Environmental Issues in the Aid Regime: What are the sustainable options for the poor?

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Environmental Issues in the Aid Regime What are
the sustainable options for the poor?
Issues and Challenges Specific Impacts on Women

• Friederike Knabe
• 3 October 2006

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Outline of the Presentation

• Environmental Challenges in Africa
• Land degradation and poverty
• The case of drylands
• Strategies for Change
• Traditional coping strategies
• New approaches to environmental challenges
• Focus on Women
• Addressing womens needs and aspirations
• The Canadian International Policy Commitments
• Commitment to UN Conventions (CBD, UNCCD, UNFCCC)
• Millennium Development Goals
• International Strategy Paper

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Introduction Kenya project
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Mount Kenya Youth Initiative for Ecosystem
Restoration

• Focus on Schools
• Nurseries with indigenous tree seedlings
• Protected woodlots with indigenous hardwood trees
  
• Education for students
• Surplus seedlings for students
• Education of parents
• HIV/AIDS education
• Resources for communities
• Agroforestry Resource Centre in schools
• Demonstration plots

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Environmental Challenges

• Land degradation
• Land slides, soil erosion and destruction of
  vegetative cover
• Deforestation
• Cutting of precious local varieties of hardwood
  trees
• Loss of local biodiversity
• Trend towards monoculture farming externally
  supplied seeds loss of knowledge of integrated
  farming systems
• Water scarcity
• Destruction of wetlands and drying out of the
  river
• Climatic variability
• Drought last year and heavy flooding this year
• Out migration of local population

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Land Degradation and Poverty

• Over 70 of all arable land in Africa is
• Degraded or rapidly degrading with nutrient-poor
  soil
• Overexploited due to lack of choices by rural
  poor and demographic pressure
• Exposed to droughts, floods and climatic
  variabilities
• Over 45 of Africas land is defined as
  drylands
• Arid, semi-arid or dry-subhumid regions
• Vulnerable to land degradation, leading to
  desertification
• Local populations most marginalized with highest
  poverty rates and minimum of essential services
• Highly dependent on environment for livelihood
  security

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Development Pathways in Drylands
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Traditional prevention and coping strategies

• Integrated land and water management
• Protection of vegetative cover
• Mixed farming practices between cropping and
  pastoral land use and a tighter economic and
  cultural integration
• Conservation and use of local drought tolerant
  crop varieties
• Use of locally suitable technologies to work with
  ecosystem processes rather than against them
• Development of alternative livelihoods that
• Are less demanding on local land and natural
  resource use
• Provide sustainable incomes
• Develop economic opportunities in dryland urban
  centres.

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New Approaches to Environmental Challenges

• Sustainable Land Management
• Integrating land, water and other natural
  resource management
• Example TerrAfrica Initiative
• Ecosystem Approach
• Defining and assessing ecosystem goods and
  services
• Bringing together of environmental sustainability
  with livelihood security
• Revision of National Development Plans and PRSPs
• Climate Change Adaptation and Mitigation
• Assessing and documenting vulnerabilities
• Capacity development for applying climate
  forecasting data
• Developing new adaptation strategies building on
  local knowledge.

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Focus on Women

• Most vulnerable sector
• Womens major role in food production
• Responsible for household chores, water supply
  and fuel
• Dependent on environmental resources
• Disadvantaged by limited access to services
• Limited land ownership and use rights
• Women and environmental challenges
• Intimately impacted by environmental conditions
• Intimately involved in environmental stewardship
• Limited role in environmental decision making

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Addressing Womens needs and aspirations

• Thirty Years of Commitments and Little Action
• UN Decade for Women (1975-85)
• Beijing Platform for Action (1995)
• Recognition of complexity and multidimensionality
  of womens poverty
• Women and Environment
• Involve women actively in environmental decision
  making at all levels
• Integrate gender concerns and perspectives in
  policies and programs for sustainable
  development
• Strengthen or establish mechanisms at all levels
  to assess impact of development and environmental
  policies on women.

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Beijing Conference 2006 Main Areas for Action

• Management of Natural Resources (particularly
  water and land)
• Integrated management of water and land
  resources
• Decentralization of forest, land and water
  resource management to local communities and
  ensure womens participation in policy-making
  processes
• Financial benefit for communities stewardship of
  forests and other natural resources
• Technologies for water conservation and
  management to respond to womens needs., e.g.
  water harvesting, reuse and recycle, soil
  conservation
• Integrated gender-oriented ecosystem approach
• Land rights and ownership for women.

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Main Areas for Action cont.

• Food Security
• Build on traditional knowledge and appropriate
  technologies for food production and
  conservation
• Promotion and research into the value, use and
  processing of local plant varieties
• Promotion of the full utilization of all
  agricultural products and plant components as
  well as conservation of local crop varieties and
  sharing of experiences among communities
• Development of urban agriculture to increase food
  supply and improve nutrition
• Facilitation of womens access to markets,
  agricultural technologies, transport and
  micro-finance
• Promoting the concept of livelihood security
  incorporating food security.

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Main Areas for Action cont.

• Education and skill development
• Womens participation in decision making
• Promoting local knowledge
• Facilitating capacity building
• Energy
• Renewable energy resources and related
  technologies
• Sustainable biomass use and production
• Health
• Promotion of traditional knowledge of
  multipurpose trees and crops
• Research into improving nutrition levels
• Water availability and quality
• Recognition of HIV/AIDS impact on communities
• Reproductive health facilities

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Canadian International Policy Commitments

• Millennium Development Goals
• Goal 3 (womens empowerment),
• Goal 7 (environmental sustainability)
• Multilateral Environment Agreements (MEAs)
• UNCBD, UNCCD, UNFCCC
• Common vision for sustainable development
• Synergies at the national and regional levels
• Civil society participation
• International Policy Statement (IPS)
• Advancing Environmental Sustainability
• Addressing Land Degradation
• Reducing Impact of Climate Change

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African initiatives and models

• National NGO networks
• linking development and environment issues
• Acting as National Focal Points for MEAs
• Regional Networks
• Example (RNSCC) West and Central African
  environmental and poverty-oriented NGOs aims to
  organize
• (a) the exchange of knowledge on the CCD/CBD
  synergy between the network partners,
• (b) the interaction of network partners with
  international CCD/CBD synergy experts, and
• (c) the creation of joint experiences of network
  partners with CCD/CBD synergy
• and to strengthen the capacities of its member
  NGOs

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Canadian Civil Society

• What is the role of environmental issues in the
  Aid Regime ???