It's Possible to Reverse Climate Change in Africa
A small environmental revolution is taking place among peasant farmers and villagers in West Africa, a region once devastated by drought and systematic land degradation, and it is peasants like Yacouba Sawadogo and Sakina Mati leading it
Luc Gnacadja | East African in AllAfrica.com | 15 March 2010
Sawadogo, an illiterate peasant farmer in Burkina Faso, has become a celebrity in his village.
He traverses the world's capitals in his open Sahelian sandals to share his expertise with policy-makers.
Undaunted by neighbours who were burning his crop and calling him a madman, this man "single-handedly has had more impact on conservation than all the national and international researchers put together," claims geographer and natural resource management specialist, Dr Chris Reij of the Netherlands, who has followed Sawadogo's agricultural innovation for over 25 years.
Building on a soil nurturing technique known as Zaï handed down from his ancestors, Sawadogo has enabled his village to reclaim the biological and economic productivity of their land, and in the semi-arid Sahel region.
In the language of experts, they have figured out a way to beat land degradation in the drylands, a process referred to, in such regions, as desertification.
According to the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organisation (Unesco), the technique has also been used to plant trees in the region and in other villages in Niger.
The results are astounding. Up to 1.5 million people have benefited and 5.2 to 5.3 million hectares of land made suitable for cultivation; an area almost equal to Togo's territory.
Sawadogo's story captures the essence of the environment ministers' message to the African Community last week at their two-day gathering on Wednesday and Thursday, 3-4 March, at the East African Community headquarters in Arusha, Tanzania.
Meeting at the observance event to mark the African Environment Day held on March 3 every year since 2003, they chose the theme, Africa Resilience to Climate Change: Biodiversity Conservation and Enhancing Traditional Knowledge.
The decision by the ministers to focus on climate change is a bold move for not only is the scientific basis of climate change now under serious attack, but sceptics also claim that climate change has become the scapegoat of any and all of the world's environmental problems, especially in Africa.
Sceptics are correct to the extent that desertification, land degradation and drought remain the primary threats to Africa's future economic, human and environmental wellbeing, as Sawadogo's struggle for survival demonstrates.
Also consider that land degradation costs Africa up to $9.3 billion every year, affects about half of the population, and that by 1990, an area covering 17 per cent of Africa, twice the size of Sudan, was degraded.
Economic reasons
Therefore, Africa must not be distracted from its primary focus on combating land degradation and desertification and recovering such land.
There are good economic reasons for this too. With this level of land degradation and a growing population that stands at over 1 billion people today, the region's food security is under serious threat.
Second, and fortunately, the demand for food is set to increase globally in the next 40 years, and Africa and Latin America are the two regions with the greatest potential to increase food production to meet this global food demand.
This is a big opportunity for Africa's agricultural sector.
With a little support, self-motivated people like Sawadogo and Mati can achieve unimaginable economic fortunes.
Experts agree that agriculture remains the most effective route out to eradicate poverty in Africa.
Lastly, there is strong evidence that the recovery of land is possible.
In fact, a large proportion of the degraded land recovered over the last two decades is in the dryland regions.
The constraint to rapid and vast progress is the lack of trust and faith to invest in peasants like Sawadogo who dominate land production in such regions.
The threat of climate change, however, is a challenge Africa must not ignore because the gains made so far by Sawadogo and others are still not sufficiently widespread to absorb the anticipated climate shocks such as high moisture loss, more intense and frequent droughts, water scarcity and increased pressure on the land.
Meantime, and as scholars debate these issues, the achievements of Africa's peasants and farmers who have painstakingly made incredible gains with modest support risk being rolled back by peculiar droughts such as that which hit Africa last year.
Africa must take measures to climate-proof all the sectors that could be adversely affected by a warming climate.
So how do biodiversity conservation and traditional knowledge fit into this equation?
There are four ways to deal with climate change.
One is to cut down emissions, but Africa's contribution is miniscule at the moment, so its investment needs to be channeled elsewhere.
Inaction is an irresponsible response because it makes room for future political instability, should the crisis eventually unfold at the projected levels.
Waiting to respond as events unfold, which is adaptation, is a reactive and expensive tactic; an incoherent firefighting approach with short- and medium-term solutions.
A country may also opt for resilience, the comprehensive national approach to planning measures that will safeguard the economic basis and wellbeing of the people and environment against climate change shocks, so that long-term sustainable development in the country is not hampered.
As is evident from the African Environment Day theme, the ministers call for resilience, with traditional knowledge and biodiversity conservation as centrepieces.
Ironically, the value of traditional knowledge and the role of local populations are in the Copenhagen accords.
But as demonstrated by peasants in West Africa, the continent has affordable technologies that can be built upon to help its economies to withstand the climate shock.
But these have to be accompanied by a determined effort to scale up and to scale out this experience and knowledge. But it is a race against time.
Experts agree that in Africa, land degradation often takes the form of soil erosion and loss of organic matter, the same challenge that Sawadogo's Zaï technique seeks to rectify.
His ancestors had long discovered that digging pit holes to bury manure attracts termites that break down the organic matter which produces needed plant nutrients that enhance land productivity.
Posts
No comments:
Post a Comment