Showing posts from category Africa.
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Increasing Human Security Through Water and Sanitation Services in Rural Madagascar
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For the past several months, I have been working with a team of other researchers in partnership with WaterAid and Columbia University’s School of International and Public Affairs to find new techniques for measuring the benefits of improved water and sanitation in rural Madagascar (draft report). Studies of the impact of water and sanitation programs tend to focus on health treatment costs avoided and time saved obtaining water, but our field visits and analysis suggest that water and sanitation development projects can also improve food security, education, and local community governance, and may even introduce new forms of conflict resolution.
After our team’s initial field visit to rural communities around Ambositra, a small commercial town several hours south of the capital, we decided to broaden our scope of analysis. We had noticed that livelihoods and community management were dramatically different in villages with clean water nearby than in villages whose residents continued to walk long distances to sources of questionable quality.
By conducting focus group interviews with community organizations, community councils, and other community leaders, we discovered that the new water projects led to the creation of water committees to oversee the maintenance and long-term use of these services. As these committees gained respect and legitimacy within their communities, they encouraged and managed additional community improvement projects. For instance, one committee collected contributions and organized the construction of a community storage facility for surplus rice harvests (which also stored the tax payments for the new water system, which are often made in rice, not currency). In another village, the water committee members coordinated efforts to self-finance and build a new one-room primary school, which subsequently required the government to fund water and sanitation facilities for the school. This brought water services to an entire new section of the village in addition to the school.
The committees’ direct interaction with the users of the tap stands increased the communities’ trust in the committees, a fact reflected in statements gathered through household surveys. Several water committees organized their communities to participate in a regional economic fair, showcasing their vegetable production and arts and crafts, an opportunity that other villages did not seize.
In addition, the committees codified conflict resolution mechanisms in their founding committee rules, formalizing a crucial tool for mediating conflicts between community members over water. These committees are also empowered to resolve water-related conflicts that existed prior to the project. The water committees are evidence of the first institutions developing in these small communities. Although our report includes suggestions for measuring some of the diverse impacts of improved water and sanitation, such as education and livelihoods, further questions remain: How do we measure the impact of water and sanitation projects on governance and natural resource management? Are there ways to quantify community-level social changes?
Food security is another area that changed after the introduction of improved water sources. The close proximity of water to the houses dramatically increased the variety and quantity of vegetables grown. Our interviews revealed a dramatic upsurge in the cultivation of high-value crops that are more sensitive to rainfall variability. The reliable small-scale irrigation made possible by the water project allowed farmers to cultivate crops that had previously been off-limits to them. These new crops diversified production and decreased dependence on other foods for basic consumption, promoting better nutrition and sustainable harvests. In addition, one water committee actively sought out secondary water sources in order to ensure sufficient water flow throughout the dry season, further increasing households’ food security.
There are additional indicators that we did not have time to adequately study and quantify, including increased environmental awareness; the impact on gender dynamics and women’s earning power; the psychological impact of clean water and improved sanitation; and higher earning potential due to higher rates of school attendance and the attainment of more advanced education levels. The team hopes that additional work will be carried out on these and other potential benefits of water and sanitation projects, so that governments, donors, NGOs, and private citizens will see that these projects are not just investments in pipelines and latrines, but in food security, governance, education, economies, and conflict resolution—all of which contribute to human dignity and security.
Alex Fischer is a policy associate at WaterAid America, where he works on the management and development of water resources. He is also involved with several projects focusing on environmental governance in post-conflict settings. He holds a master of international affairs degree from Columbia University.
Photo: A water system in a village near Ambositra has multiple uses, including drinking water, small-scale irrigation, clothes washing, and composting. Courtesy of Alex Fischer. -
Growing Food Insecurity Threatens Ethiopians With HIV/AIDS
›June 27, 2008 // By Kai CarterPlusNews recently reported on the harmful impact of rising food prices on HIV-positive Ethiopians. According to the nation’s Central Statistical Agency, the price of food has increased 40 percent since last year. The situation has been particularly devastating for those with HIV, as poor nutrition weakens the immune system and “hastens the development of HIV into AIDS.” For those on antiretrovirals, malnutrition reduces the treatment’s effectiveness and increases its toxicity to the body. As Gideon Cohen of the UN World Food Programme (WFP) explained, antiretroviral treatment “can’t work if people aren’t eating enough.”
The consequences extend far beyond HIV-positive individuals themselves, however. For infected mothers who have been advised against breastfeeding, purchasing milk or formula drastically increases household expenses and is often unaffordable. In addition, HIV augments adults’ energy requirements by 10-30 percent. Without sufficient nutrition, it becomes difficult for these individuals—who constitute almost eight percent of Ethiopia’s urban population—to work and provide for their families, undermining food security even further. So as the current food crisis threatens the lives and livelihoods of the HIV-positive in Ethiopia, it also increases the rest of the population’s susceptibility to the virus and other illnesses.
Unfortunately, this problem is not a new one. At a 2006 Wilson Center event, Jordan Dey, director of the U.S. Relations Office at WFP, said, “Hunger weakens immune systems, increases vulnerability to disease, and creates a platform for disability.” A Wilson Center On the Hill event today from 12:00 noon to 1:15 p.m. in the Rayburn House Office Building will examine what the United States can do to relieve the global food crisis.
