Latin America and Caribbean Views

By Emma Batha

The United Nations recently declared the world had met an ambitious target for halving the number of people without safe drinking water well ahead of a 2015 deadline.

It’s an impressive achievement, but not necessarily as impressive as it sounds.

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By Guy Edwards, Victoria Elmore and Jin Hyung Lee

The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change’s (IPCC) Fifth Assessment Report (AR5) is underway and is due to be completed by 2013/14. There are 84 Latin American and Caribbean contributing authors out of a total of 833.

As we approach the publication date, these scientists have a vital role to play in promoting the importance of climate science in Latin America and persuading governments to create robust and ambitious national and international climate policies.

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By Veerle Vandeweerd

Richard Kelly of the island of Jamaica took to the stage here in Bridgetown, Barbados, with a story to tell.

Against the backdrop of iconic sprinters Usain Bolt and Veronica Campbell-Brown, Kelly spoke of a people renowned for their kinetic energy - energy that will be unleashed at the London Olympics this summer, he promised.

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By Mairi Dupar

Have you heard of anyone going to court to obtain protection from climate change impacts? Or to sue a company for causing climate-related harm?

Individuals, communities and even whole nations are increasingly exploring these possibilities, broadly termed ‘climate change litigation’.

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Benite Joseph is one of many people in Haiti who lives below the poverty line and whose family is unable to eat every day. Benite lives with her four children aged between nine years and 16 months under a tarpaulin perched on a very small ledge about 400 metres above the main road in Fonds-Verettes, Haiti, near the border with the Dominican Republic.

This area is about 50 miles from the Haitian capital of Port-au-Prince. Its steep hillsides made chalky and barren from years of deforestation cannot retain rainwater; so many residents have lost their homes to waves of flooding caused by hurricanes – long before the 2010 earthquake.

The Joseph family’s hardship is primarily due to the structural economic problems that predate the earthquake. With no land of their own to farm, her husband was forced to seek work as a day labourer to earn just $1 a day. As the agricultural economy continues to decline, Benite’s husband took the risk of travelling to the Dominican Republic without papers to join a construction crew. But at the end of the job, instead of paying him, his employers called immigration authorities who summarily deported him.

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By Annalise Romoser, Lutheran World Relief

In 2000, Colombian farmer Rogelio Martinez and others were violently pushed off their land by paramilitary soldiers.  They left behind nearly 500 acres of quality farming territory and lost an abundance of corn, yucca and rice crops. “I was forced to leave everything behind,” said Rogelio in 2009, “my land, my crops, even my dignity[1].”

In 2007, Rogelio mustered up the courage to return home and reclaim the land he had labored on for many years. A lull in the country´s conflict opened space for others to return, and Rogelio encouraged them to do so. He became a community leader and helped usher 53 families home.

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By Jimena Peroni, Action Against Hunger

Recurring drought in the Chaco, a semi-arid lowland plain in Bolivia, has left the indigenous Guarani communities at risk from the harmful effects of chronic malnutrition and anaemia. J

Doña Liliana has a long day ahead of her. After preparing breakfast for her seven children and sending the older ones to school, she will need to clean the house, fetch water, wash clothes, grind corn for the chickens, care for her children and prepare dinner. Doña Liliana never stops. During the festive season, much of her time is used to prepare “chicha”, a drink made from corn to share with the community.

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By Samuel Nota

The speed, scale, and complexity of urbanisation are unprecedented, and how we approach it will be fundamental to whether the world achieves environmentally sustainable development, experts said at the recent Planet Under Pressure conference in London.

The modern era of urbanisation since the Industrial Revolution over a century ago has seen the development of megacities around the world. As the world population increases to an estimated 9 billion by 2050, urban centres – particularly small and medium-sized cities - will see a population explosion, the experts said.

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In a recent blog post I referred in passing to some of the hype surrounding “crowd-sourcing” projects in the aftermath of the Haiti earthquake.

That’s not to criticise the volunteers – mostly in the United States – who collectively devoted hundreds of hours to charting the needs of quake survivors on online maps, based on SMS texts sent from the disaster zone.

