If in March I spent the most of my time in Nakuru, April has been totally opposite. I guess I’m just so used to live with people around me, that the company of my small radio didn’t keep off the feeling of walls of my small house falling on me. So I’ve been escaping the reality and work to Tanzania, Mau forest and somewhere in between for the most of the month.
But at least all the travels weren’t just for fun, especially the one to Mau. The week before the Easter Ermis organized a workshop there for five different forest dwelling communities: The Batwa from Uganda, Sengwer from Cherangani in Kabolet forest, Yaaku from Mukogodo forest and Ogieks from Eastern Mau and Mount Elgon. (The Mount Elgon Ogieks called also as Chepkitale) Mamas, bwanas and youth all present. The issue was to bring all hunter-gatherers together and for the Kenyan communities to present for Ugandans how they had used mapping as a tool in their land campaigns and community mobilization.
I had barely arrived from my first travel when I was told to pack up again and prepare myself for sleeping a week in a tent at the Nessuit primary school compound, a place for the meeting regarded as freezing cold for camping. But hamnashida. Catherine equipped me worryingly with the warmest clothes she could find and a double sleeping bag – and I couldn’t have felt better! Chilly bright mornings, full moon above high cypress trees and smooth hills surrounding the landscape reminded me a lot of the nature back home in Lapland.
Unfortunately the Lapland-like feeling faded quickly when exploring the forest outside the school compound closer. I can’t even call it exploring, so narrow was the stripe of trees in front of the devastated landscape of grey dry field growing only stamps. There’s indeed hardly anything left of Mau forest to argue on, but they won’t stop. The farmer-settlers who’s legal rights to any land is absolutely unknown, big economy-boosting and employing land owners, environmentalists willing to conserve vulnerable habitants for wildlife and wildlife only, list goes on..
No wonder why hunter-gatherers saw it so important to share their history of land campaigns thoroughly: discrimination, objection and disappointments after disappointments. It definitely took the fair share of the whole meeting, so some other previously planned activities like group discussions of youth, women and men separate, to improve participation of marginalized groups within the communities, had to be cancelled. In the end the whole wamama-issue was actually brought up shortly by Julius and not the community members themselves.
“Women’s indigenous knowledge? Nobody has studied that.” Chris, a Scottish anthropologist and the worker for the Batwa through Forest People’s Program told me: “I came here to study Indigenous knowledge, too, but it failed. There was so much more important work to do..” referring obviously to the poverty and discrimination that all Batwa are facing regardless of sex or age. But at least I was not the only one interested. Grace pointed out, too, how Batwa women seem so empowered and outgoing compared to our previous experience with the Yaaku for example. Chris told again that the most of the pygmi communities are egalitarian, non-hierarchical. People have different tasks but none of them is of higher value than the other, and people, too, are valued according to their skills in their task whatever it be.
That sounded extremely interesting and I can only hope that in future meetings also such issues could be exchanged between the communities. What matters now is that we had the meeting in the first place. The people had their chance to share the issues they themselves saw relevant as much as they wanted to. Their debate reached from different sweetness’ of honey to Ogiek holding aerial photos and what in earth is an aerial photo anyway. And it was the community members to speak, nobody else.
Of course the big 3D Model of the Ogiek, their ancestral information as a tangible, appreciable form seemed to interest and inspire the participants a lot, too. Map is a strong tool in defining the home of the nation: who does the land belong to and what in there is relevant or important..The communities know this, too, and I believe the Batwa would now like to come together to collect, discuss and present their knowledge the same way, too. At least the knowledge will not die away with the elders now when it can’t be practiced through livelihood without an access to the forest. But I do wonder would it still be valuable for urban-oriented youth, who are in final responsibility of the future of these cultures?
This was yet to be found out, and I know I could have just asked anyway. Instead I ended up using tiring work and my small Kiswahili as an excuse to pumzika during breaks. But at least the language excuse didn’t work for very long. I happily noticed how the elders came talking to me patiently long complicated Kiswahili sentences with lots of hand sings for assistance.
