A shot of clarity in the hazy debates on climate change

posted at 11:43am, 10 Dec 09 by Whitney [ 0 comments ]

I’ve been thinking a lot about climate change this week.

You might guess that it has something to do with the COP15 climate negotiations going on in Copenhagen … but you’d only be partly right.

COP 15 logo

Though I’m as glued to the coverage of the conference as any eco-minded person these days (see some of my top 3 sources for background and news below), I’ve also been looking out for some equally exciting coverage of a project that, I think, has some lessons to teach the attendees of COP15.

Our AdapCC project, undertaken with GTZ and 4 of our coffee and tea partners, has earned some well-deserved attention in the press in the last weeks. A piece by Janice Warman in The Spectator highlights the impressive gains made by tea farmers in Kenya, going so far to say that “this is where Barack Obama should be: walking the muddy fields of his father’s native country” to prepare for his debut at Copenhagen.

A Reuters piece by Frank Nyakairu discusses the drought that has been damaging crops in Kenya over recent years and offers some insights from Cafédirect’s CEO, Anne MacCaig.

Both articles touch on the fact this project goes a long way towards exemplifying the positive impact that home-grown adaptation strategies can bring to communities in the developing world. Politicians in Copenhagen are doing some heated arguing about a proposed $10 billion USD per year fund to go towards adaptation in developing countries. The developed world says ‘Yes, we agree, this is enough’ and the developing world says ‘No way, not nearly enough’.

One way to bring some clarity to this debate is to look at some real world, concrete examples of successful adaptation … and this is exactly what AdapCC set out to do. And the benefits are visible, tangible and replicable.

A portable mixed vegetable garden in Kenya

Tea farmers in Kenya are growing kale to consume and sell when their tea crop fails and are considering diversifying into passion fruit. Coffee farmers in Mexico are drying their coffee beans in simple shelters that shed the unexpected rains that now fall during the ‘dry’ season. Their counterparts in Nicaragua are joining forces to produce rich organic compost to help keep moisture in the soil, while farmers in Peru are reforesting the local watershed in the hope of capturing enough carbon to sell credits to fund further adaptation.

A solar coffee dryer in Mexico

These examples can send a lightning bolt of clarity into the often long, wordy and politicised debates going on around climate change and adaptation. So … if anyone over there on Copenhagen wants to hear a bit more about it, feel free to get in touch.

My top 3 sources for background and news on Copenhagen:

1.    Grist (a long time favourite for the lastest news with a cheeky attitude)
2.   The COP15 website (where there are more live webcasts than you’d care to watch)
3.   The Munk Debates (check out the most recent debate with climate change heavyhitters including George Monbiot and Bjorn Lomborg for a great primer on both sides of the debate)

Comments are closed.