In a country where most farmers depend on rain to feed their crops and guarantee their harvests, that question is omnipresent: It's about survival. And there's no sure way to answer it.
But there is a way to manage the uncertainty it breeds, and Biru, with steady steps, is slowly freeing herself from the constraints of an increasingly erratic climate. Her tools? An entrepreneurial drive and—now—weather insurance for her crops through a program that has grown to reach more than 13,000 farmers in Tigray since its launch in Adi Ha in 2009.
Biru, a 50-year-old mother of six children, was among the first farmers in this rocky northern region to invest in the insurance when Oxfam America, together with the Relief Society of Tigray and a host of partners, began offering it as a way to help families build resilience in the face of repeated drought. If there is insufficient rain during a critical period of the growing cycle, farmers will receive a payout for the crop they have insured.
And even those too poor to have cash on hand can get insurance: They can pay for their premiums in exchange for working on projects that help their communities reduce the risk of future disasters , such as by planting trees to preserve the topsoil. Of the 13,195 farmers now insured, 91 percent of them, or 12,064, are trading their labor for their premiums. And many of the households that have bought insurance are headed by women—3,610 of them.
Biru has been able to pay for her insurance with cash. This year, she bought a package for 200 birr, or about $11.75. It will cover her teff, a tiny grain and a staple of the Ethiopian diet used to make a bread called injera.
In Adi Ha, the weather has not been severe enough—yet—to trigger a payout. But Biru is convinced that investing in insurance is a smart move and that the program should be scaled up to reach farmers in other parts of Ethiopia. Without the cushion insurance provides, families who lose their harvests and have nothing to fall back on could be forced to migrate far from their homes or to sell precious household resources—like a cow—to buy food.
"This insurance is very good," said Biru. "It's saving our assets in a bad year."
And perhaps it's that confidence that is also helping her take other well-considered risks that are allowing her to build a more secure future for her family.
In 2009, the first year weather insurance was available, Biru joined a group of 10 farmers and together they bought a pump to irrigate some of their crops. Her contribution was 4,000 birr—or about $235. In 2010, with the proceeds from an abundant harvest of peppers, Biru was able to pay off the loan for her share of the pump.
Soon after, she took an even bigger plunge: With a new loan, she invested 14,000 birr, or about $823, in her own pump, available to use whenever she needs it. In August, she had already reaped 2,000 birr-worth of peppers from her field, and was looking forward to continuous harvests in the future.
"This is more productive compared to maize," said Biru. "Maize you harvest once. This you harvest every week."
Peppers won't be her only cash crop from this newly irrigated land. Scattered amidst the plants are 60 orange tree seedlings and 30 mango tree seedlings.
"If we manage it very well, we can start the first harvest (from the trees) after four years," Biru said.
For all Biru's progress, farming in Tigray is not an easy undertaking. And one of the biggest challenges, she said, is the cost of fertilizer. The price keeps climbing.
"It's 1,000 birr per quintal (or about $58 for 220 pounds)," said Biru, recalling when it was a fraction of that price two decades ago. "Our land can't perform well without fertilizer, but fertilizer is very expensive…Most of our money is invested in fertilizer."
But most of her pride is invested in her children: all six of them have been able to attend school. Her oldest son has a degree in accounting and a daughter has a degree in engineering. Three of the others are still making their way through, while a middle son has decided to stop his education and assume—eventually—responsibility for his parents and the land they have worked so hard to cultivate.
Weather insurance may make his job, and the job of countless farmers like him, easier in the years ahead. The initiative is now set to expand into three new countries with the help of the World Food Programme. And its focus has broadened to promote a variety of tools that will help rural families build their resilience including access to credit, the encouragement to save, and steps to reduce the risks of disaster.
]]>For days, a small team of local aid providers has been delivering essentials like tanks of clean water, sanitation and hygiene supplies, and cooking equipment to the shelters, expanding and complementing the National Civil Protection System. Their initial action was so swift that by the time the president declared a national state of emergency, thousands of displaced people were already benefiting from their work.
The aid workers are members of Salvadoran organizations, groups that are willing to put all their other work on hold when disaster strikes. And they are not just foot soldiers—they are experts, able to survey a shelter in the midst of an emergency and within hours get key relief materials delivered and water tanks installed that meet international standards for quality.
“There is this core of ten or fifteen people on the team who are working day and night,” says Karina Copen, Oxfam’s humanitarian program officer in El Salvador. “They’re so dedicated."
The core team on the ground is never entirely alone. All across the country, they are supported by community leaders who have been trained in the basics of caring for the public health needs of their people during emergencies. And they are backed by Oxfam.
For the past four years, Oxfam has led an effort to build the capacity of local Salvadoran communities, municipalities, and aid groups for handling emergencies like earthquakes and floods. Multi-day seminars and hands-on disaster simulations have helped transform the desire to help into hard-core expertise.
“In some ways, it would be easier to bring in a team of Oxfam specialists to do the work in emergencies,” says Copen. “But it wouldn’t be nearly as effective.”
“In a disaster, communities are the first responders,” she explains. “Before local or international aid agencies or government officials arrive, the affected communities need to make decisions and act.” So, training community leaders in the basics of public health—organizing shelters, maintaining sanitary conditions, and making sure people are drinking clean water—has been a top priority.
Training a core team of water and sanitation specialists has been even more labor-intensive, but everyone has benefited.
“In this emergency, team members have been able to come up with accurate technical assessments and then implement the response,” she says.
Confident in the team’s ability to handle the work on the ground, Copen and colleague Enrique García, Oxfam’s regional humanitarian coordinator, are able to focus on coordination.
The result: an effective and smooth-running disaster response that draws energy from its own success. “The people we’ve trained are not sitting around waiting for someone to tell them what to do,” says Copen. “They know how to help their communities, and they are stoked.”
