Another Path

Creating A Climate For Change- The Movie And Updated Blog Post

2012-01-25T05:44:00.000-08:00

I understand that the film for some reason did not come through email, so here it is again. My apologies.

If You Cant See the Film In Your Browser
CLICK HERE to view it on my channel.

After three weeks away from most other responsibilities and a chance to just get my head down and do some work, I have now finished the editing of the Creating A Climate For Change documentary. The screening and launch for Durban was great, and allowed the project to benefit from the publicity of the COP17 Conference in Durban, but for a stand-alone film edit the project needed hundreds of hours of further editing. That is now done, and I am happy to announce the documentary is uploaded and viewable here. I am looking for broadcast partners worldwide, so if anyone knows some folks who might like to buy it for broadcast, that would be great. Link TV may be running it in the next few months. If that is the case I will make sure to post the flighting times on here.

Happy New Year!

Double Click to open this video to open it full screen, and choose on the lower right of the picture 480p to view it in. The quality is much better.

Creating A Climate For Change - The Movie-Updated

2012-01-24T00:04:00.000-08:00

If You Cant See the Film In Your Browser

CLICK HERE to view it on my channel.

After three weeks away from most other responsibilities and a chance to just get my head down and do some work, I have now finished the editing of the Creating A Climate For Change documentary. The screening and launch for Durban was great, and allowed the project to benefit from the publicity of the COP17 Conference in Durban, but for a stand-alone film edit the project needed hundreds of hours of further editing. That is now done, and I am happy to announce the documentary is uploaded and viewable here. I am looking for broadcast partners worldwide, so if anyone knows some folks who might like to buy it for broadcast, that would be great. Link TV may be running it in the next few months. If that is the case I will make sure to post the flighting times on here.

Happy New Year!

Double Click to open this video to open it full screen, and choose on the lower right of the picture 480p to view it in. The quality is much better.

Lessons From Durban: Bottom's Up!

2011-12-27T01:34:00.000-08:00

Dark clouds gather over the fifth day of meetings in Durban South Africa, where the world's leaders met to discuss Climate Change.

In the aftermath of the COP17 event in Durban where the Creating A Climate For Change Project was launched, a few things became clear to me. One was that I had been working very hard without a break for three months, and needed to take some time off. The other much more important thing was that these large conferences between nations are not delivering the change we need to see in order to lower our dependence on fossil fuels. Nations are struggling, either with a need to develop or with a need to keep their economies afloat. When times are tight long-term attempts to reduce fossil fuel dependency are going to be a very tough sell, unless there is a clear short-term financial and electoral benefit.

So some will look at Durban as a huge success, particularly high-end polluters like China and the United States. They will toast "business as usual" as their economies struggle onward, wholly dependent upon fossil fuel use, without the necessary spending on sustainable alternatives. Essentially the conference skirted all of the major issues and settled for an understanding that we do need an agreement, but that we should decide all of that later, at least four years from now, preferably longer. This is bad news for scientists and farmers who understand that we are really putting ourselves in a very bad future position by not regulating greenhouse gas emissions now.

It became crystal clear to me on this project through Southern Africa that there is an urgency to stop the runaway greenhouse effect, a very real need that is having dire consequences for people across this region and the rest of the world. I have argued on this blog and in my writing for both Global Post and Link TV that one of the reasons we are in a downward economic spiral is because we are using our planet's resources unsustainably. Higher food prices, especially basic commodities like corn and wheat, mean less cash in the financial sector and less money everywhere to fuel further growth. Check out these well-made graphs tracking food prices worldwide. World corn and wheat prices have again shot up by 50% in the last half of 2011, and are higher now than in 2008, and this will again have a knock effect in virtually every part of our global economy.

In the project I spoke to Dr. Anthony Turton, an economist and water resource manager who looks at water and food security through the lense of National Security. This former secret service operative helped bring the ANC and and National Party together for a dialogue in the 1980s, and eventually helped unveil the new constitution in South Africa in 1994. He is not an environmentalist, but a realist who at one time received funding from the national and international security establishment to look at environmental problems as national security issues. He says "Our global economy is a subsidiary of our global ecosystem". When the ecosystem declines the economy will too, and it is my opinion -and many others that this is exactly what is happening right now.

Barring some game changing energy technology or a cataclysmic event in our personal, political or environmental horizon, it seems we are stuck with government inaction at the highest levels for the next twenty years at least. However, as I learned at COP17 and in my work, many people are already working across the world at changing the status quo from the bottom up. Small energy projects in places like Mozambique, China's emergence as a huge developer of green energy technologies, grassroots recycling movements, buying an electric car, these are all part of the way we can start to live sustainably with our planet today. It is obvious that we the people are the only ones who can make change happen now, and the sooner we get started the better.

The Rooftop of the Re-Purpose Center in Durban. Cabbages and other foods complement local plants and a chessboard in this roof-top garden right in the center of the city.

At the Repurpose Center in Durban a group of concerned citizens and architects got together with the city of Durban to help revitalize the city center, provide more jobs, and create rooftop gardens that preserve endemic South African plants while providing nutrition for underprivileged communities. This center is an example of exactly how grassroots movements can become mainstream and make a huge difference in their communities. With enough projects like this, humanity can learn to become better stewards of our environment, and create the changes that will make us all more healthy, happy and help us look after our global ecosystem -and in turn our economy.

Happy Holidays.

The Exhibition Online

2011-12-06T07:10:00.001-08:00

Ancient Baobabs Tower above an island deep in the Jakotsha Trust Conservation Area in the Okavango Delta. This Baobab below is dying as the ecosystem that supported it for at least a thousand years changes.

Elephants like this family herd on the Maramba River in Zambia are already ranging across borders. These elephants trundled down to the river from the Zimbabwe side, drank their fill and moved on into Zambia as the sun set.

The Omaruru River in flood in Namibia. This year Namibia experienced more than twice its normal rainfall in many areas of the country. This image was taken from a road that almost never floods. More variability in climate can be expected as Southern Africa warms.

