Adapt!

Fighting Poverty in a Changing Climate

The climate crisis is about the interaction between North and South and the connection between development and environment.

Here are 5 examples of sustainable initiatives.

THAIL AN

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VI KE NY A

ETNA M

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BIQ

ZAM

MO

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OVE INTERNATIONAL – DANISH ORGANISATION FOR SUSTAINABLE ENERGY

ADAPT!

ADAPT!

Fighting Poverty in a Changing Climate

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C L IM AT E C RISES

The struggle for survival threatens the environment: When even minimum energy consumption threatens the environment:

The climate crisis strikes the poor every single day

4 C L IM AT E C RISES

The climate crisis is about the interaction between North and South and the connection between development and environment.

The crisis is already here. Here are 5 examples of sustainable initiatives.

The climate crisis is not a future threat or a doomsday prophecy. For millions of people the climate crisis is already here. Poverty has always been a reality in large parts of the world.

A billion people are extremely poor.

Many of these poor people are now the first to experience how the climate crisis makes life even more difficult.

Higher temperatures, more drought periods and heavier flooding hamper food production and increase poverty.

Population growth compounds the problems. It squeezes people together in slum areas, and when agriculture fails the urban poor areas expand.

The fight against climate change cannot get underway quickly enough.

In the North it is first and foremost a struggle to halt climate change by changing and reducing energy consumption. In the South it is mainly

a struggle to adapt to a new and harsher reality. It is a struggle that must be funded mainly by the northern countries. The poorest countries have a claim for compensation for the unbelievably extensive damage the North and excessive consumption have done to them. These snapshots give 5 examples of the challenges, and of the work that the Organisation for Sustainable Energy (OVE) is carrying out.

Poverty threatens the environment too The main responsibility for the crisis lies with the rich industrialized countries. But poverty also threatens the environment and the climate. When poor families in the desert land of Mali have no other opportunity for income, they fell trees and gather firewood and sell it to the energy-hungry towns, and even in a country like Mozambique

with widespread forests, population growth and inefficient utilization of energy lead to their disappearance. In both Mali and Mozambique the struggle for survival exacerbates environmental damage and contributes to increased climate change.

Resources are destroyed, as when growth in countries like Vietnam and Thailand comes so quickly that the public service systems, energy infrastructure, and water and sanitation systems cannot keep up. Water resources are destroyed by household and industrial waste, local authorities give lower priority to finding more sustainable energy solutions.

And so far too many resources are misused to the detriment of the environment.

From the poorest societies to new middle-income countries solutions presuppose dialogue and popular backing. Solutions must help to provide income and work. In a host of countries the fight for the climate and the environment is a fight for good income-generating activities that provide work for the poor.

Precisely because poverty is a factor in exhaustion of resources and en-

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C L IM AT E C RISES

vironment, the fight against poverty can also be turned into a fight for sustainability.

The conditions are different, not just from country to country but also internally. We might regard the millionslum town Kibera in Nairobi in Kenya as a hopeless town. But for poor small farmers who leave the countryside because of drought and crop failure, the slum town might be the only hope. And here it is also possible to create improvements that benefit the individual and increase sustainability at the same time.

In most places there is knowledge that can be put to better use, and technologies that point to more sustainable possibilities are already available. A good down-to-earth example is the fuel-saving cooker that has made its triumphal progress from Thailand to large parts of Africa, but still requires adaptation to local materials and social marketing in areas where it isn’t known.

come to stay, as far into the future as we can see. It challenges the population of the planet in every possible field. The current financial crisis is for instance bound up with the energy crisis, with the food crisis, and with the increasing scarcity of water and land. All the crises affect environment and climate development.

It seems insurmountable. But two crucial connections allow manageability: • One is the connection between North and South. The challenge affects the whole planet, but the countries of the North have a special responsibility and a special obligation, because they have principal responsibility for the crisis.

• One is the connection between development and climate. The climate is affected by the development of global society. And the environment and climate problems are created both by an over-consumption that is not sustainable, and by a poverty that leads to environmental destruction in the daily fight for survival.

