Jaspreet Kindra

Jaspreet Kindra began her career in India – Bhopal, the provincial capital of Madhya Pradesh, where her first editor was passionate about environmental reporting and encouraged her to write articles focusing on environmental issues.

In 1991 she moved to Delhi and joined the editorial team of an evening paper published by the Hindustan Times. Here she gathered a wealth of experience as a journalist covering issues that ranged from the environment, to HIV/AIDS.

When her family moved to South Africa she began her career again and worked her way from a community newspaper in Durban to South Africa’s leading daily publication “The Mail and Guardian”, where her first assignment was to cover the African National Congress. She now lives in Johannesburg and couldn’t imagine doing anything other than what she is doing right now. Jaspreet talked via e-mail with capitaleritrea.

Q: Congratulations, you won the Earth Journalism Awards in Copenhagen with a series you wrote for IRIN South Africa. What is your job at IRIN?
A: Thank you. I am IRIN’s focal point for climate change and food security coverage. I write about these issues from a global and regional perspective – from the field and the desk on policy.

Q: Did you ever imagine you’d be winning a journalism award with a series about climate change in Eritrea?
A: No I did not. I heard about the award many months after the Eritrea trip and wasn’t even going to enter it. However, only after IRIN’s marketing person insisted that I should participate I applied minutes ahead of the closing time on the last day.

Q: How many online votes did you get out of the total and does the award come with a monetary incentive?
A: I actually have no idea about the number of votes I got in the end. The award did not come with any monetary incentive.

Q: You said you chose Eritrea because it is a very under-reported country. Are there any other reasons?
A: I liked the fact that Eritrea’s environment officials were so proactive and I was amazed to discover that Eritrea was already tapping wind power. I was curious – wanted to find out what this country with very little financial resources had managed to do.

Q: How would you describe Eritrea?
A: Eritreans are some of the most warm, friendly and resilient people I have ever come across. It is a tough terrain with some tough people. I also discovered how beautiful the Red Sea coastline is – it has a tremendous potential as a tourist destination – the untouched unspoilt beaches…though it was incredibly hot.

Q: “Reaping the wind” is the winning story in your series. Personally, what is your favourite story in the series?
A: I like all of them enormously. But I guess `Reaping the wind’ and `Water on their minds’ because I got to visit those areas I wrote about.

Q: What was your experience with the local fishermen at the Red Sea coast line?
A: Wonderful people! Very resilient and extremely hospitable. The fishermen were very open and shared their lives without any prompting. I am really grateful to them for sharing their lives with me. I think sleeping out in the open on the cots close to the sea was probably one of the highlights of my trip. It gave me a sense of their relationship with the sea and comprehend what one of the fishermen said: “The sea is everything to us”. And the food was great by the way.

Q: You mentioned that it’s only the National Fisheries Corporation that buys the fish at very low rate or else in the bigger markets of Yemen. What changes do you think would the wind turbines bring to the livelihoods of the Afar tribe in the area unless there are other market opportunities?
A: From what I understand from the fishermen, if they had access to cold storage facilities– they could access markets in other towns and even the capital, Asmara. At the moment they have to get rid of their catch at the nearest market. The fact that they are unable to access bigger markets also acts as a disincentive to catch bigger loads of fish.

Q: You also stated that ‘’Eritrea could sustainably harvest around 70,000 metric tonnes of fish annually, but the current catch is around 13,000 tonnes, according to the government’s environment department.’’ What are the measurements for this figures to be sustainable?
A: These are figures I sourced from the government. I assume they would have taken all the sustainability indicators into account to come up with the figure.

Q: What are the goals of the award and what would one expect after this – is there possibility where the international body could put some efforts to help the society to develop what they already have started?
A: I hope the award by highlighting certain stories – well, speaking for the adaptation award – I hope the Eritrean story will inspire other LDCs/ communities to become proactive about their future living with an even more erratic climate.

Q: What are your future plans?
A: I hope to continue to highlight efforts being made by small and poor countries in dealing with the impact of climate change and food insecurity.

Q: Do you plan to return to Eritrea one day?
A: I hope I do one day to be able to see the impact of the projects I had seen.

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Kindra, Jaspreet

IRIN reporter Jaspreet Kindra is one of the winners of the Internews Europe Earth Journalism awards, held at the ongoing COP15 conference in Copenhagen.

IRIN News Services said it is delighted that one of its reporters has won the price. Jaspreet Kindra is one of the winners with her in-depth series “Climate Change Focus on Eritrea”.

