POVERTY: MYANMAR: Humanitarian cost of economic development

BANGKOK, 27 February 2012 (IRIN)

 Photo: Courtesy of Frankie Abreu
Construction underway for Dawei port

A development spree in Myanmar following recent political reforms may have hidden costs for rural dwellers, especially ethnic minorities, say analysts.
Speaking at a recent conference in Yangon on inclusive growth, former World Bank president and Nobel laureate Joseph Stiglitz warned that Myanmar risked becoming "a rich country with poor people", as quoted in local media.
In 2011, foreign investment in mining, oil, gas and hydropower in Myanmar totalled US$20 billion, according to the government.
And while a $3.6 billion project to construct a dam on the Irrawaddy River for a hydropower plant was suspended due to protests stemming from environmental and social concerns, including the projected displacement of thousands of villagers from the northern state of Kachin, a deepwater port project is going ahead, despite similar criticisms.
Saw Frankie Abreu, a coordinator with the local NGO Another Development for Burma, believes the multi-billion dollar project in the southeastern city of Dawei in Tanintharyi Region may displace tens of thousands of villagers and boost undocumented migration to Thailand.
The Burmese government has defended the proposed port, whose construction began late 2011, as a boon to the local economy, but community activists say the gains are coming at too high a cost.
While the government is creating four new villages to house the displaced, Saw Frankie Abreu criticized the plan as insufficient.
"We have seen the houses they are building. They are building one house for each family, but it is for... just four or five people. But villagers have more children than that. And also most of the time they are extended families, but the government is counting this as one family. So where will the others go?" Saw Frankie Abreu asked.
The displacement will "severely" affect the livelihoods of the ethnic minorities living in these villages who are unable to adapt to the new locations, said Khin Ohmar, coordinator of the Burma Partnership, a network of NGOs based in northern Thailand.
"The Mon and Karen people are the majority in this area. They depend on the orchards and farming, like growing betel nuts, for their livelihood. Their livelihoods depend entirely on the land they live on," Khin Ohmar told IRIN.
One of the villages under construction for the displaced from Dawei is 60km north in Bawa village.
"Bawa is a fishing community," said Saw Frankie Abreu, "while the Dawei people are farmers. The land in Bawa is not suitable for farming, so people are now thinking of moving, or are already moving to other places."
A number are trying neighbouring Thailand, said Khin Ohmar.
Win Kay Thi, a Burmese migrant worker from Dawei living in the southern Phang Nga Province of Thailand, told IRIN she would bring her mother and sister, who live in Dawei, to join her.
"I have settled in Thailand as a migrant worker for more than five years, so I understand the environment here. In [Myanmar], I don't know the place where my family is going and my family also doesn't know about the new situation [in Bawa], so I will bring them here," Win Kay Thi said.
"Others in the village are also talking about moving to Thailand," she added. "People in the area are very worried about their future. Right now buildings are mushrooming. They are accelerating the building."
The International Organization for Migration recently estimated 1.4 million unregistered Burmese workers and family members already in Thailand.
"When locals first heard about the project, grassroots people were very optimistic," Saw Frankie Abreu said. "They thought they would get job opportunities, maybe transportation would be better, maybe they can start taking local goods to markets in the city better. Then they started realizing the challenges."
http://www.irinnews.org/report.aspx?reportID=94955

POVERTY: UGANDA: Charcoal boon a bust for forests

GULU, 7 February 2012 (IRIN)

 Photo: Charles Akena/IRIN
Uganda loses some 80,000 hectares of forest every year

Once a fortnight, Moses Sserwada travels from the capital, Kampala, to northern Uganda to pick up a truckload of charcoal destined for the popular Owino market in the city.
“I have been in this trade for three years; we get our supply from northern Uganda because the charcoal produced there is of a good quality and in high demand,” Sserwada told IRIN.
The charcoal trade, referred to as "black gold" by Kampala traders, has become more profitable than the forests where trees are being indiscriminately cut down for charcoal-burning. For the rural population, charcoal trade is an opportunity to earn an income.
According to the National Forest Authority (NFA), more than 73,000 hectares of private forest are cleared every year across the country and over 7,000ha of protected forest reserves are destroyed annually for timber and charcoal.
“People are cutting down trees indiscriminately without thinking of the future,” said Moses Watasa of the NFA.
Watasa said Uganda had no clear policy on charcoal production. "We must encourage planting fast-growing trees like eucalyptus now so that we can be in a position to get timber and charcoal in 10 years," he said.
Northern Uganda has thick forest cover, comprising both hard and soft wood. Forest growth in the area flourished during the two-decades-long Lord's Resistance Army (LRA) conflict as many locals were displaced from their villages.
Previously, Kampala charcoal traders relied on charcoal from Nakasongola, Hoima, Masindi, Kafu, Luwero areas of eastern Uganda. These have since been depleted of private and community forests.
For instance, Langele village, adjacent to the Murchison Falls National Park in Nwoya district in northern Uganda, known for its beautiful scenery and thick forests, is no more. Locals refer to Langele as a charcoal factory.
“The price of forest depends on its thickness but on average it costs 1.5 million shillings [US$600] for a hectare,” said Otto Oola, a resident of Langele. "Any patch of land here covered with trees is [worth] a fortune, it can earn you millions of shillings any time."

