The sobering effect of drunken forests: Why this Arctic community chose conservation over Big Oil

By Edward Struzik

Angus Sanguez is 67-years-old and whippet-thin. His face has been weathered by years of living in the Dehcho region in Canada’s Northwest Territories, a sub-Arctic wilderness that is on the frontlines of climate change.

Sanguez was born and raised in the Dene community in Tthets’ek’ehdeli (also known as Jean Marie River), one of six indigenous communities in the Dehcho region. Covering 215,615 sq km, the Dehcho is twice the size of England, inhabited by only 3,000 people, as well as countless moose, bears and bison that roam over a massive storehouse of carbon trapped in permafrost.

Sanguez was visiting the Scotty Creek Research station in Canada’s sub-Arctic when he had a eureka moment while gazing upon all the dying trees that could no longer root themselves in the thawing peat. “So that’s why they call this a ‘drunken forest,’” he said. “I heard that term many times. But I never knew what it meant. Now I see these how these trees that have fallen down everywhere are likes drunks coming out of a bar, falling down and leaning up against each other. We are seeing a lot of this.”

Climate change is the latest threat to the lives and livelihoods of the Dene people and other indigenous communities throughout Canada. For decades, they have successfully fended off Big Oil and resisted wit one notable exception, offers to partner with fossil fuel companies, opting instead to collaborate with scientists and the national government to create Canada’s first indigenous protected area in 2018 and appoint indigenous guardians to monitor environmental changes. Scientists say their approach could serve as a conservation and climate adaptation model for other indigenous communities.

Climate threats

Climate change is transforming the Dehcho. It is one of the most rapidly warming regions on Earth.

In recent years, Sanquez and the Dene have experienced catastrophic flooding, massive landslides that have drained and browned lakes, and runaway wildfires like the ones in 2014 that burned 570,000 hectares of forest in the southern territories. Those 380 fires released roughly 94.5 megatonnes of carbon, half of the carbon sequestered annually in all of Canada, as well as a potentially toxic form of mercury that has been locked in permafrost.

William Quinton, a Laurier University scientist who has been monitoring the impact of climate change on permafrost in the Dehcho for 23 years, runs the Scotty Creek Research Station 50 km south of Fort Simpson, a remote village, 500km west of the capital Yellowknife.

Permafrost is like a cement that holds carbon rich peat, rocks and mineral-richly soils together. In addition to warmer temperatures, drilling for oil, and mining for metals and minerals can hasten its thaw and complicate the maintenance and cleanup of mines such as the abandoned Cantung mine located along one of the headwaters of the Nahanni River system.

The thawing permafrost can also be seen in the seismic lines around Scotty Creek that were bulldozed to identify sources of oil and gas, The lines, the single largest human disturbance in the Dehcho region, were streaming with water that had percolated up from the thawing permafrost.

In the 1950s, permafrost covered nearly 75% of the 152 square km drainage area of Scotty Creek. It’s down to a third of that. Where there still is permafrost, it is often covered by a layer of talik, unfrozen ground that does not refreeze in winter when snow acts like a blanket, trapping some of the heat.

Thick, long lasting snow cover followed by a quick spring meltdown helps spread the thaw downwards and outwards. Trees literally drown as the ground surface collapses into depressions, and as melting snow and rain fills those depressions with water. Quinton has had to move his research camp twice to avoid being flooded out.

“What we’re seeing perhaps more clearly than any other place in the world is ecosystem change occurring in fast motion,” said Quinton. “The involvement of the Dene is important to our understanding of what is happening because the elders here have a longer record of what was there in the past and how it is affecting fish and wildlife.”

From Fort Simpson, a small single-engine float plane flew us across a wilderness that spread out as far as the eye could see towards the Mackenzie Mountains where the last icefields in the mainland of the Northwest Territories are wasting away as fast as sea ice is melting.

The lessons learned at Scotty Creek have been sobering, said Quinton at Goose Lake. It was so hot and buggy that on shore, the typically gregarious ravens (datsą́) and trickers whisky jacks, (ohk’aa), were lying low. The Mackenzie Valley can be the hottest place in Canada in summer and the coldest in winter.

“It’s tough to be a tree in this landscape,” Quinton said. “The thawing that we are seeing is turning forests into bogs and other wetlands that may not be able to support the fish and animals that the Dene rely on for food and clothing.”

“The implications for water quality, vegetation changes, biodiversity and for the people living in this part of the world are profound,” he said.

The best way of visualising what Quinton is talking about is to describe what occurred 300km to the northeast in the Mackenzie bison sanctuary. Warming temperatures and the 2014 wildfires thawed permafrost so intensely that incoming water from groundwater channels drove most of the 700 wood bison out of the protected area.

The exodus was so complete, according to Terry Armstrong, a biologist working for the government of the Northwest Territories. He told Climate Home that he had a difficult time finding animals when he flew in to do a count the following year.

No one can say with certainty whether it was swamping that drove the animals out. But York University scientist Jennifer Korosi who was there at Scotty Creek says it’s hard not to make the connection considering the amount of water in the sanctuary doubled between 1986 and 2014 and Falaise Lake, the largest in the sanctuary, grew by 824%.

The tree ring and sediment coring Korosi did indicates that flooding has occurred in the past, but not nearly on this scale, for the past 300 years. Indigenous elders say nothing like it has happened in their lifetime.

Fusing science with indigenous knowledge

The message from indigenous elders and leaders at Fort Simpson was unambiguous. “Climate change is not going to wait for us to find a way of adapting and mitigating,” said Gladys Norwegian who was once chief of Jean Marie River and grand chief of the Dehcho.

“It’s happening now. We need to work as partners with scientists at Scotty Creek to see what is coming. We also need to get our own act together,” Norwegian said.

What the Dene community would like to know from the Canadian scientists they are collaborating with is how future warming will further impact their food, water and infrastructure, which is built on rapidly thawing permafrost. They are working with scientists at Scotty Creek as equal partners, to learn and better evaluate resource developments and climate impacts on their land.

Quinton believes the “unique fusion of science and indigenous knowledge” provides a model for other indigenous communities in Canada facing climate threats.

“It is a clear departure from how science and land management was conducted in the north in the past,” he said. “Because the livelihoods of the people here are so closely dependent on what is happening on the land, a management approach that puts them in leadership positions is critical.”

Not only does thawing lead to erosion and flooding, it dissolves carbon in water and enhances microbial activity that can transform harmless elemental mercury securely stored in permafrost into toxic methylmercury. This brownification of streams, rivers and lakes is how University of Waterloo scientist Heidi Swanson and University of Alberta ecologist Dave Olefeldt got involved.

With Sanguez’s assistance, Swanson is testing fish for mercury and at their request, advising people what fish they can eat. Olefeldt and his team are tracking the movement of mercury through these catchments.

There is no discernable sign yet that the contaminated fish are affecting human health. But George Low, who coordinates the aquatic resources and oceans management programme for the Dehcho First Nations, says it’s important to keep track of what’s going on, given how many fish are consumed by indigenous people.

It’s not just a matter of monitoring the situation. Community members like Sanguez are also assisting Swanson in an experiment to remove some of the older, bigger fish from lakes. This leaves the younger fish with more food and the opportunity to grow fast without accumulating so much mercury.

The merging of science and indigenous knowledge has been a long time in the making largely because of prejudices that persisted since the days when Simpson, the governor of the Hudson Bay Company, was in charge and described the Dene women he bedded as his “bits of brown.”

A more constructive meeting of minds began to slowly gel in the mid -1970s when a consortium of energy companies proposed building a 3,860 km long natural gas pipeline through the Mackenzie Valley. No one in the indigenous communities knew how a pipeline as big as that might affect caribou migration, or whether it could stand up to thaw. Neither did the energy companies. In spite of many other knowledge gaps, the Canadian government enthusiastically supported the project until public hearings overseen by Justice Thomas Berger came to a fiery head in Fort Simpson in December 1975.

Speaking for all the Dene people, Jim Antoine, a young leader from Fort Simpson, told Berger that he was willing to lay down his life to stop the $10 billion project.

Antoine’s speech made news all across Canada. Few people believed that it would end as badly as it did in Mexico when the Chontales Indians were violently cleared out as they tried to block access roads to oil and gas installations in 1976. But threats to blow up a pipeline in northern Canada rattled government and resources industry officials who were used to getting their way with indigenous people.

In the end, Berger was sympathetic. In a landmark report that got a reluctant nod from the Canadian government, the judge recommended a ten year moratorium on development in the region until land claims were resolved and wilderness protected for the benefit of the Dene.

Antoine went on to become premier of the Northwest Territories. At the request of the Dene, Nahanni National Park – a United Nations World Heritage site – was expanded to protect the headwaters of many of the rivers that drain into the Mackenzie watershed.

Indigenous guardians

The biggest development occurred this year when the Dehcho First Nations and the Canadian government finalised a deal to set aside 14,218 square km of land in the Horn Plateau, Hay River Lowlands and Great Slave Plain as a national wildlife area. Edéhzhíe became the first indigenous protected area in Canada in 2018 and the government provided a $10 million grant (£6.93m) to the Edéhzhíe Trust Fund to support the Dehcho K’éhodi Stewardship and Guardians Program.

The indigenous guardians work with scientists to monitor climate and environmental changes in the region. They also share scientists’ insights with community members.

William Alger, one of the guardians, is positive about the programme. “I learn from elders where the fish and animals are and the changes they see that are taking place,” he said.

Quinton sees the guardian programme as a way of “ground truthing” the science that he and his colleagues are doing. Once the Dene learn how do the science at Scotty Creek, they will be able to take control of the programme.

“Southern researchers like me have to come to terms with the fact that while the current system in which we operate is well-intentioned, it doesn’t necessarily address the needs of the local community,” Quinton said. “Too often, we fly in and fly out with the data without communicating what that data means.”

The Dene in the Dehcho are not the only indigenous people in northern Canada doing this. The Gwitchin of Old Crow in the Yukon have been moving in this direction for some time. The Dene and Metis people in Sahtu region of the Northwest Territories recently signed an agreement to establish an indigenous protected area – Ts’udé Nilįné Tuyeta – which will be just as big as Edéhzhíe.

Despite the progress, the Deh Cho claim to land ownership has not been resolved. And while oil flowed out of the territories from another pipeline for more than a half century, Deh Cho villages like Fort Simpson are still shipping dirty diesel in from the south to heat homes and to keep the lights on.

