President Obama will this week become the first African American President to make an official visit to an African country.

The most interesting fact is that he does not go to South Africa or Nigeria - the two countries that compete for the unofficial title of leaders of black Africa. President Obama decided to go to the oil producing belt of West Africa, and this cut out South Africa;  then he chose the unassuming Ghana, rather then the feisty Nigeria - the most populous black state and important partner of the US in oil trade.

Why? What does he teach in this visit?

Nigeria is a corrupt state to its bone. Even its son, the Nobel Price winning Wole Soyinka said that neglecting Nigeria was just the right medicine that Nigeria needed. He continued then with the shocking statement: “I’d ’stone’ Obama if he showed up in Nigeria and conferred legitimacy on its sorry government.”

Ghana on the other hand, a much smaller West African nation, as of now with little US trade, did hold fair multiparty democratic elections since 1992, and  has a history of incumbents stepping down once they reach their term limits.

Ghana is a beacon of hope to Africa and has produced the only two-terms African UN Secretary-General, Koffi Annan, who we hope will be at hand when President Obama arrives for a day at the end of this week.

Yes, we know, it is rumored that the US is interested in Ghana also as it is the newest arrival to the West Coast Oil-belt, and with China making inroads in the region, the US might be interested to establish here a military base as well as an oil trade relationship.

But even so, this US President showed preference for clean government if this is at all possible.

Africa watch and learn!

Heart health at the tip of your finger
By Karin Kloosterman
July 01, 2009

 http://www.israel21c.org/bin/en.jsp?enDi…;

Whoopi Goldberg tried the EndoPAT heart test on her finger during a recent episode of The View and came out smiling. After 15 minutes, the Israeli developed device was able to give her heart a passing grade. At least for the next seven years.

Developed by Itamar Medical, an Israeli company traded on the Tel Aviv Stock Exchange, the EndoPAT has been popular not only with celebrities, but also gets a seal of approval from America’s doctors, and prestigious medical institutions like the Mayo Clinic.

Earning FDA status in 2003, the EndoPAT can measure the health of your heart using two small probes that hook up to each index finger. While there are other tests on the market like ultrasound tests to help clinicians assess if a patient has the early onset of heart disease, the EndoPAT looks further into the future — up to seven years, sensing whether or not your arteries are losing elasticity.

Like a blood pressure test on your finger

“The test I’m talking about - a 15 minute test - is a probe on the finger and basically it works the way you take blood pressure,” says Dr. Dov Reuven, the company’s CEO. “We do the same thing and measure the stress of the arteries in the fingertips.”

Used over 150,000 times in the US, the recent vote of confidence from the Mayo Clinic, which tested the EndoPAT on an independent study of healthy volunteers - part of the Framingham Heart Study — tells doctors that it’s a good addition to their toolkit for assessing heart disease.

“That’s the beauty of this. That’s why it is revolutionary,” Reuven tells ISRAEL21c. “The EnoPAT is the easiest detector of this disease. All other devices work within about one, two or three years. There is a test in the US that looks for carotid plaque. The point is once there is a buildup of plaque, it is too late in the cycle. A patient is not going to turn around that much. Ours can already see arteries that are less distensible.”

This means that people who may get a clean bill of health from doctors, can look deeper into their future, to know if they are at risk for heart attack seven years down the road. If you discover you are at risk, a regimen for improving health can be developed with a doctor. Changing one’s diet and exercise, or taking statins, may be a course of action.

Applications in understanding erectile problems

It also has become an interesting test for understanding erectile dysfunction, and can help a doctor decide whether or not to prescribe erection-enhancing drugs like Cialis, says Reuven.

The same device that tests for heart health can also tell urologists whether or not to prescribe medicine. “It could protect them from malpractice,” says Reuven.

Essentially, using this device doctors have a much better way now to control a patient’s health to determine if they are at risk of a heart attack. “The importance of the Mayo Clinic story is that today when you go to your physicians or cardiologist, they will ask you seven questions, or risk factors for heart disease, like cholesterol levels, if you smoke, or are overweight,” says Reuven.

Sometimes there are people who are considered completely low risk based on these basic questions, but nevertheless are at risk for heart disease. The study examined 240 people who are “specimens of health”, tacking them over time, and recording cardiac events, such as chest pains or heart attacks.

The efficacy of the test was confirmed by doctors at Mayo. The clinic writes: “Results of a Mayo Clinic study show that a simple, non-invasive finger sensor test is ‘highly predictive’ of a major cardiac event, such as a heart attack or stroke, for people who are considered at low or moderate risk, according to researchers.”

Mayo’s seal of approval

The device is now available at doctors’ clinics in the US, including the clinic of The View’shouse doctor Dr. Stephen Lamm.

Endorsing the product, Lamm says he uses it on every patient, translating to about 200 times a month.

On the show, Whoopi scored a 1.9, “and she was excited,” says Reuven. “The real truth is the arterial sclerosis process starts early on in life. This will become part of the screening and treatment process,” he adds, mentioning that China is taking a serious look at the device too. “They can’t afford heart bypasses and stents.”

The EndoPAT has applications in wellness and holistic medicine as a means to quantify if a treatment is working.

The company has a second device, a product that functions like a mini sleep lab used to detect the severity of sleep apnea. Called the WatchPAT it resembles a ski or diving watch. It removes the need for people to spend uncomfortable nights in a sleep lab.

Traded on the Tel Aviv Stock Exchange, the largest investor in Itamar Medical is Medtronic. The company employs about 160 people worldwide.

The Tennessean, May 1, 2009
Global warming strongly divides Christian clergy

By Bob Smietana

When the Rev. James Merritt wants to talk about the environment, he does what any good Baptist preacher would do. He picks up the Bible.

“The first assignment that God gave to Adam was to take care of the Garden,” said Merritt, who was president of the Nashville-based Southern Baptist Convention from 2000-02. “As far as I know, that job has never been revoked.”

While most Christian ministers agree that human beings are to care for creation, they disagree on the details. That’s especially true about the topic of global warming.

A new survey from Southern Baptist-owned LifeWay Research found a split between mainline ministers, like Episcopalians and Methodists, and evangelicals like Southern Baptists. Mainline ministers believe that climate change is manmade and want to take action. Evangelical ministers, on the other hand, remain skeptical.

For full story, visit:

 http://www.virtueonline.org/portal/modul…

The United Nations Collaborative Programme on Reducing Emissions from Deforestation and Forest Degradation in Developing Countries (UN-REDD Programme) is a collaboration between FAO, UNDP and UNEP. A multi-donor trust fund was established in July 2008 that allows donors to pool resources and provides funding to activities towards this programme.

The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) estimates that the cutting down of forests is now contributing close to 20 per cent of the overall greenhouse gases entering the atmosphere. Forest degradation also makes a significant contribution to emissions from forest ecosystems. Therefore there is an immediate need to make significant progress in reducing deforestation, forest degradation, and associated emission of greenhouse gases.

The United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) agenda item on “Reducing emissions from deforestation in developing countries and approaches to stimulate action” was first introduced at the Conference of the Parties (COP11) in December 2005 by the governments of Papua New Guinea and Costa Rica, supported by eight other Parties. The challenge was to establish a functioning international REDD finance mechanism that can be included in an agreed post-2012 global climate change framework. Progress has been made and the need to meet the challenge is now reflected in the Bali Action Plan and the COP13 Decision 2/CP.13. A functioning international REDD finance mechanism needs to be able to provide the appropriate revenue streams to the right people at the right time to make it worthwhile for them to change their forest resource use behaviour.

In response to the COP13 decision, requests from countries, and encouragement from donors, FAO, UNDP and UNEP have developed a collaborative REDD programme. The UN-REDD Programme is aimed at tipping the economic balance in favour of sustainable management of forests so that their formidable economic, environmental and social goods and services benefit countries, communities and forest users while also contributing to important reductions in greenhouse gas emissions. The aim is to generate the requisite transfer flow of resources to significantly reduce global emissions from deforestation and forest degradation. The immediate goal is to assess whether carefully structured payment structures and capacity support can create the incentives to ensure actual, lasting, achievable, reliable and measurable emission reductions while maintaining and improving the other ecosystem services forests provide.

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From:  Charles McNeill
Senior Policy Advisor
United Nations Development Programme
The UN-REDD Programme is having an event at the current climate change meeting in Bonn:

MRV, MULTIPLE BENEFITS & GOVERNANCE: KEY ISSUES FOR REDD IMPLEMENTATION

Tuesday, 9 June 2009
1:00pm – 3:00pm

Solar Room, Ministry of Environment , Bonn

Speakers:

Peter Holmgren, Director, Environment, Climate Change & Bioenergy Division, FAO

Barney Dickson, Head of the Climate Change & Biodiversity Programme, UNEP-WCMC

Rosalind Reeves, Forest Campaign Manager, Global Witness &
Laura Furones, Regional Manager for Latin America Forest Team, Global Witness

Charles McNeill, Senior Policy Advisor, UNDP

Monitoring systems that will allow credible and affordable Measurement, Reporting and Verification (MRV) of REDD performance are critical for successful implementation of any REDD scheme.  Many countries are in the early phases of designing such systems by preparing and testing technical methodologies for accurate measurements, including field measurements and remote sensing, to enable monitoring of emissions from forests and land use.

MRV requirements under REDD are about trends in emission levels and therefore concern the stock and flows of forest carbon.  Specific MRV requirements will be determined through the UNFCCC process, building on IPCC guidelines.  Additionally, for REDD to be successfully  delivered by countries, alignment with national development contexts is needed to address synergies and trade-offs among multiple benefits (including livelihoods, biodiversity and ecosystem services).

The aim of the event is to support countries in developing appropriate institutional and governance mechanisms to operationalize MRV systems. Speakers will also describe ongoing work of the UN system on multiple benefits beyond carbon.  Implementation issues at the national level including institutional capacities will be explored.  The CSO speakers will address the governance and independent monitoring aspects of MRV for REDD.

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The International Institute for Environment and Development (IIED)  announced its latest CLIMATE related publications:

 - Incentives to sustain forest ecosystem services: A review and lessons for REDD
Paying people to protect forests can be an effective way to tackle deforestation and climate change but only if there is good governance of natural resources, claims this study funded by Norway’s Government. IIED, the World Resources Institute and the Center for International Forestry Research looked at existing efforts to pay people in developing nations to protect ecosystems in return for the services — such as fresh water, wild foods and climate control — they provide. It aimed to see if such payments could be used to help tackle climate change by reducing greenhouse gas emissions from deforestation and forest degradation (REDD). A review of 13 schemes that make payments for ecosystems services in Africa, South-East Asia and Latin America concluded that performance-based payments can be part of REDD but only if important preconditions are met.

 http://www.iied.org/pubs/display.php?o=1…

 - Community-based adaptation to climate change: an update
Over a billion people - the world’s poorest and most vulnerable communities  - will bear the brunt of climate change. For them, building local capacity to cope is a vital step towards resilience. Community-based adaptation (CBA) is emerging as a key response to this challenge. Tailored to local cultures and conditions, CBA supports and builds on autonomous adaptations to climate variability, such as the traditional baira or floating gardens of Bangladesh, which help small farmers’ crops survive climate-driven floods. Above all, CBA is participatory – a process involving both local stakeholders, and development and disaster risk reduction practitioners. As such, it builds on existing cultural norms while addressing local development issues that contribute to climate vulnerability. CBA is now gaining ground in many regions, and is ripe for the reassessment offered here.

 http://www.iied.org/pubs/display.php?o=1…

What Does Climate Change Do to Our Heads?     

by Sanjay Khanna
14 May 2009, CultureChange.org
A small yet growing body of evidence suggests that how people think and feel is being influenced strongly by ecosystem transformation related to climate change and industry-related displacement from the land. These powerful stressors are occurring more frequently around the world.

A case in point: When researchers from the Centre for Rural and Remote Mental Health at the University of Newcastle in Australia conducted interviews in drought-affected communities in New South Wales in 2005, the responses suggested some of their subjects may have been suffering from a recently described psychological condition called solastalgia (pronounced so-la-stal-juh).

Solastalgia describes a palpable sense of dislocation and loss that people feel when they perceive changes to their local environment as harmful. It’s a neologism that Glenn Albrecht, an environmental philosopher at the University of Newcastle’s School of Environmental and Life Sciences, created in 2003.

Albrecht’s work among communities distraught by black-coal strip mining in New South Wales’ Upper Hunter Region convinced him that the English language needed a new term to connect the experience of ecosystem loss to mental health concerns.

“The sense of a home landscape being violated [by strip mining-related environmental damage] seemed to have disturbed the region’s social ecology so much that the psychic or mental health of many people living in the zone of high impact was being affected,” he says.

Albrecht’s stunning insight? That there might be a wide variety of shifts in the health of an ecosystem—from subtle landscape changes related to global warming to desolate wastelands created by large-scale strip mining—that diminish people’s mental health.

In Eastern Australian communities, where the toll of a six-year-long drought has been devastating, interviews with farmers provided additional momentum for the solastalgia concept.

In one such interview, a female farmer poignantly described the loss of her garden oasis. “Our gardens have had to die,” she said, “because our house dam has been dry…. So it’s very depressing for a woman because a garden is an oasis out here with this dust…you know, to come home to a nice green lawn is just… that’s all gone, so you’ve got dust at your back door.”

