Will Rio+20 Summit live up to its billing?

World leaders will this week meet in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil, for the Rio+ 20 Summit and African populations will be watching with keen interest the unfolding events at the biggest global gathering on sustainable development.
The summit, which will be attended by Zimbabwes President Robert Mugabe, among other statesmen, comes at a time the United Nations system in Africa indicates the summit is all-important for Africa, which has the second-largest forest in the world.

UNDP resident representative in Cameron Martin Zeh-Nlo said: The African countries neighbouring the Congo Basin forest should bring up negotiations on the following dilemma: on one hand, theres the international community which demands that these states should not touch the forest, but on the other side are the states which want to use the forests to develop.

What should we do, knowing that these states with their current resources will not be able to fund all the aspects of their development regarding education, health and agriculture?

This is the dilemma African countries have been battling with over the years. Although rich in terms of resources, the continent remains poor for countries do not have the means to capacitate their populations and be able to fully benefit from its vast mineral resources.

According to the fifth Global Environment Outlook (GEO) analysis, Africa is faced with a number of constraints for its development which, more than in any other continent, hamper its capacity to conserve its environment and more specifically the Congo Basin which is the second biggest forest on the planet after the Amazon in Latin America.

The GEO-5 launched on the eve of the Rio+20 Summit last week assessed 90 of the most important environmental goals and objectives and found that significant progress had only been made in four.

These are eliminating the production and use of substances that deplete the ozone layer, removal of lead from fuel, increasing access to improved water supplies and boosting research to reduce pollution of the marine environment.

Some progress was shown in 40 goals, including the expansion of protected areas such as national parks and efforts to reduce deforestation. Little or no progress was detected for 24 including climate change, fish stocks, and desertification and drought.

Further deterioration was posted for eight goals including the state of the worlds coral reefs while no assessment was made of 14 other goals due to a lack of data.

Of importance is the caution that if humanity does not urgently change its ways, several critical thresholds may be exceeded, beyond which abrupt and generally irreversible changes to the life-support functions of the planet could occur.

If current trends continue, if current patterns of production and consumption of natural resources prevail and cannot be reversed and decoupled, then governments will preside over unprecedented levels of damage and degradation, according to UN Under-Secretary General and UNEP Executive Director Achim Steiner.

But its not all bad news. The GEO report says meeting an ambitious set of sustainability targets by the middle of the century is possible if current policies and strategies are changed and strengthened, and gives many examples of successful policy initiatives, including public investment, green accounting, sustainable trade, the establishment of new markets, technological innovation and capacity building.

Interestingly, where international treaties and agreements have tackled goals with specific, measurable targets such as the bans on ozone-depleting substances and lead in petrol they have demonstrated considerable success.

For this reason, African leaders attending the all-important Rio+20 Summit should call for more specific targets, with quantifiable results, across a broader range of environmental challenges.

World leaders and nations meeting at Rio+20 are reminded why a decisive and defining transition towards a low-carbon, resource-efficient, job-generating green economy is urgently needed.

More important, the scientific evidence, built over decades, is overwhelming and leaves little room for doubt.

So, Rio+20 is a moment to turn sustainable development from aspiration and inconsistent implementation into a genuine path to progress and prosperity for this and the next generations.
Can one imagine that each year Africa loses about 4 million hectares of forests, which is two times more than the global average?

Already half of the African ecological zones have been degraded or converted into farmlands and urban centres.

Africa currently has 2 million square kilometres of protected regions, but the coastal zones are still confronted by problems related to mining and oil drilling, uncontrolled fishing, poor management of the mangroves and development of the coastal regions.

Trees from the forests are destroyed to construct houses or produce charcoal, hence reducing the habitations for various animal species. At the same time Africa is the second most dry continent after Australia.

Some 340 million Africans out of a population of about 1 billion people do not have access to clean drinking water. And out of the 1,4 billion people in the world who do not have access to energy, 40% live in sub-Saharan Africa.

Even though 60% of the African population is involved in agriculture, two-thirds of African farmers practice subsistence farming.

In terms of responsibility, one cannot say that Africa is a big polluter. On the contrary, Africa has suffered due to pollution, with a high drop in agricultural production. Ironically, industrialisation of the North in the 19th century was possible due to high consumption of energy, coal and later petroleum.

Now, Africa should also be allowed to boost its economic growth by using its raw materials, and to achieve this, the continent should adopt an industrialisation process that will be focused on local value addition processes.

