Home » Uncategorized » Page 41

Category: Uncategorized

Water & Climate Change News | Rainwater Harvesting Mexico | Kenyan Villagers: 4% of Water of Canadians | Tanzania Drought & Flood

November
Water & Climate Change News
Center for Sustainable Development 
 
THIS MONTH’S NEWS
1. Families in Kenyan Village Have 4% of the Water as do Canadian Families
Maggie Muthui of Kenya, and Erin Watson of Canada—developed this project over the course of four months to protect the village spring and distribute fresh water into the Kenyan village of Lita.
 
Due to a lack of adequate water resources, the community of Lita suffers from many problems including a lack of food security, poor hygiene, and increased risk of disease.
500 households require a minimum of 80 liters of water per day for drinking, washing, and cooking. That’s 13.3 L per person per day as compared to the 329 L currently used by the average Canadian! The project will help protect the one remaining natural spring in Lita allowing families access a safe source of drinking water.
2.  36% Water Shortage in Mexico City: Rainwater Harvesting Solution
36% of families in Mexico City do not have adequate access to water for bathing, washing dishes or clothes, or flushing toilets.

CSDi Partner David Vargas began the process of developing a project to help 550 families in Mexico City gain access to water through a rooftop rainwater harvesting project.

Rainwater harvesting systems provide families with about 50% of their water demand.  David’s program trains & pays local plumbers to install the systems. They buy all materials locally to support the local economy & ensure that families can maintain systems easily on their own.  The systems provide families access to clean water while enhancing their economic situation & quality of life.
Chris Enns & Catalina Gheorghe are doing a community-based adaptation to climate change project in Wagete village, Tanzania, impacting 4,000 villagers. Their project is a ‘mainstreamed’ project—they are incorporating adaptation to climate change activities into a traditional rural development project.
 
For the traditional development portion of their project they have a healthcare & education component— and for adaptation—a  water conservation and management program. Detailed project outline & great photos at link.

They’ve been determining their risks and vulnerabilities to climate change by combining scientific data with local community knowledge. Chris and the community developed a list of local resources, hazard maps, a seasonal calendar & a historical timeline.
 
Drought and Flood. The facilitator asked group members to rank the vulnerability of each identified resource from each of the identified hazard. Drought and flood ranked as the highest hazards to livelihood resources. See the livelihood/hazard results matrix link above.
Matt produced this excellent short documentary addressing the impacts of climate change on water resources in Mauritius, an island in the Western Indian Ocean, and how people are beginning to respond.
 
Too much rain in May and drought conditions in November negatively affect farmers with both extremes. Rainfall is down 10 % but the intensity has increased. 50% of water stored in reservoirs is lost to leaks. The film shows us how having supplies of water resources and managing them are 2 different things.
Prem Goolaup, of the island state of Mauritius in the Indian Ocean, has been developing a community based adaptation project for the past eight months. At times the farmers suffer from drought—at other times flooding.The adaptation components of his project include a Water Management Program.
 

 He’s using a participatory mapping technique to not only learn more about the specific challenges the farmers face, but by including farmers in the research and drawing of the map, they are better understanding their current challenges and also developing a sense of ownership for the project. 
What is a prioritization of the community’s greatest hazards they face?
  •     Unpredictable rainfall during the rainy season makes it difficult for farmers to plan cropping
  •     Drought has caused livestock deaths and crop failures or low crop yields
  •     Intense sunshine coupled with decreased rainfall causes crops to wilt or ripen early (coconut, banana, cashew nut)
  •     Unusually heavy rainfall causes pit latrines to overflow and contaminate drinking water increasing diarrhea
  •     Shortage of household water

  Farmer adaptation strategies include:
  •     Getting more organic matter into their soil to better hold water
  •     Using mulches to reduce evaporative loss
  •     Water conservation techniques
  •     Water management techniques during periods of heavy rain and flooding 
  •     Drought resistant and early maturing crops varieties
  •     Techniques for protecting young plants during torrential rains and flooding
6. 300 Hands-On Field Activities for Community Based Adaptation Projects: Water is the Underlying Theme
I am announcing an updated  compilation of Community Based Adaptation Field Activities—complete with links to source materials and technical information.
 
This collection of 300 CBA field activities began as a resource for our CBA online students.
However, as it grew, we decided that it was important to make it more broadly available to CBA development practitioners.

 
Water is a key component in each of the following categories.

Here are how the activities are organized:

1. Agriculture and water.
2. Small island developing states.
3. Emergency preparedness and disaster risk reduction.
4. Energy.
5. Livelihood.
6. Health & sanitation.
7. CBA project design.
8. CBA participatory inclusion.
9. Long-term investments.
10. General resources.
7. Help Scale Up Project Successes: Help Us Increase Impact to 200,000 Beneficiaries by December 31.
Help us to scale-up these impacted-oriented courses and their resulting projects. In the courses’ first 21 months people from 500 organizations in 153 countries have developed and are developing projects impacting 400,000 people. Help us scale up the reach of our courses so that a much greater number of students can begin projects and increase this impact to 500,000 people by year’s end.
 