Crucial connections: North-South and Development-Climate

The big money, and the small

The climate crisis is not a crisis that is solved through a few years’ active efforts. It is a challenge that has

The Organisation for Sustainable Energy is a small player in relation to the global challenges. But OVE is

a player in both the North and the South. And a number of OVE’s activities show that it is possible to create hope and a spirit of change with small means.

These articles are about 5 action areas: Vietnam, Thailand, Kenya, Mali and Mozambique. The most expensive of the projects costs about 15 million DKK for the entire project period. The cheapest up to now is the action in Mali for about 1 million DKK. Danida is financing the actions.

OVE’s approach is to concentrate on development of equal local partnerships that make it possible for people to utilize their local resources better, and thereby generate employment and incomes. It is possible to create hope with a little money.

But this doesn’t mean that the “big money” can be dispensed with. The small projects are up against big challenges the whole time. If climate change continues it threatens the actions that Mali’s women are taking, and when the Kibera slums grow the whole time the improvements are exhausted. There are also infrastructure requirements in the slums and many other places that cannot be met

7 ”Now we are here only because we are made of flesh”. 89 year-old Vasco Rambik is the memory of the place. ”From 1983 until 1999 we could just about survive, but since 2003 we have had particular problems with drought. This year is the worst.”

After the Zambezi river broke its banks in 2001, the family was allocated a place in one of the 52 temporary settlements that the authorities and different aid organisations established in the period after 2001. They are still living there.

by the residents, but demand completely different and bigger resources. The projects therefore also work on strengthening advocacy activity.

The possibilities for the poor to shout about the problems they cannot solve themselves will be strengthened.

The UN’s estimate of what the climate effort will cost, both in terms of adaptation and mitigation of climate change, varies from around 100 bil-

lion USD per year, to an amount of several hundred billion. In addition to efforts to reduce energy consumption and make it more sustainable, it concerns all possible forms of adaptation initiatives from building embankments to research into more drought resistant agriculture.

100 billion dollars is a lot of money, but less than a tenth of global military spending. To defend the planet,

the climate action is more necessary.

It will take place in the global plan and in the big budgets. But it also happens in the small tangible efforts where poor people live, and where equal partnerships in civil society make a sustainable difference.

8 THA IL A ND

When energy thinking must be fundamentally changed:

We’re in a hurry, so we must be patient

10 THA IL A ND

Civil society and its organizations for sustainability have come together to change Thailand’s way of thinking about energy.

Thailand is a growth society. CO2 emissions per inhabitant are over 4 tonnes per year, and more than twice as high as in 1990. Demand for energy is growing fast, from both industry and households, and decisions have to be made quickly. But where energy conservation and cleaner energy sources are concerned it is a matter of having patience. Especially when the task is to influence development in an entire country, and not just to run a single effective pilot project.

Many say that the new Thai way of thinking began to grow seriously in 1999, when Thailand’s network for sustainable energy (SENT) entered the debate on a planned new power station in Prachuap Khiri Khan in southern Thailand. As alternative to a 1400 MW coal-fired power station, SENT proposed a much more sustainable alternative based on efficient use of waste heat from industry, small hydro-plants and energy conservation. The coal-fired power station is

not yet built, and the fight between civil society and the coal power supporters continues.

The Thai sustainable energy network is made up of a range of civil society organisations, and in part grew out of the co-operation between Thailand’s organisation for adaptive technology (ATA) and Denmark’s OVE, the latter working with ATA since 1997. Together with the work that ATA and OVE were already involved in, the debate on the proposal for a new coal-fired power station created awareness of the possibility of thinking about energy in a completely new way.

an important element in the process, even though it is urgent. It takes time to develop dialogue and to create a feeling of local ownership of development that is a little better than at present, both for the local community and the environment. When things are seen from below and not just from above, there is then the opportunity for firm grounding.