A Zebra ranges across the Torra Conservancy in Namibia at sunset. The conservancy is one of the best run in the country, and allows local communities to benefit from tourists, helping finance the protection of of this ecosystem, as well as lions, elephants, giraffe, rhino, and even this one lone Zebra.

Another path winds into the distance at the Tora Conservancy in Namibia. This year the grass grew over the rocky soil, and turned this desert landscape into a garden. If Humanity to is to survive the coming changes, then we will have to embark on another path, one that sees us as custodians of our environment.

A true-to-color thunderstorm rolls into the Damaraland area of Namibia, lit by the setting sun. As southern Africa’s climate warms, violent thunderstorms, searing droughts and more variable weather is predicted.

A typical high-veld thunderstorm rolls across the grasslands of the Cradle of Humankind, near Johannesburg South Africa. New discoveries here highlight the evolution of our species here in Africa. Today, Africans are part of a global solution that will hopefully see our species continue to thrive in the face of climate change.

The power of nature reigns after a downpour over the springtime landscape at Golden Gate National Park on the border between Lesotho and South Africa.

The Namib Desert Above Gobabeb Trai

Oom Pieter Bees, 76 from the Topnaar Community in Namibia’s Namib Desert. “The Climate here has changed, when I was younger we used to have many more wet years”.

Piet Kruger, a Baviaanskloof Farmer who has sold his sheep and is replanting his farm with Spekboom bushes. In his gravelly voice looking out over his farm before a big storm system rolls in, he says: “If I can farm buffalo, or elephants, or just the wild bushveld I will be happy, but I don’t think we will ever farm again here like we used to. We have to change”.

Many people work planting spekboom in the western part of the Baviaanskloof. At Zevenfontien (Seven Fountains) Community Farm in the western Bavianskloof Mountains community elder Jacob Deinaar Van Mathews talks to Hans vin Voegue in Jacob’s house on the farm. Hundreds of people live on the farm and some of them find work restoring the landscape by planting spekboom.

Topnaar Communities in the Namib Desert are getting assistance from the Gobabeb Training and Research Center in how to evaluate their livestock, so they can make more informed decisions. Only through education can small communities adapt to climate change.

In the north of Zambia near the town of Mpika the ladies of the Mupumbishi Women’s Club help each other sort out their seed grain for their next bean crop. Beans and other legumes like peanuts are one of the main elements of Conservation Farming. There are more than 300,000 Conservation farmers in the country.

Near Mchinji in Malawi small farmers are working in conservation farming methods as a way to adapt to Climate Change. Eight year old Brian Phiri holds up a bowl full of peanuts. Conservation farming has changed his life, since now his family has enough money to send him to school.


Max Thokabotshabelo, a community guide from the Okavango Delta in Botswana, poles his Makoro canoe through the papyrus as night falls. In the distance a hippo grunts, and the swish of the grass past the Makoro blends with the rising sound of night insects. “Nature is the best for relieving stress” says Max.

Johanna Swartz runs a team of Spekboom planters in the Baviaanskloof on contract for the Gamtoos Irrigation Board, with help from the NGO Living Lands.
“There is a great change in my life, because all the things I needed and can’t buy before, I can buy them now. I don’t struggle with money any more. Now there are opportunities I would grab, too, things that I love”.

This is an online version of the exhibition Creating A Climate For Change, which is currently touring South Africa. It was made possible through a grant from the Open Society of Southern Africa and the Open Society Foundation For South Africa.

Creating A Climate For Change -The Movie

2011-12-04T04:45:00.000-08:00

The Half hour movie Creating A Climate For Change is undergoing a second edit, it will be re-released at the beginning of 2011.

702 Talk Radio Profiles The Journalist

2011-12-03T03:00:00.001-08:00

The show went great last night. Pictures and a full report will be up in the next few days. We had native American people from the mountains of Ecuador, top officials from the United Nations, local and international media like the Associated Press, and lots of African delegates and people from the NGO sector. More than a hundred people crowded into the Corner Cafe and enjoyed food cooked by Judd and the crew. The film was a success, and a good time was had by all.

Here is a LINK to one of our biggest radio shows in South Africa, produced by Jenny Cryws Williams. Jenny invited me on her show for about a half an hour. Here is the podcast for the show.

More on the exhibition and film launch as well as COP17, and a sneak view of some amazing technology. For now I am off to Oceans Day here at the Durban Climate Change Conference.

Film Launch Tonight: Creating A Climate For Change

2011-12-02T03:38:00.001-08:00

Chapter 3 Creating A Climate For Change

2011-11-28T00:12:00.001-08:00

The KAZA Park: A Regional Response to Climate Change

This is a land of wilderness where a million vulnerable people farm on marginal land, exposed to the climactic variability that is a hallmark of Climate Change. It is also elephant territory. An estimated 140,000 elephants, more than a third of Africa’s remaining population, call this area home.

Chobe National Park in Botswana is expected to be one of the "seed" parks for a grand plan of conservation and social upliftment that will help southern Africa deal with the effects of climate change through regional water management and a single management plan based on natural systems.

Assisted by the South African Peace Parks Foundation, the five African countries of Angola, Botswana, Namibia, Zambia and Zimbabwe, agreed in August 2011 to create the Kavango Zambezi Transfrontier Conservation Area. This not only allows the elephants to roam free across borders, but creates a framework to protect and share their precious water resources. The Kaza, it is called, is 29 million hectares, an area about the size of Italy.

Werner Myburgh is the chief executive director of the Peace Parks Foundation, sitting at their offices far away in Stellenbosch South Africa, he explains of this ambitious project.
“One of the big objectives of the Peace Parks Foundation is to facilitate the process where you look at the management of integrated ecosystems across international boundaries.”

The Foundation is a facilitator for a dialogue between all of the stakeholders in the region.
“So we help governments in each of those countries initiate the process where you bring together private sector, communities and government around one table and say, well what do you think is the future of this area?”

