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…”

By limiting our meat eating, we could reduce greenhouse gas emissions, energy and water consumption. This is the main goal of the Vegetarian Movement (Vegan), one of the thousands of non-governmental organizations attending the 17^th UN Climate Change Conference (COP 17) , which is entering its second week.

COP 17 is taking place from 28^th November to 9^th December, bringing together delegates from 195 countries inside the International Conventions Center (ICC), as well as representatives of civil society movements that raise their voices in alternative forums outside the walls of the ICC.

Livestock generates 18% of global greenhouse gas emissions – more than the world transportation sector- according to reports by the Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) and the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC). This multilateral organization was established by the United Nations Environment Programme (UNEP) and the World Meteorological Organization (WMO) to assess the science on climate change and its environmental and socio-economic impacts.

According to research published by the American Journal of Clinical Nutrition, a meat diet requires 17 times as much land, 14 as much water and 10 times as much energy than a vegetarian one. “Replacing livestock products not only can achieve quick reductions in atmospheric GHGs, but can also reverse the ongoing world food and water scarcity,” says a report from the Worldwatch Institute.

By stopping (or reducing) meat production, we can preserve 70 per cent clean water, and save up to 70 per cent of the Amazon rainforest from clearance for animal grazing, according to the Center for the International Forests Research. Besides that, it could free up to 3.5 million hectares of land annually, and consume 2/3 less fossil fuel than those used for meat production, and reduce pollution from untreated animal waste.

Talking about climate finances — a major sticking point in the ongoing climate talks — scientists in the Netherlands found that of the estimated USD 40 trillion needed to stop global warming, almost 80% of this amount would be saved with a vegan diet. That’s a saving of USD 32 trillion for the simple step of turning away from the meat to a plant-based diet.

There is something we can do to mitigate climate change, and we can do it now, activists say.

As Governments of the world assemble to discuss a way to slow down the pace of climate change, 1000 women farmers across Africa engaged in a peaceful protest to add their voices to the growing cry for climate justice.

They say climate change has resulted in lost crops, lost income and a reduction in the fertility of their land.

Critics warn this could drive large-scale destruction of habitats such as grasslands, destroy biodiversity and undermine the natural services these ecosystems offer, like capturing rainfall and regulating stream flow.

Efforts are under discussion to reduce deforestation, which releases plant-captured carbon into the atmosphere and drives climate change. The focus is on building instruments that will allow big industrial countries to offset their greenhouse gas (GHGs) emissions by paying developing countries to keep their natural forests standing. Not only does this reduce emissions from deforestation and forest degradation (hence the scheme’s acronym, REDD), but it maintains these natural carbon sinks which help prevent further build-up of GHGs in the atmosphere. Farmed forests are also being considered as part of this REDD mechanism.

“Of all the causes of deforestation, such as trade and industrial development, agriculture and forestry are two of the main drivers,” said Dr Yemi Katerere, head of the UN-REDD Programme Secretariat. Speaking during a day of discussions here in Mexico aimed at finding solutions to tackle climate change while maintaining food security, Katerere said the successful implementation of a REDD programme needed to include the agroforestry sector.

One of the controversies of REDD is that by placing a value on forests because of their carbon capture services, but not on grasslands, for instance, this will drive agroforestry activity away from forest habitats and into grasslands.

“There is a risk of displacement as REDD starts to be implemented and the value of forests goes up,” Keterere said, “so agriculture could move to grasslands or low carbon forest areas. The types of policy being designed need to be looked at in terms of how they are likely to trigger these events.”

This sector could become more profitable if landowners are able to earn additional income, above and beyond yield profits, if they are paid for the amount of carbon their farmlands capture annually. This could drive a more aggressive spread of farmland, warned the Worldwide Fund for Nature’s (WWF) policy director for forest carbon initiative Gerald Steindlegger.

Agricultural yields also need to increase through more intensive farming methods, noted World Bank sustainable development vice president Inger Andersen, in order to meet the growing population which is expected to reach 9 billion people by 2050. Andersen said production needed to “rise two and a quarter times above 2000 levels” to meet this demand. Agriculture is critical to climate change agenda, she said, since it contributes roughly 17% of global greenhouse gases.

Anderson claimed that some methods of farming reduce emissions such as not ploughing and planting nitrogen-fixing trees amongst field crops. But WWF’s Steindlegger was guarded against the idea of spreading deforestation-targeted money into forestry and agriculture.

“We don’t have endless funds available and they will need to be prioritised. If it’s spread across it will not be available for the first purpose, which is to conserve forests and give an equitable share of benefits to the people living around the forests.”

In the meantime REDD funding should be the preserve of natural forest. Ultimately, though, UNFCCC processes will need to find ways to quantify and value the carbon capture and other ecosystem services of all habitats – grasslands, mangroves, wetlands – as a way to incentivise their conservation in a similar fashion, argued Steindlegger.

So far US$4.5 billion has been pledged by developed countries, though not dispersed, and is earmarked to get the administrative systems in place in various countries for handling funds and building capacity to monitor and verify the state of forests, ahead of a full rollout of REDD initiatives.

