The prodigal summer: On politics, religion and borderland identities

The journey of my summer 2013 cannot be simply described as having many tear-shedding frustrations and serendipitous encounters. From now on I accept that every journey will be blessed with lots of them.

What truly stand out to me in my entire journey from the Subcontinent of India to the Roof of the World of Tibet via the mountain country of Nepal and back to the basin of Sichuan, were the numerous people who extended their helping hands to me, known and unknown to me previously. To name a few, I think of my Chinese friends who hosted me when I missed my flight to Delhi in Hangzhou and Shanghai, of my professor Rob and his collaborators who arranged everything for me before I even arrived in India, of Arnab and Susmita who welcomed me in their homes in Delhi and showed me the Eternal Gandhi museum when I had to find a place to stay in Delhi because of the missed flight, of my FES classmate Divita who took me around Hyderabad, of people at the NGO Samuha in Northern Karnataka who brought me and my professors into the villages and the villagers who hosted us, of the staff and students at the ACARA social enterprises boot camp in Bangalore who let me participate in their courses, of the Green Path Hotel owner who gave me a free tour of his organic farm outside of Bangalore, of Mamta, Vishal, Sir Tandan, Oma and many more at the NGO Jagriti and my later translator Naresh in Kullu who broke their legs to help me accomplish my research and accommodate my requests, of every woman and man in the villages around Kullu who welcomed me into their kitchens, answered my relentless questions and served me overly-sweet milk tea and food, of the apple pickers and owners on the road side who gave me hugful of free fruits, of Aunt Susma who made me breakfast while staying in her guest house, of her son-in-law who gave me a free ride to meet my friend Hal close to Dharamshala, of a Tibetan-in-exile named Zheba in Mcleod Ganji who treated me ginger lemon honey tea and carried my suitcase to the bus station, of my never-before-met-but-known-through-the-youth-climate-network friend Rajesh in Kathmandu who hosted me, cooked breakfast and took me to see the major wonders of Kathmandu in one day on public vans, of the bus driver who helped me connect to another bus to the reach the border town of Tatopani, of the pupils on the bus who chatted with me and took me to a guest house, of a Nepali travel agent who in the next morning took me to the border check point from my hostel and carried my suitcase, of Yangyang a young Chinese working in the Tibetan/Napali tourism industry who took over the suitcase from the checkpoint on, helped me find a van back to Lhasa and brought me to taste the best yogurt, sweet tea and shows in Lhasa, of my remote relative and his friends who hosted me, cooked for me, used their “connections” to get me a ticket to the Potala Palace and waited in line for me to get my train ticket, and of my father who arranged things for me from afar and made sure he put money back into the credit card and of my boyfriend who had to listen to my frustrations and cries on the phone while being 16 hours of time zones apart... The list cannot possibly end and I am not sure how I would ever fully repay their generosities.

Traveling alone undeniably enhanced the chances of encountering memorable personalities, laughing and heartbroken stories, and making discoveries by accidents and sagacity. I had too much time to think over what just happened and what it all meant while traveling through one bumpy bus ride after another. But I had too little time to write it down, as whenever I did, I had to devote it to typing notes from interviews and/or writing a paper in collaboration with my college professor. But in this short note, I will jot down whatever enlightenments and discoveries I can remember throughout the journey.

On spiritual “perspectives”

What do you do when during one summer you came across people belonging to four different religious/spiritual practices, two of which told you their paths were the only ones to truth while the other two demonstrated their devotion by their relentless worshipping to their gods and Buddha? Learning and being open to different perspectives have been the mantra of my American education and underpinned my traveling and research endeavors all over the world. But what happens when these “perspectives” into truth are in irreconcilable contrast? All cultural-political-religious systems carry their own set of logics, metrics, and practices developed over thousands of years. No matter how they have advanced or protracted the societies, no matter how they have uplifted the spirits of the people or burned their bodies, there are people in either end of the hierarchy perpetuating the structure. Are there right and wrong perspectives? Is it rational for me to have my own judgment? Will I find peace following one or none? Or perhaps it is really possible to have my own belief system blending the good of others and good only? Understanding different perspectives seems to be both a blessing and a curse.

The followers of the Guru Swamiji in Kullu, many of which were the wandering souls of the 60s if you will, realized through the teachings of Swami that the reality is only the waking state and your true consciousness lies in your dreams and your mediation. You shall have peace by tapping into the true source of universal knowledge that is within yourself.  Swamiji saved them in the crumbling years of 60s and 70s and provided them a place in Kullu to seek their own peace (not possibly that of the world as they later realize) while giving them enough freedom to do what they need to do in life.

Then you have an American couple on the train who are such thank-God-there-is-FoxNews, Obama-is-a-curse-to-the-country, government-handout-is-bad, blacks-and-Indians-are-naturally-lazy and Jesus-love-you Christians from South Carolina. They were teaching English in Dongguan – the manufacturing capital of China before spending a fortune in Tibet for the 3^rd time in 15 years. They admired China and Chinese people for being the most capitalist and hardworking. For them and if only I can believe too, humans came from one man and one woman. Following Jesus is the only path to truth. Only Jesus can decide who is to go up to Heaven or down Hell. They wish the Tibetan Buddhism devotees who impoverish themselves by kowtowing 10 thousand times and travel hundreds of miles on foot and over so as to have a better life can go to Heaven. “But you know it is not our choice. The path is controlled by God.” It was both frustrating and necessary to engage in such conversations, which both the old man and I could obviously feel. The man said we were from such different generations and it was important for us to know what the younger generations were thinking because we were the future. I wanted to know how the Republican/FoxNews discourses run through the thinking and languages of an ordinary man and woman.

On Tibet

I thought I could finally say a word or two about Tibet, now having traveled through the Tibetan communities on both sides of the Himalaya, from India to Nepal to Tibet. I have a few narratives from people and museums on both sides – far from enough to present a fuller picture. But this collection of what I saw and heard tells me that the reality is sometimes simpler and sometimes more complicated than either side presents.  I spent a night and a day in Dharamshala/McLeod Ganji, where the 14^th Dalai Lama retreated and established the “Tibetan government in-exile.” McLeod Ganji is a small but rightfully touristy town set half way between Dharamshala at the bottom of mountain and the snow-capped peaks of the…The first night before Sunset, I stumbled into a Buddhist temple that hid itself into the forest down hill off the bustling streets of McLeod Ganji. A sign before the entrance into the temple said “monk residence, visitors entry with permission.” I strolled around the temple hoping to acquire such permission, until finally one monk saw me and approached me. I asked if I could still visit even it was so late. He gladly invited me into the temple, unlocked the gate into the inner hall, and told me the name of all the statues inside the temple. After a while he asked me where I was from. I was reminded of the warning my landlady’s son-in-law told me, that I should not tell people in McLeod Ganji that I was from China because 80% of the population was Tibetan. “Just pretend you were American.” But I have decided that if I were to seek meaningful conversations I shall be honest to begin with and so replied the monk, “Chengdu, Sichuan province.” He smiled at me, nodding his head.