This integrated approach to conservation is vital for semi arid countries facing the combined challenges of food and water security in a time of a changing climate. It is also vital for protecting the migration routes of the wildlife, and both of these elements are essential for creating sustainable livelihoods in the area.

One of the pillars of the KAZA project is the official protection of two rivers, the Zambezi and the Kavango. Dr. Anthony Turton is a South African Hydrologist specializing in water resource management in the Kaza area. “The former colonial powers used rivers as borders, whereas the previous, precolonial dispensation used rivers as a means of transport, as a means of connecting people.”

Africa inherited the borders that were created during the colonial area, but the Kaza will see the precolonial values of rivers restored, and will help secure these two great watersheds from the ravages of climate change, deforestation and overconsumption. Water is the key not only to life, but prosperity as well, and the Kaza plan and researchers like Dr. Turton are helping shape the future of this precious resource.

Turton literally wrote the book on the Okavango Delta's water system. He sees water, ecosystems, development and economies inextricably linked together. “If our national economy is a wholey owned subsidiary of our national hydrology, then our global economy is a wholey owned subsidiary of our global ecosystem. So ecosystems matter because actually this is the life support system provider for planet earth.”

This is the area of Southern Africa that will most likely see the largest effects of climate change, according to climate modeler Francois Engelbrecht of South Africa’s Center for Industrial and Scientific Research. “So both of these river catchments are unfortunately located right in the subtropics. That is specifially the area of Southern Africa that is projected to dry the most. It is also the region of southern Africa that is projected to warm very rapidly and these are absolutely drastic rises in the surface temperature. “

The area is already experiencing climactic changes that are making farming more difficult. Matshelu "Max" Thokabotshabelo sits under a jackleberry tree deep in the Okavango, keeping out of the burning noon sunshine. "Before, people here could rely on farming, but now they can’t because the rainfall here is more variable”. He is a community game guide from the Etsa community in the north west of the Okavango Delta in Botswana. Here many young Botswanans are turning to tourism as farming becomes more difficult.

He knows about the Kaza Park plan and he wants it to help protect the waters that flow from Angola, through Namibia and into the the unique waters system of the Okavango. “It’s very important that we implement the Kaza plan, so that we can try and manage our water resource here, thereby sustaining the Okavango Delta.”

Community conservation systems like the Jakotsha Trust where Max works as a guide are being used to guide the creation the Kaza. The Kaza plan is not just about widllife and conservation, it seeks to include communities and rural farmers in the overall land use plan.

The area has low land fertility, poor soils, and increasingly variable rainfall. With Climate Change making farming a losing proposition, everyone involved hopes that the creation of the Kaza will bring more visitors. The tourism industry is already the biggest employer in the area, and in this way it’s possible to bring jobs, training and a new future to the nearly 1 million people who live in and around the boundaries of this vast park.

The success of the tourism industry is dependent upon the conservation of the wild herds that roam this area. By creating financially beneficial alternatives to farming, the Kaza plan creates an appropriate whole system approach to sustainable land use.

Victoria Falls is the park’s centerpiece. Here the Zambezi River flows into the Batoka Gorge, along the border with Zimbabwe and Zambia, through Mozambique and into the Indian Ocean. The falling waters will take months to get there, and on their way they will sustain millions of people. As this region warms up and dries out, the very lives of the many people who rely on these two great rivers is in the balance, but Turton believes the Kaza Plan will help secure a better future for the people here.
“One of the important things that the Kaza type thinking will bring about is a reinforcing of the human rights of those very marginalized groups by the emergence of a transboundary management of natural resources such as water, such as landscapes.”

These forward thinking ideas in transboundary management are being accepted and understood on a regional level here in Southern Africa as it starts to face the reality of a changing climate. As the plan evolves to take advantage of the realities on the ground, the elephants have already started to expand their range into the new areas of the park, taking advantage of new water sources in Angola when rains are plantiful, or keeping close to the riverine highways in Botswana when rains are scarce, a living example of how to take advantage of a variable climate.

Chapter 2 Creating A Climate For Change

2011-11-28T00:06:00.001-08:00

Gobabeb Training and Research Center: Science In The Sand

It is morning in the shifting sands of the Namib Desert, and the little laceritid lizard, Meroles anchietae is out looking for his breakfast of seeds and insects. This reptile is perfectly adapted to the scorching days of one of the worlds most variable ecosystems. Dancing like a child on a hot beach this local lizard, found nowhere else in the world, cools its alternate feet in the wind allowing for a few more minutes of foraging and breeding before it is forced to dive under the sand and escape the mid-day sun.

Miya Kabajani, a young Namibian researcher working on the long term monitoring program at Gobabeb Research Center studies how the animals and plants have adapted to this variable climate, and what lessons they may teach us about how we can adapt to climate change.

Watch the film:

Chapter 1 Creating A Climate For Change

2011-11-22T22:30:00.001-08:00

Part of the four-part video series about Climate Change in Southern Africa, one of the areas of the world we are already seeing large changes in climactic conditions and where we are projected to see double the warming of the rest of the planet.

The video, part of the Open Society Fellowship I am working on, follows an exciting project in the striking Baviaanskloof mountains of South Africa, where a new type of collaboration between all the stakeholders of this damaged landscape have come together to help restore it, and in the process created a model of how we can survive and thrive in a warming world.

Jeffrey Barbee

Johannesburg

Back From The Wild

2011-11-16T08:19:00.001-08:00

Eight days ago we were far in the north of Zambia in the miombo woodlands and farmlands meeting with farmers and the Conservation Farming Unit. Over the last eight days we made our way south, back through the Kazungula ferry at the heart of the new KAZA Transfrontier Conservation Area and south to Johannesburg. With the trip done, this week we have been conducting the final interviews with climate scientists and water specialists here and now we start the editing process.

In the midst of this, we have been selecting the images for the exhibition for the official launch of the project on the 2nd of December at the Corner Cafe in Durban and I am delighted to invite any readers of this blog who may be at the conference to come and enjoy a sustainable dinner, see the images of southern Africa's climate and watch a private screening of the film.

