Farmers in India can now choose from 25 species of trees

While India has a world-first national policy for agroforestry, aka trees on farms, farmers in different agro-climatic zones need help with which trees to grow. A new book is now here to help.

“With multiple research initiatives underway, a lot of scientific knowledge on different species of agroforestry has been generated. Promising Agroforestry Tree Species in India is an assemblage of useful knowledge,” said Trilochan Mohapatra, secretary of the Department of Agricultural Research and Education and director-general of the Indian Council of Agricultural Research. “This book will be useful for farmers, planners, forest officials, and teachers and students of agroforestry.”

India stands at the forefront of global efforts to promote research and education in agroforestry so that more trees are planted on agricultural land. With the decline of the world’s natural forests and increasing variations in weather patterns brought about by climate change, scientists, farmers and governments are turning to trees to help make agriculture more resilient, decrease pressure on forests and increase carbon storage.

Agroforestry has traditionally been practised in India and other countries for centuries, but the world’s second-most populous nation became the first — and up until now, the only — government with a national policy on agroforestry, which was launched in 2014. The new publication, which compiles characteristics of useful trees, will complement the policy and speed up its adoption throughout the country.

“The National Agroforestry Policy of India was followed by a sub-mission on agroforestry with an investment of about USD 147 million by the Federal Government. It mainstreamed agroforestry into the agricultural agendas of state government,” said Javed Rizvi, director of the World Agroforestry Centre (ICRAF) in South Asia. “Given that research in agroforestry has significantly developed in India in recent years, we saw a need to consolidate the massive amount of information about each tree species. The new publication outlines botanical characteristics, propagation for differing agroforestry systems and climatic zones, and cultural appropriateness.”
 
Promising Agroforestry Tree Species in India is an outcome of a long-term collaboration between Central Agroforestry Research Institute of the Indian Council of Agricultural Research, and the World Agroforestry Centre. The book identifies 25 agroforestry species based on their usefulness for timber, fuel, fodder, fruit, biofuel, raw material for industrial use and medicinal ingredients.

“Trees used in agroforestry systems are vital,” said Dr Om Prakash Chaturvedi, director of the Institute. “They reflect farmers’ choices as well as market demand. The Central Agroforestry Research Institute and All India Coordinated Research Project on Agroforestry identified important agroforestry tree species, which have been adopted by the National Agroforestry Policy and are expected to increase farmers’ use of agroforestry.”

Taking climate action has investment opportunities for Africans

Citizens of Africa have been urged to take advantage of investment opportunities that accompany climate action to earn some money and lift their people from poverty.

Secretary-General of the Pan African Climate Justice Alliance (PACJA), Mithika Mwenda, has noted that the renewable energy revolution currently being witnessed in the world provides affordable access to energy to people who would otherwise not have access.

He noted that renewable energy has also aided in the reduction of emissions, thus contributing to the attainment of the Nationally Determined Contributions (NDCs) ambitions of countries.

“We are witnessing renewable energy revolution and in Africa and the rest of the world, this is an explosive sector,” observed Mithika. “We need to take advantage of the investment opportunities coming with climate action; there are a lot of resources in this to help address poverty”.

At the COP21 climate talks which produced the Paris Agreement, the G7 committed to allocate US$10 billion into the African Renewable Energy Initiative (AREI).

Though there are concerns with delivering the promise, the Initiative, in its current design, will help cure chronic energy poverty by supporting decentralized, modern, off-grid and people-owned energy systems not only for lighting, but also cooking, driving smallholder agribusiness and charging mobile phones.

Mithika added that green energy has helped save lives by reducing indoor pollution.

Fossil fuel vs. renewable energy economies

Mithika Mwenda was addressing an event on low-carbon and climate-resilient development, held on the sidelines of the 2018 African Union Summit in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia.

Most African countries do not contribute any significant amount of greenhouse gases but there are commitments in their NDCs to ensure that their development pathways are carbon neutral.

In a climate-constrained world, investment in fossil fuel-based energy sources no longer makes sense.

But Africa faces the dilemma of whether to rapidly revert to renewable energy, have a mix of both fossil fuels and renewables, or ignore the global call and continue in the unsustainable model of development pursued by industrialized countries which brought the climate crisis.

What is evident, though, is the fact that the global community has shifted.

This shift should make African countries re-think their priority energy sources and investment in oil and in some instances coal, as it may not make economic sense in the long-run.

The Addis Ababa side-event, attended by climate actors from across the continent, is organized strategically to get African leaders to focus attention on climate change issues.

As the first Pan African convention after the COP23, the event offered an opportunity to exchange ideas and reflect on Africa’s victories during the Bonn Climate Change Conference, with a view of charting a collective path towards subsequent Global Dialogue processes on the subject.

