Friday... Wangari Maathai

*First a little bit from Thursday, other than being an AVAAZ alien I attended a presentation about the IGBP climate change index which Steve Running was the brain child of. This index the press release from UM can be read here. The index is like the Dow Jones but for climate, it takes into account four climate factors; CO2 concentration, sea level rise, global temperature and sea ice. This is a new way of communicating an indication of how the planet is doing overall and have it so the average person can understand. I really like this idea, whenever the average person can understand the climate data that means there may be one more climate champion. The climate change index was introduced at this conference and I hope that it will continue being developed in the future.

So Thursday, I got to see a panel about the Greenbelt movement with Wangari Maathai, who is so eloquent, humble, beautiful, and amazing. The room was packed, all the seats were filled and people were sitting on the ground and standing up in the back. She has helped impoverished women in Africa plant trees, and give them the skills to plant them. This seems like a simple act, but it is one that helps lift them and their communities out of poverty, gives them a livelihood and empowers them, as well as combating deforestation and climate change in Africa. "We are not only planting seeds but we are planting seeds for peace, planting seeds for democracy." On this panel there were other amazing people, Fredrick NJau with the Greenbelt Movement, Mia McDonald with Brightgreen.org and Samwel Naikada from Kenya who is a Maasi forest conservation project coordinator.

The largest issues stressed by all was the need of funds, because people are getting the skills but there is no money. When Fredrick talked about getting carbon sequestration projects running, many communities cannot accomplish this to help save their forests. To start a project you need upfront money, which no community has to hire consultants and verifiers. Only companies have the $20,000 to pay these consultants, it's not as easy as just planting a tree. Right now it will be the companies who can do these projects and this money will not trickle down to the community.

The livestock sector was also talked about and the problems the industrialized system brings such as food security, conflicts, forest loss, soil erosion, "climate space"and amount of available resources for development. It is speculated there will be about 120 BILLION farmed animals by 2050. During the Q&A Wangari stressed to help solve this problem we need to educate people who are coming into wealth, because as soon as you get wealthy you want to eat meat, even though they probably didn't when they were poorer. So it is helping educate them so that they don't want to eat a bunch of  meat when they get lifted out of poverty.

I really liked Samwel Naikada who is from the Dupoto community and his community has been proactive in their future. The Maasi have realized that they have new needs now so they need to change and adapt to new challenges. The people of the Dupoto community are pastoralist and rely on their livestock. Their objective was to save the forest through active community involvement and operate as a self-help group. They also promoted other activities other than livestock raising such as bee-keeping, nature walks, camping in the forest, bead work for the women, dances, community scouts which all promote eco tourism. Samwel said that the Maasi elders have been talking about the world turning upside down since they have been seeing drought and its effects, water levels drop and their effects,  change in wild animal behavior which has been causing more animal-human conflict and a lowered quality of livestock feed.

The themes that resonated through this panel was A) Africans want to save their environment because they are so dependent on it but do not have the monetary means to B) Many of these tribes do not understand that climate change is why this is all happening (this theme is carried on throughout the conference)

To learn more about the Greenbelt Movement  here