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Indigenous Peoples

Climate Threats Hit Low-Income Countries Hardest

Tom Grubisich's picture

As the table shows, many low-income countries face the most climate threats, as identified by the World Bank.  A number of the most-threatened countries are also in the Least Developed Countries category, and six of them are in "fragile situations," also as identified by the World Bank.

Among the hundred finalists in the recent DM2009 competition, 26 of them came from most-threatened countries.  Bangladesh, which ranked first among most threatened, had five entries, but no competition winners.

Pledges of Adaptation Collaboration Need a Close Watch

Tom Grubisich's picture

Many developing countries are busy planning to adapt to climate change that is already heavily impacting their people, natural resources, and economies, especially agriculture.   But what actually works in particular countries, and at what cost, are often questions that National Adaptation Plans of Action (NAPAs) and other strategies don't adequately answer.
 
To find answers that can be tailored to the conditions of individual developing countries -- there are 130 -- the World Bank is leading a pilot study of climate adaptation in Bangladesh, Bolivia, Ethiopia, Ghana, Mozambique, Samoa, and Vietnam.

The concept note says "overall oversight of study progress" will include, besides the six national governments, "civil society representation."  But some DM2009 finalists say they see little evidence, based on their own experiences, that governments in their countries are serious about collaboration with the private sector.

Successful climate adaptation depends on public-private collaboration, especially on the community level, where so much adaptation integrated with economic development has to take place.  NGOs with strong community roots -- like many of the DM finalists -- can also help close the capacity gap that hampers public programming in developing countries.

World Bank Showcases DM2009

Tom Grubisich's picture

Development Marketplace got marquee treatment from the World Bank website this week.  It was featured in the top spot on the Bank's homepage, with a photo of Alejandro Agumedo, director of the Association ANDES project, and researcher Katrina Quisumbing King of the winning Peru finalist project Adapting Native Andean Crops for Food Security to Indigenous Peoples.  The World Bank package included, besides the main story, profiles of three past finalist winners and their subsequent successes.

 

What's Next for Non-Winning DM Finalists? An Answer From One

Mohammad Abu Musa's picture

Climate change has uprooted 2 million people in the coastal belt of Bangladesh.  They can't afford to be a direct buyer of the refugee resettlement service and economic recovery project that brought me to DM2009 as a finalist (but wasn't a winning entry).  Some third-party economic buyer is required on humanitarian grounds. In the absence of such a buyer, my project got bogged down in frustration, but, gradually, we're trying to recover.

Some other of the 72 non-winning DM finalists where the target beneficiaries cannot afford to be the direct economic buyer may have similar stories.

DM2009 finalists have detailed in this DM blog -- here and here -- the problems of NGOs trying to form climate-adaptation partnerships with national governments.  Too often, collaboration doesn't happen.
 
The World Bank can help make collaboration happen by exercising its convening leadership -- with international donors and national governments as they prepare their climate- adaptation programs.  “Just because they don’t get a prize from us doesn't necessarily mean they wither away,” said Aleem Walji, the World Bank Institute's Innovation Practice Manager.  “Indeed, we know that many finalists are able to leverage the Development Marketplace experience to get other support. I think we have a responsibility to try and support this entire community of finalists.”

Let there be a “Finalists72 Campaign” to turn all ideas into action to save the planet.

(Photo credit of Bangladeshi woman in search of drinking water after cyclone Aila on May 26, 2009: Abir Abdullah/Oxfam/Flickr.)

How Social Media Transformed DM2009

Edith Wilson's picture

Through the Web and social media, DM2009 became a truly global event.  The competition among the hundred finalists and the week of dialogues, panel discussions, and other activities unfolded in Washington, but people around the world were able to become virtual participants.  From Russia, Bangladesh, Cambodia, Djibouti, Uganda, Belize, and scores of other countries, instant connections were made via YouTube, Twitter, Flickr, and the DM blog.

During the four-day competition, more than 180 videos about what local communities are doing to adapt to climate change were posted on the DM2009 Channel on YouTube. Since the channel launched in late October 2009, it has drawn 12,000 views. Ninety percent of the viewing audience comes from outside the United States, mostly from the developing world. Videos have been recorded in 14 languages. (Visit the Channel on the right side of this page.)  More than 300 photos were posted on the DM2009 Flickr site, which attracted more than 8,000 views during competition week.