“It’s crazy,” said James Tsetso, a Łı́ı́dlı̨ı̨ Kų́ę́ First Nation councillor who was at Scotty Creek. “And look at all of the wood in the forests around us. Why are we still shipping wood products from the south to rebuild and fix up homes that were destroyed by last year’s floods?”

There is no doubt that the Dene need jobs. It’s why they are more open-minded about resource extraction. But some are leery of mining companies like those that operated Mactung and Cantung in the Mackenzie mountains. Neither offered meaningful employment to locals before filing for bankruptcy. Nor has there been an equitable amount of work for northerners to participate in the $2.2 billion cleanup of these and many other abandoned mine sites in the Yukon and Northwest Territories.

Gerry Antoine, the Dene National grand chief, was just 20 years old when he volunteered to rally the Dene during the Berger Inquiry. His brother’s speech still resonates. But getting angry, he says, will bear no fruit.

Antoine is confident that the Dene will adapt to climate change, just as they have with so many challenges they have faced over thousands of years. But he wonders whether southerners will fare as well, given their short history in North America, and their desire to take more than they need.

“It’s all about balance,” Antoine said, while preparing a moose hide for tanning. “You take only what you need from Mother Earth as we try to do here. That’s really the best way of dealing with climate change.”

The post The Arctic community that chose conservation over Big Oil appeared first on Climate Home News.

Ekaette Robert, who lives in Esit Eket, an oil-rich community in Nigeria’s southern Akwa-Ibom state, has endured great hardships with unbroken optimism in recent years. Over the past seven years, she has experienced the death of her husband, struggled to provide for her five children and now, her livelihood is in danger.

After her husband’s death, Robert started farming cassava to make a living. She rarely makes a profit. Gas flaring – burning off methane as an unwanted byproduct of oil extraction – increases soil temperature, causing a decline in crop yields for Robert and other farmers.

“The yield is very discouraging and it is getting worse by the day. My cassava stems withered and despite applying fertilisers, the problem still persists,” she told Climate Home News. She can only afford to send two of her children to school.

In the nearby village of Ibeno, residents suffer from dwindling fish stocks and excessive heat.

“Rainwater visibly changes colour and is not consumable. We only manage to use it to wash and maybe bathe,” said Daniel Afia, Ibeno’s village head, who retired from the fishing business after a long period of unprofitable endeavours.

Esit Eket and Ibeno are oil producing communities that have endured squalid living conditions, rising poverty levels and loss of livelihood since Frontiers Oil and ExxonMobil started operating there in in 2003 and 1974 respectively.

In the Niger Delta, gas flaring is killing crops, polluting water and damaging human health. The government has promised to end flaring by 2030 under its national climate plan, but communities remain sceptical, given previous failed attempts, a lack of enforcement and necessary technology.

Farmer Okon Ekpobia shows the poor quality of his harvest (Photo: Ndueso Etuk)

Okon Ekpobia, the village head of Idung Akpeudo, in Esit Eket, farms yam and other crops but is often left frustrated with the harvest.

“Crops don’t do well since oil exploration started in this community,” he said. “Both the quality and the yield is nothing to write home about. I can’t sell my produce and make decent profit from it.”

Farmer Victor Isong, expressed worries over the rising heat, which is affecting his family’s health.

“It does not matter whether it is plants, animals or human beings, everything in our environment is suffering,” Isong said. “My wife and children often come down with heat stroke.”

“At the moment, I have a cough and it is common knowledge that it is caused by the polluted water we drink and the gas flare,” he said.

Want climate news in your inbox? Sign up for free to get our weekly newsletter and occasional extra bulletins

Thomas Esenyi, a farmer in Esik Eset, recalls how scared he was when there was a gas leak from an oil facility owned by Frontiers Oil in November.

“The fault started during routine maintenance. The gas leakage took over the entire community. The company had to tell residents not to cook anything to avoid fire explosion. We were breathing in that gas and many had chest pain and were fatigued after the incident,” he told Climate Home News.

Several studies have highlighted the devastating impacts of gas flaring on Niger Delta communities, including loss of biodiversity and shrinking water bodies.

“Oil exploration activities, especially gas flaring, has resulted in the extinction of many fish species, especially Bonga fish,” Emmanuel Etia, a fisherman in Ibeno, told Climate Home News. “The flared gas and the ensuing heat also affect the breeding cycle of fish causing some species to migrate to a different area.”

Gas flaring in Ibeno, Nigeria (Photo: Ndueso Etuk)

Nigeria is Africa’s most populous country and the continent’s biggest oil producer. Apart from crude oil reserves, Nigeria has the largest gas reserves in Africa and is among the world’s top 10 gas producers, with estimated reserves of 5.72 trillion cubic metres (tcm).

Since 2012, Nigeria has been among the top seven countries flaring gas. According to the Nigerian National Petroleum Corporation, Nigeria flared 35.4 tcm of natural gas between 2016 and 2020.

Nigeria to end gas flaring by 2030, under national climate plan

Flaring emits CO2, methane and volatile organic compounds. Methane, which is the primary constituent of fossil gas, contributes significantly to global warming. Although it only stays in the atmosphere for around nine years, methane has a warming impact 84 times that of CO2 over a 20-year period. Oil production was responsible for about 40% of global methane emissions in 2020, according to the International Energy Agency (IEA).

Aside from the health and environmental costs, it wastes fuel that could generate revenue if captured and sold. Nigeria lost an estimated $762 million to gas flaring in 2018, according to PricewaterhouseCoopers (PwC).

And there is huge unmet demand for energy. According to the World Bank, 85 million Nigerians do not have access to grid electricity and the lack of reliable power results in economic losses equivalent to 2% of GDP annually.

Children living in Ibeno in the Niger Delta (Photo: Ndueso Etuk)

The country is trying to crack down. Nigeria pledged to end gas flaring by 2030, under an updated climate change plan submitted to the UN last year, and has signed up to the Global Methane Pledge, vowing to cut emissions by 30% by 2030, alongside 110 other countries. The country also signed into law its Climate Change Act (CCA) in 2021.

Nigeria has committed to cut its emissions by 50% by 2050 and achieving net zero emissions by 2060.

Gas flaring undermines Nigeria’s climate goals, Chukwumerije Okereke, a professor in environment and development at Reading University, told Climate Home News.

“Gas flaring is the largest single source of climate pollution in Nigeria contributing about 55 million tonnes of carbon equivalent per annum. It is important to arrest the climate pollution from gas flaring if Nigeria is really interested in tackling climate change,” he said.

Many experts and residents of the Niger Delta are sceptical about the government’s goal, in light of its record. Since the first legislation to regulate the oil industry, the Petroleum Act of 1969, was enacted, 10 deadlines to end gas flaring have been missed.

The country continues to invest in oil and gas exploration and is projected to remain one of Africa’s leading crude oil producers and top three gas producers for the next three years.

Previous attempts to tackle the problem have not succeeded primarily because “of the failure to align political and economic interests to action,” Okereke said. “Some of the major climate action that the government could take to address this problem invites them to go against certain powerful interests.”

Canoes on the shore in Ibeno, Nigeria (Photo: Ndueso Etuk)

Samson Benu, an official at the Nigeria Erosion and Watershed Management Project (NEWMAP), said the country’s infrastructure deficit and lack of finance must be addressed before significant progress can be made. Previous attempts to provide these resources since 2016, through the government’s gas flare commercialisation programme, have been fraught by corruption and lack of requisite technology.

To discourage multinational corporations from flaring gas, the government introduced a penalty of $2 per thousand cubic feet of gas wasted. According to Nigeria’s National Oil Spill Detection and Response Agency (NOSDRA), in 2021 the volume of flaring was equivalent to $521 million in fines, which were mostly unpaid.

Environmental activist Nnimmo Bassey told Climate Home News oil majors would prefer to pay the fine than invest in the needed infrastructure.

“The problem right now is that the Nigerian state is the majority shareholder in all the joint ventures and stopping gas flaring requires that majority shareholders provide the [necessary funds],” he said.

Impact of oil exploration activities at Aieto spill site, Nembe, Nigeria’s Bayelsa state (Photo: Health of Mother Earth Foundation)

Bassey criticised some of the provisions in Nigeria’s Climate Change Act, including the requirement that all companies of 50 or more employees set annual emissions reduction targets. Bassey said companies will end up playing with figures and give fictional solutions due to poor oversight by regulatory agencies.

Tijah Bolton-Akpan, the executive director of the environmental justice organisation Policy Alert, called the law “a feel-good illusion”. He said the law does not align with the country’s overall development agenda, which is still very much reliant on crude oil.

“We have a contradiction. On the one hand, we have emissions reduction targets and on the other hand, an economy that isn’t in a hurry to diversify away from the fossil industry. There is an energy transition blind-spot,” Bolton-Akpan told Climate Home News.

He said that the Act does not include the goal of cleaning up communities affected by oil pollution.

“The least the government can do now is to put in place a framework to clean up their badly damaged environment and enable them to have their lives back,” he said.

Bolton-Akpan’s implementation fears also extend to data collection. Poor disclosure of the carbon intensity of reserves, production processes and outputs by international oil companies operating in Nigeria remains a challenge.

For fisher Etia, the government’s intents are lofty but they amount to nothing if time is not devoted to enforcement.

“Our lives are not a reflection of the amount of resources in our land because of gas flaring. The government should quit talking and get to work,” he told Climate Home News.

Oil companies operating in the Niger Delta and state government officials did not respond to Climate Home News’ requests for comment.

This article is part of a climate justice reporting programme supported by the Climate Justice Resilience Fund.

The post Will Nigeria’s climate change law put the brakes on gas flaring? appeared first on Climate Home News.

Mounir grows date palms, just like the majority of Tozeur’s inhabitants. This oasis – over 4,000 years old – is the largest in Tunisia. Located at the edge of the Sahara Desert, in the southwest of the country, this city now wants to be ‘top of the class’ for environmental management, and aspires to energy autonomy.

Approximately 97% of Tunisia’s electricity is currently  , mainly natural gas. In 2020, nearly 57% of the country’s natural gas needs were met through imports, mainly from Algeria.

