Green Earth Africa

This week the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC) votes on its future, with many in the country nervous about the outcome. Meanwhile in Durban, delegates are meeting to try to resolve our collective future, by finding a way to tackle global climate change. As a Congolese citizen fighting to protect the forests that millions of us call home, there is a great deal at stake in the coming weeks.

For those of us who rely on forests for everything, the key to a better future is clear – we must protect our homes from the march of the logging companies, before it is too late. To us, this is not a fuzzy, distant debate about the future of big-name treaties. Forests are crucial to climate protection because they store huge amounts of carbon dioxide and emit it when they’re destroyed. But this is also a human rights and development issue about how we as citizens can use our resources to build a better future. To do that, we need an international effort to protect our forests, and a government that manages them in the interest of the people who live there.

All this could happen if the right decisions are made in the next few weeks. An international framework to pay developing countries to protect their forests has been set up – it is known as Reducing Emissions through Deforestation and Degradation (REDD+), and is based on providing financial support to forest protection initiatives in-country, to bring those who live in forests into the conversation about how they’re used. There are many such projects in DRC, which is the second most densely forested area in the world, and great things are expected from REDD+ here. But the scheme will only work if donors provide the money they have promised, set up solid oversight mechanisms to make it work, and ensure the money is not lost to corruption. This is what needs to happen in Durban.

There are threats to DRC’s forests on many fronts. First, a growing population, a large majority of whom live in poverty, have opened up tracts of forest land for agriculture, often using damaging slash and burn methods. Additionally, here in North Kivu, local people are reliant on charcoal for cooking, the production of which has obvious consequences for forests.

Another threat comes from the multinational mining and oil exploration firms seeking to open up the country’s mineral-rich interior. A British oil company, SOCO International Plc, recently conducted surveys in theVirunga national park in this province, a Unesco world heritage site that supports the livelihoods of more than 3 million people. DRC is incredibly rich in natural resources – their exploitation must be managed in a way that benefits the Congolese, and doesn’t just line the pockets of companies.

Unfortunately, this is not the case when it comes to our forests. Industrial logging is opening up new areas of previously untouched forest. Amoratorium on new logging contracts was imposed in 2002, while a World Bank sponsored review of existing concessions took place. The ban was not respected, and the bank did not bother to speak to the people the forests belong to, but the process is currently being rushed to a conclusion, with several logging firms a week having their contracts renewed. The people who live in DRC’s forests have benefited very little from the exploitation and destruction of their homes, and social agreements signed by companies in the past have provided little more than gifts for local chiefs.

For some communities, this rush for our resources has had even harsher consequences. Following a dispute after one logging company reportedly failed to build a school in an area called Yalisika, the company was then accused of facilitating a police intervention that resulted in numerous accusations of rape, attempted rape, assault and even the death of one man. A formal court case is ongoing, and we hope this will reveal the truth in due course.

Industrial logging by large multinational corporations is not the only way forward. My organisation is lobbying for a new law that would allow communities to manage and preserve their own forests, a solution that would be good for them and good for the world’s climate. REDD+ funds could provide the means to support this kind of project, as well as projects to replant deforested areas, and to promote more efficient agriculture and reduce the need to open up new tracts of land.

There is a lot of talk about another big letdown in Durban. However, if REDD+ works, it could give people who live in the forests more of a say in how they are managed. This is an issue that matters now, to real people, in very difficult situations. Next week we will find out if global leaders can find the resources to make it work.

With all eyes fixed on the latest global share prices and bond yields, there was relatively little interest in the most recent figures published in the annual red list.

This is the world’s most comprehensive inventory of the global conservation status of biological species. It shows that 25% of all mammals and one in three of the world’s amphibians are at risk of extinction.

While these trends are not as turbulent as the global financial markets, the steady decline of the world’s biodiversity could be just as critical to long-term economic success and prosperity.

This is because the loss of biodiversity causes ecosystems to stress, degrade or even collapse altogether. This reduces the environment’s ability to deliver the goods and services that nature provides for free, such as clean air, water, soils and waste disposal, as well as the raw materials that industry depends upon.

As a result, it is evident that the protection of biodiversity, while complex to value and quantify accurately, is essential for future well-being and economic development.

Policy will inevitably have to rise to this challenge and businesses must look ahead to what this might mean for them and how they should act responsibly.

That is why the Aldersgate Group, an alliance of leaders from business, politics and society, has recently convened a series of discussions on how to make this agenda more tangible for key decision makers. Thefindings were published today at the Business of Biodiversity Symposiumwith government ministers and leading chief executives.

It became immediately evident from our dialogue that the value of biodiversity must be reflected in prices and policy appraisal. We cannot take for granted the services that ecosystems provide for free – such as regulating the climate, absorbing pollution and reducing flooding.

