A lack of adequate money to fund adaption projects, particularly at the community level, has also seen the country lag behind in implementing these projects, risking huge economic and social loss the impacts of climate change are increasingly felt.

In an interview with this reporter on the sidelines of this year’s UN climate talks in Durban, South Africa, Dr Elizabeth Gray, Global Climate Change Fellow at The Nature Conservancy, explained that a domestic climate change policy was important in coordinating the efforts of various stakeholders toward a common goal.

“A climate change policy is important because it sets out the strategy to adapt and directs resources to adaptation activities that respond to priority needs of communities,” she said, as climate negotiations involving 195 countries prepared to enter their second week.

“Without such a policy there will be no mechanism to determine who is doing what and whether they are doing the right thing and whether resources spent have brought the expected results. A policy is also important in data collection and management because implementing adaptation activities should be based on adequate data on various aspects which can only be correctly gathered when there is an authoritative mechanism to guide the collection.”

However, Dr Gray hastened to say that even where there is a climate change policy, successful implementation of adaption activities will only be realized when there are enough funds for the purpose. “There is a huge cost involved in implementing activities. Of course a country could use its local resources but some projects need huge amounts of money and this calls for additional sources of funding.

“In fact this is one of the cases in which a policy is needed so as to determine how adaption projects would be funded,” she noted, adding that a policy could also give guidance on how to mobilize local resources to provide for an adaptation fund.

A coordinated national policy and secure funding might have made a difference in a village in Tanga District. In 2000  a community in Chongoleani Village started a project to plant mangroves after an increase in the volume of sea waves  flooded and destroyed their coconut farms.  The village got small financial support from an NGO for a project called  the Tanga Mangrove Development Programme. The village government initiated the project and was responsible for its supervision. In 2005, the mangrove programme  ended and the village government was left to run the afforestation project. Two years later the project collapsed, mainly due to lack of guidance.

“The village government did not know what to do and even district and regional authorities could not provide the required guidance,” explained Hassan Dengo, Tanga District Natural Resources Officer. He says that the villagers have now abandoned the project and they are unprotected from rising sea water levels. “They have also become poorer because alongside the mangrove project, they also started beekeeping, crab  and fish farming, which earned them some income. These projects were abandoned with the collapse of the mangrove reforestation project.”

Asked on the accuracy of data used to determine adaptation projects, Dr Gray explained that climate change is about trends in the various aspects of weather and data must be collected in order to establish this trend.  “Yes, we are talking about sufficiently accurate data. And in order to get it there must be many weather stations around the country so a lot of data can be processed to give accurate results,” she said, adding that Tanzania needs more stations so as to get accurate data that would be the basis for  formulation and implementation of climate change adaptation projects.

A recent briefing paper published by Tanzania Natural Resources Forum (TNRF) highlights the fact that Tanzania doesn’t have a stand-alone climate change policy as a result of which there are weaknesses in implementation of adaptation projects.

“As  it stands, there seems to be  a large gap between on-going activities related to climate change and lack of clear policies, strategies or institutional frameworks in  place to tackle climate change. There is a practical need to have a dedicated climate change policy in the country,” reads part of the brief.

While these countries already experience severe floods, prolonged droughts and other disasters, the frequency and intensity of these disasters are likely to increase, claiming more human life. However the impacts caused by these events can be reduced through appropriate disaster and risk management, said the report.

Presenting a snapshot of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) Report to Climate Change Media Partnership (CCMP) on the sidelines of UN climate talks here in South Africa, Dr Christie Ebi explained that there is some evidence that there has been an increase in the severity and frequency of extreme weather conditions as a result of the concentration of greenhouse gases in the atmosphere caused by humans.

“Economic losses from weather and climate related disasters have increased,” she said. “Fatality rates and economic losses expressed as a proportion of GDP are higher in developing countries than in the developed countries,”  citing the period from 1970 t0 2008 during which over 95 percent of deaths from natural disasters occurred in developing countries.

The report is likely to be released to the public in full in February, but a summary is now available and provides an insight into how disaster risk management and adaptation may assist vulnerable communities to better cope with a changing climate.

According to the report, there is a high possibility that maximum and minimum temperatures have risen on global scale due to the increase in greenhouse gases thus resulting in extreme events which will have greater impacts on sectors such as water, agriculture and food security, forestry, health and tourism. Water management systems will be seriously affected.

