Africa needs multi-sectoral approaches to address climate change impact - Eriyo

 The Deputy Secretary General of the East African Community (EAC), Jesca Eriyo has suggested a multi-sectoral approaches to address climate change impact, reports NaijaAgroNet.

Eriyo, according to NaijaAgroNet reports made this known at a regional workshop on African Agriculture in a changing climate: enhancing the up-take of climate smart agriculture.

The forum, organized by the African Climate Policy Centre (ACPC), Common Market for Eastern and Southern Africa (COMESA), Climate Change, Agriculture and Food Security (CCAFS), and East African Community (EAC) brought together climate change and agriculture experts from about 20 African countries.

“As EAC, we’re pleased to collaborate with other African regional economic organizations, research programmes and centers and development partners in finding lasting practical and policy solutions to address agricultural production and food security within the confines of a changing climate,” Eriyo said.

Agriculture, she noted in recent years has overwhelmed the impacts of climate change, which pose a serious concern on food security in the region with more than 130 million people.

Eriyo also said that the trading bloc has the potential and capacity to produce enough food to meet the region’s food demand and produce surplus for export to the world market.

The regional body, as said by her, is one of the implementing partners in the Programme on Climate Change Adaptation and Mitigation in Eastern and Southern Africa, just as its focus is on up- scaling climate smart agriculture in the region and promoting Africa’s solution within the ongoing climate negotiations under the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC).

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Misconceptions on dry lands and pastoralism

PASTORALIST move their livestock with the seasons, in search of good pasture across the drylands. Recent droughts in Africa are making decision makers question the viability of pastoralism, particularly in the face of future climate variability and change. But their fears are founded on misconceptions.

Governments fear collapse

Governments are concerned pastoralism will collapse, driving millions of people into destitution at huge cost to national economies. Collapse would also make pastoral areas more insecure, with ramifications for political and economic stability. So policies to settle pastoralists and introduce them to modern cropping and livestock production, or to choose different livelihoods, are thus once again on the agenda.

Potted history

Ever since colonial times, policy makers have viewed pastoralism as backward, uneconomic and environmentally destructive; responsible for fuelling conflict and needing to be brought into line with ‘progressive and modern’ development. Policies have consistently sought to settle pastoral communities and turn them into ‘modern’ livestock keepers, in the image of Australian and American cattle breeders. Privatising the commons, land titling, introducing ranches with non-indigenous breeds and providing plenty of permanent water are some of the investments used to increase cattle productivity and ‘modernise’ pastoral people. The vast majority of these actions have proved ineffective as well as costly in environmental, social and economic terms.

Such policies are ill-conceived; and pastoralists, their advocates and scientific knowledge on pastoral systems challenge this view. Historically, settlement approaches have failed, undermining pastoral production, exacerbating poverty, and causing environmental degradation and conflict in many pastoral areas of Africa.

Productive pastures

With appropriate support, pastoralism is actually the most cost-effective and climate resilient livelihood system for the drylands. Even with a legacy of antagonistic policies, pastoralists are not just surviving but are creating substantial economic value. The statistics are fragmentary, but the evidence is growing. Pastoralism directly supports around 20 million people in eastern Africa,[1] produces 80% of the total annual milk supply in Ethiopia, provides 90% of the meat consumed in East Africa, and contributes 19%, 13% and 8% of GDP in Ethiopia, [2]Kenya [3] and Uganda,[4] respectively. In Ethiopia, annual returns to capital from livestock are around 2.1-2.6 billion USD. [5] When measured per hectare, pastoralism also out-performs ranching and sedentary livestock keeping in similar environments.

Pastoralism is not only economically effective, but also ecologically efficient and sustainable. Its mobile production strategies are a crucial way of harnessing variably-distributed nutritious pastures to increase livestock productivity while also adapting to extreme events, such as drought, that will increase with climate change. The recent SCOPE report Livestock in a Changing Landscape (2010) finds pastoralism performs better than intensive livestock in relation to overall green house gas emissions.

Pastoralism’s strategies for success

Pastoralists use tried and tested strategies and institutions to exploit climatic variability in drylands and maintain relatively high long term production despite periodic losses. These strategies include mobility (to reach both pastures and markets); animals bred to selectively feed on the most nutritious pastures; designated wet and dry season grazing; mixed livestock herds, and complex (and sometimes reciprocal) tenure rules.

So what is causing the problem?

Yet pastoral systems are increasingly failing to provide sustainable livelihoods. This is largely a direct result of inappropriate policy and development interventions. Government failure to understand pastoralism leads to poor policies that undermine pastoral strategies, making them vulnerable to climate variability and extreme events like drought. This creates and perpetuates poverty and contributes to conflict that, in a vicious circle, reinforces misconceptions about drylands.

