Colombia’s indigenous peoples are working together to create an adaptation plan against climate change, which will bring together their own traditional knowledge with outside help from other agencies.

“It is better to die fighting in a war than to die from thirst”, says Walter Peña as he walks on the stones at the bottom of a dry stream after six rainless months in the department of Cauca, part of the Macizo Colombiano, a mountainous region in Colombia’s south-west.

Walter, a peasant from the region, has not seen a drought like this in almost 30 years. People who live some distance from the rivers usually transfer river water to their houses via small open water channels. But the recent drought has caused the channels to develop large cracks and the water doesn’t reach their houses any more.
 
The dry season also brings a wind blowing in every direction, drying every plant in its path. “This didn’t happen before. With this situation, there is no way to protect any plantation. This is all crazy, some water springs are gone,” adds Walter.

Unpredictable weather

Something similar is happening to the indigenous communities living in the area, home to seven ethnic groups. During the last 10 years José Domingo Caldón, a leader of the Kokonuco Indian community, has seen the dry and rainy seasons getting longer every year.
 
Before, he says, the indigenous authorities could predict winter and summer time, as well as the best time to cultivate, “They used to ask Nature’s permission”.
 
Now the weather changes from one day to the next and people can no longer predict what is going to happen tomorrow or when the best time will be to cultivate or harvest. The old authority figures are dying and taking their knowledge with them, and the young people are not maintaining it. As they integrate into Western society they leave behind their customs and stop believing in traditions and ancient wisdom
 
“Now people are cultivating anywhere and at any time. This is greatly affecting the socio-economic situation of the community as many crops have been damaged”, Jose Domingo laments. “It is the responsibility of humans for not respecting the environment”, he adds.
 
He knows his people cannot remain inactive in the face of this situation.

Joining forces

That is why his community and four other Indian communities (Poblazón, Quintana, Puracé, Paletará and Kokonuco) have joined forces. They are developing an adaptation plan to reduce their vulnerability to climate change.
 
Supporting them are two peasant associations, Asoproquintana and Asocampo, with the help of the Spanish Agency for International Development Cooperation (AECID), alongside four agencies of the United Nations (UNDP, FAO, UNICEF and PAHO, the Panamerican Health Organization) and some local authorities.
 
It is the first time that four UN agencies have worked together on a joint climate change project, with the aim of using the results to develop a national climate change policy.
 
The plan includes water resources management, the conservation of the environment, and health protection, all within the framework of the Millennium Development Goals. The agencies have already identified several traditional practices that may be useful for adaptation programmes.

Traditional meetings create early warning systems

Manuel Mompotes, former Governor of the Puracé community and a local leader of the project, believes that one of the strengths of the indigenous peoples is their custom of meeting and discussing problems. Community meetings where leaders take collective decisions and exercise justice in the Indian way are for them a tradition.
 
“With this strength we can get the active participation of the communities, raise awareness and achieve goals in adaptation”, says Mompotes. And through these meetings, he says, the participants can also create early warning systems.

Trueque improves food security

UN officials say trueque (bartering) is another traditional activity which can help people adapt to climate change. Bartering events, which unite people from different ethnic groups and also peasants, take place every two months in different parts of the region. “It is the place to exchange information and to create links between people living in different climatic zones”, says Luis Sanchez, from the UN’s Food and Agricultural Organisation.
 
He points out that bartering also makes a contribution to food security because people exchange goods from different zones, helping to supplement diets.
 
The Kokonuco community, for example, has often moved in search of new settlements. When the community resettles, it brings seeds which it has learned to protect and to adapt in the right mixtures to new climates. Now the different families are spreading the seeds of best quality to ensure food security. “This is autonomous community knowledge and it is a strategy to face climate change”, José Domingo says.

Harmful traditions to be tackled

But not every traditional practice is beneficial for the environment.
 
Burning the ground during droughts to prepare the soil for planting is something indigenous people have done for years. But the practice is condemned by environmentalists because it destroys soil nutrients and is a threat to drainage basins so it becomes a threat to food security.
 
This practice is one reason why some ecologists think indigenous people pose as much of a threat to the environment as anyone else. What’s more, taking care of the environment may not be a priority for many people already dealing with conflict and natural disaster. 
 
“As part of the project we will analyse what are the traditions that must be strengthened and which ones should be reconsidered to better adapt to climate change”, says Luis Sanchez, the FAO representative.
 
It is a challenge the UN project must address if it is to succeed.

In the Indian-administered state of Jammu and Kashmir, few of the vehicles plying the roads, the brick kilns, cement factories or the lime quarries meet the standards set by the state’s pollution control board. Each pumps black carbon, formed through the incomplete combustion of fossil fuels, and other harmful pollutants, freely into the air. Produced through diesel combustion and biomass burning, black carbon is now being recognised as a major contributor to climate change by scientists, after many years during which it was overlooked.