The DM2009 blog has posted more than 32,600 page views since its re-launch in late October, and the DM Twitter account enlisted more than 123 global followers who tweeted 600 times. New social media connections continue to be made weeks after the competition, and, as you can see, this blog continues to draw new posts and comments.

The World Bank tells the story of DM2009 here.

(Photos, on DM2009's Flickr pages, are [above] from competition-week video of "Meet Climate Change Practiontioners" featuring [from right] Valerie D'Costa, Product Manager of infoDev, and interviewer Habiba Gitay, Environmental Specialist at the World Bank Institute, and [right] DM video command center.)

Civil Society and Climate Change: Some Ill Winds

Tom Grubisich's picture

Will civil societies be real as opposed to figurehead partners in what are sure to be numerous climate-adaptation projects in developing countries in the decade of the 2010s?  Accumulating comments from DM2009 finalists who have had experiences dealing with governments in their countries suggest the question is, at the very least, an open one.

Ann Kendall, whose Cusichaca Trust project in Peru was a winning DM entry, had this to say: "Currently NGOs [in Peru] are undervalued, with exclusion from paid participation in government programs because of the support of some activists to communities in some notably conflictive situations."

To be eligible for international donor-country funding that's beginning to gather momentum post-Copenhagen, Least Developed Countries (LDCs) are mandated to give highest priority to partnering with civil society in developing their National Adaptation Plans of Action (NAPAs).  Completed country plans generally pledge there will be such partnering, but here's what DM2009 finalist Nazrul Islam, Country Director in Bangladesh for the finalist project of RELIEF International, said: "Certainly we would love to be part of the [Bangladesh] NAPA since my project perfectly fits into the government's current agenda to educate people about climate change. Since the government agencies themselves will implement most of the projects, I am afraid it would be a little challenging for civil society organizations to join directly in this NAPA."

From Brian Peniston of the finalist project in Nepal developed by the Mountain Institute: "My experience is that host governments will only share resources with NGOs under duress."

In this mini-interview, Carlos Daniel Vecco Giove, whose Native Community Kechwa Copal Sacha project in Peru was a winner at DM2009, offers further corroboration that there are problems, but holds out some hope:

Q. Is your country in its adaptation program doing enough to develop capacity -- knowledge and learning -- among government and civil society organizations?

A. Definitely it isn't doing enough. The level of knowledge is very low among politicians and they aren´t able to design adequate politics to adaptation.

Q. Is the national government really listening to local communities in preparing adaptation plans and strategies?

A. Definitely it isn't. The government imposes programs and it usually doesn´t listen to local communities.

Q. Since you returned to Peru from DM2009, do you plan to work with government so that your project might be incorporated in national adaptation efforts?

A. Yes, we will do so. We hope to improve knowledge and sensitize politicians and urban people. We have good relations with technical units within regional and local governments and we are sure they will participate actively in our project.

DM2009 Finalists Could Be Models for Climate Adaptation

Tom Grubisich's picture

The big question of whether developed nations will get serious about funding climate adaptation in developing countries was at least partially answered by the "Accord" at the recently concluded U.N. negotiations in Copenhagen.  Big global warmers -- the U.S. and the OECD nations primarily -- will pony up billions.  Exactly how much money and how it will be divided between mitigation (measures to hold  temperatures increases to under 2 degrees Celsius) and adaptation (proofing people, ecoysystems, and economies against the destructive impacts of worse weather) is not detailed.  But the developing world seems sure to get major help.

There's another big question that doesn't have even that half-answer: Will the unspecified billions that go to adaptation be effectively spent to do their intended work?  With adverse weather trends intensifying flooding, drought, and rising sea levels, especially in poor and other developing countries within the equatorial belt, adaptation is urgent -- particularly in Sub-Saharan Africa, low-lying parts of South Asia, and among the Pacific island states.  Much of the adaptation will require capacity development -- learning and knowledge that must reach broadly through the organizational fabric of government and civil society and foster innovative adaptation.  But developing nations and donors alike are having a hard time doing that. The World Bank Institute's new "Capacity Development Results Framework" (published in draft form in June 2009), says bluntly: " ...the results of efforts to develop capacity have persistently fallen short of expectations."

