Trees Matter!

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ALTHOUGH Honduras makes a minimal contribution towards climate change, our poor communities are being impoverished by it, complained a Honduran Catholic priest. Fr. José Andrés Tamayo may be short in height, but he is a big man when it comes to campaigning against environmental destruction which, in his view, in contributing to global warming. He was in the Scottish city of Edinburgh on July 5, one of eight speakers from countries of the South, pointing out that making poverty history - a reference to an anti-poverty campaign which lobbied leaders of the world's richest countries meeting in Edinburgh - cannot happen if climate change is ignored. There was a gasp around the audience of around 250 in the city's Dynamic Earth Centre as he told them his efforts to protect the environment and livelihoods in Honduras have meant that there is a bounty of $40,000 on his head!

Rampant deforestation

Average temperatures in the Southern region of Honduras have increased by between 1.5 and 2.00 degrees over recent decades, and areas which had a mild climate have now become desertified with streams drying up. Fr. Tamayo is the pioneering leader of the Environmental Movement of Olancho, a coalition of small-scale farmers and community leaders calling for a ten-year moratorium on logging. Loggers mow down a staggering 267,000 acres each year - the equivalent in size to about 109,000 football pitches. In the state of Olancho, where Fr. Tamayo is parish priest, unregulated logging has destroyed 64 percent of the region's 12 million acres of forest, and the resulting erosion has dried up much of the region's water supply, which is having a devastating effect on small-scale farmers' livelihoods. Furthermore, the region's rich and fragile ecosystem - home to a dazzling array of more than 500 species of birds, rare species of rainforest, endangered plants and animals - is being destroyed. Twenty-five percent of the greenhouse gas emissions from Honduras are from the burning of rainforests. Cardinal Oscar Roderiguez of Honduras is one of those who has joined his annual marches for life to protect the rainforests and sustainable livelihoods.
During the Edinburgh meeting, organised by a coalition of environment, development and Church groups - including the Catholic Institute for International Relations, CAFOD and Columban Fathers Faith and Justice - G8 leaders meeting the following day in Scotland were urged to take immediate action to reduce carbon emissions and tackle climate change. Fr. Andres specifically asked companies in G8 countries to buy only certified wood, and stop supporting state corruption in order to get access to timber. He also urged listeners to write to the Honduran president, Ricardo Maduro, asking him to act to stop the rampant deforestation in Olancho. Express your concern at the harassment and intimidation that the communities of Olancho have faced, he told them and urge him to protect the lives and security of environmental activists. He was also worried about the forthcoming Central America Free Trade Agreement (CAFTA) which will open up the forests even more to exploitation. We have a monster looming on the horizon he complained. Fr. Tamayo's concerns for his safety and that of others is not without cause. Several of his colleagues have been murdered in recent years.

Crop failure in Africa

At the same meeting, Anglican archbishop Donald Mtelemela, from Tanzania, told the audience that drought in his country equals failed crops. In Tanzania, droughts that would happen once a decade now come every four or five years. In Africa, where small-scale, and often un-irrigated, farms are the dominant form of agriculture and provide employment for 70 percent of the people, the impact of lack of rainfall is easy to see. To be without rain is like being denied oxygen, he said, adding that people who spend their days walking miles for food and water can do no other work; and that people who cannot wash their eyes with clean water when the wells dry up are more likely to develop glaucoma. There is a rise in the numbers of children under five dying from malnutrition. The West should accept that there is a problem, not just in Africa, but in the world he said. Today the problem is with Africa, but tomorrow it could be with Europe.
Rebecca Musyoka, a speaker on behalf of small farmers in Kenya, argued that excessive wet seasons in parts of the country are making it difficult to collect firewood. She suggested that what is needed are micro-hydro schemes. But this will not be the same everywhere. In drought-hit parts of Tanzania, explained Archbishop Mtelemela, a reliance on hydro-electric schemes means the people are more vulnerable as electricity supplies falter. Dealing with climate change - by both curbing it and coping with it - is vital. Making poverty history without an effort to curb climate change is just futile - the two are inseparable, said the Archbishop.