Poverty
Although aware of the environmental impact of indiscriminate cutting of trees, Oola said many people were doing it out of poverty. He said charcoal buyers not only provided cash upon purchase, they also helped villagers clear forested land for cultivation.
“I am trying to survive, I can’t sit hungry in that forest,” Oola said.
According to the State of the Environment report by the Uganda National Environment Management Authority, the rate of deforestation had, by 2005, increased from 1.76 percent per annum to 2.13 percent per annum.
The report says pressure on land, water, forest and biological resources has dramatically increased to meet the needs of a growing population, leading to a loss of 76 percent of the country's forest cover.
Geoffrey Oryema, the district leader of Nwoya, said poverty and lack of a meaningful livelihood source were the driving factors for environmental destruction.
“What do you expect somebody in the village without money to pay for his needs such as soap, salt, medicine and food to do?” Oryema said. "People are struggling to find alternatives to survive."
However, Samuel Abwola, a district environment officer in Gulu, said people in rural areas were being exploited to degrade their own environment.

 Photo: Charles Akena/IRIN
Charcoal production is seen as a way out of poverty

Depletion
Gulu initially had 371 sqkm of forest cover, but environmentalists now estimate the cover to be only 200 sqkm, a reduction they attribute to charcoal-burning, human settlement as well as the quest to open up cultivable lands.
Margaret Barihahi, a coordinator for the African Climate Change Resilience Alliance, said it was necessary to devise alternatives for sustainable livelihoods and to empower communities with information on the dangers of indiscriminate forest-cutting.
“Without a viable alternative source of energy, it is clear that charcoal and wood fuel will remain the dominant sources of energy,” Barihahi said.
An estimated 95 percent of Ugandans depend on charcoal and wood for cooking. Moreover, Uganda's rapid population growth, coupled with rapid urbanization, has increased the demand for energy, especially cooking fuel.
However, growth in energy demand has not been matched by corresponding growth in supply of alternative sources of fuel, such as hydro-electricity, which is the cheapest and most convenient alternative source of energy for cooking.
Because of its short supply, hydro-electricity is neither affordable nor reliable.
Uganda's National Development Plan estimates the country's electricity demand to reach 35,000MW by 2015 and the absence of cheap charcoal is likely to push demand for electricity even higher.
http://www.irinnews.org/report.aspx?reportID=94810

POVERTY: World Bank Energy Strategy Must Address Energy Poverty and Climate Change

Athena Ballesteros and Tom Nagle : March 10, 2011


Solar panel used for lighting village homes, Sri Lanka. Photo credit: flickr/World Bank

In consultations, a range of countries and interest groups have called for an energy strategy that supports sustainable development.
The World Bank is in the final stages of drafting a new energy strategy due late April 2011. The strategy has drawn so much attention because of its potential to address two major challenges confronting developing countries – energy poverty and climate change. While the strategy could be an opportunity for the institution to tackle both challenges simultaneously, some stakeholders are concerned that it may sway too much in one direction, addressing one challenge while undermining the other.
To balance these differing opinions, the World Bank embarked on an eight month consultative process with input from client and donor countries, civil society, the private sector, and others (see Box 1). We studied the reports of the consultations carefully to distill important messages emerging from the process. There appears to be some areas of resounding agreement, while in other areas, differing perspectives emerged. The overarching message delivered to the World Bank is a demand for investments in the energy sector that produce sustainable development outcomes.

