The Road to the Horizon

[i-teak seedling]

One or two generations ago, smallholder farmers might have grown food crops mainly to feed their own families. But those days are gone. Farmers are looking more and more for cash income.

Like in Bihar, North-Central India: farmers still value the “yield” of a crop, but the “revenue” becomes increasingly important. It is not just because of the “Modern Times”, where electricity bills and school fees are to be paid, and people want to buy a mobile phone, a television or a tractor.
No, there is more than that: climate change has chased up the expenses: boreholes, mechanical or electric pumps, hybrid seeds… Each of these has a price ticket attached to it. A price ticket, farmers are scrambling to pay, but a necessity for any land to bare any crop.


The droughts
A good crowd had gathered in Rambad, a small village in Bihar. Both young and old, from the better-off farmers to the day labourers, all were sitting around us. We were talking about the change in weather, the effects it had on this farmers’ community and ways these people have tried to adapt over time.

When we asked who of the farmers had experimented with new things in the past years, they pointed out a slim man, probably in his late thirties, standing in a bit of a distance. As we all looked at him, he came nearer, stood up straight and held his arms stiff along his body as he said his name, “Vidyabhushan Kumar”, in a loud voice. As if a teacher had just summoned him. We asked Vidyabhushan to sit with us and tell his story. (...)


Read my full post on the CCAFS blog

[i-ICRISAT researcher in test field]

During my past visits to Kenya, Ghana, Mali and Burkina Faso, one common streak always came up when talking to farmers about climate adaptation techniques: they were all actively using new seed varieties for their different crops.

I had not really questioned where those seed varieties came from. I saw them in the shops of commercial seed traders, so I asked no more. A bit like a child does not ask where Santa comes from. A long and complex process of seed selection and breeding remained hidden for me.

A visit to ICRISAT, the International Crops Research Institute for the Semi-Arid Tropics near Hyderabad in India, changed all of that. I discovered the world’s headquarter for the agriculture research on five crops: sorghum, pearl millet, chickpea, pigeonpea and groundnut. And I discovered the link between chickpeas, chickpea heroes and the war against hunger.

Food diets, malnutrition and chickpeas
Sufficient food, but also a balanced food intake are key to battle malnutrition. Often the world’s attention goes to staple foods like rice, maize or wheat. We often forget it takes other crops too, to make a balanced diet, in a global fight against hunger.

Chickpeas is one of those crops, and an important one, as they make up for more than 20 percent of the world pulse production. Chickpeas contain 22-25% proteins, and 2-3 times more iron and zinc than wheat. Chickpea protein quality is better than other pulses. …

So understandably, agricultural researchers, like Dr. Pooran M.Gaur, a principal scientist and chickpea breeder at ICRISAT, make continuous efforts to develop new chickpea varieties, adapted to fast changing environmental conditions. “Super Chickpeas”, as it were. Bred by –what I would not hesitate to call - “super scientists”, in the quiet isolation of agricultural research centers. (...)

Read my full post on the CCAFS blog

[i-farmer in Burkina Faso]
“My grandparents grew crops without any fertilizer, and had no problems. But with the 20 hectares I inherited, the yield was not enough to even feed my own family”, sighs Ganame Adama. “The forest was gone; the fertile soil was taken away by the waters gushing over the land during the rainy season. A hard crust was everything we were left with. We had to find ways to use that water.”

The people from Ninigui, in Burkina Faso’s north, looked for advise from other farmers who lived through similar challenges. They learned how to build small dams, called ‘diguettes’, ‘digues’ or ‘digues filtrantes’ to break the water flow and block the fertile ground from running off: Using a simple long tube, filled with water, they mark ‘contour lines’ with sticks: areas on their flat plots which are at an equal height. Then they stack rocks, only half a foot high, following those contour lines.

“These dams break the flow of the water as it gushes off the plains. While the rain water slowly seeps through one dam, the soil carried by the water, sinks to the bottom, forming strips of fertile land. The water leaking through one dam is stopped again by the dam on the next contour line, about twenty meters further down the slow slope. And again on the next, and again. Each time, a fertile strip of land forms between the lined-up rocks”, explains Adama. (...)

