Africa

Farmers planting sweet potato seedlings at the Seed Savers Bene Bank. Credit: Seed Savers.

By Nout van der Vaart
Rotterdam/The Hague, Dec 9 2019 (IPS)

People have a right to define their own food system. This includes which seeds they use. Last week, farmers in Nakuru County, Kenya, celebrated the launch of “Ten rich, underutilized crops,” a publication and documentary that capture their efforts to promote and sustain the varieties they grow.

 

Farmers’ diminishing access to seeds

Access to seeds for smallholder farmers has become an issue of concern in Eastern Africa. Mirroring the trend in which control of global food production is falling into ever fewer private hands, it’s getting increasingly difficult for farmers to use and exchange their own, farm-saved seeds. Eighty percent of seeds used by smallholder farmers are sourced through farmer-managed seed systems. But these systems are largely ignored by governments whose agricultural budgets are mostly used to promote hybrid or improved seeds through the commercial or formal seed system.

African governments are also pressured by regional, international and bilateral trade agreements to adopt discriminatory policy and legal frameworks that are very unfavorable to smallholder farmers. These seed laws protect exclusive ownership rights – like patents and breeders’ rights – while overlooking farmers’ rights. The resulting privatization of seeds greatly restricts the majority of smallholder farmers, who depend on the free and open use, reuse, saving, and exchange of (farmer-managed) seeds.

 

Food security, climate resilience, biodiversity – and seeds

There are three reasons why farmer-managed seeds help solve problems like food scarcity, climate change and loss of plant species.

1. In the face of a rapidly worsening climate crisis, smallholder farmers need seeds that are resilient to changing and unpredictable weather conditions, like prolonged periods of drought or heavy rains. Free seed exchange increases resilient sorts of seeds, and therefore farmer’s own resilience to climate change.
2. Farmer-managed seed systems provide the majority of food produced in sub-Saharan Africa. Smallholder farmers as such play a considerable role in keeping themselves and their communities food secure.
3. By growing, breeding, and fostering farmer varieties (“underutilized varieties”), farmers greatly help preserve agricultural biodiversity in their countries.

 

Delicacies made from the 10 rich, underutilized crops. Credit: Seed Savers.

 

Documenting and registering farmer seed varieties

The Kenyan Seed Savers network, with support from Hivos and our Sustainable Diets for All partners, has documented and characterized 60 underutilized varieties grown by smallholder farmers in Nakuru county. Ten of these varieties are described in the publication “Ten rich, underutilized crops.” They are considered most promising in terms of nutritional value, climate resilience, and popular taste. The next step is for them to be produced and marketed on a larger and more commercial scale by the farmers themselves.

As put by Francis Ngiri, a farmer in Nakuru involved in the documentation project, “These varieties will allow us to grow and diversify our production and eat more healthy.”

Hivos and Seed Savers’ booklet demonstrates the rich diversity that grows in farmers’ fields in Kenya. More importantly though, it’s part of a direct appeal to Kenyan authorities to recognize that these varieties exist, that they belong to farmers, and hence should never be subject to private control.

There is an urgent need for countries like Kenya to adopt legal frameworks on seed and intellectual property rights that allow farmers’ varieties to be registered as such, protecting them from privatization. One way to avoid corporate control of seeds is to have them  registered as open source, which would grant them the status of protected commons. This would not only safeguard national agrobiodiversity, farmers’ own food security and ensure their ability to adapt to climate change, but would clearly recognize farmers’ own vital contributions to these efforts.

The time for Open Source Seeds has come!

 

 

This opinion piece was originally published here

The post Saved Seeds are Seeds of Resilience appeared first on Inter Press Service.

Excerpt:

Nout van der Vaart is advocacy officer for sustainable food at Hivos

The post Saved Seeds are Seeds of Resilience appeared first on Inter Press Service.

Credit: The Pacific Community – Sustainable Pacific Development Through Science, Knowledge & Innovation

By Thalif Deen
UNITED NATIONS, Dec 9 2019 (IPS)

When UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres addressed the Economic and Social Commission for Asia and the Pacific (ESCAP) last month, he pointed out the dramatic impact of climate change triggering natural disasters around the world— from glaciers that melt, ice caps that disappear and corals that bleach.