“Are there a lot of Chinese visiting here?”

“Yes, sometimes.”

“Oh, that’s good to hear.”

“Chinese people, no problem. His Holiness said the Chinese people are good.”

A little bit surprised to hear this, I mumbled something I remember that did not make any sense to him perhaps – but basically something about the “yes it is big politics between the governments.”

As he took me to another hall to see Mandala made of sand by the monks, I asked when he came to India. He said more than 10 years ago and most of his families were still in China. “I do miss them but you can’t go back.”

The next morning I went to visit the main Buddhist temple and a small museum right next to it. I had earlier seen a piece of wall on a quite street that said “Evidence of Tibet being an independent country.” There was a picture of the Tibetan flag appearing on a 1934 National Geography magazine, next to two other countries, a photocopy of a Tibetan diplomat’s passport with stamps from several countries, and another picture showing the full government cabinet with a visiting British official.  In and outside of the Temple, I saw posters depicting the image of an eight-year boy – the Banchan Lama who was allegedly kidnapped and put under house arrest by the Chinese government about 16 years ago – with the demand to the Chinese government to return him to the Tibetan people. The museum, free of admission, presented a fuller story of the struggles of Tibetan people had been enduring ever since the communist party of the new China “invaded” Tibet in 1951. The narrative began in 1951, when right after China’s independence in 1949, the party sent an army to invade Tibet. The then 13^th Dalai Lama, who had in the 1930s warned the Tibetan people about the imminent threat of the red ideology, organized a brave but eventually ineffective army with mainly volunteers to fight off the invading People’s Liberation Army.  Unable to defend themselves, the Tibetan government was force into signing the “peaceful liberation treaty” with the communist party. Since then, tens of thousands of Tibetans began escaping into Nepal and India, walking all the way with and without their families. Because life after 1951 did not seem to get better, more Tibetans ran away, until 1959, the 14^th Dalai Lama and his government decided it was time for him to go. The presentations accused the Chinese mainly on the following accounts: 1) cultural assimilation, making Tibetans the minority of their own land, 2) destruction of important Tibetan temples and religious sites especially during the Cultural Revolution, 3) environmental degradation: cutting down Tibet’s trees and mining away its resources, 4) the kidnapping of the young 11^th Banchan Lama and erecting another one, etc. One part of the exhibition made clear 2 demands: 1) make Tibet a true autonomy, 2) let the Dalai Lama return to Tibet.  His Holiness’s vision for the future of Tibet includes building it into a true democracy.

As an environmentalist and anthropologically inclined person, these accusations speak directly to me. But it is easy to see how these narratives also capture the imaginations of the western masses. But it is perhaps as one-sided as story made believe on the Chinese side, as I tell the story later.

 The next noon, having registered a two-hour yoga drop-in session for 2 pm, I went on another road in McLeod Ganji in search of the Tibet Hope Center whose names appeared on many posters around the city. I found this three-story dilapidated building behind the Hope Café. One young man was sitting on a chiar outside of the building and another woman was ruffling through bags of what seemed to me to be clothes and books. I asked the young man if he could give me an introduction of the Center and he explained that it was mainly a volunteer-run place to teach Tibetans English and other languages but right now they were moving to another close-by building. He asked if I was from Korea. I said no, “I am from Chengdu, China.” He then pointed me to the woman, “She can speak a little Chinese. I can’t.” The woman looked at me and said, “Yi Diandian (just a little).” Then another man, who always also helping move the furniture, came back by and asked “Are you from China? Where?” I told him again and also that I had been doing some research in Kullu, a close-by district. He then started speaking in Chinese and told me no Chinese dared to tell they were from the mainland here. He asked me to wait until they finished moving and then we could chat. I gladly agreed and offered to help move, under the drizzling rain. Later we sat down at Hope Café and both ordered ginger lemon honey tea because I was coming down with a soar throat due to the incessant rain in Dharamshala. I was not expecting to be sitting down with a Tibetan to have a real chat, although I had wanted somebody to tell me a more complicated story.

I realized how lucky I was to be walking the road that Zhebang could perhaps never return. The road from Tibet to India via Nepal was a one-way street for the runaway Tibetans.

We met again at a Tibetan restaurant. I ordered a Thupka (Tibetan soup noodle) made with my favorite sweet potato noodle. It turned out to be not enough for me. He surprisingly simply ordered fried momos. This time I learned that he was engaged, with a British woman. She was the daughter of the documentary director for whom he worked as a translator. They were going to get married in October and later he would go to England.  I congratulated on his engagement and told him I was truly happy for the new life ahead of you.

After dinner, he insisted on helping me carry my luggage to the bus station. We walked back to my hotel. He mounted the 15-kg suitcase onto his shoulder, and we walked to the bus station in the drizzling rain. It was the same rain that drizzled onto me when I first arrived in McLeod Ganji a day ago – when my hotel owner offered a 300-rupee balcony room and insisted on taking my suitcase for me as we walked to see his “house.” At that time I did not quite believe when he said he liked Chinese tourists as I told him where I was from. I was welcomed and sent off all so properly by both Indians and Tibetans living here.

Sitting in the bus with an Israeli tourist next to me and watching McLeod Ganji slipping away from me, I realized how the individuals could be so much greater than the mask called nationality they were wearing and how fragile politics was in front of open hearts.  

After a sleepless night on the bus, the passengers were dropped off on the road side of a place unknown to me. I shared a van with two other Danish students to the Delhi airport. The steaming but gently so morning heat replaced the damp and cold weather in McLeod Ganji. I could not wait to return to the grace of the Himalayan. By 6 pm that day, I had landed in the lavishly green valley of Kathmandu, Nepal. I made friends with a Nepalese student who about 2 months again responded to my email about a youth climate conference in Beijing. So now, probably for the first time in my life, I had a friend picking me up in a strange country. The next day Rajesh took me to the most famous Hindu and Tibetan Buddhist temples in Kathmandu.

            I have little to say about Tibetans in Nepal for the two nights I spent in Kathmandu. As far as my steps reached, there were Chinese tourists all over the place. For what I know, the great Buddha was born in Nepal. There are many important Buddhist temples in Nepal. Most of them seemed to be attended by Tibetan Buddhists. His Holiness’s pictures were everywhere to be seen in the temples. I saw Chinese tourists busy taking photos of the Buddha, together with His Holiness’ pictures. One tourist was asking directly in Chinese if she could take a picture of Dalai’s photo, and the monk replied in Chinese with a big smile on the face “yes please feel free.”

In a Nepalese-owned Tibetan crafts shop, I found the Tibetan flag – the same one that appeared in the 1934 National Geography and that in all the Free-Tibet demonstrations. I was told due to agreement with the Chinese government, the Tibetan flag with “free Tibet” on it was banned in Nepal. But the shop owner, as if he wanted to show me the best he got in his small shop, quietly proudly took out a “free Tibet” flag under the piles of hand-woven crafts. I thanked him for showing it to me but turned off the deal. But it seemed to me there was business to be made under the ban.