The San Antonio Tuk community forest, a three-hour drive south on the Yucatan peninsula from UN climate talks in Cancun, is just one of Mexico’s many communal land trusts, or ejiros. Created on the back of the Mexican revolution a century ago, they account for a staggering 70 percent of the country’s 64 million hectares of forest cover.

Environmental NGOs say the ejiros would be perfect for preserving forests under the Reducing Emissions from Deforestation and Land Degradation (REDD) regime now under negotiation at the UN climate talks, a scheme to pay tropical countries to keep forests standing.

The difference is stark between Cancun and the forest village of San Antonio Tuk. Cancun is a tourist playground where mangrove forests have long made way for dozens of air-conditioned hotels, one of which is the gigantic Moon Palace, host to the climate conference.

The contrast exemplifies the threat facing Mexico’s forests. “It’s not logging or fires that are the biggest threats to our forests, but development in the tourism, mining and agricultural sectors,” says Sergio Madrid Zubirán of the Consejo Civil Mexicana para la Silvicultura Sostenible, a network of NGOs that work on forests.

The Consejo supports four forest projects which it hopes will benefit from a future REDD scheme by sequestering carbon and protecting trees. San Antonia Tuk lies in one of the larger zones, a 70,000-hectare community forest in the heavily deforested state of Quintana Roo, home to 54 Mayan communities.

LOCAL PARTICIPATION IN REDD?

In Mexico, conservationists are divided on whether to protect forests by keeping people out of them, or by appointing indigenous people like the Mayan forest dwellers as official forest custodians. Some REDD proposals on the table take an ambivalent approach to the participation of indigenous communities, with some nations reluctant to use the scheme as a way of empowering local ethnic groups.

“It’s the people who live in the forest that know best how to preserve it,” counters Zubirán. “A non-touch strategy won’t work because nobody accrues benefits from conserving the forest. If we involve local communities, we win much more.”

Community member and biologist Marco Antonio explains that the project was launched with the aim of giving economic support to the keepers of the forest. “Over 40 groups of land owners deliver essential environmental services for which they receive an incentive from the central government,” he says.

This concept, in which forest people get paid for safeguarding, for instance, the water supply used by downstream communities, is rapidly gaining ground. “For our stewardship, the government gives us 326 pesos ($26 US) per hectare per year,” says Cante Chuc who runs a privately owned network that mediates between communities and project funders.

That number doesn’t seem much, but with hundreds of hectares per community member, it provides an additional income, while the trend of deforestation has been halted, says the Consejo’s spokesperson, Iván Zúñiga Pérez-Tejada.

The project is supported by a $200,000 grant from HSBC Bank, the Ford Foundation and the Consejo.

The Mexican NGO hopes to complete a baseline survey of carbon sequestration in the forest in June next year, and has an eye on how it could benefit from a REDD agreement at the Cancun climate talks.

The Consejo argues that many of the tricky issues associated with REDD – such as ensuring loss of forests doesn’t occur in other ways, verifying how much extra carbon is stored as a result, and making sure that carbon isn’t simply released later – could be solved by putting the Mayan forest communities in charge of monitoring schemes, because they have used the forest sustainably for centuries.

“A well-organised community is the most effective remedy against illegal logging,” argues Zubirán.

FORESTS FOR FUTURE GENERATIONS

Catalina Briceño Lopez, a sinewy 69-year old, was one of the first Maya to arrive in the area. “I came here at 15 with my husband who was one of the founders of San Antonio Tuk,” she says.

She recalls a pristine forest where no one lived. “It is important to pass on this sense of conserving the forest for next generations. I have a piece of land, and when my children and grandchildren come to visit me, I teach them about how to live from the forest without over exploiting it,” she says.

“It is a beautiful thing to preserve the environment, I am very excited about this (project).”

Don Santos Ilichois, 64, carves out an environmentally sustainable living by harvesting gum (known as chicle) for the chewing gum industry. A packet of “organic tropical forest chewing gum” sells for as much as 2 euros in European supermarkets.

While most Westerners his age are reaching for their slippers, Don Santos straps on a pair of spikes and readies himself to climb an 800-year-old chicle tree. A couple metres above ground, he hacks diagonal lines into the ancient forest giant.

“The gum will run down the tree through these lines where we can collect it,” he says. “It will not kill the tree.”

Wiping the sweat off his tough, sun-hardened face, he explains it takes several hours to work the entire length of a tree like this. In one day, he can harvest about 1.5 kg of gum from a tree, with 1 kg of gum fetching about 55 pesos ($4).

“We hope that with an agreement on forests (at the U.N. talks), we can keep on using the trees in our traditional ways,” he says. But the future of REDD – hailed only a few weeks back as one of the few likely successes from Cancun – seems uncertain.

The Japanese government reiterated last week it will not join a second phase of the Kyoto Protocol after the initial period expires next year, injecting a sense of pessimism into the negotiations.

