Christian Aid - Uganda Multimedia News & Information

Aid agencies asked to empower local organisations to overcome emergencies

Gerald Businge — Tue, 27 Mar 2012 11:05:13 +0000

Many more people will survive and recover from emergencies such as earthquakes, floods and famines if international aid agencies boost local organisations’ ability to respond, a Christian Aid report says today.

‘One of the best ways to reduce the suffering and devastation caused by disasters in poor countries is to strengthen local people’s ability to prevent them in the first place – and respond quickly if the worst does happen,’ said Katherine Nightingale, the author of the new study and Humanitarian Policy Adviser at Christian Aid.

‘But that requires the international community to pay more than lip-service to the huge importance of national and local organisations in vulnerable countries which are the first on the scene to help people in the wake of catastrophes.

‘It means shifting money and power away from international aid agencies and the UN towards local agencies and partnerships with national institutions, which are best placed to prevent and respond to disasters.

‘This absolutely isn’t a call for the international organisations to abandon their efforts but it is encouraging them to get better at working in genuine partnership with poor countries’ local and national organisations and governments, with all the shifts of power and resources that implies.’

The new report – Building the Future of Humanitarian Aid – notes that while the need for international humanitarian organisations to work more closely with national and local organisations is widely acknowledged, in practice there remains a long way to go.

‘The reality is that despite the policy commitments and growing evidence-base of the importance of local capacity and the need to work in genuine partnerships, there are some repeated and disheartening lessons that emerge from many humanitarian responses,’ it warns.

‘These indicate that local capacities are frequently undermined or excluded, often systematically…Southern partnerships are sometimes in name only and partners are treated as a pipeline for delivery, with little sense of sustainability of work.’

For instance after the Haitian earthquake of 2010, UN co-ordination work was criticised for excluding national and local organisations in favour of international NGOs, through the language that was used, the locations of meetings and other decisions.

However, there are also positive examples. In Ethiopia, training has enabled local organisations to have more access and influence in international emergency coordination meetings. And in Haiti, despite the exclusion difficulties, local and national organisations were able to deliver rapid emergency relief following the earthquake, with support and accompaniment from international NGOs, including Christian Aid.

Building the Future of Humanitarian Aid calls on UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon to set up a high level panel to review disaster prevention and response lessons from major emergencies such as the Haitian earthquake, Pakistan floods and Asian Tsunami. The review should lead to the inclusion of disaster prevention work in the framework which follows the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs) after 2015.

The report also argues for radical, urgent reforms to the funding of emergency prevention and response work. ‘Donors, UN co-ordination mechanisms and national government must fund, coordinate and deliver emergency responses as if local capacity mattered,’ it states.

One proposal is that the United Nations should move towards only funding emergency aid work if that work involves a local government or civil society organisation in a lead role. Another suggestion is that international alliances of aid organisations should try to prevent their members doing emergency response work in countries where they have no previous experience, and instead coordinate to channel funds through alliance members with history and experience in those countries.

The report is available here: http://www.christianaid.org.uk/images/building-the-future-of-humanitarian-aid.pdf

It will be launched at a panel discussion held jointly with ALNAP (Active Learning Network for Accountability and Performance in Humanitarian Action) at Christian Aid’s London office tomorrow (Wednesday March 28) between 12.30-2pm.

Members of the media wishing to attend please RSVP Andrew Hogg on 07872 350534 or email ahogg@christianaid.org.uk

For more information and to interview Katherine Nightingale, please contact Andrew Hogg on 0207 523 2058 or 07872 350534.

Notes to Editors

1. Christian Aid works in some of the world’s poorest communities in nearly 50 countries. We act where the need is greatest, regardless of religion, helping people build the lives they deserve.

2. Christian Aid has a vision, an end to global poverty, and we believe that vision can become a reality. Our report, Poverty Over, explains what we believe needs to be done – and can be done – to end poverty. Details at http://www.christianaid.org.uk/Images/poverty-over-report.pdf

3. Christian Aid is a member of the ACT Alliance, a global coalition of 100 churches and church-related organisations that work together inhumanitarian assistance and development. Further details at http://www.actalliance.org

4. Follow Christian Aid’s newswire on Twitter: http://twitter.com/caid_newswire

5. For more information about the work of Christian Aid visit www.christianaid.org.uk

Andrew Hogg

News Editor,

Christian Aid,

PO Box 100.

London SE1 7RT

0207 523 2058/

07872 350534

ahogg@christian-aid.org

@Caid_newswire

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The post Aid agencies asked to empower local organisations to overcome emergencies first appeared on Uganda Multimedia News & Information.

African Green Revolution Ignores downsides of intensive farming

Gerald Businge — Thu, 13 Oct 2011 11:36:29 +0000

Full report at this link: http://bit.ly/pXo82N

Lessons learned from Asia’s Green Revolution about the damage intensive farming can cause are being ignored in the race to help Africa feed itself, Christian Aid warns in a report published today to mark the UN’s World Food Day (Oct 16).

Sustainable farming techniques are being sidelined in favour of a quick-fix solution – modern seed varieties (MVs) that produce better yields if treated with synthetic fertiliser and pesticides.