It is about climate, but that is not the special focus in the local community. Thais want better, cheaper and – depending on their circumstances today – less polluting energy. And for Thailand as a nation it is partly about making the country less dependent on expensive imported energy, which is really bad in times of crisis. As part of the new thinking, it was decided through new energy legislation to increase the share of energy produced from renewable and local resources from 1% in 2002 to 8% by 2011.

Energy planning from below Co-operation between ATA and OVE over the years has developed into involvement in influencing Thailand’s national energy policy, with government support but with the starting point in local communities’ need for energy and the resources that are available locally. Patience is therefore

Thailand’s ATA and Denmark’s OVE have been involved in the government policy to reach this goal. There is an arrangement at the top, so to speak but the initiatives come from below – from the regions and the local districts. ATA and OVE have established 4 local energy and environment offices

11 OVE began with a partnership with the Thai NGO ATA. Focus was on better utilization of local energy resources. After ten years the initiative was extended to cover energy planning for the whole region.

together, and a range of courses have been conducted for the Energy Ministry’s planners. On completion of their training in “local energy planning”, the experience encouraged the government to request ATA and OVE to conduct training in local energy planning for energy planners in the ministry’s own 13 regional energy centres.

The target group’s needs are the starting point Thailand has had quite a few unsuccessful projects that were supposed to further new and better energy technology. Wind turbines have been set up where there isn’t enough wind, and biogas plants built that didn’t work. It is therefore crucial that you act after careful analysis of local interactions and involvement of residents. OVE’s position was that every

single project must be based on the target group’s actual needs, and that the planning should start with an analysis of what local resources are available.

The new energy strategy promotes decentralization and local autonomy in central energy decision-making, and there is no doubt that ATA in cooperation with OVE has contributed to what some call a paradigm shift in Thailand’s official way of thinking about energy.

The intermediate aims are many: • Better handling of rubbish, sometimes for energy purposes.

• More efficient energy utilization through better local technology.

• Minimization of superfluous energy consumption.

• And much more focussed thinking on the use of local resources.

Thailand has many challenges other than energy and environment and climate. There are problems enough to detract from the focus and create difficulties on the way. But the thinking has changed fundamentally in the course of the 10 years. Energy is no longer just something one buys and burns away in greater and greater amounts, to keep pace with economic development.

A fall in Thailand’s total energy consumption should not be expected but a graph that climbs less sharply maybe seen, at the same time as an increasing share comes from local and renewable energy.

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VIETNAM

When growth threatens the towns and the environment:

Help for self-help and self-help as environmental help

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VIETNAM

Vietnam is a success story. Fantastic economic growth over a number of years. Millions of people raised out of poverty. A tiger economy that has taken a leap forward, and a country that – even though hit by the economic crisis – is a model for many others. We can really talk about development in Vietnam.

But the development has a downside which is seldom spoken about, and which tourists don’t see. Most of the new industrial development has taken place in the large towns and industrial areas, and it has led to an enormous migration of people from countryside to town. Even though many fewer children are born than before, there are almost one million more Vietnamese every year. There is therefore a dramatic pressure on Vietnam’s towns.

The towns are literally ready to burst.

In some places there is a trend to social unrest, and there is broad agreement that “something must be done”.

But what?

The problems are obvious. Low-income families with 5-6 members live in apartments of around 20 square meters, and in the poorer parts many share filthy toilets and bathing facilities with other families. The water supply is inadequate and often irregular. The untreated wastewater runs straight out into open drains. Some days the stench is indescribable and proclaims to every nose that people live here at constant risk to health.

There is intense pollution of earth, air and water. And there are many causes: from the dramatic industry and traffic development to family kitchens based on inefficient burning of coal.

The health problems are interwoven

with general environmental problems, and there is also a climate dimension because the waste is great.

The households use energy inefficiently, and less than half the rubbish in Hanoi is collected in an organized and safe manner. Watercourses that could have great social value are transformed into stinking drainage channels.

There are thousands of potential and necessary measures, but how does one get started? How does one just prevent the problems from growing?