While persistent drought and open-pit coal mining may be extreme cases, if the environmental degradation of the past hundred years is any indication, our contemporary lifestyles, built on a dwindling resource base, have failed to acknowledge how much the mental health of people and ecosystems is interrelated.

This may imply that the unrelenting media focus on weather-related and economic aspects of climate change does not adequately take into consideration the challenge of mitigating the psychological impact of global warming. How might we feel when the heat is relentless and our surrounding environment changes irrevocably? How might our mental health be affected?

In a recent Wired magazine article on Albrecht and the concept of solastalgia, Global Mourning: How the next victim of climate change will be our minds, writer Clive Thompson sensitively characterized as “global mourning” the potential impact of overwhelming environmental transformation caused by climate change. Thompson cogently summed up Albrecht’s view of what solastalgia might look like were it to become an epidemic of emotional and psychic instability causally linked to changing climates and ecosystems.

Albrecht also emphasizes that feelings of melancholia and homesickness have previously been recorded among Aboriginal peoples in the Americas and Australia who were forcibly moved from their home territories by U.S., Canadian and Australian governments in the late nineteenth and twentieth centuries.

Sanjay Khanna: You speak of psychoterratic and somaterratic illnesses. What are they?

Glenn Albrecht: Psychoterratic illness involves the psyche or mind and terra or earth. So a psychoterratic illness would be an earth-related mental illness, where both nostalgia and solastalgia are examples of people being made “mentally ill” by the severing of “healthy” links between themselves and their home or territory.

Somaterratic illness, on the other hand, involves soma or the body and relates to damage done to the human body, its physiology and/or genetics, as a result of the loss of ecosystem health by, for example, toxic pollution in any given area of land.

SK: You note on your blog that there are antecedents to solastalgia.

GA: Yes, David Rapport, a past professor at the University of Guelph in Ontario, Canada, is a pioneer in the study of the health of natural ecosystems and their relationship with humans. In the 1970s, he described “ecosystem distress syndrome,” which was what happened when an ecosystem couldn’t restore its balance after an external disturbance.

Once I fully appreciated this concept, I realized there must be a human equivalent to ecosystem distress syndrome, that is, a home environment so profoundly disturbed that it affected the balance of well being or the mental health of people within their social ecology.

The interviews of affected people I conducted along with Nick Higginbotham and Linda Connor in strip-mined areas of the Upper Hunter Valley showed that people’s sense of place was being violated and that this was profoundly disturbing them. Their home environment was being desolated and it seemed to us that the vital link between ecosystem health and human health, both physical and mental, was being severed.

SK: Can you tell us a little bit more about the origins of solastalgia?

GA: Solastalgia’s Latin roots combine three ideas: The solace that one’s environment provides, the desolation caused by that environment’s degradation and the pain or distress that occurs inside a person as a result.

Solastalgia brings into English a much-needed word that links a mental state to a state of the biophysical environment. The need for new concepts in the face of what is happening under climate change has seen other cultures develop new terms that have affinities with solastalgia.

The Inuit, for example, have a new word, uggianaqtuq (pronounced OOG-gi-a-nak-took), which relates to climate change and has connotations of the weather as a once reliable and trusted friend that is now acting strangely or unpredictably. And the Portuguese use the word saudade to describe a feeling one has for a loved one who is absent or has disappeared. The upshot is that under the pressure of climate change, your preferred climate and ecosystem might well be thought of as a lover gone missing or turned bad.

SK: How might your research impact on psychiatry and the diagnosis of psychoterratic illnesses such as solastalgia?

GA: Alongside five other researchers, our four-person team co-wrote a summary of our research on the mental health impacts of mining and drought for psychological and psychiatric professionals. The paper, Solastalgia: the distress caused by climate change, was published in Australasian Psychiatry, a publication of the Royal Australian and New Zealand College of Psychiatrists, in November 2007.

Our team has mused that people badly affected by solastalgia would benefit from a set of professionally developed diagnostic tools so that solastalgia could be listed as a condition that required diagnosis and professional attention.

We’re happy for other people to take that challenge up and there are some academic psychiatrists who are interested in exploring these ideas further. However, given that key aspects of solastalgia are existential, the traditions of environmental philosophy and medical psychiatry may not come together so harmoniously. The melancholia of solastalgia is not the same as clinical depression, but it may well be a precursor to serious psychic disturbance.

That said, it’s worth remembering that up until the mid-twentieth century, the medical profession viewed nostalgia as a diagnosable psycho-physiological illness in which, for example, soldiers fighting in foreign lands became so homesick and melancholic it could kill them.

Today psychiatrists would see the condition of rapid and unwelcome severing from home as post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD), an outcome of an acute stressor such as warfare or a Hurricane Katrina.

Solastalgia on the other hand is most often the result of chronic environmental stress; it is the lived experience of gradually losing the solace a once stable home environment provided. It is therefore appropriate to diagnose solastalgia in the face of slow and insidious forces such as climate change or mining.

SK: Would you tell us a little bit about the transdisciplinary team that you participate on?

GA: Nick Higginbotham, a social psychologist colleague who specializes in epidemiology and health matters, is working to gather empirical data for our solastalgia research. He has developed a much-needed environmental distress scale (EDS) that teases out the specific environmental components of distress from all the other things that go on in a person’s life. We will be using this scale in the new AUS$430K grant the team has received from the Australian Research Council to extend our earlier work by addressing “the lived experience (ethnography) of climate change” among people in the Hunter Valley.

Linda Connor, an ethnographer and social and medical anthropologist, handles the ethnography or cultural experience of all this. So collectively we have empirical (Higginbotham), cultural (Connor) and philosophical (me) interpretations of health and climate change. Finally, Sonia Freeman, our research assistant, has co-authored a number of papers.

SK: What implications might the recent apology by Kevin Rudd, the new Prime Minister of Australia, to the “stolen generations” of Australian Aborigines have in relation to solastalgia?

GA: The apology by Kevin Rudd to the stolen generations is about seeking forgiveness for the government-sanctioned taking of Indigenous children from their families and from their home territories (their “country”) from 1909 until 1969. There have been profound mental and physical health impacts from this process and many of the remaining stolen generations are now ageing but with a 17-year shorter life expectancy on average than non-indigenous Australians. Those who are alive today may be experiencing genuine nostalgia for a once-sustainable past and solastalgia within contemporary pathological and depressed home environments.

SK: Do you see a relationship between the conquest of Indigenous peoples of the Americas and Australasia, the state of environmental degradation and the experience of loss that we are seeing today? If so, what is that relationship from your perspective and research?

GA: The answer is, yes, there is a relationship between the two colonial cultures: the two continents were colonized only by the systematic dispossession of complex and formerly sustainable Indigenous societies.

Traditional Indigenous cultures in the Americas and Australasia displayed a profound appreciation of the relationship between human and ecosystem health, something global culture is trying to rediscover under the label of sustainability.

Remnant aboriginal cultures are still being pushed aside by the dominant global model of economic growth and progress. Even today, their chronic health problems are likely related to social and political issues that are connected to ongoing dispossession.

I’ve had recent firsthand experience of the lives of Indigenous people leading semi-traditional lives in Northern Australia to see the importance of the connections between human health and ecosystem health. In Arnhem Land, Aborigines who live on what are called “outstations” have been able to maintain much stronger and healthier links to their traditional land. Their physical and mental health status is, as a consequence, much better than those whose links to their own land have been severed and who now live in crowded, dysfunctional communities.

SK: Some of the solastalgia symptoms you describe are similar to the loss of cultural identity, including the loss of language and ancestral memory. Loss of place seems an extension of this new global experience of weakened cultural identities and Earth-based ethical moorings.

GA: I have written on this topic in a professional academic journal and expressed the idea of having an Earth-based ethical framework that could contribute to maximizing the creative potential of human cultural and technological complexity and diversity without destroying the foundational complexity and diversity of natural systems in the process.

Our history shows that some people and cultures have a tendency to create pathological ways of thinking, but if we want to support a life-affirming ethic in the twenty-first century, we are in need of reform and change.

SK: In the context of accelerating environmental change, what would you say to young people about the planet they are inheriting? What does sustainability mean in the context of the overwhelming pace of environmental and economic change that we’re seeing today?

GA: This is a tough one because the children of today face the double whammy of the escalating pace and scale of changes under the global forces of development and those of climate chaos. I’ve suggested to my own teenagers that what is happening is unacceptable ethically and practically and they should be in a state of advanced revolt about the whole deal.

From my perspective, supporting and maintaining the status quo is no longer a reasonable response to these big picture issues. At every point, we must challenge and refute this kind of thinking in a society that is clearly on a non-sustainable pathway.

Unfortunately, the lot in life of the youth today is to undo much of what has been done in the name of growth and progress in the last two hundred years. However, this does not mean a return to the past: As Herman Daly (the ecological economist) once said, you can have an economy that develops without growing.

On a personal level, I’m an optimistic, energetic philosopher and I believe that we must get our values more life orientated. I’m not willing to give up on encouraging change towards sustainability even in the face of what look like overwhelming negative forces.

The four-year grant recently awarded to our team will allow us to study the lived experience of climate change at a regional level. We’re happy that we’ll be able to start contributing data on how climate change is shifting culture, values and attitudes.

The next four years are critical. As a member of a research team, I believe that we’re right at the leading edge of change research and we are very committed to supporting the network of ecological and social relationships that promote human health. There’s hope in recognizing solastalgia and defeating it by creating ways to reconnect with our local environment and communities.

###

Sanjay Khanna is a writer and foresight researcher based in Vancouver, Canada. He can be reached at sk AT khannaresearch DOT com. His blog is at www.realisticsanctuary.com. More articles are available at www.huffingtonpost.com

From IISD a Special Report on UNCCD Land Day at the ongoing Bonn meetings on Climate Change.

On Saturday June 6, 2009, organized by the UNCCD Secretariat, the UN Convention to Combat Desertification (UNCCD) Secretariat hosted “Land Day” at the Gustav-Stresemann-Institut, Bonn, Germany.

The event, attended by 170 participants, aimed to help climate change negotiators and other stakeholders attending the concurrent Bonn climate change talks consider in detail the linkages between climate change and desertification, land degradation and drought (DLDD).

The event was opened by Luc Gnacadja, UNCCD Executive Secretary, Yvo de Boer, UNFCCC Executive Secretary, and Adolf Kloke-Lesch, Federal Ministry for Economic Cooperation and Development (BMZ) Director-General.

Jeffrey Sachs, Earth Institute Director, Columbia University, offered a pre-recorded keynote address.

Participants then attended three panels, entitled:

  - “How does sustainable land management support climate change adaptation?”;

 - “What options can soil carbon sequestration offer for mitigating and adapting to climate change?”; and

  - “Sustainable land management in climate change policy frameworks: what is the way forward?”

Luc Gnacadja, UNCCD Executive Secretary, stressed that land has an unparalleled capacity to sequester carbon, but its potential to mitigate climate change is presently untapped. Emphasizing that numerous opportunities exist to include land within a post-2012 climate regime, he said the Clean Development Mechanism (CDM) and carbon markets must be changed and made accessible to farmers and land managers.

Gnacadja argued that soil restoration and soil carbon sequestration offer “win-win-win” opportunities for climate change, biodiversity and desertification. Noting that “poor soils lead to poor people,” he further suggested that inclusion of desertification, land degradation and drought in a future climate regime has the potential to bring more equity and justice to developing countries.

Yvo de Boer, UNFCCC Executive Secretary, discussed the linkages between the agriculture and forest sectors and climate change mitigation and adaptation. He highlighted that 10-12% of total annual greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions come from agricultural practices, and that deforestation accounted for 20% of GHG emissions in the 1990s.

Underscoring that some mitigation options can be realized at “low or even negative costs,” de Boer highlighted a number of possibilities in these sectors, including: reducing emissions from deforestation and degradation in developing countries (REDD); improved crop and grazing management; and restoration of organic soils. He added that mitigation options, such as agroforestry, support adaptation and promote biodiversity.

Adolf Kloke-Lesch, Director-General, German Federal Ministry for Economic Cooperation and Development (BMZ), said climate change threatens to destroy the efforts and achievements of sustainable development. Noting that land degradation was previously considered a collection of local problems, he argued that today it is understood as a global problem that must be part of the global environmental agenda.

Kloke-Lesch stated that sustainable land management offers a cost-effective solution to mitigating climate change and that natural infrastructures, such as forests and soils, must be part of this solution. He stressed that sustainable land management must become an integral part of climate protection strategies in a new “Green Deal” forged at the 2009 climate change talks in Copenhagen.

In a pre-recorded message, Jeffrey Sachs, Earth Institute, Columbia University, underscored the importance of integrating the urgent agendas of drylands and global climate change. He said drylands are amongst the most vulnerable areas to climate change, and that impacts in dryland countries are compounded because these countries are also experiencing demographic pressures and have large populations living in poverty.

Sachs explained that the combination of these factors is “at the root” of some of the greatest security challenges on the planet, noting these issues must be addressed to lessen security risks not only for the people in these regions but for the entire world.