The death of the Kyoto Protocol would jeopardise the carbon offsetting initiatives it has given birth to, including the Clean Development Mechanism. And any subsequent collapse of budding carbon markets around the world could pull the rug from under a hard-fought REDD deal before it even gets off the ground.

“Projects on the ground are looking for a signal that REDD is coming and that long-term sustainable finance will be available,” said Davyth Stewart of Global Witness, a London-based NGO that advocates for the fair use of natural resources.

“Without a REDD deal here in Cancun, some of those projects will be forced to search for funding elsewhere, including multilateral development banks and the private sector, where they will be subject to different or minimal international common standards.”

Nigerian Foreign Affairs Minister, Ojo Madueke, has said that a new date to end gas flaring in the country will be announced in the next few days.

Madueke, who spoke on Tuesday at the “Nigerian Climate Change Investment Forum” in Copenhagen , Denmark , promised that his government would no more change its position.

He promised, “we will make a fair commitment on ending gas flaring in the next few days before the international community, and we will deliver this time around.”

During a presentation to open the day-long event, he said that Nigeria would utilise the challenges posed by climate change to diversify the economy from an oil dependant one.

The minister, who is representing President Umar Yar’ Adua at the climate summit, noted that while making the most of the proceeds from fossil fuel (oil), Nigeria would vigorously pursue green technology that will ensure revenue from sources other than petroleum.

He described climate change and its accompanying effects as an apocalypse, and called for urgent actions to address the outcome of the phenomenon.

And speaking at the same occasion, Minister of Petroleum, Dr. Rilwan Lukman, said the world has responsibility to ensure a sustainable environment  for the survival of mankind including future generations.

“The environment is the common heritage of mankind,” he said, and urged both developed and developing countries to reach a compromise and come up with a viable agreement to save the earth from environmental destruction.

“We would like to see more positive commitment and cooperation from the United States of America . COP15 must succeed. G77, China and Africa Group must cooperate to reach a consensus,” he pleaded.

Another Nigerian official, Timpre Sylva, the Bayelsa State Governor, disclosed that the Nigerian state had begun to feel the impact of climate change such as frequent flooding.
“ Bayelsa State happens to be one of the states below sea level. We know that most of the problems of climate are due to the activities of the west, and so we have come to tell the polluters, who have caused these problems, to come to Nigeria and Bayelsa State to invest in cleaner energy,” he added.

Representatives of the smaller countries of the region, Afghanistan, Bhutan, Nepal and Pakistan, were speaking during a side event at the UN Climate Change Convention conference in Copenhagen. The event was organised by the International Centre for Integrated Mountain Development (ICIMOD),  a regional knowledge development centre serving the eight regional member countries of the Hindu Kush-Himalayas – Afghanistan, Bangladesh, Bhutan, China, India, Myanmar, Nepal, and Pakistan.

“The most vulnerable countries in the world are in the Hindu Kush Himalayan region, which is home to 1.3 billion people. We are facing increasing threats of floods, droughts and forest fires, and our agriculture-based economy is at huge risk”, said Nepal’s prime minister, Madhav Kumar.

Nepal stressed that the poorer countries of the region are suffering even though they have made no contribution to global warming.

“Nepal is responsible for only 0.5 per cent of greenhouse gas emissions, yet it is at the receiving end of global warming”,  the prime minister said. The director general of ICIMOD,  Andreas Schild, pointed out that the HKH region contains 100 square kilometres of ice and 33,000 cubic metres of ice mass, which act as a source of water for one-third of the world’s population.

Bhutan’s agriculture minister, Pema Gyamtsho, said each country of the region faced a potentional threat from climate change. Its impact had already started taking a toll, the minister said. “Some glaciers in our country have retreated  by 200 metres. We have over 2,000 glacial lakes, of which 25 are potentially dangerous,” he said.

He stressed the need to take integrated adaptation measures in South Asia, where every country faced threats which could cause damage near at hand. “All of us need to have a common strategy. And I think we need to seal a deal at the regional level”, he said.

Mostapha Zaher, director general of Afghanistan’s National Environmental Protection Agency (NEPA), said that while his country had suffered from conflict for the last 30 years, “now it faces the challenge of climate change”. He said it was a huge challenge for a poor country like Afghanistan.

“It needs high technology and huge funds to cope with such a challenge. I think the developed countries should have no problem in providing this to the least developed countries,” Zaher said.

“Afghanistan’s economy is largely based on agriculture and 80 per cent of our population depend on farming for their livelihoods. But continuous droughts are posing a serious threat to the agro-economy and food security.”

The representative from Pakistan, Dr Arshad Muhammad Khan, is also the director of the Global Change Impact Studies Centre,  a think tank set up to help national planners and decision makers in areas such as climate, water, energy, food, agriculture, health, ecology and new technologies.

He said the “most vulnerable country to the impacts of climate change is Pakistan.”  Khan said Pakistan’s entire river system depended on the Himalayan glaciers. “Pakistan’s lifeline is the Indus river system which gets 75 to 80 per cent of its water from the glaciers. But with these glaciers facing threats, our irrigation network, the world’s largest, is also exposed to danger,” he said.