Black carbon – the overlooked threat

The good news is that black carbon stays in the atmosphere for only a short time, in contrast to carbon dioxide, which has an atmospheric lifetime of more than a century. The bad news: it appears to be capable of causing rapid environmental damage in the short time it is present.

In regions like the Himalayas, black carbon is seen as especially risky by some scientists as it makes the snow melt faster. “When black carbon deposits on ice it darkens it, thereby making it absorb sunlight which enhances the melting of snow,” says Veerabhadran Ramanathan of Scripps Institute of Oceanography in California.

Veerabhadran Ramanthan’s recent studies suggest black carbon is responsible for around 18 per cent of global warming, compared with 40 per cent for carbon dioxide. 

“Given its tendency to cause instant damage, black carbon emissions in Kashmir obviously pose an additional danger to Kashmir’s glaciers,” adds the Indian glaciologist Professor Syed Iqbal Hasnain who works with the Energy and Resources Institute (TERI) in Delhi. Professor Hasnain is currently studying Kolhai glacier in Kashmir which he believes is retreating rapidly.

Car ownership is booming

Pollution from vehicles is emerging as the primary source of black carbon. The regional transport officer, Anees Ahmad, says the number of vehicles registered in his office on 31 March 2009 stood at 2.45 million, including 68,940 commercial vehicles. Due to a boom in Indian-manufactured small cars and commercial mini buses this represents a huge rise on the 25,253 vehicles registered in 1986 and 80,143 in 1997.
 
Apart from private vehicles, thousands of diesel-fuelled vehicles, used by the Indian army and paramilitary forces, navigate the roads of Kashmir. Official estimates put the number of troops in the state at around half a million, though human rights activists and some political organisations say the real figure is over 700,000.

In October India’s minister for non-conventional energy, Dr Farooq Abdullah, revealed that these diesel-fuelled military vehicles are using 1.2 billion litres of diesel each year just in Kashmir’s Ladakh region alone, though he said efforts were being made to reduce that to 40 million litres.

Illegal fuel openly sold

Kashmir’s pollution control board says that more than 55 per cent of Kashmir’s vehicles do not conform to pollution norms.

“Adulterated fuel – kerosene mixed with diesel to make more profit – worsens the problem,” says the pollution control board director, Mian Javid. This illegal fuel is openly sold along the Jammu-Srinagar highway.

“The smoke density of more than 70 per cent of diesel-fuelled vehicles does not conform to the existing permissible level,” said Javid. “Surprisingly, one of our surveys has revealed that more than 80 per cent of these vehicles possess pollution-control certificates.”

The certificates are issued by various outlets across Kashmir which are registered with the General Transport Department. The certificates from these outlets are usually unreliable since the issuers, according to officials of other government departments, accept money for providing bogus certificates.  

Vehicles are not the only culprits though; brick kilns are also among the major emitters of black carbon. A recent survey by the pollution control board found 374 kilns, of which it had authorised only 59. Similarly, there are 204 stone crushers, only 83 of which are authorised by the board. Javid says the board is taking measures to curb this trend.

Closure orders ignored

“We have already ordered the closure of 39 brick kilns and 29 stone crushers,” he says. But the people of the affected areas say such orders never lead to action. “Orders for closing the brick kilns were issued in the past as well, but were observed only in the breach,” said Iqbal Ahmad of Aripathan village in Kashmir’s Budgam district where most of the brick kilns are.

Conservative estimates say that if an average kiln burns 15 tons of fuel a year, meaning together they all burn arond 5,000 tons of fuel. What concerns the campaigners most is the fact that the lowest quality of coal is being burnt in these kilns, as well as rubber tyres to save costs.
 
Yet another source of black carbon is the use of conventional fuels in households. People use firewood and cow-dung cakes for cooking and heating during the winter. “We have around five million people living in the villages. If an average household burns eight kilograms of firewood per day, it would work up to millions of tons of firewood,” observes S A R Shah, a scientist with the Department of Environment and Remote Sensing.
 
With electricity in short supply, influential families and all commercial enterprises use diesel generators for their energy needs. “Even in an environmentally sensitive area like Ladakh 116 hotels and 318 guest houses use diesel generators, since electricity is only nominal here,” says Mehboob Ali, tourism officer in Leh-Ladakh. Ladakh is home to a number of glaciers and many endangered animals.

Little government action

There hasn’t been any effective government response to the growing atmospheric pollution, and Kashmir’s environment minister wasn’t sure whether any environment assessment report had been prepared by his ministry so far. “I will have to confirm it, I don’t know,” he said.

Kashmir may currently lack the technology to reduce black carbon emissions, but scientists say that reduction using existing technology is a relatively cheap and easy way to significantly restrict global warming. One example of this would involve switching over to fuels such as compressed natural gas rather than diesel and petrol. Making public transport a more comfortable alternative to private cars is another. Terming the reduction of black carbon, a ‘low-hanging fruit,’ scientists say it should be plucked immediately to buy time when the world is driving fast toward a cliff in terms of climate change.