To a large degree it is about creating awareness and about organizing people locally for the local tasks. About getting them to organize and prioritize themselves in a country that has no tradition of that kind.

Sustainability doesn’t come from outside OVE has worked on urban environment projects supported by Danida in Hanoi since 2000. It began with a small pilot project and continued in 2005 with a project where local Agenda 21 activities were introduced in 4 local wards with around 60.000 inhabitants.

15 ”I get up at five in the morning, have a break between 12 and 1, and carry on until 7.”

Her name is Thach Thi Bichan. Her given name, written last, means Jade Stone. ”In the women’s group we discuss everything from fighting dengue fever and bird flu, and how one takes care of the family. It is good for me to learn from others.”

Sustainability doesn’t come from outside. The prerequisite is local partners and involvement of the people who live with the problems. They must have tools and skills to improve their own existence, in a manner that benefits society at the same time.

The task for OVE, together with the Vietnamese partner organisations VSED and C & D, was therefore to establish co-operation both with the local authorities and with the residents. The first pilot phase with environmental activities in an individual district led to people in neighbouring districts expressing the wish to participate themselves. So there was local interest from the start in 2005.

Small but good 4 years and 47 local environment

projects later the co-operation is in its third phase in 2009, and this is because the local authorities have asked for it. They have been happy with the projects, and increased environmental awareness that has been created among the residents.

The model that showed itself to be effective was based on the local communities’ own discussions and prioritizing. In each of the 4 districts local environment groups were formed (”Environment Community Groups”).

They received training, and on the basis of that training set to work on identifying and prioritizing the most important local environmental problems. At the same time a Ward Task Force was appointed in each district, to assist the local community both

with prioritizing and carrying out the projects. The members of these Task Forces received special training in planning on the basis of participatory community planning.

It wasn’t OVE, or Vietnamese VSED and C & D, or the local authorities that prepared and implemented the 47 projects, but the residents. And the involvement showed itself in the success rate. All 47 projects were in fact completed. Perhaps not all with equally outstanding results, but in such a way that taken together there was no doubt that the residents have made life a little better for themselves, at the same as they have made a useful social and environmental contribution.

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VI ETNAM In both town and countryside, clean water and hygienic toilet facilities are vital for keeping malaria and other parasitic diseases in check.

In Vietnam the authorities follow a ”onedoor policy”. Health and social matters are both handled by the same office – a concrete expression of the interrelatedness of the state of health and the environmental problems.

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They are very different projects, most relatively small but often with meaningful positive outcomes: • Improvement of drainage systems to reduce risk of flooding.

• Improvement of the toilets.

• Better waste collection systems, not least in the schools.

• Introduction of more energy efficient coal stoves for the kitchens.

• Better washing facilities in the schools.

• Tree planting and erection of benches in common areas.

• Upgrading of the drinking-water supply.

There are still masses of problems, but an important process is under-

way. OVE estimates that 14,000 people benefitted directly from the actions that have been carried out, and that at least 30,000 people or half the inhabitants in the area have in one way or another had contact with the work and gained greater understanding that the local environment can be improved by self-help actions.

The overall investment in the 47 projects was 610 million Vietnamese Dong, equivalent to 225,000 DKK or about 40,000 USD. The local residents and their wards paid almost 40%, Danida just over 60%. It can be fairly asserted that there have been big results for very little money.

In addition to these investments the project has established a micro-credit fund that lends money to the poor for environmental improvements and income-generating activities.

At the same time as the 47 projects have been carried out, OVE and Vietnamese VSED and C & D have worked to develop a planning process for the establishment of Local Agenda 21 work. The planning is now complete and the model will be tested in a third and final phase in a new area in Hanoi. It will be the last phase with OVE. The hope and belief are that the model will then have shown its sustainability, and that the initiatives continue without support from outside.

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When even minimum energy consumption threatens the environment:

It’s about wood and It’s about water

20 MOZ A M BIQUE

Mozambique’s annual emissions of the greenhouse gas CO2 are 100 kilos per person against over 10 tonnes per Dane and 20 tonnes per inhabitant of the USA. It isn’t poor Africans that destroy the climate with their energy consumption. The average Dane is responsible for CO2 emissions that are 100 times as big as the Mozambicans’.