My point was that their gate-crashing of the relief response in Haiti posed a welcome challenge to the traditional humanitarian system – but also generated hyperbole about the effectiveness of crowd-sourcing in actually saving lives.

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By Saleem Shaikh and Sughra Tunio

Tackling climate change through sustainable forest management is being promoted as a way forward to fight greenhouse gases.

Good management of forests practices can contribute to climate change mitigation and adaptation. It also can help strengthen food security, reduce poverty, and achieve economic development and sustainable land use – critical contributors to sustainable development.

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By Kathleen Mogelgaard

In January, the U.S. Agency for International Development released its long-awaited climate change strategy. Climate Change & Development: Clean Resilient Growth provides a blueprint for addressing climate change through development assistance programs and operations.

In addition to objectives around mitigation and adaptation, the strategy also outlines a third objective: improving overall operational integration.

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By Ambassador Marlene Moses

The outcome of the international climate change conference last year in Durban, South Africa, underscored a dichotomy that has come to characterise the effort to reduce the carbon dioxide emissions responsible for global warming: While it surpassed what many thought was politically feasible, it was far less than what is needed to avoid a catastrophe.

The “Durban Platform for Enhanced Action,” as the agreement is formally known, gave the talks a boost by setting the world on track to reach a comprehensive climate treaty in 2015. The catch, however, is that any new reduction commitments wouldn’t take effect until 2020 - not nearly soon enough to avoid widespread droughts, food shortages, rising seas, and other devastating climate impacts.

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By Neil Palmer

Accurately predicting tomorrow’s weather is notoriously difficult. So what are we to make of climate change studies that make predictions for 50 years’ time?

According to three new reports from the Consultative Group on International Agricultural Research’s Climate Change, Agriculture and Food Security (CCAFS) research program, the models commonly used for predicting future climates were pretty wide of the mark when they were tested to see if they correctly anticipated some well-documented changes in climate up to now.

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By Francesco Femia and Caitlin Werrell

AlertNet posted an interesting piece recently titled “Climate-security as agent provocateur.” The author, Katie Harris of the London-based Overseas Development Institute, rightly calls for “nuance” in making the case for the potential security and conflict implications of climate change.

The essence of the article is that though the “frame” or “narrative” of climate-security may have generated increased interest and action from the world’s policy-makers, it can be dangerous if done poorly. We couldn’t agree more.

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By Guy Edwards

During the COP17 in Durban I caught up with Fernando Tudela Abad, one of Mexico’s foremost climate change experts and a high ranking official of the Mexican delegation.  Tudela is undersecretary of environmental policy and planning at the Ministry of the Environment and Natural Resources and also chairs the expert group of the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) on climate change.

Tudela explained how Mexico’s active involvement in the climate negotiations is based on national concerns over the country’s considerable vulnerability to climate-related disasters. In 2010, Mexico’s Foreign Secretary Patricia Espinoza remarked before the COP16 in Cancun, “we estimate that 15 percent of our national territory, 68 percent of our population and 71 percent of our GDP is highly exposed to the impacts of climate change.”

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By David Hodgkinson

The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, the UN, the International Organization for Migration and many other groups warn that the effects of climate change - including rising sea levels, heavier floods, more frequent and severe storms, drought and desertification - may cause large-scale population movements.

The scale of climate change displacement is often established by reference to the possible numbers of those displaced; estimates range from tens to hundreds of millions of people. Although it’s not clear what climate change will mean for human population distribution, there is consensus that climate change will lead to significant displacement over time.

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“Rubble still lines the street of Port au Prince”, “people are still living in tents”, “millions of dollars of aid funding is still unspent”, “response is too slow” – all tag lines that we are all used to hearing at this stage since the 2010 earthquake in Haiti. It’s time for the external commentators to take a step back and break it down to the bones of what really happened.

Disaster – check.

Crisis – check.

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Duncan Lewis, Group Marketing Director of Age UK recently returned from a trip to Haiti to monitor the progress of relief work in the wake of the 2010 earthquake.

Haiti is a country of the starkest contrasts; a place where the vibrant colour of Caribbean life beneath clear blue skies rubs shoulders with a grim struggle for survival.