For once I didn’t need to worry neither for being an outsider or not understanding what was going on around me. All the organizing worked very smoothly and I was happy to sneak behind the crowd with my teacups and camera, enabling the others to come together from my own small part, meanwhile learning myself from them, too. Especially much I enjoyed my role as a mediator of their message to outside world with both photographing and filming. It was the first time for me to hold the video camera and I noticed that filming helped me to concentrate on Kiswahili speakers and their message, too. So I really felt being in the right place and right task.
According to both Julius and Francis, our workmate in Ermis who also defined himself as now-retired-professional-Ogiek-activist, these kinds of cross-community meetings are not common. I’m not surprised and it seemed very important experience for the community members, too, to see that they’re not alone with their campaigns and non-recognition. Just coming together and sharing with others of similar experiences is enough to empower anybody, and I want to believe that the people returned home much heads full of future plans for common action.
The Global Climate Coalition, a group of representatives of the oil, auto and coal industries, spent years telling the public that the link between human activity and climate change was too uncertain to justify U.S. participation in the Kyoto Protocol, a 1997 treaty aimed at curbing greenhouse gas emissions. They have been accused of doctoring information prepared by their scientific experts before releasing it to the public.
Al Gore former US VP accused the coalition of committing fraud and telling lies to people who trusted them, in order for the industry to make money. This he highlighted before the House Energy and Commerce Committee where he equated the cause of global warming legislation with the civil right legislation of the 1960s and the Marshall Plan of the 1940s.
John Kerry pointed out on the need to be wary of some of the industry studies and analyses that will come out in the months as Congress debates whether to impose a mandatory limit on greenhouse gas emissions.
Industry Group Excised Own Experts’ Climate Findings From Report – washingtonpost.com.
The work of the first full month with Ermis has been busy as usual. Life in Nakuru has settled into routines nicely and also new things to learn and explore seem to be coming up frequently.
The workplans of the communities arrived in the beginning of the month. After the realistic initiatives from the various suggestions of the community members were chosen, I assisted in typing them. We have also been working with the budgets together with Bancy and Julius. It seems that the communities will not only complete the eco-calendar and cyber – tracking, but they will also work with improving the sustainability of their livelihoods. Another positive progress is that the advocacy process for the Mukogodo forest has been started by another local organization. Forest Management Agreement, which I typed, too, is currently being finalized. In the future also the Yaaku – community will be involved in the planning. All the planned activities will start when the workplans and budgets are finalized.
The work with JUMP is going on, too. I have received many positive responses from Finland supporting the initiative, but commenting that nothing can be started without the final program and budget. Thus, we have been working with them for the last weeks. I am waiting for mine and Grace’s suggestions to be commented on.
Meanwhile, I have also had time to start my bachelor’s thesis project. Before leaving Finland last autumn I agreed with my supervisors in my university that I would complete my bachelor’s thesis during my stay in Tanzania and Kenya, at least to get enough studying credits for the year. However, not before now I finally found both the motivation and possibility to do it. Work with Ermis is very challenging so I feel that determined studying of the subjects I work with helps me with the projects. I will write my thesis about the ways how Indigenous knowledge and the communities have been studied and how the knowledge has been used. I will especially concentrate on the knowledge of women, although I still have to talk about the subject with my professors. So far I have just been reading but I also contacted a few professors here and hope to meet them about research material in the future.
At least I haven’t been ought to stay all the time in the office. Last Saturday I attended another project which Ermis is participating called International Climate Challenge. It was an excellent project on Education for Sustainable Development. Different schools around the country have been challenged to a competition, where the students plan and implement a practical project to mitigate the negative effects of climate change in their region.
I was very positively surprised how practical, creative and effective solutions all the schools have made up. Their projects really emphasized the everyday problems they were facing because of drought, deforestation and other related hazards. So they had really understood what is climate change about and how can their solutions reduce poverty, too, which often is one big reason behind environmental destruction. The competition included also a presentation part, where the drama, dance and other forms of performances presented by the students to illustrate the issues were just enjoyable!