It is therefore easy to argue that there is nothing to deal with in Mozambique regarding more efficient use of energy. But it isn’t so. There are masses of problems in the way energy is used. The poor use energy first and foremost for cooking. They burn wood and charcoal, and they do it inefficiently with at least three serious consequences. Too much wood is used, the health-threatening pollution is dramatic, and the energy bill is bigger than necessary for everyone who has to buy charcoal or firewood.

That is why the Africans’ use of wood and charcoal affects environment, climate and economy.

But something can be done about it.

The Jiko is part of the answer – in Mozambique renamed the M’baula.

Both words mean stove in the local languages.

The Jiko’s triumphal progress The Jiko is a charcoal stove that uses a lot less charcoal than the traditional African cooking systems, and the Jiko has made its triumphal progress in many countries. A forerunner of the stove that is used in Africa today was invented in Thailand over 30 years ago.

Development work was begun in Kenya in the early 1980s. A metal model with a ceramic lining was produced, able to reduce the charcoal consumption by 30-40%. To begin with it spread very

slowly but, as it gradually became known and cheap to manufacture in local mass-production, it picked up.

Before the turn of the century it was estimated that there were almost a million Jikos in use in Kenya, and use was growing quickly in neighbouring countries. Today the Jiko is standard everywhere in Kenya where charcoal is used. One family can save 5-600 kilos of charcoal and a great deal of money.

Mozambique is less developed than Kenya, in part because of a protracted civil war. An even larger proportion of the population is therefore dependent on firewood. Possibly more than 90 %, so there is a lot to be saved.

In Sofala province in central Mozambique OVE is working with the local organisation ADEL to try to create the same “stove-dynamic” as in Kenya. Two requirements have to be met before the stove (called the M’baula in Mozambique) can achieve the same spread as the Kenyan Jiko that has inspired it.

• The people have to see for themselves that the existing way of using wood is a problem because it is too difficult and expensive to procure wood or charcoal, or because of the pollution from cooking.

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• The stoves must be cheap and of good quality. In Sofala the stoves have been adapted for local materials. It is more difficult to find cheap recycled metal in Mozambique than in Kenya, and design changes have been made. The price has come down to the equivalent of just under 5 USD per unit, but it is still too expensive for the poorest to buy.

Mozambique is still in the preliminary phase. The M’baula is something new being tried out. Success will only be achieved when it is so cheap and popular that the families ask for it themselves. However, in 2009 success is nearly in sight. In the second half of 2008 the project sold 900 M’baulas.

ADEL in Sofala and OVE have worked

”Here the maize has been taken by monkeys,” says Vasque Gonda. His sister, Mikelina Simao, shows the traces of rats, wild pigs, beatles, fungi and countless insects, especially big grasshoppers. ”Most of all we are afraid of hippos,” says Mikelina. ”They can clear a whole maize field in next to no time.”

22 MOZ A M BIQUE Rongi Christoba is 18. She was married, moved to Beira, got HIV and tuberculosis, and is back with her mother (p. 23) while she is treated for TB. She is so weakened that she doesn’t speak, but she is getting better.

23 together since 2004. The Mozambican organisation has long experience with income-generating activities and with promoting sustainable development in a way that energizes the people and creates employment.

The charcoal stoves are an important part of the work, but far from the only thing. There is also work with solar panels for local schools and with securing tree resources. With 90 % of the people using wood for cooking, it is hard on the forests. Sofala’s main town is Beira with over half a million inhabitants. The mangrove forests close to Beira are threatened by felling for fuel, and in the last year well over half a million mangrove shoots have been planted as part of the project.

There is a growing understanding that the future depends on action taken here and now. But it is too early to talk about big steps.

