NAIRIBI, Kenya (PAPACC News) - Many African smallholder farmers and farm communities experience low crop and animal yields but are unaware that this is partly as a result of climate change. In countries like Ghana, many are not aware of what to do to remedy the situation of erratic rainfall, drought and other unfavorable weather conditions. Agriculture across the continent needs to undergo a significant transformation to meet the multiple challenges of climate change, food insecurity, malnutrition, poverty and environmental degradation. A proposed means of achieving such improvements is increased use of a climate-smart agriculture (CSA) approach which emphasizes the use of farming techniques that: increase yields, reduce vulnerability to climate change, and reduce greenhouse gas emissions. Mrs Estherine Fotabong, the NEPAD Agency’s Director of Programme, says the ability of farmers to apply new technologies and innovations is an important determinant of CSA adoption. “Transformative adaptation needs to not only be at larger scale with new innovations, bold enough to take political steps that may not be easy or quick but also transformative adaptation needs to be integrated fully into the big agriculture questions that will really transform Africa’s agriculture,” she said. The decision of African Union to set up an African Climate Smart Agriculture Coordination Platform is a means to pursue the vision to have at least 25 million farm households more practicing Climate Smart Agriculture by 2025. The 2nd Africa CSA Alliance Forum holding in Nairobi, Kenya, is focused on addressing major hindrances limiting the adoption of climate-smart agricultural (CSA) practices among smallholder farmers. Under the theme “From Agreement to Action: Implementing African INDCs for Growth and Resilience in Agriculture”, the Forum is looking at the INDCs transitioning to Nationally Determined Contributions (NDCs) with key implications for Africa’s development, especially agriculture. The Intended Nationally Determined Contributions (INDCs) represent country-level programmes for climate action presented to the UNFCCC ahead of the COP21 climate talks in December 2015, which produced the historic Paris Agreement on climate change. Dr Abebe Haile Gabriel, FAO Deputy Regional Representative for Africa, has maintained that countries need support in their INDCs, through which the plight of climate smart agriculture came to light. The plight of smallholder farmers was also brought to the fore with a call to promote climate smart agriculture success stories and award them opportunities to sustainably adopt climate smart practices. Mrs Fotabong stressed that knowledge-sharing is key in agriculture and rural transformation, through which indigenous knowledge should not be ignored. “Communities should be fully capacitated in the various areas of crop management, community mobilisation and empowerment, disaster preparedness and have access to robust technologies and information such as new crop varieties that are drought and disease tolerant,” she emphasized. This she said should be the collective effort of government, private sector, NGOs, civil society and donors to ensure communities have greater ability to cope and adapt to climate change and extreme weather events and thus achieve rural livelihoods and food security. Climate Change can no longer be treated as just an environmental…

SIAYA, Kenya (PAMACC News) – When an American investor arrived in Siaya County in 2003 with a promise of transforming thousands of hectares that form the Yala Swamp into an agricultural and fish production potential, Mary Abiero, a mother of five children from Yiro village knew that a new brighter day had come. But today, the 63 years old widow is one of the 280 women camping at the foot of Mt. Kilimanjaro in Arusha, Tanzania, representing over one million women in Africa who have been oppressed, and denied the right to own property, in particular land. 38 of the women will climb the mountain to the top as a symbol of elevating women voices to the highest physical location in Africa.When he started his investment, the American farmer who had already acquired the entire Yala Swamp from the government decided to increase the portion from the original 3,700 hectares to 6,900 hectares so as to have enough reservoir of water for irrigated rice farming. And to do so, he offered to buy land from all the neighbouring households at a predetermined price, which some farmers accepted, but others including Abiero rejected. But despite the objections, he went ahead to release water, which covered all the demarcated area including Abiero’s 10 acre (4 ha) piece, submerging houses, thus driving everybody from their private properties regardless whether they sold it or not.Today, despite a court ruling that was issued in favour of the residents, Abiero is among hundreds of residents who watch from afar as someone mint profits from what belongs to them.“We have tried all we can, we have visited administration offices time and again, but nobody seems to be interested in our plight,” said Abiero. “It is in this regard, despite my age, I have volunteered to follow other women and shout from the top of Mt. Kilimanjaro for the world to listen,” she said.In another scenario in Malindi, along Kenya’s coastal line in Kilifi County, the story is no different. In 2001 for example, Chadi Charo Mwaringa, also a widow from Kanagoni Gundasaga village arrived home one day to a devastating reality. Her house, where she had been living with her late husband and children for decades had been pulled down by a salt mining company, which had allegedly bought the place.“I got married here 40 years ago, and you can be sure very few local resident own land title deeds,” said the 67 mother of three grown up children. Along the entire coastal strip covering hundreds of thousands hectares of land, people have always lived a communal lifestyle for ages. The land has always belonged to the community, and not to particular individuals.As a result, private developers have taken advantage to process title deeds for chunks of land, and used the legal document to forcefully evict residents from their ancestral homes.“Lack of legal documents for land ownership is now the biggest problem in this area,” said Katana Fondo Biria, former area councilor who has not been able…