As part of this Open Society Fellowship, there will be a series of four short films screened on South Africa's ETV, the South African Mail and Guardian, and broadcast in the USA on Linktv.org both on television and online through their website. Global Post will also be hosting the films on their website, and links to these projects will be forthcoming as the films are finished over the next week.

Herewith is a small selection of pictures from the last days of the trip as a photographic journal. I would like to give a special "thank you!" to our dynamic team who helped make this project a success, as well as all the great people who helped us along our way. I am indebted to them for their great assistance in what was a very difficult but rewarding fact-finding trip.
Jeffrey Barbee
Johannesburg

A forest tree near Victoria Falls. The Miombo Biome covered most of southern Africa, shielding the land from the sun, but with increased population, the forest has given way to fields and the region's need for fuel.

The rising full moon at Elephant Sands in Botswana

Elephant Sands, Botswana. "Where Elephants Rule"

The last sunset of the trip, in Botswana, before heading into Johannesburg.

A moon halo, also called a "moon dog" in the miombo woodlands of Zambia.

A young female Kudu tries to understand her reflection in my camera lens.

Conservation Agriculture, the fifth stage of conservation farming, near Lusaka, Zambia.

Elephants at daybreak at Elephant Sands, Botswana. These young bulls pushed through the trees next to my bed, waking me up and getting me on my way south.

It's best not to ride the hippos at Maramba River Lodge in Zambia, the night before crossing into Botswana.

Zambia

2011-11-08T00:23:00.000-08:00

The termites are swarming around our campsite at the appropriately named Forest Inn on the road between Kapiri Mposhe and the Tanzanian border in Zambia’s northwest. There is a termite in my shirt and I am battling to keep them away from my computer screen. After the first solid rains of the season the termites crawl out of the ground and these females swarm, looking for a place to make a new colony. This typically marks the end of the dry season and the beginning of the rains. Lately however, as we have been learning today from conservation farmer Charles Mwanyambo, the rains have been less dependable.

“I switched to conservation farming because of Climate Change” he explains, sitting in his small holding near Chomwe village. Conservation farming helps farmers adapt to Climate Change by diversifying their crops, retaining moisture in the soil, expanding the planting season, assisting root penetration and providing greater yields.

According to Jeremy Selby of the Zambian Conservation Farming Unit, the five principles of conservation farming are:

Minimal Soil Disturbance
Farmers plow only about ten percent of their field in tight rows, years after year. This is much less work and help the land retain biomass and fertility.

Crop Rotation
By planting a legume that fixes nitrogen in the air every other year, farmers increase yields, reduce their need for expensive fertiliser and produce cash crops like peanuts which also improves rural diets.

Retain Crop Residues
Crop residues like maize stalks are laid down between rows to help the soil retain moisture and protect it from torrential rains storms, which have become more common with the climate changing here in Zambia.

Early Preparation of Fields
By preparing fields early, farmers are more likely to benefit from erratic rainfall, and allows them to plant on time. Studies have shown that farmers can lose as much as 1 1/2 percent of their yield per day by delaying planting.

Conservation Agriculture
By inter-cropping fields with leguminous trees, crops benefit from shading, extra nitrogen, and reduced pests and weeds. The trees chosen are Zambian in origin and sprout leaves in the dry season, and produce seeds which are edible by both people and animals.

The Conservation Farming Unit (CFU) has been working in Zambia for 16 years, and works in a public private partnership with the Zambian Government’s Department of Agriculture. Selby believes that conservation agriculture is partly responsible for the success of Zambia in becoming a net food exporter for the last five years.

Conservation farming can be employed on large and small farms in any region of the world. Everyone can benefit from this farming technology that has had such a huge impact here in Zambia. Hammer Simwinga, a Goldman Environmental Prize winner who runs The Foundation for Wildlife and Habitat Conservation in Mpika agrees that Zambia has something to teach the world about living sustainably with nature, and that conservation farming can help Africans adapt to Climate Change.

Tomorrow we are heading south, and tonight, while we listen to the sounds of the cicadas and the crickets interspersed with the trucks on the nearby road, I think of the connections in Africa along highways like this, and how goods are dispersed by the trucks passing by. Zambia’s CFU has opened offices in Tanzania, Mozambique, Zimbabwe and other African countries, spreading information that has seen tens of thousands of Zambian farmers like Charles increase their crop yields and reduce their inputs, making them wealthier and more successful, even in the face of Climate Change.

Jeffrey Barbee
November 8, 2011
Northern Zambia

Jeff with Charles Mwanyambo at his conservation agriculture farm in northern Zambia. He had a small pilot project going for a few years and has now converted his whole farm to conservation farming practices.

Trees from the Miombo Biome in northern Zambia are under threat from slash and burn agriculture.

The terrain of northern Zambia is a mixture of rocky outcrops like these and large plateaux covered in forest trees.

Much of the land that was cultivated historically has started to return to trees as people cut the old growth forest and new saplings like these have started to regrow.

Mutinondo Forest Reserve near Mpika, Zambia. The reserve covers an important river catchment system for the Luangwa River.

Goldman Prize winner Hammer Simwinga with some of the children of Saloma Village.

Agnus Mumbi, 60, conservation farmer and chairwoman of the Mupimbishi Women's club at Saloma Village.

Hammer Simwinga showing how to harvest seed at the Mupimbishi Women's club at Saloma Village.

A conservation farming plot near Livingston, Zambia. Conservation farming is being rolled in all districts of the country.

Fires set to clear fields or drive out wild animals burn uncontrolled in the Southern province of the country.

Elephants graze in the future KAZA park on the banks of the Maramba River, near Livingston Zambia

Elephants graze in the future KAZA park on the banks of the Maramba River, near Livingston Zambia.

Charles Mwanyambo at his small farm near Chomwe village. The Conservation Farming Unit hopes to have three thousand conservation farmers in the district.

Congo DRC border with Zambia

2011-11-07T00:39:00.000-08:00

On the road on the Congo DRC border with Zambia. Its wet and feels far from home. Had good interviews with conservation farmers yesterday.