At a June 2009 forum co-sponsored by the WBI, consultant Robert Theisohn said: “You cannot do capacity development for others. Learning is voluntary and capacity development must be home-grown so we need to move from supply to demand, from delivery to acquisition.”

Interestingly, the projects of the 100 finalists at DM2009 were very focused on active as opposed to passive learning -- where participants don't just sit and take notes but become players in change that aims to protect people and natural resources and energize often faltering rural economies.  The DM projects would be great models for developing countries that want to start implementing their adaptation plans -- once those pledged funds from developed nations start to materialize.

DM2009 Finalists Collaborate to Make Innovation Succeed

Tom Grubisich's picture

Successful innovation in development often begins with one person's passionate belief in an idea that may exist only on a piece of paper.  But for an idea to make successive leaps to funding to implementation and, finally, scaling up invariably requires extensive networking and the forging of strategic, sometimes multiple, partnerships.  That's the story of Development Marketplace successes like 2006 winner PumpAid (photo) from Sub-Saharan Africa, 2006 winner Self-Sustainable Rainwater Harvesting from India, and 2003 winner Ha-Tien-Habitats-Handbags from Vietnam.

Beginning with a US$120,000 DM grant, PumpAid brought its clean-water project to early-stage development in Malawi and Zimbabwe, and went on to get financing of US$25 million to reach an additional eight million people in those two countries.  PumpAid has two partners. 

Ha-Tien-Habitats-Handbags, which has partnered with the International Finance Corp. (the commercial arm of the World Bank Group) and Kien Giang Province's Department of Science and Technology, was a 2007 winner of the US$30,000 UN-Habitat/Dubai Municipality International Award for Best Praces to Improve the Living Environment.

Self-Sustainable Rainwater Harvesting went through a series of expansions aided by the nonprofit Aakash Ganga that was financially seeded by Rajasthan Association of North America (RANA).  That led to a US$50,000 grant from the Asian Development Bank, and U.N. Development Programs (UNDP) has given Aakash Ganga a grant to expand to several hundred villages.

DM2009 Finalists Rank Far Down as CO2 Emitters

Tom Grubisich's picture

The 44 developing countries represented among the hundred DM2009 finalists produce very modest amounts of carbon dioxide (the major man-made source of global warming) on a per-capita basis.  The World Bank data visualization (above) divides the 44 countries into low income (green balls), lower-middle income (orange), and upper-middle income (blue).  For comparison, the high-income U.S. is represented by the purple ball in the upper-right-hand corner.

The vertical axis shows emissions per capita in metric tons among finalist countries.  A group of Sub-Saharan African nations -- represented by the green balls at the far left -- produce the lowest per-capita emissions -- as low as a fractional .10 metric tons.  Russia --  the highest blue ball -- has the highest CO2 emission rate among finalist countries -- 10.5 tons.  The U.S. rate is 19.5 tons.  Per-capita emissions by India -- the largest orange ball -- are among the finalists' lowest rates, although the South Asian county is a major emitter overall because it is so populous.

Climate change's adverse affects, including drought, flooding, and rising sea levels, will hit developing countries the hardest, and that includes their economies as well as people (particularly the poor and other vulnerable) and natural resources.  The effects are already being felt.  The horizontal axis of the chart shows gross domestic product per capita in finalist countries.  Many countries' per-capita GDP is already precariously low -- below $500 -- and some others, including India's, aren't much higher.

The DM2009 finalist projects' triple objectives are to protect people at the community level -- particularly the most vulnerable -- and the natural resources on which they depend, and energize generally faltering rural economies.

National Governments and NGOs: The Friction Point

Tom Grubisich's picture

Ann Kendall represents the Cusichaca Trust's winning entry in DM2009 that would use pre-Hispanic water-management systems to respond to the adverse affects of climate change in an Andean community of 2,350 families in Peru. In this mini-interview she has some very interesting things to say about the competition and how it could better help finalists, winners and non-winners alike.

Q. What impressed you most about DM2009?

A. The variety of levels of knowledge, experience, issues focussed, and the finalists' desire to contribute. Plus the effort and thought the World Bank staff had put into creating a program to encompass this range.