Jeanne Meintjes of Eco-Marine kayak tours in Walvis Bay and her tourist admire the seals / Mike Lloyd

Smoothly Jeanne Meintjes steers her kayak across the Walvis Bay lagoon, a precious wetland on the Namibian coast. Around her the water is alive with hundreds of seals, darting around and dipping up and down in the surf, vying for her attention.

“This year there are about 20,000 seals on the peninsula,” she explains, a particularly daring pup gnawing at her paddle. For the past decade the sturdy fifty-something has taken tourists onto the ocean to see birds, seals, dolphins and whales.

She doesn’t know about climate change, but one thing is clear: no fish to eat, no seals. “When there’s little fish, the beach is littered with spontaneous abortions [seal foetuses], the survivors shuffling around with hollow eyes. It’s awful,” she says.

Billions of fish wiped out

The Benguela’s rich fishing grounds are a result of south-westerly trade winds propelling cold, nutrient-rich water upwards from depths of 200 metres.

“This makes the system extremely productive, but lately we have witnessed some disturbing regime shifts that can only be explained by climate change,” says Hashali Hamukuaya, Executive Secretary of the Benguela Current Commission (BCC).

“Benguela Niños are becoming frequent and intense,” he points out. Like its Pacific twin El Niño, the African variant causes influxes of nutrient-poor tropical water to trigger a deficit of oxygen in the sea which makes it hard for fish to breathe, “Species that cannot migrate will die,” says Hamukuaya. “The last time this happened we lost billions of fish.”

Some fish species are disappearing, which has led to some Cape Fur seals having to migrate away from the area / Mike Lloyd

Oxygen deprivation also causes spontaneous algal blooms, or red tides, threatening the profitable rock lobster and oyster industries. Meanwhile some fish species seem to have disappeared altogether, affecting the fate of top predators. Seals are already migrating and scientists fear for the future of the African penguin. Trawling and eco-tourism could decline.

“There is no anchovy left in the system, and sardine stocks have collapsed,” says Hamukuaya. “Despite very favourable conditions in the past decade pilchards haven’t recovered, and we don’t know why.”

Marine ecosystems warming up

In 2008 the United Nations Environment Programme (UNEP) announced that 61 out of 64 large marine ecosystems were warming up because of climate change.

The Benguela is one of them. The temperature of the current has risen by one degree Celsius in a few decades.

“This leads to displacement of fish and affects spawning patterns,” says Hamukuaya. “The socio-economic consequences are enormous. In southern Angola many fishing communities lost their livelihoods.”

A seal exploring an underwater camera. Research has shown the Benguela current has warmed up by one degree Celsius in recent decades / Mike Lloyd

According to the Food and Agriculture Organisation (FAO) 42 million people worldwide live off fishing, while for another 2.8 billion fish is one of their major sources of protein.

At the World Ocean Conference in May in Manado, Indonesia, ministers from fishing nations voiced their concerns over climate change and the risks it poses to” global food security, economic prosperity, and the well-being of human populations.”

In Namibia fisheries constitute about six per cent of GDP, employing 13,000 people, all eager to keep their jobs in an economy that averages 40 per cent unemployment.

Factory worker Isabel Dewee, 48, from Walvis Bay cans fish caught off the Moroccan coast, where Namibian trawlers have ventured in search of better fishing grounds. “The seasonal work provides me with a little extra income,” she says. “I work twelve hours a day from seven till seven, sometimes even on Saturdays and Sundays.”

Jobs on the line

But the industry faces over-capacity, and as yields fail to materialise, jobs are on the line.

“The last time I set foot aboard a ship was in 2008,” complains Malakia Haugo, 35. Like many, the fisherman hangs around the port, passport and seaman’s book at the ready, hoping for a job. Haugo used to clear USD$300 per month working on a trawler. “But now I just do odd jobs and wait for a chance to set sail again.”

Scientists seem to agree that the changes cannot be attributed to the volatile nature of the current, but that they are linked to global warming.

“We know that wind patterns are changing and sea surface temperatures are rising,” says Lucinda Fairhurst of Local Governments for Sustainability (ICLEI). “This for instance contributes to sea storm surges, which affects fish nurseries and the number of days the ports can be used.”

ICLEI is in Walvis Bay to help the city prepare for rising sea levels. “From what we have seen this will be one of the worst affected communities in Africa,” Fairhurst says.

Urgent study launched

“Namibia joins other developing nations in being concerned now,” says Professor Geoff Brunditt, director of the Centre of Marine Studies in Cape Town. “Shifts in the movement of fish stocks are just one immediate concern. We urgently need better understanding of climate variability and its impact on the local economy.”

For the next three years Benguela countries, supported by Norwegian scientists, will interpret tons of data to establish how exactly climatic change affects the current.