The Rains Have Come

2011-11-03T02:56:00.000-07:00

Victoris Falls today, left, during the lowest time of the year. Right, the same spot in June, 2011. Seasonal variability in climate is normal, but if climate change affects this region in the future, the annual flood may not come. By managing this waterway across the countries' borders, millions of people who rely on the Zambezi River for their livelihood may look forward to a more certain future.

We have been traveling up from the Kavango-Zambezi Transfrontier Conservation Area (KAZA). This huge park, bigger than Italy, was signed into existence by the heads of five countries in August this year. It will create a cross-border water management system that will help these countries develop their water resources sustainably, and help them adapt to inconsistent weather and climate change. The rest of the world can learn from this type of cooperation and this segment of the documentary I am producing as part of this Open Society Fellowship looks at this grand project from the local community level to the project designers, and shows how it may not only help address climate change, but uplift communities and “creates a climate for change”, the theme behind this project.

Today we are in Lusaka, Zambia, on our way to a small town in the northwest called Mpika. It is drizzling outside the thatch roof, a change in the weather of the last two weeks which saw us struggling through 47 degree centigrade temperatures day after day. With the thunder and lightning of last night it seems that at least on the central plateau of Zambia the rainy season has come again to southern Africa. We have been following this seasonal variability closely, since the region is essentially in a drought for half the year and enjoys rainfall the rest of the time. A big fear here is that with climate change, the rainy season may not come every year like it does now. Already it’s much more sporadically timed than it was during the 20th century, and this puts rural farmers at great risk of hunger.

So now we are on our way to Mpika to meet with Hammer Simwinga, a Goldman Prize winner who has help roll out a sustainable farming system around North Luangwa National Park that has changed the lives of thousands of farmers by diversifying their crops away from monoculture maize production and educating them to become custodians of their environment. They have greater food security, and are much less prone to climate change events. When Simwinga won the Goldman prize, I went up with writer Mike Wines to take pictures of him for the New York Times. I was encouraged by his low-key approach to development that works and is good for the environment.

We will be staying in the forest and living with a farming community who works with Simwinga’s project. We will be in touch on our satellite and upload a few updates from the road.

Lusaka,
November 3, 2011

Okavango Delta

2011-10-29T08:47:00.000-07:00

We have made our way across southern Africa to one of the most sensitive ecosystems in the world. We are camped on a small island in the Okavango Delta. This system and the one next door, the Zambezi depend upon regular rainfall. In times of climactic variability, systems like the Okavango help illustrate those changes. We have come here to see how a new park plan is paving the way for the five countries to become partners in cross-border water management, not only to adapt better to climate change, but to create a holistic approach to management of all types: water, ecosystem services, wildlife management, and even education.

Link to more stories on the blog about KAZA

It is hot in the Delta, and overcast. The record flood of 2011 has subsided, and the rain has yet to start in earnest. The Cicadas are singing through the heat of the day, and sweat drips into the keyboard of my computer. We are off to interview local community guides about their opinion on the future of the KAZA park project.

Jeffrey Barbee, October 29, 2011
Okavango Delta

A cattle buying
The cattle industry in Botswana is one of the country's largest cash earners. Small and large scale cattle farming is at risk from Climate Change, since the Khalahari Desert is such a water-scarce place, any variability in climate can put industries like this in jeopardy. The Kentrek Enterprises cattle auction in Ghanzi, Botswana has six thousand head of cattle (like these pictured) for sale.

A big baobab tree on the way from Windhoek to The Okavango Delta dwarfs the project vehicles.

Our island camp deep in the Okavango Delta, where we are meeting with local community guides who are excited about the
Kavango Zambezi Transfrontier Conservation Area. This park, which I have written about extensively in this blog
(LINK TO STORIES), covers the Okavango and Zambezi watersheds, and helps the five countries of Angola, Namibia, Botswana
and Zambia adapt to climate change by managing the watersheds of these two huge river systems as a whole.

Poling a fiberglass makoro canoe through the waters of the Okavango Delta. This huge inland Delta is very sensitive

to seasonal Climate Change, and the project is looking at how this system may change in the future, affecting the

lives of hundreds of thousands of people who depend upon it.

Watching a large herd of elephants near victoria falls

Guma Lagoon in the north part of the Delta. The lagoon is a good fishing ground for local subsistence fishing during the drier months
of the year.

Journalist Jeffrey Barbee shooting video while traveling down the Thaoge channel in the Okavango Delta.

Papyrus stands high above the waters of the Okavango. Sometimes local farmers mistakenly burn the grass in the hot dry season,
like it is now. This clogs the natural systems of the Delta, contributes to Climate Change, and provides no net benefit to those who
burn. Education is clearly the best way for communities around the Delta to help manage this important water resource.

Gobabeb

2011-10-24T06:23:00.000-07:00

The Desert Research Foundation of Namibia and the Namibian Ministry of Environment and Tourism run the Gobabeb Training and Research Station in the heart of the Namib Desert. We have come here to find out about the state of the this variable environment, and what it might teach the rest of the world about how our climate is changing and how we may adapt to these possible future changes.

Our days and evenings are very full. Here is a small selection of the still images collected as a photographic journal of the last few days.

Desert Panorama near Rosh Pinah, Namibia

Old trucks in Solitaire, Namibia. Namibia's roads notoriously eat any vehicles.

The Gobabeb Training and Research Station in the heart of the Namib Desert.

On our way through the Namib-Naukluft National Park in Namibia.

Testing the air as part of the United States' National Oceanic and Atmosphere Administration's worldwide
greenhouse gas monitoring program.

Right, Miya Kabajani a third year student at Namibia's polytechnic, works with Christine Grummon from the USA
to make measurements of greenhouse gases.

Working relationships with people from all over the world help young Namibians like Miya Kabajani broaden
their understanding of environmental science. She walks here with Christine Grummon from the US to inspect fog
harvesters. Each harvester can condense roughly 1.5 liters of water from each fog event.