The havoc wrought by the quake on 12^th January 2010, that reduced Port Au Prince to a mangled mess of concrete and steel, was such that in a video shot from the hills above the city a voice declares ‘the end of the world has come’. Over half a million of the 1.5 million people made homeless are still living in the squalid heat of the camps that sprang up in the wake of the tragedy. The cholera epidemic that is continuing to affect over 200 people a day is overwhelming the already overcrowded hospitals and highlights the urgent need for improvement in sanitation. There is also still a massive UN presence on the ground, operating from huge complexes, some built from metal shipping containers, stacked like giant Lego blocks.

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This year, the world’s largest agriculture research for development partnership, the CGIAR (Consultative Group on International Agricultural Research), is celebrating its 40th anniversary. Carlos Pérez del Castillo, the CGIAR’s Consortium Board Chair, looks at the alliance’s history and achievements to illustrate the role of agricultural research in helping feed the world.

On December 10, Ellen Johnson Sirleaf, Leymah Gbowee and Tawakkul Karman were awarded the 2011 Nobel Peace Prize for their non-violent struggle for the safety of women and women’s rights. 

Past recipients of this renowned award include the likes of Nelson Mandela, the Dalai Lama and Mother Teresa. So it may sound surprising that, back in 1970, it was awarded to a plant scientist named Norman Borlaug.

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By Laurie Goering

The messages coming out of the U.N. climate talks in Durban could hardly be more at odds.

Climate change is a present threat that is driving more extreme and expensive weather all around the world, and that threatens everything from the world’s food production to the lives of the world’s most vulnerable.

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By Marlene Moses

A curious thing has happened at the international negotiations to reduce the carbon dioxide emissions responsible for climate change: We stopped talking about reducing carbon dioxide emissions.

The matter of the emissions gap - that is, the discrepancy between pledged emissions cuts and the level of cuts scientists say are actually needed to prevent unmanageable climate impacts - has largely been avoided since countries met last year in Cancun, Mexico.

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By Anastasia Moloney

When the leader of Colombia’s largest FARC rebel group, Alfonso Cano, was killed in a gun battle this month, his death was hailed by the government as the biggest blow to the guerrilla movement in its 47-year history.

The killing of FARC’s top commander in a stealth air raid on a rebel jungle camp in the verdant mountains of Colombia’s south-western province of Cauca made world headlines.

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By Michael Boyce

Last week at the US Institute of Peace (USIP), members of civil society and government met to discuss one of the world’s most pernicious, and least well-known, displacement crises.

Unlike the situations in Iraq, the Democratic Republic of Congo, or Sudan, the 5.4 million displaced persons in Latin America rarely grab global headlines. But their numbers are staggering and their plight is serious.

The crisis is particularly severe in Colombia and neighboring countries, where violence has forced thousands of civilians from their homes each year. Colombia’s borders are porous and insecure, and those who flee often find themselves trapped between armed groups, narco-traffickers, and ill-equipped security forces.

Those who have fled face harsh living conditions, poor infrastructure, and often discrimination in their host communities – with women and children being especially vulnerable.

“There has been a total failure to meet the long-term aspirations of the displaced in this region,” RI President Michel Gabaudan told the audience at USIP. “For example, the government of Colombia has now produced a top-level policy on displacement, but it's had little impact in terms of giving displaced people a new start in life.”

After years of inadequate governmental response, Latin American civil society groups – including RI – stepped forward in 2010 through a regional conference, and produced the Quito Declaration. The document focuses on the integration of refugees into asylum countries; resettlement elsewhere if necessary; and dignified, safe repatriation of those who wish to return to Colombia. It also presses regional governments to engage civil society in planning and implementing refugee assistance.

The well-attended USIP event took a significant step in that direction, with representatives of RI, Refugee Council USA, Jesuit Refugee and Migration Service of Ecuador, and Ecuadorian advocacy group CODHES engaging representatives of the State Department, UNHCR, and members of the diplomatic corps. Some of the solutions discussed included:

    * Expanding regional protection programs to include those fleeing violence from drug-trafficking, large development projects, and environmental destruction.