Now that the rains have eased and the sun has appeared, everyone in the shelters is eager to go home.
But the emergency doesn’t stop here. In the region known as the Bajo Lempa, the floods struck harder than anyone had seen in many years. Towns and villages are still deep in muck, their wells contaminated and their latrines flooded.
Now, Oxfam and the team are turning their attention to making home communities safe. The most pressing need, says Copen, is potable water.
There’s more to face: food shortages may threaten the recovery. Forty percent of the corn crop and 77 percent of the bean harvest have been lost to the floods, and prices are shooting up already. Oxfam is exploring ways to address the most urgent needs.
After days of ceaseless work, Copen sounds tired but hopeful.
“I’m always moved by the commitment of our partners, but this time I was also moved by the communities. They’re organizing themselves. They haven’t slept. They’re tending to each other’s needs. And they’re going back to their homes to start again.”
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]]>Concerns about human rights and the environment are constantly swirling around the community and mine.
The Marlin Mine now produces more than 300,000 ounces of gold a year.
Critics of the mine in Guatemala and international experts are calling on the government and Goldcorp to accept the precautionary measures issued by the IACHR and suspend operations at the mine. It's a risky stance for local people to take: Amnesty International has noted cases of beatings and death threats against members of the San Miguel Defense Front(known by its Spanish initials, FREDEMI). Community members also report shootings and attempted shootings against mine critics. Aniceto López, a coordinator who works for FREDEMI was beaten in February 2011, along with Miguel Ángel Bámaca, a farmer and public health promoter.
The insecurity is "the worst thing affecting our community now," says Bámaca, who was also shot at late at night in July 2010, just outside his home. Like many other FREDEMI members, he is not comfortable publicly identifying his attackers. He says those who wish him ill "know what we do, where we live, when people meet...they know everything," Bámaca says."Who will help us?" The government, the courts, the police, they are not helping."
Adding to concerns about the environment and security, the ethnic Maya Mam people living in the area consider industrial mining as a form of disrespect for their religion and culture, which worships nature and Mother Earth. "Our spirituality, our vision is that there is harmony between nature, people, and God, we are together and there is balance in our lives," says Maudilia López, an indigenous woman who works for the Catholic church in San Miguel Ixtahuacán. "This mining activity puts our cultural values in danger."
After the IACHR issued its precautionary measures urging the government to suspend operations at the Marlin Mine, the government initially agreed to do so, then later claimed it did not have enough evidence of environmental damage and human rights violations. Oxfam America has been collecting signatures on an electronic petition urging the government to suspend mining at the Marlin Mine and investigate the human rights violations and environmental problems linked to the mine.
]]>The agriculture ministry reported that there are now 1,070,384 farmers—about 70 percent of whom are women—applying the System of Rice Intensification, or SRI, on 185,065 hectares (457,110 acres) of their rice fields. The number of farmers using SRI practices in Vietnam has tripled since 2009.
SRI is a package of good agricultural techniques for hand-planted rice that helps farmers reduce their costs. And the innovative techniques are helping the poorest rice producers on the smallest rice paddy areas boost their rice yields: When compared to traditional rice growing techniques, SRI producers can increase rice production by as much as 500 kilos (more than 1,000 pounds) per hectare. (A hectare is about 2.5 acres.) This typically increases income by about $130 per hectare, enough money to cover food costs for a month for a family of four, or invest in five piglets to raise and sell.
“There is significant evidence that lives are changing at the village level,” said Le Minh, Oxfam Associate Country Director in Vietnam. “I give most of the credit to the collaboration amongst our farmers. When they are successful, they want to share their success with families and friends.”
SRI farmers generally use less seed, sometimes as much as 70 percent less. They do this by transplanting fewer rice seedlings, and spacing them farther apart. This reduces competition for nutrients and allows the rice plants to have more room to grow stronger roots, which makes them more resistant to pests and diseases.
Inspired by their own success, farmers like Le Ngoc Thach are committed to help others. Thach attended an SRI training and visited a few demonstration fields. He gave SRI a try in 2006 and was convinced that these growing techniques would improve the lives of farmers in his cooperative. He started to spread the word. Now 2,000 families, his entire grower cooperative in northern Vietnam, are part of a network of over a million farmers who employ SRI and earn extra income.
Vuong Hoang Kim, a cooperative member in Yen Bai province, has volunteered to teach other women farmers about using SRI. “We all are very happy to see our rice plants grow very quickly and we gain a lot of benefits from these simple techniques,” she said.
Oxfam has been working with several partner organizations to promote SRI to small-scale farmers as a means to help poor farmers in Vietnam. One partner is the Plant Protection Department in the Ministry of Rural Development, which has been training farmers in SRI techniques in northern provinces of Vietnam with support from Oxfam since 2007. SRI training is part of a larger effort to help build the ability and confidence of smallholder farmers to develop agricultural innovations as a way to earn more money. The program is especially important for women in rural areas, who normally depend on agriculture for income and food.
“It’s a great achievement for small farmers because they are the ones leading the SRI innovation,” said Ngo Tien Dung of the Agriculture Ministry’s Plant Protection Department. “We need to build momentum for SRI extension over the coming years. It’s a smart investment needed to lift people out of poverty and to boost the national economy.”
Vietnam is the second largest rice exporter and accounts for one fifth of global rice supply. In 2010 the country exported 6.6 million tons, worth about $2.8 billion. Oxfam’s collaboration with the Plant Protection Department is helping small-scale farmers, who are usually the poorest, to increase their share of this business. SRI farmers now represent about 10% of all rice growers in Vietnam.
]]>“I’m using this mandate,” Addo announces, like a seasoned politician, and starts ticking off her issues. Most of them are related to problems with water, funding for education, jobs for young people, and compensation for the damage and loss of land from a large gold mine established near Akatekyeso.