Nepal, sandwiched between China and India, is the most important passageway out for Tibetan refugees, either to stay in Nepal, go to India or elsewhere in the world. It was a few years ago when the border became more open for tourists, Chinese tourists. Since then,

I left Kathmandu after two nights’ stay with Rajesh. I rushed onto a local bus that would go to the direction of the border but require me to transfer.

... To be continued

Reflections on the Race to Rio: Fewer than 100 days before the next Earth Summit | Jacob Scherr's Blog | Switchboard, from NRDC

Reflections on the Race to Rio: Fewer than 100 days before the next Earth Summit | Jacob Scherr's Blog | Switchboard, from NRDC

Could China redefine the car?

David Tyfield on China Dialogue
March 01, 2012

Beijing’s plan to flood the nation’s roads with electric cars has hit a bump: consumers don’t want them. But e-bikes – already a success story – could trigger a transport revolution, argues David Tyfield.

Beijing’s plan to flood the nation’s roads with electric cars has hit a bump: consumers don’t want them. But e-bikes – already a success story – could trigger a transport revolution, argues David Tyfield.One of the most significant single developments for the global environment is the recent transformation of urban mobility in contemporary China. The number of cars in China, already the world’s largest auto market after the collapse of demand in the United States two years ago, increased from 9.2 million in 2004 to 40.3 million in 2010 and the total number of vehicles from 27.4 million to 90.9 million respectively.

Growth is expected to continue at 7% to 8% annually in the medium term, helping to sustain China as the global leader for absolute national greenhouse-gas emissions as well as catapult it towards a dauntingly high per capita carbon footprint.

This growth has many consequences, and not just for global climate change: so too for burgeoning urban areas being (re)designed around the “smooth” movement of cars; for intolerably unhealthy levels of atmospheric pollution; for car death and injury rates among the highest in the world; and for rapidly rising oil consumption, with the growing risk of geopolitical competition or even conflict. Indeed, American car intensity would seem impossible within China as this would mean some 970 million cars consuming 33 billion barrels per year, or 102% of current world oil output.

Aware of these issues, the Chinese government, at both national and local level, is increasingly focusing efforts on a supposedly singular technological opening: electric vehicles (EVs). EVs have been identified as one of seven “key strategic emerging industries” for the next five years. One hundred billion yuan (US$15.7 billion) of support over the next 10 years has been announced, with a view to getting 500,000 EVs on China’s roads by 2015, and five million by 2020. EVs are subject to 0% sales tax and receive consumer subsidies of up to 60,000 yuan (US$9,400) from central government, which is doubled by some city-based programmes.

This policy focus has been matched by the striking emphasis of Chinese car companies, in comparison to those domiciled elsewhere, on developing EVs. The most high-profile internationally is BYD (Build Your Dreams) but other private car companies and major state-owned enterprises alike are also pouring concerted efforts into this market. International attention is growing too, with a stream of reports from major consultancies, think-tanks and international institutions such as the World Bank.

There are several good reasons for this focus. Economically, the current global oligopoly of major multinational car corporations may currently be in crisis, but the opportunity for a Chinese company to break into these lucky ranks seems bound up with assuming early leadership in a new fundamental technology. Institutionally and geographically, China’s intense population density in the east of the country also makes it amenable to the compact and relatively short daily distance range of the EV, as against the large gas-guzzlers of America’s spread-out suburbs.

In terms of innovation too, existing and emerging Chinese strengths in electronics, batteries and nanotechnology fit well with development of EVs. And last, but by no means least, EVs do seem to have an environmental benefit – especially for local air quality but also for greenhouse-gas emissions – over conventional internal combustion engines, even given the current coal-dominated electricity generation, at least in many densely populated regions of China.

But EVs also come with significant problems. First, conventional cars that are EVs do nothing to solve the intensifying problems of traffic gridlock that plague Chinese cities. Second, while EVs may improve greenhouse-gas emissions in some regions, in others, especially coal-rich regions in the north and north-east, it has no such advantages. Third, despite the existing science and innovation strengths, innovation capacity for EVs in China remains highly dependent on foreign enterprise, while the record of technology transfer to date, including in the joint ventures that have dominated the Chinese car market, offers no promising precedent.

All of these objections, however, may be diminishing as cities put quotas on licence plates, or the efficiency of coal-power stations is improved or innovation capacities are developed. There is one consideration, however, that threatens to undermine completely the grand plans of a transition to electric cars. This is the almost complete lack of consumer demand for EVs, despite the significant state subsidies for their purchase.

To some extent, this may be explained by the lack of a charging infrastructure – an issue that is also being addressed in Chinese cities with more commitment than elsewhere in the world. But it is also arguable that the lack of take-up reflects much more deep-seated problems for the EV policy. Moreover, it reflects a general weakness in the perspective of Chinese low-carbon innovation policy.

This policy focuses overwhelmingly on the development of new, “low-carbon” technologies, in the expectation that R&D and invention alone will drive transition to a low-carbon mobility system. But a growing academic literature on low-carbon innovation is showing that these systems, and their transition, are inextricably both technological and social, to the extent that each of these cannot be understood without simultaneously considering the other.

From this perspective, it is clear that in the absence of significant consumer demand, any invention, no matter how technologically impressive or environmentally beneficial, will never be successfully introduced. This also forestalls the process of incremental improvements that underlies the majority of technological progress, so that a promising invention is likely to remain only an inadequate and uncompetitive prototype.

Once these irreducible socio-economic issues are considered, however, an alternative route to successful low-carbon transition presents itself. Where there exists consumer demand, perhaps from unexpected groups, for innovative but low-cost combinations of existing technologies, the possibility arises that these unpromising prototypes may develop in time into increasingly attractive, technologically sophisticated and competitive innovations. In doing so, they may even come to redefine existing social understandings of specific technologies, such as the “car”: what it looks like, what it can do, how it is used, owned, manufactured and paid for.

Such innovation is often called “disruptive” because of its potential to unseat incumbent technologies and the corporate hierarchies built on their continuing success.

What has all of this got to do with the EV and Chinese policy? The answer lies in an example of such disruptive – and low-carbon – innovation that is already a striking success story in China, namely electric bikes, also called E2W, for electric two-wheelers. China is already the undoubted leader in E2Ws, with approximately 120 million on the road by the year 2009 to 2010. The appeal of this transport is as a low-cost, speedy (maximum speeds can reach 40 to 50 kilometres per hour) and “nimble” form of transport, able to weave through congested streets and onto and off pavements.

Moreover, the market is dominated by small, start-up Chinese companies, some of which have grown to large enterprises, using their own technology. The E2W is thus a significant Chinese disruptive low-carbon innovation. Moreover, it is significantly “lower-carbon” than EVs as it is smaller, lighter and more mobile, making it much more energy efficient.

The real promise of E2Ws, however, is that they could redefine the very concept of the “car”. This is in striking contrast to the EV efforts of Chinese car companies, which are simply – and unsuccessfully – trying to change the engine in otherwise conventional vehicles.