Q. What improvements would you like to see?

A. This year’s agenda and the series of sessions were very intensive and had all the strains of a crash course in order to communicate/educate at all levels of experience. It provided lots of opportunity but was perhaps too intense for some, so that there was less space for taking initiatives and advantage for more specific choices of dialogue developed with individuals and concerning more project specific interests, which could have included a deeper exploration of connections between fellow finalists objectives and appreciating the points of value of their issues and presentations and how these might interact with their own objectives. In 2006 I remember there was more collegial, general interaction with World Bank staff who took the time to visit and take a relaxed interest in the stands. Their conversations and reactions to the finalists about their specific presentations were most useful, as were their own matured interests and concerns, sharing their World Bank experiences and views. The interaction in 2009 with the World Bank managerial staff...was excellent and greatly appreciated. It would have been good to have had a couple of free hours one afternoon and some info on book shops in Washington for acquiring/reviewing available published materials. Maybe this was available on the Friday and the winners missed out on it!

Q. Should there be a bigger money pool to produce more winners or to extend winning projects beyond the early-stage period?

How to Help Tame Scary Adaptation Funding Estimates

Tom Grubisich's picture

Such intimidating numbers: To adapt to destructive climate change, developing countries need US$30-$50 billion annually between now and 2020, and US$100 billion annually thereafter, according to U.N. and World Bank estimates.

By the end of the U.N.-sponsored climate negotations wrapping up this week in Copenhagen, developed nations are likely to pledge more.  But most of the funding gap is not likely to be closed.

A ray of hope: What if all hundred finalist projects of DM2009's "Climate Adaptation" competition were to be financed?  Their total cost would be about US$17.5 million.

These early-stage projects are as solid as any adaptation proposals anywhere in the developing world.  They all survived rigorous scrutiny to be among the 6 percent of more than 1,700 applications that made it to the DM finals.  They focus on helping poor and other vulnerable people who are those most affected by climate change.  Most of the projects are designed to be replicated widely, so they have the potential of helping millions of people threatened by flooding, drought, and rising sea levels -- and also protecting many ecosystems throughout the globe.

The Secretariat of the U.N. Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) could help to make this happen by recommending that up to US$17.5 million of any new adaptation funding for developing countries be earmarked for the DM finalists.

The issue is not billions or even hundreds of millions of dollars -- just a tiny fraction of the lowest estimated cost of adaptation in developing countries.  Could developed nations, who are responsible for most of the global warming that is hitting the poorest countries hardest, say anything but yes to that?

 

How DM2009 Can Be Better -- From 5 Finalists

Tom Grubisich's picture

From DM2009 finalists, here is a sampling of suggestions for how future Global Development Marketplaces could be improved:

  • Sonia Gabriela Ortiz Maciel, Mexico: "More workshops on funding, reporting, finance, accounting -- and in the morning, when we're not tired."
  • Carlo Vecco Biove, winner, Peru: "DM could fund an additional phase for those projects that demonstrate proven success, or could help organize events (such as business conferences) to support the attainment of financing for longer-term results.  Two years is short."
  • Laurie Navarro, Philippines: "DM should have a network of other sources of funding for those projects that do not qualify for DM support."
  • Benedict Bijoy Baroi, Bangladesh: "DM should provide feedback on the weaknesses of finalist projects or lack in improvement.
  • Tom Okumu, Kenya: "DM should award at least one finalist from each participating country as a way of balancing the competition participation and equal distribution of development in these countries of representation."

     

After Copenhagen: DM2009 Winner Has a Message for World Leaders

Leonardo Rosario (beneath banner in photo) of the Philippines was a winner at DM2009 with his Trowel Development Foundation's project to protect subsistence fishing communities from climate change, while also improving their production and marketing and restoring mangrove forests.  Here's his message for leaders at the international climate talks in Copenhagen.

How I wish the finalists of DM 2009 could have presented their “100 Ideas to Save the Planet” to international leaders gathered at the U.N. Climate Conference in Copenhagen.

What those leaders would have seen would have been not only passion and commitment but also solutions that were innovative, pragmatic, and cost-efficient.

It’s too late to go to Copenhagen.  But Copenhagen is only the beginning of the search by world leaders for climate adaptation solutions that are worthy of their support. 