It’s a village of dirt paths, and cracked, crumbling, concrete structures. There is one well near the main road with a large group of women and children pumping water, filling buckets, and carrying them off.
“We had a hill over there,” Addo motions behind her home. “That was our water shed, but they blasted it and destroyed it. We had streams flowing out of it and there was no water scarcity. But it was all destroyed and now there is no water.” The mining company, AngloGold Ashanti, drilled two wells for the community, only one of which is currently functioning and now serves hundreds of people in the area.
To some, Addo may seem an unlikely leader: she’s a woman with little formal education. But she has the training and knowledge she needs to be effective, thanks to her work with the local human rights and environmental organization Wacam.
“Formerly, nobody consulted us,” Addo says of the mining company. “After we got training from Wacam, we understood our rights. Now they know if they want to work here they need to come and ask for our consent. Now they recognize we know our rights, and that is why they are respecting us.”
Addo is part of a growing group of village advocates in rural Ghana trained by Wacam that is bringing their concerns to companies and government bodies, and pushing for changes. Wacam has been building this network for 16 years, and it is now gathering momentum.
Addo is aware of her responsibilities to effect change, and knows she has to do it honestly. “I am always very concerned about the truth,” Addo says, walking down a path near her home. “Whatever I say, I investigate it, and double check to make sure I come out with the truth.”
Addo believes blasting rocks with explosives in nearby mine pits caused the cracks visible on so many of the buildings in Akatakyeso. She says the blasting near her home was quite violent: She was actually in her kitchen (a wood-frame shelter next to her home where she did all the cooking on an open fire) when it nearly collapsed on top of her and her family after one particularly large explosion. They just made it out from under its metal roof before the entire structure came down.
Even the best trained community representatives negotiating compensation from a mining company for blasting damage require hard, indisputable information and facts. Several hours to the north of Akatakyeso is a community called Dormaah Bypass, which worked with Wacam to close the information gap and get a commitment from another mining company, Newmont, which runs the Ahafo mine, to repair the community’s buildings.
Dormaah Bypass is just on the other side of the bypass road built for the excavation of Ahafo, less than a mile from the pit. Emmanuel Kuduah, 62, lives just off the bypass road, where he farms citrus fruit and leads a small evangelical church. “The main problem here is blasting,” he says, sitting in the shade of a tree outside his house. “The pit is so close, it is cracking our buildings, and in one case a building collapsed on someone and he died.”
A brief walk around Kuduah’s house, where he lives with his wife and eight children, showed more than a dozen cracked areas, many of which had been repaired. But some of the repairs were opening up again, and Kuduah says the continued blasting makes it look like some areas were never repaired.
Wacam’s trainers helped people from this community to hold meetings with Newmont to discuss the building damage but the company was reluctant to accept responsibility in all cases. The company did however offer to pay for an engineer to survey the buildings and make a recommendation.
Kuduah says Wacam warned villagers that an engineer hired and paid by Newmont might not be independent enough to make a fair analysis. Wacam recommended that the community members press Newmont to pay for the study, but to allow community members to pick the expert engineer. “Wacam helped us find an engineer. We held a meeting at the assembly hall to present the expert’s report, and that was when the company accepted responsibility for the cracks in the buildings and said they would repair them.”
Kuduah says this engineering study is just one of the ways Wacam has been able to help his community negotiate with Newmont. “They have consistently provided us with knowledge and ways to organize and lead our struggle, so we have the strategies and leadership we need. Whenever we have asked for ideas and knowledge, Wacam has helped us.”
]]>The main training is in Ghana’s Minerals and Mining Act, which accords citizen’s rights to fair, adequate, and prompt compensation for land lost to mines. Activists also learn how to monitor the negative environmental effects of mining, particularly pollution to water bodies by cyanide (used to separate gold from rocks), which is shockingly frequent in Ghana. “Wacam has carried out investigations in water bodies in mining communities,” says Hannah Owusu-Koranteng, while riding in a van from Ghana’s second city Kumasi to the capital Accra, just one of the scores of trips she makes every year to train local activists. “Out of the 400 water bodies we tested, 250 were polluted. We presented the report to the Environmental Protection Agency and they are doing an investigation. It also helped inform a recent assessment in which the EPA rated the mining companies, and all the mining companies in Ghana were scored poor or unsatisfactory.
“This has all emerged from the communities, where activists identify pollution sources, and we contract researchers to analyze the water bodies and come out with findings we present to the government.”
Informed communities now know what to do if they find dead fish in rivers and streams: collect and preserve samples to verify the presence of cyanide contamination, contact the Environmental Protection Agency, and negotiate compensation from the company responsible for the spill. Local activists are also trained how to communicate with the media, in cases where government and company responses to such accidents are slow or non-existent.
Oxfam also supports the legal aid organization the Center for Public Interest Law, (CEPIL), which assists communities pressing their grievances through the courts. CEPIL’s work has helped several communities get compensation for cyanide spills, including a $250,000 development fund from mining company Goldfields Ghana, agreed in an out-of-court settlement for the community of Abekoase in 2007. CEPIL is also helping plaintiffs in Dumasi press for compensation from Bogoso goldmines for a cyanide spill. This case has been in and out of court since 2004, and further delaying tactics by the defendant are trying the patience of community members.
It was in Dumasi where one of Wacam’s most energetic local activists emerged: Joanna Manu. Manu was one of the local farmers who learned about the cyanide spill in the nearby Aprepre Rriver in 2004, and went there immediately to collect dead fish and warn people not to touch or drink the water. She and her fellow activist Nii Anyetei pressed the case for compensation with the EPA and mining company.
Manu had also previously suffered the indignation of being arrested for farming her own lands, but successfully stood up in court and invoked the Minerals and Mining Act, pointing out to the judge that as she had received no compensation, the land did not belong to Bogoso . “I am farming that land still,” she told this writer in 2007.
