World Food Day 2023: A Coordinated and Interlinked Approach to decision-making key to ensure that Water is Life and is Food for All.

The theme of the 2023 World Food Day is Water is life, water is food. Leave no one behind. Water is essential to life on Earth. It covers the majority of the Earth's surface, makes up over 50% of our bodies, produces our food, and supports livelihoods. But this precious resource is not infinite and we need to stop taking it for granted. What we eat, and how that food is produced all affect water. This means it is time to start managing water wisely

The 2023 World Food Day theme is very important to reflect on given the recent report from the Stockholm Resilience Centre that has warned that, ‘we are in six out of nine vital life support systems, we have blown well past the safe zone. And we’re now in the danger zone, where we – as well as every other species – are now at risk’.

The planetary boundaries concept presents a set of nine planetary boundaries within which humanity can continue to develop and thrive for generations to come. Crossing boundaries increases the risk of generating large-scale abrupt or irreversible environmental changes. Drastic changes will not necessarily happen overnight, but together the boundaries mark a critical threshold for increasing risks to people and the ecosystems we are part of. 

The Planetary boundaries 2023  (Source: Helene Karlsson)

 

Boundaries are interrelated processes within the complex biophysical Earth system. This means that a global focus on climate change alone is not sufficient for increased sustainability. Instead, understanding the interplay of boundaries, especially climate, and loss of biodiversity, is key in science and practice.

In 2011, the Bonn2011 Conference: The Water, Energy and Food Security Nexus – Solutions for a Green Economy noted that achieving water, energy and food security, and consequently reducing hunger and eradicating poverty, is a central future challenge that is possible even under difficult and challenging global economic conditions.

One of the policy recommendations from this Conference, ‘to have a coordinated and interlinked approach to decision-making’ ties in well with the 2023 theme of the World Food Day. This will ensure achievement of water, energy and food security, optimum use of natural resources, effective demand management and efficient use of increasingly limited financial resources.

This looks at creating synergies both horizontally across the three sectors and the broader policy environment including climate change and urban development, and vertically between international, regional, national and local levels. Similarly it embraces the principles of the Green Economy in decoupling growth from resource depletion.

Achieving mutually beneficial approaches, multiple benefits and fewer unintended consequences requires political commitment and coherent policies to ensure that development pathways explicitly account for the inter-dependency between water, energy and food.

Energy provision and food supply options utilize water and land to varying extents and similarly water supply requires energy at differing scales and intensities. In prioritizing water, energy and food security and its contribution to poverty reduction, any trade-offs between alternative choices on resource utilization, technology, regulatory frameworks, incentive structures, fiscal and trade policy should be made on the basis of an integrated ‘nexus assessment, review and strategy.’

It would provide an open and full understanding of the implications of one choice on the other options as well as consequent requirements placed on natural resources and the risks of degradation. Multiple benefits and efficiency gains can be achieved by looking beyond single issue approaches.

In addition, cooperative structures and procedural mechanisms for implementation of a more interlinked ‘nexus’ perspective at international, national and local levels should be encouraged.

The objectives of greater interlinkage in policy formulation, planning, management and monitoring processes can be achieved by targeted cooperation, cross-sectoral relations, improved procedures and regulatory measures while concentrating on the fundamental need to improve sector performance.

Within sectors, financial incentives are required for innovation and replicating successful initiatives. Cooperation is needed at the national level through strategic planning and functional linkages to coordinate sectoral ministries and other stakeholders including civil society; in business through strengthened incentives, public-private partnerships and improved corporate responsibility programs; at the local level in ensuring access to basic services; and at the international level, for example through more effective coordination in implementing existing multilateral environment agreements and Green Economy considerations.

Similarly greater cooperation applies in formulating strategies to enhance resilience to natural disasters and improve adaptive capacities.

Water Hyacinth, Nile Perch and other Invasive Species driving Global Plant & Animal Extinctions

Scientists have released a damning report warning that environmental chaos sown by invasive species, whose spread around the world has seen economic damages quadruple every decade since 1970. Climate change in form of warmer temperatures are expected to further drive the expansion of invasive species.

The team of 86 researchers from 49 countries released a four-year assessment of the global impacts of some 3,500 harmful invasive species, with a key finding that economic costs now total at least $423 billion every year, with the alien invaders playing a key role in 60% of recorded plant and animal extinctions.