The UN estimates that these services deliver to humankind over $72tn a year – comparable to World Gross National Income – but nearly two-thirds of the globe’s ecosystems are considered degraded. The global importance of understanding, measuring and capturing the value of nature is undertaken by the UN through TEEB, a major international initiative to draw attention to the global economic benefits of biodiversity.

The endeavour to reflect environmental values in prices is an essential one, but for complex challenges such as biodiversity loss, some tipping points exist beyond which damage to human welfare is irreversible. Already in certain coastal areas there are “dead zones”, where coral reefs and lakes are no longer able to sustain aquatic species.

Inevitably, there are limits to pricing the priceless. For example, how can you put a value on a species of Himalayan yew tree, on the brink of extinction, that is used to produce Taxol, a chemotherapy drug used to treat cancer?

That is why good resource management requires a combination of price, regulation and information to achieve the desired behavioural change, and caution is required when there is uncertainty about nature’s thresholds.

As policy develops, what should businesses be doing to address these risks and take advantage of the potential opportunities?

It is evident that many businesses are assessing their dependency on biodiversity and integrating measures for the sustainable use of natural resources into their corporate strategies. This is vital as all businesses, directly or indirectly, depend upon biodiversity and ecosystem services for their ongoing commercial success and should therefore address the significant risks and opportunities relating to their impact on nature.

In the first instance, an organisation needs an efficient method for determining the materiality of biodiversity to its operations and stakeholders. While a number of reports claim that there is an increased awareness from communities, NGOs, customers, consumers and shareholders on biodiversity issues, the evidence is mixed.

And businesses also struggle to communicate the more technical language of biodiversity and ecosystems to their customers, who are much more familiar with concepts of nature, place and landscape.

Despite improvements, the measurement of biodiversity remains challenging and identifying the implications for decision making can be complex. This is why it is often treated superficially in company reports.

However, that has not stopped forward-looking businesses leading the way. The Aldersgate Group’s upcoming report illustrates case studies from a range of companies in a variety of sectors such as M&S, PepsiCo, Puma, Willmott Dixon, InterfaceFlor and The Co-operative Group.

One example is Wessex Water which has undertaken an initiative to protect water quality upstream rather than pay for removing pesticides downstream – achieving bottom-line savings of more than 80%.

The failure to address risks can lead to significant costs. The Gulf of Mexico oil spill, for example, demonstrates how a major oil company was suddenly faced with society’s valuations of marine and coastal ecosystems, and forced to internalise the costs of environmental damage.

As more businesses begin to address such impacts, it is essential that biodiversity rises up the political and boardroom agenda. While we might be some way off the chancellor presenting a natural capital budget alongside the fiscal budget, more attention on the long-term implications of the red list would be a good start.

Andrew Raingold is executive director at the Aldersgate Group, an alliance of leaders from business, politics and society that drives action for a sustainable economy.

There is little better on a winter’s evening than curling up next to a wood fire, or the modern equivalent, a wood-fired boiler – unless it is the green warm glow you get from knowing that the fuel you are using is environmentally friendly and sustainable.

Except that it is not always. And nor is that two-year-old diesel car you bought because its fuel efficiency, compared with petrol models, makes it more green. As a United Nations report has just uncovered, wood burning and diesel vehicles are two of the biggest culprits in the developed world in generating the black carbon – soot – that is a major cause of climate change.

“It’s nice to sit in front of a wood fire in the winter, but we should all be feeling pretty guilty,” said Joseph Alcamo, chief scientist at the UN Environment Programme.

The most up-to-date, and expensive, models of wood-fired boilers do not produce black carbon. Pellets, for instance, are fine. But Markus Amann, of the International Institute of Applied Systems Analysis, in Austria, warned: “It’s the cheap ones.” Models that burn logs instead of pellets are particularly bad, as they are near impossible to retrofit with particle-catching technology that would render them harmless. Most diesel cars more than two years old are also likely to emit particulate matter that is big enough to cause air pollution – which causes the premature death of hundreds of thousands of people in Britain – and climate change.

Black carbon is a problem because it is black – it absorbs heat, and in the worst cases it dirties the snow in areas such as the Arctic, Siberia and high mountains. The blackened snow absorbs more heat and instead of reflecting the sun, and helping to cool the planet, it warms the surrounding areas. Repeated on a global scale, this is a major cause of short term climate change.

The good news is that tackling black carbon, and other so-called “short-lived climate forcers” such as methane, could be a quick win in terms of tackling climate change. If the world were to take urgent action on the leading causes of the problem, we could knock about half a degree Celsius off the expected warming in the short term. That means a lot in terms of global warming – world leaders have pledged to try to limit global temperature rises to no more than 2C above pre-industrial levels, because scientists regard that as the limit of safety, beyond which climate change would become catastrophic and irreversible.