In the meantime, Manu has pursued her studies, finishing high school in her mid-30s. She is now pursuing her ambition to become a member of Ghana’s parliament. She recently achieved a significant milestone on that road: she was elected to the District Assembly of the Western Region.
There’s a saying in the local Twi language in western Ghana, Adwem anu balofo tirmuI: knowledge is not only in the head of one person. “Wacam has taught me about the basic rights of people, their rights to own property, to information, to live as a human being. And that a leader has to listen to people, be humble before them, understand their issues, and that I have to have the courage, commitment, and confidence to represent them,” Manu says during a brief networking visit with other activists in the small city of Prestea, a gritty mining town near Dumasi.
For a community leader, especially a woman, to speak truth to power in Ghana, like many parts of Africa, is a challenge. Criticizing or challenging elders, or those in power, is risky – not only is it considered rude by many, it can lead to isolation. However in Ghana, there is a polite way to do this: one must seek permission to raise something publicly that might not be pleasant. This permission, called sebi, is a crucial way of working. “Wacam taught me how to do that,” Manu says.
In between villagers in her voting districts, Manu says she is setting her priorities for her work in the District Assembly. Chief among them is to ensure communities understand their rights in the face of industrial mining. “I know from my experience that when your land is taken from you, you will be jobless,” Manu says. “You will not get money to feed your family. I want the assembly to know about this so they will help people negotiate well, so they can get something for themselves.”
]]>Anwiam means “in the sand” in the local Twi language. Residents enter the village by passing over a set of railroad tracks separating it from a housing development built for the AngloGold Ashanti mining company staff, behind chain link and barbed wire fences. Anwiam has no electricity and little clean water. “If you compare the company residences with Anwiam, it is like apartheid,” says Hannah Owuso-Koranteng, who works at the human rights and environmental organization Wacam. “The rail line divides them.”
AngloGold Ashanti was blasting in nearby mine pit, and draining water, without any advance warning to the community. Amo says they used to blow a whistle just before blasting, signaling a sudden evacuation. Then, two years ago she and others from Anwiam started attending training sessions with Wacam. These problems, Amo says, were “a violation of our rights to live in a clean environment.” She says they learned that the company should consult them about a blasting schedule, and warn them about water outflows—and pay fair compensation for damages.
The training with Wacam was a real eye opener for Amo, who at first appears to be a very shy woman, concerned that she does not speak English well. But when she starts talking about the injustices she sees in her community, her face changes and she speaks rapidly and without much hesitation. “Now I can sit at the negotiation table and look the company representatives in the eye and tell them we think they should redress some of these issues, and that we should be compensated,” Amo says. “What they are doing is violating our rights, so they have to look at other ways of engaging us, so we can solve these things amicably.”
Stories of injustices like these, and local efforts to redress them, are becoming better known in Ghana thanks to a proliferation of grassroots activists trained by Wacam. Stories in the media abound: cyanide spills, homes damaged and destroyed by blasting, inadequate compensation, loss of farmlands and jobs and income, and involuntary relocation. “People are now questioning whether mining is a good development option for the country,” says Hannah Owusu-Koranteng. “And if we have to engage in mining, what are the methods we have to use?” She says questioning the role of mining in the economy used to be akin to treason, or a threat to national security. This started to change as Ghanaians have become more and more aware of the severe costs imposed by mining on local communities.
This has caused many to consider what mining is bringing to the country: Daniel Owusu-Koranteng points out that with such high prices for commodities like gold these days, mining is now bringing in about 40 percent of Ghana’s foreign exchange, more than exporting cocoa. However mining only contributes about six percent of Ghana’s GDP. “What accounts for this is high capital flight in the sector,” he says. The Minerals and Mining Act requires companies to pay between three and five percent of mineral revenue values, most pay three percent, a rate negotiated by some larger companies. Advocacy campaigns by Wacam and others are pushing this up to at least five percent.
The local activists trained by WACAM have played an important role in the national level debate about mining in Ghana. Each of them has had to take on new responsibilities and learn things about themselves in the process, as they work to improve their community and their country.
Philomena Addo, the subsistence farmer from Akatakyieso and recently elected village representative, is struggling to survive as she is taking on new leadership responsibilities. “We lost almost all our land to the mine. Now we have to go to other communities with land, and we are now share croppers,” she says outside her home. “There is just no land to cultivate here, the areas were all either destroyed or taken up by AngloGold for grazing cattle.”
Nevertheless, Addo says she has truth on her side, and is using her own personal transformation to seek a political solution to the problems in her community. “I used to be very timid,” she says “I would not discuss anything in public. Now I am more confident and I can speak at any level in public, at the community or national level.” She plans to push her agenda and serve her constituents: “It’s a privilege to win this confidence,” she says of her recent landslide victory at the polls.
]]>“My friends,” comes the voice from the radio, “take your chairs to sit down and have some discussion about cholera now on your favorite show, ‘Some information about cholera.’”
If it is hard to imagine a show about a deadly disease as your favorite, that may be because you don’t live in rural Haiti. Here, among the beautiful mountains and broad rivers, people live with a frightening reality: it’s easy to catch cholera, and reaching the nearest clinic may take more time than you have.
Without treatment, cholera can be fatal within hours. But in rural Nippes province, what serves as a road may be the bed of a river that after heavy rains becomes a torrent. Or a footpath over steep mountains, where the rocks are sometimes covered in mud so slick that only the most sure-footed can navigate them. Where swift access to medical care is out of the question, cholera prevention takes on special urgency.
“There are some localities where we have to walk three to four hours to reach people. We use horses to go there,” says Jean Bassette, the Oxfam public health officer who hosts the show. “We can’t travel to remote areas every week, but with the radio program we can reach them easily.”
“Ti koze sou kolera,” as the show is called in Creole, invites listeners to call in. The discussions cover whatever cholera issues people want to talk about but usually focus on prevention and emergency treatment.