Conversely, E2W companies are taking advantages of the opportunities for considerable experimentation and radical redesign of the “car” offered by an electric drive train, which removes the cumbersome engine and transmission of an internal combustion engine, around which the rest of the car is built; for instance, as E3Ws. This may, in turn, increasingly come together with seemingly isolated changes, whether increasing the levels of ICTs and digital technologies integrated into their design or the development of innovative vehicle-sharing schemes.

There are, of course, important objections to E2Ws too. These include the penalties and even outright bans that several Chinese cities have placed on them, and the potentially negative environmental effects of increased demands for lithium being merely mitigated, not eliminated, by a shift of focus from EVs to E2Ws.

The biggest objection, however, may be that E2Ws are likely to replace only bikes, not cars, and thus increase energy inefficiencies and demand. Certainly, this is possible, and indeed even likely insofar as electric “bikes” and “cars” are understood as simply replacements for existing technologies. But such understanding is not written in stone and there are significant economic incentives for disruptive Chinese companies and consumers to challenge these established definitions with new visions of vehicles and vehicle use. These new E2W or E3Ws, then, would not so much replace “cars” as render the very category outdated, obstructive and obsolete.

In this way, a transition in the whole socio-technical system of urban automobility may indeed emerge in China, possibly quite suddenly, and on the basis of largely Chinese enterprise. In contrast, given that the urgent challenge of decarbonising Chinese – and global – urban transport is one of completely changing the high-carbon, US-dominated model of the twentieth century, the existing policy of targeting global leadership in a low(er)-carbon cars is unlikely to yield significant results.

David Tyfield is a lecturer at the Centre for Mobilities Research at Lancaster University.

The Greatest Challenge of 2012: Can the World's Leaders Go from Zero to Planetary Heroes in less than 160 Days?

This is published on Natural Resources Defense Council on 01/12/11 by Jacob Scherr, Director of Global Strategy and Advocacy
http://switchboard.nrdc.org/blogs/jscherr/the_greatest_challenge_of_2012.html

It is the start of a new year and the time for making resolutions to change our ways. Yet we all know how hard it is to give up old habits. This reality was evidenced by the just released “zero” draft of the output document for the Rio+20 “Earth Summit”. Following a well-established pattern, the “zero” draft alone provides little promise that the gathering of world leaders in Rio de Janeiro June 20-22 will fulfill the UN’s desire to generate the political will needed to move the world off its current trajectory towards a degraded planet less able to meet human needs. Rio+20 must be about much more than just another document. The next Earth Summit needs to stimulate real accountable actions that put humanity on a more sustainable path.

The “zero” draft is truly just a very preliminary vision. It was prepared by a group of experienced diplomats and officials at the UN, based on submissions from a 100 governments and more than 500 civil society and other entities and two days of discussions at a December preparatory meeting. Over the next five months, this document could be expected to be the subject of hundreds of hours of intensive negotiations.

The 19-page “zero” draft optimistically titled “The Future We Want” already has too much jargon and repetition and too many abstract incremental promises and far off goals. Given the experience with past UN mega-conferences, there is a real danger that by the time the leaders get to Rio, they will be asked to endorse a document that will have ballooned in length to more than 100 pages. There will be strong pressures to accommodate the desires of various governments and interests to make sure that their issue or concern is at least mentioned. The few potential gems in the zero draft (my colleague Lisa Speer has blogged about the draft’s promising language on the high seas) could easily get lost in a deluge of vague promises. Worse yet, based on the record of the last four decades, there is little guarantee that governments will follow through on these negotiated grand plans.

So here is the plea NRDC has been making to officials, negotiators, and fellow civil society advocates: Make this summit different. Keep the final Rio+20 declaration short and sweet. We all need to focus on what will make this Summit transformative – let’s create the expectation that each of the leaders will come to Rio with commitments to specific actions which produce real near-term results for which someone can be held accountable.

Let’s not waste time arguing over matters that has been debated repeatedly over the last 40 years. Let’s ask the presidents and prime ministers to focus on a handful of truly international structural issues – such as upgrading the United Nations Environment Programme, setting clear and measureable sustainable development goals, and moving much more quickly to secure protections for our high seas.

It is the very first and very last paragraphs of the zero draft which gives me most hope that we can break with the routines of the past and make the next Earth Summit truly historic and ground-breaking. The first indicates that presidents and prime ministers will be expected to come to Rio+20. Our very top leaders need to make a powerful, clear showing that they are really serious about working together for a prosperous, secure and sustainable future for our people and our planet. They need to inspire governors, mayors, executives, and other leaders also to be engaged and take action. They need to instill real hope, particularly in young people, that we can make a very rapid transition to a low-carbon green economy.

The very last paragraph calls upon the Secretary General to create a registry of Rio+20 commitments as an “accountability framework.” Our hope is that hundreds, if not thousands, of such specific promises will be made in Rio on all of the various issues of deep concern to civil society. (See our list of deliverables.) And – as NRDC proposed at the UN in December – the Secretary General will use modern information technologies to let citizens around the world see what countries and others are pledging, what progress is being made, and where there are needs for more attention and action. Such a web-based directory (take a look at the mockup we presented at the UN) would help fulfill the Secretary General’s own New Year’s resolution when he said, “Technology outpaces our current thinking, peoples’ ideas and our current way of working…We have to make our Organization more nimble, more efficient and effective, and transparent and accountable.”

With less than 160 days left before the Rio+20 Earth Summit, each of our world leaders still has a chance to break the comfortable habits of the past and become a “hero” in confronting the greatest of challenges – improving the quality of human life and protecting our planetary home. This is one test where inevitably some leaders will do better than others, but we are all at risk if we do not demand that they all take real action now towards a future we want.

Civil Climate Change Activism in China – More than Meets the Eye by Patrick Schröder

Patrick Schröder:is the international adviser at the China Association for NGO Cooperation where he supports coordination and international cooperation of the China Civil Climate Action Network (CCAN). He holds a PhD in Environmental Studies from Victoria University of Wellington. His position is supported by the German Centre for International Migration and Development (CIM) to facilitate German-Chinese cooperation on climate change and civil society.

As climate change becomes an increasingly urgent problem that needs to be addressed through global cooperation, China – the world’s largest emitter of greenhouse gases and, at the same time, largest manufacturer of renewable energy equipment – is attracting attention greater than ever before.

The global community is wants to understand what is happening in China in terms of climate change mitigation, energy policies, low carbon urban development and other activities. The public is particularly curious to learn about the role of Chinese civil society and environmental NGOs’ engagement in China’s low-carbon development pathway. This publication provides a brief overview of several important ways in which Chinese environmental groups are working to address climate change issues – both at home and internationally. It also explains the developing relationship between the Chinese government and NGO actions, how Chinese environmental NGOs are fi nding their way into global civil society, and their participation in global civil society debates on climate change. It also forecasts what can be expected from Chinese NGOs in the field of climate change in the years to come. Although China’s NGO climate change movement and civil society will have neither the strength nor the tools to solve the world’s climate change problem alone, it will be impossible to solve it without their participation and contribution.