For now, only 3% of Tunisia’s electricity is generated from renewables, including hydroelectric, solar, and wind energy. However, the country aims to produce 30% of its electricity from renewable energy by 2030, according to its

To help it achieve its renewables target, Tunisia is installing two public solar plants in Tozeur in March, each with an output of 10 MW. The project was financed by loans from the German Development Bank (KfW). In total, €23 million in loans rallocated to technical assistance and staff training. The solar panels were supplied by two European manufacturers: TerniEnergia from Italy and GenSun from France.

“Nearly 17,000 tonnes of CO2 emissions will be avoided each year compared to before the installation of the solar plant, helping the country to reach its goals in terms of renewable electricity generation”, said Abderrazek Al Ouja, the project manager of the solar farm. The electricity produced by our two plants represents of the region of Tozeur, he told Climate Home News.

The farming community of the oasis takes a sceptical view of this new installation.In the last two years, the farmers have accumulated  17 million dinars (£4,372,026) in debt, for extracting groundwater, and the Tunisian Electricity and Gas Company (STEG) is now threatening to cut off their electricity.

With working conditions increasingly difficult, the Tozeur farming community is highly vulnerable. One of the main challenges it is facing is soaring electricity bills, linked to water drilling, which they have more and more trouble paying.

and access to water is the number one issue for farmers in Tozeur, where water resources are quickly depleting. “We now need electricity to pump our water. And it doesn’t seem like this new central will help us with our electricity problems, as no one has consulted us until now”, said Mohamed Jhimi, farmer and president of an agricultural development group in Tozeur.

“They’ve got some nerve to implement a solar power plant, without it being planned to benefit those who suffer the most here,” Jhimi said.

For Hamza Hamouchene, a just transition expert and researcher at the Transnational Institute (TNI) in the Netherlands, “this kind of project usually exacerbates already existing problems, as it is in the case of the huge complex Noor-Ouarzazate in Morocco, the world’s largest concentrated solar power plant (580 MW).”

“The local communities already suffered from huge water poverty, as the water levels are very low. Since the installation of this mega solar plant, a huge one compared to the Tozeur’s central, some of the water has been diverted to go to this solar farm,” he told Climate Home News.

The entire process is centralised and financed through development banks, he said. “They do the so-called social assessments but in reality, they are just ticking boxes.”

According to project manager Al Ouja, the new electricity production would benefit almost 40,000 homes in Tozeur’s region, although a STEG engineer refuted this claim. “All the electricity produced in Tozeur is injected into the national grid and then redistributed centrally. It does not benefit to the local inhabitants per se,” he told Climate Home News.

Tunisia emits only 0.07% of global greenhouse gas emissions, yet the country is among the most vulnerable to the effects of climate change. “In Tozeur, all we see are mitigation programmes when what we need most is to adapt,” said Salem Ben Slama, a member of the . “Our farmers need help to cope with the threats that endanger the life of the oasis.”

Mounting climate threats

In Tozeur, the reception to this solar plant is far from unanimous. “With the creation of this solar park, the Tunisian state misses the opportunity to address the climate issue as it unfolds here,” said Ben Slama. “We have invested millions of dinars in a mitigation programme, that is the solar farm, but those who suffer the full force of climate change here, the farmers, are ignored,” he told Climate Home News.

This imbalance is reflected in the figures. In its climate plan, Tunisia outlines its plan to spend 74% of its climate budget, $14.3 billion, on mitigation, compared to just $4,3 billion on adaptation. For the energy sector, the country mainly aims to focus on the development of solar energy, multiplying its production capacity by 10 by 2030, compared to 2020.

“What we need is a national programme to protect and value our fragile ecosystems, as well as our indigenous and local knowledge”, said Salem Ben Slama. With their worsening working conditions, more and more farmers are forced to leave their land and knowledge behind.

To help communities adapt to climate impacts, the assembly of Maghrebi citizens for the oasis of Tozeur has “the promotion of technology transfer and the strengthening of knowledge in the field of adaptation.” They also stressed the importance of improving scientific knowledge around how climate impacts affect oases.

Oases are among the most fragile ecosystems on the planet. In Tozeur, the

past two years were the worst ever recorded for farmers, who rely almost entirely on date production. In Tozeur, almost 50% of the population works in date production, according to Karem Dessy, president of the Associationto Safeguard the Medina of Tozeur.

“Most of our current problems are of climate change,” said Karim Kadri, an engineer and researcher in oasis agriculture in Tozeur. Over the past two years, temperatures have reached record

The drought has had multiple consequences on the fragile oasis ecosystem: a devastating disease called “boufaroua” has attacked the palm trees. “These are mites that grow around the fruit and suffocate them,” explained Kadri. The dates turn white and the whole crop goes up in smoke. “Usually, it only takes one or two rains to wash our trees and naturally rid them of these invaders,” he said.

Oasis is synonymous with water. In addition to the rainwater, the groundwater is also drying up. Previously, a single source, that of Ras El Ain, was used to irrigate the entire oasis of Tozeur. The water was perfectly distributed among farmers, with the help of an irrigation system dating back to the 13th Century.

“But in the 1990s, these water tables began to be depleted when the state expanded the oasis with farms established, as well as with the development of the hotel zone. It was the beginning of irrigated areas and drilling practices to extract water in larger quantities,” said Chaker Bardoula, a farmer and former president of the regional federation of agriculture.

Water battle

Today the naturally available water resources no longer exist. Faced with the disappearance of this “mother-source”, the Tunisian state has implanted boreholes in order to maintain the irrigation of the ancient oasis. But this water is far from sufficient to meet the needs of farmers, who have been forced to install their own drilling pumps.

“It is these pumps that are very expensive for electricity,” said Ben Slama. “It is a huge problem.” Since the 1970s, the cost of electricity has increased four to six times, he said. In addition to the rising cost of electricity, farmers have been receiving pressure from middlemen. “They are taking advantage of the Covid pandemic to force farmers to lower their selling prices. They smash prices and no one is monitoring”, said Chaker Bardoula. This year, farmers who were lucky enough to sell their crops sold them for three times less than in previous years, he said.

All these pressures mean that farmers have been unable to pay their electricity bills for the past two years. “We are suffocating: on the one hand because of climate change, on the other because of our debt to the STEG,” said Jhimi.

Ben Slama said that as long as no system of subsidising electricity to farmers has been found, it is impossible to speak of social responsibility.

“This plant does not address local communities. We have been excluded from this project, no one has come to consult us,” he said.

According to him, it would be enough to allocate a produced by this solar power plant, to the farmers, for climate justice to be given. When questioned on this matter by Climate Home News, neither of the two project managers of the solar farm said they were aware of this matter.

Taha Sendid, Tozeur’s STEG district manager, said the company has been helping the farmers by setting up payments by instalments, to resolve the long-standing debt issue. “However, the electricity produced by the solar central is not specifically, it addresses the entire population of Tozeur. If they have specific issues, they should address [them to] the State,” he said.

For Hamouchene, “one way of making this transition just, would be to cancel these farmers’ debts, and provide them with cheap electricity.”  State subsidies could also put a brake on individual drilling initiatives, he said. Many farmers, because of a lack of assistance, dig wells that are much too deep, weakening the water table even more.

To protect what is left of the oasis, Dessy said the government must urgently invest in adaptation solutions such , which is being done elsewhere across the country. “At this pace, we only have a hundred years before the water resources completely vanish, according to local hydrogeologists. We need to act fast,” said Dessy.

The post Debt-stricken Tunisian farmers ‘ignored’ as government rolls out solar megaproject appeared first on Climate Home News.

Vilches, who grew up next to the river, is an activist for Mujeres Modatima, a Chilean organisation that fights to protect the water for local communities and exposes its illegal extraction by businesses and politicians.

“Here it is,” she said, as she stopped by a messy pile of dry branches. Underneath it lies an illegal well.   “Be careful,” she warned, looking in the direction of a nearby house, where people are watching. A hose can be seen going out in direction to the hills, which are covered in avocado plantations. Vilches knows these installations very well; agricultural companies use them to steal water from the river’s groundwater course.

She has reported water theft in Petorca to the authorities for years and has received death threats as a result. “People have followed me to my house to intimidate me, and painted death threats in the place where I work. They can paint over every wall they want because they’ll never paint over my dignity!” she told Climate Home News.

Dry wells

Vilches’ home province of Petorca, which is located 200 kilometres north of the Chilean capital Santiago, is facing a severe water crisis due to the explosive growth of large-scale avocado farming. This water-intensive production has dried up local rivers and forced many smallholder farmers to leave the area.

“Here I used to have all sorts of fruit trees. And we traded them for cheese or milk from our neighbours who had goats. When we were sick, we didn’t go to the pharmacy. We strolled down to the riverside to pick up medicinal herbs. Now we have to buy everything from the stores,” said Vilches.

In the midst of a 10-year drought, the longest ever to hit the country, most of the available water in the rural areas of Petorca goes towards avocado production [source?], while the provincial government has to buy and deliver water to more than 6.000 people in rural communities by truck, 20% of the province’s population. The quality of this water is not guaranteed. Petorca residents have reported an increase in diseases such as gastritis or urinary infections, which they attribute to the lack of water and its unreliable quality. [Source? Can you include some links to studies that highlight a link between these diseases and inadequate water supply]

The root of this distribution problem lies in Chile’s Constitution and Water Code, both written in 1981 under a military dictatorship. Under this legislation, water was privatised and tradeable water rights were granted for free and in perpetuity.

This system distributed water without taking into account future hydrologic scenarios and climate challenges. Chile is on a clear desertification path, with dry weather advancing south every year.

“The decrease of rain and snowfall is a clear trend in this part of Chile. But if we combine it with the unplanned overuse of water for agricultural exports, we are accelerating a process of desertification that advances south, and Petorca is starting to show signs of a semi-arid climate,” Ariel Muñoz, investigator in the Centre for Climate and Resilience Research (CR2), told Climate Home News.

“If we keep extracting water, the reserves will end, and similar scenarios are developing in other parts of the country,” said Muñoz. “Petorca is an example of how critical it can get if we don’t redistribute water and plan with every need and scenario in mind.”

Currently in Petorca, big agricultural companies control more water rights, than what is currently available. When avocado producers require more than their current water allotment, they take it illegally [source].

A new constitution

Communities are hopeful that a new constitution will dismantle water privatisation in Chile and ensure fair distribution.

4 July 2021 will be remembered as a historic day in Chile. An indigenous woman, Elisa Loncon, assumed the presidency of a convention to write Chile’s new constitution. 155 citizens were elected to the constitutional convention earlier this year, following massive protests demanding structural changes.