“This gives us the platform to develop common African narratives that will have impact on the global stage,” said James Murombedzi, Officer-in-Charge of the African Climate Policy Centre (ACPC) of the UN Economic Commission for Africa (ECA).

Moving along the development pathway

Climate change is no longer discussed as a limited environmental or scientific matter but as a development issue.

African civil society therefore looks forward to leaders moving from the rhetoric to taking real action on the ground.

“The momentum for the implementation of the Paris Agreement and the NDCs is picking up, but the question is: are we moving with that pace in Africa?” queried Mithika.

Some countries on the continent have developed very effective policy and legal frameworks to facilitate the implementation in the areas of transparency, adaptation, loss and damage, among others.

But there are others stuck on bureaucracies to push the climate agenda forward.

“We need to think broader about what is the impact of climate change on development. What does it mean for agriculture? What does it mean for energy, for infrastructure? So we are really talking about development,” said Mithika.

He believes that the ClimDev-Africa programme can rally the African continent around in mobilizing action and “we need to ensure that critical centres that support the livelihoods of the African people and which are weather sensitive like agriculture are created”.

The Climate for Development in Africa (ClimDev-Africa) Programme is an initiative of the African Union Commission (AUC), the United Nations Economic Commission for Africa (ECA) and the African Development Bank (AfDB), established to create a solid foundation for Africa’s response to climate change.

By Kofi Adu Domfeh

Climate justice momentum in Africa must not be left to die

African civil society organizations on climate change have been at the forefront in building momentum for vulnerable people on the continent and other developing economies to access climate justice.

The voices were high and loud going into the UN Conference of Parties (COP21) on Climate Change which produced the historic Paris Agreement on Climate Change in 2015.

But these voices have gone down low after the talks.

Two years after Paris, most countries on the continent have slowed in climate action.

Sudanese scientist and climate activist, Dr. Shaddad Mauwa, has sat in meetings, shouted and held placards in demonstrations at the local, continental and global stages to clamour for climate justice.

He acknowledged that though African climate change actors – governments, parliamentarians, negotiators, civil society – are doing better than before, there seems to be a wall that has become difficult to break.

“There are many issues still not going in the line of what Africa will like to see,” he said.

For him, these issues include the commitment of developed economies to heed to the Paris Agreement in reducing greenhouse gas emissions, lack of access to climate funds by developing countries and poor implementation of nationally determined contributions (NDCs) to be climate-resilient.

Pushing the African Climate Agenda

The Pan African Climate Justice Alliance (PACJA) has for almost a decade served as the largest advocacy platform for CSOs in Africa.

The activities of the Alliance resonates with the global call for action against climate change proclaimed by the United Nations, with a singular clarion call that no single individual, institution, country or region can single-handedly defeat the threats posed by the changing climate and the quest for achieving a sustainable development while leaving no one behind.

Secretary-General of the Organization, Mithika Mwenda, however, says the major concern is how to make the Paris Climate Agreement relevant to the vulnerable farmer who needs to irrigate his farm all year round to produce food and the community that gets displaced by flood anytime it rains.

“Having the Agreement is one thing and getting it implemented is another thing,” he said. “One of the things we’ve been trying to do is to push the governments to focus more on implementation because now we have a framework which is supposed to go on the ground”.

It is a shared opinion that Africa is not deficit in policy formulation. But getting the thoughts off paper to achieve set goals on the ground becomes problematic. Lack of finance for implementation is often cited as hindrance.

PACJA has been pushing the international community to provide sufficient funds for the implementation of provisions in the Paris Agreement, which includes each country’s NDCs, to ensure integration of climate change into the new paradigms of low-carbon development and climate resilience pathways.

“We are very optimistic, though it is not an easy thing to do. Africans and the global community have no choice; we have to act on climate change. We have frameworks in countries that if we build on, we can have very transformative economies,” said Mithika.

Building a stronger CSO Alliance

The adoption of the Paris Agreement left many stakeholders and countries unable to shift from the negotiation mode to implementation, including many civil society groups.

PACJA envisions a global environment free from the threat of climate change with sustainable development, equity and justice for all.

The Alliance acknowledges there is still more ground to cover around low-carbon, climate-resilient, green economy discourses.

 

At its Second Extra-Ordinary General Assembly meeting in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia on January 23, 2018, The Alliance elected the Continental Executive Board as the implementing organ of decisions and policies of the organization.

Newly elected Chairperson of the Board, John Bonds Bideri, says building capacities of local CSOs remains crucial to PACJA to support grassroots initiatives to deal with climate vagaries.

“The most important thing is that the vulnerable people should have that protection at the global, continental and community levels in terms of responding to issues or challenges that affect them,” he stated.

By Kofi Adu Domfeh