Report can be downloaded at http://www.eu-china.net/web/cms/upload/pdf/materialien/2011_11_11-schroeder-climate-change-activism-China_11-11-07.pdf

Earth Insights: Environmental Governance and Rio+20

Earth Insights: Environmental Governance and Rio+20

MHC Student Dana Drugmand wrote an excellent update on the Earth Summit, summarizing recent Rio speakers at MHC and interviewing professor and student (that's me!).

In June of 1992, tens of thousands of people, including 172 states, over 2,400 representatives of nongovernmental organizations (NGOs), 8,000 delegates and 9,000 members of the press gathered in Rio de Janiero, Brazil for the United Nations Conference on Environment and Development. The Rio Earth Summit, as it is informally known, was the largest environmental conference in history and the largest formal gathering of heads of state. Sustainable development had emerged onto the mainstream global agenda, with resulting documents “The Rio Declaration” and “Agenda 21” outlining principles and an action blueprint for achieving sustainable development. Additional outcomes of the conference included a “Set of Forest Principles,” the Convention on Biological Diversity, and the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC). It was a landmark event in the history of environmental protection.

What has happened since then? The state of the environment has not gotten much better. Environmental degradation has actually gotten worse. Biodiversity loss is accelerating. We are now losing species at 1,000 times the natural rate. According to the International Union for Conservation of Nature (IUCN), one out of every eight bird species, one out of four mammal species, and one out of three amphibians are threatened with extinction. Half of the world’s forests are now gone. Overfishing has resulted in the decline of 90 percent of the oceans’ large fish species. Atmospheric CO2 levels continue to rise. These problems do not exist in isolation; there are related social issues. Billions still live in poverty, chronic hunger affects nearly one billion people worldwide, and the gap between the rich and the poor has widened.

The political enthusiasm for tackling environmental and developmental challenges that was on display at Rio in 1992 has eroded over the years. “I could definitely see the growing distrust toward international negotiations,” said Yiting Wang ’12, an Environmental Studies major who has been involved in the international environmental process through programs abroad and in environmental policy. James Gustave Speth, former dean at the Yale School of Forestry & Environmental Studies and founder of the World Resources Institute, has called global environmental governance “an experiment that has largely failed.” Despite a proliferation of conferences, negotiations, and treaties over the last 20 years related to environmental matters, commitments to following through on actions have been absent.

Clearly there has been an implementation gap. It is relatively easy for a head of state to agree to abide by a certain environmental regulation, but actually enforcing the policy is another matter. This suggests a lack of effective monitoring strategies. Another reason for the implementation gap is that greater priority tends to be given to pursuing trade and economic interests. “The current economic situation also has a lot to do with the delivery of these promises,” Wang said. Finally, there is an overall lack of political will. The U.S. has not demonstrated much leadership in the international environmental arena, refusing to sign the Convention on Biological Diversity and the Kyoto Protocol. There has been increasing recognition that the global environmental governance system is fragmented and has not been entirely effective.

Reassessing this institutional framework will be one of the major discussions taking place at the United Nations Conference on Sustainable Development (UNCSD) in June 2012. The conference, to be held once again in Rio de Janiero, marks the 20th anniversary of the first Rio Earth Summit. The main objective of “Rio+20,” according to the 2012 UNCSD official website, is “to secure renewed political commitment for sustainable development, assess the progress to date and the remaining gaps in the implementation of the outcomes of the major summits on sustainable development, and address new and emerging challenges.” The two major themes of UNCSD are 1) a green economy in the context of sustainable development and poverty eradication, and 2) the institutional framework for sustainable development. The latter theme entails evaluating the current environmental governance organizations and institutions and discussing options for reform. One proposal is to create a “world environment organization,” a new UN super-organization for dealing with environmental matters.

Earlier this month, on Oct. 6, Jacob Scherr, Director of Global Strategy and Advocacy for the Natural Resources Defense Council (NRDC), gave a lecture on Mount Holyoke’s campus called “The Race to Rio+20.” Scherr identified the challenges we are presently faced with. After recapping some of the pressures on the planet, he expressed the notion that humans are pushing up against planetary boundaries. Thus, as Scherr put it, “we are running out of time.” He acknowledged the lack of strong leadership by governments and the prevailing skepticism about the international process. Yet, he did highlight some opportunities presented by Rio+20, such as the potential for social media to reach and engage billions of people like never before. He also outlined a list of “potential deliverables,” or smaller-scale targets that could be discussed at the conference, such as eliminating inefficient incandescent light bulbs and phasing out fossil fuel subsidies.

According to Environmental Studies professor Catherine Corson, “the most important issue that Rio needs to address is consumption in the global North, particularly the United States.” Corson, who specializes in global environmental governance, is currently teaching an Environmental Studies seminar, “Science and Power in Environmental Governance,” that focuses on Rio+20 and the long road that has led to it. She wants students to know about Rio+20, which, she said, “is anticipated to be the decade’s most high profile environmental event.”

Why is Rio+20 so significant? “Like the 1992 Rio summit,” Corson explained, “the ideas, power relations and institutional mechanisms that emerge from it will have a tremendous impact on future international environmental policy and practice, as well as on our lives more generally. Your generation will shape, through events like this and related policies, how we, as a global community, address issues like consumption, waste, environmental degradation and increasing inequality.”

Yiting Wang said she is hopeful for Rio+20 to turn into the Earth Summit of our generation. “It offers some hope and opportunities to review the pitfalls of the past 40 years of international environmental governance, reset the agenda and allow new actors to emerge.” One of these new types of actors is youth. Wang has served as International Youth Coordinator for the China Youth Climate Action Network (CYCAN) and has attended climate change conferences in Copenhagen and Cancun. She has already attended some of the preparatory meetings for Rio+20 and intends to follow through with her participation next year at the actual conference in Rio. “Increasingly, these international negotiations have been a platform for the youth movement to make a presence, solicit resources and expand influence through both direct political action and civic diplomacy,” Wang said. “This is also why I personally still continue to involve myself in the process, despite all other frustrations.”

Anticipation for the Rio+20 conference is already building here on campus. Students who are possibly interested in attending the event should talk to Wang or Corson, as they are looking to organize a “Mount Holyoke delegation. The Miller-Worley Center for the Environment is also sponsoring several lectures as part of its theme on international environmental governance. The next lecture is coming up on November 10 and will feature James Gustave Speth.

“The Shu Dog That Barks at the Sun”: Our Language and Our Reconciliation with Nature

By Yiting Wang: Series of my "environmental studies manifesto: ES and me"

Language is a double-edged sword that both empowers and disempowers humans, with regard to human-environment interactions. Where it empowers, it gives humans identity, sense of belonging, and means to free ourselves from our inner world that cannot be said. Where it disempowers, humans use certain identities, narratives and concepts to separate humans from humans and the animated living world.