With less than a month before the annual climate change conference slated for Morocco, African Climate Experts are expected to meet in Addis Ababa Ethiopia from 18-20 October, to brainstorm what next for Africa after the Paris Agreement. Convened under the auspices of the Climate for Development in Africa (ClimDev-Africa) Programme, the Sixth Conference on Climate Change and Development in Africa (CCDA–VI), is set to discuss, in the African context, nuances, challenges and opportunities of implementing the Paris Agreement. According to James Murombedzi, Officer –in-Charge at the Africa Climate Policy Centre, “The Paris Agreement heralds bold steps towards decarbonizing the global economy and reducing dependency on fossil fuels.” But of utter most importance for Africa is to understand the implications of the Paris Agreement especially with regards to means of implementation ( Technology transfer and finance), an issue that has never escaped the minds of the African Group of Negotiators, and this is a point that Murombedzi emphasizes for the stakeholders at the upcoming conference. “However, there are contentious nuances of the agreement that must be unpacked in the context of Africa’s development priorities, particularly in regard to the means of implementation which were binding provisions of the Kyoto Protocol and currently only non-binding decisions in the Paris Agreement,” said Murombedzi, pointing out the need for Africa not to lose focus on what matters in the implementation stage of the Agreement. The Paris Agreement on climate change, set to come into effect before the end of the year, aims to limit the increase in the global average temperature to well below 2°C above pre-industrial levels and to pursue more ambitious efforts to limit the temperature increase to 1.5°C above pre-industrial levels in this century. The basis of the Paris Agreement is the Intended Nationally Determined Contributions (INDC) submitted by all parties in the lead up to COP21 as their national contributions to limiting global greenhouse gas emissions. INDCs became Nationally Determined Contributions (NDCs) subsequent to COP21. Implementation of the Agreement has significant implications for Africa as the continent that will be most severely impacted by the adverse impacts of weather variability and climate change. The continent is already experiencing climate-induced impacts, such as frequent and prolonged droughts and floods, as well as environmental degradation that make livelihoods difficult for rural and urban communities. Increasing migration on the continent is both triggered and amplified by climate change. Therefore, under the main theme: “The Paris Agreement on climate change: What next for Africa?” CCDA VI is about a critical and contextual analysis of what is at stake for Africa and what the Agreement offers, prior to COP22, in order to contribute to the strategic orientation for African countries in moving forward with the implementation of the Agreement. And to better articulate the specific objectives and capture the implications of implementing the Paris Agreement for inclusive and sustainable development in Africa, the Conference will be organized under the following sub-themes: Unpacking the Paris Agreement and emerging challenges and opportunities for Africa; Integration of…

Isaiah Esipisu The Christian Aid, a British based nongovernmental organisation has teamed up with the umbrella of African civil society organisations under the Pan African Climate Justice Alliance (PACJA) to urge environment ministers expected at the ongoing talks to amend the Montreal protocol in Kigali, Rwanda to negotiate for an early phase down date of gases that deplete the ozone layer. “It’s fitting that ministers will be arriving here at the summit because it is their governments’ credibility that will be on the line if we don’t get a strong outcome,” said Benson Ireri, the Senior Policy Officer for Africa at Christian Aid. The gasses being targeted for the phase down are in the group of hydrofluorocarbons (HFCs), which are used in cooling systems such as refrigerators and air conditioners. The phase down process calls for the manufacturers of these gases to stop doing so, and substitute it with Hydrocarbons (HCs). “In the Paris Agreement, national leaders promised to keep global warming to a level well below 2 degrees centigrade and to try their hardest to limit it to 1.5 degrees. However, those promises will ring hollow if we don’t get an early date for the global phase down of HFCs,” said Ireri. “These chemicals are thousands of times more potent than carbon dioxide as a greenhouse gas and are increasing in use by 10-15% a year,” he added. Mithika mwenda, the Secretary General for PACJA echoed Ireri’s sentiments, saying that the phase down is a key mitigation action, which will enable the global community to meet the provisions of the Paris Agreement. “It would be disastrous for communities at the frontline of climate crisis if the Agreement came into force next month and countries had failed their first test by failing to agree on an ambitious deal during this 28th Session of Montreal Procotol,” said Mwenda. According to Ireri, the vulnerable countries do not have time to wait because the climate is changing fast. “Phasing down HFCs is something which we absolutely must do if we’re going to honour the pledges of the Paris Agreement,” he said. “It’s time for ministers to step on the gas and ensure phase down dates in the early 2020s,” added Ireri.