According to PlusNews, WFP’s HIV/AIDS feeding programme in Ethiopia has exceeded its budget by 44 percent, and has had to borrow funds from other UN programmes. This alarming situation illustrates the severity of the situation in Ethiopia and calls not only for increased humanitarian aid, but also for mechanisms to ensure long-term food security. Nations will not be healthy, prosperous, and peaceful until their people are properly nourished and given the chance to develop to their full capacity. -
In Ethiopia, Food Security, Population, Climate Change Align
›June 24, 2008 // By Daniel Gleick“The only future is resettlement,” a local Ethiopian official recently told the Economist, commenting on dire conditions in the Goru Gutu district, which is facing starvation following unpredictable rains and insect infestations. “Ethiopia has been synonymous with disastrous famine since the 1980s,” notes Sahlu Haile in “Population, Development, and Environment in Ethiopia“, his award-winning article for Environmental Change and Security Program Report 10. In fact, writes Haile, “the agricultural sector—the mainstay of the national economy—is less productive per capita today than it was 20 years ago.”
If resettlement were to take place in Goru Gutu, roughly 4,000 people would have to be resettled every year, and the government has a budget equal to only a fraction of the task. In addition, previous resettlement attempts have been disastrous. According to Haile, “previous resettlement programs were not voluntary…neither were they based on serious economic, social, and environmental studies.” As a result, they led to hardship for the migrants and to conflict with local populations, who felt threatened by the newcomers.
In “The Missing Links: Poverty, Population, and the Environment in Ethiopia,” Mogues Worku points out that in coming years, a rapidly growing population—the result of a lack of access to family planning and education among women—will put additional stress on the country’s ability to feed itself. In addition, Worku explains that climate change “has intensified these environmental problems by altering the region’s rainfall patterns.” Ethiopia’s population and climate challenges will likely lead to additional pressure for resettlement, paving the way for possible conflict. There are many national and international NGOs doing impressive work in Ethiopia on food security, family planning, sustainable livelihoods, and other issues, but much work remains to be done. -
Weekly Reading
›An alert from USAID’s Famine Early Warning Systems Network warns that despite generally good rains, “conflict, livestock disease, and high prices for cereals and other essential goods have minimized the extent to which pastoralists can benefit from these rains, undermining their recovery from drought and elevating their food insecurity, which is evidenced by alarming rates of child malnutrition in several areas.”
The UN Security Council held a special session on gender-based violence this week, and the New York Times’ Nicholas Kristof applauded the Council’s (belated) attention to the issue. ECSP recently sponsored an event on gender-based violence in conflict and post-conflict situations.
East Timor’s citizens are demanding that the government revoke an MOU signed with an Indonesian company that would grant the company 100,000 hectares of land to plant sugarcane. -
MEND Makes Headlines With Most Ambitious Oil Attack Yet
›June 19, 2008 // By Sonia SchmanskiThe Movement for the Emancipation of the Niger Delta, or MEND (seen in a photo by Dulue Mbachu, courtesy of ISN Security Watch and Flickr), has attacked Nigeria’s oil infrastructure again, this time significantly enough to cause Royal Dutch Shell to suspend its production at the damaged facility. Worldwide crude price levels rose in the wake of the attack, as well as amidst concerns that a Nigerian oil worker strike could be imminent.
The attack, which took place today in the Bonga oil field some 75 miles off Nigeria’s coast, is being described as unusually ambitious for a group that has focused mainly on the creeks and swamps of the Niger Delta. In a statement released to the media, the group explained that “the location for today’s attack was deliberately chosen to remove any notion that off-shore oil exploration is far from our reach.” Shell spokeswoman Eurwen Thomas said that the attack marked the first time MEND has managed to achieve the sophisticated planning and acquire the advanced equipment required to successfully target such a remote rig.
Though Nigeria is Africa’s biggest oil producer and a member of OPEC, most areas remain mired in poverty and plagued by pollution. Widespread resentment over inequitable revenue disbursement has spawned numerous groups agitating for a greater share of the country’s vast oil wealth. MEND is only the latest of these groups, but it has made a name for itself through attention-grabbing attacks like this one. The group’s claim to have captured an American worker was substantiated by private security officials, who said that two other workers were injured. Since the upswing in violence that began in early 2006, Nigerian rebel groups have taken more than 200 hostages.
Eleven percent of U.S. oil imports—46 percent of Nigeria’s total production—come from Nigeria, making this escalating series of attacks particularly relevant to American officials, and perhaps providing incentives to mediate talks between Nigeria’s government and Niger Delta militants, which have thus far been unsuccessful. Yet negotiations will be difficult between such polarized players. Said MEND, “the oil companies and their collaborators do not have any place to hide in conducting their nefarious activities.”