Perhaps the most liberating and anthropocentric tool, language enables humans to “make claims” about ourselves and our surroundings. Narrative is the primary use of language to construct social norms that holds together a community. These narrations people carry on generations after generations are also fundamentally shaped by our relationship with our land. And by naming the physical locations and subjects, we make stamps and declare the evidence of material reality. Our reality. Leslie Marmon Silko tells the story-telling format from a Native American Pueblo eye, “one that embraces the whole of creation and the whole of history of time (p.49)” In communities where stories of the Creation survive, stories are also told to give directions and ground members of the community for both internal purposes and social conduct. Just like the West Apaches, as anthropologist Keith Basso unveiled, who “negotiate images of understandings of the land” – into stories that “stalk” people. These claims of reality, through naming of places on which stories “naturally” occur, constitute the moral world of the West Apaches. That moral system prescribes checks-and-balances not only to the social world, but also to the society-nature interactions.

Humans’ particular way of claiming of who we are reminds me of human’s use of language from a Chinese perspective. Chinese idioms, mostly famously the ones composed of only four Chinese characters, do not conform to modern Chinese grammatical structure and syntax. They are highly compact and synthetic in that the meaning the whole idiom goes beyond those of the four characters combined – “the whole is larger than the sum of the parts.” Each idiom has a story, mostly a historical event or a myth, that derives from ancient literature. It usually entails a moral lesson. We treat them as our cultural treasury and learn them throughout the 10-year mandatory primary education. For example the idiom“蜀犬吠日(shu quan fei ri),” it tells the story originated from the Tang Dynasty more than a thousand years of ago of a dog from the Sichuan region, where I come from, who would bark at the Sun whenever it comes out. Seldom do people living in the Sichuan basin see the Sun because of the topography and climate. The Sichuan people thus carry the stereotype of living in their isolated but fertile heaven. It is also used to describe people, often disapprovingly, who are too easily panicked at something normal due to their isolation.

(Picture left:Credit LISA MINOT)

Humans use language to not only make claims to ourselves or even ridicule ourselves so our offspring will no follow suit. We also use sometimes very powerful narratives to claim biophysical spaces and resources we are made to believe we belong to. Apt to be the master of our language, humans also use it to disempower our fellow species, living and nonliving on planet Earth. In her essay “In History,” Jamaica Kincaid told the less narrated side of the Christopher Columbus’s heroic and groundbreaking “discoveries.” It serves as an example of great scale in which one man, replete with self-placed superiority and “sense of wonder,” placed names onto thousands of physical and living objects in the “New World” as if they never have names or any history before him. They were “new” only to him and his shipmates. Negotiations over “property rights” – a western invention – have often sparked fierce, if not violent, conflicts among different groups of actors carrying different identities and discourses to justify who truly owns and belongs. And too often, we find out in the end the long-existing primary caretakers of the land are ousted and replaced by “efficient,” entrepreneurial and technocratic entities, in the name of progress, modernity and development. Those who are disempowered are forced to conform to a constructed new norm or standard. In the end we hear very polarized narratives of who owns what and who can best use the land, which denotes completely different policies, if necessary at all. The Amazonian forest region is one thus example where government, corporations, big industrial rangers and the indigenous have heavily contested the ownership and usage of the land, resulting in the exploitation of both the forests and already marginalized populations. Living organisims have the tendency to overdo themselves with the same means they make the world around do for them. “The result is a spiritual fragmentation that has accompanied our ecological destruction,” says Hogan, and social destruction of segments of the global society, as I would add. The conversion of forest land into cattle range was driven partly by the government incentives, encouraged by global financial institutions who champions liberalizing the markets, to make “productive” use of the land, which in the end resulted in speculation of land at the expense of small-holder farmers.

All the same, we can reclaim the same human intellect that has crafted the sensorial expression of ourselves as language to reconnect with the Creation. Language is a tool of knowing the world and ourselves. As David Abram points out, we learn language by basic mimicking – it is physical, intuitive and “bodily.” We need to bring forth our animal nature, echoes Frances Moore Lappé, to heal ourselves and our broken relationship with the land. “What we are searching for is a language that heals this relationship, one that takes the side of the amazing and fragile life on our life-giving earth,” says Linda Hogan in her account of “A Different Yields: A Spiritual History of the Living World.”

There could be in every human being’s inner self a desire to heal the wound. And today’s worlds are in urgent need of true healers. Nevertheless, by solely mimicking the shamans in Southeast Asia, says Abram, is only to treat the symptoms without awareness to the broader physical and ecological environment. “For the source of stress lies in the relation between the human community and the living land that sustains it.” To be a healer, or a true magician, one first needs to understand the intricate relationship we have with nature and call on fellow species to respond to their respective inner calling. However, what arouses human sensual experiences, emotions and expressions are what we treat as “external” stimuli. To understand that the “external” is only part of the big Creation and the whole history, we will be able to internalize and reclaim respect for ourselves. Because only when we begin truly listening to and loving ourselves, can we appreciate and protect other parts that constitute the whole.

In reflecting on the thoughtful analyses and writing this paper, my understanding of the path I have chosen also renewed. I have always understood that I do not mainly express my passion for the environment through writing. After all, written words have many limitations despite their higher position in Western culture. What I have learned out of these readings and the study of political ecology is the ability to discern the power-laden messages, directives, confrontations imbedded in stories people tell that have largely shaped human landscapes and have been driven by evolving ideologies and ethics. At the end of my undergraduate study as an environmental studies major, I have finally found a set of tools that will allow me to see the world through languages and other representations, and re-create narratives that speak the language of our Creation and an honest self.

Here, let me end by returning to my version of the barking dog story. The visiting poet who coined the phase in a way used a euphemism to belittle the local people’s animal behavior. Yet in the locals’ accounts, when the sun is out everybody is enlightened. Everybody is as happy as a Sichuan dog when it baths in the sun. From waiting for the light of life to come out to being shone by it, my people have fully enjoyed, with due respect, the cycle of life in universe.


Works Cited
Abram, D. 1997. The spell of the sensuous. New York: Vintage.
Basso, K. 1984. Stalking with stories: Names, places, and moral narratives among the western apache. Text, Play, and Story: The Construction and Reconstruction of Self and Society: 19-55.
Hetch, S. B. 1985. Environment, development and politics: Capital accumulation and the livestock sector in Eastern Amazonia. World Development: 13 (6): 663-684
Hogan, L. 1994. A different yield. Religion & Literature 26 (1): 71-80.
Kincaid, J. 1997. In history. Callaloo 20 (1): 1-7
Silko, L. M. 1981. Language and literature from a pueblo Indian perspective. Yellow Woman and a Beauty of the Spirit: Essays on Native American Life Today: 48-59.

