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Kalkani Choolburra, Aboriginal Programs Coordinator at the Botanic Gardens of Sydney, showing the many uses of native plants. Here, she is weaving with a Lomandra leaf. Credit: Neena Bhandari/IPS

By Neena Bhandari
SYDNEY, Oct 3 2023 (IPS)

Growing up in Sydney, Kalkani Choolburra, a Girramay, Kuku Yalanji, Kalkadoon and Pitta Pitta woman from Far North Queensland, would frequently travel with her family up and down Australia’s eastern seaboard. Her grandfathers and uncles would bring fresh catch of dugong, her favourite bush food, and she would go hunting for the short-necked turtle with her aunties and female cousins.

The traditional or subsistence hunting of dugongs and turtles has been an important part of the Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander (Indigenous Australians) people’s social and cultural lives. Its meat has been a vital source of protein for these communities, who have sustained themselves on the native flora and fauna for thousands of years.

Now, national and international chefs are incorporating some of these native Indigenous produce – notably Kakadu plum, Davidson plum, lemon myrtle, wattle seed, quandong, finger lime, bush tomato, muntries, mountain pepper, saltbush – into their dishes ranging from sushi and samosa, pizza and pies to cakes and muffins.

These quintessentially native Indigenous ingredients are also being used in condiments, relishes, sauces, and marmalades and infused into chocolates, teas and beverages for their unique flavours and textures.

In recent years, there has been a growing interest and recognition of the nutritive and medicinal properties of native Indigenous plants and fruits. Professor Yasmina Sultanbawa, Director of the ARC Training Centre for Uniquely Australian Foods at The University of Queensland in Brisbane, recalls taking lemon myrtle to her lectures a decade ago. She would crush the leaves and ask her students to smell and identify them.

“They didn’t know what it was back then, but now they immediately recognise it as lemon myrtle,” Sultanbawa tells IPS. “The market for native Indigenous foods is growing because it is rich in nutrients. For example, the vitamin C content in Kakadu plum is about 75 times more than in an orange; folates (a natural form of vitamin B9 or folic acid) and fibre in green plum is much higher than in a mango; and kangaroo meat has only 2 per cent fat and a high concentration of conjugated linoleic acid and omega 3.”

In a study co-authored with Dharini Sivakumar, Sultanbawa argues that including native Indigenous foods in the diet could help reduce malnutrition.

“Legumes like wattle seed are low in carbohydrates and have a very high content of protein, fibre, zinc and iron comparable to chickpeas. Wattle seed is also a great functional ingredient for adding value to other foods; for example, it can be incorporated into breads made with wheat flour. What makes native Indigenous foods attractive is that you don’t have to add a lot of it to get the nutritional benefit,” she adds.

A 2019-20 market study of Australia’s native foods and botanicals industry by researchers at The University of Sydney, supported by Australian Native Foods and Botanicals (ANFAB), forecasted the native food sector would grow to 40 million Australian dollars (about USD 25,2m) in farm gate value, A$100m (about USD 63,1m) in middle market value and A$160m (about USD 101m) in total retail value by 2025.

A spread of Lilly Pilly, Davidson Plum, Finger Lime marmalade and traditional Aboriginal bread, Damper, which is made by crushing a variety of native seeds into flour and then baking the dough in the ashes of a fire. Credit: Neena Bhandari/IPS

Besides being used in traditional and modern cuisine, many of these native Indigenous botanicals are being used in cosmetics, pharmaceutical and nutraceutical industries. For example, the vitamin C-rich, pink-red native Lilly Pilly fruit has good astringent properties that boosts collagen production within the skin. It is used today in a variety of anti-ageing skincare products.

The COVID-19 pandemic craze for superfoods and television cooking shows, such as Australian MasterChef, has also contributed to the increasing popularity of native Indigenous foods.

They can now be found on grocery superstore shelves. According to a spokesperson for Coles Group Ltd., a leading Australian retailer, “We currently work with nine Indigenous-run businesses that sell products with native ingredients, including Kurrajong Kitchen Oaklees original crackers, Yaru still mineral water and Seven Season Green Ant gin, on our shelves.”

Recently, The Coles Nurture Fund awarded Indigenous-owned family business Walaja Raw Bush Honey a grant of A$330,000 (about USD 208,470) to create a new, medicinal grade, premium Melaleuca honey that is sustainably made in the West Kimberley region on Yawuru Country (Country is a term used by Indigenous Australians to describe the lands, waterways and seas to which they are connected through ancestral ties and family origins).

Although the demand is growing, supply is limited because much of the native Indigenous produce is currently wild-harvested.

“Native foods have never been cultivated to be mass produced. They grow now as they’ve grown since the beginning of their time, culturally and sustainably. It’s best left like that,” says Choolburra, who is the Aboriginal Programs Coordinator at the Botanic Gardens of Sydney.