“If we don’t have oral rehydration salts—or sugar and salt to prepare them—what can we do?” asks one caller.
Stephanie Lormil, an Oxfam public health promoter who sometimes joins the show, explains that coconut water can be a stopgap solution, hydrating the person well enough to make the trip to the hospital.
Sensitive topics like social stigma enter in, as well.
“Treat people who have cholera with respect,” advises Bassette. “Do not humiliate them. People who have the disease need to be able to tell that to the community, and the community needs to support them by preparing oral rehydration salts and helping them get to the hospital. If people with cholera keep the information to themselves, there is risk to the whole community.”
Feedback on the show has been overwhelmingly positive. Local leaders in communities throughout the broadcast area often call in with thanks and congratulations, and people on the street have kind words for the show.
“When we first heard about cholera, we were scared,” says Jose Mira of Petite Rivière de Nippes, who cited the radio show as one of Oxfam’s successful public health efforts. “We didn’t want to live next to people who had cholera. But Oxfam helped us understand the phenomenon of cholera and gave us training. After that, it became easier. We are not scared of cholera anymore, because we know how to protect ourselves.”
Read more about Oxfam's cholera program in rural Nippes.
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]]>It did not have to be this way.
About 190 miles east of Yabello in the Liben District of the Guji Zone, a group of people have managed to escape this horrible fate through a project that helped them create a new means of earning a living while maintaining their pastoralist way of life. A small-scale irrigation initiative, supported by Oxfam America and its partners, has allowed the dream of some of the people of Melka Guba and to become a reality: They are now growing enough food to ensure their families can eat.
Here, in late August, things look much different from the surrounding areas. Smiles brighten the faces of men, women and children, and healthy cattle graze on the dried corn stalks and leaves strewn across the fields from the recent harvest.
In response to a 2008 drought that hit this region hard, Oxfam America worked with a local partner and the regional government on an emergency and recovery project that helped link disaster relief to longer-term development. The first phase focused on saving lives and livelihoods. This was followed by steps that helped villagers analyze their situation and reorganize themselves with a goal of building their assets and strengthening their means of making a living. That is when the people of Melka Guba decided to diversify their livelihoods: In the face of a changing climate they determined to try farming with the help of the new small-scale irrigation network along the nearby Dawa River.
In spite of the fact that this herding community had little prior experience with irrigation, the 64 hectares of irrigated land have now become a life line for more than 201 households in the area.
Mero Abdo, a 30-year-old mother of three, said, “I thank the day I joined this irrigation project. We see how others are suffering everywhere, but my children go to sleep full. I feel really happy I can even help others who are not part of the irrigation community and are having a problem feeding their children.”
Revered by her community, Abdo is a strong woman and one of the first 101 women selected to participate in the irrigation project.
“I was excited from the beginning since I used to hear about irrigation on the radio and I knew it would change our lives,” she said. Abdo not only serves as a member of the irrigation management committee as well as its treasurer, but she is one of the few women to take on all farming activity on her own.
For most of the participants, this third harvest was their best yet. Abdo managed to produce 14 quintals of corn on a quarter hectare of land (about .6 acres), more than from either of the previous two harvests.
“I used the line-sowing technique this year and produced more,” she said. “I plan to use seven quintals to feed my family and sell the rest to pay for my children’s school, buy cattle, or start a small trading business.”
Abdub Bora, a 40-year-old farmer and father of eight, proudly showed us his traditional storage silo filled to the brim with corn from his last harvest.
“This time I produced 15 quintals of corn on my quarter hectare of land,” said Bora. He told us he is planning to use eight quintals and sell the remaining seven quintals to meet the other needs of his family. “I have eight children and four are still in school. I will use the money to buy books and use some of it in case my family gets sick,” added Bora.
Bora’s wife lives in Melka Guba, about 10.5 miles from the irrigation site, where their children can attend school.
“We don’t mind the separation. The main thing is to have enough to eat and allow our children to finish school,” said Bora. “My wife brings me food I can easily cook here and she even comes and works with me during the busiest farming season.”
The reach of this irrigation project spans further than the community itself. Thanks to the river-fed harvest, the households participating in this project are one of the few sources of corn seed in the Liben District.
When the project started, each of the 201 households were allotted a quarter hectare of irrigable land in accordance with government regulations. But not everyone was convinced the irrigation would work and some abandoned their plots. To avoid wasting water, the irrigation management committee offered those plots to neighboring farmers who would be capable of using them.
Hussein Gufar, a 44-year-old father of six, was one of the lucky ones who received one of the adjacent parcels. During the most recent harvest, he produced 25 quintals of corn on a half hectare of land (about 1.2 acres).
“We said this could change our fate,” said Gufar, who is a member of a task force that ensures the daily operation of the irrigation system. “We were not sure at first but now we have more confidence and plan to work even harder.” A pile of corn sacks in the middle of his field is proof of his commitment and hard work.
Beyond the families the project has helped, it has also blessed the community’s most valuable asset—the cattle, which now feed on the stalks and leaves left after the harvest.
“We are not only able to feed our animals but we sell the rest of the maize residue to the surrounding community for additional income,” added Gufar. The price of that fodder has increased four times in one year which reflects the desperate situation most of the surrounding community is in.
The irrigation effort is not without challenges and does not address all of the community’s needs. Community members are aware they will have to work together to reap the maximum benefit of this investment. Some of the concerns they have expressed include the high cost of transportation, which limits farmers to growing only longer-lasting produce, such as onions; the rising cost of generator fuel; and minimal support from the government in terms of providing training and helping connect farmers with markets.
“We are now only producing onions and tomatoes for home consumption. If we could reach the right market and access reasonable transportation, we could earn more money and increase our income,” said Gufar.
