sustainability. In Cuba, we have supported the government in integrating ecosystem-based adaptation with inter-sector coastal planning.
Supported by the Adaptation Fund and European Union, and in partnership with the UN Environment Programme and the Climate Technology Centre and Network (CTCN), the Adaptation Fund Climate Innovation Accelerator (AFCIA) aims to foster more innovation at the local level.
The AFCIA funding window, managed by UNDP, was launched in 2021 and supports communities that are already responding to climate stresses in innovative ways.
Through the learnings from AFCIA, we aim to share lessons learned and best practices through an open platform called the Adaptation Innovation Marketplace, in which the International Centre for Climate Change and Development (ICCCAD), Global Resilience Partnership, Climate-KIC, UN Capital Development Fund (UNCDF), and Least Developed Countries Universities Consortium on Climate Change (LUCCC) are also founding members and key partners.
At UNDP, we are focused on scaling up and accelerating innovative adaptation approaches that have been proven to be effective.
With the first round of US$2.2 million grant funding, the programme is supporting 22 organizations in 19 countries to foster and accelerate their adaptation ideas.
The programme aims to develop more than 10 scalable innovative adaptation solutions, benefiting more than 175,000 people (at least 30 percent women), and supporting 2,200 hectares of land with restoration or regenerative agriculture.
For example, in Brazil, we are supporting a local partner to improve food security and protect the local ecosystem for indigenous people by introducing and expanding the production of acai berries. 115 hectares of land are now certified under sustainable agroforestry management, with 27 tonnes of acai berries processed and sold.
In Cambodia, 40 women are growing and selling crickets as an alternative food source, earning $2,600 for the first tonne of cricket farmed, a more adaptive product due to existing and future climate trends and one with year-round availability.
In Uganda, we are supporting a local partner that is teaching communities aquaponics technology through an innovative lease-to-own model to promote aquaponics and horticulture-related production. 2,600 aquaponic kits have been leased, and this local partner is now targeting an expansion plan of reaching $21 million of the local vegetable and fish market.
A second cohort of grantees is about to be announced, and we hope to provide another $2.5 million to local organizations across the globe, including approximately 10 micro grants of $60,000 and 13 small grants of $125,000.
Working with partners such as ICCCAD and the Global Resilience Partnership has allowed us to showcase the work of these AFCIA grantees and replicate their innovations in a broader network of networks.
For instance, at last month’s Global Gobeshona Conference, we had the opportunity to learn from four local organizations – from the first cohort of grantees from the Innovation Small Grant Aggregator Platform (ISGAP) Programme – that are implementing solutions to build the resilience of women, youth, refugees and Indigenous communities in India, the Philippines, Uganda and in the Sahel (West Africa).
These examples are instructive. By identifying successful innovation solutions, and then scaling up and replicating them in other parts of a country or region, governments can save valuable time and money.
By establishing or accelerating pilot projects and carefully monitoring their results, insights and best practices can be fed into policy processes, helping to scale up successful approaches.
Working together with partners, I am confident we will empower local communities and stakeholders to innovate and adapt, finding more solutions for resilience building.
We look forward to working with our current partners, and new ones, to scale the impact.
Srilata Kammila is Head of Climate Change Adaptation, UNDP
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