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Posted on Sustainabilitank.info on August 27th, 2008 From: Jeremy.Houssin at erm.com ERM and UNEP organise a training workshop in Dakar, Senegal, from the 8th to 12th of September 2008, to help African project sponsors. You will find below and attached to the mail a call for CDM projects and projects in the Voluntary Market.
A Call for CDM projects and projects in the Voluntary Carbon Market for project sponsors in Senegal who want to participate in a Capacity Building workshop. Types of projects eligible: Workshop financing: For the project sponsors who are already registered by the UNEP for the Africa Carbon Forum, please indicate your UNEP registration number. Pilot projects and case studies in asset classes such as plantation forestry, agro forestry, and bio fuels will open up opportunities for African participation in the CDM and the voluntary carbon markets. In addition, the project will facilitate the establishment of a stakeholder network for technical cooperation and linkages between carbon buyers and sellers. The programme’s findings will also serve to contribute to the policy debate towards a post-2012 climate regime, casting light on key issues such as eligibility of avoided deforestation and land degradation projects in CDM-type initiatives. CASCADe Project in Senegal and Benin: For more information : Houssin Jérémy Permalink | ### |
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Posted on Sustainabilitank.info on May 30th, 2008 Opinion The Rich Get Hungrier. by: Amartya Sen, The New York Times In January of 2007, tens of thousands of Mexicans marched in the streets to protest a leap of 50 percent in the price of corn tortillas. Will the food crisis that is menacing the lives of millions ease up - or grow worse over time? The answer may be both. The recent rise in food prices has largely been caused by temporary problems like drought in Australia, Ukraine and elsewhere. Though the need for huge rescue operations is urgent, the present acute crisis will eventually end. But underlying it is a basic problem that will only intensify unless we recognize it and try to remedy it. Misdirected government policy worsened the division. The British rulers were determined to prevent urban discontent during the war, so the government bought food in the villages and sold it, heavily subsidized, in the cities, a move that increased rural food prices even further. Low earners in the villages starved. Two million to three million people died in that famine and its aftermath. Much discussion is rightly devoted to the division between haves and have-nots in the global economy, but the world’s poor are themselves divided between those who are experiencing high growth and those who are not. The rapid economic expansion in countries like China, India and Vietnam tends to sharply increase the demand for food. This is, of course, an excellent thing in itself, and if these countries could manage to reduce their unequal internal sharing of growth, even those left behind there would eat much better. But the same growth also puts pressure on global food markets - sometimes through increased imports, but also through restrictions or bans on exports to moderate the rise in food prices at home, as has happened recently in countries like India, China, Vietnam and Argentina. Those hit particularly hard have been the poor, especially in Africa. There is also a high-tech version of the tale of two peoples. Agricultural crops like corn and soybeans can be used for making ethanol for motor fuel. So the stomachs of the hungry must also compete with fuel tanks. Misdirected government policy plays a part here, too. In 2005, the United States Congress began to require widespread use of ethanol in motor fuels. This law combined with a subsidy for this use has created a flourishing corn market in the United States, but has also diverted agricultural resources from food to fuel. This makes it even harder for the hungry stomachs to compete. Ethanol use does little to prevent global warming and environmental deterioration, and clear-headed policy reforms could be urgently carried out, if American politics would permit it. Ethanol use could be curtailed, rather than being subsidized and enforced. { So - even a Nobel Peace Prize Wining Economist, of the stature of Amartia Sen, can show total ignorance yet speak up in loud voice, making public that ignorance, by not trying to analyze what he was fed as information by clearly vested interests. We said this many times, but in reverence to Professor Sen, we will repeat this once more: Ethanol could have been made out of the corn that was NOT GROWN, rather then from the food commodity. The point is that the agricultural policy in the US and in the EU is based on “Set-Asides” that leave land out of production in a subsidization of the commodity prices policy. So there is land available to grow an extra amount of corn.} ———- Permalink | ### |