Read my full post on the CCAFS blog...

With the media heating up for the December Climate Change Summit in Denmark, it is time to for some reflection.

Does the name "Severn Cullis-Suzuki" mean anything to you? Severn was 12 when in 1992, she raised money to attend the Earth Summit in Rio de Janeiro. She spoke to the summit members in a speech which became famous. A speech which -sadly enough- could have been given today. It makes one wonder what progress really happened in the past 17 year.

[Loband: Object Removed -]

Do we actually make progress on protecting our planet for the sake of our children, and their children? In an age where Green Goes Commercial, where corrupt companies like Monsanto and Cargill start dominating our food chain, and chase the food prices up so the poor no longer have access to food. A world where Western companies buy up fertile land in Africa to grow biofuel crops so less land becomes available for food agriculture?

Did we make progress, or are we still sliding downhill?

Check out the most recent news and blogposts about the Climate Change summit in Copenhagen on Humanitarian News.

[i-I am switching off my lights this evening. Will you?]

Don't forget: today, we're all standing up for the cause of the Earth. The world’s first global election, choosing between Earth and global warming.

Earth Hour invites all of us to switch off our lights today March 28 between 8:30-9:30pm (local time) in a sign of support. I set my alarm clock. Don't want to miss it. I want to be one of the 1,000,000,000 people who will vote for Earth.

Bloggers Unite for Earth Hour[i-Bloggers Unite for Earth Hour]Not that it will save much energy, or will have the Earth live one hour longer. But as a call to have people think about the global warming. About the environment.

Earth Hour. A simple gesture. An important cause. I should have gone into advertising. Join us. On Earth Hour that is. Not in advertising.

Check out:
- The Earth Hour's photo stream on Flickr as they are being posted.
- Their Twitter updates
- The YouTube Earth Hour channel
- Plenty of Twitter posts about Earth Hour. (at the time US East Coast went into Earth Hour's time zone, tweets came in at 30 per second!)

Update: 20:30 - and off went the lights at The Road.

[i-and off went the lights at The Road]

This post is published as part of the Bloggers Unite, a viral movement of bloggers for a cause.

[i-Gene Hunter]ABC’s documentary “Seed Hunter” takes you on a modern day "Indiana Jones"-style search for the Holy Grail of Seeds: the wild chick pea.

"Gene detectives", like Dr.Ken Street, hunt this rare seed variety for its ultimate heat and cold resistance. A seed with a gene that could help us grow food withstanding 21st century global warming.

This video is a must-see odyssey from the Middle East to the mountains of Tajikistan into the Arctic doomsday vault. (Watch)

Thanks to my Friend E for the link!

save the planet[i-save the planet]

Last weekend, 26 children's paintings with the theme of climate change were auctioned in New York. The event raised money for children most adversely affected by global warming. The "Paint for the Planet" auction, sponsored by the United Nations Environment Program (UNEP), spotlights the work of young artists across the globe.

The paintings are the best of some 200,000 entries received during the past 17 years of the UNEP's annual International Children's Painting Competition.

Entries came from as far as Burundi, Armenia, Thailand and Colombia. (Full

More posts on the The Road about global warming.

Picture courtesy CNN

stop global warming, join the virtual march here[i-stop global warming, join the virtual march here]Glaciers melting ten times faster than previously thought, atmospheric greenhouse gases reaching levels not seen for millions of years, and species are vanishing as a result of climate change.

StopGlobalWarming.org is a movement about change, as individuals, as a country, and as a global community.

Join the 1,167,642 supporters of the Stop Global Warming Virtual March, and become part of the movement to demand our leaders freeze and reduce carbon dioxide emissions now. We are all contributors to global warming and we all need to be part of the solution.

More on The Road about global warming, the environment and pollution

Discovered via Beading Stars and AidNews

[Loband: Object Removed -]
Half the world's poor live in coastal areas. These areas are often already under threat due to poorly planned development but challenges are made worse with natural disasters and climate change causing more floods and extreme weather events such as hurricanes and cyclones.