As Indigenous Land and Sea Corporation’s Group Chief Executive Officer, Joe Morrison says, “Bush foods (food native to Australia and historically eaten by Indigenous Australians) are a fundamental part of Indigenous identity and our traditions that span thousands of years of connection to Country.”

But climate change presents a growing challenge with extreme weather conditions, including frequent storms, soil erosion, salinity in fresh water and ocean acidification threatening the ecosystems supporting native flora and fauna.

Choolburra says, “We (Indigenous Australians) are adapting our sustainability practices to meet the challenges of climate change, which is impacting everything in various ways. For example, many areas now facilitate cultural burns (Indigenous fire practice) in order to manage land and provide nutrients. In many cases, the production or harvesting of native foods is left to local communities in order to sustain the amount of quality produce.”

She occasionally leads the Aboriginal Bush Tucker Tour, which provides visitors from across the world an opportunity to learn about the traditional knowledge and cultural significance of native Indigenous flora and its many innovative uses.

On a cool, wet Sydney day, as we walk along the rich foliage in the Botanic Gardens, she plucks the long, flat green leaf from the native Lomandra plant, a vital source of food and survival and referred to as the ‘corner shop’ in some Indigenous Australians’ cultures and shows us how it can be woven to make baskets.

Pointing at the Dianella bush, she relates the old practice when children were told to hide in it – if they got lost. The Dianella’s sharp-edged leaves would repel snakes, and the children could attract attention by blowing in the hollow base of the leaf to make a whistling sound. The edible blue-purple berries, with tiny, nutty seeds from some of the Dianella species, are rich in vitamin C.

However, she warns that like anything consumed in large quantities, some of the popular nutritious plants, such as warrigal greens, used as a substitute for common spinach, and the sandpaper fig could cause diarrhoea or vomiting if eaten too much.

As the native Indigenous food industry grows, experts say, there is a need to enhance Indigenous communities’ participation to ensure they reap the benefits. “Australia needs to brand and market native Indigenous foods as its authentic cuisine. This will foster cultural knowledge about our Indigenous heritage and biodiversity,” Sultanbawa tells IPS.

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Credit: IOM/Gema Cortés
 
In a world characterised by economic crises, conflicts, and natural disasters, the uptick in migration is proving to be one of the most important geopolitical phenomena of the century. The adverse effects of climate change and environmental degradation are increasingly driving people from their homes--IOM

By Lansana Gberie
GENEVA, Switzerland, Oct 3 2023 (IPS)

On 14 June, the UN High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) issued his flagship annual report, Global Trends: Forced Displacement 2022. It states that by the end of 2022, the number of people displaced by war, persecution, violence and human rights abuse had dramatically increased by 19.1 million — the biggest increase on record — reaching a total of 108.4 million.

This record-breaking displacement resulted mainly from the war in Ukraine and the eruption of conflict in Sudan. Ongoing conflicts in Afghanistan, Ethiopia, in Africa’s Sahel region and elsewhere also contributed, as did prominent natural disasters related to climate change.

Rush to conflict, slow to solution

In the report, High Commissioner Filippo Grandi was right to blame this tragedy on people who “are far too quick to rush to conflict, and way too slow to find solutions,” leading to such “devastation, displacement and anguish for each of the millions of people forcibly uprooted from their homes.”

On Monday 15 May 2023, the Member States of IOM elected Ms. Amy Pope as its new Director General.

Yet, to blame the perpetrators of such conflicts is not to absolve the rest of the world for responding so appallingly to such displacements. This is inevitably irregular or illegal migration. On the day that the UN report was released, as many as 600 men, women and children perished needlessly when a human smuggler’s boat, Adriana, capsized off the coast of Greece.

In the following month of July, news photographs showed 27 bodies of African migrants along with dozens of inebriated figures stranded along the Libya-Tunisia border. A few weeks later on 21 August, Human Rights Watch reported that border guards of an important Middle Eastern country had carried out “widespread and systematic” abuse of hundreds of African migrants and asylum seekers trying to cross its border between March 2022 and June 2023.

That country has rejected the allegation as false. If the evidence proves otherwise, then we could consider this an extreme example of “a kind of grim and tragic monotony,” the phrase used by the American Quaker humanitarian Louis W. Schneider in 1954 to characterize the world’s aggressive attitude toward unwanted migrants.

Lansana Gberie

Secure borders, safe passages

Perhaps more pernicious, because more subtle and more easily replicable elsewhere, is the growing practice by wealthy countries of providing training, logistical coordination and other high-tech support to poorer countries so that those poorer countries can forcibly prevent migration to the rich ones.

Linked to such pernicious support and coordination is the recent migrant boat tragedy off the coast of West Africa, after patrol boats chased a fishing boat carrying migrants. Maneuvering in pitch darkness to escape, the migrant boat lost its way and struck rocks off a popular beachfront in Dakar, Senegal, killing at least 16 people.

No doubt those countries have legitimate, and probably even humane, reasons for their robust efforts to stop this kind of irregular and dangerous migration: thousands of young Africans have died over the years trying this perilous route. And state sovereignty requires secure borders.