He called for several responses, including: better science on the effects of climate change in dryland regions; increased understanding of human systems, such as the impacts of climate change on herders’ livestock assets; and increased understanding of intervention measures that are needed for adaptation and climate change preparedness. Sachs emphasized the need for a holistic approach in addressing these issues, highlighting the potential for ecosystem-based adaption in this regard.

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(later addition) Professor Sachs - Highlighting the political conflicts in the 10,000 km stretch of drylands across the Sahel from Senegal to the Horn of Africa, across the Red Sea into Yemen, Pakistan and on to Afghanistan, Sachs said the lack of  “a coherent, consistent, persistent, scaled science-based response” to the harrowing effects of climate change associated with hunger, livestock survival and increasing stresses between sedentary populations and nomadic or semi-nomadic herders is the real challenge.

It is mind-boggling how above reality was suppressed by the UN for so many years - this as if the men in the UN glass building can speak only of unsolvable issues that provide for them a raison d’etre and their jobs, while trying to find the real reasons of those conflicts, the reasons before the fabricated reasons of “the other” would do harm to the bureacrats self  interest.

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www.sustainabilitank.info is still waiting to hear above ideas fully backed by the UN bureaucracy, but we are already gratified that many individuals, and enlightened governments, speak out forcefully. We were privvy, and victims, to a UN that was hiding above under the global rug because they felt it was just one more cause that can harm the sale of petroleum.

Please also read into the “at the root” comment by Dr. Sachs, locations like Darfur and the Middle East, and we would like to remark that we were hoping that President Obama would mention this in his Cairo speech to the Muslim World - but he did not. In our opinion, an opinion we fought for at the UN, a cooperative program on these “Land” issues between Israel, the Arab World, Iran, China, Africa, with international support, could go a long way in helping  address some of the problems with the Islamic governments - problems that were mentioned in the speech and the African problems that were not mentioned at all.

 As we know that many of our readers are interested in the nexus of climate change and desertification, we thought that there might be interest in participatingin the following review studies and decided to post this e-mail.

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Dear Scientific Colleagues and Stakeholders of the UNCCD. This is an invitation to review the first drafts of scientific analysis papers contributing to the world’s fight against desertification and land degradation.

To begin the review, please go to the website www.drylandscience.org

(or http://dsd consortium.jrc.ec.europa.eu/php/index.php?action=view&id=160) and click the button on the left entitled ‘Online Consultation’.

You can download and read the papers in PDF format there if you prefer, but all comments must be received via the web feedback system that is accessed through the above path.

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Background

The Committee on Science and Technology (CST) of the United Nations Convention to Combat Desertification (UNCCD) has called for a Scientific Conference on the topic of “Bio-physical and socio-economic monitoring and assessment of desertification and land degradation, to support decision-making in land and water management.”  The Conference, popularly known under the shorter title ‘Understanding Desertification and Land Degradation Trends’, will take place at the UNCCD Conference of Parties in Buenos Aires, Argentina during 22-24 September 2009.

In preparation for that Conference, three Working Groups have drafted ‘white papers’ summarizing leading scientific knowledge relevant to the topic assigned by the Convention that leads towards recommendations that can support decision-making in land and water management by the Convention and its Parties. Each of the three Working Group white papers is about 80-100 pages long consisting of several chapters. In addition, there is a cross-cutting topic that the Working Groups collectively address (denoted ‘S1’).

For one month, from 28 May to 28 June 2009, the first drafts of the white papers will be open for review by scientists and stakeholders worldwide.

We look forward to your valuable contributions. Please visit the web link mentioned above to participate in the review process. Thank you for helping to enrich these papers with your knowledge, comments and suggestions.

Sincerely,
The Dryland Science for Development Consortium (DSD)

————
Dr. Christopher Martius

Head, Program Facilitation Unit (PFU), CGIAR Program for Central Asia and the Caucasus (CAC)

Coordinator, Regional Program of the International Center For Agricultural Research In The Dry Areas (ICARDA) for the CAC Region
Tashkent, Uzbekistan

Mail Address: Program Facilitation Unit, P.O. Box 4564, Tashkent, 100000, Uzbekistan
Street Address: 6, Osiyo Street, Tashkent, Uzbekistan

Phones: +99871 2372130, +99871 2372169, +99871 2372104
Fax: +99871 1207125

CLIMATE CHANGE: U.S., China Seek Common Ground
By Matthew Berger

UNITED NATIONS, Jun 3 (IPS) - As the slew of U.S. officials visiting Beijing continued with Treasury Secretary Tim Geithner’s visit this past weekend, it is clear the Barack Obama administration is taking a much more active approach to relations with China than in years past. This shift is probably most clear, and most crucial, in the field of climate change.

Climate change talks continue this week in Bonn ahead of December’s United Nations-sponsored talks in Copenhagen, which will try to determine a successor to the Kyoto Protocol. Among the significant changes in the 12 years since the protocol was adopted is the increase in the political will of the U.S. to act on climate change and in the carbon emissions of China.

Together, these two factors mean a U.S.-China bilateral agreement prior to Copenhagen should be both more likely than in previous years and more necessary. The two sides, however, remain far apart.

The U.S. and China are the world’s largest emitters of greenhouse gases, combining for over 40 percent of global carbon emissions. But China’s share has grown feverishly since the Kyoto Protocol was adopted in 1997.

“In 2006, China added enough coal-fired power capacity to emit over 500 million tonnes of carbon dioxide per year for the next 40 years,” Elizabeth Economy, director for Asian studies at the Council on Foreign Relations, told IPS. “This wipes out the EU’s entire Kyoto reduction commitment of 300 million tonnes.”  Economy says China is the world’s largest emitter of carbon, and “without a dramatic reshaping of its economy, its emissions will be twice those of the United States by 2030.”

Prior to the Obama administration’s dual emphases of working with China and on climate change, the prospect for a serious global agreement to address these issues seemed dim.

This is largely because negotiations between the two countries not only directly impact the rate of climate change but the political arena in which this issue is addressed, as well.

When the U.S. shows it is committed to acting on climate change, a lot pieces fall into place, Jake Schmidt, international climate policy director at the Natural Resources Defense Council, told IPS. And how far the U.S. is willing to go is largely based on how far China goes.

On Capitol Hill you cannot have a debate on climate action without the question being raised of what China is doing, he said. “What is agreed between China and the U.S. will have a huge impact on solving climate issues over the next 10 to 15 years.”

This is also true for countries like India, which is largely seen as being in the same middle ground between developing and industrial as China.

The actions of China might have an even bigger impact on those countries that are less developed than it and India. The Kyoto Protocol included the principle of “common but differentiated responsibilities,” which recognises that the largest shares of greenhouse gas emissions are from industrial countries and that developing countries will likely increase their emissions in order to meet their needs.

It also, however, meant quantitative emissions limits were not placed on developing countries, including China, under the protocol.

Schmidt says he is not sure that the issue of who falls into the category of “developed” and “developing” will get resolved at Copenhagen, but that countries like China and India will clearly be expected to do more than less developed countries, probably with responsibilities that will evolve over time.

“The idea of common but differentiated responsibilities can remain a part of a Copenhagen agreement,” said Economy, “but I think there will be increasing pressure on China to actually assume some responsibilities, even if its cap is not – understandably – as aggressive as that of the United States.”

While visiting China last week with a U.S. congressional delegation, Senator John Kerry remarked that “Copenhagen will be defined by what the U.S. and China agree on in the next few weeks,” calling his discussions with Chinese officials on climate change the “most constructive and productive” he has had with them.

Overall, however, the talks were seen as only minimally productive. China recently released a position paper calling for a 40 percent reduction in greenhouse gas emissions from industrial countries by 2020 and more funding from industrial countries for climate projects in developing projects. It also stressed that “common but differentiated responsibilities” remain a part of any Copenhagen agreement.

According to Economy, China is currently home to 42 percent of all “clean development mechanism” projects, in which industrialised countries invest in greenhouse-gas-reducing projects in developing countries in lieu of reducing their own emissions.

This does mean China is getting funds that might otherwise go to lesser-developed countries. “There are undoubtedly developing countries that feel that China has absorbed more than its fair share of greenhouse gas mitigation assistance,” said Economy.

Ultimately, though, both China and the U.S. made dramatic shifts toward more significant action on climate change since 1997 and in the past couple years.

While China has avoided setting firm targets or timetables for limiting emissions, it has taken action in other ways. It currently has some of the strictest auto emissions standards in the world, strong energy efficiency standards for industry, and is increasing its investment in renewable energy sources.

But these efforts, warns Economy, “act only at the margin in terms of influencing the country’s greenhouse gas emission trajectory.”

Schmidt agrees, but sees hope that U.S. engagement might “push China over the finish line” and into a more sustainable energy future.

And the U.S. has been engaging China fairly heavily since President Obama took office in January – a trend that is far from over. U.S. climate envoy Todd Stern will visit later this month, as will Energy Secretary Steven Chu.

“Within the first six months in office, nearly every Obama cabinet minister will have visited China,” says Schmidt. “Under the Bush administration, [Treasury Secretary Henry] Paulsen and [President George W.] Bush went once or twice.”

“By no stretch of the imagination,” he says, did climate change or China “get the amount of attention they are getting under the Obama administration.”

——————

Above sounds great and promissing  - that by Copenhagen there might be some US-China bilateral agreement to help the Climate Convention from its dead point that was set in Kyoto. So, if there is a good US-China bilateral agreement, Copenhagen as a locale will allow for the rest of the world to join in. In the absence of such a prior US-China agreement, the optimism expressed in the other recent IPS article on the topic of a global climate change agreement as it appears in: http://www.ipsnews.net/news.asp?idnews=4… is just so much UN hot air - but if there is a US-China agreement - then let Copenhagen get the flowers.

Investing in Carbon Capture and Storage Nature’s Way.

Time to Give Forests, Mangroves, Peatlands and Climate-Friendly Agriculture
a Bigger Role in Combating Climate Change, says UNEP

World Environment Day 2009 – Your Planet Needs YOU!

MEXICO CITY/NAIROBI, 5 June 2009 – Boosting investments in the
conservation, rehabilitation and management of the Earth’s forests,
peatlands, soils and other key ecosystems could deliver significant cuts in
greenhouse gas emissions and avoid even more being released to the
atmosphere, a new report by the UN Environment Programme (UNEP) says.

Achim Steiner, UN Under-Secretary-General and UNEP Executive Director,
said:  “Tens of billions of dollars are being earmarked for carbon capture
and storage at power stations with the CO2 to be buried underground or
under the sea.”

“But, perhaps, the international community is overlooking a tried and
tested method that has been working for millennia — the biosphere. By some
estimates the Earth’s living systems might be capable of sequestering more
than 50 gigatones (Gt) of carbon over the coming decades with the right
market signals”, he added.

“This is also in line with UNEP’s Green Economy initiative as for the same
dollar, euro, peso or yuan not only are we combating climate change, but
potentially delivering additional economic, environmental and developmental
benefits from improved water supplies, soil stabilization and reduced
biodiversity losses, alongside new kinds of green jobs in natural resource
management and conservation”, he added.

UNEP’s Rapid Assessment report ‘The Natural Fix? The Role of Ecosystems in
Climate Mitigation’ (see http://www.unep.org/pdf/BioseqRRA_scr.pd…) is
released to mark World Environment Day 2009, whose global hosts this year
are the Government and people of Mexico.

The report comes just under six months before the crucial UN Climate Change
Convention meeting in Copenhagen, where Governments need to “Seal the Deal”
on a new, forward-looking treaty.

Key Messages from the Report

* The adoption of a comprehensive policy framework under the UN Framework
Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) for addressing ecosystem carbon
management would be a very significant advance.

* It is vital to manage carbon in biological systems, to safeguard existing
stores of carbon, reduce emissions and to maximize the potential of natural
and agricultural areas for removing carbon from the atmosphere.

* The priority systems are tropical forests, peatlands and agriculture.
Reducing deforestation rates by 50 per cent by 2050 and then maintaining
them at this level until 2100 would avoid the direct release of up to 50 Gt
of carbon this century, equivalent to 12 per cent of the emissions
reductions needed to keep atmospheric concentrations of carbon dioxide
below 450ppm.

* Peatland degradation contributes up to 0.8 Gt of carbon a year, much of
which could be avoided through restoration.

* The agricultural sector could be broadly carbon neutral by 2030—equal to
6 Gt of CO2 equivalent or up to 2 Gt of carbon if sustainable management
practices were widely adopted.
* It is essential that climate mitigation policy is guided by the best
available science concerning ecosystem carbon, and decisions should be
informed by the overall costs and benefits of carbon management.

* Developing policies to achieve these ends is a challenge: it will be
necessary to ensure that local and indigenous peoples are not disadvantaged
and to consider the potential for achieving co-benefits for biodiversity
and ecosystem services.

* Drylands, in particular, offer opportunities for combining carbon
management and land restoration.

Barney Dickson and Kate Trumper of the UNEP-World Conservation Monitoring
Centre, which has spearheaded the compilation of the report in
collaboration with some 20 leading experts, said:  “While more research
will be needed to fully capture the carbon and livelihood opportunities
from drylands, it is already clear that there is a potentially a big bang
for your carbon buck.”

