Showing posts from category Africa.
-
Weekly Reading
›How Do Recent Population Trends Matter To Climate Change?, from Population Action International, offers the latest research from this constantly changing area of inquiry.
U.S. Global Health and National Security Policy, a timely report by the Center for Strategic and International Studies, examines major threats to human health and international stability, including HIV/AIDS, SARS, pandemic influenza, and bioterrorism.
In the coming decades, Russia will confront “accelerated population decrease; a dwindling of the working-age population; the general ageing of the population; the drop in number of potential mothers; a large immigrant influx; and a possible rise in emigration rates,” warns a new report from the UN Development Programme.
In The National Interest and the Law of the Sea, the Council on Foreign Relations’ Scott Borgerson argues that ratifying the Law of the Sea Convention is vital to protecting the United States’ national security, economic, and environmental interests.
David Sullivan of Enough debates Harrison Mitchell and Nicolas Garrett of Resource Consulting Services (RCS) on the links between conflict and mining in the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC). RCS recently published a report arguing that mineral extraction is key to DRC’s development and not the primary cause of conflict in North Kivu.
Responding to the ubiquitous Monsanto ads that ask, “9 billion people to feed. A changing climate. Now what?,” Tod Preston of Population Action International responds, “family planning and empowering women, that’s what!”
Water and War, a publication of the International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC), outlines how the ICRC provides access to clean water during conflict and humanitarian disasters. -
Food, Water, Energy, Timber, Population: Do Madagascar’s Forests Stand a Chance?
›April 22, 2009 // By Kayly Ober
A graphic published recently in Le Monde reveals that companies from South Korea, China, Saudi Arabia, and the United Arab Emirates (UAE) are the top purchasers of foreign farmland. These corporations from water-strapped, land-starved, and/or densely populated countries often make bargain-basement deals with unsavory African and Asian governments—or even warlords—to increase their own profits and their home nations’ food security.
A case in point: The International Criminal Court’s indictment of Sudanese President Omar al-Bashir for human-rights abuses has not deterred Saudi Arabia’s Hail Agricultural Development Co. from developing 9,200 hectares of land in Sudan or the UAE from investing in agricultural projects in several Sudanese provinces, including a 17,000-hectare farm for wheat and corn.
As previous New Security Beat posts have pointed out, allowing foreign governments to purchase land could threaten food security within the host country, and around the world. The heads of the Food and Agriculture Organization and the International Fund for Agricultural Development raised eyebrows last weekend when they suggested that these deals could be “win-win” situations, if done right.
These business ventures can also have serious political consequences: Several months ago, seeing an opportunity to capitalize on increasing population growth and limited arable land in its homeland, South Korean conglomerate Daewoo signed a deal to buy more than half of the arable land in Madagascar to grow grain and palm oil. Widespread anger at the terms of the deal—from which the island’s people would gain little—contributed to then-President Marc Ravalomanana’s unpopularity. After weeks of riots, Ravalomanana was ousted by Andry Rajoelina, who immediately axed the deal. “In the constitution, it is stipulated that Madagascar’s land is neither for sale nor for rent, so the agreement with Daewoo is cancelled,” Rajoelina told BBC News.
Yet although Rajoelina’s actions may seem to have preserved Madagascar’s land for its people, the coup he launched has spurred unprecedented destruction of this land, in the form of deforestation. The breakdown of authority that accompanied the coup spread into Madagascar’s protected areas, where groups of thugs have been illegally felling valuable trees at a rapid rate since the coup. This environmental destruction is particularly tragic for a country like Madagascar, which possesses some of the richest biodiversity on the planet and relies heavily on ecotourism for jobs and economic growth.
Next month, a Wilson Center event will explore some of the motivations, patterns, and implications of this rush for farmland. Five Wilson Center programs are co-sponsoring this event—demonstrating the global, cross-sectoral implications of this issue.
Photo: Deforestation in Madagascar. Courtesy of Flickr user World Resources Institute Staff and Jonathan Talbot. -
Water’s Role in International Development
›
A mark of a good event is that it generates further debate, questions, and ideas. “Water and International Development: A Dialogue,” a recent discussion at The Johns Hopkins University School for Advanced International Studies, was such an event. Geoff Dabelko, director of the Environment Change and Security Program at the Wilson Center, and Aaron Salzberg, special coordinator for water resources at the U.S. Department of State, went head-to-head to discuss water’s role in international development.