During the last harvest, the irrigation participants contributed 10,700 birr ($629) of which 10,000 ($588) was used for generator fuel and to pay for the seeds some had borrowed.
Many efforts are underway to improve the quality of life in the area. Among other things, this project fostered the construction of a three-room school that is managed by the pastoralist commission. In addition, a health post is also being planned for the site.
Melka Guba farmers are eager to start the next planting season. To use the irrigation system efficiently, all their plots need to be ready for sowing at the same time—so water isn’t wasted. Farmers are now working on that coordination.
And along with the irrigation has come something else: peace of mind. Project participants can now have access to food all year round. They will no longer suffer the harsh consequences of drought nor be dependent on others to feed their families.
]]>In one case, at least 22,500 people in Uganda lost their homes and land to make way for a British timber company, the New Forests Company (NFC). Villagers told Oxfam that some evictions resulted in physical violence, and destruction of property, crops and livestock. Many have been left destitute, without enough food or money to send their children to school. They have received no compensation or alternative land. NFC denies that it was responsible for any evictions.
What’s more, NFC is supported by investment from international institutions which claim to uphold high social and environmental standards, including the World Bank and the European Investment Bank. In addition, HSBC, which prides itself as a responsible bank, owns 20 percent of NFC and has one of six seats on the NFC Board.
Preliminary research indicates that as many as 227 million hectares have been sold, leased or licensed in large-scale land deals since 2001, mostly by international investors. This modern-day land rush follows a drive to produce food for people overseas, meet damaging biofuels targets or speculate on land to make an easy profit.
However, many of the deals are in fact ‘land grabs’ where the rights and needs of the people living on the land are ignored. Global safeguards exist to protect poor people, but they are being flouted in the scramble for more land. And it’s women—who produce up to 80 per cent of food in some poor countries—who are most vulnerable.
Oxfam is calling for remedies to the Ugandan mass eviction and the other large scale land grabs included in the report. Investors, governments and international organizations must also put a stop to land grabbing by fixing the current policies, regulations and business practices, which frequently fail to ensure that local people are consulted and treated fairly during negotiations. They should also ensure that all relevant international standards are respected including the World Bank's International Finance Corporation Performance Standards and the Forest Stewardship Council's standards.
The US government should take a leadership role in curbing this growing phenomenon working closely with like-minded governments at the UN's Committee on Food Security in Rome next month to push forward strong and broadly supported Voluntary Guidelines on land tenure. Finally businesses and policy-makers should start to explore measures that the US government and industry can take to curb the worst abuses by US investors and US listed companies in affected countries, including measures to increase transparency around land deals.
Get the latest updates on the Uganda case and find out how you can show your support—join Oxfam's GROW campaign today.
Help shine a spotlight on the worrying practice of land grabs. Read Oxfam's new land grabs report and share it with friends.
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]]>While witnessing the ravages of rain in the southern Sindh province, I stopped at a roadside relief camp in the Nandu area of Badin district. A middle-aged man beckoned me to come and meet a family that had taken shelter in a brick shed. The shed is meant for passengers traveling along the road to use for rest. There was a curtain - a patchwork of nylon on the door - and inside a woman sitting hunched on the floor, baking bread. I was soon to find out that her name was Lal Khatoon.
Lal Khatoon comes from Shadi Lal in Badin – the first and worst-affected district in the recent rains, which has experienced continuous rains since the second week of August….She gave birth to her seventh child during the rains. She was lucky not to have faced any complications during childbirth, as there was no trained health worker present at the time of her delivery.
But soon, she was faced with another challenge: when her baby girl was four days old, the roof of her one-room house [collapsed]. Lal Khatoon had to leave on foot and without any belongings….
Lal Khatoon and her husband work as sharecroppers. After working the land for a year, her family gets to keep 25% of the total crop – which is barely enough to sustain them. There is nothing left over once she’s seen to the needs of her family, so she has no savings.
[After leaving her home,] Lal Khatoon and other members of her clan walked for miles carrying her newborn baby, Abida (”worshiper of God“), and three younger children until a military vehicle picked them up and took them to a government camp in Union Council Nando, where she received a 10kg bag of flour from the government - an amount she is told will be delivered every ten days.
“We manage by skipping meals," she says, "and by eating a quarter or sometimes, if we’re lucky, a half a piece of bread.” During the rains, they went without food for ten days, as the stock they had only lasted for a week.
Lal Khatoon lives in constant fear: how will she manage to care for her child, who is already sick with skin rashes and diarrhea? How will she build back her house? The land she worked is underwater, and it will take at least six months for it to be cultivable again….
Oxfam is rushing aid to the flood-affected areas of Pakistan, supporting search-and-rescue operations and delivering clean water to areas hit hard by the disaster. We aim to reach 850,000 people with clean water and sanitation and help many of those who have been displaced gain access to food and the means to earn a living.
Donate now to support relief and recovery efforts in Pakistan.
As drought and food crisis spread throughout East Africa, families like Loliyak’s are feeling the effects of hunger. With support from Oxfam, and funding from the Office for Foreign Disaster Assistance, an emergency cash transfer program aims to help the hard-hit population of northern Kenya’s Turkana region. More than 5,500 families in the program will receive a payment of 3,000ksh, about $31, every month for the next six months. Because the aid comes in the form of cash, rather than food or other goods, people can choose to buy what they need most; the local economy benefits; and herders who’ve lost everything can seek new ways of earning a living.
For Loliyak, the new income means an opportunity to choose the most nutritious foods for her children. "If you have cash, then you can buy things [you] don't have in the house, like cabbage or beans. But with food aid, we can only eat maize for the whole month,” she explained.
Another participant, Abenyo, 25, said she hopes to use her payments to buy a goat—a first step toward replenishing her family’s assets. With most of their livestock lost to the drought, and food prices escalating out of reach, she and her three children have turned to foraging to survive.