Areas of Agreement
Many stakeholders have prompted the World Bank to shift its focus to small-scale, distributed, renewable energy-based generation technologies such as solar home lighting systems or village micro-grids powered by run-of-river mini hydropower systems. Such technologies can directly address the largely unmet energy needs of the 1.5 billion poor without access to electricity, particularly in rural areas. This message was consistently delivered in various parts of the world. For example:
At the meeting in Nairobi, the private sector called for a focus on renewable technologies due to the abundance of resources on the continent, while government participants pointed to its cost-effectiveness in the long-run. Participants from academia and think tanks highlighted the efficacy of decentralized renewable energy systems in meeting the economic and social needs of the poor.
Similarly, in Laos, non-governmental organizations pointed to the impacts of the export-oriented hydropower project (Nam Theun 2) on the resource-dependent poor. Participants from the private sector and the public utilities recommended that future energy investments focus on tapping local renewable resources, including solar and hydropower, to meet the income-generating needs of the poor within the country.
In the Netherlands, the government expressed a preference for the World Bank to avoid commercially viable centralized generation projects, while Dutch private sector and NGO participants pointed out that decentralized generation would have the greatest poverty reduction impacts.
Such consensus also emerged from diverse interest groups and countries on the value of the World Bank investing in energy efficiency, supporting integrated resource planning in the energy sector and across sectors, and modernizing household fuels for cooking and heating.

Areas of Disagreement
The areas where stakeholders diverged have been familiar issues of contention on the World Bank Board. In some cases, differences of opinion between interest groups within the same country came to light. One of the most hotly contested issues was the World Bank’s role in fossil fuel lending. For example:
In Bangladesh, participants from the private sector, public utilities, and some members of parliament argued strongly against any prohibitions on the continued development of their abundant domestic coal resources, as they see it as a constraint on the country’s development goals. In contrast, the Bangladeshi government expressed a preference for developing low carbon energy sources and using coal-based resources only in exceptional cases.
In consultations with African energy ministers, South Africa argued against the World Bank discontinuing lending for fossil fuel-based projects claiming that they have no viable alternatives for baseload power vital to their pursuit of economic growth and industrialization. Instead, they prefer to see the World Bank invest in cleaner coal technologies, while simultaneously investing in renewables.
Among stakeholders in Europe, there remained concerns that continuing World Bank investments in carbon intensive fuel technologies would counteract its efforts to mitigate climate change, leading to demands for a definitive phase out of fossil fuel lending.
Similarly, there were other issues that elicited a spectrum of responses including energy subsidy reform, financing additional costs of lower carbon projects, and large scale hydropower dams.

Our Recommendations for the World Bank
The World Bank’s leadership may find it challenging to balance all the diverse interests in one strategy document. However, what they can do is put in place a set of procedures that will allow them to objectively evaluate trade-offs and make investment decisions that support the sustainable development priorities of their clients. Such procedures, as we have argued earlier, should include:
Undertaking options assessments to investigate and transparently disclose the full range of energy options available to meet a client country’s demand before moving forward with any investment. Such assessments should be based on integrated planning processes at appropriate levels (regional, national or sub-national) that take into account resource availability and use in the energy and other sectors.
Valuing the net costs of shifting to low-carbon alternatives through the use of GHG Accounting tools to calculate the volume of emissions from projects as well as the use of pricing methods, such as market prices or shadow prices, to calculate the value of reducing or avoiding emissions in alternative options. This will help the World Bank assess the additional resources required from climate change funds to buy down the higher costs of lower carbon options. On a broader level, GHG accounting will also help the institution manage and reduce the emissions of its overall investment portfolio.
Engaging stakeholders in inclusive and transparent processes when making investment decisions to ensure equitable, pragmatic and sustainable outcomes.
Adopting robust environmental and social standards for energy investments, particularly large hydropower given its serious ecological and social footprint. Although designed for the private sector, many of the environmental, social, and human rights standards articulated in the draft IFC performance standards would provide a strong basis for safeguards at the World Bank. The energy strategy would also need to articulate standards for providing accessible means for dispute resolution for affected stakeholders.
We believe that the writing on the wall is clear – stakeholders across countries and interest groups would like the World Bank to devise an energy strategy that supports sustainable development in developing countries. It is imperative that World Bank leadership not dismiss the often polarizing debates as unnecessary noise, but instead hear the clarion call for meaningful reform in defining the institution’s role in promoting a sustainable energy future.


Tom Nagle is a research intern for the International Financial Flows and the Environment project at WRI. He is also pursuing a Masters degree in International Relations and Environmental Policy at Boston University focused on the nexus of energy and economic development.

http://www.wri.org/stories/2011/03/world-bank-energy-strategy-must-address-energy-poverty-and-climate-change

POVERTY: UGANDA: Food, water crisis looms for thousands

 Photo: Charles Akena/IRIN
A boy quenches his thirst at a mobile water point in northern Uganda. Forecasts by the meteorological department indicate that the country is headed for a long period of drought