But more and more, he said, the devastating impacts are on the life of the people and in the health of people around the world.

According to the results of a report published in Nature Communications, sea-level is rising much faster than what was expected and forecasted in the past.

“If we are not able to defeat climate change”, Guterres warned “we will have in 2050 an impact of the sea-level rise on over 300 million people”.

Of these 300 million people, 70% are in countries in the Asia-Pacific region where coastal cities could be “wiped out” if there aren’t enough sea defences in place.

The most vulnerable include the Pacific Island Countries and Territories (PICTs), plus eight Asian countries: Bangladesh, China, India, Vietnam, Indonesia, Thailand, the Philippines and Japan, according to the report.

Dr Benjamin Straus, president and CEO of Climate Central, who along with Scott Kulp, co-authored the report, was quoted by Cable News Network (CNN) as saying: “The results indicate that, yes, a great deal more people are on vulnerable land than we thought.”

And they need to take immediate action to avoid the impending “economic and humanitarian catastrophe.”

As the sea-level continues to rise, the world’s low-lying countries, mostly in the Pacific, will be the worst affected by the climate crisis, which is not of their own creation.

At the ongoing COP25 climate change conference in Madrid, which is expected to conclude December 13, the future of the “Blue Planet, where water covers around 75 percent of the earth’s surface, will be a major part of the discussion.

In an interview with IPS, Andrew Jones, Director, Geoscience, Energy and Maritime Division at the Pacific Community (SPC), a principal scientific and technical organization in the Pacific region, provided a worst-case scenario for Pacific Island Countries and Territories (PICTs).

Excerpts from the interview:

IPS: The countries singled out as the most vulnerable to climate change are the 57 small island developing states (SIDS)—some of whom like the Maldives, Tuvalu and Kiribati, may be wiped off the face of the earth due to sea level rise and natural disasters. Do you think the international community is adequately responding to these dangers with concrete actions on climate resilience and funding for adaptation?

JONES: An important point in there is that the countries most vulnerable to climate change are the atoll nations, of which there are four: Maldives, Marshall Islands, Kiribati and Tuvalu.

These countries are mere meters above sea level and have no higher ground to which they can retreat (unlike other countries which have populated atoll islands but also volcanic islands, or which are territories of another country).

Another important point is that these countries will become uninhabitable long before they are “wiped off the face of the earth” by sea level rise and disasters.

The picture of seas rising like a bathtub, so that we can wait until the high ground goes under, is too simplistic (and dangerous thinking).

Even relatively small increases in sea level will lead to more wave flooding (raising up the ‘base level’ of the natural wave variation in the Pacific) and this wave flooding will poison fresh water supplies and crops.

Safeguarding the World’s Largest Tuna Fishery. Credit: Siosifa Fukofuka (SPC)

IPS: Is the UN’s Decade for Ocean Sciences for Sustainable Development (2021-2030) a step in the right direction?

JONES: The UN Decade is definitely a step in the right direction, because the more detailed, rigorous scientific data that we have, the more certainty we will have in forward models, and the better we will be able to inform mitigation and adaptation decision making.”

However not enough is being done to respond to the climate change crisis facing our Pacific Island Nations (the Leaders used the term ‘crisis’ at the last Forum Meeting).

Ambitious adaptation actions are needed within PICTs to prevent them from becoming uninhabitable. For example, countries like the Marshall Islands may look to build higher islands.

However, the future of the Pacific depends on the international focus remaining on mitigation; the international community must commit to progressing the Paris Agreement.

In this context, the UN Decade for Ocean Science is also not enough. PICTs cannot wait ten years to build a better database before commencing ambitious adaptation measures.

A large factor is that we currently have a window in which the Pacific needs to focus on adaptation while the international community needs to focus on mitigation. If in the future the international focus shifts, then much less adaptation funding will be available for the Pacific.

IPS: What are the specific threats facing PICTs?

