Day: February 18, 2013
Africa’s drylands: dangers and opportunities
Hye Jung Han, one of my master’s students at SAIS, reports from a SAIS event last week. The speaker was Dr. Dennis Garrity, UN Convention to Combat Desertification Ambassador:
The Sahel region of West Africa faces worsening social, political, economic and food insecurities. With a population burgeoning to 1.8 billion people, at least twice as much food must be produced per year by 2050 to avoid widespread starvation. Food production per capita has been declining since the 1960s. Land degradation has become a serious problem, with declining soil fertility, escalating fertilizer prices and heightened risks of devastating droughts from climate change. The region suffers erratic and extreme rainfall and increasing temperatures that lead to higher crop stress. Smallholder food production, the economic mainstay of the region, is at serious risk.
Worsening food insecurity overlaps with low human development indices and extreme poverty. These structural vulnerabilities drive chronic political conflict in the region. Terrorism and political instability are centered on the African drylands. Mali has been the most recent iteration, with destabilizing spillover effects in Niger, Nigeria and Algeria. The combination of conflict and land degradation is leading to rapid disappearance of available lands for farming.
For Dr. Dennis Garrity, United Nations Convention to Combat Desertification (UNCCD) Drylands Ambassador, part of the answer lies in EverGreen Agriculture, a form of intensive farming that integrates trees with annual crops to regenerate land on small-scale farms. Fertilizer trees such as faidherbia albida have been widely used by farmers for generations. This indigenous tree improves soil fertility and moisture conditions by buffering the microclimate, providing an effect not dissimilar to a greenhouse. It is highly compatible with food crops because it does not compete with them for light, nutrients or moisture, and its nitrogen-rich leaves are used as fodder for livestock.
By scaling up this indigenous farming practice and applying scientific, tree-based management, EverGreen Agriculture has yielded significant livelihood and environmental benefits. In Malawi, maize yields on farms with fertilizer trees are 2.5 times higher than on farms without them, increasing from 1.3 to 3.1 tons per hectare. Mali has seen increases in household and national food security, with the intercropping of faidherbia trees leading to the enhancement of millet, sorghum, and livestock fodder production. Agroforestry is proving itself one of the lowest cost, least risky, and most easily diffused agricultural practices that can be made accessible to small scale farmers.
National governments are deepening their support. The successful experiences of Zambia, Malawi, Niger, and Burkina Faso prompted the Ethiopian Prime Minister to promise the establishment of a billion fertilizer trees on smallholder farms at the UN Climate Change Conference at Durban in 2011, prompting the Prime Minister of Uganda to announce a larger program. Seventeen countries are currently engaged in EverGreen Agriculture, with national scaling-up programs supported by the African Union, World Bank, IFAD, GEF, FAO, UNEP, UNCCD and other regional and local organizations.
Agroforestry systems such as EverGreen Agriculture build more productive and drought-resilient farming systems, relying upon local knowledge, science and practice. Working to regreen the Sahelian landscape and combat desertification, EverGreen Agriculture can improve household and national food security, increase the resource pie and ameliorate some of the chronic drivers of conflict that continue to plague the region today.
Share this, I'll really appreciate it:
Talk is cheap
Calls for negotiated solutions are all the rage. Secretary of State Kerry wants one in Syria. The Washington Post thinks one is possible in Bahrain. Everyone wants one for Iran. Despite several years of failure, many are still hoping for negotiations with the Taliban in Afghanistan. Ditto Israel/Palestine. Asia needs them for its maritime issues.
It is a good time to remember the classic requirement for successful negotiations: “ripeness,” defined as a mutually hurting stalemate in which both parties come to the conclusion that they cannot gain without negotiations and may well lose. I might hope this condition is close to being met in Syria and Bahrain, but neither President Asad nor the Al Khalifa monarchy seems fully convinced, partly because Iran and Saudi Arabia are respectively providing unqualified support to the regimes under fire. Ripeness may well require greater external pressure: from Russia in the case of Syria and from the United States in the case of Bahrain, which hosts the US Fifth Fleet.
It is difficult to tell where things stand in the Afghanistan negotiations. While the Taliban seem uninterested, Pakistan appears readier than at times in the past. The Americans are committed to getting out of the fight by the end of 2014. President Karzai is anxious for his security forces to take over primary responsibility sooner rather than later. But are they capable of doing so, and what kind of deal are the Afghans likely to cut as the Americans leave?
Israel and Palestine have one way or another been negotiating and fighting on and off since before 1948. Objectively, there would appear to be a mutually hurting stalemate, but neither side sees it that way. Israel has the advantage of vast military superiority, which it has repeatedly used as an alternative to negotiation to get its way in the West Bank and Gaza. A settlement might end that option. The Palestinians have used asymmetric means (terrorism, rocket fire, acceptance at the UN as a non-member state, boycott) to counter and gain they regard as a viable state.
The Iran nuclear negotiations are critical, as their failure could lead not just to an American strike but also to Iranian retaliation around the world and a requirement to continue military action as Tehran rebuilds its nuclear program. The United States is trying to bring about ripeness by ratcheting up sanctions pressure on Tehran, which fears that giving up its nuclear program will put the regime at risk. It is not clear that the US is prepared to strike a bargain that ensures regime survival in exchange for limits on the nuclear program. We may know more after the P5+1 (US, UK, France, Russia, China + Germany) meet with Iran February 26 in Almaty, Kazakhstan.