Carrying On for Wangari Maathai at the Rio+20 Earth Summit | Jacob Scherr's Blog | Switchboard, from NRDC

Carrying On for Wangari Maathai at the Rio+20 Earth Summit | Jacob Scherr's Blog | Switchboard, from NRDC

I awoke today to the sad news that Wangari Maathai, environmental leader and Nobel Prize winner, had died at age 71. I first had contact with her in the days running up to the 1992 Earth Summit in Rio de Janeiro almost 20 years ago. I was finishing up an unprecedented report with Human Rights Watch entitled Defending the Earth: Abuses of Human Rights and the Environment. We had gathered case studies of the harassment and suppression of environmental advocates around the world. The most compelling of them was Wangari’s confrontation with the Kenyan government over plans to build an office building in Uhuru Park in Nairobi. She was labeled a “subversive”, arrested and jailed, and then along with other protesters gassed and clubbed by the police. We had invited Wangari to join us at a press conference to release ­Defending the Earth at the June 1992 Earth Summit, but were uncertain whether she would be permitted to leave the Kenya where she had been scheduled to go on trial just days before the start of the Rio Summit.

She was finally permitted to travel to Brazil. As she spoke at the press event for our report, I was so impressed by her quiet dignity and immense courage. She was not afraid to speak out about her own struggle with the Kenyan Government – although not at all sure what would happen to her when she returned home. She did not hesitate for a moment to link her plight to environmental advocates from other nations whose rights were also being abused.

Over the next two decades, Wangari became a spokesperson not only for environmentalists in Kenya, but for all of us who are working to protect and preserve the Earth. In her 2004 Nobel Prize Lecture, Wangari said:

Today we are faced with a challenge that calls for a shift in our thinking, so that humanity stops threatening its life-support system. We are called to assist the Earth to heal her wounds and in the process heal our own – indeed, to embrace the whole creation in all its diversity, beauty and wonder. This will happen if we see the need to revive our sense of belonging to a larger family of life, with which we have shared our evolutionary process.

In the course of history, there comes a time when humanity is called to shift to a new level of consciousness, to reach a higher moral ground. A time when we have to shed our fear and give hope to each other.

That time is now.

(Jacob is coming today to Mount Holyoke College to speak on "Race to Rio+20: Making the Earth Summit 2012 a Success)

Crossing space, connecting people: the story that comes with a little cook stove

Cross-published on Youth Exchange of Perspectives

When I read through Jared’s updates of his time in China, he reminded me the fundamental cultural exposure and experience that are essential in a cross-cultural encounter. It is an element I sometimes neglect while I am carrying a more important personal “global environmental” agenda with me to Kenya for the second time. Despite being a researcher of environmental issues this time, I find myself still a “CUYCEer (or YEPer now)” even though I am a continent away from both China and the U.S. It is not my intention to devote my first blog on this site to talk about my experience in none of the two countries, but I have to say my life in Kenya and the other life with YEP are so much intertwined on so many aspects. One is feeding the growth of another. It is a continuously and organically evolving curly cue. Therefore I hope the story that comes with my interest in cook stove in Kenya will shed some light on “youth for sustainability” across the border to my fellow YEPers.

To make a lengthy story short, before the UN Climate Change meeting in Cancun, I had been interning at the UN Environmental Program in Nairobi, Kenya for half a year. Having attended the previous climate meeting in Copenhagen and felt at home with the international youth climate movement, I readily become a devotee to the African Youth Initiative on climate change Kenya chapter (AYICC-K) even before I landed Nairobi. Because of my personal interests in cook stoves in less developed countries (another “carry-over” interest from my time with Energy Crossroads Denmark), members of AYICC-K introduced me to a slew of youth-led community-based organizations across Kenya that are engaged with improved cook stove dissemination. One such visit was to the Tembea Youth Center for Sustainable Development, close to the northern shore of Lake Victoria in the western part of Kenya. It was just an overnight visit and once again I am drawn back to the African sun that shines a billion things to life. This time I am back for the summer to both conduct research for my honor thesis and to rekindle the inspirations and enthusiasm that I had from my equally energetic young Kenyan friends.

Then here comes what is “curly cue” about it. Out of last year’s visits and interactions with my fellow AYICCers, together around eight of us started the Rural Energy Enterprises Network, or REEN (just to add more acronyms for your information). Therefore this year’s research trip is also intended to generate knowledge to build the foundation upon which REEN delivers its vision. But it is preciously with CUYCE and YEP since Copenhagen that I come to understand and learn what it takes to plant a seed, nurture and grow it. Yes the equatorial African landscape and soil is a completely different picture from that of China and the U.S., the good ingredients of exchange, partnership and collaboration are more or less the same. The same passion – the belief in bridging individuals and building networks to defend planetary sustainability and the confidence in the young people of the world to deliver grand vision – takes me from China to the U.S., from Copenhagen to Cancun, and onto Kenya.

And we are blessed with possibilities, of which we can make changes. What my young colleagues in Kenya inspire me the most are their creativity and entrepreneurship in tackling climate change, environment and development issues. Tembea, which I base my research on, has recently engaged in a carbon offset project that aims to reduce greenhouse gas emissions through the diffusion of energy efficient cook stoves. In many parts of the world, people are still cooking with open fires made of three stones or other types of traditional stoves deemed “grossly inefficient.” The heavy and toxic smoke coming out of these stoves is killing some 1.6 million people worldwide (especially women and children,) annually, not to mention the trees being cut down and other environmental and health issues. At least the WHO says so, and many more (governments and donors alike) who are concerned with energy supply and deforestation in developing countries and their consequence globally.

In a much prolonged two-year long pilot phase, Tembea has constructed over 1600 energy efficient cook stoves in rural households, maintained 50 artisans or technicians (male and female, mostly young people) and facilitated over 130 community saving and loaning groups. The new stoves are also called “rocket stove” for its internal air and fire tunnel, and is about 50% more efficient than the traditional three stone open fire. Tembea, with funding from a carbon project developer based in Europe, subsidizes the stove to only cost households 500 Kenya Shiling (less than 6 dollars). The saving groups function to help members pay for the stove, as well as to support members with financial and other socio-economic needs. Tembea also intends to train these groups to act as empowered grassroots unit to be able to lobby for their own interests in the government system in the near future.

As a carbon-financed project in the premier voluntary carbon market, this stove program is soon to benefit from carbon credits priced around 20 Euros per ton of carbon dioxide saved. One cook stove is estimated to save 1-2 ton a year, and the plan is to install 7, 200 stoves in a 7 year project life cycle. The math is looking good, only if everything goes well with the carbon registration and validation process with Gold Standard. It has a highly complex project set up, involving many stakeholders, monitoring and validation processes. It has been an assiduous journey to fulfill the various requirements demanded by the offset standards.

This is why you often hear high transaction costs associated with small scale carbon project (with many individual components) and a general lack of capacity to implement carbon-financed projects in Africa. Tembea’s collaboration with the European-based carbon developer therefore has a lot to offer in terms of capacity building for the whole continent. On the other hand, I also look into challenges, issues of equity, and even systemic pitfalls a carbon offset project like this faces, hence the effectiveness of it to address climate change and sustainable development. Whatever the term means. Carbon offset has good potential, but that’s the only solution.