Ekimat Maraha, whose family also lost all of their animals, said they have been living on wild fruit and gifts of food begged from their neighbors. Balancing her child on her lap, she signed the official paperwork with an indelible blue fingerprint to confirm receipt of her first cash payment. “With the money, I’ll buy food for my household and a roof for my home,” she said. “I hope one day I’ll return to my former glory.”
Also participating in the program are 215 local shop owners, who not only receive cash themselves but work with Oxfam to distribute payments in their communities. In turn, the families buy food and other staples from the merchants’ shops, boosting their business during a time of hardship.
“Since the drought, I’ve been unable to provide customers with the things they need,” said Samuel, one of five participating shop owners in Loruth. “Thanks to Oxfam’s cash grant, I was able to purchase items that I couldn’t afford before, like wheat, maize, flour, and vegetables. As long as there will be a good circulation of cash, then I can go and buy new items.”
Jacinta opened her store in Nachukui in 1994, but said that lately she has struggled with rising food costs. A bag of flour, for example, costs her 40 percent more than it did before the drought. “A few days ago the shelves were bare, but now they've been restocked,” she said.
Many shopkeepers, like Abullah Mohammed and his wife Asinyen, let the neediest local families buy food on credit to tide them over. Thanks to the cash transfer program, many of those customers have now been able to repay their debts. “We got 1000ksh (about $10) in one day. We usually only make 300ksh ($3) per day,” said Asinyen. “With the extra money I make, I hope that I’ll be able to send my son to university.”
Many of Turkana’s herders have been devastated by the loss of their animals, and are left seeking new ways to provide for their families. “The pride that I used to have with my livestock is no longer there,” said one herder, Ebe. “I had lost hope with life, but because of this cash, hope is coming back. I’d like to start a petty trade so that I can sustain my family.”
Sabina Loliyak, the mother who lost half of her livestock, said she wants to use her future cash payments to make the transition from herder to small business owner. “Since the drought has come, everything has changed,” she said. “People who used to be pastoralists are now moving to the trading centers like Kaikor. There are [fewer] people in the mountains now.”
Faced with these changes, she is determined to adapt. “If we can start a business, then our life will change automatically,” she said. “Cash will help us to start a new life."
Oxfam aims to reach more than 3 million people throughout East Africa with a variety of support including food aid, clean water, and veterinary care for animals. We are also campaigning to change the root causes of this crisis. Find out how you can help saves lives in East Africa.
Reporting and photos by Caroline Berger; edited by Anna Kramer.
]]>Getting your goods to market; selling them for a fair price; paying for your education. These may not seem like unrealistic goals. But for Nunoncca and the Figueroas, they won’t be easy to achieve. As residents of the remote Andean village of Chiluyo—population 50, and more than 15,000 feet above sea level—they face the same challenges now affecting many of Peru’s rural people. Though locally led solutions can help, unpredictable prices, a declining investment in agriculture, and changes in the climate are making life for these herders and farmers more uncertain than ever.
Every Monday, Antonia Figueroa walks five hours to the nearest market, in Suykutambo, where she sells her alpaca wool, fiber, and chuño (a freeze-dried potato product dating back to the time of the Inca Empire). Last time, she sold 20 soles, or $7, worth of goods, and immediately spent the money on cooking oil, sugar, rice, and noodles for her family—all the while hoping the price of staples wouldn’t increase. “We are continually producing less and selling less, feeding our children less, and therefore our children’s health suffers,” said Figueroa.
Along with farming, most residents of Chiluyo and other highland communities rely on alpaca breeding as their main source of income. Because the area is so remote--making it difficult for people to reach markets where they can sell their products--it remains one of Peru's poorest regions. In the broader Suykutambo district, the average per capita income is just 127 soles, or $46, a month.
As small-scale producers like Figueroa and Nunoncca struggle to eke out a living, the Peruvian government has decreased its support for their efforts. For example, a recent study conducted for Oxfam by analyst Epifano Baca found that investments in small-scale agriculture made up just 2.6 percent of Peru’s national budget in 2010, down from 3.2 percent the year before.
“Why is there a lack of support for a sector of the economy that produces most of the food consumed in Peruvian cities?” asked Baca. “[Small-scale producers] sustain millions of families, especially those living in extreme poverty.”
In addition to economic challenges, residents of Chiluyo say weather patterns are changing in ways they have never experienced before. Periods of drought and extreme heat and cold affect not only people but the livestock they depend on for survival. “It doesn’t rain like it used to. We don’t have water for our pastures, [so] our animals die,” said Figueroa.
Oxfam’s local partner the Intermediate Technology Development Group (ITDG) gathered testimonies from rural people throughout Espinar province, where Chiluyo is located. They described water scarcity, harsher frosts (some zones have recorded temperatures as low as 3 degrees Fahrenheit), and increases in solar radiation which have destroyed agriculture and grazing lands, resulting in higher livestock mortality rates.
The Peruvian government’s response to climate change includes efforts designed to reach the maximum number of people, like increasing hydroelectric power supply to cities and building irrigation projects along the coast. But in far-flung villages in the Andean and Amazon regions, thousands of residents—mostly indigenous people—are being left behind.
Responding to growing concerns about drought, ITDG looked for ways to help communities manage water more efficiently, using methods like reservoirs, channels, and spray irrigation systems. To date, ITDG has built 20 reservoirs in Espinar at a cost of $1500 to $1800 each, benefiting a total of 40 to 60 families.
“While the focus is on water resource management, this project is part of a broader strategy that also introduces forage grasses resistant to weather conditions,” said Lorena del Carpio, Oxfam climate change specialist.
ITDG also worked with small-scale producers to make sure they had a voice in their local governments. Throughout Espinar, herders and farmers are now involved in developing community budgets that take their needs into account. Some municipalities have committed to allocating more than 50 percent of next year’s budget to pressing issues like water management and combating climate change.