“Their large area means that total carbon potential is high and the often
degraded soils means extra carbon could boost agricultural productivity and
incomes in some of the poorest parts of the world”, they said.

According to the report, recent estimates indicate that human activities
are currently responsible for global carbon emissions of around 10Gt.

The research indicates that there may be scope for tackling 15 per cent of
these—perhaps even more – through managing land use changes and carbon in
ecosystems.

Forests – the largest sink
Tropical forests hold the largest terrestrial carbon store with an annual
global uptake of around 1.3 Gt of carbon, or about 15 per cent of the total
carbon emissions resulting from human activities.”,

Global tropical deforestation rates are currently estimated to be as high
as 14.8 million hectares per year (about the size of Bangladesh), while
deforestation is responsible for nearly one-fifth of the global greenhouse
gas emissions – more than the entire transport sector.

Clearing of tropical forests may release an additional 87 to 130 Gt by
2100, corresponding to the carbon release of more than a decade of global
fossil fuel combustion at current rates.

Reducing deforestation rates by 50 per cent by 2050 and then maintaining
them at this level until 2100 would avoid the direct release of up to 50Gt
of carbon this century.

Conventional logging techniques damage or kill a substantial part of the
remaining vegetation during harvesting, resulting in large carbon losses.

Improved logging techniques can further reduce carbon losses by around 30
per cent compared to conventional logging techniques.

Forests around the world act as powerful carbon sinks: those in Central and
South America are estimated to take up taking up around 0.6 Gt of carbon,
African forests somewhat over 0.4 Gt, and Asian forests around 0.25 Gt.

The potential to enhance carbon capture and storage in boreal forests –
which stretch across Canada, Russia, Alaska and Scandinavia – is low. But
they are the second largest stock of carbon, which could be lost to the
atmosphere via increased numbers of fires, draining of peatlands, logging
and mining.

Temperate forests in Europe and North America have been expanding over
recent years—in Europe they are estimated to be capturing and storing
between seven and 12 per cent of Europe’s emissions. Further reforestation
and management could enhance this further.

Agriculture – climate neutral by 2030
The agricultural sector has the largest readily achievable gains in carbon
storage if best management practices – such as avoiding turning over the
soil and using natural nutrients like compost and manure – were widely
adopted.

* Up to 6 Gt of CO2 equivalent, or up to 2 Gt of carbon, could be
sequestered each year by 2030, which is comparable to the current emissions
from the agricultural sector.

Many of the agricultural practices that store more carbon can be
implemented at little or no cost. The majority of this potential – 70 per
cent – can be realized in developing countries.

* Fully returning straw to croplands in China could sequester around 5 per
cent of the carbon dioxide emissions from fossil fuel combustion in that
country based on 1990 emissions.

Many agricultural areas in the tropics have suffered severe depletion of
their soil carbon stocks. Some soils in tropical agricultural systems are
estimated to have lost as much as 20 to 80 tonnes of carbon per hectare,
most of which has been released into the atmosphere.

Agroforestry – where food production is combined with tree planting – has a
particularly high potential for carbon sequestration in tropical areas.

* Average carbon storage by agroforestry practices is estimated at around
10 tonnes per hectare in semi-arid regions.
*  20 tonnes per hectare in sub-humid and 50 tonnes per hectare in humid
regions.
* Sequestration rates of smallholder agroforestry systems in the tropics
are around 1.5-3.5 tonnes of carbon per hectare per year.

Peatlands –chock-full of carbon
Although peatlands cover only a tiny percentage of the Earth’s surface they
are, metre for metre, the most effective carbon stores of all ecosystems.

* On average peatlands store 1,450 tonnes of carbon per hectare.
* Currently, about 65 million hectares of peatlands worldwide are
considered degraded with large quantities of carbon being lost as a result
of drainage, with half of these losses occurring in tropical areas.
* Overall draining of tropical peatlands – mainly for palm oil and pulpwood
production – leads to annual carbon losses of up to 0.8 Gt per year. Peat
fires in South-East Asia are responsible for half of these emissions.

Planting biofuels on drained peatlands can nowhere near compensate for this
release of greenhouse gases.

* Combustion of palm oil produced on drained peatland generates 3 to 9
times the amount of CO2 produced by burning coal, equating to a carbon debt
requiring 420 years of biofuel production to repay.

Re-wetting of peatlands and replanting of forests in areas that have been
deforested can significantly reduce future emissions of greenhouse gases.

Oceans
The oceans are believed to have absorbed around 30 per cent of the historic
carbon emissions, making them the second largest sink after the atmosphere
itself.

* However, the uptake capacity of oceans and coasts – currently at 2 Gt per
year – is both finite and vulnerable.
* Some studies suggest that the ability of oceans to soak up carbon could
peak at around 5 Gt per year by the end of this century.

The opportunities for enhanced carbon capture and storage is likely to be
in the coastal zones and in coastal ecosystems such as wetlands and
mangroves.

* Inshore waters up to 200 metres in depth, which includes coral and
seagrass ecosystems, may be responsible for removing just over 0.2 Gt of
carbon per year.
* Globally, mangroves may be accumulating around 0.038 Gt of carbon per
year, which, when taking their area of coverage into account, suggests that
they sequester carbon faster than terrestrial forests.

However, current patterns of use, exploitation and impacts will, if
unchecked, lead to coastal wetlands and mangroves becoming carbon sources
rather than sinks.

* The report estimates that widespread loss of vegetated coastal habitats
has already reduced carbon burial in the ocean by about 0.03 Gt of carbon
per year.

Cost of ecosystem carbon management
The cost of ecosystem carbon management can be very low compared to other
‘clean energy’ options.

* Managing grazing, fertilizers and fire on grasslands to reduce emissions
costs as little as $5 per tonne of carbon dioxide equivalent per year.
* Restoration of soils and degraded land cost about $10 per tonne, whereas
the costs of technological carbon capture and storage are estimated at
$20-270 per tonne of carbon dioxide equivalent.

The economic mitigation potential of forestry would double if carbon prices
increased from $20 per tonne of carbon dioxide equivalent to $100 per
tonne.

* If carbon emissions were valued at $100 of CO2 equivalent, in 2030 the
agricultural sector would be second only to building as potentially the
most important sector for achieving carbon cuts.

At this level of carbon pricing, forestry and agriculture combined would be
more important than any other single sector, and would retain high
importance at even lower carbon prices.

At the moment, however, the international climate regime only partly
addresses emissions from land-use change, such as deforestation, and does
not provide incentives for reducing carbon emissions from forests and other
ecosystems, let alone for conserving them as carbon sinks.

It is expected that Governments negotiating the new climate agreement in
Copenhagen in December this year will take the first step in this direction
by starting to pay developing countries for reducing emissions from
deforestation and forest degradation.

The report argues that a more comprehensive system of payments for
ecosystem services needs to be considered.

“Our planet’s living systems have developed ingenious, efficient and
cost-effective ways to manage carbon. Sending the right price signals to
those who make economic and development choices about the value of
preserving and effectively managing our forests, grasslands, peatlands and
agricultural lands is critical for the success of any climate change
mitigation strategies”, the report says.

UNEP and partners, with funding from the Global Environment Facility, have
launched a new project among communities in Western Kenya, Niger, Nigeria
and China, to assess with greater precision the amount of carbon locked
away in different ecosystems and landscapes under a variety of management
regimes.

The findings, leading to a global standard upon which carbon investment
decisions can be taken, should be available in some 18 months time.,

“If the global community can rise to this challenge, the planet’s living
systems will be our best allies in the struggle to avoid dangerous climate
change”, Mr. Steiner concluded.

A copy of the report is available at www.unep.org or
 nick.nuttall at unep.org

At UNEP-WCMC: Barney Dickson, Head of Climate Change and Biodiversity
Programme, on Tel: +44-1223-814-636, Mobile: +44-7590-655-975, or E-mail:
 barney.dickson at unep-wcmc.org

Or: Anne-France White, UNEP Associate Information Officer, on Tel:
+254-20-762-3088; Mobile in Kenya: +254-728-600-494, or e-mail:
 anne-france.white at unep.org

Or: Xenya Cherny Scanlon, Information Officer, on Tel: +254-20-762-4387,
Mobile: +254-721-847-563, or e-mail:  xenya.scanlon at unep.org

***********************************
Jim Sniffen
Programme Officer
UN Environment Programme
New York
tel: +1-212-963-8094/8210
 info at nyo.unep.org
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The US Chamber of Commerce has commissioned from Baird’s Communications Management Consultants (Baird’s CMC) in partnership with the Africa Business Initiative, an “inside-the-boardroom survey of attitudes toward corporate investment in Africa among leading U.S. corporations.” The information was gathered between January and November 2008 in a series of closed door interviews with senior officers of 30 American Fortune 100 corporations.

The report can be found at:  http://www.usafricainvestment.com

Among the conclusions I found:

“USA Inc. is more interested in Africa than before, because the African market appears increasingly attractive, but Africa has tough competition and high hurdles for US investment. Education is at the top of the US corporate wish list for Africa; ‘educate your people so that we can employ them.’

The African countries that hold most interest are South Africa and some countries in the North, like Egypt; there are also some pockets of interest in West Africa, most notably Ghana, Nigeria and to some extent Angola; while some in the South (Botswana and Mozambique) and East (Uganda and Kenya), are also being watched.”

——-

The report is in two parts:

Part One: Understand how US corporations view Africa as an investment destination and what their requirements are for investing in Africa on the same scale as their investments in the rest of the developing world.

Part Two: The response of African political and government leaders to these private sector views will be telling; what is the conversation about FDI behind government’s closed doors, when policy is made?

——-

Why has Africa not attracted more interest from the U.S. business community?

Rule of law – The rule of law does not prevail to the degree required to make Africa an attractive investment destination. This applies to corporate, societal, and criminal law

Attraction — While the enormous natural resources are an attraction, Africa does not offer a sufficiently large middle class of consumers or show consistent economic growth that could promise a future market. Most African countries are small and have poor markets, and there are barriers to regional markets–such as taxes and the freedom of movement of people and goods

Risks versus rewards– Given the currently perceived risks in Africa, the rewards have to be very high to make it worthwhile to invest. Presently, U.S. corporations say that there are very few visible promises of future returns high enough to justify significant interest in investing

Supportive business framework–Transportation and communications infrastructure, trained or trainable human resources, and equitable trade and employment practices are insufficient to support corporate investment

A welcoming environment– African countries are not doing a sufficient job of providing education and health services to the potential workforce, which makes the potential hire-able local insufficient to support investment.

———

From the www.SustainabiliTank.info  angle we found the most important comment to be: 

“Africa may want to consider the benefits of encouraging US Corporations whose stated desire is to employ Africans, unlike others who merely exploit African mineral resources without contributing to local employment. Africa may also benefit in the long term from the US approach of skills transfer and technology development, provided that its intellectual property is protected.” This obviously requires African leaders to help educate their people which might then also lead to the obvious requirement to allow in new spirits such as more democratic stiles of government and distribution of wealth produced from this more intimate interaction with the outside world and we hope that this can be agreed upon for a true benefit of Africa.

If this study could open African eyes to such potentialities, then the study might indeed provide the positive basis for moving Africa away from the present dead point where the export of commodities such as oil, minerals, and diamonds, are the one way connections that masquerades as business relations between African governments and US corporations. On the other hand, the US public will have to allow also the opening of the US market to goods manufactured in Africa.All of this while US corporations become also investors in the creation of a more developed African internal market.

The report was brought to our attention by  Fabiane Dal-Ri  -  fabianedalri at usafricainvestment.com

 Cash Seen Key To U.N. Climate Deal, writes, Alister Doyle, from Paris, after the second installment of the initiative taken in April by the new US  Sectretary of State, Hillary Clinton.

PARIS - Tens of billions of dollars are likely to be needed to help poor nations curb greenhouse gas emissions and adapt to climate change under a new U.N. treaty, European Environment Commissioner Stavros Dimas said.

“Everybody agreed that additional money is needed and without money an agreement in Copenhagen will not be possible,” Dimas told Reuters after the first day of a two-day meeting of 17 major greenhouse gas emitters in Paris on Monday.

The talks among environment ministers, the second in an initiative by U.S. President Barack Obama, are working on a new U.N. treaty due to be agreed in Copenhagen in December to succeed the Kyoto Protocol.

“We didn’t discuss this (issue of cash) but the sooner we have this discussion the better,” he said of the talks which included the world’s top greenhouse gas emitters led by China, the United States, the EU, Russia and India.

The EU will debate climate finances at a summit on June 18-19 after delays partly caused by recession that has hit state coffers. EU leaders have previously agreed to contribute their fair share to developing nations, Dimas said.

Asked how much cash he reckoned was needed to help curb emissions, Dimas noted a European Commission document in January quoted independent researchers’ estimates of net global incremental investments of 175 billion euros ($245 billion) by 2020. Half of that total would be needed in developing nations.

And he noted the same report quoted a U.N. estimate that costs of helping developing nations adapt to impacts of climate change — ranging from drought-resistant crops to coastal barriers against rising sea levels — would be between 23 and 54 billion euros a year by 2030.

Part of that cash could be raised by carbon markets, some by public finances, some by other sources.