Still, it is hard to shake off the impression that staunching illegal migrant flows is a greater priority than helping desperate young people — often displaced by conflict and ecological disasters — to more secure and prosperous destinations.

The issue is not just a matter of moral consideration. It is a hugely complex problem, clearly one of the great global challenges of our unequal world, and one without an easy fix. Even so, the world must find a more humane and effective way of addressing it.

Humane management of migration

The International Organisation for Migration (IOM) was founded in 1951 to “help ensure the orderly and humane management of migration, to promote international cooperation on migration issues, to assist in the search for practical solutions to migration problems and to provide humanitarian assistance to migrants in need, including refugees and internally displaced people.”

The vision is ennobling, and IOM takes its mission seriously. The organization is currently made up of 175 member states, operating in 180 countries around the world (including my own, Sierra Leone). It employs thousands of people from diverse backgrounds in fulfilling this mission.

In March this year, as chair of the governing council of IOM, I visited two African countries where IOM has a significant presence. My first stop was Morocco — Rabat and Casablanca — where, during two days in March this year, I met with migrants, staff of IOM, senior government officials, diplomats and civil society organizations working with migrants.

Morocco is a critical migration hub — a source country, a transit point, and increasingly, a destination country for migrants. It combines border security arrangements with richer countries to its north with its own efforts to accommodate migrants, though perhaps with a lopsided provision of resources between the two.

Because of Morocco’s strategic location, the African Union in 2020 established the African Migration Observatory (AMO) in Rabat. Headed by an Egyptian diplomat, Ambassador Amira Elfadi, the observatory could potentially assist in monitoring events such as the tragedy at the Tunisia-Libya border. But when I met Ms. Elfadi, she had no staff yet. The AMO needs support for operations as extensive and energetic as those in Kenya.

The most effective combination

I had wide-ranging conversations with IOM staff in both countries, in town halls organised by local IOM leaders. Passion for the work of the organisation was very strong. Passion combined with strong technical knowledge and an eagerness to engage with migrant communities and local authorities at all levels — which I found stronger in Kenya — makes for greater effectiveness.

In May, by resounding vote and unanimous acclamation, IOM elected Amy Pope as its director general. She is a resourceful and energetic American who embodies this combination of passion, knowledge, and enthusiasm for engaging with staff at all levels, with all governments and local authorities, and with migrant communities.

A veteran migrant defender, Ms. Pope is the first woman to head this important organization since its founding 72 years ago. In her vision statement, she committed to a “people-centred” approach, defining this as a commitment to “the migrants, vulnerable people, and the communities IOM serves, IOM’s member states and its workforce.”

Since becoming deputy director of IOM over two years ago, Ms. Pope has consistently pursued this vision with a passion rare in the staid corridors of Geneva power offices. She is now one of a handful of pioneering women to lead important international organizations in Geneva, which hosts a few dozen. All of them assumed their positions within the past four years. It has been a refreshing change.

A novel leadership of a global organization grappling with a large global challenge tends to come with high expectations. It is both the attraction and a pitfall of progressive change. Either way, it will not detract from Ms. Pope’s commitment to posit that she will be as successful only in so far as the world wants her to succeed.

With the extraordinarily grim developments heralding her tenure, the world must embrace her “people-centred” approach. A failure to do so could mean unending calamities like the ones described above.

Dr. Lansana Gberie is Sierra Leone’s Permanent Representative in Geneva. He is Chair of the Governing Council of International Organization for Migration.

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Cecilia Erzuah was awarded the United Nations’ 2023 Military Gender Advocate of the Year. Credit: UN

By Abigail Van Neely
UNITED NATIONS, Oct 2 2023 (IPS)

Cecilia Erzuah was torn between two opposite career paths at the end of university. The week she was supposed to begin military training, her professor offered her a position as a lecturer.

Erzuah had worked as a teacher before and thought she was pretty good at it. She’d also been in Ghanaian youth cadet programs throughout school. But she’d never seen the military as a viable career before.

“I’m going into the military,” Erzuah decided. She remembers telling her professor she could still lecture, even while serving.

In a way, she did. Years later, Erzuah would host discussions on domestic violence and gender equality as the commander of a Ghanaian engagement platoon with the UN Interim Security Force for Abyei. She was awarded the United Nations’ 2023 Military Gender Advocate of the Year award for her service.

The UN Police Division aims to increase the number of women serving in military contingents to 15% by 2028 from the 10% it last reported in 2016. While Ghana is the largest contributor of women military peacekeepers, Erzuah was the first to receive the award, the UN reports.

Abyei is a contested area between Sudan and South Sudan. Recently, violence in Sudan has “worsened dramatically,” the former UN special envoy for Sudan, Volker Perthes, said. Perthes resigned last week, warning that the “conflict between Sudan’s rival military leaders’ could be morphing into a full-scale civil war’,” AP reported. According to UN humanitarian representative Edem Worsornu, millions of Sudanese people are at risk of famine. Cases of sexual violence have been driven to “distressing levels.”