HOW: NETWORKING.
Please spread the word about our courses to your friends/colleagues through your blog, your newsletter or your Facebook page—or by ‘liking’ & commenting on this post on our Facebook Page. Consider making a scholarship donation for field staff who can’t afford course fees.

To learn about other student projects in real time, please visit our Facebook Page; or visit the  CSDi Development Community to see their regular postings—and join 600 colleagues in sharing resources & collaborating online.

 
Visit Online Learning to see a full listing of Winter Quarter Community Based Adaptation courses that begin in January 2012.
What’s happening in the region where you live?
Please write us with your stories, thoughts and comments through Online.Learning@csd-i.org or post them at our Facebook Page, or on the Center’s Blog.
 
Like us: CSDi Facebook.
 
I look forward to hearing from you.
 
Sincerely,
 
Tim Magee, Executive Director
 
Would you like to subscribe to this newsletter?
 
The Center for Sustainable Development specializes in providing sound, evidence-based information, tools and training for humanitarian development professionals worldwide. CSDi is a 501(c)(3) nonprofit organization.
 

CBA Climate Change News | 300 CBA Actions | Vulnerability-Tanzania | Risk Maps Mauritius | Farmers-Guatemala

Also: Climate Change Study in Injustice | Indigenous Knowledge | Mainstreaming
November
Community Based Adaptation to Climate Change Newsletter
Center for Sustainable Development 
 
THIS MONTH’S NEWS
1.  300 Hands-On Field Activities for Community Based Adaptation Projects: Updated

I am announcing an updated  compilation of Community Based Adaptation Field Activities—complete with links to source materials and technical information. This collection of 300 CBA field activities began as a resource for our CBA online students.
However, as it grew, we decided that it was important to make it more broadly available to CBA development practitioners. Here are how the activities are organized:
1. Agriculture.
2. Small island developing states.
3. Emergency preparedness and disaster risk reduction.
4. Energy.
5. Livelihood.
6. Health & sanitation.
7. CBA project design.
8. CBA participatory inclusion.
9. Long-term investments.
10. General resources.
2.  Is Climate Change Affecting Farmers in Your Country? It is in Guatemala.
Each week I hear about subsistence farmers affected by extended drought, rainy seasons beginning late and ending early, too much rain at the wrong time, and extreme weather events destroying crops. But a trip to a coffee farm in Guatemala brought this reality home to me.
My farmer friend Sergio told me that in the past, it rained from May 15 until October 15 every year. For the past few years, the rains have been less predictable and when it does rain—the the rains come with a high intensity and an excess of water—a perfect formula for a fungus locally called “Ojo de Gallo” which causes the coffee plants to drop both leaves and fruit. 2010 coffee production in Guatemala was down 20% because of this fungus.
Sergio’s farm has recently experienced two major hurricanes: Stan and Agatha. Agatha, in 2010, dumped 50 inches of rain on his farm in a 36 hour period.
3. Mainstreaming Climate Change Adaptation: A Guide for Practitioners
Climate change adaptation is an area of growing concern for many developing countries. Increasingly, countries are coming to realize that, in the long term, climate change adaptation needs to be supported by an integrated, cross-cutting approach.
We are pleased to draw your attention to a new Guide released by UNDP-UNEP. This guide provides practical, step-by-step guidance on how governments and other national actors can mainstream climate change adaptation into national development planning as part of broader mainstreaming efforts.
4. Climate Change Risk & Vulnerability in a Remote Tanzanian Village
Chris Enns & Catalina Gheorghe are doing a community-based adaptation to climate change project in Wagete village, Tanzania, impacting 4,000 villagers. Their project is a ‘mainstreamed’ project—they are incorporating adaptation to climate change activities into a traditional rural development project. 
They have a healthcare & education component— and for adaptation—a soil and water conservation program, and a farmer extension program. Detailed project outline & great photos at link. They’ve been determining their risks and vulnerabilities to climate change by combining scientific data with local community knowledge. Chris and the community developed a list of local resources, hazard maps, a seasonal calendar & a historical timeline.
5. CC Study in Injustice: 10 Million Additional African Children Malnourished by 2050
The World Food Program estimate that globally, 10-20 percent more people will be at risk of hunger by 2050 than would be without climate change. Of these, almost all will be in developing countries, with 65 percent expected to be in Africa. This has severe implications for nutrition, particularly for children.
In sub-Saharan Africa, it is estimated that 10 million more children will be malnourished as a result of climate change.
Prem Goolaup, of the island state of Mauritius in the Indian Ocean, has been developing a community based adaptation project for the past eight months. The adaptation components of his project include a Soil Restoration and Water Management Program. 
 He’s using a participatory mapping technique to not only learn more about the specific challenges the farmers face, but by including farmers in the research and drawing of the map, they are better understanding their current challenges and also developing a sense of ownership for the project.
7. Do you think that local/indigenous knowledge should be incorporated into adaptation to climate change projects?
Last week, Stephen Oluoch met again with his target community to gain a better understanding of their knowledge of climate change, challenges that they are experiencing attributable to climate change, and activities that they have begun on their own using indigenous knowledge to adapt to their changing situation. 