Benguela dolphins exploring the bay / Mike Lloyd

As Jeanne Meintjes excitedly points out a pair of Benguela dolphins that have come to check out the intruders in their kayaks, one cannot help wondering whether three years is fast enough.

“The noise was deafening, louder than thunder” remembers Sher Afzal, a resident of Sonoghure village located in Chitral district in Pakistan’s Hindu Kush mountain range. “It was past midnight and I ran out with my four children and saw the water rushing into the village. We barely managed to escape. We saved ourselves but lost everything else.”

Sonoghure was once considered the most beautiful village in Chitral, known as ‘paradise on earth’ in local songs and folktales for its picturesque orchards, towering poplar trees and old stone houses built on a cliff overlooking Chitral River. Now half the village lies beneath 15 ft of boulders and stones brought down in a massive flood caused by a melting glacier on the mountain above. Around 112 homes out of a total of 330 in the village were destroyed.

Mountain communities living in these remote valleys depend upon their goats, fruit trees and terraced fields for their livelihoods. They are not responsible for climate change yet they are among the first victims of rising temperatures in the region. For them climate change is not a future prediction but a present reality.

Mountain temperatures rising

The villagers of Sonoghure survived the flood which lasted for three days in July 2007 without loss of life, although they lost much of their livestock. They had been forewarned by Focus Humanitarian Assistance (FOCUS), an international emergency response and disaster risk management agency, which had been monitoring the glacier. FOCUS Pakistan also trained several volunteers in the village and surrounding areas, giving them a stockpile of provisions which helped the community to cope after the flood.

Scientists warn that temperatures in this mountain region are rising faster than in the plains. Nusrat Nasab, Deputy Executive Officer of FOCUS Pakistan says they have identified 155 vulnerable lakes in Chitral and the northern areas of Pakistan, 15 of which are particularly vulnerable. “Several-thousand-year-old glaciers are rapidly disappearing in the Hindu Kush-Himalayan region” says Pradeep Mool, a scientist working for the International Centre for Integrated Mountain Development in Kathmandu. “As valley glaciers retreat, glacial lakes are forming.”

Glaciers melting worldwide

The flood that devastated the village is known as a glacial lake outburst flood or GLOF. These occur when lakes formed by the rapid retreat of glaciers increase in volume, finally bursting out of the unconsolidated moraine and ice which dams them. This leads to a sudden discharge of huge volumes of water and debris which can be catastrophic for those living downstream. Several glacial lake floods have been recorded in nearby Gilgit district as well as across the borders in China, India, Nepal and Bhutan.
 
“I believe that the glaciers in this region are melting at a staggering rate,” says Indian glaciologist Syed Iqbal Husnain of the Delhi-based Energy and Resources Institute (TERI). “Some glaciers appear to be growing, but it is the melting water underneath which is pushing them up. Sub-glacier lakes are increasing which then burst as GLOFs.” In fact, GLOFs are occurring in other mountain regions as well, in British Columbia, Central Asia, Europe and South America.

Village fears another deluge

In Sonoghure, villagers observed water seeping out of the ground near the glacier shortly before the flood hit the village – it is likely a lake formed beneath the glacier, which is still quite large. There are fears it might burst again, since there was heavy snowfall in Chitral last winter which has fed the glacier. If so, it will create more hardship. “The flood destroyed not only our fields and homes, but also the village hospital, schools, roads, water pipelines, electricity poles and swept away three bridges on the river that connected the village with the main road,” says Sahib Faraz, the FOCUS designated ‘village captain’ who was in charge of the response effort.

“We lost walnut and mulberry trees that were over 1000 years old. Each household had an orchard and we could sell one sack of walnuts for around Rs 10,000 (US$120) to the local tradesmen. Now we are taking loans and struggling to get by as daily wage labourers. We can’t even afford to send our children to college for further studies”.

Homeless two years on

It has been two years since the disaster and villagers say the government is still not helping them rebuild their infrastructure. A rickety bridge across the river connects the village to the main road and it takes well over an hour to get to the village from the nearest town of Booni by jeep. “We have lost our livelihoods. Some of us are still living in tents. Please let the outside world know what is going on here,” says Sahib Faraz.
 
The mountain villagers attribute the catastrophe to God’s will. “Perhaps we made some mistake and did not make God happy” says 73-year-old Bulbul Zar, who cannot remember such a flood in his lifetime or his father’s. Not many make the connection between rising temperatures caused by carbon emissions in the towns and melting valley glaciers in the mountains. Even if they do, they feel helpless.

Nowhere else to go

As for their future plans, they don’t have too many options. Those who have some resources are rebuilding their houses on top of the rocks where the flood hit the village, others have moved in with relatives whose homes were spared. A flood could certainly happen again, but no one knows when. They really have nowhere else to go and the realisation is sinking in that the government is not going to give them alternative land as compensation. Landholdings are very scarce in these high mountains.
 