Erzuah’s experiences working with local communities in the region are a reminder of the everyday people still relying on support. When villages are attacked, “you see nursing mothers [and] parents carrying their children with one hand trying to salvage the few clothing they have and running for their lives,” she says. Peacekeepers help these internally displaced people get to safety.

“The most valuable thing we have in life is our life, and then the peace we enjoy- because how much can you carry with you when you’re running for your life?” Erzuah asked.

In Abyei, Erzuah was charged with maintaining engagement with local leaders and organizations as a liaison between her battalion and the community. “If you don’t engage the community as a peacekeeper, you will be doing things they don’t need,” Erzuah says. “You will exert your energy for nothing.” Local people also share critical knowledge. For instance, they can help UN personnel predict when and where attacks will occur.

But it wasn’t easy to get community members to open up. Many women are wary of men – who they have seen perpetuate the crimes around them, Erzuah explains. Over time, though, Erzuah’s platoon, which consisted of an equal number of men and women, gained the trust of the people they were meant to serve. They had a particular impact on women who were encouraged by the presence of other women in a typically male-dominated field. “When the woman smiles, you feel it is more genuine than the man,” Erzuah jokes. More women have joined community protection committees thanks to the platoon’s outreach efforts.

“On every front, Captain Erzuah’s work has set the standard for ensuring that the needs and concerns of women are reflected across our peacekeeping operations,” Secretary-General Antonio Guterres said at her award ceremony. “The mixed patrols are…boosting the confidence of community members to go about daily activities safely,” Deng Paul Mankuol, a traditional chief in Majbong, said.

Erzuah smiles when she remembers learning about her physiology alongside local women during a breast cancer awareness event last year. “You realize that we are different but the same.”

Still, it’s not easy to be a woman in the military. All peacekeepers must adapt to unfamiliar environments and remain constantly on alert. Erzuah points out that women must also adapt to being on long patrols in areas without infrastructure to support their unique needs, like access to menstruation products.

Peacekeepers must adapt to unfamiliar environments and remain alert. UN Peacekeeping celebrated its 75th anniversary this year. Credit: UN

Ultimately, Erzuah chose her path because she’s never been afraid of a challenge. Growing up, Erzuah aspired to accomplish something that would demand her to be extraordinary. She relishes her current opportunity to show that women can be equally capable: “You feel you’re having the most impact when you will even see admiration in people’s faces.”

When people ask her if she’s afraid, Erzuah says they just want to know what motivates her. She sees the questions as a chance to explain that she struggled to get where she is now but that if she did it, they can, too.

Erzuah designs almost everything she wears – besides her uniform in her free time. She may still just be an “amateur fashion designer,” but she thinks that if she ever wants to be a professional, she can. It’s her belief that a person can be outstanding in any field they set their mind to.
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President Michel giving voice to the cause of small island states at the UN conference in Samoa in 2014. (Photo from the personal collection of James Michel)

By James Michel
VICTORIA, Seychelles, Oct 2 2023 (IPS)

Everyone knows that small island states are on the frontline of global warming. Rising sea levels, acidification destroying fisheries and coral reefs, and changing patterns of rainfall are just some of the challenges. Some low-lying islands have already been lost to the ocean.

These challenges are real and can hardly be understated. Yet there is another side to the story, too: one that tells of a creative response and new opportunities. The fact is that small island states are on the frontline of the Blue Economy.

Several years ago, in 2016, I wrote a book (Rethinking the Oceans: Towards the Blue Economy) to show why urgent action was needed. The interconnected seas cover most of our planet and yet we have always treated them as second best, as if the riches that are found there will last forever. Instead, I have for long argued that our approach must be sustainable. It must serve not only today’s needs but also tomorrow’s generations.

A decade ago, the idea of the Blue Economy was poorly understood. Why, people would ask, is it any different from how the sea has always been used? Things have changed since then and the question is no longer ‘why’ but ‘how’. In my second book on the subject, Revisiting the Ocean: Living the Blue Economy, I show what progress has been made and where we can find some of the most important changes.

There is a great deal more to be done, not least of all in stemming the relentless flow of harmful practices. But there are already signs of progress. To show this, I look to local communities and business startups, to visionaries and philanthropists, as well as international bodies. Go to remote beaches to see how communities (often led by women) are taking matters into their own hands. Or to the workshops of inventive young entrepreneurs who are finding ways to do things better. I am a realist but also an optimist and in my new book, I try to balance a pervasive sense of impending doom with a strong message of hope.

Kentaste is a local company reviving the coconut industry along the Kenya coast. (Photo courtesy of Joanne Muchai)

COP28 will bring together the great and the good, drawn by the prospect of a new approach. But it will also attract those who are not so enamoured with a sustainable approach to the ocean. Fast-growing nations with, literally, billions of mouths to feed will not so easily be persuaded that sustainability is the right approach. Nor will commercial and other interests which are poised to scrape the ocean floor for rich mineral reserves. Yet, if we are not to destroy our planet, restraint has to win the day. In the crowded rooms of the upcoming event in Dubai, we must lose no opportunity to press the case.