While Loncon gave her inaugural speech, water rights activist Carolina Vilches, one of the elected citizens, watched in the audience. “Water for everyone! Justice for Petorca!” she shouted as her name was called.

Carolina Vilches works along with Verónica at Mujeres Modatima. She, and representatives from other communities facing water rights challenges, managed to secure a seat in the convention, which started work immediately. They hope that the new foundational text will help abolish the current model of water privatisation, and establish access to water as a human right under the Chilean constitution.

“It’s important that voices which have never been listened to, have a space in the construction of a new country. I will give my all to convey the voice of my community in the convention,” she told Climate Home News.

She said she will work to ensure that no private water scenarios remain in the new constitution, and that the right to water and the rights of nature are recognised.

“In this constitutional convention, we see a new opportunity to trigger other necessary changes in the way that water is managed, and to establish the access to water as a human rights issue. Our colleague Carolina Vilches is representing us in that space, while we keep our work on the ground which is where we set the foundations for our demands,” Lorena Donaire, another Mujeres Modatima activist, told Climate Home News.

The case for 100 litres

Rural communities in Petorca were already facing severe water shortages when the coronavirus pandemic hit. While the World Health Organization (WHO) recommends a minimum of between 50 and 100 litres of water per day per person, people in Petorca received just 20 litres of water a day, according to a report by the National Human Rights Institute.

Communities and human rights institutions started taking legal action in May 2020, to demand the 100 litres recommended by the WHO.

One of the lawsuits got as far as the Supreme Court, which, in March 2021, ordered the government to meet the requirement. The ruling was seen to set an important legal precedent, but not as a permanent solution.

“In Chile, it’s difficult to enforce a ruling as there is no established mechanism, or organism in charge of following up”, said Pilar Moraga, deputy director at the Centre for Environmental Law at the University of Chile. In a similar case regarding contamination and health issues in the same region, the government is yet to obey a two-year-old Supreme Court ruling.

“In addition, delivering water by truck is not a sustainable way to provide water to the community, and there is no mention of the required quality of the water delivered,” said Moraga.

For many, the Constitution has to change, in order for there to be real transformation.

On the ground in Petorca, activists fight on, despite experiencing death threats and intimidation. Modatima women continue reporting water theft, and planning actions to seek climate justice abroad [where and how?], as many people still get less than 100 litres of water a day despite the Supreme Court ruling.

Verónica Vilches and her colleagues created a distribution network during the pandemic, to bring water to those who live in isolated regions. Other localities have raised funds and organised collaborative initiatives to finance temporary water solutions.

“We help each other out and invent what we can to survive. But there is no support, everything comes from our own willpower, and every day is a struggle. We need real change. This is no drought. The water has been stolen from us and we need it to be returned to the land and to the people,” she said.

The post Chileans look to new constitution to return water to communities appeared first on Climate Home News.

This is the second year we have partnered with the Climate Justice Resilience Fund (CJRF) to support original reporting that focuses on communities, mainly in developing nations, who are suffering the worst impacts of climate change even though they have contributed very little to rising greenhouse gas emissions.

The coronavirus pandemic has in many cases exacerbated inequality and vulnerability to climate extremes. With mounting debts amid Covid restrictions, many governments are struggling to meet basic needs, let alone build back better.

Articles will spotlight CJRF’s priority of “communities first hit, first to respond, and first to adapt to climate change”. We will highlight the stories of women, youth and indigenous people who are creating and sharing their own solutions for resilience.

Our climate justice reporting programme previously shone a light on Kenyan women who are claiming land rights to feed their families, indigenous women running a WhatsApp food exchange in Costa Rica and how Bangladesh’s Munda minority face extra barriers to climate adaptation.

We plan to publish 12 articles under the project, running until February 2022. We welcome stories from all around the world and will give priority to journalists from developing nations or marginalised communities.

The ideal story for us will capture the attention of our international audience with colourful or surprising details. Perhaps it contributes to an international initiative or represents a global trend. Perhaps it is financed by multinational corporations or public institutions from other countries.

Your story should combine on-the-ground reporting from affected communities, scientific evidence, innovative and rights-based solutions, and political tension or controversy. 

If you are a journalist with at least three years’ experience, please send us your pitches. You must have fluent spoken and written English. It helps if you have worked with international media before and have some awareness of climate change themes.

Your pitch should explain the top line of the story and essential context in no more than 150 words. If we like the idea, we will ask for more detail. Briefly explain what sources you would interview and any travel required. All stories should include photos of the communities you are profiling and we encourage partnerships between journalists and photographers. 

When pitching for the first time, tell us a bit about your journalism experience and background. Include links to one or two recent stories you are proud of. 

Throughout the reporting process, editors will work closely with you to provide feedback and advice.

For transparency to our readers, each piece will note that it was produced with support from CJRF along with a link to our editorial guidelines that outline how we interact with grant makers while ensuring independence.

The budget range for each story is £1,000-1,400, to cover all reporting, photos and travel expenses. Travel costs will be negotiated in advance and reimbursed subject to valid receipts.

Please send your pitches to reporter Isabelle Gerretsen (ig@climatehomenews.com), who will be overseeing the programme. We will review the first pitches in late March and subsequent ideas in coming months and will publish stories until February 2022.

The post Climate Home News seeks pitches for climate justice reporting programme appeared first on Climate Home News.

With four children in tow and seven months pregnant, she returned to her father’s home, Namelok village in Kajiado, southern Kenya.

“I asked my father if I could get a portion of land to try farming and goat rearing. I needed financial means to feed, educate and care for my children,” Lasoi told Climate Home News. 

Lasoi’s father gave her access to two acres of land despite her brother’s objections. She could cultivate it, plant vegetables, rear her goats but not plant trees or make any long-term decisions without consulting her father.

But after years of farming, banks would not give Lasoi a loan for her business as she had no assets. “I thought of buying land but school fees and my children’s needs didn’t permit. I asked my father for at least a small portion of his 300 acres of land, but he was sceptical.”

It was only when she attended a training session on land rights by the Nasaru women’s group, which advocates for women to be included in decision-making, in 2016 that Lasoi learned she was legally entitled to own and manage land. 

“They told us that the constitutions and the laws in Kenya guaranteed women right to property. I did not know at that time” Lasoi says.

In Bangladesh, the marginalised Munda face extra barriers to climate adaptation

Equipped with this knowledge, she convinced her father that she needed to own the piece of land she had been farming for years. 

About eight months ago, her father allocated her five acres of land as her inheritance, to which she now holds a title deed. 

“My father empowered me. I never thought I could own land after my divorce. I can finally plant trees and shield my goats from the heat, secure a loan, and sell if need be,” says Lasoi. “It’s priceless to finally make decisions over land.”

Alice Lasoi, pictured at the back, convinced her father to allocate her five acres of his land and use it to grow her own crops and rear goats to sell (All photos by Sophie Mbugua)

Owning land is key to helping women cope with the impacts of climate change, such as drought, and enables them to feed their families. 

In Kenya, Article 40 of the constitution guarantees a right to property for all. The Land Act, revised in 2016, requires spousal consent to sell land. The 2013 matrimonial property act allows women to register alongside their husbands for property acquired during marriage. The 2016 Community Land Act states that boys and girls above 18 years have a right to vote on community land decisions.

Regionally, the Africa Union, in its 2009 land declaration, recommends that its member states allocate at least 30% of land to women. Article 7 of the Maputo Protocol, the African Charter on human rights, grants both women and men rights to an equal share of joint property acquired during  marriage in the case of separation, divorce, or annulment.

“We have very beautiful pieces of legislation protecting women’s right to land in Kenya and in Africa but there is a big gap between policy and practice in many sub-Saharan countries. Since the colonial times, women have been excluded from land control and ownership. Our problem is enforcement,” Faith Alubbe, the chief executive officer at the Kenya Land Alliance, told Climate Home News.

It is difficult to enforce land ownership policies as rural women and community influencers are rarely included in drafting them, according to Evelyne Batamuliza, executive member of the African Development Bank Group’s Adaptation Benefits Mechanism.

“We move so fast in terms of making these laws but sometimes the people who these laws are made for do not know they exist as they never got a chance to participate,” Batamuliza tells Climate Home News, adding that land rights remains “a conversation among the elite in cities”.

Lorna Nashipei at her farm in southern Kenya where she manages her own plot of land and plants assorted vegetables

During the colonial era, the eldest male was registered as the family land administrator and no consideration was given to women. The male determined the rights of the women living in that homestead. In many African countries, the land laws are still colonially inclined.

“This generational exclusion of women on land has further affected their inclusion in community decisions to cope with droughts and floods [which are] becoming extreme and more frequent,” Juliana Rono, director of Nasaru Women’s Group, told Climate Home.

Since 2016, Rono has been working to build the resilience of about 150 women in dry areas of Kenya’s Kajiado county, with a climate adaptation grant, totalling 52 million Kenyan shillings ($466). The project was initially expected to run for three years, but has been extended for five years until June 2021. 

Rono says in her community, it was difficult for women to create alternative livelihoods as they do not own land.

“With the droughts and floods becoming frequent and severely disrupting pastoralism, it’s becoming critical to have an alternative livelihood to shield families from increasing poverty and malnutrition,” she says. 

Climate news in your inbox? Sign up here

Pastor Stephen Saruni, a religious leader in Nameko, says frequent drought has driven men to sell their land. “Unfortunately, they sell without the wife’s knowledge, they relocate to towns, marry another woman leaving the wife and children in extreme poverty,” Saruni told Climate Home News.

According to the World Health Organization women and children are 14 times more likely to die when a natural disaster happens than men. 

Social norms demand women stay home to care for families while men leave for towns in search of jobs. Women and girls in poor countries spend 40 billion hours annually collecting water, according to the United Nations Department of Economic and Social Affairs (UNDESA). 

According to Care International, women and girls make up 43% of the agricultural workforce in the global south. Women and girls from Eastern, Central, and Southern Africa, produce nearly 70% of the region’s food crops by volume. 

But despite this, less than 15% of women in sub-Saharan Africa have control over the land they farm, according to Batamuliza. A lack of land rights restricts women from making decisions about planting drought-resistant crops like sorghum or investing in alternative livelihoods like goat rearing, she says. 

In Kenya, the Federation of Women Lawyers (FIDA) says women head about 32% of households, but individually hold only 1% of land titles. In 2018, an analysis by the Kenya Land Alliance found that out of the one million title deeds issued by the Kenyan government between 2013-2017, only 103,043 were given to women.