Water is problem no. 1 in the slums OVE is also active in Mozambique’s capital Maputo. 1.5-2 million people live here, and 75% in areas without any form of planning. There are huge bleak slum districts without roads, infrastructure, or wastewater and

rubbish systems. In one urban environment project OVE is working with the local organisation Livaningo for more sustainable urban development.

Here it is also about getting people to organize themselves and to fight for necessary changes. People here also live with massive health-threatening pollution from inefficient utilization of wood and charcoal. But in the interest of truth it must be admitted that the solution of that problem is a long way down the residents’ list of priorities.

The absolutely most important problems in the slums are about water.

About getting clean water and about being able to get rid of dirty water in a satisfactory way. At times the slum quarters are flooded by wastewater, they become totally impassable, they stink and they are perfect breeding places for malarial mosquitoes.

A little can be done through self-help projects, but only a little. There is need for infrastructure projects that are much bigger than the residents themselves can manage with handtools. The most important task therefore is probably to generate official awareness of the problems.

It was a success for the project when the influential national newspaper Noticias published a front page proclaiming that the slum-dwellers ”live in Hell”.

Development presupposes that people have the opportunity to influence their existence in a better and more sustainable direction. The poor in the slum areas still don’t have many victories to point to. And even though energy is an important part of their existence, it is the other problems that to an even greater degree are making their lives hell.

24 KEN YA

When the slums grow because of climate victims:

The sky is the same, but the conditions are profoundly different

26 KEN YA

A biodome in the middle of Kibera, Nairobi’s biggest slum area.

The biodome has toilets and washrooms on the ground floor, offices on the first floor, and a community meeting-place at the top. Toilet waste is converted to biogas in the cellar. The biogas is used for heating water for washing and for the cafe on the top floor.

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One million people crammed together in an area far too small (Outer Nørrebro in Copenhagen has 50,000 residents in the same space). On average 2-3,000 people per hectare, most of them extremely poor and more than half of them children under 15 years old. This is the reality of one of Africa’s biggest and worst slum areas, Kibera in Nairobi in Kenya.

The figure of one million inhabitants is a qualified guess. It could be a few more or less. In many ways Kibera is beyond normal statistics. And Kibera and other slum areas grow all the time, partly because poor people from the countryside move to the town. In Kenya one feels that the climate crisis began long ago, with drought and crop failure as results.

Kibera is marked by poverty, by criminality and by social and ethnic tensions. Occasionally also by a certain hopelessness, but in spite of that at the same time by dynamism too. A child has to be strong enough just to get by in Kibera. Dynamism is a vital necessity.

Many Kenyan as well as international organisations try to help Kibera’s inhabitants by upgrading the slums and making the living conditions a little better, and there are tasks enough to tackle. With the funding from the Danish “Children’s Development Calendar” project and in partnership with the Kenyan Organisation for Environmental Education (KOEE), OVE is now trying to give support via an initiative in some of Kibera’s schools.

To survive from day to day It’s about surviving from day to day, about making everyday life a little better, and about creating better opportunities for an adult life by im-

proving conditions strictly locally. It is much too early to report results. The partnership project has only just been established, but the idea is to convert 4 schools into local Teaching Centres for Sustainable Development, and to do it in a way that gives quick results.

The centres will function in relation both to the schools’ students and their parents. And the goal is that by 2018 it will be possible to report that the environment has become measurably better in the four school districts. At the same time schoolto-school co-operation will be established between Danish schools and schools in Kibera. Children of the same age will be able to tell each other about the lives they lead via the internet. It will increase Danish children’s awareness of what the sameaged Kenyan children have to cope with. Maybe it can lead to new ways of working together.

In reality Kibera is made up of a series of slum towns grown together, and as in other slum towns there is a gigantic problem in getting clean water and disposing of refuse and wastewater. For the same reason there is a great deal of focus on water, sanitation and hygiene, and on

28 KEN YA In Kibera the words food safety have a very definite meaning. Sacks of cabbages are taken in at night to protect against theft.