The boulders and sand covering the village act as a stark reminder of the glacier that roared down the mountain and changed their lives forever. Throughout Chitral district, villagers look up at their glacier-clad mountains, and fear that what happened in Sonoghure could happen to them as well.

It was pouring in Kathmandu when my plane landed in September – the runway had cracked due to the torrential rains (the monsoon had arrived late this year) and the city was muddy, crowded and clogged with traffic. I had been expecting a cross between Hunza and Chitral – instead I felt I was in Rawalpindi! The mountains were far away in the distance and Kathmandu was full of precarious-looking concrete buildings (this is, after all, an earthquake zone).

Later, of course, I managed to visit the old parts of Kathmandu and was enchanted by the intricately-carved temples and ornate palaces. What’s more, they seem to have kept them in good condition and the historical places we visited were thronged with tourists. Anyhow, I had not come to Nepal as a tourist but as a participant in a climate change media workshop and conference, which took up most of my time.

Rooftop rain water harvesting tank

The idea behind the workshop, which was called “Third Pole Project: Covering Climate Change in the Himalayas”, was to draw attention to this mountainous region which is home to some of the largest reservoirs of ice outside the north and south poles. We learnt how rising temperatures are threatening this fragile region, which includes the Tibetan Plateau and the Hindu Kush, Himalayan and Karakoram mountains. Scientists now say that the temperatures in this region are rising twice as fast as the global average, and that could lead to major changes in the strength and timing of the Asian monsoon. Already the failure of the monsoon to arrive on time in Nepal this year has led  a few farmers to commit suicide. Take retreating glaciers into account as well, and the impacts on river flows, groundwater recharge, ecosystems and people’s livelihoods could be dramatic.

The highlight of our workshop was our field visit to the International Centre for Integrated Mountain Development (ICIMOD), which is located in Kathmandu. ICIMOD was created in 1983 and its members include India, Pakistan, China and Afghanistan. Scientists from all over the region work for ICIMOD. They say the Hindu Kush and Himalayan mountain ranges are a climate change hotspot and need the world’s attention. “Mountain systems are very fragile and sensitive to climate change…”, says ICIMOD. “Policy makers need to be made aware of this”.

I knew that ICIMOD was well funded, but I was still surprised by their impressive, well-equipped building. The Pakistan Government donated the library and computer lab section. ICIMOD does appropriate research and offers ways of adapting to their problems to mountain communities – but they can act only as facilitators. Action has to be taken by the governments themselves.

With climate change now affecting the amount of snow and ice and rainfall patterns in these high mountains, there is an urgent need to understand the changes and their impact on downstream users. Unfortunately regional cooperation, scientific data and exchange of information are lacking – for example, scientists are still unsure about the glaciers’ storage capacities. They just don’t know how much ice there is and what amount of water is available each year for irrigation needs. ICIMOD is trying to bring all the region’s scientists together so that there is more data sharing and regional and trans-boundary cooperation.

Later that day, we were taken to visit ICIMOD’s field station in Godavari, outside Kathmandu. An entire degraded mountainside has been rehabilitated by ICIMOD’s researchers and scientists since 1992, and it is hard to believe that the lush green area, spread over 30 hectares, was once denuded of trees. This is where ICIMOD comes up with the technology to help create resilient mountain communities. “Our focus is on adaptation”, one of the scientists explained as they took us on a tour of the mountainside.

Access to fresh water is a recurring problem in the mountains, and it will be made worse by climate change. The first intervention we saw was roof-top rain-water harvesting. This is actually quite simple – you collect the rainwater which hits your roof-top by channeling it into a large tank which then stores the water for later use in the house and kitchen garden. I thought of all the water shortages faced by hill stations like Murree in Pakistan – what a simple but ingenious solution!

Another interesting technique was in the water-harvesting ponds, which are lined with thick blue plastic to avoid seepage. These small ponds can be built on mountain slopes (wherever there is enough flat space) and they can easily store water for irrigation and for livestock use. Mountain communities depend on their livestock for survival, so it is vital to ensure that they get enough drinking water. Usually they have to hike for miles with their goats and sheep to reach fresh-water springs above the valleys.

There were also examples of gravity sprinkler irrigation, drip irrigation and hydraulic ram pumps (which use the momentum of water flowing downhill to pump it to villages further up the mountain). We saw Sloping Agricultural Land Technology, or SALT – growing different species of trees and plants close together. Dense, double hedgerows of trees or shrubs are planted along contour lines, creating a living barrier that traps sediments and gradually transforms the sloping land into a series of terraces. This prevents soil erosion and improves its fertility. In the long run, it protects mountain communities from land-slides, while the terraces can be used to grow cereals, vegetables and fruit trees.

The scientists at ICIMOD have also devised ways to improve cooking methods in the mountains – since foraging for fuel wood is a constant problem for villagers and the cause of deforestation. We met some of the villagers, who explained how community-managed forests have been successfully replanted in recent years. In 1993, the Government of Nepal reversed its earlier policy (forests were nationalized in the 1960s, resulting in massive deforestation) and community forestry restarted. The people now protect and manage their own forests – and as a result, forest cover in Nepal has increased dramatically.