The discussion between Dabelko and Salzberg touched upon many issues I ran into while trying to program Water for the Poor Act funding while working as a natural resources adviser for the Economic Growth Office at the U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID) mission in Ghana. Once we received the funding, there was an intra-office debate among:- People who wanted to make drip-irrigation work we were already funding fit the Water for the Poor Act definition;
- People who thought the funds should be spent on a narrow set of water and sanitation interventions, such as borehole/latrine construction and water purification tablets; and
- People who thought the funds should be spent on the larger-scale water and sanitation infrastructure that Ghana so desperately needs.
USAID mission offices have specific strategic priorities and associated operational plans, which dictate the makeup of the staff employed at any given time. In this case, there was no one water specialist who could take on this important task. I had an M.S. in water management, so I was passed the baton. If the Water for the Poor Act is going to have a significant impact, USAID missions must have the technical capacity to assimilate the funds.
Dabelko and Salzburg’s discussion brought up even more questions for me: How can the United States reconcile its bilateral earmark funding for water with the growing trend toward donor coordination—for instance, under the 2005 Paris Declaration, or, in the case of Ghana, the Multi-Donor Budget Support fund, which encourages donors to contribute direct financial support to the Ghanaian government to implement its Growth and Poverty Reduction Strategy? Is there a need to have water specialists assigned to USAID missions, rather than relying on specialists in Washington, D.C.? How can we make municipal financing mechanisms for infrastructure more attractive to Western funders and host-country governments? Although Dabelko and Salzburg might not have had all the answers to these questions, I’m heartened that they and other water experts are tackling the tough issues.
David Bonnardeaux is a freelance consultant on rural development and natural resource management for the World Bank, USAID, and CARE, among others. He is also an amateur photographer (www.davidbonnardeaux.smugmug.com). His next port of call is Vietnam.
Photos: Top: Boy pumping water, Volta Region, Ghana. Bottom: Girl collecting water from lake, Volta Region, Ghana. Courtesy of David Bonnardeaux. -
At the Fifth World Water Forum, Africa Steps Up
›
A record-breaking 28,000 people, including five heads of state, participated in the Fifth World Water Forum in Istanbul, Turkey, last month. I was there, too, excited to be discussing this year’s theme, “Bridging Divides for Water.” Much of the conversation centered on how to bridge the remaining divides in meeting the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs)—especially MDG 7, which aims to halve the proportion of people without sustainable access to safe drinking water and basic sanitation by 2015.
While notable progress has been made in many regions of the world, such as China and India, other areas, particularly sub-Saharan Africa, lag woefully behind. According to the most recent numbers (2006) by UNICEF and the World Health Organization, only 31 percent of the population in sub-Saharan Africa has access to sanitation, and there are 38 sub-Saharan African countries where sanitation coverage is less than 50 percent. Access to improved drinking water sources has increased to 64 percent across the region; however, increases in coverage are not keeping pace with population growth, and the current rate of provision is not adequate to meet the MDG drinking-water target.
The Fifth World Water Forum, however, marked a hopeful new development. For the first time, the region of the world with the most serious water challenges, Africa, used the Forum to announce an internally driven water and sanitation agenda with a united voice. With support from the African Development Bank, the African Union and the African Ministerial Conference on Water (AMCOW) unveiled a plan to implement existing political commitments to water and sanitation. An “Africa Regional Paper” informed by the First African Water Week, held in Tunis in March 2008, presents African perspectives on each of the themes of the Forum (global change and risk management; advancing human development and the MDGs; managing and protecting water resources; governance and management; finance; education, knowledge, and capacity development), with a key message of delivering on existing commitments. In response to this agenda, the G8 countries announced increased aid to Africa’s water sector.
The desire to solve the world’s water crisis has generated many reports and frameworks over the years, including the Brundtland Commission’s report “Our Common Future” and the World Water Forum process itself. But perhaps nothing is as effective as a proactive, united stance from sub-Saharan Africans themselves, which could go a long way toward ensuring aid is used appropriately and efficiently. The fact that South Africa will host the Sixth World Water Forum in March 2012 should provide another impetus for meeting water and sanitation targets on the continent.
Hope Herron is an environmental scientist with Tetra Tech, Inc. She is currently researching water security issues in the context of the new U.S. Africa Command and U.S. defense, diplomacy, and development frameworks.