Measuring the temperature at the research station.

Renown environmentalist and researcher Mary Seely climbs a dune in the evening outside the research center.

Members of the team join scientists in the dunes around Gobabeb.

The Desert Research Foundation has been studying the Namib desert for more than forty years.

Local communities benefit from the DRFN's work by systems they have set up to assist Namibian farmers with
climate data.

Oom Pieter Bees is one of the oldest community members from the Topnaar community. He feels that the desert
climate has changed from the time he was a young man.

Jeff and Carl at work in the Namib Desert's shifting sands.

Sunset in Namibia.

Local Topnaar communities benefit in different ways from the Gobabeb Training and Research Center.

Solitaire, Namibia. Fri, Oct 21, 2011 at 3:25 PM

2011-10-22T04:02:00.000-07:00

Driving up the central plains to the Desert Research Foundation of Namibia. Hopefully we don't end up stuck here like this guy.

Richtersveld/ Ais Ais Transfrontier Conservation Area.

2011-10-20T09:36:00.000-07:00

We are on the Namibia side of the Orange River. This is the Richterveld Ais Ais Transfrontier Conservation area. These two large watersheds across the borders of South Africa and Namibia have been combined into a single park, to allow animals and people greater freedom of movement. Trans-boundary parks reunite ecosystems into a whole management approach, and allow countries to manage their natural resources in a combined way. As Climate Change worsens, countries that have an ability to manage water and other resources across boundaries will be better able to adapt to those changes. We are on our way to the Desert Research Foundation of Namibia, where we are hoping to get a greater understanding of how climate change is affecting southern Africa. We will also be visiting the Okavango, whose watershed along with the Zambezi is being incorporated into a much bigger park plan the size of Italy. It is finally hot after three days of freezing, unseasonable weather.

The Bavianskloof

2011-10-17T13:08:00.000-07:00

The Bavianskloof supplies much of the water for the nearby South African city of Port Elizabeth. This large coastal city does not have an integrated water system, so the area that is supplied from the Bavianskloof cannot get its water from elsewhere in the city’s supply. It also supports about two hundred and forty large scale farms that grow everything from potatoes to oranges. The natural water catchment system was damaged by overgrazing and water diversion projects, which bled away most of the moisture from the western half of the Bavianskloof. The river stopped flowing for much of the year, and the region’s water supply began to dry up. With the loss of the dominant forest type, called subtropical thicket, temperatures rose, rainfall became more sporadic, farms failed. This was human induced climate change, albeit on a small scale.

Noel Isaacs stand in the wild Fig Tree forest he has helped to save on the community farm Zevenfontien.
One of the seven fountains on the farm comes from this rare dark woodland.

To protect the river catchment system in the mountains the government started buying farms and created the Bavianskloof Mega Reserve, a World Heritage Site with hundreds of indigenous plant species still clinging to the degraded slopes of these magnificent valleys. Ten years ago, the government embarked on an ambitious plan to reforest the mountains called the Working For Water Program. Turning the dire state of local employment into an asset, they trained unemployed people to plant spekboom, the dominant plant of the subtropical thicket. Some teams planted while others uprooted water hungry trees like eucalyptus from Australia, that did not belong here.

A few years later a small South African Non-Government Organization (NGO) called Living Lands started to work with the program and local famers, eventually creating a network called Presence. Presence consists of all of the stakeholders who have some sort of connection to the Bavianskloof. They have facilitated a working relationship between local farmers, poor communities, the local irrigation board, local and regional government, and all the people who live in the kloof.

This relationship has changed how people in the area think about water and conservation of resources. I am sitting in the early morning mist on the farm of Piet Kruger, in the western Bavianskloof mountains. He has been farming here for thirty five years, and admits he was an active participant in degrading the land. “We had no idea what we were doing, but the government of the day made policies that were clearly not sustainable”, he explains over a traditional dinner as dogs curl up by the fire. “This area is not for farming, but we were told to farm it in this way, and we got some good years out of it, but at what cost? I don’t think I will ever farm again here, unless I am farming the thicket itself.”

Kruger sold his sheep in May this year. He still runs cattle on some of the larger parts of the farm, but they are much less damaging to the thicket which he is replanting everywhere.

Spekboom does not only secure hillside and trap moisture in the soil. It is an excellent source of food for most of Africa’s large herbivores which do not damage the plant, since they don’t eat away the underpart or “skirt” of the plant. Kruger says, “I will run cattle until the government offers me some buffalo, then I will get rid of them. Maybe we will even see elephants here some day”. His stands above the valley of his farm, looking across through the approaching rain. Kruger is one of the first of the wild-land farmers in the area, and his enthusiasm for it is obvious.

Many of his neighbors, who even two years ago turned up their noses at the thought of conservation agriculture and “farming” wilderness, have started planting spekboom. Many feel that without the tree cover their lans are destined to become wasteland, and this change of attitude has come through the work of the Living Lands’ Presence network. They meet regularly with farmers, talk about options, and try to get these hard-scrabble and independent people to start to change their thinking.

The Fig Tree forest in the farm of seven fountains. This community run farm is hoping to expand into tourism
to help the residents with an alternative income. Previously they relied only on sheep and goat grazing.

Marijn Zwinkels is an environmental scientist who works with Living Lands. “This has been an uphill battle, getting people to change their minds about farming and old agricultural practices”. He explains, sitting next to a small damn that is meant to restore the alluvial fan of a canyon outflow. He explains that people are changing, farmers have bought-in to the idea of conservation agriculture. He went away with the farmers and and the other stakeholders to another valley much like this one, and they took on a leadership role with the famers of that valley, proud of their own place now as land restorers. “They have ownership and pride over this new knowledge, and that seems to make a huge difference”.