My own nation, Seychelles, has one of the world’s smallest populations and yet, surrounded by a vast stretch of ocean, we have pioneered new ways to sensibly manage this immense gift of nature. Planning our marine space in a rational way is how we are making progress and I commend the lessons to other small island nations. We have also been innovative in attracting funds and the ways we have done this, too, is a shared resource.

Under the auspices of the European Union, Seychelles last year hosted an event where African entrepreneurs displayed their exciting ideas and projects. Fabrics produced from leaves and fish skin gathered locally, natural fertilisers from seaweed, productive ways to recycle fishing nets, and desalination units using renewable energy. With the help of large funding bodies like the UN and EU, much more can be done to unleash creative energy. Revolutions invariably start in small ways and nothing short of an ocean revolution is needed. Urgently!

I look forward to COP28 and I know that the host nation, the United Arab Emirates, will do all that it can to lead by example. Let us go to the conference with enthusiasm, welcoming every new initiative. I will be there, along with friends from other small island states and it is up to us all to make our voice heard.

Copies of my new book will be available at the event (as well as direct from https://www.jamesmichelfoundation.org) and I hope I can share with you some of my own ideas and a record of the wonderful efforts being made around the world to save our precious ocean.

James Michel is a former president of the Republic of Seychelles and a leading international advocate of the Blue Economy.

IPS UN Bureau

 

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Excerpt:

The Mbeubeus dumpsite in Dakar, Senegal, where Practical Action, an international organisation is helping the communities phase out open burning of waste. Credit: Practical Action.

By Robert Kibet
NAIROBI, Oct 2 2023 (IPS)

With the African continent recycling less than 11 percent of its waste, COP28 provided leaders on the African continent to consider integrated waste systems that include informal waste workers.

Akinyi Walender, Africa Director at Practical Action, an innovative international development group, says the informal waste workers are rarely involved. She was speaking recently at the inaugural Africa Climate Summit.

“For us to tackle the issue of waste, we really have to look at how we can have a more integrated system in place, which means we need to bring everybody along,” she told a session on open burning of waste on the sideline of the summit.

Coming ahead of the upcoming Cop28 summit, Wandeler says it provided an opportunity for the African continent to think concretely about what it wants to achieve on climate issues.

“The situation on climate is so dire that we do need to really act. We should already begin to look at opportunities within the continent and make those good while we wait for the funding that is supposed to come on adaptation,” Walender told IPS in an interview.

Over 90 percent of waste generated in Africa is disposed of at uncontrolled dumpsites and landfills, often with associated open burning. Nineteen of the world’s 50 biggest dumpsites are located in Africa, all in Sub-Saharan Africa.

The African Union set an ambitious target for African cities to recycle at least half of their waste by 2023, but many are still far from achieving this.

According to the UN Environment Programme, the goal can be met and even surpassed with a shift of organic waste to composting and bioenergy recovery, along with the refurbishment, repair, reuse, and recycling of the waste.

In 2016, Sub-Saharan Africa alone generated around nine percent of global waste or 180 million tonnes, of which about two-thirds is dropped in landfills and open dump sites, left to pollute the nearby environment and global climate. This is projected to quadruple by 2050.

Last year, environment ministers from 54 African countries met in Dakar, Senegal, at the 18th session of the African Ministerial Conference on the Environment (AMCEN), committing to achieve a 60 percent reduction of open waste burning by 2030 and fully phase out open burning of waste by 2040.

It is an ambitious target, which Walender says, “With the much wider UN 2030 Agenda on the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) in place, many countries have so much that they need to grapple with”.

Akinyi Walender, the Director of Practical Action Africa, speaking during a session on open burning of waste at the sideline of the recent Africa Climate Summit in Nairobi. Credit: Robert Kibet/IPS

“We have many policies in place, but most are hardly implemented. The whole topic on open burning of waste and its 2040 timeline is very short. Many have yet to even put in place those policies that govern the open burning of waste. I feel that this timeline is actually very short,” Walender told IPS in an interview.

Sam Dindi, director for training and community mobilization at Mazingira Yetu, a Kenyan-based environment organization, says if countries embrace a green and circular economy in which waste is reused, it has the potential to create job opportunities for the youth.

“Open burning of waste is a quick way of addressing a problem, but again, it brings an even bigger problem that we may not be able to solve both as a country and as a continent,” he told IPS in an interview.

Last year, Kenya passed the Solid Waste Management Act 2022, dubbed Sustainable Solid Waste Management Act 2022, which requires the closure of all open dumpsites and transit to landfills, a controlled form of dumpsite.