Mother-of-five Lorna Nashipei is working hard to overcome these societal barriers. Two years ago, the 38-year-old mother was surprised to meet a pastoralist woman growing and selling vegetables from her kitchen garden. 

“I was spending too much time travelling to the nearby town to purchase vegetables weekly. I spent 500 Kenyan Shillings ($4.50) on vegetables and transport. Yet I had five acres of land all left for cows and goats to roam around,” Nashipei told Climate Home News.

Lorna Nashipei started with a small kitchen garden, now she farms two acres of land in her village in southern Kenya

Nashipei convinced her husband to allow her to start a kitchen garden. Over time, the number of times she asked for vegetable money reduced, but the frequency Nashipei served the family vegetables increased. 

When her husband questioned how Nashipei was managing to serve vegetables regularly, without asking for money, she saw an opportunity to request a more significant portion of land. 

Today, Nashipei farms nearly two acres of maize, beans, sweet potatoes, peas, assorted traditional vegetables, and grass for her cows. Her husband is helping her fence the land to protect the crops from livestock destruction. 

She earns around 30,000 Kenyan Shillings ($269) selling farm produce during a good harvest. She has invested some of this money in a community savings programme, known as table banking, where members pool their savings and lend to each other. 

Nashipei makes an individual contribution of 3,000 Kenyan Shillings ($27) each month and has used the table banking system to buy goats, food and help pay for school fees. 

Nashipei is not the only woman succeeding in making land decisions in Kenya. Since the 2016 community land bill passed, Alubbe says two pastoralist communities in Laikipia county have successfully registered their land.

UK plans climate donor summit to address ‘dismal’ support for poorer nations

In these communities, eight women have been included in land governance structures. They are registered as part of the groups harvesting sand, sold in nearby towns for construction, and as part of the committees that allocate grazing areas, something that has not happened before. 

“It is a good precedent,” says Alubbe. “The hope is that as more communities register themselves and their lands, women’s land rights will expand from access and use to control and ownership and that communities will learn from these two pastoralists groups where women make decisions on how land is used.” 

Nashipei’s initially sceptical husband has allowed her to access and manage two acres of land. Although the land title is still in her husband’s name, Nashipei is in the process of having her name included on the family title deed.

“Since he has seen the farm generate income and reduce financial burden on him, he has allowed me to grow crops without his permission. We have saved around 8,000-10,000 Kenyan shillings ($70-100) each month,” she says.

Rono hopes to see more women fight for their rights to owning and controlling land and make better decisions on how to adapt to the changing weather. But the gulf between statutory and customary laws makes this complicated, says Batamuliza.

“Statutory law recognises that women can control and own land, but on the ground, the customary laws controlling land allocations are already institutionalised culturally and socially. The customary law is more prevalent than the statutory law advocating for equality of land inheritance,” Batamuliza says.

“Unless there is advocacy in behaviour and an attitude change among the traditional decision makers and influencers in African communities, the two worlds cannot exist coherently. We will not see a lot of change just from adopting all these declarations, laws and policies.”

This article is part of a climate justice reporting programme supported by the Climate Justice Resilience Fund.

The post In Kenya’s changing climate, women are claiming land rights to feed their families appeared first on Climate Home News.

Known until recently as “bunos” or jungle-clearers, the Munda people came to the country from Bihar state in India to help reclaim land for agriculture for zamindars (landowners) and dig lakes and ponds. They number around 5,000 in the coastal districts of Khulna and Satkhira.

In a region suffering from climate change impacts, the Munda are doubly disadvantaged by their minority status, lacking access to microfinance, benefits and employment opportunities available to others. An initiative to help them find alternative livelihoods has been shelved due to lack of funds.

Cyclone Amphan made landfall in western Bangladesh in May, triggering a tidal surge that overtopped the embankments and left fields flooded with saltwater for months. Over recent years, sea level rise and reduced river flow had made the soil increasingly salty, so rice could only be grown during monsoon season. After the storm, even that one annual crop became unviable across much of the region.

31-year-old Doyal Kumar Munda has fallen back on gathering resources from the forest, mainly crabs and fish.

“It is not enough for a balanced livelihood,” he told Climate Home. “Thirty years ago, my family had 20 acres of arable land. Now, we have only a homestead of 0.3 acres. Everything went as my parents sold land to meet the family’s needs.”

Doyal Kumar Munda catching fish in the shrimp land close to his house (Credit: Abu Siddique)

According to a 2015 study published by the Department of Environment, sea levels have been rising 6-20mm a year along the country’s coastline.

Between 1973 and 2009, 223,000 hectares of land has been affected by the intrusion of saline water, the Bangladesh Soil Resource Development Institute reports, a trend that continues today.

The impact can be seen in rice production data. There are three different growing seasons for rice in Bangladesh: Boro, Aman and Aush.

Between 2000-01 and 2014-15, Boro paddy cultivation in Khulna district fell from 210,000 acres to 121,000, a 42% drop, according to the Bangladesh Bureau of Statistics. Aush acreage fell nearly three quarters from 31,000 to 8,000. Aman, the most important crop, went from 851,000 to 247,000 acres, a 71% decrease over the same period.

As the sea encroaches on farmland, many are turning to fish, shrimp and crab farming, or rearing goats. Others migrate in search of seasonal work. But the Munda face extra barriers to these adaptation strategies.

Mangrove revival: How tree-planting is financing women’s businesses in Kenya

Varoti Munda and her husband Robindro Munda tried to lease some land to cultivate shrimp a few years ago, but were refused a loan by local micro-credit organisations.

Like Doyal, they are dependent on the mangroves, venturing into the forest two or three times a week for resources they can sell to support their three children.

Seeking anonymity, a manager of a local micro-credit lender said the Munda people often had no assets to guarantee repayment of a loan. “Creating opportunities for the poor and developing their living standard are our objectives,” the manager said. “At the same time, we need to get back our money from the borrowers.”

Munda have no representation in local or national government bodies. They often lack awareness of social security entitlements and are not selected by local administrators to benefit from government-run work programmes such as road maintenance.

As a 75-year-old widow, Razu Bala Munda is eligible for a widow allowance of 500 taka ($6) a month and an old age allowance of 800 taka ($9), but receives neither. “When there is an emergency like a cyclone, we receive some relief,” she tells Climate Home. “But I have no idea about widow or old age allowance.”

Doyal Kumar said: “We only receive such benefits after the mainstream people, who are part of the vote banks of the authority.”

Nurul Islam, chairman of Uttar Bedkashi Union, the local authority, acknowledged the community sometimes missed out, “which should not be”, he said.

Moving to the cities for work is not easy either. Samaresh Munda, 25, found a job three years ago at a factory making plastic items in Dhaka. He says he is paid 2,000 taka ($24) less than others for the same work and was initially refused accommodation in shared houses. “I struggled to make people understand that I am not different.”

Local campaign group Initiative for Right View (IRV) launched a project a few years ago to boost the Munda’s prospects, but it has been put on hold because the funding from Swiss donor Heks/Eper ran out.

“We tried to provide some alternative livelihood options like goat rearing and training on how to make compost fertilizer from household waste,” said Marina Juthi, programme coordinator of  Initiative for Right View (IRV). “However, we have lost the funding.”

This article is part of a climate justice reporting programme supported by the Climate Justice Resilience Fund.

The post In Bangladesh, the marginalised Munda face extra barriers to climate adaptation appeared first on Climate Home News.

At the Kenyan historical coastal Islands of Lamu, a group of six women groups are actively involved in restoring and conserving mangrove forest cover.

The women are part of a community conservation initiative called Mikoko Pamoja (in swahili which means – Mangroves together), a partnership project of the Kenya Forestry Services (KFS), The Nature Conservancy (TNC) and Northern Rangeland Trust(NRT) that aim is to sell carbon credits from ocean ecosystem. https://www.planvivo.org/mikoko-pamoja

The groups are located in Faza, Kiunga, Makongeni, Mkoko, Mtangawanda, Kizingitini, of Lamu Island.

Nuzla Misbahu, 28 year old mother of three is the chairlady of the Kizingitini women Association. A group of 86 women rehabilitating and protecting the mangrove forests in Pate Island of Lamu.

“It is voluntary work because we know the importance of the mangroves to our community. Our husbands rely on the mangroves and fishing to sustain us,” said Nuzla.

“We have been taught on the different species of mangroves, where they can grow well, and the season to plant seedlings.”

“NRT and TNC facilitate us to go to the field to check on the mangroves, plant and clean the beaches. In return the organizations has given us loans to start businesses,” said Nuzla adding that initial 10 women were initially given US$250 each last year to start their own business with a repayment period of one year after which they were given US$500 this year to repay in two years.

As the group of 10 moves on she said, another group of 10 from the association is given the first loan of US$250. So everyone in the association will benefit from the loans’ scheme.

“I opened a shop selling household goods and then expanded it to a retail shop this year,” said Nuzla adding that some of her colleagues too set up businesses like selling of fish, clothes on the market.

“For the initial loan we were paying each US$25 every month to offset the loan. Then when we finished we were given US$ 500 to repay within two years. This is what I used to expand my shop to a retail shop,” she said adding that after the two year repayment period she expects to get US$1,000 to expand her business.

“I make a profit of $3 daily which is good enough for me to pay for my expenses and repay for the loan at the end of the month.”

So far, she said a total of 23 women in Kizingitini have benefitted from the microfinance scheme and they have all set up businesses.

“We meet on the 10th of every month to plan on our mangrove work and also take record on how people are repaying their loans because if one of us misses to pay back then no one in the group will be given more money and it also means those who had not got anything will not be considered,” said Nuzla.

In Mtangawanda, another group of 50 women led by Zulfa Hassan have so far planted over 30,000 mangrove trees since 2018.

“We restore the mangrove, monitor them and clean the beach environment,” said the 36 year old mother of four.

She says before joining the pamoja initiative, they used to replant the mangroves but not properly as they do it now.

“Very few survived because we didn’t know that there were various species of mangrove plants and that they grow in specific soil within the forest. This is what we have now been taught and about seeds handling. Practices. We can now see unlike before more seedlings are surviving,” explained Zulfa.

She said they volunteer in conserving the mangroves because most of the families in Lamu rely on mangroves for building, firewood, medicine for the stomach, mosquito repellant.