Asia’s conflicts have only rarely come to actual violence. China, Korea (North and South), Japan, Taiwan, Vietnam, the Philippines and India are sparring over trade routes, islands, resources and ultimately hegemony. This risks arousing nationalist sentiments that will be hard to control, driving countries that have a good deal to gain from keeping the peace in some of the world’s fastest growing economies into wars that the regimes involved will find it difficult to back away from. Asia lacks an over-arching security structure like those in Europe (NATO, OSCE, G8, Council of Europe, etc) and has long depended on the US as a balancing force to preserve the peace. This has been a successful approach since the 1980s, but the economic rise of China has put its future in doubt, even with the Obama Administration’s much-vaunted pivot to Asia.
This is a world that really does need diplomacy. None of the current negotiations seem destined for success, though all have some at least small probability of positive outcomes. Talk really is cheap. I don’t remember anyone complaining that we had spent too much money on it, though some would argue that delay associated with negotiations has sometimes been costly. The French would say that about their recent adventure in Mali.
But war is extraordinarily expensive. Hastening to it is more often than not unwise. That is part of what put the United States into deep economic difficulty since 2003. If we want to conserve our strength for an uncertain future, we need to give talk its due.
Share this, I'll really appreciate it:
Happy birthday, Kosovo!
I did this interview on for Arben Ahmeti, editor of the new Kosovo daily Tribuna. They are publishing it today (the day after the fifth anniversary of Kosovo’s declaration of independence):
1. Has Kosovo achieved statehood five years after declaration of independence?
A: Yes, Kosovo is a state. It has a functioning presidency, government, Constitutional Court and judicial system. It has functioning municipalities and civil society. While there are many state institutions that are not fully formed yet, the main state institution lacking at this point is a security force capable of defending the state, its territory and its people. That will become permissible this year and will be needed within the next five years, because I find it hard to believe KFOR will stay any longer than that.
2. There is no international legitimacy yet, no authority over all territory; no rule of law. Do you think that these five years were more a test than actual existence as a state?
A: No. I don’t. You are building a state, which takes time. There is a good deal of international legitimacy: more than half the members of the UN have recognized Kosovo, which is increasingly accepted in regional meetings and international organizations. There is government authority over 89% of the territory. The law rules more than it doesn’t. Otherwise I don’t know why my driver on the way to the airport at 5 am keeps below the speed limit. The Constitutional Court has intervened twice on issues concerning the presidency, successfully. I know a lot of states in which that would not have been so readily accomplished.
There is of course room for improvement, especially concerning corruption and organized crime. But you should not ignore the real progress that has been made.
3. How long do you think will it take to Kosovo to become member of UN?
A: As long as it takes to convince Serbia that it is better off with a clearly defined border and a friendly neighbor than an indefinite border and a hostile neighbor. It is beyond me to predict when that might be, though I suspect it will be sooner rather than later. Belgrade needs a date to begin EU accession negotiations, because with the date comes substantial financing. No one in Belgrade is going to do Kosovo any favors, but you have some leverage in this situation.
4. Do you think that ongoing dialogue will result in normalization of relations between Kosovo and Serbia this year?
A: There has already been a good deal of normalization. Belgrade officials are meeting often with Kosovo officials, whom the Serbs accept as the democratically validated representatives of a legitimate government. But I won’t be satisfied until there is mutual diplomatic recognition and exchange of ambassadors. That isn’t going to happen this year.
5. Will north be a special territory?
A: I don’t know what a “special territory” is. I expect the north to have all the privileges defined in the Ahtisaari plan, which are many. There may also be some need for particular implementation agreements, like the Integrated Border Management agreement.
6. Do you expect the north to be integrated into Kosovo institutions?
A: Yes, while continuing the relations with Belgrade permitted in the Ahtisaari plan.
7. How do you see the lack of rule of law in Kosovo?
A: I see it as a problem, one that needs to be solved. I can remember a Kosovo that had much less rule of law than today. And I hope to see one with more rule of law than today.
8. How do you comment the evaluation of EU Commission for visas on Kosovo?
A: I see it as a first step in the right direction. The EU Commission has to be exacting and clear in what it asks of Kosovo. Experience with other Balkans countries will make the Europeans very tough. If you want to get into their club, you need to meet the requirements. If I were an EU citizen, I would expect a great deal of rigor in applying the requirements.
9. Do you think that Kosovo is losing too much lacking the economic development?
A: Kosovo has a lot to do still to make its business environment attractive to foreign investors. But in talking with Kosovar entrepreneurs, I’ve found a good deal of enthusiasm for the commercial possibilities. Growth in Kosovo has been high by European standards. Not sufficient, but still high. One of the key questions now will be how to incorporate the gray economy into the official statistics and make it part of the official economy.
10. Is Kosovo still a “black hole” in Balkans?
A: No. It is a developing country, an emerging market, that still needs to improve the business environment and rule of law. These are much better problems than it had ten or even five years ago.
While far more advanced than an infant, a five year old still has a lot of growth and maturing to do. Enjoy your childhood. It will be over soon enough. Happy birthday, Kosovo!
RSS - Posts