—-

LOW-CARBON

Dimas said developing nations also needed cash, for instance, to help train officials to work out strategies to avert dependence on fossil fuels. “Money is urgently needed … to help develop low-carbon national strategies,” he said.
Many developing nations are refusing to outline what they plan to do to slow their rising greenhouse gas emissions, saying they need first to know how much aid will be available. Rich nations want to see poor nations’ plans first.

But Dimas also said some actions to curb climate change in poor nations, such as replacing an inefficient coal-fired power plant, could save money by cutting energy consumption. “There are quite a lot of projects, especially energy efficiency, which will pay for themselves,” Dimas said.

For Locavores, a New Breed of Farm

As published in The Washington Post, May 6, 2009.

The Article is by Diane Daniel and was brought to our attention by Jan Lundberg. We thought to revive our interest in a sustainable agriculture and ethical questions that come up in the context of industrial farms in an age that calls also for the re-introduction of biofuels. Further, as we intended to post also the article  from the Maryland Urbanite by Tracey Middlekauff, we saw the potential of posting a series on these subjects. This series will lead to following the enhanced future agriculture developments in Africa, Brazil, and the remaining areas of the planet that may yet not have been industrialized. (clarification introduced May 26, 2009)   

Diane Daniel reports: “I’m from a long line of out-of-the-box thinkers, and we’ve been on this lunatic train for a long, long time,” proclaimed ruddy-cheeked Daniel Salatin, 28, during his introduction to what is perhaps the country’s most sought-after farm tour. “Let me give you some housekeeping rules,” he boomed. “There are none.”

The 75 of us smiled from our perches on hay bales lined up along the floor of a flatbed trailer. Soon we would be pulled by tractor through Polyface Farm, a mecca of sorts, thanks to its dedication to sustainable practices and the prominent treatment given it by author Michael Pollan in “The Omnivore’s Dilemma,” his 2006 critique of industrial farming.
The faithful and curious, along with their kids and two groups of college students, had come to this farm deep in the Shenandoah Valley to hear the gospel according to the Salatins.

The Obamas may have planted an organic garden at the White House, but the first family of farming is arguably the Salatins. Patriarch Joel is the famous face of this self-proclaimed “beyond organic” livestock farm, which he took over from his father in 1982. On the day we visited, Joel was out of town on one of his many speaking engagements. (His stock is set to rise even higher: The new documentary “Food, Inc.,” opening June 12 in Washington, paints him, once again, as a prophet among demons.)

Polyface has been widely praised by sustainable-farming advocates and foodies for its commitment to Earth- and animal-friendly practices, including rotational grass grazing, humane treatment of animals and local processing. With an annual average population of 6,500 laying hens (for eggs), 24,000 broilers (for meat), 1,000 head of cattle, 200 hogs, 500 turkeys and 250 rabbits, Polyface is classified as a commercial farm, but it’s on the smaller side, defiantly spurning one-size-fits-all USDA regulations.

“We have an open-door policy,” continued Daniel Salatin, donning an Australian bush hat like his father’s before leading us on a two-hour-plus tour of a tiny portion of Polyface’s 100 acres of pasture (an additional 450 acres are wooded). “There are no copyright issues. It’s all about everybody else doing it. The consumer, the customer, the farmer. We share what we know.”

After “The Omnivore’s Dilemma” hit the bestseller list, demand for tours grew to the point that the Salatins began to offer one freebie a month from spring to fall (reservations tend to fill up far in advance) and otherwise charge $800 for up to 100 people, with an extra $200 to guarantee Joel or Daniel’s presence. But visitors can also take free self-guided tours from Monday through Saturday.

My husband and I turned our tour into a locavore weekend. After Polyface, we visited the much-smaller Green Fence Farm in nearby Greenville. The specialty produce and livestock farm is owned by Kate and Nick Auclair, Washington transplants who not long ago were deeply entrenched in government work and are now just as deeply entrenched in soil and feathers. Later we dined at area restaurants including Staunton Grocery and Zynodoa, each of which uses ingredients from one of the farms.

“We’re land stewards,” Salatin said at our first stop, where we examined the open-bottom cages his broilers would soon go into to peck at feed and fertilize the soil.

“What excites us is to see land heal,” he said. “All of that hinges on making earthworms and soil happy and healthy.”

As directed, we bounced on the spongy earth, oohing and aahing over its richness, even if its texture had been created by earthworm excretions.

“As the first tour of the season, you’re probably the only ones to see the pig-aerators,” Salatin announced on the way to the next stop.

That excited the crowd, many of whom had read about this Polyface practice. Instead of removing the manure that cows produce during the winter, farmers let it pile up. All the while they add small amounts of corn, like frosting in a layer cake. In early spring, when the cows are taken out to pasture, the pigs are brought in to root for the corn, turning the soil over and over. The end result: a rich compost.

“We’re standing on literally tons of cow manure, and I’m not smelling much, if any,” Salatin said when we reached the corral of 22 grunting pigs. We nodded in agreement.

“Look at this compost,” he said, scooping up a steaming handful and stretching out his arm to the crowd. “If anyone wants to grab this and feel how warm it is, go ahead.”

Surprisingly — for this crowd — there were no takers.

After visiting a cow pasture, the tour stopped at the brooder (chicken nursery), teeming with 3,000 adorable day-old peeping chicks. In three weeks, these broilers would be out in the fields. Five weeks later, they’d be ready for slaughter.

Like a museum exhibit that ends in a gift shop, ours ended at the farm store, where, if visitors are interested, they can buy a processed Polyface broiler for the trip home. We filed into the small concrete building, checking out the steaks, poultry, pork, even dog food. One of the shoppers was Salatin fan Amy Troppman, 33, who lives three hours northeast in Lovettsville. She picked up a pound of ground beef ($4.25) and a dozen eggs ($2.50 medium, $3.75 large).

“I’d read ‘Omnivore’s Dilemma’ and was very excited to hear Polyface was so close. It’s a thrill to be here,” she said. Troppman had brought her parents, visiting from Cincinnati, who had also been eager to visit the famous farm.

“I was particularly struck by the pig-aerator and the lack of smell,” she said. “And the animals all look so happy.”

 The following two articles tell us indirectly that much of what we are doing in above two general areas - The Climate Change area and the Foreign Aid area - is helping the wrong factors - be this the economic baloons builders in the industrialized countries, or the dictators and money skimmers in the truely needy countries - all of them having plenty of lobbyists in places like Washington DC and the UN while the world may be starved by not having in leading position just a few straight minds shooting at the real problems - simple Gordian Knots Cutters. Our Website loves to point fingers.

——–

From Harry Langer of H. L. Langer & Co., Inc.

 STOPPING GLOBAL WARMING.

Cap and trade measures to combat the global warming effect of greenhouse gasses won’t work. These measures raise concerns about the risk of financial scams and bubbles reminiscent of the CBO crises; business lobbying for free pollution credits that would emasculate national legislation to cap greenhouse gasses; and distant compliance deadlines that could result in economic, social, political, environmental, and health disasters.

It would be better to just eliminate carbon emissions on a fast timetable and simultaneously develop and exchange alternative energy technologies.

Global problems need global solutions. The enactment of uniform international greenhouse gas elimination regulations with timetables for their compliance and the means to enforce them would avoid political and business pressures within individual nations to weaken regulatory standards and eliminate concerns of unfair global competition and compliance evasion. Effective and immediate action is necessary.

A summit meeting of the leaders of the Group of Twenty major industrial nations and the leading international environmental and financial organizations should be convened to establish regulations and implement progressively heavier uniform. limits on carbon/greenhouse gas emissions on the Group of 20 advanced nations (which account for over 80% of the world’s GDP) to eliminate them over a 5 to 10 year timetable.

This would also help economic recovery by creating jobs and revenues. Industry and consumers could be compensated for investment in qualified pollution control or elimination devices; clean energy replacement products or equipment; and research and development of carbon replacement or reduction technology by backward or forward accelerated depreciation tax incentives or credits and low interest government loans or grants. This would be a very effective economic and humanitarian stimulus. Higher fuel and utility taxes could encourage energy conservation and reimburse government for pollution control incentives.

Undeveloped nations would be subject to lower carbon emissions limitation timetables and would be forbidden to allow developed nations to use their countries to circumvent or evade their progressive greenhouse gasses limitation regulations.

The World Court could impose fines and embargoes on nations for non-compliance with the carbon control restrictions and the sharing of pollution control technology. Compliance and the decisions of the court could be overseen and enforced by one or more of the established world organizations like the WTO, OECD, IMF, World Bank, or UN or a special independent entity.

Similar measures should be taken for the establishment of global regulation and enforcement procedures for the preservation and expansion of forests and woodlands according to climate, terrain, and soil conditions. Saving and planting trees and shrubs (preferably fruit and berry ones) is an inexpensive way to aid climate control; balance atmospheric oxygen and carbon gasses; prevent soil erosion and desert expansion; control flooding; increase water resources (replenish groundwater, rivers lakes, rainfall), reclaim agricultural land expand the food supply including fish stocks to combat global hunger; provide jobs; and create self sufficiency via fresh, desiccated, and prepared agricultural industries. A worldwide reforestation program to supply free or subsidized seedlings, plants, and technological assistance to achieve these goals would be relatively inexpensive and highly successful on a cost benefit basis. Subsidized solar powered cooking devices or stoves could help reduce the use of wood as fuel and help preserve trees and shrubs in many countries. Grants, loans, credits, and technical assistance could be given to countries heavily dependent on forest products to develop alternative sources of jobs and revenues.

Harry L. Langer                                                    E-mail:  harrylanger at hllanger.com

———- +++++++ ———

AID ALTERNATIVES FOR UNDEVELOPED COUNTRIES.

Massive financial aid is usually wasted in impoverished countries with inept leadership, poor governance, pervasive corruption and inadequate legal, justice and educational systems (like those in Africa, South America, and Southeast Asia). It invariably enriches top officials and maintains them in power at the expense of their citizenry. Such governments also manipulate and exploit well intentioned and generous donors. They become so dependent on the continuing easy availability of funding from donor nations and NGO sources that they have little incentive to improve domestic conditions. Progress, entrepreneurship, and self reliance become stifled and poverty becomes institutionalized.

Consequently, it would be more effective if a major portion of foreign aid took the form of supplies and equipment that could develop agricultural self sufficiency, create both domestic and export industries and jobs, and provide water purification systems for disease control, public consumption, and industrial needs. For example:

(a) In lieu of military aid, donor nations could give not only food but also seeds and fertilizers (suitable for local climate and soil conditions), tools, farm equipment (tractors, spreaders, combines, etc.), solar or wind powered water pumps and generators, and growing and technical assistance to meet domestic needs and create export markets. Water purification systems canning, desiccation, and packaging equipment and technology could also be provided for market development and greater profits.

(b) Supply commercial sewing and textile machinery to produce raw materials and finished products for the domestic and export markets.

(c) Supply equipment and machine tools to extract and fabricate domestic minerals and raw materials. i.e., iron copper, aluminum, glass, wood, hemp, chemicals, herbs and medicinals, etc. for more jobs, higher living standards, and greater revenues.

(d) Similarly, develop fishing and animal husbandry industries with related preparation, canning, and freezing facilities.

e) Micro financing should be a mandatory part of all assistance programs.

(f) It is also essential that business licenses be easily and quickly obtained and that cell phones be available and affordable to all.

Such types of aid could provide jobs, facilitate self sufficiency, reduce poverty, raise living standards and offer alternatives to illegal drug production as a livelihood. It would also create jobs in the donor nations — a win, win situation for all parties.

The United Nations and the IMF could play essential roles in organizing and establishing such alternative aid programs for the Group of 20 Leading Industrial Nations. They would have a greater and quicker global economic stimulus benefit without the risk of inflation or stagflation, without dangerously increasing the money supply and would create the jobs necessary for recovery. Also, the right kind of aid would be directed to where it was most needed. The IMF could allocate the amount of aid and the ratio between cash and goods of each donor and the UN and NGOs could determine the types and sources of the goods needed and undertake their distribution either through its own agencies directly to Village Elders, Tribal Leaders, and/or reliable local entrepreneurs. Each organization would do what it does best. The goods would be permanently marked to prevent resale for profit by corrupt parties.

Harry L. Langer   T.212-517-5942   F 212-861-4053   E-mail:  harrylanger at hllanger.com

MINISTERIAL ROUNDTABLES at CSD-17 as per brief summary in the Earth Negotiations Bulletin of  Thursday May 14, 2009.
The High-Level Segment of CSD-17 continued on Thursday with roundtable discussions on “Realizing a Sustainable Green Revolution in Africa” and “Integrated Land and Water Management.” CSD 17 delegates also negotiated draft recommendations in Working Groups and multiple informal consultations throughout the day and into the night.

REALIZING A SUSTAINABLE GREEN REVOLUTION IN AFRICA: Robert Watson, Director, International Assessment of Agricultural Knowledge, Science and Technology for Development (IAASTD), highlighted, inter alia: the multi-functionality of agriculture; agro-ecological practices and the critical role of natural resources and biodiversity; adapting to a changing climate; increasing water efficiency; acknowledging the role of women; reforming international trade; investing in science and technology and improving extension services; and investing in rural development. Tesfai Tecle, Special Advisor to the Chairman, Alliance for a Green Revolution in Africa, introduced his organization’s strategy to reduce hunger and poverty in Africa through agricultural development. Matthew Wyatt, Assistant President, IFAD, stressed: smallholder farmers must be in the vanguard of a sustainable African green revolution; such a revolution is possible only if small holders get the support they need; and investment is needed in infrastructure, financial resources, technology, extension services and payments for environmental services.