But how does a farmer make money when his sheep and cattle are gone? Farmers have been encouraged take advantage of is the carbon market. Both the large scale and small scale planting of spekboom should be eligible for Carbon Credits. However this is a difficult and expensive system to implement, the paperwork is a nightmare and the reporting is extremely time consuming. It works ok for large-scale projects worth millions of dollars like the Working For Water Campaign, but for a small farmer planting a few hundred hectares of spekboom, the current system is difficult to benefit from. However, there is a new system that may become law at the COP17 meeting in Durban.

Zandvlakte, Piet and Magriet Kruger's farm in the western Bavianskloof Mounatins.
Lightning from a passing storm illuminates the eastern horizon.

Called the REDD+ system, it would pay developing countries to restore and maintain the large carbon sinks like the spekboom biome of South Africa. This system is one of the big hopes for the stakeholders here and elsewhere. If the REDD+ system is agreed to by the world’s polluting countries, it will give farmers here some financial breathing space and allow conservation farming to go forward more aggressively. But carbon trading is not the only financial hope for this area.
Port Elizabeth and hundreds of farmers benefit from the water flowing out of this area. Why should they not pay for that benefit? A system of natural capital attempts to put a monetary figure on this water delivery system for what is essentially an ecosystem service. What would the price of the water be if is flowed out of a desalination plant? What are the costs of not implementing a program to restore this watershed? By putting a monetary value on the services that Pieter Kruger and other farmers are offering downstream, namely clean water, they argue that they should be getting some financial remuneration.

Piet Kruger talks about a new language of conservation. This mountain of a farmer uses terms like ecosystem services, climate change, and natural capital in his clipped Afrikaans accent with ease. He foresees a time when the damage inflected on his farm by decades of ecologically unsustainable farming is returned to the way it used to be. As he drives up the hill before a thunderstorm he points out the newly planted spekboom bushes like a they were his prize bulls. “I get pleasure out of farming, but being given the chance to restore this place to how it used to be, that makes me very proud”.

Farmer Piet Kruger speaks in a new language of conservation from his farm in the western Bavianskloof of South Africa.

A big thanks to Eezi-Awn for their great help installing a styling awning

they made for the truck.

Journal: First Days in the Baviaanskloof

2011-10-16T04:54:00.000-07:00

The nursery for the rehabilitation the landscape of the Baviaanskloof.
Baviaanskloof Mountains.

We left the Living Lands office at eight in the morning to meet with the Gamtoos Irrigation Board (GIB). The board is a private entity representing the interests of the 250 or so farmers that use water from the Coega Dam, which comes from the Baviaanskloof area. The Dam also supplies a large part of the city of Port Elizabeth with it's water. The board has been contracted by the South African government’s Department of Environmental Affairs to oversee the land restoration taking place in the kloof. This public/private partnership puts farmers who benefit from the water supply into a position to manage their water sustainably, which means that unlike many other irrigation boards in the world, they are actively involved in land restoration efforts.

Riennette Colsky is the board’s administrator, based in the town of Patensie, and she acknowledged that tree planting through community up-liftment schemes and restoring landscapes were not “normal” activities that came naturally to the board, but ones which they had come to realize were vital to the health of ecosystem that they depend on for water. “It required a new understanding of our role” she says, standing in the green garden of the board’s offices. “We had to change our mindset and develop a better understanding of how nature works and how we can work with it, and that is something that Living Lands helped us to do”.

After meeting Riennette for our video interview we filled up with fuel, our last for a few days. The clouds started together as the team, along with Marijn Zwinkels from the NGO Living Lands, headed into the Baviaanskloof. Later in the morning we headed into the heart of the World Heritage Site where the water for the Koega dam comes from. Johanna Swartz runs a small team of planters. Unemployed for years, she got involved in the Working for Water Program as a tree planter, and now
runs her own business as a subcontractor, planting Spekboom trees from her own nursery.

Johanna Swartz's planting team near Cumbria planting the keystone species Spekboom

In a secluded corner of the kloof, over a pass on a rough road, we found Johanna planting spekboom, the keystone species of the sub tropical thicket. She spoke to us at length about what this job has meant for her. She is now able to educate her children, hire a car and even offer employment to other members of her community. Her team worked, stooped over the veld, planting the little bushy trees and then covering them with thorns to stop wildlife like the curly horned kudu from eating the young vulnerable saplings.

Here at the Rooihoek campsite the clouds have gathered ominously, but the rain is yet to come. This has been a wet year for the first time in almost ten years, and signs of recent flooding are everywhere. The sounds of the birds gathered near the river echo off the cliffs at last light. There are no other visitors here, and the cost is minimal. To drive through the Baviaanskloof and camp here we are paying thirty Rand each, about four dollars. Click the Rooihoek link to make a booking. Tourism, as we are hearing every day, can help restore the Bavianskloof.

Our cell phones are already out the of the signal area and we will be out of touch with the world for the next few days as we make our way to the western part of the kloof.

The team camping at Rooihoek in the Baviaanskloof World Heritage Site.

The Road to COP17: Expedition Images

2011-10-10T14:07:00.000-07:00

I am sitting here at eleven in the evening, uploading pictures before a day-break start tomorrow. It has been a long couple days of driving to get the Baviaanskloof of South Africa where we are covering a story about what it takes to regenerate landscapes that have been degraded. Outside I can hear the sound of the water falling over the spillway of the Coega Dam. The Baviaanskloof mountains supply the water to Port Elizabeth. The Living Lands Foundation is working with the local communities and the Department of Water Affairs and Forestry to make sure that the catchment area that feeds the dam delivers clean water, -among many other projects. That means taking care of their local watershed, which means preventing overgrazing, and restoring the local subtropical thicket which used to cover these mountains. Together they are attempting to mitigate and adapt to Climate Change by making sure the local ecosystem works. That ecosystem has been badly damaged by farming methods that are unsustainable. In the next week we will be visiting different stakeholders and trying to get a handle on the situation. We will be in the kloof, far from cellphone and internet but will try to keep this blog update with the help of Jurgen Meekel and his team in Johannesburg.

Here are a few images of the trip down into the Eastern Cape of South Africa.

Solar PV panels used to power a road diversion near Colesburg, South Africa.