For the Rio+20 Summit, the entire humanity is in danger. The levels of warming experienced in Africa have been increasing year after year. This should make the big polluters countries of the North to pay for their actions. And so the Rio+ Summit should engage in negotiations with a view of safeguarding the African interests.
millenniumzimbabwe@yahoo.com/http://twitter.com/wisdomdzungairi

Zim speeds down an unsustainable path

On the eve of the most important conference on sustainable development RIO+ 20 the world remains on unsustainable track despite hundreds of internationally agreed goals and objectives.
The world over countries commemorated the United Nations World Environment Day in style on June 5.

Officials in charge of the environment in Zimbabwe and elsewhere seemed querysome, no one had an answer to why the environment was deteriorating so fast.

The environment week was so special to the world this year than any other time in many ways. It was celebrated on the eve of the Rio+20 the most important conference on sustainable development on the UN calendar in 10 years.

It was not an irony then that when Environment minister Francis Nhema accompanied by secretary Florence Nhekairo launched the countrys environmental outlook report, he indicated Zimbabwewas living on borrowed time.

Zimbabwe is a signatory to almost all UN protocols on the environment, but a lot needs to be done on that front.

But, yes these ambitious set of sustainability targets can be met, (only) with renewed commitment and rapid scaling-up of successful policies.

Attitudes have to change, it must be an honour to keep our cities, our country and our space (where we live) free of dirt. The country must not celebrate litterbugs. People must feel ashamed of throwing away litter everywhere. This does not call for sterner measures, but change of attitude by everyone.

A fast-growing urban population, globalisation and climate change alongside a need to boost governance, are also among the challenges facing Zimbabwe and of-course Africa if we are to put ourselves firmly on the path to a sustainable future.

Clearly the continent is still lagging behind with respect to meeting internationally-agreed goals while increasing pressure on its natural resources can lead and has led to tensions and resource degradation as Africas population grows at the fastest rate in the world.

Yet many countries are adopting collaborative cross-border policies and projects that contain seeds for a more sustainable future from a renewed understanding of the value of forests to ecosystems.

In Zimbabwe that has seen a change in government policy to the network of protected areas on the countryside, for example curbing rampant forest fires, gold panning, sand poaching and deforestation.

If scaledup and accelerated, such measures could assist in a transition to a Green economy as nations across the globe prepare for the Rio+20 Summit later this month.

Some of the above measures are among the main findings for Africa from the Global Environment Outlook 5 (launched last week), which analyses the worldwide state of the environment and tracks progress towards agreed goals and targets.

International goals to reverse deforestation are off track in Africa in general and Zimbabwe in particular, with over three million hectares lost each year due to an expansion of agricultural lands to meet food needs and, to an extent, the international demand for biofuels.

Globally, although the Millennium Development Goal target on water supply was met in 2010, more than 600 million people will still lack access to safe drinking water in 2015.

In Africas cities, Harare among them characterised by extremes of prosperous centres and poor, informal settlements many governments struggle to provide social services including access to safe drinking water and sanitation.

Harare mayor Much Masunda at one time pointed out he was in charge in the capital and was putting measures to uplift living standards through provision of water and improved service delivery.

But residents in the capital actually spend more time without water and electricity. Hence, people may find it difficult to support Masundas (I like his intellect) push to repossess Harare power station when nothing has been done to improve the water situation in Harare, itself an environmental misnomer.

It is pertinent to understand that achieving food and energy security and managing environmental risks is also a challenge.

Exacerbating the issues is climate change, which can accelerate urbanisation and place further stress on natural resources such as freshwater and land through extreme weather events.

Weak governance means that the complex web of interwoven issues are not being dealt with, although Africas track record of collaborative projects between governments, communities and stakeholders shows progress is possible.

Perhaps it is time all politicians and not only Nhema and staff in his ministry, industry and commerce, Environmental Management Authority (EMA) director general Mutsa Chasi or Masunda himself a technocrat and businessman and many others of their ilk, pay particular attention to policy approaches, highlighting successful national and regional policies that can be scaled up and replicated elsewhere.

Emerging trends and regional priorities for action must also be explored for the benefit of everyone.
Can Zimbabwe stand up and be counted?

millenniumzimbabwe@yahoo.com/http://twitter.com/wisdomdzungairi

Global Warming: Time to start preparing for the worst

Its time to start protecting people from the impact of severe-weather events as the climate change conversation is shifting.
This was disclosed at a meeting of environment stakeholders in Harare last week, a precursor to the launch of Zimbabwes 3rd State of the Environment Report in Harare today to coincide with the World Environment Day (WED) on June 5. The theme for WED 2012 is Green Economy: Does it include you?