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New International Peace Institute Paper Examines Resource Scarcity, Insecurity
›June 18, 2008 // By Daniel Gleick“Often, those who are already vulnerable to threats because they are poor, illiterate, lack political power, or face gender or ethnic discrimination are the ones who find themselves in the front lines of the negative dimensions of environmental change,” writes Richard Matthew of the Center for Unconventional Security Affairs at the University of California, Irvine, in “Resource Scarcity: Responding to the Security Challenge,” a new paper from the International Peace Institute. Vulnerable populations “face water and land scarcity, are displaced into marginal ecosystems where they encounter unfamiliar parasites, experience severe weather events, lose everything to floods and mudslides, and daily eke out an existence in peri-urban areas awash with human waste.”
Researchers continue to debate the security implications of various kinds of resource scarcity, but according to Matthew, there are at least four areas of general agreement:
• Resource scarcity is never the sole cause of conflict, but is often a contributing factor;
• Migration is frequently the link between resource scarcity and conflict;
• Rapid changes in access to resources are more likely to cause conflict than gradual changes; and
• Climate change will lead to resource scarcity in many areas that are experiencing or vulnerable to conflict.
Despite these dire circumstances, Matthew believes key actions and policies could significantly reduce the likelihood that resource scarcity will lead to conflict and insecurity. He offers 14 specific recommendations for NGOs, governments, and international organizations, which include supporting “the effort in UNEP to integrate the environment into post-conflict assessment, disaster management, and peacebuilding” and mobilizing “the enormous capacity of the private sector and NGO communities…around sustainable development, conflict resolution, and peacebuilding.”
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Africa Atlas’s Exquisite Images Reveal Effects of 40 Years of Environmental Degradation
›June 16, 2008 // By Daniel GleickOn June 10, at the 12th session of the African Ministerial Conference on the Environment, the UN Environment Programme (UNEP) released Africa: Atlas of Our Changing Environment, a comprehensive look at the environmental devastation being wrought in Africa. Highlighting the ecological damage caused by high population growth, climate change, and the unsustainable use of natural resources, the atlas shows before-and-after satellite images of “disappearing forests, shrinking lakes, vanishing glaciers and degraded landscapes.” The above image, courtesy of UNEP, shows how Lake Chad has shrunk to one-twentieth of its size 30 years ago.
As The Independent put it: “Put it all together and you have a picture that is hard to credit, so enormous is the destruction.” Much of the impetus behind the atlas was to spur African governments to improve their environmental records.
On July 1, ECSP will host UNEP Executive Director Achim Steiner at the Washington, DC, launch of the atlas. -
In Egypt, Record Food Prices Lead to Family Planning
›June 12, 2008 // By Geoffrey D. DabelkoAt Egypt’s National Population Conference on Monday, Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak—whose government has struggled to respond to recent civil unrest over skyrocketing food prices and bread shortages—told attendees that high population growth is a “major challenge and fundamental obstacle” to development. The following day, Egyptian Minister of Health and Population Hatem el-Gabali announced an $80 million national family planning program with the slogan “Two children per family—a chance for a better life.” Egypt’s current fertility rate is 2.7 children per woman.
With a population of 81 million, Egypt is the 16th most populous country in the world, and, according to Philippe Fargues of the American University in Cairo (AUC), excluding the desert, Egypt has the highest population density in the world—twice that of Bangladesh.
Is the government’s plan a productive long-term response to the food crisis? How can it be part of a larger package? Or is population a distraction from the real issue of corruption, as identified by interviewees in the Washington Post article where I first read about the programs.
I posed these questions to a demography and security listserv and got some interesting responses. According to Valerie Hudson of Brigham Young University, a political scientist known best for her book Bare Branches on the security implications of imbalanced male-female population ratios: “Mubarak would do more to achieve his goal of 2.0 children per woman by a focused plan to raise the status of women, for example, by:- Outlawing polygamy, or erecting such high legal barriers to it that it becomes impractical
- Fully implementing CEDAW [the Convention on the Elimination of Discrimination Against Women]
- Enforcing the ban on FGM [female genital mutilation]; 97% of Egyptian women are circumcised
- Educating women on a parity with men; the median number of years of schooling for men is 6.3; that for women is 4.4
- Raising average age at first marriage for rural women (current average is 19)
- Creating more parity in family law for women in matters such as divorce, inheritance, etc.—all of which can be found in CEDAW.”
“I don’t think population pressure is a distraction from the real issue of corruption; though the government of Egypt is indeed corrupt by developed-world standards (or maybe by any standard). Corruption, which is symptomatic of state weakness, limits the ability of the Egyptian government to address this problem credibly and effectively. But it doesn’t mean they are wrong about the problem.
I was actually struck by the modesty of official ambition to reduce the fertility rate from 2.7 (which is slightly above the world median, apparently) to 2.0 (which I’m guessing is pretty close to the middle). This assumes that, basically, a steady state population of, say, 100M Egyptians would be sustainable indefinitely. I’m not so sure of that. The impact of anticipated climate change on Egypt may prove quite formidable by the end of this century. I’m not sure a leveling off after some additional increase will do the trick….Too pessimistic? I hope so.”
The Movement for the Emancipation of the Niger Delta, or MEND (seen in a photo by Dulue Mbachu, courtesy of ISN Security Watch and 
On June 10, at the 12th session of the 