Such inputs are expensive and the seeds need frequent replacement. In Asia, the use of MVs in a head-long rush for bumper harvests has been shown to accelerate soil degradation, destroy crop diversity and encourage farmers to go into debt.

As Africa seeks to banish hunger, sustainable alternatives that can boost production, incomes and food security, help conserve soil and water and build resilience to climate change remain badly under resourced.

The new report Healthy Harvests: The Benefits of Sustainable Agriculture in Africa and Asia says that while there is no denying the achievement of Asia’s Green Revolution in lifting yields and reducing hunger, improvements began to stall in the 1990s amid problems that should give African governments ‘more than a pause for thought.’

These include widespread soil degradation, increased vulnerability to pests, farmer debts, a decline in traditional farming knowledge, increased inequality in rural communities, loss of biodiversity and increased greenhouse gas emissions from industrial agriculture.

In recent years, interested parties including the World Bank, the UK’s Department for International Development (DFID), USAID, the Rockefeller and Gates Foundations and African governments have promoted a Green Revolution for Africa that they claim would avoid such negative impacts.

While the efforts of such backers have helped focus the attention of policymakers and donors on the need to strengthen food security through agriculture in Africa, the solutions they advocate have tended to focus too narrowly around promoting synthetic fertilisers and pesticides, which were behind many of Asia’s problems.

‘Governments and donors need to significantly re-balance their current focus on quick-fix, external-input-intensive ‘solutions’ towards a much greater support for sustainable agro-ecological approaches,’ says the report.

Particular concern is raised about a number of initiatives funded by the Alliance for a Green Revolution in Africa (AGRA) founded in 2006 by the Rockefeller and Bill and Melinda Gates’ Foundations, and supported by DFID.

Working in 12 African countries, it funds important projects promoting improved seeds, soil health, market access for farmers and finance and policy work. It also aims to increase productivity by improving farmers’ access to mainly hybrid seeds – part of the MV range – and inputs such as chemical fertilisers.

AGRA’s key activities in this regard have included funding African agricultural scientists to develop hybrid seeds and improved crop varieties, and funding networks of rural agro-dealers to expand small farmers’ access to seeds, pesticides and fertilisers.

The report says that AGRA funded agro-dealers in eight countries are selling ‘ever more quantities of chemicals to farmers and increasing their reliance on inputs’.

In Malawi, where AGRA operates, ‘the principal beneficiaries of these efforts are the key suppliers of the inputs, mainly Monsanto,’ it says.

At the same time, training in Malawi of the agro-dealers in product knowledge – a key part of the AGRA programme – has been partly undertaken by the input suppliers, leading Christian Aid to question whether they have merely used the training to promote their own products.

The report says 70 per cent of the world’s nearly 1 billion hungry are smallholder farmers and the rural landless who have been long locked into a cycle of low productivity, lack of assets and services and weak market power.

Today, they also face the effects of climate change, land degradation and ground water depletion.

The report gives examples of successful sustainable agriculture techniques that can help. They include:

Diversification: cultivating a wide range of crops; introducing mixed systems of crops, livestock and aquaculture; and increasing biodiversity
Nutrient recycling (waste from one sub-system is used as an input in another)
Maximum use of renewable, locally available resources (such as seeds, manure, mulch, nutrient-fixing plants)
Low external-input organic soil and crop management techniques such as integrated pest management and zero or low till farming, enabling a radically reduced reliance on, or complete avoidance of, synthetic fertilisers and pesticides

Healthy Harvests: The Benefits of Sustainable Agriculture in Africa and Asia is launched tonight at the House of Lords at a joint meeting of the All Party Parliamentary Group on Agriculture and Food, Christian Aid and the African Smallholder Farmers Group. It marks the UN’s World Food Day on Sunday, October 16.

Ends

Further information from Andrew Hogg on 0207 523 2058 or 07872 350534. 24 hour press duty phone – 07850 242950
Notes to Editors
1. Christian Aid works in some of the world’s poorest communities in nearly 50 countries. We act where the need is greatest, regardless of religion, helping people build the lives they deserve.
2. Christian Aid has a vision, an end to global poverty, and we believe that vision can become a reality. Our report, Poverty Over, explains what we believe needs to be done – and can be done – to end poverty. Details at http://www.christianaid.org.uk/Images/poverty-over-report.pdf
3. Christian Aid is a member of the ACT Alliance, a global coalition of 100 churches and church-related organisations that work together inhumanitarian assistance and development. Further details at http://www.actalliance.org
4. Follow Christian Aid’s newswire on Twitter: http://twitter.com/caid_newswire
5. For more information about the work of Christian Aid visit www.christianaid.org.uk

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Christian Aid is a charity and company limited by guarantee registered in England and Wales: 35 Lower Marsh, London SE1 7RL. UK registered charity no. 1105851. Company no. 5171525.

Christian Aid also operates in Scotland: Registered Office: 41 George IV Bridge, Edinburgh, EH1 1EL. Charity no. SC039150

Christian Aid Ireland is a charity and company limited by guarantee registered in Northern Ireland: Unit 6 Linden House, Beechill Business Park, Belfast, BT8 7QN. Northern Ireland charity no: XR94639. Company no. NI059154.

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