Baraza

While in the USA I attended a conference on Rewards for Ecosystem Services at the Land Tenure Center at Madison University titled Designing pro-poor rewards for ecosystem services

What are rewards for ecosystem services? Well it’s a new field that tries to reward those who are protecting the environment and to pay them for the services generated. You can read about it here

We’re all used to the idea of carbon credits, this idea goes a little further and provides mechanisms for payments for biodiversity, clean water, air and aesthetic values. Payment for Ecosystem Services is the new buzz word in conservation and everyone is trying to take credit for leading in this field including WWF

Katoomba is probably the most talked about site – it is a really creative ecosystem services marketplace

Everything I knew about climate change and fossil fuels were thrown in the bin. Professor Jonathan Foley the founder of the Center for sustainability and Global Environment at Madison University (SAGE) presented the most compelling evidence that the main cause of climate change is in fact land use change – something that we tend not to think about. You can download his presenatation here
Professor Foley believes that land-use change has already irreparably altered the earths biosphere.

Land use change is happening everywhere. Consider these facts

1. 40% of the earth is under agriculture of this,
2. 18 million km² is under crops, and
3. 30 million km² is under pasture
4. 35% of the planets photosynthesis is controlled by humans
5. Water use has increased by 3 times in the last 50 years
6. Nitrogen and Phosphorous inputs to the environment have doubled
7. Land under agriculture has increased by 12% in the last 40 years,
8. Agricultural intensification has increased by 70%.
9. Use of agricultural fertilizers has increased by a whopping 700%

Not surprisingly he concludes, global land use and agriculture produce ore green house gasses than any other activity.

You can download this image at the World Resources Institute website here

Professor Foley fears that land conversion from diverse ecosystems to simple monocultures is one of the greatest threats to the survival of humans on earth. In this illustration he shows how this leads to a collapse of ecosystem services.

I can relate to this directly. In Kenya organic farming is becoming not only fashionable but the cheap alternative – which is critical now that world food prices are shooting through the roof (prices have gone up by 85% in the last 18 months). When my sister Su started an organic company called Green Dreams none of us expected it to make money in Kenya. Surprisingly there is a good market for healthy food. She lost her farm in the post election crisis but this has not stopped her. She now trains and promotes local organic farmers and promotes the cultivation of a diverse array of traditional crops as one important way of achieving sustainability.

Predicting that the election crisis would lead to a food shortage as people fled their farms, she initiated a program to distribute seeds to displaced families so that they could plant on tiny areas – even IDP camps. Recently she discovered a new need in Africa’s biggest slum – the famous Kibera, which is on our doorstep of Nairobi. This is where she is now doing something very exciting, she’s training ex convicts to reclaim garbage heaps for farming.

Here they are creating a worm farm to generate organic fertilizer. I encouraged Su to start a blog because it is so fascinating and her discoveries are so useful – everything she is doing can be replicated elsewhere in Africa. I’m so pleased that she followed my advice, you can now follow the story of this unconventional organic farmer and the conversion of a garbage dump in Kibera to a productive garden here.