GENEVA, Switzerland (PAMACC News) – Governments and non-state actors need to deliver an urgent increase in ambition to ensure the Paris Agreement goals can still be met, according to a new UN assessment.The eighth edition of UN Environment’s Emissions Gap report, released ahead of the UN Climate Change Conference in Bonn, finds that national pledges only bring a third of the reduction in emissions required by 2030 to meet climate targets, with private sector and sub-national action not increasing at a rate that would help close this worrying gap.The Paris Agreement looks to limit global warming to under 2°C, with a more ambitious goal of 1.5°C also on the table. Meeting these targets would reduce the likelihood of severe climate impacts that could damage human health, livelihoods and economies across the globe.As things stand, even full implementation of current unconditional and conditional Nationally Determined Contributions makes a temperature increase of at least 3°C by 2100 very likely – meaning that governments need to deliver much stronger pledges when they are revised in 2020.Should the United States follow through with its stated intention to leave the Paris Agreement in 2020, the picture could become even bleaker.The report does, however, lay out practical ways to slash emissions through rapidly expanding mitigation action based on existing options in the agriculture, buildings, energy, forestry, industry and transport sectors. Strong action on other climate forcers – such as hydrofluorocarbons, through the Kigali Amendment to the Montreal Protocol, and other short-lived climate pollutants such as black carbon– could also make a real contribution.“One year after the Paris Agreement entered into force, we still find ourselves in a situation where we are not doing nearly enough to save hundreds of millions of people from a miserable future,” said Erik Solheim, head of UN Environment. “This is unacceptable. If we invest in the right technologies, ensuring that the private sector is involved, we can still meet the promise we made to our children to protect their future.But we have to get on the case now.”CO2 emissions have remained stable since 2014, driven in part by renewable energy, notably in China and India. This has raised hopes that emissions have peaked, as they must by 2020 to remain on a successful climate trajectory. However, the report warns that other greenhouse gases, such as methane, are still rising, and a global economic growth spurt could easily put CO2emissions back on an upward trajectory.The report finds that current Paris pledges make 2030 emissions likely to reach11 to 13.5 gigatonnes of carbon dioxide equivalent (GtCO2e) above the level needed to stay on the least-cost path to meeting the 2oCtarget. One gigatonne is roughly equivalent to one year of transport emissions in the European Union (including aviation).The emissions gap in the case of the 1.5oC target is 16 to 19 GtCO2e, higher than previous estimates as new studies have become available.“The Paris Agreement boosted climate action, but momentum is clearly faltering,” said Dr. Edgar E. Gutiérrez-Espeleta, Minister of Environment and Energy of Costa…

ABIDJAB, Ivory Coast (PAMACC News) - The Mali ‘Rice Initiative,’ which sow the country move out of a food crisis situation in 2008 to a currently food exporting country has been cited as a good example that other countries can follow to become food secure.In 2008, food prices rose all over the world, a situation that led to food riots globally with West Africa countries suffering many of the incidents. “We had no choice other than developing a policy that would later see our country out of the crisis,” said Dr Dembele Bourema, who until July 2017 was Director for research at Institut d'Economie Rurale.As a matter of urgency, the government of Mali formed an initiative that would see farmers buy certified seed, important farm inputs and even machineries for land preparation at highly subsidised prices, and by 2010, the country was producing enough for domestic consumption according to Dr Bourema, now the Programme Officer for Africa Green Revolution Alliance (AGRA) in Mali.AGRA works with research institutions in the country to produce and multiply seeds locally for the farmers, following the increased demand.“It will take commitment of African governments to stimulate and guide the transition. If left to the private sector alone, growth in the agrifood system will not be as fast as it could, nor will it benefit as many smallholder farmers and entrepreneurs as it could,” Dr Agnes Kalibata, the AGRA President for told Thomson Reuters Foundation at the 2017 Africa Green Revolution Forum (AGRF) in Abidjan.Her sentiments are also registered in the Africa Agriculture Status Report released on September 5, 2017.Following the ‘Rice Initiative’ in Mali, which has now expanded to supporting other staple food crops not limited to sorghum, millet, cowpeas, ground nuts and maize, the country has been allocating at least 15 percent of the national budget to agriculture, superseding targets to invest ten percent of GDP in agriculture, agreed at the 2003 African Union (AU) Summit as part of The Comprehensive Africa Agriculture Development Programme (CAADP). Apart from seed and farm input subsidy, the government of Mali started buying new 1000 tractors every year from 2009 and selling the same to farmers at half price. But farmers were and are still allowed to pay just 20 percent of the value of the machinery in cash, and then pay the remaining 30 percent as loans to commercial banks in installments. Poor farmers were not left behind because they were and are still allowed to buy the machineries at the same subsidised rate through groups as long as they demonstrate ability and willingness to cultivate at least 50 hectares of land. By 2008 when the initiative was thought through, the West African nation was producing only 900,000 metric tons of rice against domestic consumption of 1.1 million metric tons. But in 2016, Mali produced 2.7 million metric tons of rice with government subsidies worth CFA35 billion ($61.7 million) in the entire agriculture sector. This rice production is double the country’s annual consumption.For food in general, the…