Photo: A Sudanese girl fills a water jug at a pump. Courtesy of Flickr user Water for Sudan. -
‘60 Minutes’ Gives Community-Conservation Programs Short Shrift
›April 1, 2009 // By Rachel Weisshaar60 Minutes correspondent Bob Simon recently reported on how African herders are poisoning lions, which sometimes kill herders’ livestock, with Furadan, a highly lethal pesticide (video; transcript). Today, there are only 30,000 lions in Africa, down from 200,000 twenty years ago.
Although Simon did mention “the Lion Guardians, a group of reformed Maasai warriors who keep track of collared lions and warn herders when the lions get too close to their cattle,” he failed to highlight other, more comprehensive community conservation programs in the area, such as the Il Ngwesi Group Ranch. I mention Il Ngwesi in particular because its health and conservation programs coordinator, Kuntai Karmushu, actually appears in the 60 Minutes segment, alongside Mengistu Sekeret.
The Il Ngwesi ranch has successfully used a multisectoral approach to protect wildlife and promote rural development. Eighty percent of the ranch’s 16,000 hectares are devoted to conservation efforts, including a very successful ecotourism endeavor that Karmushu calls “the Il Ngwesi backbone.” Il Ngwesi’s ecotourism enterprise—which employs community members, is run sustainably by the community, and directs revenue back into the community—has enjoyed steadily increasing revenue since 1999.“The amount of tourism that’s here is not sufficient to offset the cost of these people living with wildlife,” says Tom Hill, an American philanthropist who has set up a fund to compensate Masaai for livestock losses due to lions, in return for not killing the lions. But Il Ngwesi proves that with a comprehensive approach and local buy-in, conservation can be a smart investment for local people. The ranch’s profits are used for education programs, HIV/AIDS awareness efforts, conservation and security improvements, and infrastructure development. The community participates in spending decisions, which Karmushu says is “one of the key things” driving the ranch’s success. In 2002, it won the UN Environment Programme’s Equator Initiative Prize, which recognizes outstanding local efforts for poverty reduction and biodiversity conservation in the tropics.
ECSP’s website has more on the Il Ngwesi Group Ranch and other successful community conservation projects in East Africa, including video, PowerPoint presentations, and transcripts.
Photo: Kuntai Karmushu. Courtesy of the Wilson Center and Heidi Fancher. -
Weekly Reading
›The BBC has produced an excellent multimedia package (including articles, videos, and a narrated slideshow) on the controversial Gibe III dam in Ethiopia, which could threaten the livelihoods of nearly 500,000 people.
According to New Directions for Integrating Environment and Development in East Africa, the following activities are successfully promoting sustainable, integrated development in the region: “community-based management of natural resources for local livelihoods; natural resource-based businesses that benefit communities and the environment, including markets for environmental services; integrating population issues into development activities; connecting initiatives within landscapes; promoting integrated approaches in the formal policy process; and policy research and networks for advocacy.”
Flamingoes, giraffes, buffaloes, and other wildlife are at risk from forest fires in Kenya, according to the BBC. Police believe some of the fires were set deliberately by people opposed to relocated away from protected areas.
The Center for American Progress (CAP) has released two new reports on Afghanistan. Swords and Ploughshares: Sustainable Security in Afghanistan Requires Sweeping U.S. Policy Overhaul describes a three-day simulation conducted by CAP and argues that sweeping U.S. foreign-assistance reform is essential to stabilizing Afghanistan. Sustainable Security in Afghanistan: Crafting an Effective and Responsible Strategy for the Forgotten Front sets forth short-, medium-, and long-term policy goals for Afghanistan.
The UN Population Division has raised its low population projection for 2050, reports Ben Block on Worldchanging. The revision in the estimate was largely due to a rise in births in Europe and the United States. -
In Uganda, First Trip for Journalists Bolsters International Reporting
›March 24, 2009 // By Will Rogers
U.S. journalists “are by and large dying for the opportunity to go overseas and learn about a whole range of issues, from refugees to human rights,” but often lack the support of their editors—the “gatekeepers”—to do so, said Louise Lief, deputy director of the International Reporting Project (IRP), at a February 26, 2009, event, “Reporting From Uganda: U.S. Media Cover Health, Environment, and Security.” Leif was joined by Paul Hendrie, department editor at Congressional Quarterly (CQ); David Rocks, senior editor at BusinessWeek; and Ben de La Cruz, a staff video journalist at The Washington Post, to discuss the recent IRP Gatekeeper trip to Uganda.