“Kenya is making progress. Last year, Kenya passed the Solid Waste Management Act 2022, which transforms how we manage waste from the previous linear economy and promotes a circular economy in which waste is given a new lease of life. It is either upcycled or recycled,” says Dindi.

According to Dindi, the implementation of the policies in place remains a barrier to the efforts of various stakeholders.

“Implementation of the policies is where the rubber meets the road. This is where we lack the political goodwill because perhaps implementing these policies is perceived to affect some businesses, policymakers, or other interested parties,” Dindi told IPS.

Dumping of waste, according to stakeholders who spoke at the session, agreed that the open burning of waste heavily impacts the impoverished and marginalized communities.

A 2021 report by Practical Action dubbed Managing Our Waste indicates that nearly two billion people on the planet live without any form of waste collection, with Sub-Saharan Africa experiencing some of the lowest waste collection coverage.

The report recommends monitoring waste management as a people-centred service, integrating the voice of those most affected and improving informal waste workers’ lives and working conditions.

“At all levels, waste policies need to focus not only on environmental benefits but also on improving the lives of the poorest communities and workers. Their voices need to be heard in all key decision-making processes,” reads the report.

In Senegal, Practical Action is working with local communities and government agencies to reduce the open burning of waste at two major dumping sites, namely, the infamous Mbeubeus site in Dakar and a second one in Thiès.

“While it is generally seen as a responsibility of the local government, the community and the private sector need to be involved. If you look at the whole circular economy, there is the ability to reuse, recycle the waste, and reorient it in terms of packaging,” Walender told IPS.

 

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Artist and farmer Chavely Casimiro and her daughter Leah Amanda Díaz feed one of the biodigesters at Finca del Medio, a farm in central Cuba. The biodigester produces about seven meters of biogas per day, enough energy for cooking, baking and dehydrating food. CREDIT: Jorge Luis Baños / IPS

By Luis Brizuela
TAGUASCO, Cuba, Oct 2 2023 (IPS)

Combining technologies and innovations to take advantage of solar, wind, hydro and biomass potential has made the Finca del Medio farm an example in Cuba in the use of clean energies, which are the basis of its agroecological and environmental sanitation practices.

Renewable energy sources are used in many everyday processes such as electricity generation, lighting, water supply, irrigation and water heating, as well as in cooking, dehydrating, drying, baking and refrigeration of foodstuffs.

“We started out with windmills on artesian wells and hydraulic rams to pump water. That gave us an awareness of the amount of energy we needed and of how to expand its use,” said farmer José Antonio Casimiro, 65, owner of this agroecological family farm located in the center of this long Caribbean island nation."More incentives, better policies and financial support are needed so that farming families have sufficient energy for their work and can improve the comfort of their homes and quality of life." -- José Antonio Casimiro

The farmer expressed his appreciation of the help of his son, 41, also named Antonio Casimiro, in the installation of the two mills at Finca del Medio, during the days in which IPS visited the farm and shared in activities with the family.

“There was no one to assemble or repair them. We both had to study a great deal, and we learned to do a lot of construction things as we went along and perfected the techniques,” said Casimiro junior, referring to the equipment that is now inactive, but is capable of extracting some 4,000 liters of water daily from the water table.

When rainfall is abundant and the volume of the 55,000-cubic-meter-capacity reservoir rises, the hydraulic ram comes to life. The device diverts about 20,000 liters of water to a 45,000-liter tank, 400 meters away and 18 meters above the level of the reservoir.

“The only energy the rams use is the water pressure itself. Placing it on the highest part of the land makes it easier to use the slope for gravity irrigation, or to fill the animals’ water troughs,” explained Chavely Casimiro, 28, the youngest daughter of José Antonio and Mileidy Rodríguez, also 65.

An artist who also inherited the family’s “farming gene”, Chavely highlighted some twenty innovations made by her father to the hydraulic ram, in order to optimize water collection.

Other inventions speed up the assembly and disassembly of the windmills for maintenance, or in the event of tropical cyclones.

“We have been replacing the water supply with solar panels, which are more efficient. They can be removed faster (than the windmill blades) if a hurricane is coming. You can incorporate batteries and store the energy,” said Casimiro.

“Let’s say a windmill costs about 2,000 dollars. With that amount you can buy four 350-watt panels. That would be more than a kilowatt hour (kWh) of power. You buy a couple of batteries for 250 dollars each, and with that amount of kWh you can pump the equivalent of the water of about 10 windmills,” he said.

But the farmer said the windmills are more important than the energy they generate. “It would be nice if every farm had at least one windmill. For me it is very symbolic to see them pumping up water,” he said.

 

Lorenzo Díaz, the husband of Chavely Casimiro, uses a solar oven to cook food. In the background can be seen a windmill and a solar heater, other technologies that take advantage of the potential for renewable energies on the Finca del Medio farm in central Cuba. CREDIT: Jorge Luis Baños / IPS

 

Innovations

Located in the municipality of Taguasco, in the central province of Sancti Spíritus, some 350 kilometers east of Havana, Finca del Medio follows a family farm model including permaculture, agroecology and agricultural production based on the use of clean energy.

