Showing posts from category environment.
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Stephanie Hanson Reports on PHE in Agricultural Development and Rwanda’s ‘One Acre Fund’
›Driving from Kigali into rural Rwanda, the hills that flank either side of the paved road are covered with bananas, maize, coffee, and beans under cultivation. Most Rwandans are farmers, using any bit of available land to feed their families and generate income. In this country—the most densely populated in Africa—little arable land is left untended.
My organization, One Acre Fund, offers loans and education to smallholder farmers in Kenya and Rwanda. We work with 18,000 farmers in three districts in the southwestern and western part of Rwanda, where we are know as Tubura, which means “multiply” in Kinyarwanda.
Though One Acre Fund is not a traditional population, health, and environment (PHE) project, agricultural development work inherently is PHE work, particularly in Rwanda, which faces significant population and environment challenges.
Our farmers have small plots of land because Rwanda’s population density is so high—375 people per square kilometer, higher than Japan—leaving only .13 hectares of arable land per person. They struggle to grow enough food because it’s difficult to support a big family on a small piece of land, especially without access to high-quality seed and fertilizer.
When farmers don’t grow enough to ensure basic food security for their families, their children are malnourished, which makes them more susceptible to illness.
Finally, agriculture both depends on and affects the environment. Farmers need favorable growing conditions—good soil and adequate rainfall—for a good harvest. Sustainable agriculture practices, such as composting and preventing soil erosion, ensure the environment remains healthy to support future farming.One Acre Fund is acutely aware of the challenges that our farmers face due to high population density, food insecurity, and environmental degradation. We offer a service model that addresses all the needs of a smallholder farmer: financing, farm inputs, education, and market access.
When a farmer enrolls with One Acre Fund in Rwanda, she joins as part of a group of 6-15 farmers. She receives an in-kind loan of seed and fertilizer, which is guaranteed by her group members. One Acre Fund delivers this seed and fertilizer to a market point within two kilometers of where she lives. A field officer provides in-field training on composting, techniques to prevent soil erosion, land preparation, planting, fertilizer application, and weeding.
Over the course of the season, the field officer monitors the farmer’s fields. At the end of the season, he trains her on how to harvest and store her crop. One Acre Fund also offers a harvest buyback program that farmers can choose to participate in.
On average, One Acre Fund farmers double their farm income per acre in one growing season. Ninety-eight percent of our farmers repay their loans, which are due several weeks after harvest.
With their increased harvests, One Acre Fund farmers are able to feed their children, which reduces malnutrition. Anecdotally, we also know that One Acre Fund children experience less illness; this year, we are working to incorporate health indicators into our monitoring and evaluation work.
At a harvest buyback last month, I met many farmers who had benefited from One Acre Fund’s services. One woman, Tamar, had sold 400 kilograms (880 pounds) of beans at the previous season’s buyback, which earned her roughly 132,000 Rwandan francs ($235 USD). She told me that she was using the money to build a bigger home for the six of her ten children who lived at home.However, Tamar really wanted to buy a cow, but she knew that she would not earn enough money this year to afford one. With so many children, she struggled to earn enough money to invest in something that might generate additional income for her and her family.
Another woman, Medeatrice, had also made $235 USD from the sale of her beans. With that income, she had opened a small shop with her husband in a nearby market. Unusually for Rwanda, where the average woman has 5.5 children, Medeatrice only had one, a three-year old boy named Prince. I asked her if she planned to have more children.
“I only want one more child,” she told me. “If I only have two children, it is easy to educate and to take care of them.”
The Rwandan government has invested in educating its population on family planning, but it will take time for birth rates to drop. For now, families with five, six, or nine children are not uncommon.
However, research shows that when women have increased access to economic opportunities, birth rates drop. One Acre Fund is focused on helping Rwanda’s families increase their harvests so that they not only have enough to eat, but they can start investing in their futures.
Guest Contributor Stephanie Hanson is the director of policy and outreach at One Acre Fund.
Photo Credit: Rwanda’s hills and Medeatrice, courtesy of Stephanie Hanson. -
Chad Briggs: Dealing With Risk and Uncertainty in Climate-Security Issues
›July 21, 2010 // By Wilson Center StaffWe must do more than simply take our current understanding of climate-change risk and extrapolate it into the future, asserted Chad Briggs of the Berlin-based Adelphi Research in a video interview with the Wilson Center’s Environmental Change and Security Program.
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Local Case Studies of Population-Environment Connections
›“The role of intergenerational transfers, land, and education in fertility transition in rural Kenya: the case of Nyeri district” in Population & Environment by Karina M. Shreffler and F. Nii-Amoo Dodoo, explores the reasons for a dramatic and unexpected decline in fertility in rural Kenya. In one province, total fertility rate (TFR) declined from 8.4 to 3.7, from 1978 to 1998. The study found numerous contributing factors for this decline, which occurred more quickly and earlier than demographers expected, but land productivity seemed to be the primary motivator. A growing population and the tradition of dividing family land among sons made continuing to have large families unrealistic for these Kenyan families. “Family planning is, therefore, not the primary causal explanation for limiting the number of children, but rather serves to help families attain their ideal family sizes,” the authors conclude.Also in Population & Environment, “Impacts of population change on vulnerability and the capacity to adapt to climate change and variability: a typology based on lessons from ‘a hard country,’” by Robert McLeman, explores the potential for human communities to adapt to climate change. The article centers on a region in Ontario that is experiencing changes in both local climatic conditions and demographics. The study finds that demographic change can have both an adverse and positive effect on the ability of a community to successfully adapt to climate change and highlights the importance of social networks and social capital to a community’s resilience or vulnerability. McLeman also presents a new typology that he hopes will “serve the purpose of drawing greater attention to the degree to which adaptive capacity is responsive to population and demographic change.”