Finally, I received a small task on again another project which deals with improving cooperation between stakeholders within Mau forest area. I have been browsing through all the weblinks of Mau and related issues to be catalogued into a Spatial Data Infrastructure, which Ermis is establishing.
After all these activities, there has not been much time for myself only. On Sundays I have taken a habit of going for long walks to the surroundings, sometimes on my own and sometimes with Julius’ family members, who have been very welcoming for me as a total stranger to the town. They have invited me to their home even on many evenings after work and I really appreciate their hospitality. The children are so funny you can’t stay grumpy no matter how tired you’d be after a long day! And apart from the dust Nakuru seems a very nice place and I’ve found already several nice spots to relax after the long week’s work.
All in all I have enjoyed myself a lot here in Kenya. The work which Erms is doing is very valuable and the other people in the office are just great. Even if all this has been very new to me, I know I can always ask anybody whenever I need support. It also seems that the culture here is closer to Finland than the Tanzanian one, which I experienced for half a year before coming here. I have just been very relieved to get along with kenyans so easily and feel so much like home in here.
While carbon dioxide may be the No. 1 contributor to rising global temperatures, scientists say, black carbon has emerged as an important No. 2, with recent studies estimating that it is responsible for 18 percent of the planet’s warming, compared with 40 percent for carbon dioxide. Decreasing black carbon emissions would be a relatively cheap way to significantly rein in global warming — especially in the short term, climate experts say. Replacing primitive cooking stoves with modern versions that emit far less soot could provide a much-needed stopgap, while nations struggle with the more difficult task of enacting programs and developing technologies to curb carbon dioxide emissions from fossil fuel.
By Degrees – Third-World Stove Soot Is Target in Climate Fight – Series – NYTimes.com.
But the awareness of black carbon’s role in climate change has come so recently that it was not even mentioned as a warming agent in the 2007 summary report by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change that pronounced the evidence for global warming to be “unequivocal.” Mark Z. Jacobson, professor of environmental engineering at Stanford, said that the fact that black carbon was not included in international climate efforts was “bizarre,” but “partly reflects how new the idea is.” The United Nations is trying to figure out how to include black carbon in climate change programs, as is the federal government.
Do women have any power in African society? Under what circumstances? These questions are asked because I am an African woman who in my personal experience, is aware that the studies that posit the automatic powerlessness of women as a group vis a vis all men do not explain my own experience. They also may indicate the existence of a very real human situation, but do not give any idea of the richness and vibrancy of life as it exists, and as I know it. To demonstrate what I mean, let me quickly make the following observations
We are trying to compile an assortment of video at Africa Climate’s videos. If you have a good video on Africa, please share it!
Using modeling global warming has been shown to contribute 37 percent drop in rainfall and set to increase.
According to Prof. Peter George Baines, his analysis revealed four regions where rainfall has been declining linked to climate change. The affected areas were the continental United States, southeastern Australia, a large region of equatorial Africa and the Altiplano in South America. This work was based on the examination of reanalysis and satellite-based rainfall data, coupled with dynamical interpretations.
Mexico is currently experiencing one of the worst water crisis ever. This great city was once a lake before being drained to make way for the metropolis. It is now on the verge of disaster.
Meanwhile, according to a report featured by the National Geographic, 22 African countries are experiencing their worst wet seasons in decades, and climate experts say that global warming is to blame.
Devastating rains and flash floods have affected 1.5 million people across the continent, killing at least 300 since early summer.
West Africa has seen its most severe floods in years, as torrents swamped the Democratic Republic of the Congo’s capital of Kinshasa last week, killing 30 people in less than 24 hours.
In northern Ghana, more than 300,000 people have been uprooted by devastating downpours.
In East Africa, meanwhile, hundreds of thousands have been displaced and scores killed in Uganda, Sudan, Kenya, and Ethiopia (see map).
This map below from ClimateHotMap.org shows some areas which are impacted differently by the variability in local, regional and continental climate.
Pictures of World Water Crisis from Time.com
Dried Up Seabed
The Aral Sea has lost two-thirds of its volume because its source rivers were diverted for cotton irrigation during the Soviet era. Once the fourth-largest lake in the world, it is now a dusty graveyard of rusting shipwrecks.