In 1993, Casimiro and Rodríguez with their children Leidy and José Antonio – a year later, Chavely was born – decided to settle on the 13-hectare farm of their paternal grandparents, with the aim of reversing its deterioration and soil erosion and installing perimeter fences.

The erosion of the land was due to the fact that in the past the farm was dedicated to the cultivation of tobacco, which depleted the soil, and later it had fallen into abandonment, as well as the house.

The older daughter is the only one who does not live and work on the farm, although she does spend time there, and a total of ten family members live there, including four grandchildren. All the adults either work on the farm or help out with different tasks.

With the help of technological innovations adapted to the local ecosystem, and empirical and scientific knowledge, the family has become self-sufficient in rice, beans, tubers, vegetables, milk, eggs, honey, meat, fish and more than 30 varieties of fruit. The only basic foodstuffs not produced on the farm are sugar and salt.

They sell all surplus production, including cow’s milk, for which they have specific contracts, and they are also promoting agrotourism, for which they are making further improvements to the facilities.

At Finca del Medio, a system of channels and ditches allows the infiltration of rainwater, reduces erosion of the topsoil and conserves as much water as possible for subsequent irrigation.

These innovations also benefit neighboring communities by mitigating flooding and replenishing the water table, which has brought water back to formerly dry wells.

The construction of the house is also an offshoot of technological solutions to the scarcity of resources such as steel, which led to the design of dome-shaped roofs made of mud bricks and cement.

The design aids in rainwater harvesting, improves hurricane protection, and boosts ventilation, creating cooler spaces, which reduces the need for air conditioning equipment and bolsters savings.

Along with food production, the new generations and members of the Casimiro-Rodriguez family engage in educational activities to raise awareness about good agricultural and environmental practices.

Students from nearby schools come to the farm to learn about these practices, as well as specialists in agroecology and people from different parts of the world, interested in sharing the experience. Meanwhile, several members of the family have traveled abroad to give workshops on agroecology and permaculture.

 

Farmers José Antonio Casimiro (R) and his son of the same name talk in the mechanical workshop at their Finca del Medio farm. Both have come up with innovations for the use of windmills, the hydraulic ram and biodigesters, as well as agricultural tools. CREDIT: Jorge Luis Baños / IPS

 

Solar and biogas potential

On one of the side roofs of the house are 28 photovoltaic panels that provide about eight kWh, connected to batteries. The stored energy covers the household’s needs during power outages that affect the island due to fuel shortages and breakdowns and problems in maintenance of its aging thermoelectric plants.

In addition, the household has three solar water heaters with a capacity of 380 liters.

Next to the kitchen, two fixed-dome biodigesters produce another renewable fuel, biogas, composed mainly of methane and carbon dioxide from the anaerobic decomposition of animal manure, crop waste and “even sewage from the house, which we channel so that the waste does not contaminate the environment,” said Casimiro.

Due to the current shortage of manure as the number of cows has been reduced, only one of the biodigesters is now operational, producing about seven meters of biogas per day, sufficient for cooking, baking and dehydration of foodstuffs.

The innovative family devised a mechanism to extract – without emptying the pond of water or stopping biogas production – from the bottom the solids used as biofertilizers, as well as hundreds of liters of effluent for fertigation (a combination of organic fertilizers and water) of the crops, by gravity.

The installation of the biodigesters, the solar panels and one of the solar heaters was supported by the Swiss Agency for Development and Cooperation (Cosude) and the Indio Hatuey Experimental Station of Pastures and Forages through its Biomass-Cuba project, Casimiro said.

He also expressed gratitude for the link with other scientific institutions such as the Integrated Center for Appropriate Technologies, based in the central province of Camagüey, which is focused on offering solutions to the needs of water supply and environmental sanitation, and played an essential role in the installation of the hydraulic ram.

The farmer said the farm produces the equivalent of about 20 kWh from the combination of renewable energies, and if only conventional electricity were used, the cost would be around 83 dollars a month.

 

Lorenzo Díaz feeds firewood into an innovative stove that allows the Finca del Medio farm to efficiently cook food, dehydrate or dry fruits and spices, heat water and preserve meat, among other functions. CREDIT: Jorge Luis Baños / IPS

 

Efficient stove

In the large, functional kitchen, the stove covered with white tiles and a chimney has been remodeled 16 times to make it more efficient and turn it into another source of pride at the farm.

Fueled by firewood, coconut shells and other waste, “the stove makes it possible to cook food, dehydrate fruits and spices, heat water and preserve meat, among other tasks,” Rodríguez told IPS as she listed some of the advantages of this other offshoot of the family’s ingenuity that helps her as a skilled cook and pastry chef.

She pointed out that by extracting all the smoke, “the design makes better use of the heat, which will be used in a sauna” being built next to the kitchen, for the enjoyment of the family and potential tourists.