South Africa (PAMACC News) - A new study focusing on six developing countries has shown that women are not getting the resources they need to feed their families and communities and adapt to climate change. An analysis by Oxfam on policies and public investments in Ethiopia, Ghana, Nigeria, Pakistan, the Philippines, and Tanzania has exposed a sham in the rhetoric and commitments by countries and donors to shore up the agricultural sector and to focus support on women farmers. The findings come following a year of rising hunger, fueled by conflicts and super-charged weather events. A brutal drought in East Africa pushed millions to the brink of famine; several Category Five hurricanes slammed into the Caribbean and the United States while flooding in South Asia killed more than 1000 people. The Oxfam study focused on agricultural policies and public investments in the six countries and found two major problems; first, very little money is being used to support small-scale farmers and help them become more resilient to climate change. Second, it’s almost impossible to know how much is really reaching women farmers, a group especially threatened by climate change. “Climate change is not some far-off threat; it is here now and putting lives in danger,” said Rashmi Mistry, the head of Oxfam’s GROW campaign. “Governments are breaking their promises to give more resources to farmers. Women on the front lines of climate change can’t continue to struggle on while waiting for money to trickle down to them. Investing directly in women farmers not only helps them and their families, it bolsters the food security for entire communities.” Oxfam is calling on donor governments to meet the goals of the Paris Agreement and step up their funding aimed at helping communities adapt to climate change. Developing countries must increase funding specifically for women farmers. African countries must also honor the Maputo Declaration that commits 10 percent of all government spending to agriculture development. These commitments offer huge benefits. Discriminatory attitudes and policies mean women farmersproduce about 20 to 30 percent less than men – closing this gap would lift millions out of hunger and poverty. The countries investigated by Oxfam are all struggling to get enough climate adaptation funding. In Pakistan, just 26 per cent of the USD1.17 billion in climate finance they received in 2014 went to adaptation. Worse still, as of this May, Nigeria has received only USD15 million for adaptation—a sliver of what others have had. As of last year, multilateral adaptation funding for small-scale farmers totaled just USD345 million, far short of the many billions that estimates show developing countries will need. To make matters worse, Oxfam found that governments do almost nothing to make sure women farmers benefit from these insufficient amounts of climate and agriculture funding. For example, in Nigeria, climate adaptation policies simply “encourage” women to participate in initiatives, but go no further. These policies do little to support the specific needs of women farmers, like improving their access to land, credit, technical training,…

HARARE, Zimbabwe (PAMACC News) - Elliot Nzarayebani throws a lump of soil violently in a small dam of dirty water near Gutaurare Business Centre in eastern Zimbabwe; he shakes his head as a swarm of mosquito buzz off the edges of the pond. Sadly however, it was in the middle of June, one of the coldest months on Zimbabwe’s calendar; a month when mosquitoes are not commonly seen in this part of the country. “You see we still have mosquitoes even in the middle of winter,” Nzarayebani said.And a bite from bloodsucking female mosquito transmits a number of serious diseases, including the deadly malaria, chikungunya, dengue fever,West Nile virus and Zika virus among others. In this part of the country, it was rare to see mosquitoes in winter; but not anymore. And villagers are left at their wit’s ends as they don’t know why mosquitoes are now thriving in the winter temperatures.Nzarayebani, who is a volunteer health worker in this area said local people were now encouraged to sleep under insecticidal mosquito nets even in winter. “We have attended to many cases of malaria this past rainy season and our fear is that we will continue to see more cases even in winter. Times are changing. We don’t know whether the mosquitoes are now resistant to the cold weather or our winters are no longer as cold as they were before,” he said. “But the government is working hard to curb mosquito through various programmes including indoor residual house spraying in this part of the country”. And in the city of Mutare, one resident Desire Zivanai Jongwe, vented his anger at mosquitoes on Facebook.“Mosquitoes in Mutare resisting this cold weather; thought mosquitoes are for summer only,” Jongwe posted on his Facebook timeline. And many people in Zimbabwe are now asking why there are mosquitoes even in winter.Experts have proffered explanations for the And according to Zimbabwe’s Ministry of Health and Childcare a total of 170 897 malaria cases were in the first 15 weeks this year up from 108 788 during the same period in 2016 with 116 deaths. And health experts said half of Zimbabwe’s 13 million people are living in areas where malaria was endemic. A study published by the journal, BioMed Central revealed that the advent of climate change, especially increases in temperature, threatens to complicate the situation by extending the geographical distribution of malaria globally, in parts of Europe, Asia and Africa. The report said insecticide residual spraying has been documented as an effective way to control malaria and has been adopted globally by the WHO and national governments. However, the report added, both insecticide resistance and climate change threaten to reverse the progress made by insecticide residual spraying in malaria control. “Resistance has been reported in all four classes of insecticides approved by the WHO for vector control intervention,” the report said. “Variability of environmental temperature is suspected to complicate the situation through alteration in the genetic structure, and enzyme and protein profiles of mosquitoes”.…