Archive for June 4th, 2008
Dr. Richard Leakey: How Climate Change Affects East Africa
Dr. Richard Leakey talks on climate change with WildlifeDirect’s former Communications Manager, Dipesh Pabari of Sukuma Kenya
How is climate change beginning to affect Kenya and East Africa as a whole?
There is a huge gap in our knowledge on the impact of climate change in East Africa. At the moment, very little research is being done that gives us a clear picture on the modelling of impacts in this sub-region on climate change. The general feeling is that we will see more dramatic droughts and more dramatic precipitation. Whether this will fall into the cycles we have grown accustomed to, or whether the monsoonal changes that will result in increased warming of the Indian Ocean will give us a totally different weather pattern, we don’t know. The expectation, however, is that some areas in Kenya will get more rain and other areas will get less rain on average and the periods of no rain may be extended and longer while the degree of rainfall may increase to the point where flooding, mudslides and that sort of a thing become a serious issue.
One of the things that is recognised and now fully understood is that the melting snows or ice in the Antarctic is going to affect currents and the increased temperature on the ocean surface is going to bring changes in the direction of the monsoons which do not have to shift very far to take more or less rain in a certain direction.
Have you noticed any drastic changes to the environment in the Turkana Basin over the years that you have been working there?
We know from accurate geological and archaeological records that for the past 8000 years, Lake Turkana has received 95% of its water from the Ethiopian Highlands down the Omo River. 8000/7000 years ago, Lake Turkana was about 300 ft higher than it is today. The drop in the level of is a direct correlation of less rainfall in the Ethiopian Highlands.
When I first went to work in Lake Turkana in the late 60’s, the lake level was about 50 to 60 feet higher than it is today. There is no major hydroelectric dams or major irrigation schemes on the Omo River or in the Ethiopian Highlands so I believe this has to reflect changing weather patterns. Whether the weather patterns are changing because of human impact or whether it is changing because of climate change on a larger scale is not clear. But the lake level in Turkana is directly related to the quantity of rainfall falling in the Ethiopian Highlands.
What do you think is the most important factor to immediately address in terms of tackling climate change?
Population growth is as far as I am concerned is probably the single most worrying factor for the planet. We can look at a farm, we can look at a national park – we can say the carrying capacity of that area is “x”. If we look at the planet, the carrying capacity for our planet has been exceeded. This planet has too many people on it. How we address this I don’t know. But I am certain if we don’t address it, many of the good efforts being made to cut carbon dioxide emissions and to find alternative sources of energy won’t have the desired effect. It has got to be linked and conceptualised in a way that stabilises the human population and ultimately brings the numbers down.
It is only if you bring numbers down that we will be able to find a way for resource utilisation per capita to increase. It is the only way you are going to deal with poverty and unless you deal with poverty, the situation can only spiral downwards. This is a massive problem and the solutions are not simply condoms versus draconian measures such as one child per family. It has to be looked at in different countries in different ways. I think there has to be a commitment everywhere to slow and stop population growth. I do believe that we have been set back a long way by the opposition to family planning that is being shown by some of the religious groups and by some of the more conservative governments such as the current US administration.
What can we do as a country and regionally?
As to what Kenya can do, I would urge our researchers to look back at old records and try to draw up some picture of whether there are discernible trends. Are there are any indications that give us insight into sea level change? There is also bound to be a lot of anecdotal evidence from farmers and fishermen about seasons and when people plant crops. We need to be accumulating a great deal more local information. Looking at what happens in America, Europe or Australia isn’t going to give us the planning capacity that we need.
I believe we should also be addressing governance. We should be looking to the government to put in rules that focus on a number of things. First of all, planning for natural disasters that I think will begin to increase in frequency both from the sea with typhoons or cyclones; ocean surges; high tides and rising sea levels.
We also need to look into our planning rules such as where people are allowed to build or whether people should be clearing steep slopes in valleys that could lead to landslides. We should certainly be thinking about conservation of water; we should be thinking very carefully about how much water we can afford to waste. Can put water back into the aquifer as they do in Australia? I think we need to start thinking about government intervention in irrigation systems and the water off-take levels. We have some rules that can be improved upon as we are wasting so much water. Water harvesting is of particularly critical importance.
Water is currently such a scarce source for the majority of Kenyans. How are authorities to prepare for such drastic measures when we are already in such dire straits?