However, disaster risk management and adaptation to climate change can help reduce both the economic and human losses. “High exposure and vulnerability are generally the outcome of skewed development processes such as those associated with environmental degradation, rapid unplanned urbanization in hazardous areas, failures of governance and the scarcity of livelihood options for the poor,” Dr Ebi said.

She added that countries can more effectively deal with the impacts of extreme weather events if they include considerations of disaster risk in their national development and sector plans and if they adopt climate change adaptation strategies. They should then translate these plans and strategies into actions targeting vulnerable areas and groups.

Another way of risk management is post–disaster recovery and reconstruction. These measures provide an opportunity for reducing weather- and climate-related risks and for improving adaptive capacity. The report says that effective national systems for risk management comprise multiple actors from national and local governments, private sector, research bodies and civil society including community based organizations each playing different but complimentary roles to manage risk. In this view addressing social welfare, quality of life, infrastructure and livelihoods and incorporating a multi-hazards approach into planning and action for disasters in the short term facilitates adaptation to climate extremes in the long term.

Adaptation to climate change and disaster risk management provides a large range of complementary approaches for managing the risks of climate extremes and disasters. Effectively applying and combining approaches may benefit from considering the broader challenge of sustainable development.

Tanzania  has  yet to incorporate climate change disaster risk in its sector plans nor does it have a climate change policy that would ensure the inclusion of disaster risk in its national development plans.  In contrast, Kenya developed its first National Climate Change Response strategy (NCCRS) last year in order to put in place robust and thorough adaptation and mitigation measures to minimize risks. South Africa has also developed a National Climate Change Policy which was approved by the cabinet at the end of last year.

It is estimated that the COP 17, taking place here from November 28^th to December 9^th, will emit approximately 76.919 tons of CO2 equivalent to the atmosphere, according to the Department of Environmental Affairs of South Africa. This calculation is based on the estimated 25,000 delegates , NGO members and other visitors attending the COP.

International flights will have the largest impact on the overall carbon footprint. Other items took into account are: accommodation, electricity and water expenditures, food and information packs.

However, delegates and visitors will be able to reduce their carbon emissions through a voluntary offset mechanism called CEBA (Community Ecosystem-Based Adaptation Initiative), by buying carbon credits at www.durbanceba.org . Each credit costs 100 Rands (approximately USD12).

The funds will be used to support more than 42 initiatives hold by the eThtekwini Municipality, to which the city of Durban belongs. One of these projects is the Buffersdraai Landfill Reforestation Plan. It involves the community by providing them with skills to collect seeds from local tree species, grow them, and then resell them to the government. “Tree-preneurs” get from 5 to 10 Rands for each small tree, depending on its size, in credits to buy food, school stuff or building materials.

“My life improved after I joined this plantation program in 2008”, said Ziningi, mother of five children, who lives in the surroundings of Durban. “At the beginning, people didn’t believe they could get paid on that, but I began planting trees and that helped me not only to buy food, but also bricks for my house, and to pay for my driver’s license,” said Ziningi. Now she drives the bus that gets people to the tree nursery of the program, and she is a coach for other participants of the project.

Tree seedlings take several months to grow, and each producer can grow as many trees as he or she (most of them are women) has room at home. The goal of the program is to reforest land destroyed or converted to sugar cane plantations. The new forest is aimed at mitigating climate change in the city and providing job opportunities.

This project began in 2008 as part of the “Greening Durban Program,” to offset the 2010 soccer World Cup’s  carbon footprint.  Until today, the Municipalityhas  invested 13 million rand.

Other projects focus on adaptation to climate change, such as the Durban Central Beach Front Dune Rehabilitation. “The objective is to protect dunes and sand in the coastal zone”, explained Sean O’ Donoghue, climate protection manager at eThekwini Municipality. Dunes are important to manage wind-blown sand, and to protect the beaches and the infrastructure of this very touristic city. The municipality invested 6 million Rands to launch it.

It would be unfair to say that only some have been victimized by the changing climate, but what would be fair to say is that some parts of the world have tougher times than the others, and the Himalayas are one of those. Studies have shown that mountains across the globe in general, and the Himalayas specifically, are threatened by climate change. This needs to be looked into seriously.

Mountain regions have experienced above-average warming in recent years, with significant implications for the eco-system goods and services they provide to humanity. These are especially critical for the survival of  poor and indigenous communities. “Scenarios of climate change in mountain regions are highly uncertain and poorly understood, with large gaps in knowledge,”say the mountain experts.