ICIMOD has also experimented successfully with solar cookers and improved bio-gas plants. What fascinated me were the bio-briquettes which are now being used quite widely in Nepal to light cooking stoves and heaters. Beehive Briquetting Technology (BBT) converts unwanted bio-mass (weeds, paper trash, etc.) into charcoal in a charring drum. A mould (the only real cost involved) is used to turn it into solid fuel bio-briquettes which can be ignited quite easily and burn smokelessly thanks to the air flow through the various holes in the briquette. One briquette is enough to prepare a meal for a small family. In Nepal, many villagers have turned making briquettes into a side business.

Other techniques include cool chambers, rectangular pits made of bricks which have a water channel running round them. They are used to store vegetables and food.  There were also solar dryers that can be used to dry fruit.

Our last stop in Godavari was a visit to the centre for sustainable apiculture and pollination. Honeybees  are essential for the health of any eco-system, as they increase yields by pollinating plants. A Pakistani scientist told us that honeybee production in Pakistan could easily be doubled if the government paid more attention, and that the healthiest nations in the world were the ones who had the highest consumption of honey.

We left Godavari, our heads full of new ideas. Perhaps it was too much information for one day, but it was heartening to learn that the technology is out there to help poor mountain farmers adapt to climate change in the near future.

In the Bali roadmap, agreed at the 2007 negotiations of the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change, member states agreed to intensify national and international action to reduce the effects of climate change.

Resisting mandatory emissions caps
Developing countries, including China, continue to resist mandatory emissions caps arguing they have historically contributed little to global warming. The UN roadmap recognises they need the opportunity to develop, during which time their emissions will increase. However member states find it harder to agree when mandatory global emissions reductions should begin to apply to developing countries, and views vary widely between rich and poor countries.

Some industrialised nations are pushing for all countries, whatever their wealth, to agree to cuts in certain industrial sectors. Under this approach, governments would commit collectively to a set of targets, standards, or other measures, to reduce emissions from a given sector, such as electricity, cement or steel. The topic continues to be hotly debated at the climate change talks, as some developing countries see it as a back-door attempt to impose emission reduction targets on them.

No-lose targets
What incentives are there for developing countries to adopt this approach? One popular idea is ‘sectoral no-lose targets’. This means developing countries would pledge to achieve voluntary carbon emissions cuts in agreed sectors. They would then receive carbon credits if they beat their reduction target which they could trade on the world carbon markets.

Crucially, no penalty would apply if the country failed to meet the targets. Developing countries could then use the revenue from this trading to invest in clean technology. In China, the environmental campaigning group Greenpeace has teamed up with the Chinese government and the renewable energy consultants Ecofys to study how it might apply the sectoral-based approach in China’s electricity industry, the largest single source of emissions, accounting for about 40 per cent of the country’s CO2.

This incentive only works if they can sell their carbon credits at the right price, which is far from certain given the recent low prices on offer on the world carbon market.

Technology transfer: the bargaining chip
For China, like many other developing countries, the most attractive incentive for agreeing to voluntary cuts is the prospect of benefiting from the transfer of environmentally-friendly technology from industrialised countries.

Lu Xuedu is a senior official of the Ministry of Science and Technology and a prominent member of the Chinese delegation at the UNFCCC meeting in Poznan in 2008. He said China and other developing countries were strongly pushing for a sectoral approach which emphasises technology transfer to control, reduce or prevent greenhouse emissions. But developed countries wanted to assign mandatory, binding targets to developing countries, especially China and India, as soon as possible, he said. “This is what we will object to”.

Predicting emissions
Ascertaining emissions in China and other developing countries in and around 2020 is seen as key to identifying the emissions trajectory necessary to achieve to the long-term goal of limiting warming to 2°C above pre-industrial levels. Developing countries are being asked to predict the size of their emissions. This is another stumbling block for China.

As a large and developing economy with fluctuations in economic demand, it is difficult for China to project the future size of the economy and its emissions. “There are so many uncertainties in the Chinese economy. Nobody dares to make an accurate projection. There will be a large degree of uncertainty attached to any specific emissions pathway,” said Jiang Kejun, an energy researcher from the National Development and Reform Commission, the highest governmental body to address climate change in China. “In the case of power generation, it is very difficult to make accurate forecasts of electricity production and demand in a decade or more.”

Smooth negotiations are key
Gao Feng, the UN Framework on Climate Change’s director of legal affairs, expects that wealthier, industrialised nations will agree to additional emissions reductions, while emerging economies are likely to offer long-term commitments on future reductions. However, what shape those commitments should take, and what share of the responsibility developing countries should shoulder, is still unclear.