JONES: The Pacific is heavily reliant on the ocean as a source of protein, but the changing climate is impacting fisheries and opening new debates on what is considered international waters- and what is not.

Firstly, what is considered international waters – Pacific’s position on this is very clear – the sovereignty of their nations is not in question regardless of geographic changes that may occur due to changing climate.

Pacific Leaders have stated that once maritime boundaries are de-limited they cannot be challenged or reduced as a result of sea-level rise and climate change. The Pacific has stated that anything which is currently sovereign waters will remain that way and will not become international waters in the future.

However, the international legal instrument through which these maritime boundaries are defined (United Nations Convention on the Law of the Sea) is not clear on this point.

Therefore, SPC is undertaking a regional technical study to understand which ‘base points’ (the points of land from which the maritime boundaries are defined) are vulnerable to change through sea level rise.

At the same time, the Office of the Pacific Ocean Commissioner (OPOC) is looking at international legal instruments to understand which avenues will be open to PICTs to ensure they retain their sovereign rights into the future.

IPS: What’s the future of coastal fisheries? How will they be impacted by climate change?

JONES: In terms of fisheries, it’s probably worth noting that the coastal fisheries which are a primary source of protein for PICTs may be impacted by climate change but these are separate from any debate over international waters.

Oceanic fisheries are the transboundary resource most likely to be affected by any climate change in this context, and while they are a source of protein they are also cornerstone of Pacific export economies.

The latest scientific modelling suggests that the geographic distribution of tuna populations may change in the future, which may result in decreasing tuna stocks in the exclusive economic zones of some countries and may also result in an increase in the relative proportion of the tuna resource within international waters (as defined by current maritime boundaries).

This could have significant implications for the narrow and fragile economies of some PICTs, and therefore all aspects of development, although FFA are working with PICTs to reassess how they distribute rights to the tuna resource under future climate scenarios.

The writer can be contacted at thalifdeen@ips.org

The post The Economic & Humanitarian Catastrophe Threatening Pacific Island Communities appeared first on Inter Press Service.

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By Joseph Chamie
NEW YORK, Dec 6 2019 (IPS)

In addition to its unprecedented rapid rate of demographic growth during the past 75 years, world population’s distribution across the planet has changed significantly over the past seven decades. The momentous global changes in humanity’s geographic distribution pose serious social, economic, political and environmental challenges and disquieting implications for the future. 

The proportion of world population living in more developed regions is half its 1950 level, 16 versus 32 percent, and is expected to decline further to 13 percent by 2050. This transition is the result of substantial differences in the rates of population growth among the major regions of the world.

The relative demographic standing of Europe’s population has changed substantially during the recent past, falling from 22 percent of world population in 1950 to 10 percent today and projected to decline further to 7 percent by midcentury. In the opposite direction, Africa’s population has nearly doubled its share of world population during this period, increasing from 9 percent in 1950 to 17 percent in 2020.

As the sizable differences in the demographic growth rates of those two continents are expected to persist well into the future, Africa’s population is expected to be more than triple the size of Europe’s population by midcentury. And by the close of the 21st century, Africa’s population is projected to be nearly seven times as large as Europe’s population, 4.3 billion versus 0.63 billion, respectively.

Differing rates of demographic growth have also resulted in significant changes in the ranking of countries by population size. Among the top ten largest populations, for example, the number of more developed countries has decreased from six in 1950 to two today and is expected to decline to one country, the United States, by 2050 (Table 1).

 

Source: United Nations.

 

Again, African countries, which were not among the top ten largest populations in 1950, have experienced the most relative gains in demographic ranking during the recent past. Consequently, by 2050 three African countries, Nigeria, Ethiopia and the Democratic Republic of Congo, are expected to be among the world’s top ten largest populations.

Another momentous change in the distribution of the world’s population is its rural/urban composition. During the past seven decades a literal revolution in urban living has occurred worldwide. The proportion of world population residing in urban areas has increased from a minority of 30 percent in 1950 to a majority of 56 percent today and is expected to increase further to nearly 70 percent by 2050 (Figure 1).