Cutting black carbon also saves lives – acting on air pollution would avoid millions of premature deaths around the world each year. The UN advocates a number of measures that would all be either low-cost or would pay for themselves – in terms of lower fuel costs – within a few years. For instance, replacing wood fired cooking in the developing world with low-emissions sources such as solar cookers, petroleum based stoves or other modern technology would cost about $20 (£13) to $60 per stove, but would save millions of lives.

Changing farming practices would also save millions of tonnes of carbon emissions a year – for instance, rice paddy fields generate methane, a greenhouse gas many times more powerful than carbon dioxide. By changing practice so that the paddy fields were dried out once a year and exposed to the air, the amount of methane produced could be drastically reduced, at no cost to farmers and with no reduction in the overall rice yield.

Composting is also a good idea, according to the UN – the methane emitted can be captured and used as a small power source. Although at present it takes a farm to produce enough manure and waste to power an anaerobic digester, smaller scale versions could power a single heating source or cooker.

This article was written by Nobel peace prize winner Wangari Maathai in September, shortly before her death. It addresses some of the main issues she and the Green Belt Movement were intending to raise at the UN climate summit, which starts in Durban, South Africa, on Monday

In 2011 the worst drought in 60 years engulfed the east of Africa, forcing millions into a desperate struggle to survive. Poor governance intensified the consequences: a drought, not unusual for this part of Africa, became a famine, in which untold human suffering was guaranteed.

Governments could have planned for the drought (after all, some regions haven’t seen good rains for four years) and helped their people adapt to the realities of global warming. They didn’t.

This is the International Year of Forests. What we know is that intact forests are essential to stabilising local climates and securing the livelihoods of Africa’s farmers, herders and entrepreneurs. However, some governments, institutions and organisations are aggressively promoting the planting of exotic species of trees at the expense of indigenous ones as a solution to both drought and climate change. It is not.

One of the most important environmental benefits indigenous forests provide is regulating climate and rainfall patterns; through harvesting and retaining rain, these forests release water slowly to springs, streams, and rivers; this reduces the speed of water runoff and with it, soil erosion. Indigenous forests and trees also play an important role in spiritual and cultural life.

Exotic trees, like pine and eucalyptus, cannot offer these environmental benefits. They eliminate most other local plants and animals. Like invasive species, they create “silent forests” that are devoid of wildlife, undergrowth and water. Tragically, exotic tree plantations in the tropics have taken the place of indigenous forests, often through “slash and burn” practices that destroy biodiversity and turn what used to be forest into agricultural or grazing land.

Through the Redd+ initiative (Reduced Emissions from Deforestation and Forest Degradation), the international community has committed itself to protecting and rehabilitating indigenous forests. Redd+ is intended to save the world’s remaining indigenous forests, whose destruction is responsible for about 17% of climate-warming carbon dioxide (CO2) pumped into the atmosphere each year. It also seeks to bolster the capacity of communities to mitigate and adapt to the negative effects of climate change (including drought and floods).

For governments and private enterprise to support Redd+, and at the same time welcome the planting of exotic trees at the expense of indigenous forests, is a contradiction. This is especially true for countries like Kenya, where indigenous forest cover is less than 2% and mainly remains in watershed areas. Establishing plantations of exotic trees in watershed areas and on private farms is bad environmental, economic, and social policy. In the long run, communities will be without reliable rainfall, rivers, productive soils, and food.

In Kenya and other tropical countries more than 60% of the population still live in rural or forested areas. These communities will become poorer and more vulnerable to the impacts of climate change – and the nation will experience more severe and regular droughts that in turn will challenge livelihoods, food security and industry – since Kenya (like Brazil and, increasingly, China and India) relies on hydropower.

The benefits provided by indigenous forests and trees are worth trillions of US dollars each year. No market value is given to clean drinking water, clean air and food that sustains life, unlike the dollars that can be assigned to timber sales. The lure of money obscures the real value of essential environmental services and livelihoods of local communities as they are sacrificed for short-term economic gains.

Environmental damage can take a long time to take root. Some years back Kenya imported a eucalyptus clone from South Africa. In South Africa now the government’s Working for Water programme has as its main objective the removal of eucalyptus and other invasive species from sources of water. Today we are seeing that many rivers in Kenya have less water than they used to, or have dried up altogether.

Governments must demonstrate a commitment to standing forests and the rehabilitation of degraded forests. This can be done only if national laws that encourage continued deforestation and forest degradation are reformed; and if communities are supported to plant appropriate trees. If none of this happens, considerable financial resources will be invested without achieving reductions in poverty and other development gains. As the world can see in the east of Africa, there is no time to waste.