Here is one list that resulted from this participatory exercise:

Vulnerability Matrix 1: What is a prioritization of the community’s greatest hazards they face?

  • Unpredictable rainfall during the rainy season makes it difficult for farmers to plan cropping
  • Drought has caused livestock deaths and crop failures or low crop yields
  • Intense sunshine coupled with decreased rainfall causes crops to wilt or ripen early (coconut, banana, and cashew nut)
  • High temperatures causes people to sleep out in the open or with windows opened which increases malaria incidences
  • Unusually heavy rainfall causes pit latrines to overflow and contaminate drinking water increasing diarrhea
  • Shortage of household water
We’ve trained development professionals from 500 organizations in 153 countries to develop projects impacting over 400,000 people. Student projects have utilized 270 different kinds of solution-oriented activities to address community need. Scan the list to see which would work best for your project.
 
We look forward to working with you in our training programs.
 
Sincerely,
 
Tim Magee, Executive Director
 
Tim Magee is the author of A Field Guide to Community Based Adaptation published by Routledge, Oxford, England.
 
Like us: CSDi Facebook.
Learn more about design and implementing Community Based Development Projects.
 
Would you like to subscribe to this newsletter?
 
If you have a question don’t hesitate to contact us at: Online.Learning@csd-i.org.
 
The Center for Sustainable Development specializes in providing sound, evidence-based information, tools and training for humanitarian development professionals worldwide. CSDi is a 501(c)(3) nonprofit organization.
 
 

Development in Real-Time: 3 Disease-Related Deaths in 2 Weeks on Student Projects

UGANDA
Last week I wrote about 2 deaths caused by malaria in a Ugandan community that a student team’s field project is focused on.

KENYA
This week: Genevieve Lamond (UK), Martha Njoroge (Kenya), Kathy Tate-Bradish (US) are working on an HIV related project in Kenya. The thrust of their project is to provide support for 40 children who are HIV/AIDS orphans.

Community needs assessment in the Kenyan community. See vote results & photos.
Their plight is complicated by the fact that these children are undernourished and don’t have access to healthcare—nor to decent hygiene. These complications lead to chronic disease among the children like marasmus and kwashiorkor. The situation is further exacerbated by the fact that six of the children were HIV-positive themselves. Their project is in the initial stage of project design/funding.

Yesterday I received news from this team that one of the HIV-positive children died:

Says Kathy: “On Thursday our Kenyan teammate Martha Njoroge had to attend the funeral of a seven-and-a-half year old boy who was a member of our project and community. Brian. He was an HIV+ orphan, being raised by his poor, elderly grandmother. It seems to have been a combination of TB and malnutrition which his thin, immune-compromised body couldn’t combat any longer. The two of them evidently often went to bed hungry, and the grandmother didn’t want to ask for help, so the community wasn’t fully aware of the severity of their plight. It was certainly a wake-up call. This is important, and heartbreaking, work. Our motivation has never been stronger!”

Says Genevieve: “Martha and I had some sad news this week – one of the young boys we’ve been trying to support actually died at the beginning of the week.

He was just nearly 8yrs old and had been born with HIV, recently he contracted TB and seems his condition then progressed to AIDS. His sickness wasn’t helped by lack of food and nutrition and his granny wasn’t confident enough to approach Martha to ask for more help, in fact she told her that the food we’d given out in a meeting in August had been used little by little for their few meals.

This has really highlighted the need for sustainable food systems and adequate nutrition (as well as measures to help stop the spread of HIV/AIDS) but in a way that old people can manage as well, particularly as they are often the ones left to care for their grandchildren.

There are five more HIV+ children in our group so we’re going to make more efforts to ensure that for the time being they are provided with nutritious foods to take with their ARVs”.

Martha, Kathy and Genevieve’s team is tackling the challenges this community faces with a three component project:
1. HIV/AIDS and Sexual Health Education Program
2. Advocacy program for access to health care
3. Family Garden and Nutrition Program

Good job Team Kenya!

This sad news from Uganda and Kenya brings to light three important things.
1. There is tremendous need in the developing world for a wide range of overwhelming problems.
2. Our online students working in the field are confronted in real time by these terrible challenges in actual, on-the-ground projects that they’re developing in the courses.
3. We need to scale up our online course program to be able to get sound development tools into the hands of many more people.

In the first 21 months of our online courses, 500 people from 320 organizations in 113 countries have developed/are developing projects positively impacting 170,000 people.

Help us scale our courses so that our partners can impact 200,000 people by year’s end.
Please consider spreading the word about our courses to your friends and colleagues through your blog, your newsletter or your Facebook account—or by simply commenting on this post on our Facebook page.

Consider making a scholarship donation for those field staff members who can’t afford the course fees.

To learn about student projects in real time, please visit our Facebook Page or CSDi Development Community to see their postings.

Would you like to subscribe to our newsletter?

 
The Center for Sustainable Development specializes in providing sound, evidence-based information, tools and training for humanitarian development professionals worldwide. CSDi is a 501(c)(3) nonprofit organization.