President Museveni’s Surprising Views
“One of the advantages of these trips is when you go with a critical mass of 12 very senior editors…you can often get in to see the head of state,” said Leif, describing the group’s sit-down interview with President Yoweri Museveni of Uganda. One “big surprise for me was President Museveni’s views on population,” which he did not consider a challenge, said Lief, despite the country’s high total fertility rate of 6.7 children per woman.
She was heartened that the country’s poor infrastructure, including bad roads and unreliable electricity, did not deter Ugandan children from obtaining an education. “All along the road in brightly colored clothing there were thousands and thousands of children,” she said. “Some of them were walking for kilometers, but they were going to school.”
Organic Farmers Fight DDT in Uganda
“These things that we deal with in Washington every day have a real impact in the real world,” said CQ’s Paul Hendrie. He wrote a story on the Ugandan debate over using the pesticide DDT to combat the country’s significant malaria problem. “As one expert put it to me, ‘Farmers love DDT because it kills everything,’ and that’s why it was so popular”—and why it was banned in the United States.
“Uganda has developed an industry, a fledgling industry, of certified organic farmers. They’re the leading organic exporter in Africa and thirteenth in the world,” explained Hendrie. Farmers are concerned “that if traces of DDT are found in these products, they’ll be shut out of markets, especially in Europe, their biggest market.”
“It’s kind of ironic then that in Uganda now, today, the fight against the use of DDT is not being so much led by environmentalists as by farmers, and specifically organic farmers,” Hendrie noted.
Investigating Uganda’s Economy
“In a developing country, what is it that moves people, that makes the economy grow?” BusinessWeek’s David Rocks wondered before visiting Uganda.
“One of the companies that struck me was Kiwi Shoe Polish,” he said. Many people keep their shoes “for 10 or 15 years, so you have to keep them shined and polished and in good shape in order to use them.” But Chinese companies have begun counterfeiting the polish, causing Kiwi’s sales to plummet 50 percent in the last year. “It’s the poorest of the poor who are getting ripped off,” he said.
“I think that there is a lot of room for interesting economic and business stories to be done from Africa,” said Rocks, who is a senior editor at the magazine. “I hope to get my people to do more and more of that.”
Seeds of Peace in the IDP Camps
“The focus of my reporting was basically on security issues in the north, in the Gulu region, where there’s been a 20-year civil war,” said Ben de la Cruz, who filmed several videos for The Washington Post documenting the dangers of life in Uganda’s internally displaced persons (IDP) camps. In the online multimedia presentation “Seeds of Peace,” IDPs tell their wrenching stories, and peace mediator (and former Wilson Center Scholar) Betty Bigombe provides historical and political context on Uganda’s civil war.
“Despite the two years of relative peace, lots of people are still living in the camps and are afraid to leave,” de la Cruz explained. “There’s a huge fear factor because of Joseph Kony’s rebels—even though they had a ceasefire, they’re always afraid he’s going to come back.”Photos: From top to bottom: Louis Lief, Paul Hendrie, David Rocks, and Ben de la Cruz. Courtesy of Dave Hawxhurst and the Woodrow Wilson Center.
-
Weekly Reading
›The UN Population Division updated its population predictions through 2050 this week, and global population is now expected to surpass 9 billion by 2050, with most of this growth occurring in developing countries. Andrew Revkin of the New York Times reflected on the findings on his Dot Earth blog.
Although many of Rwanda’s national development policies recognize the links between population, health, environment, and poverty, actually implementing cross-sectoral collaboration remains challenging. A new policy brief from the Population Reference Bureau examines prospects for—and progress in—integrating these sectors. For more on population, health, and environment in Rwanda, read Rachel Weisshaar’s from-the-field dispatches on the New Security Beat.
“Population growth, climate change and demand for greater food and energy supplies are squeezing global water supplies, according to a new U.N. report,” says the New York Times/Greenwire. The report, Water in a Changing World, will be officially launched at the World Water Forum in Istanbul on March 16, 2009.
Karen Hardee and Kimberly Rovin discuss how population affects Ethiopia’s ability to adapt to climate change and increase its citizens’ food security in an article for peopleandplanet.net.
The Canadian Broadcasting Company’s The Current examines the global politics of water in a season-long series entitled “Watershed.” Recent episodes have highlighted desalination in Israel, collapsing fisheries in Nova Scotia, and Karachi’s black market in water.