Though there has to be more research on the mountains to find out the realities of climate change, the thing agreed upon globally by scientists is that the melting of the glaciers in the Himalayas is at a higher rate than in the past, and if this continues at the same pace one of the largest freshwater systems on the earth, also known as the water tower of Asia, would no longer be sustainable incoming decades.

The Inter-governmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), the scientific body of UN climate change framework convention, said that  glaciers have melted significantly, and that this will accelerate and affect the water supply from major mountain ranges where more than one-sixth of the world population currently lives.

Though threatened, the mountains have not yet received global attention due to various reasons. The most debated issues among the scientists is that there has been scant research regarding the Himalayas and climate change, as it is one of the most difficult terrains in the world, with huge diversity. Experts have urged that there is no need to wait, but start taking actions to fight climate change as agreed upon by the scientists. “There is the urgency to act to fight climate change as the Himalayas are in threat and for this, regional cooperation is the need of the hour,” said Dr. Andreas Schild, outgoing Director General of International Center for Integrated Mountain Development (ICIMOD), an inter-governmental agency based in Kathmandu that is the knowledge center for eight Himalayan countries, including Nepal.

Mountain countries like Nepal are demanding that climate change issues in the Himalayas be taken more seriously. They have started a project to bring diverse mountain initiatives into a common platform. This is very ambitious. But in the words of Nelson Mandela, repeated at the opening of this year’s summit in Durban, “It always seems impossible until it’s done.”  The dream of Nepal could transform into reality if there is hard work and excellent diplomacy.

It’s not only Nepal that’s in a tight fix with climate change, of course. The Himalayan range extends 3,500 km over all or part of eight countries from Afghanistan in the west to Myanmar in the east. It is the source of ten large Asian river systems – the Amu Darya, Indus, Ganges, Brahmaputra (Yarlungtsanpo), Irrawaddy, Salween (Nu), Mekong (Lancang), Yangtse (Jinsha), Yellow River (Huanghe), Tarim (Dayan), and provides water, eco-system services, and the basis for livelihoods to a population of around 210.53 million people in the region. The basins of these rivers provide water to 1.3 billion people, a fifth of the world’s population.

With these facts and figures, urgent action is necessary to tackle climate change by all the countries in the Himalayan region, in a consolidated form and also at the global level by all the mountain countries.

Though the countries with mountains have various stands in the global forums like climate change meetings, and are linked with various groups of countries like least-developed countries, developing countries or developed countries, the agenda on mountains should be common if we really want to save the elegant Himalayas and other beautiful mountains across the planet. It is not that mountains have been totally neglected, but what we need now is common efforts to save the mountains.

To be heard globally, it is time that all countries came together with urgency in the global forums like climate summit in Durban, where the world has been searching for solutions for the problems created by climate change.

Tired of suffering in silence, rural women from across southern Africa, and many from further away, gathered outside the Inkosi Albert Luthuli Convention Centre in Durban on Friday to make their voices heard during the COP17 climate change conference.

Shouting slogans, ululating and singing protest songs, they held a rally before marching through the streets around the centre, watched closely by police.

Nora Mlondoboza (51) from Mopani, near Tzaneen in Limpopo, explained: “We are here to make our voices heard by those people who are sitting there deciding our fate, deciding how we are going to live, how our future is going to be. We want them to take decisions that are going to benefit all of us, not them only.

“Getting together as women, we are sharing the similar experiences and challenges we face – all over Africa. Even in India women are experiencing the same problems we are having. As rural women, we have nothing. We cannot speak alone – if we are united, those people who are seated there, they are going to listen.”

With water shortages on the rise across the globe, people in dry areas suffer most. And women with families to feed feel it most. Margerieta Pieterse (46), from Rawsonville in the Western Cape, said: “We didn’t get rain in the winter. Rain only came in September, and vegetables grew ripe too quickly. It was very strange.

“Water is our biggest problem. We were given land to grow food by the municipality, but that land is far from our houses and it’s very dry, it needs a lot of water. And we have to pay for that water – they put in a meter to see how much we use. We have a right to use water – we grow vegetables not just for ourselves but to feed our whole community. We sell it cheaply because so many people are unemployed. Even if a man has a job, he earns almost nothing.

“We can’t afford healthy food so our kids get sick. Sometimes we don’t have clean water for days at a time. The soil is polluted with chemicals and so is the food that grows from that soil. If you eat it, the chemicals get into your body. That’s why we see so many different illnesses today.

“Government really needs to do something about it…”

The money would also fund research in smallholder production systems and markets, management and conservation of forest and tree resources, landscape management of forested areas for environmental services, biodiversity conservation and livelihoods, and impacts of trade and investment on forests and people.