Authorities must prepare for climate change. Water is fundamental. This has to take into account not only the harvesting of water but also the recycling of water and adaptation of technologies that don’t lead to waste. Storm water, for example, could be harvested.
There are a number of things that can be done in the urban areas that would improve our life. Many of our urban water systems were put in place in the 50s and 60s. Most of the supplies are losing 50 to 70% to leakages. If you go to Lamu, the last official study suggested that 70% of the water from rain fed wells was simply leaking out of broken pipes.
If you drive along the highways in Nairobi where there are water pipes on the side, you will see many flower nurseries where people are planting flowers to sell. Their source of water is broken pipes – there are no springs on the road, those are just broken water systems. It is all over the country. We should fix these things. There is a lot we can do. But it will take time and it will take money and it needed to have started years ago.
We also need to participate in some of the global studies to give us a better indication on the likelihood of crop failure particularly how it would impact on small scale farmers. These are subsistence people who can move from a meagre existence to famine in a relatively small period of time. So I think there are a number of things that we could be doing to recognise that over the next fifty years, the Kenya we know will not be here. It would have changed very dramatically in terms of when the rain falls, how much falls, where people live, how people live, what they eat, how they grow their crops.
There are so many global movements that focus on reducing our carbon footprints. Do you think this is something that we should be concerned with in our region and in what particular area of life?
Although our output of carbon dioxide from transportation is relatively small, this is no reason not to be more serious about our carbon dioxide emissions. Much more should be done by urban authorities to insist on more efficient transportation such as vehicles that have better emission standards. If public transport is sufficiently reliable, many of us would not have to drive our cars to work. The condition of our roads and the fact that so many cars use the roads carrying only one or two people can all be avoided. This should be addressed. We could have commuter trains that carry large numbers in whom at the moment, travel in vehicles that only seat 14 people. This is highly inefficient.
We have to recognise that while we may not be a significant contributor to the global carbon dioxide totals; our small contribution of fumes that we are pumping into the air is taking its toll. In the mornings when there is no wind, you can see the brown, yellow smog over the city. This is going into our lungs and it is bound to have an effect over the long term. I don’t know what the statistics are but I know from conversations that I have had with medical authorities indicate that respiratory diseases are on the increase in this country.
The question of air transport and what it is going to do – well, we are already beginning to see questions as to whether countries that fly horticultural produce to markets across the world are in fact providing organic produce. The European markets may not accept six flights a night out of Nairobi airport with flowers and green beans. I think the destination markets are going to get tougher and tougher on nations such as ours.
What are your thoughts about the north-south carbon trading initiatives?
Carbon dioxide trading is an interesting idea and is certainly one that hasn’t been fully explored in Kenya. I think people should get a credit for retaining indigenous forest rather than simply being rewarded for replanting forests that they have cut down. I think that there are a lot of changes in the International Convention on what you can trade and how you can do it but I would think that biodiversity, indigenous forests as well as plantation forests could all lend themselves to development efforts in countries such as Kenya. We need to become much more familiar with what is possible and what can be done and I think you could see much of the reforestation necessary in this country for our timber needs, fuel and paper being financed through international funds. Sadly, many of us don’t have the capacity to access such schemes.
We in Kenya need to be conscious of the need for energy but rather than go the easy route and opt for dirty energy, we should start to demand that investors come here with the same criteria for development that exists in their own countries. There is no reason why foreign investors should make us continue to operate below standards in terms of emissions while they have been forced to clean up at home. But this takes a brave government; it takes a government that sees beyond its own lifetime. This is an institutional change that we have not seen here. It is where institutions and laws are supposed to operate irrespective of the party in power. This is something we certainly look forward to.
How do you realistically see us instilling such values as a nation when most people are so desperate to meet their daily needs?
The first issue is that there are far too many of us that are too poor. The vast majority of people aspire to a better standard of living and for them to have a better standard of living; they are going to have to have better access to resources. Whilst those resources are readily available, the wastage of those resources is not justified. What people need is justified but what people discard and waste and throw away is not. That is what people have to address.
We are certainly different from California, or France or Australia. Our electorate is generally not well informed. They are not likely to put environmental issues on the ballot. This comes later. By the same token, because our electorate are relatively straight forward, they will take all sorts of medicine given by leaders they trust. We have men and women who have had enough education to understand some of the dimensions of these problems and some of the relationships between problems and solutions and legislation. The Kenyan public would go along with a lot of measures without necessarily having to initiate it themselves. In a sense the government would say this is better for you. What worries me are long term events. For example, climate change and the impact it will have is simply not been given the attention it deserves by our leaders.