The "first wave" emergency aid efforts after a disaster often gets most of the media attention. However, after the first recovery period, communities need assistance with a longer term impact. That is where organisations like the World Fish Center come in.

This short video shows how one remote fishing community in Aceh is benefiting from rehabilitation efforts that put the community at the heart of planning and implementing new options for the future.

The World Fish Center published an interesting summary of their recommendations on post-disaster rehabilitation of coastal communities in Waves of Change.


With thanks to my Friend E for the link!

Added to The Road's inspiring videos.

Education_waterdrop[i-Education_waterdrop]
In the 12th century, Sri Lanka’s king Parakramabahu said: "not a single drop of water received from rain should be allowed to escape into the sea without being utilized for human benefit."

Thanks largely to unsafe drinking water, more than 2 million children die of diarrhea each year. Six hundred million subsistence farmers lack irrigation water and are mired in poverty. Wetlands have been decimated in Europe, North America, and Asia, and fish populations are collapsing. Drought caused a more than 50 percent drop in Australia’s wheat production in 2007 and sparked a ten-year peak in global wheat prices.

Every year roughly 100,000 cubic kilometers of rain fall on earth—some 15,000 cubic meters per person per annum. The total amount of water that evaporates also is more or less constant. Population, however, is not constant. It has doubled in the last fifty years, resulting in a 50 percent decline in water availability per person.

As people accept that climate change is real and here to stay, they are likely to realize that while reducing greenhouse gas emissions is all about energy, adapting to climate change will be all about water.

This article presents a holistic view on the importance of water management. It makes me think: In the whole discussion about the global food crisis, did we forget the global water crisis?


Thanks to my Friend E. for the link.

More posts on the Road about water management, pollution and the environment.

Picture courtesy sbwater.org

carbon emission per country[i-carbon emission per country]
The real climate change victims share two characteristics. They are too poor to defend themselves by expensive flood controls or sophisticated public-health programmes. And (unlike China or Brazil) the poor countries' own carbon footprints are tiny. Kirk Smith, a professor at the University of California, Berkeley, calls climate change the world’s biggest regressive tax: the poorest pay for the behaviour of the rich.

When industrial polluters in emerging markets cut emissions, they are rewarded through Kyoto. But the poorest are not rewarded for the big contribution they could make towards reducing emissions, which is the better management of tropical forests. That is because forests were excluded from Kyoto, to the chagrin of the poor. (Full)

More posts on The Road about the environment and global warming

Early Internet[i-Early Internet]
I came across this post on Shoutwire, a social bookmarking site. The post seems to be published 733,130 days ago. According to my calculations, this must have been around year 0, the year Christ was born...
This must be the proof the Internet is older than we think.

So where does Al Gore stand with his claim to have invented Internet? Or would Al be as old as Christ? Maybe Al is nobody else but JC, "the man"? Cool! Would that make "global warming", a "divine warning", like one of the prophecy thingies those dudes make? Who needs scientific evidence, hey?
Ah.. the revelations, the signs, the unbearable lightness of insights...

Ok, dear listeners, that concludes our programme of "The Nutcase" for today.

Satellite image of the northern Gulf of Mexico/Mississippi Delta showing deoxygenated (hypoxic) coastal water (light blue).[i-Satellite image of the northern Gulf of Mexico/Mississippi Delta showing deoxygenated (hypoxic) coastal water (light blue).]
"Dead zones" are areas in the world's oceans where marine life can not be supported due to depleted oxygen levels. Fish can flee potential Underwater video frame of the sea floor in the Western Baltic covered with dead or dying crabs, fish and clams killed by oxygen depletion.[i-Underwater video frame of the sea floor in the Western Baltic covered with dead or dying crabs, fish and clams killed by oxygen depletion.]suffocation by migrating to other areas, but they are often quickly rendered unconscious and die. Even if they survive studies show a decrease in size of reproductive organs causing low egg counts and lack of spawning. Slow moving bottom-dwelling creatures like clams, lobsters and oysters are unable to escape. All colonial animals are extinguished. (More)

In other words: a "dead zone" is a vicious circle turning an ocean into a desert, incapable of supporting any marine life.