“I am also a beneficiary of the microfinance scheme. When I was given my first loan of $250 I opened a small restaurant for selling chapatis (tortillas made from wheat flour). I have since expanded this into selling other types of foods after getting my second loan of $500.

“I have also started building a restaurant that can accommodate more customers. If I get US$1000 I plan to open a hotel.”

Zulfa said that she makes a profit of about $4 every day from which she saves $1 to go towards the loan repayment, $1 to her personal savings and $2 for her household use

I am also building my own house and soon I will move out of my mother’s house with my family.

The project started on a small scale in 2016 and it was scaled up in 2019.

“The aim of the project is to improve the livelihoods of the community through the conservation and sustainable use of their natural resources,” Issa Hassan, NRT Regional Director at the coast told Climate Home News.

“We focus on women at the coast because of gender discrimination in the region and also women are actively involved in the project.”

The women he said are initially asked to volunteer to the project then those who were consistent and active were selected to the Mikoko group.

He said that the microfinance project was set up to empower the women economically as they get credit – loans that are interest free. So far we have given US$57,000 to 180 women. Out of which 68 women have already repaid the first loans fully.

George Maina, Africa Fisheries Strategy Manager at TNC told Climate Change Home that even though there were efforts of planting and rehabilitating mangroves in the past, they were unsuccessful because the communities didn’t know of the various species of mangroves, the types of soil and how to plant them.

“It was important that we train and educate people in the community about mangrove planting to ensure that the right mangroves are planted and the survival rate is high,” he said Mr Maina adding that their goal is to restore, secure and better manage the mangroves for the benefit of the people and mitigate climate change because the mangroves are facing degradation.

“Cutting the mangroves means all the carbon is released into the atmosphere slowly which is even more dangerous,” he said.

A 2011 study in the Nature Geoscience found that Mangroves among the most carbon-rich forests in the tropics; Coastal trees key to lowering greenhouse gases. They help mitigate climate change as they store as much as four times carbon as other tropical forests. https://www.nature.com/articles/ngeo1123

“Restoration is done in the clear fell areas, degraded land. Planting mangroves is very difficult. Out of every 100 seedlings planted, it is estimated that only 30 survive,” noted Mr Maina.

The women groups are part of the Community Forestry Associations (CFAs) in partnership with NGOs and government have drawn a participatory forest plan and policies that gives the community the mandate to manage, conserve and restore the mangroves. The plan involves mapping and identifying the degraded forest areas for replanting, areas for use for harvesting and the planting zones in the areas that were harvested or had no mangroves at all. The activities are aligned with the Kenya National Mangrove Ecosystem Management Plan 2017 – 2027. https://www.kmfri.co.ke/images/pdf/National_Mangrove_Management_Plan_Summary_for_Policy_Makers_Final.pdf

Forester Nandwa, KFS officer in Lamu said the challenge that the community faced before was the lack of knowledge on the different species of mangrove (six), site marching, harvesting seeds during the wrong season, inadequate involvement of the community, lack of monitoring of the plantation and poor coordination among the institutions.

“Extensive logging of mangrove in the past is the major contributor to the current depletion of the mangroves in Lamu because mangrove is a cheap but strong durable wood for firewood and as a building material. That’s why we have people continuously harvesting it without care,” said Mr Nandwa.

“We are now able to collect seeds in the forest that are showing signs of shooting and planting them directly in the sites. The seeds are planted when the ocean tides are low then when it is high tides they are watered to germinate.”

In the nursery he said seedlings take between three to four months to germinate which also depends on the people handling. If planted directly they have an 80 per cent survival rate. KFS does induction before planting.

“It is difficult to control illegal harvesting because accessing the islands is a challenge because of the changing water tides in the ocean and the boat is very expensive and so monitoring of the mangroves depends on the available resources. Also it is hard to get the illegal loggers as they are very elusive,” he noted.

The penalty for illegal loggers is very small – US$500 or six months in jail which is very small.

AbdulRahman Aboud, 48 years of age has been a mangrove logger for the last 20 years. He says in Lamu there are 22 licensed loggers out of which seven are active.

“Illegal cutting of mangroves has really gone down because if you are arrested you pay a heavy fine and this has made people opt out of harvesting mangroves secretively. “For any logger you have to apply for a one year license at a cost of US$10,” said Abdul.

“The challenge is the market. Since the government banned the export of mangroves to the gulf, we only rely on the local market which is not good. We sell them to contractors and the hotels at the coast.”

According to the United Nations Environment Programme (UNEP), 67 percent of mangroves lost or degraded to date, and an additional 1% being lost each year, mangroves are at a risk of being destroyed altogether. https://wedocs.unep.org/handle/20.500.11822/28817

The post Mangrove revival: How tree-planting is financing women’s businesses in Kenya appeared first on Climate Home News.

Monica Evans

In 1915, Mike Gibbs’ Māori ancestors made their way from the flat, agricultural plains of Southland to the wild, steep, forested edge of Eastern Fiordland. They were excited – after losing their own ancestral lands to white settlers, the New Zealand Government was now offering them new plots to call their own, under the just-passed South Island Landless Natives Act (SILNA).

“So they’re on their way out there, and they meet people coming back the other way,” says Gibbs, recounting the familiar family legend that he’s heard so many times before. “And those people just said, “There’s nothing there. We can’t farm it; we can’t do anything with it.”

Today’s visitors to the Rarakau area would most likely disagree: the land is home to swathes of tall indigenous rainforest, perching on clifftops above vast, granite-bouldered Bluecliffs Beach in Te Waewae Bay, which is sloshed by the vast southern ocean and backed by the snow-dusted peaks of the Hump Ridge range. Scores of native birds live there, including tūī [Prosthemadera novaeseelandiae], kākā [Nestor meridionalis], kererū [Hemiphaga novaeseelandiae] and the endangered, endemic Kea [Nestor notabilis] parrot.

But farming was the perceived pathway to wealth at the time, and those early land claimants knew the area’s clay pan and boggy ground would never support highly productive agriculture. “And so it was named ‘the cruel joke’,” said Gibbs, “that this land was given to us.”

For decades, the land just sat there, with few visitors but the occasional timber poacher. Then, in the 1960s, the Government decided that if these families were to maintain ownership, they needed to amalgamate the land with neighbouring Māori blocks and form an incorporation – and then pay tax on it. Now needing to raise cash to keep the place in their hands, the incorporation cleared about a third of the 1330-hectare block and attempted to farm it. The effects were environmentally disastrous – and only marginally economically viable. “When I was a kid, I remember fire was a management tool,” said Gibbs. “So they’d log these beautiful forests and then they’d burn what was left. It was like the Wild West: there were wild cows and horses, and broken fences. It wasn’t really a functioning farm as such, but just no-one could see past that approach.”

To raise cash and keep the farm going, the landowners began selectively logging tall canopy trees from the remaining forest: silver beech [Nothofagus menziesii], miro [Prumnopitys ferruginea] and tōtara [Podocarpus totara], all of which produce high-value hardwood timber. Younger generations – Gibbs among them – were much less keen to log, but the problem of generating income remained. Then, in the early 2000s, Gibbs’ uncle Ken McAnergney met ecologist and carbon finance specialist Sean Weaver, and together they started exploring the possibility of selling carbon credits for protecting the Rarakau rainforest.

The group received some funding from Te Puni Kōkiri (the Ministry of Maori Affairs) to do a feasibility study, worked out that their 738 hectares of forest captures 2,458 tonnes of carbon dioxide per year, and realised it was possible to make a sustainable income from carbon credits on the international voluntary carbon market. “So it was a real win-win situation,” said Gibbs. In 2008, the landowners began selling certified Plan Vivo Standard carbon credits through Weaver’s carbon offsetting consultancy Ekos, and they’ve proved popular: demand outstrips supply. Companies like QANTAS Airlines and the popular World of Music and Dance festival (WOMAD) buy credits from Rarakau in order to ‘offset’ their own carbon emissions.

The money the landowners receive largely goes into development projects such as fencing, regeneration, pest control and building infrastructure for tourism: the site is the jumping-off point for New Zealand’s newest Great Walk, the Hump Ridge Track, so there’s potential to develop accommodation and educational services there, too. “It’s an exciting project with potential for heaps of growth, and a real feel-good factor,” said Gibbs.

That ‘feel-good factor’ is often critiqued by opponents of the carbon market concept, who argue that humanity should be focussing on reducing, rather than offsetting, its carbon footprint. In the Aotearoa New Zealand context, there are also important questions to be raised around equity and scalability. The Rarakau project is currently the only one of its kind, and in a country where around 73% of indigenous forest has already been felled – and two thirds of that which still stands is set aside in protected areas – relatively few other Māori landowners have the opportunity to follow its example.

In Tairāwhiti on the North Island’s East Coast, some Māori landowners are trying a different route: earning carbon credits via the country’s national Emissions Trading Scheme (ETS), through native reforestation on land which has already been deforested. One group of landowners in particular, who own the ‘Nuhiti Q’ block between Tokomaru Bay and Anaura Bay, has found some success with the venture: they’re reforesting unprofitable, difficult-to-farm parts of the block, and selling carbon credits to buyers like Gull, a petrol company. The money they earn from those credits has allowed them to fund large-scale fencing projects and intensify production on the remaining farmland. Replanting with native mānuka [Leptospermum scoparium] also provides them with an opportunity for a new income stream – high-value mānuka honey.

However, other landowners interested in following that path have found it much less straightforward, as evidenced in a 2019 research project carried out by economic and public policy research institute Motu and local charitable company Hikurangi Enterprises. The researchers tracked 13 groups of landowners with aspirations to reforest and enter the ETS – and over the three years in which they worked with them, “none of them managed to get registered,” said Sophie Hale, a research analyst at Motu who collaborated on the project. “And that in itself is an interesting finding, and suggests that there really is room for policymakers and other institutions to provide support to landowners – not only financially, but also with communication and information; it’s a big, scary process.”

“[The ETS is] a very complicated, complex system,” said Pia Pohatu, a local researcher who was contracted to Hikurangi Enterprises to work on the project. “And Māori land ownership and governance and development, in itself, is complex. And so I think a lot of people don’t get into it because they can’t see if they’re eligible, early.” That eligibility depends on a number of factors, such as how long ago the land was deforested, the size of the replanting area and what else is being done on the land.