Launching the programme on Dec. 4 during CIFOR’s fifth annual Forest Day, part of the on-going climate change conference here, Vice President of Sustainable Development at the World Bank, Rachel Kyte, said that the research programme on Forests, Trees and Agroforestry aims to revamp efforts to reduce deforestation and forest degradation and expand the use of trees on farms. The programme is the brainchild of a consortium of world renowned agricultural research institutions under the Consultative Group on International Agricultural Research (CGIAR), including the Forest Day organizers, the Center for International Forestry Research (CIFOR).

“The initiative focuses on the critical importance of forests as natural ‘carbon sinks’ that can help slow the pace of climate change and the need to conserve forest biodiversity,” she said, adding that improved management of forests and trees can play a wider role in reducing risks for smallholder farmers and improving the wellbeing of forest- dependent communities, particularly women and disadvantaged groups.

Already, USD90 million has been raised for the programme while the rest would be secured through fund-raising activities.

The programme comes at a time when deforestation and forest degradation are accelerating climate change and threatening the wellbeing of millions of poor people around the world.

“Under these circumstances, we urgently need a strong  and sustained effort focusing on forest management and governance, given the crucial role of forests in confronting some of the most important challenges of our time: climate change, poverty and food security,” said Frances Seymour, CIFOR director general. She added that without addressing deforestation and forest degradation, the world risks the further impoverishment of millions of poor people who depend on forests and trees for their livelihoods.

“On the other hand we will continue to witness continued carbon emissions from forest destruction and degradation that are a significant source of greenhouse gases, and loss of ecosystem services crucial to sustained agricultural activity,” she stressed.

Implementation of the programme will involve the collaboration of four of the world’s leading research centers. They are the Kenya- based World Agroforestry Centre, CIFOR based in Indonesia, the International Center for Tropical Agriculture (CIAT) based in Colombia and Biodiversity International in Italy.  “These will be the focal points of project implementation but  we will work with universities and research institutions  in the various countries when it comes to the practical implementation of the project,” Kyte told CCMP fellows in a separate interview.

In Tanzania, The University of Dar es Salaam through the Institute of Resource Assessment (IRA) has been conducting various researches on adaptation and mitigation particularly for small farmers in the rural communities. The Sokoine University of Agriculture based in Morogoro , Tanzania has also been conducting research in these areas, also involving the rural poor in their activities. These two universities are likely to benefit most from the programme.

Asked on the dissemination of the findings, the CGIAR Chair explained that information on research findings would be timely disseminated. “Our aim is to help communities cope with effects of climate change. This means once we get findings we will disseminate them so that they are put into use by small farmers, so that they may take adaptation measure and reduce poverty,” she said.

Presenting the results of a case study on implementation of ecosystem adaption in the rural communities of western Tanzania, Dr Elizabeth Gray from The Nature Conservancy said that many communities in Tanzania have adequate information on climate change, “but their efforts to adapt are hampered by lack of accurate data and finance.”

Right now as she toils hard to prepare her land for the growing season amid uncertainty about what the changing climate will bring, some of her countrywomen have adopted another strategy to attain food security.

Eunice Chipengule and 13 other women have travelled from Malawi to Durban for the UN climate change conference underway here so they can lobby for change.

“I thought I needed to be here in Durban with my fellow women farmers so that together we send a message to the leaders about our concerns,” says Chipengule, a smallholder farmer from Kasungu.

She is optimistic that despite abandoning her farm to come to Durban her trip will yield positive results, as it is her chance to tell rich countries to reduce carbon emissions and contribute handsomely to funds that will help farmers like her adapt to the changing climate.

“It is very frustrating to buy seeds, sow them, apply manure or fertilizer when at the end of the day everything is washed away due to floods,” says Chipengule. “If it is not the floods, then it will be drought which dries up three quarters of what you planted.”

Making money matter
Despite assurances from Malawi’s Meteorological and Climate Change Department that the country will have sufficiently normal rains, droughts and floods have become common, and farmers are having second thoughts about sowing their hard earned and expensive hybrid seeds.

Meanwhile, at the conference in Durban there are growing calls for international donors to do more to enable farmers like Chipengule and Magombo to protect their farms from climatic threats.

Women produce 80 per cent of the food in developing nations, according to a presentation made in Durban by Lorena Aguilar, the global senior gender advisor at the International Union for the Conservation of Nature (IUCN).