Map showing the concentration of dead zones in the Gulf[i-Map showing the concentration of dead zones in the Gulf]The most notorious dead zone is a 22,126 square kilometer (8,543 square mile) region in the Gulf of Mexico, the size of the State of New Jersey. The area has about doubled in size since scientists began studying it in 1985, a good enough reason to be alarmed.

Where fertilizer run-off meets the ocean[i-Where fertilizer run-off meets the ocean]One of the main causes of the Gulf's dead zone is the Mississippi River's dumping of high-nutrient runoff from the heart of U.S. agribusiness: the Midwest.

The principle is very simple: Agricultural fertilizer byproducts like nitrogen are running off farms into the Mississippi River, which then spills out into the Gulf of Mexico. While those chemicals help feed crops on land, the run-off builds up in the still, warm waters of the Gulf, feeding an excess growth of algae. When algae dies and decomposes, the process sucks much of the oxygen out of the water.
A sea without oxygen is little different from the surface of the moon — nothing can live there. Fish and other sea life flee, or suffocate. That creates the Gulf's dead zone.

Research in 2004 showed the Gulf's dead zone was getting smaller (More), but this hopeful cycle has now been reversed: Last year's nitrogen-fed algae bloom was the third largest in history.

The sudden expansion of the Gulf's Dead Zone is related to a recent peak in the nitrogen run-off, due to an increased use of fertilizers in the Mid West. Why was there a sudden increased use of fertilizers? After all, men has grown crops in the Mid West for decades...

Well, farmers plant increasing amounts of corn, a crop that requires heavy fertilizer, to meet the not only the growing global demand for grain but mainly to meet the demand for ethanol, a mainly corn-based biofuel. (More)

Fish starvation in the Gulf of Mexico due to hypoxia[i-Fish starvation in the Gulf of Mexico due to hypoxia]According to a separate study published by University of British Columbia and University of Wisconsin researchers in the Proceedings of the National Journal of Sciences, corn based ethanol production is directly linked to the Gulf of Mexico dead zone. If farmers produced enough corn to meet the congressional goal of producing 15 billion gallons of ethanol by 2022, nitrogen runoff into the Gulf would increase by 10% to 19%, further expanding the Gulf's dead zone. (More)

It would be a poor trade off if we killed the seas to fuel our cars.

For more information, check out this Powerpoint presentation.

More posts on The Road about biofuel, pollution, global warming and the environment.

Pictures courtesy NASA, NOAA, Uwe Kils (GFDL), peopleandplanet.net, Hans Paerl (University of North Carolina), AP.
Slide presentation courtesy Dianne Lindstedt (Gulfhypoxia.net)

link[i-link]Friends of the Earth is calling via an email campaign on one of the US largest textbook publishers to correct a school book containing a discussion of global warming "so biased and misleading it would humble a tobacco industry PR man."

"American Government", 11th edition is published by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt and approved for use in high school Advanced Placement courses in the United States. On page 559, the textbook's authors write that "it is a foolish politician who today opposes environmentalism. And that creates a problem, because not all environmental issues are equally deserving of support. Take the case of global warming. (..) On the one hand, a warmer globe will cause sea levels to rise, threatening coastal communities; on the other hand, greater warmth will make it easier and cheaper to grow crops and avoid high heating bills." (Full)

Whether or not global warming is a proven scientific fact (see this post), I can not imagine what a simplistic mind would even think of putting this in a student's text book.

piccartoon062506globalwarming[i-piccartoon062506globalwarming]
Before you read this post, a disclaimer: I firmly believe we are grossly raping the environment and make only minimal progress to protect and respect the earth as the soil for our children. Punto. (as they say in Italian: Full stop!).

Last year, "Warming of the climate system is unequivocal," concluded a report by 600 scientists from governments, academia, green groups and businesses in 40 countries. Worse, there was now at least a 90 percent likelihood that the release of greenhouse gases from the burning of fossil fuels is causing longer droughts, more flood-causing downpours and worse heat waves, way up from earlier studies.