Pastoralist’s strategically important grasslands are lost to:

•             other land uses such as wildlife conservation, private and government ranches, irrigated and rain-fed agriculture. Ruling national elites and powerful global economic players use the image of degraded drylands to promote large-scale appropriation, fragmentation and conversion of rangelands. Yet the alternatives they favour often cause environmental degradation. Large-scale agricultural irrigation and mechanisation schemes, ranching or export-oriented agribusiness all have a track record of short-lived returns but a heavy ecological footprint.

•             development of permanent settlements in once prime grazing areas and;

•             failure of nation states to recognize customary pastoral institutions.

In Africa, four major trends have resulted from this inappropriate policy environment.

•             Rangeland degradation has made pastures less productive and resilient, so they support fewer livestock.

•             Poorer households, less able to withstand drought because they have fewer livestock, are becoming more common. This brings a disproportionate impact on women and children.

•             Fragmentation of rangelands also makes pastoralists less able to use their traditional coping strategies. 

•             Conflict is becoming increasingly frequent and violent in pastoral areas due to a complex mix of factors: loss of livelihood security, land fragmentation and alienation, a proliferation of automatic weapons, disempowerment of traditional institutions and a growing sense of disillusionment by an increasingly disenfranchised youth with few social or economic prospects.

As pressures increase, many in the next generation of pastoralists will need to look beyond livestock to secure viable livelihoods.

A future for pastoralism

The future of African drylands, and their people, lies in securing pastoralism for those who wish to remain pastoralists, and providing alternative, but complementary, livelihoods options for those who do not (or cannot). TheAfrican Union policy framework for pastoralism offers a real opportunity to make pastoralism a mainstream part of national and regional policies. Pastoral people, and their institutions, must be central to this. Designing supportive national policy and investments cannot be left to governments alone.

Improving policy makers’ understanding of what makes drylands work — their ecology, economics and society — is a pre-requisite, but is not enough. Political leverage is also necessary, and it must be driven by ‘pastoral citizens’. To address this dual challenge, IIED is researching the Total Economic Value of pastoralism, running a training programme on the policy implications of supporting resilient dryland economies and societies, and working with local and national governments to improve climate resilient planning in dryland areas.

courtesy: IIED.

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*Pix: Dry lands are ephemeral but resilient resources, not deserts. Photo: Stephen Anderson

Food Price Hike: Effects of importation on Africa

World Food Laureate, Dr. Monty Jones

There have been changing fortunes on food price hikes on the continent. YINKA AWOSANYA examines the effects despite claims that Africa’s major occupation is agriculture.

Introduction:

In Africa, the record is still high when it comes to cost of food importation despite having a higher percentage of the population claiming to be practising agriculture. As such both local and international institutions as well as African governments have been lamenting the effect on the continent’s economic standing, especially long run.

For instance, the global food import bill for the year 2012 was projected to decline to $1.24 trillion, a 3.87 per cent less 2011 record of $1.29; the feasibility of the prediction lies in the increase to be recorded in food productivity in individual countries.

Traceable Facts:

This is traceable to the fact that the youths are not showing enough interest in taking up agriculture due to its unattractive status thereby leaving food production at the mercy of the aged as well as those living in the rural areas to cater for the food needs of all, both those in the urban and rural dwellers.

World Food Laureate, Monty Jones once raised an alarm that crop production in Africa is lagging behind the rest of the world with a very wide gap. This, he said, contributed greatly to the rate of food importation as little produce is not enough to cater for the ever growing population. Noting though that some African countries still export farm produces, but the rate of exportation is insignificant compared to importation.

NaijaAgroNet gathered that one of the stable food exporting countries in Africa, Kenya still imports maize to boost stocks of foods despite recording a big harvest which followed good rains in the last season. The maize imports for Kenya last season stood at 1.05 million 90-kg bags, both from regional and international markets in a bid to supplement food supplies.

Nigeria is not exempted from the food importing countries of the continent despite being the largest producer of cassava in the world, even though most of the cassava produce come from subsistence farmers. For instance, in 2011 alone, Nigeria recorded about N1.59 trillion in the importation of wheat, rice, sugar and fish only.

To curtail the rate of importation, Nigerian president, Dr. Goodluck Jonathan recently revealed an increase in tariff on wheat in a bid to encourage the use of cassava flour in the production of bread which will lead to a drastic reduction in wheat importation.

He also said that Nigeria, in 2012 alone will be making an export of a million metric tonnes of dried cassava chips to China which will work in favour of the economy as the export would earn the nation the sum of $136, about N21.7 billion in foreign exchange.