Worse still, ecologist Helen Roy co-chair of the United Nations Intergovernmental Science-Policy Platform on Biodiversity and Ecosystem Services (IPBES) report quoted by Reuters says, "We also know this is a problem that is going to get much, much worse,"

In East Africa a mention of invasive species quickly brings to many the grim reality faced by the shared Lake Victoria, as the water hyacinth remains a huge ecological disaster of our times, not to mention the Nile perch introduced in the 1950's, that is now responsible for the sudden population decline of many other fish species and extinction of hundreds of others.

However, all this has been further fueled by human-induced pollution, the uncontrolled urban population sprawl (population estimated to be more than 30 million) and the sporadic effects of climate change in the Lake Victoria region.

JEEP to spearhead dialogues on the 'Transition to Energy Saving Solutions (TESS)' in Uganda September 28-30, 2023

Yesterday (7/8/2023), on behalf of Uganda Coalition for Sustainable Development participated in a media briefing on ‘Transition to Energy Saving Solutions (TESS)’, a three-day expo scheduled to take place 28 -30 September 2023. This upcoming event is organised by Joint Energy and Environment Projects (JEEP), who sum it as a ,’convergence for energy talk, moment to experience energy in action, as an occasion to make energy choices for homes and business and an opportunity to advocate for sustainable energy for environmental protection and climate change adaptation’

TESS comes at a time when #Uganda is struggling with an unsustainable #biomass use whose fast growing population, with over 90% demanding fuel wood to cook, is a threaten to landscapes and biodiversity across the country (having lost almost 50% of the forest cover since 1990).

The over-reliance on biomass as a main form of energy for cooking comes with environmental degradation and its concomitant impacts related to health, gender and household expenditure (GIZ, 2014). According to the National Environment Management Authority (NEMA), 2.6% of Uganda’s #forests are cut down annually for #firewood, #charcoal, #agriculture, and to make way for population growth. If this trend persists, Uganda will lose all its forest cover in less than 25 years (NEMA, 2020).

The recent Executive order that bans logging for commercial charcoal production Northern and North Eastern Uganda, responding to the above threat has brought to the fore a future scenario that Uganda needs to plan for in terms of tangible options and alternatives to charcoal, firewood and other biomass as the main energy sources.

In this media brief, I emphasized the importance of providing choices amidst these challenges, where the price of charcoal has doubled in Kampala as a result of the above ban. I also noted that tried and tested local solutions (for example the 80+ local solutions documented in the Catalogue of Local Sustainable Solutions-East Africa, 2023 that are available online) should be scaled up without further delay, as an immediate response to get people to switch to energy efficient modes, but also alternatives

TESS will therefore be a timely moment for individuals, households, businesses, policy and decision-makers to listen, reflect and act on the future of the country’s energy and energy 'mix' – towards 100%
#renewables and #cleancooking for the majority.

 

Opinion: Uganda Needs to Reverse Harm on Wetlands and Decode The Kunming-Montreal Biodiversity Agreement into National Plans

Wetlands ecological services contribute $47.4 trillion annually to human health, happiness, and security according to UNEP. The World Wetlands Day will be commemorated on 2 February 2023 on the theme “It’s Time for Wetlands Restoration,” which highlights the urgent need to prioritize wetland restoration.

At the 14th Conference of Parties to the Ramsar Wetlands Convention, while the importance of people-centric wetland management approaches was agreed, the lack of financial incentives and sustainable business models was identified as a main constraint for community motivation in the wise-use of wetlands. The Secretary General’s report showed low progress in projects that contribute to poverty alleviation, indicating that current wetland conservation programs do not adequately address livelihood development.

In Uganda and in many parts of East Africa, the tension between conservation and development remains as communities, private entities and even Local Governments seek to expand land holdings for housing industry and agriculture.

This year’s World Wetlands Day theme that calls out for wetlands restoration is spot on and is a clarion call for double efforts to reverse the loss of wetlands building on the Kunming-Montreal Agreement adopted by 196 countries under the UN Convention on Biological Diversity, committing the world to halting and reversing biodiversity loss by 2030. Specifically, there was an agreement on inclusion of inland waters and coastal ecosystems in the targets on restoration and conservation of 30% of the planet by 2030.

As Uganda and other Parties to the Ramsar Convention translate this landmark agreement into national plans and turn their attention to implementation, and as the global community prepares for the UN Water Summit, scaling up wetland restoration and conservation must take centre stage.

Uganda’s other task now is to protectively guard against any further loss of wetland acreage and to find ways and means of getting communities and people dependent on / living in close proximity to these vital resources to gradually take up alternative options.

 

Above all, full implementation of the decision to cancel illegal land titles located in critical urban wetlands is overdue