Delegates then divided into two groups to discuss the theme. Netumbo Nandi-Ndaitwah, Namibian Minister of Environment and Tourism, chaired one group, in which delegates highlighted, inter alia: traditional knowledge and technologies; the role of women and their empowerment; climate change mitigation and adaptation; good management of irrigation; South-South cooperation and North-South cooperation; investment in and improvement of rural infrastructure; access to markets by farmers, especially smallholder farmers; biofuel development without causing negative impacts on the environment and food security; research done in response to farmers’ needs and dissemination of research results; land tenure, particularly for women; use of satellite technology in agriculture; the important role of the private sector; private-public partnerships; strengthening appropriate institutions and farmers’ organizations; information, education and training; and addressing the problem of migration from rural to urban areas.

Homero Bibiloni, Secretary of Environment and Sustainable Development, Argentina, and Paul Biyoghe Mba, Minister of Agriculture, Husbandry, Food Security and Rural Development, Gabon, co-chaired the other group. Participants emphasized the importance of urgently bringing about a green revolution in Africa to attain food security and combat desertification, water scarcity and the threat of climate change. Speakers focused on, in particular: South-South cooperation; increased international support; easier access to markets; technology transfer; partnerships and government political will and the role of the public sector; capacity building, especially to combat desertification and soil degradation; and use of indigenous knowledge. Some participants stressed a “green-green” revolution sensitive to environmental and biodiversity considerations, the risk of GMOs, culturally-appropriate food, and sustainable biofuels. Increased productivity was discussed, as well as multifunctional agriculture, dependence on rain and IWRM, inclusion and empowerment of small farmers and women, and population growth. Several participants reported on their governments’ programmes of support to Africa.

INTEGRATED LAND AND WATER MANAGEMENT: The Prince of Orange, HRH Willem-Alexander, Chair, UN Secretary-General’s Advisory Board on Water and Sanitation, recalling his recent trip to Afghanistan, highlighted resilient agriculture as the most effective way to bring peace, stability and sustainable development. Jose de Jesus Romo Santos, Mexican Ministry of Agriculture, discussed the implementation of sustainable management practices and highlighted some of his country’s efforts to advance sustainable agriculture and rural development. Katherine Sierra, Vice President for Sustainable Development, World Bank, stressed, inter alia, enhancing environmental services and sustainability, and improving fisheries governance.

Delegates then divided into two groups to discuss the roundtable theme. Luis Alberto Ferraté, Minister of Environment and Natural Resources, Guatemala, chaired one of the parallel roundtables. Some countries highlighted the adoption of policies enabling international partnerships. Threats discussed included: water resource deficit; natural disasters; mountain development; land degradation; vulnerability to climate; increasing land productivity and rural income; the role of tariffs and subsidies; access to technologies such as geographic information systems; and desertification. Use of water in highly subsidized agriculture was raised. One country proposed a forum for Africa to increase support and cooperation for the continent; another noted community-oriented groups with participation of farmers to promote efficient water use. Flexibility to tailor programs to different needs and the value of working together locally to help each other was stressed. One country warned about being critical in appraising advancements in sustainable development. Others highlighted indigenous knowledge, and land management that incorporates ecosystem services. One country talked about a crisis of values. WOMEN drew attention to, inter alia: land tenure; access opportunities in decision-making; institutional transformation; and significant resource allocation to help small-scale farmers and pastoralists.

Christopher Tufton, Minister of Agriculture, Jamaica, and Sumardjo Gatot Irano, Vice-Minister of Agriculture, Indonesia, co-chaired the other parallel roundtable. Speakers stressed the need to: improve rural livelihoods; improve dissemination of knowledge and good practices; implement systematic policies to improve resilience; give UNCCD the same importance as the UNFCCC; improve access to wastewater treatment technologies; integrate international legal instruments related to land; tackle land tenure issues when introducing ecosystem service payments; and invest in research. Also discussed were the role of women in agriculture; impacts of biofuel production; climate mitigation aspects of agriculture; and the impact of climate change on water and land management. INDIGENOUS PEOPLES called for a moratorium on oil and gas exploration and for the decentralization of land use planning to the local and ecosystem levels. {that must have been the proverbial “call in the UN wilderness.”  SustainabiliTank.info editorial comment)}

From: James Sniffen <sniffenj@un.org>
Date: May 13, 2009 12:48:23 PM EDT
Subject: UNEP-UNDP-IUCN NEWS:  Winners of 2009 SEED Awards Announced; Local Entrepreneurship Celebrated at the UN Commission on Sustainable Development

UNEP/UNDP/IUCN NEWS RELEASE

Winners of 2009 SEED Awards Announced;
Local Entrepreneurship Celebrated at the UN Commission on Sustainable Development

New York, USA – 12 May 2009.

The winners of the 2009 SEED Awards for Entrepreneurship in Sustainable Development were announced today at a high level award ceremony and reception. The international award recognizes innovation in local, environmentally-responsible and sustainable entrepreneurship.

Twenty local initiatives from across the developing world received this year’s award. Together, the winners cover a diverse range of promising business models that will tackle poverty and environmental stewardship in areas such as water and waste management, sustainable energy, recycling, and fish farming.

The SEED Award is the flagship programme of the SEED Initiative, a partnership founded by the United Nations Development Programme (UNDP), the United Nations Environment Programme (UNEP), and the International Union for Conservation of Nature (IUCN).

The ceremony, which was attended by high-level delegates from government, civil society and the
business community, was held in conjunction with the second week of this year’s United Nations
Commission on Sustainable Development (CSD). Taking advantage of the concentration of national
delegations engaged in the CSD, the reception hoped to direct the collective attention of the
conservation and development community to the contributions local entrepreneurs are making to
attainment of international sustainable development objectives.
“This is an inspiring group of entrepreneurs who demonstrate that environmental sustainability and business can be synergistic goals,” said the Assistant Administrator of UNDP, Olav Kjørven. “It is this type of innovation and responsible entrepreneurship that will create jobs, provide for food security and save the environment. It is our objective at UNDP to promote these progressive business ideas as they are the seeds of future economies and are one of the key instruments that will allow us to achieve the Millennium Development Goals. UNDP is proud to be a SEED Initiative partner and I congratulate the 2009 SEED Award Winners on their outstanding achievements and leadership.”

The SEED Awards are distinctive in the growing field of environment and development awards in that they identify, profile and support promising, locally-driven, start-up enterprises working in partnership in developing countries to improve livelihoods, tackle poverty, and manage natural resources sustainably. Rather than the traditional monetary prize, applicants compete for a package of individually-tailored capacity development– a suite of that will help the winners to grow their business idea and establish lasting partnerships across sectors.

In closing remarks, Achim Steiner, UN Under-Secretary-General and Executive Director of UNEP, said: “The $3 trillion-worth of stimulus packages assembled to revive the global economy can be spent on keeping ailing industries, such as gas guzzling car companies and polluting factories on life support systems or can be invested in a sustainable Green Economy for the 21st century. The 2009 SEED Award winners are shining examples of the kinds of low carbon, innovation-led, recycling and green job enterprises shooting up across the globe—enterprises that echo to the multiple challenges of here and now, enterprises that with just a fraction of the bail-out billions and trillions could be the new Microsoft, Siemens, Tata, and Unilever – able to deliver tomorrow’s economy today.”

Competition for the 2009 SEED Awards was particularly fierce. Winners were selected by an international jury of sustainable development experts. Juli Marton-Lefevre, Director General of IUCN who was also in attendance said of the level of competition: This fourth round of SEED Awards demonstrates resoundingly that there are a vast number of innovative and practical ideas in the world about how to make sustainable development happen. These SEED winners were selected from more than 1100 applications from close to 100 countries worldwide, representing the collaborative efforts of about 5000 organizations from the private sector, non-governmental organizations, women.s groups, labour organizations, public authorities, international agencies and academia. Our hope is that with SEED’s support, they will grow and inspire similar initiatives elsewhere.

Beyond the annual SEED Award, the SEED Initiative works to learn from the experiences of the individual start-ups to derive tools and guidance that can be helpful for all entrepreneurs who are aiming to deliver social and environmental benefits. The latest tool, a major online resource developed by SEED in partnership with the International Institute for Sustainable Development and the Commission on Environmental Cooperation, was launched at the reception. Set up as a wiki, at www.entrepreneurstoolkit.org, this tool is designed so that social andenvironmental entrepreneurs around the world can write about their experience with setting up and running their businesses.

For more Information
Helen Marquard, Executive Director
SEED Initiative Secretariat
Tel: +44 7785 706 646
Email:  helen.marquard at seedinit.org

About SEED
The SEED Initiative identifies, profiles and supports promising, locally-driven, start-up enterprises working in partnership in developing countries to improve livelihoods, tackle poverty and marginalisation, and manage natural resources sustainably. SEED develops learning resources for the broad community of social and environmental entrepreneurs, informs policy- and decision-makers, and aims to inspire innovative, entrepreneurial approaches to sustainable development.

SEED is a global network founded in 2002 by UNEP, UNDP and IUCN to contribute towards the goals in the UN’s Millennium Declaration and the commitments made at the Johannesburg World Summit on Sustainable Development.

SEED’s Partners
The United Nations Environment Programme (UNEP); the United Nations Development Programme (UNDP); IUCN (International Union for Conservation of Nature); and the Governments of Germany, India, the Netherlands, Norway, South Africa, Spain, the United Kingdom and the United States.

Notes for Editors – 2009 SEED Award Winners

• Bangladesh: “Solar conversion of traditional kerosene hurricane lamps”. A national NGO in partnership with a local NGO and a cooperative have developed an innovative device called “SuryaHurricane”, a low-cost solar lantern made from recycled parts of the conventional and much used kerosene lantern.

• Bangladesh: “Generating local economy through regenerating local resources”. A cooperation between a national NGO, a research institution and a small-sized business aims to avoid bio-diversity losses and degradation of the agricultural lands, by recycling waste from rice-growing for the production of cement that will be used in the production of low cost housing materials.

• Brazil: “One Million Cistern Program (P1MC)”. Local NGOs and local community associations have joined forces with the national government and international agencies to develop and build one million home cisterns to collect and store rain water in the semi-arid region, bringing access to potable water for poor rural families.

• Brazil: “The sustainable use of Amazonian seeds”. Regional development in the Brazilian Amazon is the aim of the partners, achieved by encouraging the organization of the local communities as a cooperative, and by transferring technologies and training the community in the production of oils made from Amazonian seeds, resulting in increased incomes for thesecommunities.

• Brazil: “Eco-Amazon Piabas of Rio Negro”. A national NGO, a cooperative of small producers and public authorities are working together to build a niche market of specialty ornamental fishes and to introduce a fair trade system through socio-environmentally responsible fishing.

• Burkina Faso: “Nafore & Afrisolar energy kiosks”. A small business and international NGOs are cooperating to provide sustainable energy supply to poor communities by expanding the use of “Nafore”, a PV-based telephone charger, powered 100% on solar energy.

• Colombia: “Oro Verde® - Facilitating market access for artisan miners”. A national NGO and local community associations are engaged in an initiative to reverse environmental degradation and social exclusion produced by illegal and uncontrolled mechanized mining. A mining certification process and capacity building programme have been created. More than 1000 artisan mines are now following social and environmental criteria.

• Colombia: “Camarones Sostenibles del Golfo de Morrosquillo”. The partners of this project are a community-based organization, a local NGO and a small business which are aiming to establish an cooperative enterprise that includes families of traditional fishermen in the Morrosquillo Gulf, farming shrimp in a way which produces zero emissions.

• Cook Islands: “Innovative inland oyster aquafarming”. A local business in partnership with a national NGO is farming oysters under controlled conditions in an environmentally friendly and wholly sustainable manner. Farming fish provides relief from subsistence fishing of the over-harvested lagoons in the region as well as new food security and income generation to communities involved.

• Kenya: “MakaaZingira” produces FSC certified charcoal for conservation and livelihood creation. A national NGO, a community-based organisation and a small business network aim to establish a sustainable eco-charcoal production model, helping small scale farmers to replace unsustainable practices while also bringing social benefits.

• Kenya: “Integrated plastics recovery and recycling flagship project”. A project carried out by a large and a small business in partnership with a national NGO, aiming to offer the most viable option to recycling of dirty polythenes into plastic poles. It works to improve and strengthen livelihood assets for poor and marginalised youth and women.

• Kenya, Malawi, Tanzania and Zambia: “Sunny Money - solar micro-franchising”. International NGOs and community-based organisations in Kenya, Malawi, Tanzania and Zambia have created a micro-franchise named Sunny Money, which recruits, trains and supports a growing network of solar entrepreneurs in East Africa, especially deaf and disabled people, helping them build and sell solar kits to power lights, radios and mobile phones.