With new President Ollanta Humala taking office this month, the challenge now is to elevate these voices to the national level. Figueroa, for one, doesn’t hesitate to identify what she’d like to see from her country’s leaders—solutions to help her increase her productivity, access to markets, and urgent support in the face of climate change.
But she’s also clear that, like many of Peru’s forgotten farmers, the hardworking residents of Chiluyo are not looking for a handout.
“We don’t want them to give us anything,” she said. “We want to produce.”
]]>One of those children is Mohamed, who was less than a year old and terribly thin when his mother brought him to the center.
"I came here after my son, Mohamed, became very sick about two months ago," said Fadumo, a 30-year-old mother of five in Mogadishu. He had been suffering from severe diarrhea, and though it had stopped, it had sapped him of weight and energy.
Crippling drought in Somalia has made clean water increasingly scarce and has led to a spike in children with severe diarrhea and malnutrition being admitted to local hospitals. Coupled with food shortages and limited healthcare, the consequences have become heartbreaking for families: one of every six children in Somalia dies before reaching the age of 5.
Working with a Somali organization—SAACID—and in partnership with other agencies, Oxfam started the community care program in September 2009, to help address some of these critical needs in Mogadishu. The program aims to treat acutely malnourished children, as well as pregnant and lactating mothers, and to ensure that they do not fall back into nutritional crisis.
Children with the most severe malnourishment are provided with at least two months of care in an out-patient program where they receive therapeutic food. Following that, children continue for an additional two months in a supplementary feeding program to ensure they don’t slip back into the danger zone.
For children with less severe cases, the program offers them supplementary feeding and provides basic health care, along with measles vaccinations on a case-by-case basis.
The community-based program includes 240 outreach workers and 40 team leaders who steer families to the treatment sites as well as follow up with cases and deliver key health messages across the city on a daily basis.
It was one of the outreach workers who first recognized the severity of Mohamed’s condition—and told Fadumo about the therapeutic care program.
“When he was admitted to the program he was very thin and I thought that he would never return to his standard weight because he had stopped eating and drinking,” said Fadumo, adding that at two months he stopped breastfeeding. “Since that time, he was sick and he never had good health for even one day.”
But all of that changed when Mohamed started treatment at the center.
“After he began taking the special biscuits, he almost immediately began to eat and drink water and milk again,” Fadumo said. Until she learned about the program, Fadumo had been unable to seek treatment for her son because her family had no money.
“My husband is currently unemployed,” she said. “Our life now depends on what my husband’s brothers give us. In fact, it is not enough for us, but it is our only support now.”
But a bright spot is Mohamed’s progress.
Previously thin and listless, Mohamed began putting on weight and becoming more active. His smile even came back.
“This health center is clearly providing life-saving care, and there is strong support in our neighborhood for it,” Fadumo said. “We hope SAACID can continue supporting the sick, malnourished children.”
When Oxfam media officer Irina Fuhrmann traveled to Turkana earlier this month, she found herding communities under what she described as “a virtual state of siege.” But Fuhrmann also discovered something unexpected. Many people who had been affected by the region’s last drought were now weathering the current crisis, thanks to solutions designed to fight poverty and build resilience over the long term. Where local ingenuity and determination are paired with this kind of long-term investment, there is real hope—even reason to believe that the cycle of drought can be broken.
More than ten years ago, Alice Atanbo joined one of Oxfam’s cash-for-work programs in Turkana.
“It all began when I decided to invest a small amount, which Oxfam had given me when I participated in a cash-for-work project, to buy products like milk, flour, and sugar. As soon as people found out they could buy their basic food supplies in my shop, they started coming from all around. And over time, I’ve been able to go back and ask for more credit and increase my supplies,” Atanbo said.
Atanbo’s store now supplies her entire community, Milima Tatu, with essential goods. Since her husband’s livestock died from the drought, she and her eight children have been able to live on the income generated from her shop.
Meanwhile, Atanbo is working with Oxfam to distribute emergency food aid in her community. “I receive food for free distribution, and the neediest families come to pick it up at my shop,” she said. “Today, the food has arrived from the distribution center, and the people are already waiting impatiently, with their food vouchers ready.”
It’s unusual to find green leaves in the dry landscape of Turkana, but in the village of Kaaleng, several family gardens are beginning to thrive. Supplied with water by an Oxfam-installed solar-powered energy pump, the village maintains small patches of fertile soil even in this time of drought.
Several residents, such as Benson Kore, have begun to use their plots to grow vegetables for food. Corn, tomatoes, onions, and other plants thrive on a few square meters of soil that Kore cultivates with great care. Kore’s children and his sister’s children help him in the garden—the family has pulled together, he said, to compensate for the loss of the livestock on which they once relied for food and income. Now, the waste materials from his vegetable garden provide food for Kore’s five remaining goats.
Oxfam developed the Akadeli school for herdsmen as pilot project: a way for the herders of Turkana to regroup and support one another after a previous drought devastated their livestock. At their meetings, the herdsmen in the school share their knowledge and their experiences, which range from techniques for treating illnesses to making decisions about the best time to sell livestock. Given the seriousness of the current crisis, the group works to disseminate this information to their fellow herdsmen.
With the help of a system of community microcredit, the school has also become a way for herders who have lost all of their animals to try to find new ways to earn a living. One of these, supported by Oxfam, is the development of fishing in Lake Turkana. Thanks to these fish, which they dry and sell, the herdsmen have found new sources of income, and have also diversified the nutrients in their own diets at a time when good food is scarce.
Oxfam aims to reach 3 million people in the East Africa region with a variety of support including food aid, clean water, and veterinary care for animals. We are also campaigning to change the root causes of this crisis. Find out how you can support our efforts.
Field reporting for this story by Irina Fuhrmann; written by Anna Kramer.