Role of oil companies

Nnimmo Bassey, a human rights activist from Nigeria, described the activity of trans-national oil companies active in his country as very destructive. He focussed on the flaring of gas, a by-product of oil production, which causes fires to burn near the homes and fields of the Ogoni people. Millions of dollars of gas is wasted annually in Nigeria, and greenhouse gases and toxic elements are released into the air, he said, and what is worse, they're right in the middle of communities where people live. The Shell oil company was singled out for most criticism. Shell's flaring must be stopped if the people of the Southern Delta region are to have a safe future, and he expressed concern that as sea levels rise with global warming, people living in the low lying coastal regions of Nigeria will be hit hard.
Bassey called on the G8 governments to promote true democracy in the South. He felt that with improved democratic processes the Nigerian communities in the South would be able to get the oil trans-nationals out of the region. He invited the audience to visit Nigeria, and see what they have done to our country. He also suggested that climate change results from the way of life that is prevailing today in G8 countries whereby they rely heavily on oil to maintain their current standard of living.

Flooding in Asia

Samrat Sengupta, of World Wildlife Fund India, concentrated on the consequence of too much water, where rising sea levels off India's east coast are submerging islands in the Sundarbans, a mangrove area which is home to four million people, and turning the drinking water salty. In India, the retreat and melting of Himalayan glaciers, such as the Gangroti, are creating glacial lakes that increase the chances of flash flooding downstream in the monsoon season. Tens of millions of people in Pakistan, India, Thailand and China depend on rivers that rise in the melt waters of the Himalayas for water to grow food and meet their personal needs. Melting glaciers threaten their future.
Communities in the worst affected areas are responding with reforestation and seeking alternative livelihoods. They are also urging international action - that greenhouse gas emissions worldwide be reduced to tackle the global warming which is already affecting their lives.

Climate change is no accident

After the speakers from the South shared their experiences, the former President of Ireland and former UN high commissioner for human rights, Mary Robinson, told the meeting that the G8 leaders must take the issue of climate change seriously. I have become increasingly aware that global warming is not happening by accident, she said. The impact on poor countries has turned climate change into a moral issue, especially with the prospect of growing numbers of climate refugees, and even some states disappearing altogether as sea level rises, she added. The impact of climate change immediately affects human rights - the right to food, the right to safe water and education, and she endorsed calls for the industrialised countries who are responsible for most greenhouse gas emissions to take action now to avert even worse impacts on poor countries. She joined calls for a new model of development in which strategies to increase human resilience in the face of climate change and the stability of ecosystems are central.

G8 response

Unfortunately, the G8 Summit went on to deliver small initiatives on Aid and Debt for the poor countries, but nothing of real importance on the vitally important question of human-induced climate change. The summit failed to mandate the urgent action that is needed to stop climate change mainly because of the obstinacy of President George W. Bush of the US. Within months of being elected president he withdrew the US from the Kyoto Protocol, the international climate change treaty, ostensibly because of its negative impact on the US economy. Also, President Bush has close links with large petrochemical corporations. Pulling out of the Kyoto process has had a huge impact on its effectiveness because the US is responsible for 25 percent of greenhouse gases even though only 5 percent of the world's population lives in the US.
Just one month before the G8 Summit, Philip Cooney, an oil lobbyist, edited the Bush administration's official policy papers on climate change to play down the link between greenhouse gases and global warming. This despite the call by the US National Academy of Sciences that the US needs to take immediate steps to reduce greenhouse gas emissions.
The Gleneagles Summit recognised that climate change is serious enough for action to be taken to stop the increase in greenhouse gases, but no targets were set because of a potential veto from President Bush. However, countries were encouraged to share technologies that are more energy efficient and do not depend of fossil fuel. British Prime Minister Blair indicated that he would begin talks with China, India and other countries in the South who are destined to be large energy consumers of the future to sign up to a post-Kyoto agreement on climate change.

AFRICA WORST HIT
A report released in June 2004 and titled Africa: Up in Smoke, released by a coalition of 21 UK development and environment agencies and Church groups, found that the effects of climate change were being felt the most in Africa. This is because 70 percent of the population depends on subsistence farming. The report recommended that international funds be released to prepare communities in Africa to cope with the effects of climate change, such as droughts and floods. Today, for every $1 which is spent on preparing for disaster, a further $7 is saved in the cost of clean-up operations. But the report said that such preparation is being seriously under-funded, leaving a huge disaster-relief bill to be paid. Rich nations were urged to cut their greenhouse gas emissions, and promote development that takes account of poor communities' increasing vulnerability to climate change.