SpringerLink offers free access to both these articles through August 15. -
Rear Admiral Morisetti Launches the UK’s “4 Degree Map” on Google Earth
›Having had such success with the original “4 Degree Map” that the United Kingdom launched last October, my colleagues in the UK Foreign and Commonwealth Office have been working on a Google Earth version, which users can now download from the Foreign Office website.
This interactive map shows some of the possible impacts of a global temperature rise of 4 degrees Celsius (7° F). It underlines why the UK government and other countries believe we must keep global warming to below 2 degrees Celsius, compared to pre-industrial times; beyond that, the impacts will be increasingly disruptive to our global prosperity and security.
In my role as the UK’s Climate and Energy Security Envoy I have spoken to many colleagues in the international defense and security community about the threat climate change poses to our security. We need to understand how the impacts, as described in this map, will interact with other drivers of instability and global trends. Once we have this understanding we can then plan what needs to be done to mitigate the risks.
The map includes videos from the contributing scientists, who are led by the Met Office Hadley Centre. For example, if you click on the impact icon showing an increase in extreme weather events in the Gulf of Mexico region, up pops a video clip of the contributing scientist Dr Joanne Camp, talking about her research. It also includes examples of what the UK Foreign and Commonwealth Office and British Council are doing to increase people’s awareness of the risks climate change poses to our national security and prosperity, thus illustrating the FCO’s ongoing work on climate change and the low-carbon transition.
Rear Admiral Neil Morisetti is the United Kingdom’s Climate and Energy Security Envoy. -
India’s Maoists: South Asia’s “Other” Insurgency
›July 7, 2010 // By Schuyler NullThe Indian government’s battle with Maoist and tribal rebels – which affects 22 of India’s 35 states and territories, according to Foreign Policy and in 2009 killed more people than any year since 1971 – has been largely ignored in the West. That should change, as South Asia’s “other” insurgency, fomenting in the world’s largest democracy and a key U.S. partner, offers valuable lessons about the role of resource management and stable development in preventing conflict.
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U.S. Navy Task Force on Implications of Climate Change
›What about climate change will impact us? That’s the question the Navy’s Task Force Climate Change is trying to answer. Rear Admiral David Titley explains the task force’s objectives in this interview by the American Geophysical Union (AGU) at their recent “Climate Change and National Security” event on the Hill.
The task force is part of the military’s recent efforts to try to better understand what climate change will mean for the armed forces, from rising sea levels and ocean acidification to changing precipitation patterns. In the interview, Admiral Titley points out that for the Navy in particular, it is important to understand and anticipate what changes may occur since so many affect the maritime environment.
The Navy’s biggest near-term concern is the Arctic, where Admiral Titley says they expect to face significant periods of almost completely open ocean during the next two to three decades. “That has huge implications,” says Titley, “since as we all know the Arctic is in fact an ocean and we are the United States Navy. So that will be an ocean that we will be called upon to be present in that right now we’re not.”
Longer term, the admiral points to resource scarcity and access issues and sea level rise (potentially 1-2 meters) as the most important contributing factors to instability, particularly in places like Asia, where even small changes can have huge impacts on the stability of certain countries. The sum of these parts plus population growth, an intersection we examine here at The New Security Beat, is something that deserves more attention, according to Titley. “The combination of climate, water, demographics, natural resources – the interplay of all those – I think needs to be looked at,” he says.
Check out the AGU site for more information, including an interview with Jeffrey Mazo – whose book Climate Conflict we recently reviewed – discussing climate change winners and losers and the developing world (hint: the developing world are the losers).
Sources: American Geophysical Union, New York Times.
Video Credit: “What does Climate Change mean for the US Navy?” courtesy of YouTube user AGUvideos. -
Backdraft: The Conflict Potential of Climate Mitigation and Adaptation
›The European Union’s biofuel goal for 2020 “is a good example of setting a target…without really thinking through [the] secondary, third, or fourth order consequences,” said Alexander Carius, co-founder and managing director of Adelphi Research and Adelphi Consult. While the 2007-2008 global food crisis demonstrated that the growth of crops for fuels has “tremendous effects” in the developing world, analysis of these threats are underdeveloped and are not incorporated into climate change policies, he said. [Video Below]
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Sustainable Development
›Are Women the Key to Sustainable Development?, by Candice Stevens and appearing in Boston University’s Sustainable Development Insights series, asks whether gender-conscious development strategies are the missing link in the three pillars–social, economic, and environmental–of sustainable development. She points out that “An increasing number of studies indicate that gender inequalities are extracting high economic costs and leading to social inequities and environmental degradation around the world.” In the policy world gender-conscious initiatives are often more effective as well. “United Nations and World Bank studies show that focusing on women in development assistance and poverty reduction strategies leads to faster economic growth than ‘gender neutral’ approaches.” Stevens finds that achieving greater gender parity may be the key to better governance, increased growth, and a safer environment.The Role of Cities in Sustainable Development, by David Satherwaite and also appearing in Boston University’s Sustainable Development Insights series, argues that traditional depictions of cities as dirty and unsustainable are inaccurate. Instead, “…with the right innovation and incentives in place, cities can allow high living standards to be combined with resource consumption that is much lower than the norm in most cities today,” he finds. Satherwaite contends that high-density living arrangements can reduce per capita energy consumption, transportation emissions, and costs of public service provisions like hospitals and schools. However, he warns that none of these potential advantages are guaranteed, and city planners must utilize effective local governance in order to make cities safe, clean, and sustainable.