. Mozambique: “The clean energy initiative”. This project aims to provide rural electrification using sustainable energy, generating local employment and promoting entrepreneurial skills, by offering capacity building in the manufacture, installation and maintenance of micro wind turbines. The partners of this project are local small businesses and an academic institution.

. Niger: “Almodo”. A partnership between a small business and a research institution is developing a sustainable self-financing solid waste management system that contributes to improving living conditions of the poorest population, in collaboration with a women.s group that collects solid waste in poor urban areas of Niger.s three biggest cities.

Panama: “Planting Empowerment”. An initiative involving a small business in partnership with a community-based organization and an international agency is leveraging private capital to increase conservation and provide sustainable livelihood opportunities to the local population as the same time as improve natural resource conservation in fragile environmental areas.

South Africa, Namibia and Botswana: “Biocultural protocols - community approaches to Access and Benefit Sharing”. Civil society organizations have mobilized efforts to develop bio-cultural protocols with different local indigenous communities which will help to provide a model whereby local communities can share the benefits if local resources and expertise are developed for market purposes.

Sri Lanka: “Solar energy, education & fishing”. National and international NGOs, with the cooperation of public authorities, are working to expand the use of an alternative lighting system in rural villages, through the replacement of kerosene lamps with solar panels.

Tanzania: “KOLCAFE - Smallholder coffee revenue enhancement”. This initiative, involving national NGOs and a local research institution, aims to empower coffee farmers and increase coffee production by improving agronomic practices and adding value through building product processing infrastructure and selling products directly to export markets.

Thailand: “Carbon bank and village development”. This innovative initiative of national NGOs and an academic institution aims to encourage, support and enhance community-based indigenous forestry through carbon credit trading to enable successful climate change adaptation and socioeconomic development for local communities and biodiversity conservation.

Zimbabwe: “Bridge to the World”. A small business, a research institution and an association of small-scale women farmers together are facing the challenge of improving rural livelihoods and reversing severe land degradation through innovative organic farming of essential oils, made from the indigenous Tarchonanthus camphoratus bush.

2009 SEED International Jury
The 2009 SEED Award winners were selected by the independent International Jury which very kindly dedicated considerable time to choosing the most promising of the applications. The members of the jury are:
. Leila Akahloun: Integrator for Africa Programs, Ashoka
. Nicole Haeusler: Managing Director of .mas contour . Tourism Consulting &
Regional Planning.
. Paul Laird: Corporate Partnerships Manager, Earthwatch, UK
. Juan Mayr Maldonado: former Minister of the Environment, Colombia
. Brian Milder: Director of Strategy and Innovation, Root Capital
. Jennifer Morris: Vice President, Verde Ventures at Conservation
International
. Kofi Nketsia-Tabiri: Regional Manager, E + Co Africa
. Sarah Timpson: Senior Adviser on Community-based Initiatives, UNDP
. George Varughese: President, Development Alternatives Group, India

***********************************
Jim Sniffen
Programme Officer
UN Environment Programme
New York
tel: +1-212-963-8094/8210
 info at nyo.unep.org
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Waking Up in a Former Empire at the End of the Industrial Age.           

Or: Is It “Mean” to Tell Someone Their House is on Fire?
You can never awaken using the same system that put you to sleep in the first place. - Gurdjieff

by Suzanne Duarte
www.CultureChange.org, 13 May 2009
Dearest Ones of Future Generations,

I thought you might find it interesting to hear what I’m observing of those people I know about who are just waking up to what the state of the planet is. Last month saw Earth Day, an international day of observance for the Earth. For nearly 40 years, it has been a day when environmentalists have had a chance to provide a reckoning of the damage that industrial civilization has been inflicting on the natural world. It is usually a time when print media make some obligatory gesture of recognition that humans live on a planet that we depend upon and that needs our attention. This year the statements were a little more urgent than usual, especially about climate change, which is increasingly referred to as “climate emergency.”

The reason that we are in a climate emergency — in fact, a biological holocaust, as it was identified over 20 yrs ago — is that the dominant Western, globalized culture has been in a “cultural trance,” drunk on oil, living in a delusional bubble for about 60 years. Now, the question is, is it unkind or rude or unskillful to try to wake people up from their cultural trance and point out that we are endangering the future of our species, and many others, to remain asleep? Is it “mean” to wake somebody up to tell them that their house is on fire? A lot of people seem to think so.

I’ve lost friends by trying to wake them up. Waking up at this time of the Great Turning from the industrial growth society to a life-sustaining way of life is painful.

Many people still don’t want to know, don’t want to think, because it would entail facing painful truths and making hard choices. They can stand to think about it only briefly on one day out of the year. This is the reason I write letters to the future.

I feel that beings of the future need and deserve an explanation for the destruction caused by my generation. And I can be more straightforward with you than with my contemporaries, for the aforementioned reasons.

In the last resort, perhaps I am writing only to my future incarnations to remind them of what this lifetime was like, remind them of the dismay, frustration and pain of not being able to wake people up so that the future might be more livable.

In any case, this missive is about what I observe to be the difficult stages of waking up at this time of crisis and danger. There is complex inner terrain to traverse before we can identify the opportunities and the adventure that await us if we have the courage to wake up and make the Great Turning. The challenge is that the Great Turning requires a psychological transformation from childlike dependence on external authorities and their outworn belief systems, to a mature, individuated, authentic sense of responsibility for oneself and one’s effects on the world. This is a major transformation, much more than is normally implied when we, at this time, speak of ‘growing up.’

It seems that the hardest part of waking up at this time is facing the fact that it is too late to avoid the pain, suffering and loss that could have been forestalled, had humans collectively heeded the warnings. The warnings were and are rational and scientifically based. The denial of the warnings was and is irrational, based on false beliefs. Pointing out that the denial was collective and irrational causes some people to point the ‘shame and blame’ finger at those who make this point. Instead of allowing themselves to evaluate the truth of the statement, they whine, ‘You’re shaming and blaming us. That’s not healing. You’re being apocalyptic. We don’t want to hear it, and it’s your fault for not giving us the message of hope that we need.’ This is a common shoot-the-messenger response, in which people who don’t like the message blame, or ‘shoot,’ the messenger.

The message of ‘hope’ that is demanded is the hope that we don’t have to take responsibility for ourselves and our world by changing how we live, and what we preoccupy ourselves with. The hope that many people want is very conditional. They can only take hope if they are reassured that things will continue as they have been during these very extraordinary last few decades.

The cultural trance prevents people from recognizing that the reality of living on Earth is unconditional. Our survival depends upon facing the reality of the larger living system we depend upon, and that larger living system doesn’t make deals. We can’t bargain with it. We live within its jurisdiction. The Earth has been very patient. It has put up with a lot of abuse, but the biological life of living systems is quite fragile, very vulnerable to damage by machines. Living systems have limits and tipping points beyond which breakdown and/or evolution can occur. The limits to which we can push living systems have been in view for decades. Because the limits were ignored, we are now seeing and experiencing the tipping point stage, and systemic chaos can therefore be expected.

The reality is that, not only do we have to change the way we live, but we need to recognize our part in creating this necessity. In order to survive we need to own this responsibility and grow up, so that we don’t repeat our mistakes again. That this message is taken as an insult is an ego-based default response, which is irrational and childish. This is the crux of the reason that humanity needs to grow up. Growing up resets these immature default settings. Growing up means accepting responsibility, taking the blame upon oneself, acknowledging one’s blind spots, and one’s dysfunctional social conditioning. Growing up means getting honest and feeling remorse for the consequences of one’s childishness and self-deception.

This is the point where we are right now, collectively. The minority of visionary Cassandras is turning out to be correct. But that is small comfort since they/we are still facing the wrath – and the consequences – of the majority who rejected foresight, and want to blame somebody, scapegoat somebody. The stages of grief have to be worked through in the process of waking up: denial, anger, bargaining, depression, and finally acceptance. Coming out of denial, the next reaction for most people is anger.

But I hope you of future generations can have some sympathy and compassion for those who are just waking up, because the discrepancy between the dream they are coming out of and the reality they must face is quite enormous. Some people talk about how “we need a new story,” a new cosmology, and this is true as far as it goes. But there are two facts that belie the simplicity of that statement. One is that the new story is still in gestation and isn’t yet a ‘live birth.’ The other is that the gap between the cultural trance of the old story and the unfolding reality of the world has never – in the history of our species – been so wide as it has become in Western civilization. The American Dream, in particular, has been so disconnected from the reality of the Earth that waking up from it is truly a ‘rude awakening,’ as we say, that can seem traumatic. Although waking up may be most difficult for Americans, that dream has also entranced much of the rest of the world.

However, since I am an American, I can identify with the difficulty of waking up from the American Dream. I know from experience that it entails working through layers and layers of collective delusion: the sense of entitlement and security of being a citizen within the “greatest country the world has ever known”; the sense that our country is superior and can do no wrong, and that it is ‘exceptional’ and will not collapse like other civilizations and empires; the sense that America is entitled to take what it wants from the rest of the world – by force if necessary; the sense that living in the United States is an unsurpassable blessing for which we should be grateful; the sense that ‘we’ (Americans) are the best people; and the sense that loyalty to our country demands that we turn a blind eye to its wrongdoings and faults. These are the delusions of the citizens of empire, carried over from ancient tribalistic habitual patterns.

Just to wake up to the injustices, lies, and crimes of our empire, and to realize that our arrogant assumptions of entitlement and superiority are baseless, takes a lot of courage; for to face these things means we must step out of the herd, and leave the herd mentality of the majority behind. This is a necessary part of growing up.

But once we’ve woken up to the injustices of our empire, the next step in growing up and facing reality is the realization that our empire is faltering and failing; in fact, it is disintegrating. At this stage one peeks over the edge of the cloud or the cliff and begins to comprehend how far it is to the ground – how far we have to fall. This is where we truly begin to realize that we are living in a former empire at the end of the industrial age, and that ‘progress’ as we’ve known it is over. Then we begin to comprehend that the glories of the way of life we’ve taken for granted – the glamour, ease and convenience of the industrial age – can never, ever be repeated, because our civilization has stripped the Earth of the resources that are accessible through the use of fossil fuels, and fossil fuels are going away. As Richard Heinberg has detailed for us, we have reached “Peak Everything” and after the peak, the only way is down.

This “Long Descent” or “Long Emergency” – as John Michael Greer and James Howard Kunstler, respectively, have described it – is the future that the majority of citizens of former empires have not yet been able to face. I don’t mean just Americans.

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I live in another former empire, the Netherlands. Here is what I recently observed of the masses in this overcrowded country.

Queens Day, April 30, 2009
With the sun shining and temperatures in the low 60s, boats and barges full of people wearing bright orange, often standing up shoulder-to-shoulder, float by on the canal, blaring loud music. The Dutch make a lot of noise celebrating their Dutchness on this national holiday, celebrating the chance to take a day off in the sunshine after a long, dark winter.

This is the way the Dutch have ‘fun’: they crowd together in the streets and on barges and boats, and make a lot of noise. They wear their national color, orange, to show their nationalistic solidarity. They play popular music at high volume and wave their arms in the air to express themselves. They get drunk and do crazy things. Today a driver drove his car into a crowd of people, and four people died. My Dutch husband said it was simply ‘mania,’ a mania he reported seeing on the streets yesterday as people prepared to ‘celebrate.’ The Dutch are prone to do crazy things when they have an excuse to relax their habitual stiffness.

I catch myself looking at these people unkindly. I am not only detached, but arrogantly so. Yet I immediately recognize that my arrogance is a cover for the sadness I feel, knowing that the loud display of color and sound is a cover for a psychological condition, of which the Dutch are in stubborn denial. I think about all the petroleum that is being wasted to power these people around and around the canals of the city, trying so hard to have a good time. What is behind this frivolity? Why do people waste time, energy and resources on such frivolity, if it isn’t an avoidance mechanism – an avoidance of the truth? Do they know at some level that they live in a former empire at the end of the industrial age? Is this the subconscious awareness, the anxiety that is fueling their manic ‘fun’?

I am reminded of the drunken parties of the Nazi elites, portrayed in many films, just before the fall of Berlin and Hitler’s suicide, which marked the end of World War II. This kind of frivolous abandon – also evoked by the image of the mad emperor Nero fiddling while Rome burned – seems to be a compensatory measure of resistance to facing a reality that cannot be faced. The drunken parties precede suicide.

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Not far from the Dutch geographically or politically is another former empire, Britain. Both the UK and the Netherlands have supported the American empire in its military adventures to control the supply of oil. But the Brits seem to be expressing their anxiety slightly less frivolously – by attacking each other for policies that are meant to maintain the status quo and the illusion that economic recovery is possible. (The British are much better at publicly arguing with each other than the Dutch are.) However, things seem to be in a more advanced stage of economic and social breakdown in the UK than in Holland, and grassroots movements – notably Transition initiatives – are far more robust in the UK than in Holland. In fact, they started there. I attribute the Transition movement’s birth in the UK to the deeper spiritual connection with the natural world that people traditionally have had in the British Isles, and also a deeper understanding of the dark side of industrialism. After all, the industrial revolution started in England, which provoked several opposition movements – the Romantic poets, the Arts and Crafts movement, and the Luddite protests against machines, not to mention many novels. It’s almost as though something in the British cultural psyche has been waiting and preparing for the end of the industrial age since it began.