The DM2009 finalists’ projects meet all the objectives of that search.  They enhance and strengthen people’s capacity to manage climate risks and adapt to changing climate patterns, and even to build community resiliency among the most vulnerable – Indigenous Peoples, women and children, marginalized farmers, and small-scale fishers.

Building disaster-resilient communities may seem far-fetched to skeptics, but it is do-able.  With innovative, community-based management of natural resources as well as the synergy of ancient and traditional knowledge systems combined with modern technology, a quarter of the DM finalists showed how it can be done.  The main objective of the projects was to show how food, which is most important in times of disaster, can be secured.  The techniques included climate-adapted production systems, participatory plant breeding, introduction of “Family EarthBox,” bioculture systems, cultivation of drought-resistant rainforest tree food, and merging traditional indigenous production practices with environment-friendly modern farming technologies.

How One Finalist Views DM2009

Tom Grubisich's picture

What did the DM2009 finalists think about the competition and how it might be improved?  Here's a mini-interview with Andrew Reitz, who was a DM2009 finalist from Ecuador.  Reitz is a rural enterprise specialist with Conservacion y Desarollo, whose project is a combination market/conservation approach to community agriculture that would help 100 indigenous and mestizo rural households in the Andes commercialize a native blueberry while reforesting the local ecosystem.   Reitz describes his project in this YouTube clip from the Development Markektplace Channel.
 
Q. What most impressed you about your week at the competition?

A. I was most impressed that the World Bank took the opportunity to reach out to the participants with some of the curriculum from the World Bank Institute.  These sessions touched base on some of the fundamentals to project management that, if applied correctly, will surely help participants achieve higher levels of success in future projects.   I also particularly enjoyed the panel discussion of past DM winners.
 
Q. What would you like to see added to future competition programs to help ensure that all finalists have the richest possible experience from their week?

A. I don't believe finalists were given enough time to properly present their projects to the jurors.   A half hour would have allowed for a proper question and answer period.  In addition, finalists need to be better prepped on the types of questions that jurists will ask.   The session on "selling your project/idea" was interesting; however, it would have been more beneficial if past jurors were involved.
 
Q. Should there be a bigger money pool so there can be more winners among the 100 finalists?

Indigenous Knowledge +Science and Technology = DM2009 Winners

Tom Grubisich's picture

Nine DM2009 winners will use the centuries-old knowledge of Indigenous Peoples to adapt to destructive climate change -- but often leveraged with modern science and technology.

Here's how old and new will be joined in several winning projects in Latin America:

  • Peru -- Agricultural production in four communities in the Amazonian Basin (total population: 1,500) will be better managed through a combination of ancestral knowledge of the Basin and biomathematical computer simulation model and geographic information system (GIS)-based "micro-zoning" of the communities' ecology and economics. 
  • Colombia -- Traditional knowledge, aided by GIS and the sciences of ecology and biology, will be used to protect 207,000 hectares of native forest for a combination of conservation, housing, hunting, fishing, and gathering, traditional farming, and preservation of sacred places for community rituals. 
  • Costa Rica -- Ancient knowledge of adjacent valley and mountain ecosystems will be rescued and melded with mapping and other technology to help valley inhabitants of Bajo Chirripo to better cope with flooding caused by storms whose frequency and intensity are expected to increase with climate change, and to improve their present subsistence income. 
  • Peru -- Indigenous knowledge systems on how to adapt the native potato to changing climate will be combined with modern plant breeding to help communities in Potato Park in the High Andes to adapt to rapid climate change with weather-resilient plantings. 

 

Most of the finalist and winning projects that would help Indigenous Peoples were based in countries in Latin America and the Caribbean, where the intellectual property rights of indigenous communities against "biopiracy" and related theft have won more legal protection -- a clear signal for what needs to be done in other regions to protect indigenous rights.

Poor People's Knowledge: Promoting Intellectual Property in Developing Countries, edited by J. Michael Finger and Philip Schuler (2004, World Bank and Oxford University Press), is a detailed primer on the issue, including an examination of the controversial World Trade Organization (WTO)-administered Agreement on Trade-Related Aspects of Intellectual Property Rights (TRIPS Agreement), which indigenous communities say is unfair to them.


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