Many landowners are also reluctant to shoulder the risk associated with committing to the scheme, which is relatively new to the country and risks being ditched or becoming unprofitable in the future. For Māori, who own land collectively and intergenerationally, signing up to something now that will lock their descendants into the same land use – or face high de-registration fees – is particularly problematic. “I think that would be a huge risk for Māori,” said Pohatu, “if it means our future generation can’t have their own flexibility with the decisions.”

That intergenerational ownership has been important to navigate in the agreements negotiated at Rarakau, too. “We need intergenerational ability to make change,” said Gibbs. “So my grandkids need to be able to decide what’s best for that whenua [land] – especially because from an Indigenous worldview, it’s not ours! We’re only looking after it for the next generation. And if we train our kids right, then they’re making good decisions and looking after it for the next generation, too.”

For his part, Gibbs is keen to ensure that those younger generations feel connected to Rarakau – and that’s why having a healthy, well-preserved forest, a thriving farm and a sustainable business model is particularly important. “I think at some point, there’ll be people that have no other affiliations or ties to anyone else but that whenua [land], and they may not be lucky enough to have a whakapapa [genealogy] that goes past the person that was given that land in 1915,” he said. “So we need to make that space their space; I believe that those kids have a right to that. Because once they feel that connection, that gives them their own mana [prestige, status, honour] that they carry out into the world. And that’s what everybody needs – especially Māori youth.”

The post In New Zealand’s deep south, Māori landowners make money by keeping their forests intact appeared first on Climate Home News.

The island of Pamban, a remnant of a land bridge that used to connect India and Sri Lanka, was not spared.

Fierce winds brought back memories of 1964, when a severe storm killed 800 islanders, overturning a passenger train and devastating the town of Dhanushkodi.

“We’ve seen many cyclones but that night, just for a few hours, it was really bad. We had little warning about how furious it would be,” says radio jockey P Lenin, who is 28 and hails from Pamban village.

“When I got information that if all boats on the northern side of the island were shifted away, they should be safe from the storm, I immediately got onto the radio and began broadcasting this message repeatedly.”

Almost all of the nearly 83,000 people in Pamban island depend on fishing for their livelihoods. The loss of a boat can be debilitating. Lenin’s repeated messages helped save numerous boats.

He broadcast through the night, warning his community of locations where electricity poles and trees had collapsed, potentially saving many from severe injuries or worse. Lenin says: “As soon as the eye of the cyclone passed us, I immediately went to check on the boats and help other fishermen bring them in safely. I’m as much a fisherman as I’m a RJ. I felt broadcasting on the radio was the most useful thing I could do for my people that night.”

A seaweed farmer holds up a rope with his harvested crop (Pic: CMFRI)

Kadal Osai (Sound or Music of the Sea) FM is a four-year-old community radio station that caters to the people of people of Pamban island. Founded by a leader from the fishing community, P Armstrong Fernando, community radio stations such as Kadal Osai have emerged as a reliable and easy-to-connect source of information for various rural communities in India, especially in the times of climate change.

The Indian government has weather warning systems but relies on partners to communicate the information to the people who need it most – the fishing communities. Community radios and NGOs perform a crucial role here, disseminating government alerts to coastal communities in simple terms and local languages.

Radio channels such as Kadal Osai FM go the extra mile, by putting hyperlocal alerts in a global context. “If we talk about climate change or the ice melting in the Arctic, no one really understands how it affects their lives but when we make the fisher people understand how their villages and livelihoods are affected by cyclones, extreme heat and sea erosion and connect that to climate change, then they realise the importance of the issue,” says Gayathri Usman, the radio station’s chief.

While the station caters to diverse interests, all of them are focused on one section or the other of Pamban island’s fishing community. Pride of place in their programming schedule is Samudhiram Pazhagu (Understand the Sea), in which scientists from marine research organisations in the region are regular guests.

The show offers solutions to the fishers for developing resilience to extreme weather by learning and investing in alternative, sustainable livelihoods.

“We have invited fishermen who practise sustainable fishing activities such as cage farming and seaweed cultivation onto our shows. Our hope is that more people will be inspired by them. We also want to provide people with the know-how to begin fishing sustainably,” says Gayathri.

“While the Covid-19 pandemic has affected us like everyone else, we have plans to organise multiple training camps for the woman of the island to learn seaweed farming and develop crafts such as making sea-shell jewellery as soon as we can.”

A Kadal Osai reporter interviews a woman in the market (Pic: Kadal Osai FM)

Suganthi Ravi, a 37-year-old fisherwoman, is a regular listener of Kadal Osai FM. She ventures to the shallow seas near her village for three months every year to practice seaweed farming.

“My husband is a fisherman and in the last 15 years or so his catches have been consistently reducing. While I’ve always practiced seaweed farming, I’m taking it up more seriously now and have also taken to making jewellery out of sea shells.” Ravi says her entire family loves listening to the radio channel.

She adds: “My children have found the educational shows and the shows talking about government grants and fellowships for children from the fishing community useful. I’ve found some of their episodes about alternative livelihoods very informative. More than anything else, they understand us and always talk in a jovial, entertaining manner which we really enjoy. Also, if we want to get in touch with them about anything, it’s very easy to do so.”

Jayakumar Rengarajan, senior scientist at the Central Marine Fisheries Research Institute (CMFRI) says community radios such as Kadal Osai are playing a crucial role in developing resilience against the changing climate in the fishing community.

“As far as I know, this is the only community radio station in India catering exclusively to the fishing community. While we research and provide scientific perspectives to various issues concerning fishermen, it’s radio stations such as this that take this information to the people,” says Rengarajan.

The CMFRI is a leading fisheries research organisation and looks into diverse issues including but not limited to marine biodiversity conservation, mariculture and research on fishing patterns and fish availability.

Rengarajan adds: “Resilience is something that is urgently needed for India’s fishermen and we are developing sustainable fishing models which we want to take to the community in this region. This radio station, by interviewing our experts as well as communicating our ideas to the fishing community, is providing a vital service. Scientists like us can have all the information, but explaining complicated ideas to people in a way in which they understand is extremely important.”

Sibi Arasu is an independent journalist based in Bengaluru. He tweets @sibi123.

This article is part of a climate justice reporting programme supported by the Climate Justice Resilience Fund. You can find our policy on reporting grants here.

The post In this Indian fishing community, radio is saving lives and livelihoods appeared first on Climate Home News.

“After that, every time we turned on the water, it came out yellow,” Galicia Flores said. “We tried drinking it for a while, disinfecting it with bleach, but the kids started getting sick.”

The 68-year-old and her family have tried a variety of options over the years, knowing the once-clean water was a lost cause. 

“We live close to a city well,” explained Galicia Flores’ daughter Elena Hernández Galicia, “but that’s where only yellow water comes out. There’s even a sign out front: ‘Not drinkable.’” 

The family is one of many who regularly struggle to get clean water in Mexico City – an estimated 1.3 million of the city’s almost 9 million residents lack regular water access. As coronavirus rips through town, water-poor households are particularly vulnerable to infection.

Last year, the general coordinator of the Water System of Mexico City (Sacmex), Rafael Bernardo Carmona, admitted that more than 40% of the city’s running water is lost to leaks.

And, thanks to increasingly extreme weather conditions caused by climate change, along with rapid urban growth, the situation has grown critical: The World Bank and Mexico’s National Water Commission project enormous water deficits by 2030, gravely impacting water access for millions more.

Severa Galicia Flores stores well water in plastic jugs, disinfecting it with bleach, on her patio (Photo credit: Kylie Madry)

In Mexico, water has been a constitutionally protected human right since 2012 and is heavily subsidised – if it arrives at all. Pedro Moctezuma Barragán, an environmental sociology professor at the Metropolitan Autonomous University (UAM) in Mexico City and water activist with Agua para Tod@s, Agua para la Vida (Water for All, Water for Life), was key to the fight for constitutional recognition. “Our government made this promise to us,” he said, “and now they have to keep it.” 

San Gregorio Atlapulco, where Galicia Flores lives in Xochimilco, has been labeled by the Mexico City government as a “priority attention neighbourhood,” with some of the highest cases of the novel coronavirus in the area. 

Most residents of the area are in a similar position to her, some going days without water coming out of the tap, forcing them to choose between regular handwashing and other daily activities like washing dishes, laundry, and bathing. It’s a cruel twist of irony, seeing as “Atlapulco” is Nahautl for “where the water churns” – the neighbourhood was known, for centuries, for its fresh water. 

“The lack of water in Mexico has definitely made Covid worse,” Barragán said. “If you look at a map of neighbourhoods without water, and neighbourhoods with high numbers of coronavirus, they’re the same.”

Severa Galicia Flores (right) sits in her front garden with her daughter Elena Hernández Galicia and granddaughter Melissa Fuentes Hernández (Photo credit: Kylie Madry)

Luckily for Galicia Flores and her family, local nonprofit Isla Urbana is installing a rainwater harvesting system in their house today, almost three years after the earthquake. They were picked from a handful of applicants in the neighborhood.

“[The rainwater harvesting systems] are especially important given the sanitary crisis,” said Emilio Becerril, Isla Urbana’s public policy and management coordinator. “With more, and better, water, [recipients] can have higher levels of hygiene and health, free up time for other productive activities like education, work, etc, and apart from that, it significantly reduces the stress caused by water precarity.” 

The group hopes to install 22 systems through September, with another 15 coming in October. Since its founding in 2015, Isla Urbana has set up around 350 in San Gregorio Atlapulco alone. 

City officials and some scientists tout Isla Urbana’s mission as the perfect solution for Mexico City’s crumbling water infrastructure. The group won a contract with the city’s environmental ministry to design and implement a city-wide program, installing 10,000 systems in 2019. It is in talks to carry out another phase in 2021.

Isla Urbana installs a rainwater harvesting system at Severa Galicia Flores’ house on 9 September 2020 (Photo credit: Kylie Madry)

The struggle for water access is not just an engineering problem, it is deeply political.

Alejandro Ugalde González remembers how water used to flow freely through San Bartolo Ameyalco, the neighbourhood where he grew up. With a freshwater spring that had provided water to residents for centuries, things changed in San Bartolo when mega-housing developments started to go up nearby, he says.  

“These massive developments for the rich, every house has their own cisterns that hold up to 20,000 gallons of water, they use it to wash their cars, their horses, water their gardens, everything,” Ugalde González said. “And meanwhile, we stopped getting water in San Bartolo. Now the neighbourhood is split in two: the higher part and the lower part of the neighbourhood. We have to alternate water. Some people get water during the day, some just at night.” 

