United Nations Environment Program (Nairobi)

Kenya: Lake Victoria Communities Could Be Key to Millions of 'Climate' Dollars For Poor Around the World

11 May 2009

press release

Village communities in Western Kenya alongside ones in Niger, Nigeria and China could become the key to unlocking the multi-billion dollar carbon markets for millions of farmers, foresters and conservationists across the developing world.

Catchments in  and around Lake Victoria have been chosen as a test-bed for calculating how much carbon can be stored in trees and soils when the land is managed in a sustainable, climate-friendly ways.

The initiative, known as the Carbon Benefits Project, was launched today by the UN Environment Programme (UNEP), the World Agroforestry Centre, along with a range of other key partners. The project is being funded by the Global Environment Facility.

Under the United Nation's climate convention and its Kyoto Protocol, developed countries can offset some of their greenhouse gas emissions by paying developing economies for implementing clean and renewable energy projects such as wind, solar and geothermal power.

In December 2009, at the crucial UN climate convention meeting in Copenhagen, Denmark, nations may decide to also pay to tropically-forested countries for maintaining standing forests under a scheme known as Reduced Emissions from Deforestation and forest Degradation (REDD).

This is because up to 20 per cent of the greenhouse gas emissions linked with climate change is coming from deforestation—more than from cars, trucks, planes and ships combined.

UNEP, along with the Food and Agricultural Organization and the UN Development Programme, is working with nine developing nations including the Democratic Republic of Congo, Tanzania, Papua New Guinea and Panama in preparation for  the inclusion of REDD in a future agreement on climate change in Copenhagen.

By some estimates a country like Indonesia, for example, could earn $1 billion a year if it manages to reduce its rate of deforestation by one million hectares annually, with revenues calculated on the basis of the price per tonne on the carbon markets at the time.

If REDD is agreed as part of a post-2012 climate regime, this could open the door to carbon storage payments for other kinds of nature-based management covering 'ecosystems' such as grasslands, pasturelands, peatlands and mangroves.

It could also open the door to more environmentally-friendly kinds of agriculture from agroforestry to conservation farming, as they too can store large amounts of carbon in vegetation and soils.

The missing link, however, is a way to evaluate the precise amounts of carbon each kind of system and management regime is actually locking away.

This key issue must be resolved if farmers, conservationists, communities and land owners are to be paid per tonne of pollution removed from the atmosphere.

This is where the Carbon Benefits Project (CBP) comes in: scientists will closely study projects in Western Kenya, Western China, Niger and Nigeria and develop a system for measuring, monitoring and managing carbon in a diverse range of landscapes.

The UNEP-GEF project is utilizing the skills and know-how of a range of partners including Colorado State University and WWF.

Other partners include the International Soil and Reference Information Centre, the Overseas Development Group of the University of East Anglia, and the Kenya Agricultural Research Institute.

Also involved are the International Crops Research Institute for the Semi-Arid Tropics, the Asian Development Bank, Centro de Energia Nuclear na Agricultura, the Macaulay Land Use Research Institute, Michigan State University, the Centre for International Forestry Research, and numerous local farming communities.

As part of the Carbon Benefits Project, researchers will work with project managers in Kenya, China, Niger and Nigeria to set up carbon and greenhouse gas prediction systems.

The project scientists will assemble ground measurements of vegetation, soil carbon and greenhouse gas emissions at a test site in Western Kenya to calibrate satellite images and test the measurement and monitoring protocol.

Case studies will be carried out in several catchments of the Kenya Agricultural Productivity and Sustainable Land Management Project, starting with the Cherangani Hills and followed by the Bogoria, Taita Hills and Kinale alongside Nzoia, Yala and Nyando catchments of the Lake Victoria basin.

Four demonstration projects will also be carried out in different areas of northern and western China.  The project is also operating in several catchments spanning parts of both Niger and Nigeria: Maggia-Lamido, Gada-Gulbin Maradi, Tagwai-El Fadama and Komadugu Yobe.

The measurement and monitoring protocols will be available in 18 months and the modelling and capacity building work will go on up to three years when the project ends.

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Nigeria: Garden City Swims in Flood

Muhammad Bello

9 May 2009

The problem of perennial floods in Port Harcourt is not unusual. In a year, rain falls, for about eight months on the average and most of the roads become difficult to drive through as water over runs them.

Motorists often find it difficult to navigate through while pedestrians wade through them with pains to reach their destination.

A quick check in and around the city shows that there is less problem of flooding in the old city, commonly referred to as 'town' by residents. This could be attributed to the fact that "town" is well planned. Indeed, it is a product of colonial administration dating back more than a hundred years. The streets are well paved and have functioning drainage system. Nonetheless, there is an exception to this. Along Creek road near the Port Harcourt prison, whenever it rains, inhabitants and motorists experience a lot of inconvenience as a result of the flooding that occurs. This is as a result of the market on the street which has grown beyond its boundaries and now practically operates on a part of the road. Another contributing factor to the flooding in this area is inadequate management of garbage emanating from the market.