IUCN and GenderCC Southern Africa say women farmers should get the lion’s share of donor funds for adaptation to climate change because compared to men, women tend to have more limited access to resources — including land, credit, agricultural inputs, decision-making bodies, technology and training services — that could help them to adapt.

Nongovernmental organisation Self Help Africa says the simple act of getting more money into the hands of Africa women farmers of Africa could boost food production on the continent.

It is not calling for new funds but urging donors to reserve for women a fair share of their existing budgets for agricultural development in Africa.

“African women currently receive as little as 5 per cent of the available supports — training, access to inputs, to land, and to farm credit,” reads a petition the organisation will send to US Secretary of State Hilary Clinton, UK Minister for International Development Andrew Mitchell and other senior policymakers.

Lorena Aguilar of IUCN, which is among the organisations that have signed the petition, agrees: “Equalizing access to productive resources for female and male farmers could increase agricultural output in developing countries by as much as 2.5 to 4 per cent and reduce the number of undernourished people by 12 to 17 per cent.”

The donor persective

But the global financial crisis means that some donors could cut their funding to developing nations, thereby frustrating the women’s demands for more support, says Rachel Kyte, the World Bank Vice President for the Sustainable Development Network.

Kyte said the World Bank would aim to fill any gaps, and was encouraging banks and companies that lease farm equipment to provide more support to women farmers in Africa.

“We are working with Exim Bank in Tanzania and Access Bank in Nigeria to soften up their conditions towards women so that as many as can should have access to bank loans,” says Kyte. “The problem is in most African set-ups, women do not have assets which they can use as surety.”

The accelerating need for action and agreement is at odds with the pace of the negotiations.  Just last week, the IPCC released a report that further confirms the risks and costs associated with climate change. Even so, expectations for this year’s UN conference are mixed. Ernst and Young reports that ‘the majority of business executives see binding international agreements on emissions cuts as essential, but few believe it will happen in Durban.’

So, why is COP17 important?

Climate Action Network hosted a call with NGO leaders last week which highlighted four reasons:

1.     The Kyoto Protocol is not the end game.

There is a risk that the Kyoto Protocol, the UN’s first ambitious attempt to secure multilateral commitment on GHG reductions, might collapse. Yet for many insiders, the Kyoto Protocol is not the end all. The focus has shifted to building a framework that better enables agreement. According to several NGO leaders, the Cancun talks successfully laid the foundation for such a framework. “We are not going to get a treaty in Durban,” states Lou Leonard, leader of Climate Change at WWF flatly. “It’s more important now that we lay out a road map and a mandate by which we will get agreement.”  There is clear recognition that such a road map – with financing, technology and other considerations – will require more cross-sector effort and more than just government investments. As for the Protocol, the real risk is perceived collapse of climate change negotiations.

2.     COP17 will be ‘The Finance Talks’.

Past COPs have made it clear that establishing funding parameters and identifying funding sources for clean energy, emission mitigation, and adaptation is critical. COP 17 will focus on the Green Climate Fund. The Fund is intended to finance climate change action, both adaptation and mitigation, in developing countries. It is an important signal for the private sector. Industry leaders will be looking to see whether government leaders can establish infrastructure for the Fund and secure agreement as to funding sources.

3.     The world is watching the US.

Last year, the two world leaders, the US and China, were bickering about transparency and accountability. According to NRDC’s Jake Schmidt, the dynamic this year is different.  “There is more constructive dialogue between the two countries.”

This year, the world is very much watching the US. The question: will the US show that it has a plan to reduce emissions and to act on the country’s commitments? In the lead up to COP, Obama’s decisions on two relevant issues – the Keystone Pipeline and emissions standards for power plants – signal what might be expected from the US in Durban. What happens in the US matters greatly to these international talks, and similarly what happens in Durban matters domestically.

4.     Business leaders are increasingly involved – across sectors and continents.

Industry leaders are increasingly involved in the COP talks. As clean energy deployments in over 80 countries have skyrocketed, clean energy suppliers and adopters need assurance that governments will support this market. In addition, COP 17 will work to establish a technology center that will serve as a hub for leveraging and deploying climate monitoring, management and adaptation solutions in different countries. This will require significant collaboration with technology and information industry leaders.

The net of it is COP17 does matter. It matters because global warming is becoming a more pressing global problem that the world community must work together to address. The US remains a global and industry powerhouse whose actions and example are of critical import. And, it’s clear that industry must play a role in providing leadership, technology, and financing innovations.