    * Getting regional governments to reach out to refugees who have tentatively settled in urban areas to ensure they have access to basic services.

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By Mike Shanahan

In 1992, or soon after, your government made an agreement with nearly every other government on the planet to raise public awareness of climate change.

Some do it by accident when they fail to anticipate that increasingly informed and empowered citizens can grab the media spotlight and often seem to know more than their elected representatives.

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By Katie Murray

The world’s population recently crossed the 7 billion people threshold.  We have entered a new era of endless possibilities with our growing interconnectedness and exponentially fast growth of innovative technology.

But 7 billion people raises a lot of fear and concern about whether the world is capable of sustaining such a large number of people.  Is there enough food for all 7 billion of us? 

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Where can women in Mexico and Guatemala be assured that they won’t get groped? The answer: on public buses.

In June, Guatemala followed Mexico’s lead when it introduced women-only buses along some busy routes during the morning and evening rush hour in the capital, Guatemala City.

The initiative, in response to hundreds of complaints by female passengers of sexual harassment on board the capital’s crammed buses, has been a hit among women. Boys under the age of 12 who are accompanied by their mothers can ride the buses too. 

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BOGOTA (TrustLaw) –Brazil’s leading news magazine, Veja, recently accused the country’s sports minister, who is overseeing preparations for the 2014 World Cup and the 2016 Olympic Games, of receiving kickbacks in exchange for government grants to sporting organisations.

Sports Minister Orlando Silva has dismissed the accusations as "farcical".

The affair is just the latest alleged corruption scandal to grab local headlines.

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By Thin Lei Win

Climate talks are bogged down, carbon emissions are rising and concerns over the impacts of extreme weather events are increasing, with floods and storms dominating the nightly news in Asia.

By focusing on concrete, practical actions that promote sustainable development and reduce carbon emissions, the Rio+20 Earth Summit next June has the potential to bypass the politics of global climate negotiations and make real impact to the lives of people, activists say.

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By Megan Rowling

Another month, another climate vulnerability index. Or so it seems.

The problem is they all measure 'vulnerability' to climate change from a different perspective and using different methods. They use a different set of countries for their calculations. And of course, they produce different results.

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Beatriz Gonzalez is Oxfam Canada’s programme development officer for the Americas. She is currently in Nicaragua.

Rural women have been struggling for access to land in Nicaragua for decades.

Last year, the National Assembly of Nicaragua finally approved a bill to create a special fund to provide credit to rural women for land purchase. Several Oxfam partners, including the Rural Women’s Coordination, the National Federation of Cooperatives and the Federation of Rural Women Producers were part of a two-and-a-half year struggle to get Bill 717 approved.

According to María Teresa Fernández, president of the Rural Women’s Coordination, the bill, while not as comprehensive as they had hoped for, "is an important tool to benefit rural women in the country."

She tells me that only 18% of rural women in Nicaragua own their own piece of land. The majority have to lease in order to grow corn, beans and other basic grains and vegetables, which ends up costing them half of what they earn with their productions.

If women owned land, she explains, other resources and government programs for agricultural producers would become more accessible to them as well. Women would also be less vulnerable to violence and abuse in the home if their land ownership were secured.

The organizations have therefore worked extensively in recent months to demand sufficient budget from the government to resource the land fund to benefit 1,000 women in 2011.

"Without a budget the law can’t be implemented, so what is the point then?" asks Maria Teresa. They have presented letters to members of the National Assembly, organized stunts and pushed their agenda in the media.

It’s an uphill battle that they are motivated to continue.

With Oxfam Canada’s support they are preparing communication materials to ramp up media and lobby activities around the International Day of Rural Women on October 15.

Rural women from different parts of the country will meet in the capital, sell their produce in a fair to be held in front of the National Assembly to generate income and participate in different actions calling for an effective implementation of the bill.

Oxfam made a contribution to a similar October 15 event last year that drew the participation of 900 women. This year they want to be more and better organized.

"We have to have big dreams, if we want change to happen," says Maria Teresa.

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