The question of whether or not the capacity of humans who are adaptive and clearly have shown remarkable abilities to live with a degrading environment, will get us through, is a question with little meaning. The fact is that the density of the human population on the planet and the needs of that population exceed the realistic resources that the planet can provide. If for example, we are living at the moment in Kenya with an average of 10-15 litres of water consumption per person per day (it is probably slightly less), but we are aspiring to a life that similar to the US where 200 litres a day is normal. Clearly the world has not got that kind of water to cope with such a demand on a global scale.
If in the context of where we are today, is there time?
Well, planet earth isn’t going to self destruct. What happens with planet earth is that species come, species go; extinctions happen, new species appear. It is too late now to prevent massive changes in the next 50 years. It is not too late to do things that will have positive effects a hundred years from now. If we are selfish, we will leave the planet in worse condition for those to come. If we are selfless then we will recognise that our older generation and the one before it left us in a mess which we now can’t get out of but we certainly can make sure that successive generations inhabit a world that is gradually recovering. That’s our choice.
I would also say that there this is a tendency in most parts of the world, and I don’t think it is any different in Kenya to say that it is up to God. If you leave it up to God, it is not going to do very well. It is not up to God: it is up to us. I don’t believe that if there is a God, God would say, destroy the planet the way you are doing. I think that is nonsense. If you are religious, then remember that God is generally thought to help those that help themselves.
Related: Global Warming by the Numbers
Read Full Post | Make a Comment ( 21 so far )World Environment Day and an Interview with UNEP’s Achim Steiner
Last week, Treehugger Writer Bonnie Hulkower interviewed Achim Steiner, Executive Director of the United Nation’s Environmental Programme (UNEP). Steiner was unanimously elected to his position in 2006, and is in the middle of serving a four year term. Mr. Steiner has managed 1,000 people in 42 countries, and is especially known for building partnerships between the private and public sectors. Working at the grassroots level as well as at the highest levels of international policy-making to address the interface between environmental sustainability, social equity, and economic development, Steiner stresses the need for a more intelligent economic system that considers the GDP generated by nature. A recession, Steiner firmly believes, is precisely when we should be even more focused on combating climate change, and on creating an inclusive green economy.
Most recently, Steiner has been focusing attention on marine dead zones resulting from fertilizer use, and has been heralding the importance of drip irrigation, indigenous knowledge, agricultural biodiversity, and yes, the coral chomping parrotfish.
Treehugger gained insight on how living in five continents truly gives one a diverse and international perspective, and was impressed by Steiner’s admonition that developed countries “should shoulder their full responsibility for having used the atmosphere as a dustbin for some 200 years.” Mr. Steiner also outlined suggestions for strategic government incentive programs, as well as a preview of the environmental topics he will be discussing on World Environment Day, June 5th.
Treehugger (TH): You’ve lived many places–Brazil, Germany, the U.S., Vietnam, South Africa, and now Kenya. How has living in those diverse places shaped your vision for the United Nations Environment Program (UNEP)? How has it affected the way you run UNEP and ran the International Union for Conservation of Nature (IUCN)?
Steiner: It has shown me that no one country and no one culture has a monopoly of creative and transformational ideas. Indeed the diversity of thinking, of approaching a challenge from a novel perspective, is one of humanity’s strengths that we need to harness and harvest far more.
TH: Food is on many people’s minds right now. A few months ago, you warned, “if our modern agricultural systems focus only on maximizing production at the lowest cost, agriculture will face a major crisis in 20 to 30 years time.” How likely is this scenario? What are the best strategies to avert this danger?
Steiner: The current food crisis is predominantly one about prices rather than about supply. However, there could be a knee-jerk reaction to simply accelerate and intensify the farming methods of the 20th century.
This is unlikely to serve us well in the 21st century on a planet of 6.7 billion, shortly rising to nine billion. Why? Because in many countries in the past 50 years or so the emphasis has been almost exclusively on hiking up production at the expense of all else.
For example, the emergence of marine ‘dead zones‘—deoxygenated areas of sea in which fish and other marine life-forms have either died or fled—are in part linked with the misuse of artificial fertilizers.
We also seem to have lost the link between the importance of the natural world to crop and livestock production in the first place. Whether it be pollinators such as bees and bats or the beetles, worms and other humble life-forms that make soil fertile, we need to re-discover some fundamental and economically important truths—we need to re-discover an ecological balance.