Eight hours away from Tembea, in a place near the capital city Nairobi, another youth-led enterprise is doing something similar, but in a very different approach. Several days ago when I went back to Nairobi to renew my American visa, I had the chance to revisit Peter Thuo, the owner of GreenTech Inc. and director of Ruiru Youth Center for Empowerment Program. From the latter to the former, Peter has moved from raising awareness of HIV/AIDS, constructing efficient cook stoves, onto building biogas digestors, greenhouse for vegetables and energy briquette made of waste materials. For Peter, innovating keeps him burning and a social enterprise model is what works the best in his case.

And this is where REEN strives to come in to the exchange of ideas and expertise among these resourceful youth groups and give birth to new enterprises that will thrill in their particular environment. It is a REEN for Kenyans, for Africans and for all who are young, energetic, sympathetic and eager to meet the challenge of our world. It is the same energy that fuels my engagement with CUYCE/ YEP, as well as REEN. At the same time, I see many ways in which lessons can be learned from one enterprise to another, no matter where and who they are. People need to communicate with one another, no matter the region, tribe or color.

By now I could have started writing a book of my time in the middle of nowhere in this Kenya village, just to tell you how different life is here. Where I am with Tembea in one of the poorest regions in Kenya, electricity connection rate is around 2% and I am lucky to have water to shower in bucket. Half of the population in rural area lives under literally “1 dollar a day.” Half of the staff at Tembea has only high school degree and most are below the age of 25. For the past 8 years they have accomplished a list of social and environment projects with an inventory of local and international partners, with very limited resources. For most of them, personal computers and Internet are rare species and the round talks with the UN are still too remote and surreal.

In the past several months, I have been grateful on the receiving end of the hard work YEPers have engaged and delivered. For all of you have enlightened me to take a parallel path on another side of the planet. Everyone is doing fascinating work on your end. I wish to bring your more stories in the following days.

CDM Carbon Sink Tree Plantations: Insights into Sustainability Issues

From Thinktosustain.com http://www.thinktosustain.com/ContentPageViewPoint.aspx?id=%20875) Friday, May 20, 2011

Blessing J. Karumbidza and Wally Menne

In an interview with ThinktoSustain.com, Dr. Blessing J. Karumbidza and Mr. Wally Menne discuss the sustainability and viability issues of CDM tree plantations being used as carbon emission offset projects under Clean Development Mechanism (CDM), and their impact on local communities and rural economies.

Forests play a crucial role in mitigating global warming. Their inclusion as ‘carbon sinks’ in international frameworks, such as REDD, to reduce emissions, has evoked interest among corporate and governments alike, who look at plantation projects to raise carbon credits to ‘subsidize’ their emissions back at home, in addition to other forest by-products. However, there are many ground-realities largely ignored by project proponents that pose a greater threat to the environment than the envisaged benefits. ThinktoSustain.com interacts with researchers – Dr. Blessing J. Karumbidza andMr. Wally Menne - who recently conducted a study on a tree plantation by a Norwegian company in Tanzania. Tree plantations in South Africa are grown to produce timber and paper products mainly for export, and to generate income that mainly benefits the multinational paper companies that own the plantations and pulp mills. However, they also cause substantial environmental damage, besides affecting local communities and rural economies negatively. To ascertain the impact of such projects, The Timberwatch Coalition conducted a study of a tree plantation carbon sink project at Idete in the Southern Highlands of Tanzania. The Norwegian company that owns the project, Green Resources Ltd., aims to register the project under the CDM (Clean Development Mechanism) so as to be able to generate carbon credits to sell to the Norwegian government. ThinktoSustain.com: First of all, why do industrial plantations exist in Tanzania? Who (government, multinationals or local people) is interested in such projects and Why? Dr. Blessing Karumbidza & Mr. Wally Menne: Industrial tree plantations have a long history in Tanzania, just as anywhere else in Africa where such plantations exist. We (at Timberwatch) focus specifically on industrial tree plantations for a number of reasons. Firstly, these industrial timber plantations are not forests, yet they are considered so in policy, as if they are real forests. Secondly, they are usually a monoculture tree crop that permanently destroys the bio-diversity of any area where they are planted, and impacts negatively on existing land-usage. Most of the established industrial tree plantations in Tanzania were planted during the second half of the 20th century, when the country was still under colonial rule, to help meet the timber, pulp & paper demands of growing industrial economies. They did support a crude form of economic growth, albeit an unsustainable one, requiring large areas of arable land and consuming more water than could be justified by their end value, whilst providing relatively few job opportunities for mainly temporary unskilled workers. Historically speaking, the legislation intended to regulate and control the timber production sector has been very weak in Africa in general, and this has been the case in Tanzania as well. Even in countries like South Africa, where more comprehensive legislation has been introduced, especially relating to water usage, its full implementation and effective enforcement still leaves a lot to be desired. ThinktoSustain.com: What is the Idete plantation project? When was it started? What were the benefits envisaged at the beginning of this project? Dr. Blessing Karumbidza & Mr. Wally Menne: It appears that the Idete ‘forest’ project was conceived in the late 1990s, though the actual tree planting by Green Resources Ltd. at Idete started around 2005. The project was partially in response to a perceived opportunity to make money from earning plantation carbon credits under the CDM (Clean Development Mechanism) of the Kyoto Protocol, which was adopted by the UNFCCC in 1997. However, the main motive for the new tree plantations was probably to take advantage of easy access to cheap community-owned agricultural land and grasslands, for timber production, because it is quite clear that the company would have established the tree plantations there regardless of their being eligible for CDM carbon credits or not. ThinktoSustain.com: In your study, you have cited local peoples’ experiences in South Africa and other countries. These experiences have not been good. According to you, why has this been so? Dr. Blessing Karumbidza & Mr. Wally Menne: The timber plantation sector is wasteful in many ways: using large areas of land, consuming much water and impacting negatively on the natural environment. Downstream processing of timber for pulp and paper production consumes and pollutes scarce water resources, and requires substantial amounts of cheap energy from non-renewable sources, mainly coal. In South Africa, this sector also developed in tandem with apartheid, and its story is linked to massive forced removals and displacement of poor black communities. Since 1994, when apartheid policies were officially ended, little has changed and the plantation timber industry is still guilty of exploiting poor communities and harming the environment. ThinktoSustain.com: Your study highlights an important aspect that Industrial tree plantations in Tanzania would have a devastating impact on biodiversity and have negative consequences on the local people. Can you explain why and how this has happened or can happen? Dr. Blessing Karumbidza & Mr. Wally Menne: Whether established on agricultural land or in natural habitat, such as the grassland areas at Idete, monoculture tree plantations wipe out other forms of life including important medicinal and food plants, and the wild animals hunted by the local community for food. The loss of grasslands used for grazing also impacts heavily on livestock-keeping, and usually means that grazing pressure will increase in the remaining grasslands, to the detriment of the ecosystem. The informal local economy is dependent on resources derived from Nature, and supplemented by small-scale agriculture. The destruction of this natural resource base through the establishment of tree plantations causes the local community to become dependent on an externally imposed financial economy, wherein inexperienced rural people with little formal education become the victims of their need to survive from the minimal wages paid for their labour by companies like Green Resources Ltd.