Waking up to living in a former empire at the end of the industrial age brings gravitas to one’s outlook, as Kurt Cobb suggests in Does understanding complexity beget a tragic view of life? One does not and cannot celebrate as the Dutch were celebrating outside my window. That kind of frivolous abandon is no longer possible once one has worked through the cultural trance, come down to Earth, and accepted responsibility. Then celebration takes on a decidedly more sober, mindful, even reverential tone.

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But, dear ones of the future, few people in this former empire, Holland, or in America (which will soon be globally recognized as a former empire) have acquired the gravitas – the groundedness in reality – to prepare for the end of cheap oil, or any of the other circumstances that will radically change our supposedly ‘non-negotiable’ way of life.

So, if you can, try to see the wastefulness and triviality that are so prevalent at this time as the desperation of an immature culture, which is resisting the necessity of a rite of passage that only those capable of growing up are likely to survive. The ones who do survive are likely to be your ancestors. They will probably be the ones who woke up in time and prepared for the end of the industrial age and climate change.

With love and compassion for all future beings,

Suzanne

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Suzanne Duarte
Suzanne Duarte has been teaching Buddhadharma, Deep Ecology, and Ecopsychology for over 30 years, including Peak Oil since 2005. Later this year she will launch her new website, Dharmagaians.org and its blog. This essay will be the kind of thing that will appear on her Dharmagaians blog.

 Note: The highlighting and accent are by SustainabillTank.

The presentation makes it clear that experience taught us that politicians usually do not act in time and in the end it is the military that ends up being called to sort things out. In the case of climate change - “a top Class ‘A’ security strategic challenge”, the situation may be already so bad in many places that the military may have become already an actor.

Panel II at the “Global Security Implications of Climate Change” Conference included also Top military officers from Bangladesh and the US Army War College.

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Brig. Gen. NIGEL HALL PRESENTATION at IISS, MAY 5, 2009: GLOBAL SECURITY IMPLICATIONS OF CLIMATE CHANGE, Panel II - Managing Climate-Induced State-Threatening Crises: What is the role of the military?

How should militaries plan for massive humanitarian interventions into states stressed by climate-induced crises?

Introduction:
It is a privilege to be here today.  I am not an expert on climate but I do consider climate change to be a top Class ‘A’ security strategic challenge.  May I just add that I am speaking in a personal capacity.

How Should Militaries Plan for massive Humanitarian Intervention into States Stressed by Climate-Induced Crises?

[As we have just heard], outlooks may differ depending on national and regional perspectives.  Taking a UK and European-centric perspective, my short answer is that for now they should do no more planning than they already do. Certainly UK Forces are over-committed doing high priority tasks.  If there is an unprecedented massive humanitarian catastrophe today, based upon existing planning, our militaries could throw whatever is available and required into emergency response once tasked.

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So What is the Military Priority of Effort Today?
For the likely medium [10 – 20 years ] timescale which is the nub of the question, there are other more important things militaries should be doing today, and in UK’s case, some things they are already fully engaged in doing, as part of wider cross-government climate change mitigation and planning policies.
In December 2008 the UK MOD published its Climate Change Strategy.  This covers how the MOD, as the largest producer of central government emissions, will reduce its own carbon footprint; how new defence equipment will need to meet future climate requirements; and the central role taken by MOD science, research, analysis, including scenario planning as part of cross-Government Climate Change Security Planning.
This is a start.  But there is a more proactive role that all militaries should be playing to get others to really focus and start to take the necessary anticipatory action. Given the urgency, and based upon recent strategic mistakes learnt across the security, nation building and development nexus in Iraq and Afghanistan, not to mention in the big UN missions, the military must be more forceful as stakeholders in the various national and global fora considering climate.  The military must push reluctant politicians and other government departments to grip this issue now and understand that the military are not, repeat not, the major answer to the potential massive humanitarian, social and economic consequences of climate change that we will likely encounter. In national speak, this is about ‘whole of government’, a more joined up than ever before team effort.
In the international context, this requires unprecedented regional and global cooperation and effort. The potential good news is that this subject just could be the one that gets the United Nations, European Union, NATO, other regional organisations, the revamped international finance institutions, regional development banks, and humanitarian organisations and major NGOs working more effectively together.

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I accept an alternative possibility is that this is all too difficult. That climate, as a threat multiplier, will increase existing security tensions and stresses (weak and failing states, water, food resource competition, migration) passed a tipping point and result in unprecedented global disorder.  All the more reason, I suggest, for militaries to go into overdrive now and do everything possible to prevent or mitigate this grim scenario.

They must firmly put the case that we face an unprecedented global security problem.  Climate induced security challenges converge with other 21st century security risks.  Your intelligence, military, and scientific scenarios here in the US paint much the same range of sobering assessments as in Europe.  The outlook is potential existential threat for many millions of people, not to mention significant reversal of human security, economic prosperity, rule of law, and establishment of representative government recent trends.

Long-term policies and life-changing actions and effort, therefore, must become the over-riding political issues.  They must replace customary short-term election winning political issues and short-term voter priorities.  This requires inspirational leadership.   You may be getting this here in the US.  Thank goodness, no place is more important given your political and economic leadership role in the world, and scientific and research clout.  But long-term inspirational leadership that can deliver unprecedented cross-government concerted effort and public support is desperately needed elsewhere (brief aside, it was PM Tony Blair who, driven by the security implications of all this, pushed climate change on to the G8 agenda).  For now, relentlessly making the case on climate security in order to get the traditionally slower moving civilian authorities moving is the most important military task in many countries.

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Time is Short
Whatever your top priority, whether the likely water struggles and calamities from the China/India Himalayan plateau, the devastating consequences in Africa banding the equator, or projected migration northward out of Mexico (or any one of many other scenarios) - even if we face only half the scale of migration, and complete re-location of whole communities as a result of rising sea levels, drought, and extreme weather events outlined in current best scientific predictions, comprehensive international, political, economic and social strategies and action plans must start now.  To-date military humanitarian intervention has tended to be short-term emergency response and option of last-resort.  I fear that the military will become more involved over time on account of the scale of crises and need for military intellectual, intelligence, scientific, research, organisational, and specialist equipment and capabilities as well as speed of response (recall NATO recent responses to the Tsunami, Hurricane Katrina, and Pakistan earthquake).  However, it would be fatal to make this a military priority now.
We must go the extra mile now to invest in the other non-military primary actors’ preparedness. We need to be thinking how to absorb many millions of climate-stressed migrants in ways that minimise further insecurity, including in already over-crowded parts of the world.  We have got to think and do better than mega UNWRA and IDP camps. It is not just about migration and re-location either; the Megacities projections and urbanisation trends, worry enough already, but exacerbated by climate stress will be major issues too. The sooner we get on with this non-military planning the greater willbe the chances of coping with what is coming.

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Prevention and Preparation
The military tend to think ahead and in a comprehensive and strategic way more than others.  They should play on this strength and can be significant thought leaders at this time.  Military research, science, innovation, and analysis in cooperation with others have a huge role to play at this stage.  More widely, I think of the outstanding roles played by Generals Marshall and McArthur after World War Two inspiring and designing political and economic frameworks way beyond traditional military horizons. Much better we identify some civilian Marshalls and McArthurs in the next few years, rather than revert to type in future extreme adversity and default to military supremos.
Let me put my head further above the parapet.  One key to significantly reduce the potential humanitarian impact of climate stress will be to go all out attacking poverty.  Surely, nothing else will produce a more dramatic reduction in the high population growth amongst precisely many of the peoples that will be most severely stressed by climate change and recipients of our future humanitarian and development assistance?  Perhaps at this time of economic stress with indicatorsgoing the wrong way, our politicians need to hear this loud and clear.

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Climate Change and Other 21st Century Security Risks: Opportunity
In an article I have recently completed, I describe climate as a Class ‘A’ security risk along with rapid population growth and resource scarcity and competition.  They will likely catalyse or accelerate some Class ‘B’ staple risks for example, existing tensions, rivalries, and consequences flowing from weak and failing states, poverty etc.  The combined scale of these ‘A’ and ‘B’ risks is, I believe, beyond our ability to manage by continuing business more or less as usual.  Indeed, with proliferating stress today – Pakistan and Somalia – being the two latest significant additional burdens now impacting at the political and military strategic levels, we are close to the limit of coping.  Big transformational change, what I describe as 21st century mobilisation, may be approaching fast.  Done right, ‘smart’ mobilisation which is about mobilisation of thinking power, the best available experience, and renewed commitment to public service at local, regional, national, and international levels could be a real opportunity here.

With the much needed reform of our international organisations, new century mobilisation focusing on science, research, innovation, and with unprecedented international cooperation may provide a way ahead.  This could require a shift to a wartime-style managed command economy (hopefully combining the best of free market in partnership with essential state directed activity where free enterprise cannot deliver in time), and for example height of Cold War levels of funding (with % of GDP targets) in the science, research, and planning and design of solutions to deal with these humanitarian consequences as they become shorter-term realities.

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Finally

History, reinforced by current political practice, tells us that we are programmed to put off having to face difficult choices.  The military so often end up as option of last resort and paying a heavy price for the failure of others and absence of prudent, timely action. I refer as much to the situation today in our intervention operations and major UN missions, as to 60 plus years ago.  If ever there is a time for the military to speak out, to warn, and to harness its niche strengths – its strategic forward looking approaches, its scientific, innovation, and systems-integration capacities into a wider campaign, it is right now. But the military should be a supporting and not a lead actor in all of this.

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 Peak-Oil Prophet James Howard Kunstler on Food, Fuel and Why He Became an Almost Vegan.
By Kerry Trueman, AlterNet. Posted May 7, 2009.

Kunstler dishes on the collapse of our institutions, why “recovery” may never come and how to survive the fall of farming as we know it.
I grew up in Woodland Hills, Calif., writes Kerry Trueman, a nominally pastoral, petrocentric Los Angeles suburb, so peak oil prognosticator James Howard Kunstler’s dim view of our car-crazed culture really resonates with me.

Kunstler’s relentless skewering of suburbia, and his penchant for apocalyptic predictions have landed him a reputation as a cranky Cassandra. But as Ben McGrath observed while strolling around Saratoga Springs with Kunstler for a recent New Yorker piece, “Far from the image of the stereotypical Chicken Little, he was more like an amiable town crier whom the citizenry regarded fondly, if a bit skeptically.”

So, when a friend and I found ourselves headed to Kunstler’s neck of the woods for a conference recently, we arranged to have dinner with Saratoga Springs’ resident soothsayer. Contrary to his contrarian reputation, Kunstler proved to be an affable, upbeat guy.

We chatted about food, politics, urban planning, gardening and a dozen other topics, but I’m not much of a note-taker; I’d rather eat than tweet. So our dinner conversation was off the record, including, mercifully, his ribald remarks about Alice Waters and Martha Stewart, which decency should preclude me from even alluding to.

However, he graciously agreed to answer my questions via e-mail about his conversion from carnivore to (mostly) vegan and other foodish and fuelish topics.

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Kerry Trueman: Let’s get right to the meat of the matter — or, rather, the lack thereof. You used to enjoy eating “lots of meat, duck fat, butter by the firkin.” What made you decide to go more or less vegan in recent months? Was it hard to make the transition to a plant-based diet?

James Howard Kunstler: It was as simple as a trip to the doctor’s office. My cholesterol and blood pressure were too high. I had to take some radical action. I’ve enjoyed the challenge of cooking with a very different range of ingredients. But I like cooking and am pretty good at it — I worked in many restaurant kitchens when I was a starving bohemian — and I figured a lot of things out.

For instance, that you can make stocks and sauces by braising onions and aromatics without oil or butter. The only thing I really miss is making really bravura dishes for company, like chicken pie with a butter-saturated crust, duck-and-sausage gumbo, brownies … you get the picture. … I’m still excited by the challenge of vegan (or nearly vegan — I use skim milk) cookery.

There are some excellent cookbooks out there, by the way, like Vegan With a Vengeance by Isa Chandra Moskowitz, The Accidental Vegan by Devra Gartenstein, and the Candle Cafe Cookbook by Joy Pierson and Bart Potenza.

Fast food is not a new phenomenon in the USA, however. Frances Trollope’s sensational travel book of the 1830s, The Domestic Manners of the Americans dwells on the horrifying spectacle of our hotel dining rooms, where people bolted their food with disgusting manners. Americans have been in a tearing rush for 200 years.

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KT: In The Long Emergency, published in 2005, you predicted with astounding accuracy how the subprime mortgage meltdown would unfold. Your latest novel, World Made By Hand, takes place in the near future after a massive flu outbreak that originated in Mexico. Um, what should we start worrying about next?

JHK: I don’t grow any grains. I have successfully grown potatoes, but won’t this year (I’m renting my current house and its accompanying property). This year, I’ll be planting mostly leafy greens — collards, kale, chard, lettuces, plus some peppers and tomatoes (pure frivolity). It is not hard to imagine that food theft will become a problem. The trouble, though, is that the sort of people liable to do the thieving are exactly those with the poorest skills in cooking. You have to know what to do with kale to make it worth stealing. It may be more like kitchen theft: “… what’s that you got on the stove, pal?”