Casimiro is in favor of incorporating clean energy into agricultural processes, but he said that “more incentives, better policies and financial support are needed so that farming families have sufficient energy for their work and can improve the comfort of their homes and quality of life.”

Since 2014, Cuba has had a policy for the development of renewable energy sources and their efficient use.

A substantial modification of the national energy mix, which is highly dependent on the import of fossil fuels and hit by cyclical energy deficits, is a matter of national security

However, regulations with certain customs exemptions and other incentives to increase the production of solar, wind, biomass and hydroelectric energies in this Caribbean island nation still seem insufficient in view of the high prices of these technologies, the domestic economic crisis and the meager purchasing power of most Cuban families.

Clean sources account for only five percent of the island’s electricity generation, a scenario that the government wants to radically transform, with an ambitious goal of a 37 percent proportion by 2030, which is increasingly difficult to achieve.

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UN peacekeepers on patrol in Mutwanga in eastern Democratic Republic of the Congo. Credit: UN Photo/Michael Ali

By Olivier Ndoole Bahemuke
GOMA, Democratic Republic of Congo, Oct 2 2023 (IPS)

The world is moving away from fossil fuels towards so-called “green” energies as a solution to the climate crisis, which has increased the demand for strategic minerals such as cobalt, copper and lithium.

As a human rights lawyer in the Democratic Republic of Congo – which has the world’s largest cobalt reserves and among the largest copper reserves – I represent communities and ecosystems in Virunga, Kahuzi Biega, Okapi and elsewhere that have suffered numerous human rights violations as a result of the extraction of these minerals.

Home to the second-largest tropical forest in the world and vast mineral wealth, the DRC has exceptional natural resources. However, the country has faced a complex humanitarian crisis since 1994; plagued by war and violence in the eastern regions which has led to conflict, poverty, malnutrition and recurring epidemics.

The people I represent have been forcibly evicted from their land due to mining operations by extractive companies; major human rights violations and violence that accompany the mining process; and loss of clean air, soil and water because of destructive mining practices. Certain companies exploit land in protected areas in violation of national laws, and fail to respect due diligence standards in place for businesses.

Corruption is rampant – Chinese and Canadian companies, among others, wield influence on public institutions to cut corners and avoid living up to their obligations. In many cases, no impact assessments are carried out; when they are carried out, it is often to formalise the exploitation process and not to safeguard the climate, let alone to provide social protection for the communities most affected.

In short, thousands of farmers, their villages, their means of survival and their cultural values are impacted by the exploitation of cobalt, copper and other strategic minerals in the DRC.

This panorama poses a number of major challenges. In the pursuit of their interests, multinationals extracting minerals from the DRC have no respect for the rights of peasants, national laws, climate emergency needs or social safeguards.

People living in areas surrounding mining operations suffer endemic poverty and health crises amid wider energy and climate injustice. Children are not able to attend school, there are widespread land evictions and expropriations, rivers are polluted, and women and children are exploited.

State institutions are often weaponised against ordinary people – the justice system and certain military officers and/or armed groups are co-opted for security, to protect business interests against local people.

It shouldn’t have to be this way for communities living in resource-rich countries like DRC. There should be some minimum guidelines in place to safeguard against such violations.

States in the Global North and Global South should set up a major strategic coalition to ensure compliance with due diligence standards and strengthen the corporate social responsibility of extractive companies. Such a coalition should:

• Ensure the monitoring and evaluation of national and international mechanisms for mining investment;
• Reinforce local communities’ knowledge of international laws and best practices in the field of human rights and investment;
• Provide legal support for victims of land and environmental injustice caused by mining operations;
• Build the capacities of civil society organisations in terms of technical and scientific expertise in impact monitoring and evaluation;
• End investments in fossil fuels which negatively impact people’s livelihoods, biodiversity and land, and instead invest in sustainable alternatives;
• Strengthen legal reforms to better uphold climate and social safeguards, prohibit the exploitation of certain more devastating natural resources, develop community guidelines on rights and legal means against investments;
• and decolonise energy narratives.

Over 13 kg of cobalt are needed to produce the battery for an average electric vehicle, and around seven grams are required for a cell phone. Demand for cobalt, which has tripled since 2010, is expected to reach 222,000 tonnes by 2025.

Without a major shift to put in place safeguards in the supply chain, extractive industries will continue to ride roughshod over the rights of local communities, and we will sadly see an escalation of human rights violations.

We need to act fast to stop this. We need a global monitoring programme and far-reaching legal reforms for a fair energy transition that prioritises the human rights of local communities.

Olivier Ndoole Bahemuke, from Goma, eastern DRC, is described as a leader among environmental and land defenders in the country and one of the most trusted advocates on behalf of communities impacted by land grabs, trafficking, and illegal resource extraction activities. He was the Africa regional winner of Front Line Defenders’ 2023 Award for Human Rights Defenders at Risk.

IPS UN Bureau

 

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