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Posted on Sustainabilitank.info on January 22nd, 2008 Towards CSD-16 Via Crutches Provided By The UN Convention on Combating Desertification. As we wrote in: “Will The UN Try To REVIVE The COMMISSION on SUSTAINABLE DEVELOPMENT So It Can Take Its Right Place In A World That Is Supposed To Re-Engage At Bali?” - Posted on Sustainabilitank.info on December 11th, 2007, CSD 16 will happen one way or another in May 5-16, 2008, and is tusked with: “The Review Session of The CSD Third Implementation Cycle that Will Focus on Agriculture, Rural Development, Land, Desertification, and Africa.” Ambassador Daniel Carmon, the WEAG CSD Vice-Chair from Israel, announced to a New York, December 19, 2007 meeting of the CSD-16 Bureau, that WATEC, the Tel Aviv October 30-November 1, 2007 Water Technologies & Environmental Control Conference and Exhibition, was an initiative the government took in support of CSD-16. He highlighted the importance of the thematic issues on the agenda of CSD-16 and in particular, the need for supporting Africa and other developing countries, including in the area of agricultural technologies, as highlighted in resolutions of the UN General Assembly. We understand that the ativities of the Israelis prompted Iran to leave the Bureau, and they were replaced by Indonesia. Mr. Tri Tharyat, from Indonesia, is now Vice-Chair from Asia/Pacific. The Arab region seems to be represented by Ms. Kathleen Abdalla, an employee of the CSD Secretariat. An outcome of interest from the above is that the CSD-13 document on water and sanitation will now be reviewed during the second week of CSD-16, under the option of monitoring and follow up of previous decisions. But the only large meeting, I was told, will be the “International Conference on Combating Desertification” January 22-24, 2008 - Beijing, China. That is this week - and we received the program thereof. Day 1 (January 22, 2008): After the Host Government will speak the head of UN DESA, Mr. Sha Zukang, UN USG for Economic and Social Affairs, who hails from China. Then Regional presentations on Desertification - from Africa, Asia, Latin America, and “Other Regions.” Social, Economic and Financing challenges of Desertification: Barriers and Constraints. - per region. Multi-Stakeholder Participation: Contributions of Local Governments and Major Groups, including NGOs - per regions. Followed by Plenary Session on the Way Forward Combating Desertification in the Broad Context of Sustainable Development: implementing Long-term, Integrated and Comprehensive Strategies, With International Support. While Luc Gnacadja, from Benin, is running an active UNCCD, there is nobody, since September 2007, in charge at UNCSD and no spokesman for this organization was contemplated for the opening session, unless you count on the head of DESA to represent this orphaned organization that is part of his roost. But, to call above meeting an activity of the CSdD boggles my mind - as indeed, the topic of desertification, as important as it really is, covers only a part of the concerns of what should be the larger area of interest of the CSD. We know what we are saying here - because in 1986 I wrote the UNITAR submission for The UN General Assembly Special Session on Africa: “The Potential of A Desert Economy.” That submission became later the basis for the Chapter on Arid and Semi-Arid Lands in The Club of Rome Volume on Africa Beyond The Famine.” Later, after the Rio convention, I also discussed problems of Synergy between the three separate Conventions that resulted from Rio - the Conventions on Climate Change, Biodiversity, and Desertification, and the larger concept of Sustainable Development. It was the Israelis, that under the leadership of Ambassador Israel Eliashiv, with the help of UNDP, organized in Sde Boker, at the Ben-Gurion University of the Desert, a workshop to act on those synergies. It is quite interesting now, how after two and a half days dedicated completely to combating desertification issues, the final plenary looks indeed to the Sustainable Development needs for a strategy of dealing with those subjects. Again, we think that the results of the Beijing meeting can be a terrific addition to the topics to be discussed at CSD 16, but we must ask nevertheless - addition to what? The fact is that the Beijing meeting covers clearly Desertification. With added climate change implications this can cover draught. With added social issues it could cover parts of rural development problems in Africa - but it does not cover agriculture at large in a sustainable development context as required from a CSD that is supposed to cover Land topics - presumably in countries that want to increase productivity; think perhaps in terms of agricultural industrialization, and try to compare this with time honored traditional ways. It hurts because we believe that when the UNFCCC - the climate convention - finally finds its way on the Road from Bali, and does indeed come up with a post-2012 CO2 emissions’ control program, it will have to be implemented via a Sustainable Development Roadmap. So, reducing to naught the CSD body now, will create serious delays in these programs later. As we were present at the 5/11/2007 event in the UN basement, and we wrote about that night at that time, we understand why UN donor countries have allowed the CSD to fall into what may become disrepair. Thus, we think it is for those countries that suffer most from climate change, for their own self interest, they must speak up and ask for a resumption of leadership at the CSD. This leadership has to be an enlightened, a forward looking leadership that is different from the influences of those that thought to drive the organization by looking exclusively at their rear-view mirror, as evidenced by the carrying of colonial time grief into a body - that could have helped their present day poor. Perhaps by way of exaggeration, we compared that 5/11 evening to the 3/11 and 9/11 symbolic dates. Yes, when all what is being prepared for May 2008 CSD 16, is the outcome of the Beijing meeting, we may be witnessing an outcome of that 5/11 event. Furthermore, we understand that on the fringe of the Beijing International Conference on Combating Desertification, which has been declared also as an inter-sessional event in contribution to CSD-16, it is the wish of the CSD-16 Bureau, we guess in order to cement this relationship, to declare the occasion also as the place to reconvene itself in Beijing during those days, sometimes during January 22-24, 2008. 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