But, in the discussions, one thing which came out clear was that political attacks have made environmentalists cautious with respect to how they convey the information generated by their models and empirical studies.

For example, when environmentalists urged government to rethink its decision to permit the construction of a massive hotel on a wetland near the National Sports Stadium, they were attacked left, right and centre.

The implication was that we cannot keep the open area just for frogs. I may not be a scientist myself, but ecologically these play a huge role in terms of purifying our drinking water instead of using the nine water purification chemicals to treat water.

Does it make Harare water any safer without frogs? Besides, there appears to be discord among government departments, hence no political will to protect the environment itself a major concern to the environmental sector, a notion shared by Environment minister Francis Nhema.

Nhema told guests the ongoing trend analysis and findings of Zimbabwe Environment Outlook (ZEO)s state of the environment, has shown that rural to urban migration is a major driver of urban environmental challenges.

These challenges manifest themselves in the form of increased demand for water, energy and related services, unsustainable waste generation and pollution.

While councils have by-laws that target abatement of environmental degradation, these have been ineffective and poorly implemented.

But decision-makers must have information about worst-case scenarios that might arise, in order to prepare adequately to respond to extreme events.

For example, 100 year floods dont occur every 100 years the probability of a flood of a particular magnitude might be that it occurs once in 100 years, but it is still possible to have two floods of this magnitude take place within several years of each other.

And the changing climate is in fact causing such extreme events to occur with increasing frequency. And so guidance for policy can best be drawn from a risk management perspective, studying specifically the probability of high-impact scenarios.

In any sort of crisis situation, government must prepare for the worst. Whether a disruption of power supply might result from inclement weather, a gas explosion, or deliberate sabotage, government must have emergency plans in place to provide essential energy to hospitals and other essential services.

In the case of the future of crop production in a country, a similar type of precautionary approach is necessary to maintain food security for the population. Scientists must be given the political space to explain to decision-makers what the worst-case situations might be.

Decision-makers must take into consideration the uncertainties with which climate modellers and agriculture experts are working, and request information that reflects the range of uncertainties.

Scientists should not be frightened into downplaying the more serious impacts that are foreseen this only serves to worsen threats to food security if indeed policymakers are not prepared for the breadth and severity of possible impact on food production.

Climate change poses monumental challenges for agriculture with respect to the climate variables most important to plants and animals, temperature and rainfall.

Biological organisms have physiological limits to the amount of excessive heat they can endure.
Girding communities now to bounce back from droughts, floods, heat waves, and severe storms they currently experience will go a long way to help them adapt to long-term global warming.

That broad message is what is contained in the ZEO report which surveys the current state of scientific knowledge about the impact global warming could have on nine types of extreme-weather events.

The volume is the strongest signal yet of a sea change in thinking during the past decade on adaptation to climate change.

Although the report has dealt with the subject all along, adaptation is seen by many activist groups on global warming as a cop-out a topic aimed at diverting attention from the need to reduce emissions of greenhouse gases.

But researchers have indicated that even if the country slammed the brakes on emissions, the climate would continue to warm because carbon dioxide remains in the atmosphere for centuries.

The gradual-but-relentless build-up of CO₂ in the atmosphere since the dawn of the industrial revolution is an indication that humans are pumping it into the air faster than natural processes can remove the excess.

Increasingly, some degree of adaptation has come to be seen as a necessity, not a diversion.
Teasing out trends in extreme weather and identifying global warmings fingerprint are challenging.

By definition, extreme weather events are relatively rare and require observations of consistent, high quality over long periods of time and with extremely good spatial coverage.

But enough data have been accumulating during the past years at least to begin the process. So we must pledge to make earth a better place to live in.

To spread this message and create awareness, WED commemorations this year may be the right time to initiate solutions on environmental issues.
Let us identify issues related to environment and ways to take corrective action.

The idea behind such awareness programmes is to use WED as a strong and effective platform in protecting the environment and finding solutions for a sustainable living.

Let us extend our full support to WED 2012 to prevent veldt fires, protect the forests, rivers and habitats.

millenniumzimbabwe@yahoo.com/http://twitter.com/wisdomdzungairi