Polls are still open for the Global Public Award, so if you liked her stories about Eritrea please take a minute to vote for her here:

http://awards.earthjournalism.org/finalist/climate-change-focus-on-eritrea-eritrea

Jaspreet was invited to receive the award in Denmark and is currently providing daily humanitarian coverage from the proceedings in Copenhagen.

The award is sponsored by the Danish government, who are hosting COP15, the World Bank, MTV, and others. Over 900 environmental reporters across all media – print, radio, TV and online – professional and citizen journalists, photojournalists and bloggers from more than 145 countries participated in the awards competition.

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“An interesting blog on the

Africa afraid of being taken hostage

Highly vulnerable to the effects of climate change, Africa badly needs an agreement in Copenhagen. But an agreement could become so weak, that it would be better to walk away, some analysts say.

by Morten Andersen

Can a global deal become so weak that Africa will do better by walking out of the UN negotiations in Copenhagen this December? The issue is being debated at news site AllAfrica as a new report by two UN institutions highlights the continent’s vulnerability to climate change.

“If the (Copenhagen) deal does not respond to the expectation of African nations to adapt to climate change, (and) if it fails to provide the necessary finance, technology and capacity building, then Africa should consider not signing in Copenhagen,” argues Hawa Sow, Africa Climate Policy Coordinator at global conservation organization WWF, adding that “a really bad deal could be worse than no deal”.

The opposite view is held by Gabriel Odima, President of the US based Africa Center for Peace and Democracy:

“(The African continent) is facing a real challenge in dealing with climate change. Poor governance, lack of democracy, lack of political will and institutional framework are some of the challenges facing Africa. But threatening to walk away from the negotiations is not a wise idea,” Gabriel Odima states, while adding that “the African Union should put its house in order first and come up with a workable plan to address the problems relating to climate change in Africa.”

WWF’s Africa Climate Policy Coordinator does not try to hide the fact that following the international negotiations has made her pessimistic.

“We would like the Copenhagen deal to provide special help and treatment for Africa and other vulnerable countries, but at the current state of the negotiations, we are not very confident that this will happen to a high enough level,” she says.

“Suggestions that we can do without the Kyoto Protocol (as has been suggested by primarily USA, editors remark) and replace it with an entirely new instrument are unproductive at this point. It will take too long, and we have no way of knowing what we will get. And it is very likely that the process will just lead to a prolonged race to the bottom,” says Hawa Sow. Source: (Cop15 COPENHAGEN)

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Farmland

In recent years many questions have been raised on how to handle climate change. Scientists and practitioners have recognised the importance of tackling the issue by changing to a low-carbon economy especially in the energy sector.

One of the low energy alternatives proposed is the use of 30 percent agrofuels (also known as biofuels) to replace fossil fuels in the market.

However, accusations have emerged that agrofuels compete with food production particularly in times of crises and food insecurity. The world is asking the question: where should be agrofuels planted?

In response, some policy makers have proposed that agrofuel crops should be planted on marginal lands. In farming, marginal land by definition is a poor-quality land, which is likely to yield a low return. Marginal lands are often desert fringes or mountain areas.

There are millions of hectares of marginal lands around the world, especially in Africa, which neither plays a role in food production for guaranteeing people’s livelihoods nor important for biodiversity or carbon sequestration.

Thus, many foreign companies are competing to seize the marginal lands of Africa to produce agrofuels. One potential crop often cited as ideal, planed for growing on poor soils with little water, in Africa, Asia and South America is the oilseed bush Jatropha curcas.

However, very little is known about Jatropha and there is no prior experience in growing the seed on an industrial scale. Millions of poor people living on these marginal lands are being promised jobs although there is real uncertainty about the viability of this crop.

Regardless of this uncertainty, the proposal has launched its operation in the third world and especially in Africa where many poor indigenous people are already victimized. 

The project has started for example in Wolaita, Ethiopia in the Horn of Africa.

Wolaita, located in the Southern part of Ethiopia, is one of the target areas of new agrofuel developments. Referring to local NGO Eco Yeshemachoch Mahiber, Sun Biofuels, a UK company, has seized 3000 hectares of communal pastureland for a Jatropha plantation.

The government of Ethiopia and the companies have announced that agrofuel feedstock production will only take place on marginal, waste or unproductive land.