WASHINGTON, Apr 9 (OneWorld.net) – “If fundamental climate change mitigation and adaptation goals are to be met, international climate negotiations must include agriculture,” appeals an international food policy think tank.
Farmers in Haiti. © FrizzText (flickr)“We are at the point where the negotiations are going to put in place new mechanisms for the next five to 15 years and it’s critical that agriculture be included this time around,” said Gerald Nelson, senior research fellow at the International Food Policy Research Institute (IFPRI).via Global Climate Talks Must Address Agriculture | OneWorld.net (U.S.).
It is January 2010, after years of negotiation and attrition, we now have a new Global Climate Deal. The deal will come into effect on expiry of the Kyoto protocol in 2012. Everyone is optimistic but the world is in a panic. The global temperatures have not changed much over the last 12 years, but the sun has been exhibiting some very odd behaviour. There is new emerging evidence that, besides carbon dioxide, there is another factor that is leading to the dramatic change in the climate.
It is supposed to be summer, it is cold and strangely the ice in the poles is all but gone. Places where the sun is shining, it is not producing enough heat to promote the fast growth of plants. The sea level has risen by 7 meters. The small island states have been deleted from the global map, parts of the US coast are under the sea. Mozambique, Cape Town, Mombasa, Malindi, Abidjan are no longer in the global map. Somewhere in the Kalahari, the wet conditions have given rise to an ecological boom closely mimicking the biblical garden of Aden. A natural new world order has emerged.
During the years of negotiation, politics dominated the discussions, now the word is faced with new challenges. The focus is on how to deal with; the global climate catastrophe.
Carbon dioxide levels in the atmosphere are the same levels are higher than those recorded in the 1990. However, the temperatures have plunged to an all time low. It is no longer clear why the world has moved from the balanced and predictable, the global warming carbon dealers have all gone into hiding from angry street crowds baying for their under-performing carbon credits stocks.
The New Deal, New Kyoto or …the Copenhagen something had promised to deliver the world from the global crisis by dealing in Carbon, but now, the mechanisms have all but collapsed and the cause of the global change seems no longer to point at only Carbon dioxide as the only culprit, there are many other factors.
The New Copenhagen Climate Deal had delivered a deal where the rich nations had accepted to make deep, mandatory carbon cuts and pay tens of billions of dollars in aid to help developing countries combat global warming.
China, India, Brazil and Russia had committed to taking extreme measures to help mitigate future new carbon emissions in the decade ahead.
New investments had been committed to support renewable energy technologies both in Developed and Developing nations etc… but now…
To be continued
The IPACC (partner to SHALIN ry) delegation to the UN Climate talks wrapped up its work this weekend. Highlights included a meeting between indigenous activists and the Bolivian Minister of the Environment, a workshop with UNESCO on traditional knowledge of nature, a meeting with Daniela Tarizzo of the Convention to Combat Desertification, a workshop with Conservation International on technology and adaptation, submission of recommendations from IPACC to a Tebtebba meeting on climate change, and a dialogue with UNFCCC Executive Director, Dr Yvo de Boer.
IPACC was represented by Ms Hindou Oumarou Ibrahim (Chad) and Mr ag Aly Lahyerou (Mali). A Kenyan team was due to attend but in the end were unable to make the event. Kenya will be launching its national dialogue on REDD this month.
IPACC’s team concentrated on following the adaptation negotiations in the Long-term Cooperative Action (LCA) wing of the climate negotiations. IPACC also monitored the discussions on technology and financing. The North and South remained in deadlock after a week with each side insisting that the other should move first. China and the G77 say they want the West to clarify how much money is available for technology transfer, mitigation and adaptation. The Western donor states are saying: show us your plans and then we will talk about financing. Overall, there was some progress in consensus building as more and more states acknowledge that relying solely on market revenues from carbon credit trading is not going to be adequate or predictable, and that Western states need to commit a clear amount of public funding which is not part of existing Overseas Development Assistance (ODA).