For the first time, "Global Warming" was no longer the "Inconvenient Truth". It became "The Mainstream Truth".

And forgive me, but when something becomes mainstream, and certainly when "Green goes Commercial" and "carbon credits" become one of the most profitable investments (covered amongst others in this post), I just *have* to question it, even if the Non-Global-Warmers are all accused of being paid by bad-bad-baaad companies, I want to listen to their arguments.

Sooo, for the sake of "listening to the other side", eat this:
Lawrence Solomon published "The Deniers", a book listing "The World Renowned Scientists Who Stood Up Against Global Warming Hysteria, Political Persecution, and Fraud**And those who are too fearful to do so".

Here are some leading "deniers":

Earth Hour in Dubai: Burj Al Arab in darkness[i-Earth Hour in Dubai: Burj Al Arab in darkness]
Dubai was the first Arab city to declare its public support for Earth Hour, a worldwide environmental movement backed by the World Wildlife Fund.

Millions of people around the world participated yesterday by switching off non-essential lights as a signal they care about global warming.

In Dubai, the Burj Al Arab, said to be the world's only six-star hotel, switched off its external lighting, as residents held a walkathon on Jumeirah Road. (Full)

Picture courtesy Atiq-Ur-Rehman (Gulf News)

this morning. this is supposed to be spring![i-this morning. this is supposed to be spring!]
View from our house in Belgium, this morning. Five centimetres of snow. A sharp contrast to early March last year when I complained it was too warm!. Complaints, always complaints! :-)

The Commander in Chief, by Will Ferrell.

[Loband: Embedded Object Removed - http://www.youtube.com/v/nxpEqln5EdQ]

As we were driving from Belgium to Italy today, I kept on being astonished about the beauty of the scenery... We do this drive every year. But this year, something was really different, as a lot of the trees were already in bloom, or sprouting green leaves. Too much, too early.
I thought of my previous posts on global warming, and specifically what this weather change could mean for developing countries.

link[i-link]Tonight, I checked the humanitarian news headlines. Coincidence (or not?) I saw in the headlines a new report came out today in which climate experts issued the starkest warning yet about the impact of global warming, ranging from hunger in Africa to a fast thaw in the Himalayas.
More than 100 nations in the U.N. climate panel agreed to a final text from a report driven by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC). The IPCC groups 2,500 scientists and is the world authority on climate change.

link[i-link]The report said warming, widely blamed on human emissions of greenhouse gases from burning fossil fuels, would cause desertification, droughts and rising seas and would hit hard in the tropics, from sub-Saharan Africa to Pacific islands. "It's the poorest of the poor in the world, and this includes poor people even in prosperous societies, who are going to be the worst hit," said Rajendra Pachauri, chairman of the IPCC.

Here are some articles from Reuters Alertnet and the BBC.

PS: The "Humanitarian Headlines" I referred to, you can find on the bottom of the right column on this page. A more complete overview you can read on a new blog I started using an automatic news aggregator. While the -automatically updated- articles are in English, the framing is in Dutch. I will make an English humanitarian news aggregator soon!
[update April 9: It is done. Try out The Other World News ]

Pictures courtesy WFP-Stephanie Savariaud (Burundi Flooding) and Alf Ellefsen (Afghanistan drought)

link[i-link]Hey, I was not wrong with my observations in my rumble about climate change! News got out this has been the warmest winter ever. Globally!
NOAA's National Climatic Data Center reported that during the past century, global temperatures have increased at about 0.11 degrees per decade. But that increase has been three times larger since 1976. NOAA said the combined land and ocean temperatures for December through February this year were 1.3 degrees Fahrenheit above average since record keeping began in 1880...
You watch what that will do to developing countries who are already struggling with drought and flooding every year!

Maybe now is time to think if that Kyoto Treaty should not be signed after all!

Foto credit: WFP/Mahamane Goni Boulama. For updated humanitarian news, check out The Other World News.

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