However, citing farmers in the area, the African Biodiversity Network testified that this contrasts sharply with local testimonies, i.e. developments are in reality taking place on the most fertile grazing and communal land, and on the most fertile agricultural soil.  The area is one of the most densely populated in the country, 360 and 700 people living per square kilometre.

In effect, intense competition for land caused food insecurity in which about 39% of the population in this area depend on emergency food assistance, or the Food for Work programme.

This presumed development strategy has replaced the highly productive land for food production and grazing. Hence, it is claimed that all the combined effects caused an increase in food prices in the area as much as five times the amount compared to the previous year 2008.

Besides, the companies assert strongly that the earnings from agrofuel production will enhance livelihoods of the community. Nonetheless, the farmers stated that the companies have failed to commit their promises in terms of labour salary payments and did not even provide the farmers with a copy of their contract agreements.

Thus, the African Biodiversity Network is claiming: with decreased food production and rising food prices, the community is clearly more food insecure than ever, and is facing severe food shortages, exacerbated by agrofuel production on this supposedly “unproductive” land. Similarly, China is purchasing enormous amount of land in Africa.

On the back of Africa, Western and Chinese companies try now to correct years of neglecting environmental issues, which caused climate change in first place. Should African leaders and governments accept this for the sake of making money in the short term without looking into the long term consequences?

Consequences, such as the further increase of food prices and the lack of food scurity in Africa. As a result Africans might have to buy food for expensive prices from their own land in the future. – A good deal for Africa?

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By 2050, hotter conditions and less rainfall in an area covering 500,000 sq km to one million sq km of marginal farmland – about the size of Egypt – would make it harder for people grow crops, said Philip Thornton, a scientist at the International Livestock Research Institute (ILRI), based in Nairobi, capital of Kenya, co-author of the report.

The study, Croppers to livestock keepers: livelihood transitions to 2050 in Africa due to climate change, was published in a special edition of the journal, Environmental Science and Policy, to coincide with the UN climate change meeting in Bonn, Germany, this week. The meeting is the second in the run-up to the December conference in Copenhagen, Denmark, to consider a global accord to cut greenhouse gas emissions.

The two authors suggest that rethinking and planning now for agricultural systems that will be necessary in a few decades, like boosting production of the hardier types of livestock – goats, donkeys, camels and some types of cattle – could provide an alternate source of income.

Thornton told IRIN that the affected communities could take the lead from pastoralist communities, who have been adapting to climate variability for generations. About 10 percent of the population in sub-Saharan Africa – around 72 million people – live in rangeland systems.
The Samburu tribe in northern Kenya, traditionally cattle farmers, had begun keeping camels in the last two or three decades because droughts had diminished grazing, leading to diseases in the herds and cattle raiding by other groups, whereas the neighbouring tribes, who kept camels, fared better.

“Any increase in livestock must be managed sustainably, but our research shows there are many areas in Africa where, over the next few decades, climate vulnerability, coupled with market demand for animal products, will prompt many farming communities to add more livestock to their agriculture systems and we should prepare now for this inevitability,” said Carlos Seré, Director General of ILRI.

The authors focused on the arid and semi-arid regions of West, East and southern Africa, where poor rainfall routinely causes crops to fail in one out of every six or even fewer growing seasons.

Various climate projections have indicated that the length of the reliable growing season on the affected land would drop below 90 days, making it impossible to cultivate maize – the staple food in much of Africa – and in some places even “drought-tolerant crops, such as millet” would be difficult to grow.

Livestock-farming as a solution is not a new idea. Thornton said the goal of their research was ultimately to use climate change projections to pinpoint specific areas in Africa where it would be appropriate to promote livestock ownership on small farms and help farmers deal with the risks inherent in such operations.

However, “there is currently a mismatch between the kind of localised climate change impact information that is urgently needed, and what can objectively be supplied,” he commented.

For example, while there was consensus that temperatures would rise significantly, climate models did not always agree as to how the pattern and amount of rainfall in some parts of Africa would change.

Thornton said more detailed research was necessary to help implement programmes to assist the people living in these areas.

jk/he
Source IRIN

Related posts:

1. Eritrea Preparing for Climate Change
2. Africa’s Expectations – Climate Conference in Copenhagen
3. Interview with Earth Journalism Awards Winner Jaspreet Kindra

Related posts:

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2. Reporter Wins Price in Copenhagen – With Series About Climate Change in Eritrea
3. Africa’s Expectations – Climate Conference in Copenhagen
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5. Interview with Earth Journalism Awards Winner Jaspreet Kindra