Solar cells provide energy for fridges and lighting in areas without public electricity.

refuse systems and better wastewater management. One of the challenges will be to find out which improvements can be undertaken by people themselves, and how the advocacy work can be strengthened at the same time, as is necessary to secure greater permanent improvements. Kenya has long been affected by growing disparity between rich and poor. It is one of the really big problems.

Here and now improvements with prospects There will be environmental education in the centres, and “green” teachers will receive in-service training so they can support local environmental working groups. Project money will also be used to support savings groups that can, for example, take part in financing better water sup-

plies and decent toilets and latrines, while at the same time advocacygroups will be formed to play a part in pressurizing the authorities to get them to use more money on necessary facilities in the slums.

Most things will be here and now improvements, but fortunately it is often the case that these kinds of improvements also improve the environment, and in certain cases can lead to positive climate contributions.

The suggestions list includes among others: • Sorting of refuse with opportunities for sale of compost, metal, plastic and paper.

• Establishment of nurseries and planting of trees in some of the all too few and small green areas,

• Support for small start-up programs, including some that can lead to technological improvements and save firewood and charcoal.

• Promotion of the use of solar energy for lighting the shacks in the slums.

• Establishment of communal toilets and bathing facilities.

They are programs that also offer some opportunities to create employment.

The project is called “Under the Same Sky”. The inhabitants of Kibera know that even though the sky is the same for us all, the conditions are fundamentally and unjustly different. The challenge is to show that it is still possible to make a positive difference that can be seen and noted.

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M AL I

When climate change increases poverty: When even minimum energy consumption threatens the environment:

The fight for a sustainable development one can survive on – tomorrow as well

:

3 2 M AL I

Mali is one of the world’s poorest countries.

The average income per resident is less than 1 USD a day, and more than one in five newborns die before they reach five. Energy consumption is extremely low and goes primarily to cooking, but in this desert land energy comes almost exclusively from firewood or charcoal. Two thirds of the population live outside the towns, and of them only 12-13% have access to electricity.

Therefore they burn wood, and therefore tree cutting and felling are an enormous problem. The World Bank says that forest cover occupied 11.5% of Mali’s land area in 1990. In 2005 it was only 10.3%. Maybe the reduction of just over 1% doesn’t seem so great but Mali is 1.2 million square kilometres big, so the decline is equivalent to more than 12,000 square kilometres of tree cover. The calculation is imprecise, but the problem is very serious.

Desertification isn’t happening only because of tree felling, but also because it rains less than before. The

problem increases under any circumstances, when wood is the only energy source for poor people and tree felling or production of charcoal the means of income.

The average annual temperature in Mali is around 29 degrees, and in the warmest month the average climbs to 34-35 degrees. Living conditions are already very difficult, and climate change increases poverty. Less rain and warmer climate will be a catastrophe.

Alternatives to growth of the problems There are more challenges than solutions. People know well that tree felling makes the problem worse in the long-term, but what is the alternative?

There are no easy solutions, no simple surprises, but one of the answers might be SUDEP. The acronym stands for Sustainable Development and Environmental Protection, and SUDEP stems from a partnership between MFC - Nyetaa and OVE. MFC - Nyetaa has existed since 2000, having been established because of concern about the environment and the future.

MFC’s work includes adaptive horticulture, cultivation of fruit trees and bee-keeping, and the centre helps to find marketing possibilities for alternative products.

At the same time they search for sustainable local energy solutions, such as use of oil from the Jatropha plant as biofuel in threshers and other local machines, solar electricity for schools, and more sustainable forest management.

There must be work and income alternatives to tree-felling. Poverty is the starting point for every action. It’s not

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Help for self-help is the simple guide for co-operation in the local women’s groups in Mali. The women have established the vegetable garden partly with their own funds and partly with a micro-loan.

34 M AL I about limiting consumption, but also being part of ensuring that people have sufficient supply to survive in an acceptably sustainable way.

Local choices and priorities SUDEP started in 2007 with actions in 13 villages south of Mali’s capital Bamako. The focus is women’s groups, in part because gathering firewood is women’s work in Mali. But the whole village and the local authorities are involved to ensure solid grounding.