Factors:

The increase in global food prices in the past few months could be attributed to poor weather conditions leading to low productivity as well as drought and social insecurity.

Various food prices index, especially the Food and Agriculture Organization’s (FAO’s) recent food price index which showed that agricultural commodities from November 2011 to April 2012 indicated an upward movement of food prices globally.

With foods like cereals, sugar, dairy products and meat leading the global food index with high prices, the overall price index rose by two per cent, 7 per cent lower than that of January 2011.

Nigeria records downward trend:

Although maize in Nigeria recorded a downward trend in January 2012; selling 100kg for N5,500 equivalent of $34.08 as against N6,500 in December 2011, the latest peak then. While the global maize price has the highest rate of increase with six per cent, wheat also recorded an increase but less significant despite the improved weather conditions in favour of the crop.

The global food prices could be attributed to poor weather condition affecting crops in major food producing regions of the world and the rate of mechanised or commercial farming compared to subsistence farming as the produce from subsistence farming is not enough to feed the ever growing world population.

Drought and insecurity:

Recent droughts that affected some parts of the world, especially Eastern and Sub-Saharan Africa, hinder global food security as food situation of vulnerable groups of people remained precarious.

The global price of Wheat, for instance, may not witness a sharp reduction in 2012 as its production is expected to drop to 675 million tones, a 3.6 per cent decline; another influence that may also contribute to this is the price of maize.

Due to the critical growing months ahead, crops that might have witnessed a drop in May 2012 may still remain high and vulnerable. Just as the cereal price towards the end of the year might reduce as the United Nations’ Food and Agriculture Organisation (FAO) predicted an increase in cereal production, which is anticipated to reach 2.371billion tones, thereby creating a new cereal production record.

Other agriculture produce to witness an increased production capable of leading to a reduction in their market prices or at least maintain a stable price includes milk with a forecast of 750m tones, a 2.7 per cent growth with the expectations that Asia will account for most of the productions.

While the wholesale price of local maize in Kano State in Nigeria, recorded an increase in February 2012 to N6,300, a 14.5 per cent rise over the January’s price, it dropped again in March to N6,200 and N6,800 in April, just N300 down its peak in seven years; February 2005 it was at N7,100.

Conclusion:

Although Nigerians would have expected a very sharp increase in food price in the country and never to drop from its January 2012 price due to the increase in pump price of petrol with about 50.76 per cent in January as well as the case of insecurity in the northern part of the country.

Yet, food prices did increase but not all food commodities correlate with the 50 per cent rise in fuel pump price, because some commodities did not witness an increase while others get about 20 to 100 per cent rise in prices.

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Food price index falls for the third consecutive month

The United Nations Food and Agriculture Organisation's (FAO) Food Price Index, has declared the fall of food price index for the third consecutive month in the last six months.

FAO in its monthly assessment and analysis of prices of 55 food commodities indicated a drop of 1.8 per cent from 205 points in May, thereby dropping in three consecutive months from April 2012.

NaijaAgroNet recalls that a four-point drop in June brought the index to 201 points from a revised level of 205 points in May 2012; hence the index now stands at 15.4 per cent below its peak in February 2011.

A press statement made available to NaijaAgroNet, FAO affirmed that the average prices of all commodity groups in the index were below May levels, with oils and fats recording the largest drop.

The United Nations' agency attributed the continuous drop in food price index to the continuous economic uncertainties. That adequate food supply prospects kept the index down although growing concerns over dry weather sent prices of some crops higher toward the end of the month.

NaijaAgroNet learnt that prices of food commodities have started rising again recently as a result of adverse weather and this may affect the rebound of the food price index in July.

FAO’s new production forecast for world cereal production in 2012 stands at 2 396 million tonnes, still a record level and against the previous forecast of 2,327 million tones.

Assessment by FAO also shows an adequate supply and demand situation in 2012/13 season which is traceable to the abundant supplies of rice as well as sufficient exportable supplies of wheat and coarse grains.

But grain prices were very volatile in June due to continuing dryness and above-average temperatures in most of the major maize growing regions of the United States. Adverse weather is diminishing prospects of an improvement in the maize supply situation and FAO is monitoring the development closely.

Commenting on the June Food Price Index, FAO Director-General José Graziano da Silva said the agency has been actively involved in studying food price volatility and identifying appropriate policy responses.

“Our analytical work is helping to deepen the understanding of the nature, causes and impacts of volatility and of what governments and other stakeholders can do about it,” da Silva asserted.

Yinka Awosanya

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Climate Change @ Bonn: LDC group seeks new talk plan, adoption by 75% majority

New dimension has been added to the clamour for a better environmental change with a call by the Least Developed Countries (LDCs) of the world for the United Nations climate change talk to adopt a 75 per cent majority of any latest Protocol with a timeline.