If developing countries have the flexibility to take voluntary action now, he says, new technology and capital from developed countries will help them build their capacity for clean energy and emissions cuts, making it much easier to negotiate binding targets later on. Smooth negotiations are the key.

On the argument that faster-growing developing countries like China and India should also accept binding emission reduction targets, Gao said this might not be realistic.”No-one should expect developing countries to accept emission cuts as early as Copenhagen. This simply won’t happen.”

He has worked on the farm for barely an hour and yet he feels like retiring for the day. He has to clear this previously uncultivated stretch of land, because of the desert’s constant encroachment on the traditional farmland.

“The desert was very far away many, many years ago. But it has been coming towards us and is now taking over our farms. Our farms are no longer as productive as they were,” he says.

He waves in salute to his wife and two daughters as they walk by, in search of firewood and water. They have a long day ahead as drying streams and arid lands mean longer searches for these essentials. “My wife now spends the whole day securing food, water and firewood for cooking, and has very little time to work to earn income to help supplement the little I make.”

Soon he decides to call it a day and visit his brother-in-law and fellow farmer, Sanni Mohammed, who was injured during a clash with nomadic cattle herders.

Locked in conflict over land
As the desert creeps southwards, nomads and peasant farmers in the region have become increasingly locked in conflict. While the farmers detest the animals grazing on their farmlands, the nomads become violent whenever their cattle are deprived of food or attacked.

In recent years the effects of climate change have become more pronounced in Northern Nigeria, which falls within the Savannah semi-arid zone and includes 19 of the nation’s 37 states (including Abuja, the Federal Capital Territory). Abdulahi’s plight typifies the situation in the region as it struggles with drought and desertification.

Things have got so bad that, according to the Abuja-based Weekly Trust, the minimum vegetation cover has fallen well below 10 per cent, let alone the 25 per cent cover judged necessary to support life.

Lake Chad shrinking
Worried by the threat to food security, livelihoods, water resources and health, government officials and NGOs have underlined the need for immediate action on climate change in the region. The surface area of Lake Chad – straddling the borders of Nigeria, Chad, Niger and Cameroon – has shrunk from 9,650 square miles (25,000 square km) in 1963 to 521 square miles (1,350 square km) today.

Environment and health officials are also concerned that the increase in temperature may have contributed to high levels of the bacterial disease, cerebro-spinal meningitis. Through increased flooding, climate change has affected diseases like malaria by increasing mosquito breeding grounds.

Presidential backing for adaptation
Nigeria’s president, Umar Musa Yar’Adua, said in his 2008 World Environment Day address: “About 23 million Nigerians are under threat of environmental degradation, and the implication is that Nigeria’s environment and its socio-economic development could be sensitive to the phenomenon of global warming and climate change.”

Following its establishment recently in Nigeria’s Federal Environment Ministry, the Special Climate Change Unit (SCCU) has swung into action to develop a National Climate Change Policy (NCCP). On 10 February this year history was made when a Climate Change Committee was inaugurated in the House of Representatives – Nigeria’s lower legislative chamber.

Already, the nation has begun initiatives to adapt to and mitigate the effects of climate change. For instance, under the Building Nigeria’s Response to Climate Change (BNRCC) project Northern Nigerian farmers will soon get access to a new variety of drought-resistant groundnut which can be cultivated even in water-scarce, semi-arid lands. The tests for the variety are already at an advanced stage

Rolling out farming initiatives
The BNRCC project is funded by the Canadian International Development Agency (CIDA) and managed by a consortium of local and international groups. It is also exploring alternatives to traditional crop farming and livestock rearing. Farmers need to find new ways of cultivating crops, and BNRCC researchers are hopeful they can use brackish water, water with a slightly higher salt content, to establish aquaculture in dry, degraded farmlands. This could help to improve nutrition and ensure people get a more varied diet. In the project there are also plans to cultivate vegetables in brackish water, which will help farmers to overcome problems caused by soil salinity.

Copying African success stories
Professor David Okali of the BNRCC says Nigeria hopes to imitate the success of climate change adaptation initiatives elsewhere in Africa. He points to experience of Nigeria’s neighbour, Burkina Faso, which has for over a decade operated a seasonal forecasting initiative. It works on the principle that rural farmers will increase their productivity if they have better weather forecasts. The project ‘Climate Forecasting for Agricultural Resources’, showed that most rural producers, even those with limited resources, benefited from climate forecasts by making small adjustments to their livelihood and production strategies. It will be interesting to see how Nigerian farmers benefit from a similar scheme.

But weather forecasting is but one prong of attack. Like its continental neighbours, Nigeria’s small farmers face a number of problems, including water shortages and poor access to credit to help them pay for adaptation measures. Nigeria’s climate adaptation programme has plenty of challenges ahead.

For the industrialised nations which are the main producers of greenhouse gases, climate change means reducing emissions so as to mitigate their effects. There is plenty of funding and the technology to help to achieve this.