Agriculture can also be needlessly wasteful. Around 80 percent of freshwater is used for irrigation—simple techniques like drip irrigation could dramatically cut this use.
Simply clearing more and more land for food and feed crops, and ratcheting up artificial fertilizer and pesticide use, will in the end damage, degrade, and ultimately undercut the life support systems that make agriculture possible in the first place.
Delivering more sustainable and more intelligently managed agriculture is going to depend on the circumstances of each community and country. But we need to look across a whole suite of issues, from subsidies and international trade, right down to the role of women, and indigenous and traditional knowledge which, like agricultural biodiversity, is being rapidly eroded.
Fundamentally, we need to learn to work with the natural world rather than against it if we are to maintain, let alone boost, food supplies over the coming decades.
TH: You once wrote an article for Vanity Fair about parrotfish. How did you come to be fascinated by these fish and what can we learn from them?
I learnt about parrotfish on a trip with my family to the Kenyan coast. I am not sure many people enjoying the white sandy beaches there make any connection to the parrotfish in the coastal waters. But these fish are the sand-makers—chomping through coral heads and passing the sandy substrates to the shoreline via their business end.
Nor do the airlines, tour operators and resort companies make a link between conserving the parrot fish and the multi-million dollar holiday businesses they collectively enjoy.
So I chose the parrotfish as a symbol of how we often fail to grasp the real economic importance of the natural world—even quite lowly creatures have an often quite critical if overlooked role.
You can make the same analogy across so many of our natural or nature-based assets. A tropical forest is for some merely a collection of trees worth more as logs and timber exports.
Only now are we grasping their true value in terms of the way these forests manage and modulate the climate water supplies and soil stabilization. They are the fonts of genetic material that will underpin new businesses and technologies in the 21st century.
These trees absorb the carbon emissions of the developed countries—a service that might be worth billions of dollars a year, if only we factored them into a more intelligent economic system that included the GDP generated by nature, and not just GDP based on making cars and clothes, or TVs and microwaves.
TH: How do you encourage countries to fight climate change while the economic markets are in turmoil and the US is in a recession?
Steiner: Sir Nicholas Stern, on behalf of the UK Treasury, recently published a report estimating that unchecked, climate change will be equivalent to losing at least 5% of global GDP each year, now and forever. In other words, a failure to act will lead to a significant disruption of the global economy—the recessions of the past and the present will be as nothing to those of the future. Conversely, the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), established by UNEP and the World Meteorological Organization, last year suggested that combating climate change may cost as little as 0.1 or 0.2 percent of global GDP a year over 30 years—the bargain of the century.
TH: The US pro-business group World Growth says: “quick action on climate change would do more harm than good.” You obviously don’t believe this, but how do you counter the nay-sayers?
Steiner: One of the biggest challenges in transforming the world towards a low carbon economy is the vested interests of some corporate players.
You only have to look at the humble light bulb. The old, massively energy inefficient bulb dates back almost two centuries. Suddenly, the compact fluorescent bulb is all the rage, and suddenly large corporations are switching production to the energy saving ones—it is about taking the lids off the eyes and catalyzing momentum.
So there will be losers—the businesses and companies who fail to see the writing on the wall—and there will be winners: the businesses being less energy intensive and more resource efficient, and the ones who research and develop green products and services, who will thrive.
We are already glimpsing a Green Economy—from the 300 financial institutions with $13 trillion of assets who are signatories to UNEP and the UN’s Global Compact Principles for Responsible Investment, to the $160 billion boom in renewable energy transactions.
And it is not just in developed countries. Two of the biggest wind power companies are based in China and India respectively.
TH: You’ve said that businesses should spur governments to act on stopping global warming and that the private sector should show government the way forward? Why not the other way around?
Steiner: Governments are essential. They have to set the legal, fiscal, and policy landscape in which business and consumers can act and make sane and sensible choices. But governments can often be handicapped by short term political agendas.
What can empower governments is a sense that a majority of the private sector and the public want change—so business has an important role to play in steeling political resolve and steadying the political hand.
TH: You’ve said that the environment can be the common agenda and a basis on which nations work together. Why didn’t this happen in Bali? How can we get nations to work together better? How do we bring together rich and developing countries on how to reduce greenhouse
gases? What role does UNEP have?