The tasks are defined in projectspeak as “training in natural resource management”, “preparation of local environment and development plans”, “establishment of micro-projects” and “resource mapping and prioritizing”.

In practice the task is to generate dialogue on what is possible for a sustainable foundation, and how the local environment and local income opportunities can be protected and perhaps improved. The plans include provision for ongoing evaluation every second or third year, and the women’s groups choose and prioritize their small projects themselves. Where it is possible to find water there can be vegetable gardens with wells, some places it is poultry-keeping or cattleraising, and some villages cultivate

millet collectively to save the harvest in newly-built storerooms for common use in drought periods. At the same time SUDEP is working to introduce more efficient wood-stoves and sustainable forest management, where there is only careful tree thinning. And the villages try to avoid the sale of local wood to the towns.

There is not much traditional assistance or funding in the projects. OVE and MFC do not bring gifts or emergency aid, and the essential message is that the solutions don’t come from outside but will be found locally.

Training the women is part of making them stronger. They gain greater knowledge of what is required to protect local nature, they gain a more central position as women in the life of the village, and they become – hopefully – capable of generating small alternative incomes that make it possible to improve daily life for themselves and their families.

The struggle for environment and climate in Mali is to a large degree a here and now fight. Heat and drought are not future threats but daily realities. Trying to halt desertification in Mali is crucial for many of Mali’s 12 million residents, and at the same

time one of many necessary actions in a global fight for the climate. It is part of the fight against poverty, and in Mali better local economy and protection of the environment are two sides of the same coin.

There are still more challenges than solutions in Mali, but in less than 10 years MFC - Nyetaa has demonstrated that the concept of sustainability can acquire positive local substance.

SUDEP means that many women (and many men too) get additional knowledge and more tools to find local solutions. It’s hard, but not hopeless. However, in the longer term the prerequisite for success is that the global actions against climate change are successful. If the climate gets still worse, the solutions in Mali will be challenged too. Mali’s women cannot do it alone.

Heat and drought are not future threats but daily realities. Use of local resources is fundamental in a sustainable society.

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ADAPT! ADAPT! Fighting Poverty in a Changing Climate Author: Knud Vilby Photos: Jakob Dall (forside, 2, 5, 7, 18, 21, 22, 23, 28 right, 35) Jakob Jespersen (8, 11), Jonna Fuglsang Keldsen (15, 16, 17) Finn Tobiesen (24, 26, 28 left, 29, 30, 33).

Editors: Finn Tobiesen and Hans Pedersen, OVE Print & Layout: AKAPRINT a/s English translation: semiotek Published by: OVE International – Danish Organisation for Sustainable Energy September 2009 ISBN 978-87-87660-04-4 Free copies available from: OVE Dannebrogsgade 8A DK - 8000 Århus C Tel: +45 8676 0444 Web: www.ove.org

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Product group from well-managed forests and other controlled sources Cert no. SW-COC-003158 www.fsc.org © 1996 Forest Stewardship Council

Danish Organisation for Sustainable Energy OVE, the Danish Organisation for Sustainable Energy, was established in 1975 out of the desire to advance alternatives to introduction of nuclear power in Denmark.

Today nuclear power is banned in the country, but we are still a long way from a sustainable energy supply.

OVE works both nationally and globally for an integrated energy and resources policy that aims towards 100% supply from renewable energy and utilisation of local resources. A sustainable society is not only about technology but about strong popular involvement, influence and initiative as well. Democracy, engagement and grass-roots ownership are essential principles in all that we do.

Climate change is a reality. OVE is working for the mitigation of the effects of change, both through a phasing out of coal, gas and oil and through support for the poorest in Asia and Africa who are hit by those changes for which we in the rich countries bear a massive responsibility.

Fighting Poverty in a Changing Climate

The climate crisis is about the interaction between North and South and the connection between development and environment.

Here are 5 examples of sustainable initiatives.

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OVE INTERNATIONAL – DANISH ORGANISATION FOR SUSTAINABLE ENERGY

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