 

 

Source: United Nations.

 

While the growth of the urban population has occurred worldwide, it has been more substantial for less developed regions. The proportion of the populations residing in urban centers in less developed regions has nearly tripled, jumping from 18 percent in 1950 to 52 percent today.

The far-reaching urban transition continues to be well underway. By midcentury two-thirds of the population of less developed regions, some 5.8 billion inhabitants, is expected to be living in urban centers.

In addition to increased levels of urbanization, the population sizes of urban agglomerations have increased significantly over the past 70 years. In 1950 there was a single city megacity, New York, with a population of 10 million or more inhabitants. Today there are 33 megacities and that number is projected to increase to 43 by 2030.

Some of the most rapid population growth of megacities during the past few decades occurred in Africa and Asia. Since 1990, the populations of no less than ten megacities, including Delhi, Shanghai, Dhaka, Lahore and Lagos, have tripled in size (Figure 2).

 

Source: United Nations.

 

Rapid population growth is expected to continue over the coming decade for many of the megacities in less developed regions. The population of Kinshasa, for example, which grew from 3.8 million in 1990 to 13.2 million in 2018, is projected to reach 22 million by 2030, making it the world’s tenth largest megacity at that time.

It is widely recognized that urbanization offers a large variety of social, economic and cultural benefits, opportunities and freedoms. In addition to employment and career development, urban residents have ready access to education, health care, social services, cultural institutions, recreation and government agencies.

It is also acknowledged, however, that urbanization places stresses on social services, infrastructure and the physical environment that can make urban living difficult, especially for low income groups. This is particularly evident in the cities of less developed regions.

The increasing proportions the world’s population residing in the rapidly growing urban centers of less developed countries pose serious developmental challenges for local and national governments. The basic needs of daily living for those growing urban populations, including food, water, housing, electricity, employment, education, health care, transportation, security, telecommunications, sanitation and waste management, are not meeting increased demands and desired goals.

Most recently, the populations of many large cities are facing the effects of climate change. In addition to having to deal with flooding, rising sea levels, droughts, fires and higher temperatures, many cities, especially those in Bangladesh, China, India, Indonesia and Pakistan, are now confronting air pollution. In addition to the increased risks of morbidity and mortality, ambient air pollution has enormous economic and social costs, with cities in low- and middle-income countries suffering the biggest burden from this environmental challenge.

The failure to adequately meet the fundamental needs and aspirations of urban populations is having serious consequences, particularly in the less developed countries. In addition to rising poverty levels, shortages of water, food and energy and worsening environmental conditions, those consequences include social unrest, political instability, civil violence and armed conflict.

Furthermore, those consequences will not remain confined within national borders, but will have international repercussions for neighboring countries as well as distant countries in more developed regions. Among the likely repercussions are calls for increased development assistance, requests for emergency/humanitarian relief services, rising numbers of internally displaced persons and asylum seekers, and substantially more men, women and children actively seeking to migrate to wealthier nations by both legal and illegal means.

The development and improvement of urban living is among the United Nations Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) to be achieved by 2030. Goal 11 of the SDGs aims to make cities inclusive, safe, resilient and sustainable, including emphasis on housing, health, energy, public transportation, environment, cultural heritage, employment and business opportunities.

While some developmental progress has been achieved in a number of cities in the recent past, governments are by and large falling behind in their efforts and commitments to the SDGs. The lack of progress is most evident among cities in less developed countries, which have experienced rapid demographic growth.

In brief, increasing proportions of a growing world population are located in less developed regions with rising concentrations living in their urban centers. By 2030 about 4 billion people, or about half of the world’s population, will be living in the cities of less developed regions.

Government authorities of those cities in cooperation with national leaders need to take urgent action now, including formulating appropriate polices, undertaking comprehensive planning and establishing effective programs. To do otherwise not only greatly handicaps the achievement of desired development goals, but it also undermines the provision of essential basic services and fundamental infrastructure required by the world’s growing urban populations in less developed regions.

*Joseph Chamie, a former director of the United Nations Population Division, is currently an independent consulting demographer. 

 

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