Steiner: It did happen in Bali at the climate change convention meeting. Governments have agreed to a two years negotiation that should and must lead to a new climate agreement by the climate convention meeting in Copenhagen in late 2009.
It is critical however that developed countries—who are responsible for the lion’s share of emissions historically and currently—shoulder their full responsibility for having used the atmosphere as a dustbin for some 200 years.
That responsibility also includes finding ways and means of transferring climate friendly technologies and finance to developing economies, and also finding support for poorer and least developing economies to climate-proof their economies in the face of the climate change already underway.
UNEP is playing its part in trying to build that confidence—by trying to expose the scientific realities of climate change via the IPCC and other fora, but also by emphasizing the opportunities that can arise from making a transition to more sustainable practices, including the real possibility of new and more sustainable jobs.
We are also working closely with key sectors globally, such as the buildings and construction industry, and demonstrating novel and creative market mechanisms that overcome perhaps out-dated and prejudicial views.
TH: What has made you focus on examining the postal sector’s carbon footprint?
Steiner: There are some economic sectors that can make a disproportionate contribution to the climate change agenda. The world’s post service is one such sector. According to conservative estimates, postal services worldwide employ over five million staff and use over 600,000 cars, vans, and trucks, and hundreds of aircraft, to deliver mail.
There are many other sectors too. There is increasing concern over emissions from shipping. Yet there may be perhaps less than a dozen big shipping companies responsible for perhaps 90 percent of the market.
TH: You’ve focused on not only the doom and gloom of the climate crisis, but also on the idea that climate change also holds a message that can empower people. How do you see this happening? What message does the UNEP have?
Steiner: The science and reality of human-kind’s impact on the planet, from over-harvesting of fish stocks to the rapid and rising loss of biodiversity, has become ever clearer over the past half century or so. The international community has responded, establishing bodies like UNEP, and treaties covering issues from the repair of the ozone layer to trade in hazardous wastes.
There are successes too–from cuts in pollution that causes acid rain in Europe and North America to global reductions in using ozone layer damaging chemicals. Yet the truth is that the overall scale of the response has failed to match the pace and magnitude of the challenge.
Climate change represents a challenge that recognizes no national boundaries or political outlook. It is a common challenge that touches every sector and every community on the globe. Yet, overcoming climate change also represents a real chance to do business differently on this planet, and a real opportunity to address a wide range of issues that remain unaddressed, including deforestation, and a suite of promises that remain unfulfilled—not least including support for developing economies.
TH: Can you tell us more about the Climate Neutral Network that UNEP launched in February? How were these four countries selected and how will they mobilize other nations?
Steiner: These countries selected us. They are ones that have pledged to become zero emission economies not just in terms of C02, but also in terms of the other greenhouse gases. That’s why it is the ‘Climate’ rather than the ‘Carbon’ Neutral Network.
They are all interesting because they face different challenges. Norway’s challenge is oil and gas production, whereas New Zealand’s is perhaps livestock methane emissions.
Almost 100 percent of Iceland’s electricity is generated by geothermal heat, but it has challenges in terms of transport, not least from its SUV market and its big fishing fleet.
We are especially delighted that Costa Rica is a part of this—a developing country with an ethos that is summed up by Roberto Dobles, Costa Rica’s environment minister, when he says: “We are not part of the problem, but we will be part of the solution.”
The Network aims to federate ideas and paths to neutrality via an exchange of projects and best practices. It is open to countries, companies, and cities, and soon organizations and individuals too, who are determined to reduce their emissions and are prepared to publish a strategy, with actions, to back this up.
TH: World Environment Day is just around the corner. What is your message this year? Do you have any specific tips for how our readers can make a difference as individuals?
Steiner: WED 2008 is about mobilizing grassroots action in the 18 months left to the crucial climate change convention meeting in Copenhagen in 2009. The theme is “Kick the C02 Habit.”
In the main host country New Zealand, but also around the world, we will launch the UN Guide to Climate Neutrality. I can’t give much away until June 5th, but we will outline how individuals in a developed country can more than halve their climate footprint by quite simple daily choices.
Let me give you just one for fitness fans. Jogging around the park rather than on an electric-powered treadmill will cut your daily emissions by 1 KG.
And what about toast for breakfast versus heating up a roll or a croissant in the oven? Watch this space on June 5th to learn how small, easy choices can allow almost everyone to Kick the C02 Habit!
Related: Countdown to World Environment Day – 5 June 2008
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