Other parts of the oil city that are overwhelmed by flood are Post Office road by the Rivers State secretariat, some parts of Olu Obasanjo road which separates the new Government Reservation Area (GRA) from the popular D-Line and First Bank by Rumuomasi.

Along Ikwerre road too, Emenike Street by GUO Motors terminus, there is always a huge flood when the heaven opens its bowels. Further away, along the unique Aba road, arguably the city's only freeway, it is hellish for motorists to navigate through Second Artillery by Total Filling station. Many cars get extinguished, so much so that those that are less roadworthy end by the roadside overnight. The condition is also unbearable in and around Old Aba road by Woji near Love FM.

One most disturbing disadvantage of the flood wherever it occurs is that there is a lot of traffic, a constant feature of the city, with or without the rain especially during rush hours in the mornings and evenings. This is at all times worsened by constant security checkpoints along all major and sometimes obscure roads.

Further checks reveal that flooding is worsened by the indiscriminate dumping of refuse and garbage into the scarce drainages in many parts of the city. Although, the government of Rotimi Amaechi has strengthened the Rivers State Environmental Sanitation Authority (RSESA), the outfit is more popular and dreaded, not for its clean-up efforts, but its constant harassment of harpless motorists instead of clearing drainages and ridding the city of dirts.

Another problem is that of lack of good roads. Currently, the state government has embarked on the construction of multiple intracity roads. The gains of these is yet to be enjoyed by the people. At most, works at some locations have taken up more than one year.

Uwaifo Oviawe, a resident of Rumuokwurushie, a suburb of the city, complained that anytime it rains and he has to go around the Love FM area, he dreads it. "The place is perpetually flooded. In fact it is not the normal flood. This one, you have to fold your trousers above the knee level," he said.

At Mile One along Ikwerre road, a good Samaritan had to fix a tall stick near a spot where there is a wide hole always covered by flood. "Before I put this sign" the samaritan who prefers anonymity said, many vehicles had driven into the ditch."

Several efforts to get the state's Commissioner of Environment to comment on the issue did not yield any result as his telephone was permanently switched off.

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This article considers the linkages between agriculture, hunger and food security. It highlights that hunger and food insecurity remains at unacceptably high levels. To reduce this, it is important to understand how agriculture can most effectively contribute to food security and poverty alleviation. 

It is emphasised that agriculture’s contribution to food security can be framed by two key criteria: increasing the availability of food at prices the poor can afford; and providing jobs and incomes that will give poor people the means to access food. This paper provides the following related evidence regarding these two frames:

• increasing food supply can lower food prices which is not detrimental to the producers if productivity increases outweigh decreasing prices
• agriculture can generate increased incomes for farmers in large and small farms and in the rural non-farm economy
• increases in agricultural productivity, even where there is mechanisation, have pushed up agricultural wage labour rates, thereby increasing incomes
• geographical, economic and social contexts matter
• malnutrition is only weakly correlated with income and economic wealth and factors such as basic health care are of equal or greater importance depending on differing contexts.

Besides these the article further considers two debates. First, it questions how affordable food will be produced and supplied in the changing world context. Despite limited agreements, it suggests that for producing and supplying affordable food it is important to consider the following factors:

• the extent to which the world can physically continue to increase production levels and yields
• the impact of changing patterns of food consumption especially consumption of livestock products in developing countries
• impact of potential policy reforms in developed countries especially those that reduce support of farmers.

Second, the article questions how agriculture can make a significant contribution to tackling poverty and therefore hunger. To answer this it suggests considering the extent to which countries should pursue self-sufficiency and adopt appropriate agricultural development strategies. These debates are said to be further impacted by HIV/AIDS.

Finally, the implications of these debates on agricultural policy decisions are considered. It is argued that even though these debates are well understood and often agreed upon, the details are often missing. Detailed and contextual empirical research to clearly understand the linkages between agriculture, income, and poverty and food security is required. It is also argued that to close the empirical gap there needs to be emphasis on evaluating and learning from past policy successes and failures.

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Export restrictions are often imposed as a mean to promote domestic food security. Although they may bring some short-term relief to domestic consumers, economic analysis shows that their overall impact on the domestic economy as well as on the rest of the world is negative. This paper suggests some alternative measures to safeguard food security without harming producers and without triggering even higher global prices. In this context, the paper underlines the importance of steps that can be taken at the bilateral and regional level. However, it thinks that action at the multilateral level would be optimal. Some of the suggested procedures and highlighted ideas in the paper are:

• efforts should be made to boost agricultural production and augment global food supplies
• when the international prices of staples like food grains are high, the government can opt for dual pricing instead of export restrictions
• innovative supply-side measures are worth exploring
• an 'exporters code' should be encouraged; such codes would include self-restraint on both export subsidies and export restrictions
• there is an urgent need for an exemption from export restrictions for food aid procurement
• domestic demand management measures can offset the need for export restrictions
• any disciplines on export restrictions must address both quantitative restrictions and export taxes to be meaningful
• a balance between trade disciplines for exporters and those for importers should be restored
• meaningful disciplines on export restrictions might facilitate a greater readiness by import-sensitive countries to undertake greater market access opening

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