This formed submission by LDC Group at the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) which holds in Bonn between 14 and 25, May 2012 at the Maritim Hotel.

LDCs are classified as the world’s poorest countries and in order to up persuade the UN climate change to talk more on how to reach their goal of having an effective and legally binding agreement ready for governments to adopt by 2015.

The LDC group chairman, Pa Ousman Jarju, the group’s spokesperson, Sandra Freitas, informed that the Least Developed Countries (LDCs) group’s formal submission to the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change, under which the talks take place, seeks the inclusion of some demands.

These demands encompass new legally binding agreement to take the form of a new protocol under the convention that builds on and enhances the commitments under the Kyoto Protocol.

Addition to toe six points of demands are that parties should agree new rules to allow the adoption of the Protocol by a 75 per cent majority, not by consensus as under current rules; A final negotiating text should be ready a full year ahead of the 2015 deadline rather than the usual six months deadline that the UNFCCC imposes.

Further, the LDC group noted that this would raise the ambition of commitments to mitigate climate change before 2020 must be the top priority;  The new Protocol should have as a key objective, the full implementation of mitigation, adaptation and finance and capacity building among others; and Systems for monitoring, reporting and verifying finance and mitigation actions must not be weaker than but should build upon those that already exist in the Kyoto Protocol.

Pa Ousman Jarju pointed out that at the last year’s conference of parties to the convention in Durban, South Africa, it was agreed to complete negotiations by 2015, but such deadlines have been broken before.

“Our countries cannot wait. We are already feeling the effects of climate change, but the time has come for us to be leaders in the international effort to address this global challenge,” he said.

Equally, he said, the creation of a new body to negotiate a second protocol under the Convention represents an overdue acknowledgement by all Parties that the Convention and the Kyoto Protocol alone are insufficient to drive action consistent with the ultimate objective of the Convention.

“Urgent action is needed by all Parties to prevent dangerous interference with the climate system, and in particular to stay below 2°C and keep open the possibility of limiting warming to 1.5°C above preindustrial in the long-term as called for by the most vulnerable countries,” he said.

According to the group, as negotiators gather in Bonn for the latest round of talks this week, the LDC group also proposes changes to the way the negotiations work to make them faster and fairer.

NaijaAgroNet recalls that to ensure that all issues could be dealt with, the group says the number and duration of future negotiation sessions must be agreed in Bonn, along with a timetable to discuss particular issues.

The group further says parties should consider electing officers to the bureau that will run the talks for more than the usual two year period, to ensure continuity and that the size of the bureau should perhaps be expanded given the urgency of its task and that wide range of topics it must work on.

Pa Ousman Jarju emphasised that the LDC group comes to the Bonn climate change talks with a strong set of recommendations, stressing “In the spirit of international cooperation and with our desire to see the UN climate change convention meet its objective, we urge other parties to join our call for these improvements to the negotiating process and its final goals.”

 

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FAO develops online portal to unlock food potentials

Thermal zones (baseline period: 1961-1990)

The United Nations Food and Agriculture Organisation (FAO) with the partnership of International Institute for Applied Systems Analysis (IIASA) recently developed an online data portal in order to help unlock the planet's potential on food.

The data portal, NaijaAgroNet learnt is named Global Agro-ecological Zones (GAEZ) Portal and developed in order to assist in unlocking the planet's potential to feed the rapidly growing population.

The United Nations' agency affirmed that there is need to increase the global food production to 60 per cent by 2050 as the world population is expected to rise above 9 billion.

FAO revealed to NaijaAgroNet in a press statement that the portal is a planning tool designed specially to help identify areas of increased global food production while maintaining natural resource base and facing the challenge of climate change.

FAO identified water scarcity as one of the limiting factor for area expansion that intensification of food production occurs within a changing climate, thereby requiring adaptation and mitigation.

Director of FAO's Land and Water Division, Parviz Koohafkan said GAEZ would help identify where there are ‘bridgeable yield gaps' and what causes them, allowing for the formulation of appropriate investment policies with the provision of appropriate support for farmers to help boost food production.

FAO recent study revealed that crop production by small farmers can run as low as 30 to 40 per cent of potential in some areas in Eastern Europe, the Caucasus and Central Asia.

The study also made known that the Sub-Sahara Africa is the region with the highest yielding gap in cereal. Africa as a whole also recorded about 1.2 tones of cereal per hectare compared to an average yield of some 3 tons per hectare in the developing world as a whole.

The online data seeks to enhance planners' and decision makers' capacity to estimate agricultural production potentials and variability under different environmental and management scenarios, including climatic conditions, management regimes, water availability and levels of inputs.

Yinka Awosanya/LS

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