Adapting to the inevitable effects of change is the other prong of the industrial world’s response. But for least developed countries (LDCs) with negligible greenhouse gas emissions, tackling climate change can be achieved only through adaptation. And that poses a dilemma for vulnerable countries like Sierra Leone.

The country lies on the tropic of Capricorn on the West African coast. The past decade has produced noticeable changes in its weather patterns. Rising sea levels were recorded as long ago as 2000. In 2005 there was a severe Harmattan wind from the Sahara, followed by the country’s worst recorded drought. Coastal areas have regularly been flooded.

Livestock washed out to sea
The low-lying settlement of Kroo Bay in Freetown is being more severely flooded with each passing year. If the rains come at night, this population of poor traders, craftspeople and retailers are flooded out of their tin shacks. Pigs and other livestock they tend are swept out to sea, property is damaged beyond repair and half a foot of mud is left in the wake of the flood waters. Each year residents try to build their homes on slightly higher ground or encroach illegally within the city.

The high tide in this estuary is 150 cm higher than it was in 1996, according to meteorological officers. This is exacerbated during the rainy seasons when the upland streams flow into the estuary. There are 32 similar slum settlements along the coastline of Freetown, home to around 150,000 of the capital’s one million residents. Wealthier people are not immune either. It is already too late for the millionaire’s mansions at Lakka on one of Sierra Leone’s most valuable tourist beaches at. They are being washed away.

Short of adaptation funds
The majority of the least developed countries have now drawn up a National Adaptation Plan of Action (NAPA). These plans are a key strategy of the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC), and offer an opportunity for each country to receive US$350,000 in funds to embark on their most urgent adaptation priorities. It is not much, but it is a significant help when there are no resources in the national budget for adaptation activities.  

But Sierra Leone, though fulfilling its obligations to the UNFCCC, remains, like most other least developed countries, short of funding. The UNFCCC member states met in the Polish city of Poznan in December 2008 to develop plans for combating climate change. For one Sierra Leonean delegate, Dennis Lansana, the country’s director of meteorological services, the negotiations fell short. “The conference was largely inconclusive,” he told me afterwards.  

Dennis Lansana insists the UNFCCC had promised to support Sierra Leone to produce greenhouse gas inventories, assist in communications with the UN Secretariat, and provide pilot funding for adaptation: “Very little of this promise has materialised in Sierra Leone in recent years” he says.    At the Sierra Leone Climate Change Office, I was told that the country’s proposed adaptation projects were realistic, if only the funds could work through the UN bureaucracy. Will it be too late?

One preoccupation for a country like Sierra Leone is growing enough food. Its National Adaptation Plan of Action reflects this, and it will receive international help for its dry-area irrigation schemes, but not until 2011, when administrator of the UN adaptation funds, the Global Environment Facility, can factor it in. Everyone hopes mass starvation will not occur before then.  

Arguments abound within the UN system as to whether the NAPAs are worth funding, even where the funds are available. Europe luckily is championing support for funding, particularly for its African, Caribbean and Pacific partners.  

Louis Riera, the European Commission’s development head, supports the EU initiative for a Global Climate Change Alliance (GCCA) to develop vulnerable countries’ adaptation and risk management. At the COP14 in Poznan in December, he told me that adaptation should not be postponed but the plans must be better defined. “The NAPAs are wish lists, vague, with a lack of strategic framework,” he said.
 
But Sierra Leone’s climate experts think their NAPA is realistic and strongly deserves funding. Priorities include a coastal area management review, the strengthening of meteorological data collection, and water resource management measures like irrigation and rainwater collection. A wish list? Hardly.  

Low priority country
Even so, Sierra Leone’s adaptation projects are low on the EU’s priority list. Vanuatu, the Maldives, Cambodia and Tanzania will be the pilot recipients from the Global Climate Change Alliance’s 2009 funding round, and 11 other least developed countries are on its 2010 list. So perhaps Sierra Leone could learn a lesson in pro-active jostling from other vulnerable countries.  

The country also lacks the political will to finance climate change adaptation. This is why an NGO, the Environmental Forum for Action (ENFORAC), in 2007 held the country’s first national symposium on climate change. 

The Union of Environmental Journalists and Green Scenery, both forum members, are running a conservation project with a media component. They are telling coastal and forest communities about sustainable energy, the dangers of deforestation, and the importance of forests in moderating climate change. In the words of a Jamaican meteorologist, Clifford Malu, ‘effective adaptation must involve grassroots community participation’.  

The growing awareness that climate change threatens poverty reduction and other Millennium Development Goals makes it all the more vital for the poor and vulnerable to know about the dangers ahead. A vulnerable country like Sierra Leone cannot afford not to adapt. But who is listening to its call for help?

Deleen Powell explores what measures are being put in place to ensure the survival of Jamaica’s farming sector.

Now a new form of household fuel is being developed to encourage people to stop relying on their forests for energy. Wambi Michael reports.