AGAGO/AMURU, 9 March 2011 (IRIN) - Thousands of people in 36 of Uganda's 112 districts are at risk of serious food and water shortages due to drought attributed to the La Niña weather phenomenon.
Health officials have warned of outbreaks of diseases such as diarrhoea and dysentery, due to poor hygiene.
The situation requires urgent attention, says the Minister for Disaster Preparedness, Musa Ecweru. "We are experiencing food shortages; some families are [already] going without food."
The ministry has issued public alerts, warning of impending severe water shortages and famine in parts of the country.
Ecweru said the government was working out ways of securing money for relief food and identifying the worst-hit families.
Forecasts by the meteorological department indicate that the country is headed for a long period of drought. The department has predicted that La Niña conditions, which started in July 2010, will affect rainfall distribution in 2011.
James Magezi, a senior research officer at the meteorological department and assistant commissioner in the Ministry of Water and Environment, told IRIN several parts of the country were likely to experience abnormal rainfall patterns this year, with regions such as northern Uganda and Karamoja completely dry.
Magezi said sunny and dry conditions, characterized by higher-than-normal daytime temperatures, would occur across the country and were likely to continue up to mid-2011.

Poor rainfall
Although some rains are expected in March, Magezi said they were likely to be insufficient to support agriculture in many areas. Wells are already drying up in some of the 36 affected districts, forcing residents to walk long distances in search of water.
Richard Ongom, a resident of Lira Palwo in Agago district, told IRIN: "It takes several hours for the wells to fill up and we have to walk long distances to fetch water from rivers and streams."
He added that high daytime temperatures and strong winds made movement difficult. "The sun is too hot during the day and the blowing winds crack our lips; at night it is impossible to sleep inside the house because of the heat."
The drought-prone Karamoja region, in the northeast, is one of the areas hardest-hit by the La Niña effect, with households struggling to sustain livelihoods. Strong winds are destroying structures and movement is hampered by temperatures ranging from 35 to 38 degrees Celsius during the day.

 Photo: Charles Akena/IRIN
A dried up stream in Lamwo, northern Uganda

In the north, formerly displaced persons resettling in villages in the Acholi districts are experiencing frequent fire outbreaks and falling water levels in rivers.
Oxfam, an international NGO, warned of impending drought in East Africa as well as the Horn of Africa in an update for March, stating that the situation was "deteriorating quickly and could result in a major humanitarian emergency over the coming months".

Response
While noting that governments in the region had recognized the severity of the crisis and initiated remedial measures, Oxfam cautioned that "responses have generally come later than necessary and are focused on emergency measures such as trucking in water and de-stocking animals - buying up cattle that are too weak or low value".
The drought has also affected electricity generation in Uganda as water levels fall in rivers such as the Nile. Streams such as the Aswa, Ayugi, Unyama and Pager, all in Amuru and Kitgum districts, are drying up.
Pastoralists living along the cattle corridors in Nakasongola district and Bullisa, in Bunyoro region, have expressed concern over loss of livelihoods due to the shortage of pasture and water for their livestock.

Food security
Parts of the country were hit by torrential rains in 2010, causing water-logging and rotting of crops, a situation that has now affected food reserves.
"Where shall we get food; last year's harvest was very poor and the little we had we sold to raise money for family needs such as school fees and treatment?" asked James Onyut, a resident of Agago.
Unless the government intervenes, Onyut said, people were going to face tough times. "We pray the rains come early and remain normal so that we can harvest something good from the first season of March-July," Onyut said.
http://www.irinnews.org/report.aspx?ReportID=92146

POVERTY: Drought threatens hydropower in Vietnam

 Photo: FAO Vietnam
Irrigating these fields may reduce power for country

BANGKOK, 9 March 2011 (IRIN) - Low water levels in reservoirs opened in January to irrigate rice fields in Vietnam are threatening to undermine hydropower-fuelled electricity, warn experts.
Approximately 2.7 billion cubic metres of water, equivalent to 500 million kilowatts of electricity, were discharged to irrigate more than 635,000 hectares of crops, according to Nguyen Tri Ngoc, head of the cultivation department in the Ministry of Agriculture and Rural Development.
However, increasingly volatile weather patterns, coupled with heightened water demands from households and local industries, have contributed to a drought that could mean cutting off needed energy. Nearly one-third of Vietnam's electricity is derived from hydropower.
"The government will have to ration electricity. They have already increased electricity prices by 15 percent to reduce consumption and save water in hydroelectric dams," said Koos Neefjes, climate change policy adviser for UN Development Programme.
"Given the increase in severity of droughts being experienced in Vietnam, the country's overdependence on hydropower means it can expect to experience more energy blackouts," said Ame Trandems with the US-based NGO International Rivers.
http://www.irinnews.org/report.aspx?ReportID=92148