He’s loath to point all of the blame at the developers, however, saying that the local government, the Álvaro Obregón municipality, has permitted it. “Of course if we ask them if it’s happening, they’ll deny it,” he said. “But where else could all of this water be going? We know how much water comes out of the spring. But we’re not getting any of it.”

That’s why, in 2014, the neighbours of San Bartolo distanced themselves from the municipality, reclaiming its “traditional representation” as a pueblo originario (a small town that was later absorbed into Mexico City).

In the gated communities of San Bartolo Ameyalco, residents have plenty of water to keep their lawns lush (Pic: Kylie Madry)

This means that they now have a semi-self governing body, which Ugalde González was appointed head of in January, though many administrative issues like water management remain in the hands of the city.

The move was spurred by the events of 21 May, 2014, when residents sought to block the installation of pipes they feared would reroute water to other neighbourhoods. The municipality sent 1,500 police to “protect” the installation. In the resulting conflict, 100 residents were wounded and five detained for more than a year.

“It was an enormous violation of human rights,” Ugalde González said, “And the municipality wonders why we don’t trust them?” 

In the middle of the pandemic, many residents still go days without water. “The municipality tells us they’ll send us pipas [water tankers], but they refuse to come here,” Ugalde González said. And just like in San Gregorio Atlapulco, Covid-19 cases have been high in San Bartolo Ameyalco – though the neighbourhood dropped off the government’s “priority attention” list in August. 

There are other factors at play besides water, of course: Ugalde González points to an early lack of education around the coronavirus, pre-existing health conditions, and little government support as contributors to the havoc the virus has played in the area for the past six months.

Residents of San Bartolo Ameyalco painted a mural on the side of a water-pumping station in the neighborhood, the site of the May 21, 2014 clash with police. The mural reads “Freedom for political prisoners,” and “Water isn’t merchandise.” (Photo credit: Alejandro Ugalde González)

For citizens with low confidence in their government, rainwater harvesting systems could give a needed boost of trust in a city known for its rainy season – and its flooding. Every afternoon for close to half the year, massive amounts of water drop down into the city like clockwork  – leaving billions of gallons of potentially usable water to waste. Since Mexico City lacks a comprehensive water drainage system, most of that rain floods out onto the streets, into metro stations, and into homes, costing Mexico an estimated $230 million (£178 million) a year. 

The city’s drainage system is over 50 years old and the city’s population has rapidly expanded in that time, explained Mario Lopez Perez, who worked in Mexico’s National Water Commission (Conagua) for decades. “The pipes aren’t designed to handle double the capacity of water they used to,” he said.

Experts predict that the flooding will only get worse, as climate change causes more erratic weather patterns – in the month of September alone, Mexico City has seen some of its heaviest rains in the past 20 years. Beyond the flooding damage, the crisis is worsening the city’s sinkage levels, sewage spills and earthquakes. 

Rainwater harvesting may not be a long-term solution to flooding, but could offer a needed relief to an overworked, underproducing water system. “They reduce costs just as much for the families as for the government, since, when there’s no water, they have to subsidize pipas and other water delivery methods,” Becarril said. 

The relief they provide to individuals and families may not be the golden ticket, however. “[Rainwater harvesting systems] help, but don’t solve the problem,” Lopez Perez said. The ex-official points to more complicated approaches, such as better urban planning, and looking for more natural water sources, to keep future generations from going without.

But for today, Lopez Perez asks, “What am I supposed to wash my hands with, if I don’t have anything?”

This article is part of a climate justice reporting programme supported by the Climate Justice Resilience Fund. You can find our policy on reporting grants here.

The post Covid exposes Mexico City’s water access gap between rich and poor appeared first on Climate Home News.

A new online food exchange scheme led by indigenous women near the Carribean side of Costa Rica is strengthening traditional practices in the face of the pandemic.

The programme, which launched with its first money-free food exchange in June, aims to tackle the impacts of COVID-19 on local people’s food security. 

But it also hopes to build a longer term resilience against the threats of climate change and encroaching industrial farming.

“Our new generation are losing these practices and now is a good time to take them up again,” says Gina Haylen Sanchez, a member of the women’s association leading the project. “Now that we are faced with this situation, we have to bring out what we really are saying that we are as indigenous people.”

Exchange

The first local product swap, organised by the Kábata Könana Women’s Association from the mountainous Cabécar Talamanca indigenous territory, took place in late June.

The exchange revolves around “tejedoras”, or “knowledge weavers”,women from ten communities inside the territory who collect information about the food needed by families in their area, and what they have to spare.

This information is sent by WhatsApp to a central office of the association, which works out the exchange, or “estanco”. Produce is harvested and collected together in white plastic sacks outside people’s houses, where the women collect it, bring it to their central office, unload everything and sort it afresh into delivery packages.

The use of WhatsApp to collect the information fits in with a wider trend in Costa Rica – the social media platform has been used extensively during the pandemic by producers and small businesses to connect and deliver directly to customers.

But the initiative also aims to strengthen the traditional agroforestry farming techniques of the Cabécar, whereby crops are planted among native trees and plants – allowing farming without the need to raze whole forests.

“We saw that at some point this pandemic is going to affect us economically,” says Edith Villanueva Reyes, secretary of the board of directors of the Association for the Integral Development of the Talamanca Cabécar Indigenous Territory (Aditica). But instead of looking outside the territory for support, the woman decided to focus on working internally, she says.

Reinforcing tradition

The process is a modern, scaled-up version of the Cabécar’s traditional custom of exchanging food. “You always brought something to the person you were going to visit, and you have something back to the person who visited you,” says Levi Sucre Romero, an indigenous Costa Rican from the neighbouring Bribrí de Talamanca territory and a coordinator of the recovery plan in Talamanca Cabécar. ”This was common within the territory and was very strong before, but is less so now.”

However, the system is not a strict barter where “I have to give you and you have to give me”, says Villanueva Reyes.

The new exchange combines these traditional methods with the concept of “estancos” – local bartering systems organised by the Costa Rican government several decades ago to boost production in different areas of the country. 

Each part of Cabécar has a different balance of food production, Haylen Sanchez Rayes, another member of the Kábata Könana association, tells me as she takes a break from unpacking the white plastic sacks, each with the name of the family that contributed it. 

In the lower region, varieties of plantain and banana are grown along with cassava, cacao and avocado, she says, while higher up rice, different varieties of beans and maize are more common.

A “solidarity” economy

With a series of precautions due to the COVID-19 pandemic, I’m able to visit the woman in their central office the day they are collecting the food. Costa Rica has seen a large number of cases over the past few months, despite its initial success in containing the virus, and the indigenous territories have implemented strong measures to try to prevent the spread of the virus. 

This forms part of a wider pandemic care and recovery plan for the Talamanca Cabécar territory, which has also included ensuring local people are informed about the pandemic in their own language and restricting access to the territory.

The second estanco taking place when I visit in late August is different from the first. The 5000 kilos of food –  collected from some 300 local families – is being distributed not among the indigenous community, but in San José, Costa Rica’s capital, via a network of young indigenous women who play for female football teams.

The women say they have arranged this in a sign of gratitude for support they have received from the capital during natural disasters such as floods. They also want to show solidarity with those struggling in the city during times of pandemic. “We can walk onto our patios for a banana, cassava, a hen or eggs,” says Marisela Fernández Fernández, president of the Kábata Könana Women’s Association. “But in the city people do not have that same luck.”

The two exchanges may appear different, but are both part of a “solidarity economy”, says Bernard Aguilar, executive director of environmental NGO Fundación Neotrópica – who argues they exemplify the important role played by elements not counted as economic growth. “Nothing that is going to be transacted in the estanco project is going to appear in the GDP,” he notes.

A third virtual exchange, which will again distribute food back among the community, will take place in a few weeks time. Ultimately, the women want to expand the exchange to include other indigenous territories, including poorer areas such as Alto Telire – an extremely remote Cabécar community in the neighbouring Telire territory where the growth of marijuana crops has led to the arrival of international drug traffickers – and cocaine along with them.

“We have thought of carrying out initiatives there, but we have to set goals to see how we can get in, how we can go and talk to these families,” says Sanchez Rayes. 

The women also hope to begin connecting online with people outside the territories to sell produce directly to them. This would be a change to how much of their produce is currently sold, to larger companies which have cut their orders since the pandemic began.

The estanco is also tied to a wider effort to increase resilience in the region. Another initiative aims to set up a “Living Museum for the Protection of the Seed” – whereby different families would preserve the seeds and informacion of a particular variety of indigenous plant in their homes.

Climate impacts

The Talamanca region is already seeing some impacts of climate change. Several people I speak to highlight a fall in the production of pejibaye – a dry, savoury fruit from the native peach palm trees (or “pejibaye”) popular throughout Costa Rica. 

“I remember that my mother had so many pejibayes that she threw them to the pigs,” Villanueva Reyes tells me. “But from around five years ago, the pejibaye harvests have not occurred. People say it’s because an insect eats them there before they bloom. We don’t know […], but the harvest of pejibayes is no longer the same as before.”

The Talamanca forest mountain range is highly vulnerable to climate change. Already high yearly rainfall could rise by 30% by the end of the century, while the minimum temperature rise is likely to be 3.5C, according to a 2016 report by Costa Rica’s Tropical Agronomic Research and Teaching Center (CATIE). The region’s biodiversity is especially vulnerable due to its high number of endemic species. Humid ecosystems such as that in Talamanca need everything to align, says Sucre Romero.

Fernández Fernández says the community has already been seeing changes in the local climate, with rain and sunny weather coming at unexpected times of year and impacting harvests.

Practices focussing on local varieties and farming methods, such as the estanco, could help to face these climate impacts, she says. “Our elders always say we must work, that we should not sow monoculture that it is only one product,” she adds, referring to the huge banana plantations in Costa Rica which use vast amounts of pesticides. “We have to plant varieties of products to guarantee food, because we do not know when the time of drought, the time of hunger, the time of crisis could occur.”

The pandemic has hit Costa Rica hard, but these women are seeing a way to use this experience to create more resilience in the long term. “By practicing our own culture, as our ancestors taught us, we can continue living and we can face the pandemic,” says Villanueva Reyes.

The post ‘Solidarity economy’: Indigenous women run WhatsApp food swap in Costa Rica appeared first on Climate Home News.