Sunset over the Karoo Desert about 50km north of Graaff Reinet

Twilight over the lake at Pienaarsbaken Farm in the Karoo Desert.

The Coega Dam in the Eastern Cape of South Africa

The Coega River flows out of the Baviaanskloof

The Coega Dam

In the background half of the hillside has been decimated by Sheep farming, while on the other side of the fence the

subtropical thicket has been saved.

Solar Hot water heaters in Jensonville in the Karroo desert of South Africa.

Mountains soar above a high pass south of Middelburg on the Karoo Desert.

On The Road To The COP17

2011-10-08T12:29:00.000-07:00

We are on the road to the Climate Change Conference in Durban at the end of November. This is a bit of a circular trip that will take our team from Johannesburg South Africa, down to the Baviaanskloof mountains near Port Elizabeth, then up to Namibia's deserts and through Botswana's Okavango Delta to northern Zambia and back down again. Ultimately we end up in Durban with a film, photographic and written group of reports about how southern Africa is mitigating and adapting to Climate Change.

This project is supported through a fellowship with the Open Society Foundation of South Africa. The 26 minute film will be shown during the talks at the Conference of the Parties (COP) where the world will meet to discuss how to deal with the threats associated with climate change. There will also be a screening of the film and an exhibition of the photographs that have been created during this project at The Corner Cafe, a highly reviewed food eatery in Durban known for its innovative approach to locally produced food chosen carefully. As our project partners in the media broadcast or print the material from the project we will make sure the blog links to that, and also upload material onto a YouTube account.

This blog will carry updates of the project as journal logs, photographs, short films and a map. Please feel free to ask questions and make comments on this blog, and I will try to reply as quickly as possible. This is a special project that follows how Africans are responding to climate change with innovative approaches that the rest of the world can learn from. By taking this project to the COP17 and getting broadcast and print partners to assist in the dissemination of the material we will be doing our part to make sure that African projects that offer real solutions to the problems of Climate Change will get a voice.

Creating A Climate For Change:
This multimedia project graphically illustrates how Africa is already showing the world how to respond to Climate Change, especially how to adapt to it. Climate Change is a broad and far reaching problem facing Africa. So much of the continent’s future as a hand-to-mouth agrarian society is dependent upon a stable climate. Climate change on the continent has seen growing seasons drastically altered and current systems of agriculture break down. Globally, the rising unpredictability of world food markets make it hard for the international community to make up this shortfall. The ability of the African farmer to grow his own food during times of drought or flood, the health of families, access to quality medical care, access to energy, the ability to study at night for school children, the ability for parents to pay for a child’s education, these all basic needs that are mutable given the uncertainty of the climate today. When people do not have enough to eat, every other basic right is subjugated. The project offers a glimpse of an alternative future emerging in Africa: how to adapt to the coming changes, driven by Africans themselves. That the climate is changing is clear in Africa, the long-term effects and the ability of Africans to respond to these challenges is the core of this dynamic television, print and web-based report.

A Dark Force Behind Climate Change & One Way to Fix It

2011-09-19T05:39:00.000-07:00

The city of Maputo, like almost every city in Africa, gets most of its energy in the from charcoal made from hardwood trees.

It is Thursday morning at the crack of dawn in Maputo, Mozambique. I have been working on a project about energy and have come here to this railway yard to get a look at the thousands of tons of wood and charcoal that arrives here every week. The trains are heavily laden, towering even, with their loads stretching off into the distance. They have arrived overnight from more than five hundred kilometers away.

Far away at the front line of this destruction thousands of people toil in the ever-retreating forest, cutting trees, making charcoal, and earning just a few dollars a day. The station master holds up my photographic shooting, saying we do not have the required permits to work here, even though we have a letter from the Mayor of Maputo, a special filming permit from the film board, and journalistic accreditation. He and his private security guards stop me from shooting while one of our great helpers goes out to get further permission from the local railway authorities.

While we wait he explains to my colleague that the trees are retreating so far that the army of wood cutters is starting to run up against the Kruger/Limpopo national park on the border between South Africa and Mozambique. We ask whether they replant the trees. He seems very surprised at the notion, as if he and his crews had never thought of it. He laughs nervously, shifting in creaky chair. The local charcoal mafia runs this train yard through dubious government contracts and this is the sharp end of the energy stick. A sinister energy is in the air here, almost like we are interrupting a private party that everyone is slightly embarrassed about attending.

Maputo, like almost every city in Africa, runs off of charcoal. The average salary is so low that charcoal and firewood are the only cooking methods most people can afford. Even affluent people often cook in their closed apartments with charcoal, ignorant of the very serious health risks.

Maputo’s two million people are almost wholly dependent on this weekly train of charcoal and the many trucks that also bring it into the city. Thousands of trees a week feed this relentless need for energy and the way they are managed the forests of southern Africa offer a finite source. According to UN statistics the trees will be wiped-out in a few decades, but before that happens the cost of getting the charcoal to the market will become prohibitive.

Salma Ngolodi counts cash with a smile after she sells a full bag of charcoal. The real way to save forests is to make money for communities without cutting them down, something that the UN REDD system hopes to make possible.

The deforestation is a double blow for climate change in Africa. Trees anchor soils, without them floods wash away the topsoil that small farmers depend on. The trees that were removing carbon from the air are now being burnt and contributing to the growing amount of carbon and something even more insidious, called Black Carbon.

According the Pew Center on Global Climate Change, “Black Carbon (BC) has recently emerged as a major contributor to global climate change, possibly second only to CO2 as the main driver of change. BC particles strongly absorb sunlight and give soot its black color. BC is produced both naturally and by human activities as a result of the incomplete combustion of fossil fuels, biofuels, and biomass. Primary sources include emissions from diesel engines, cook stoves, wood burning and forest fires.”

Anyone who has ever felt a black plate heat up in the sunshine knows that black absorbs heat the best. What this means is that those little black soot particles from forest burning and charcoal cooking heat up the air by coloring clouds a darker shade and also fall on snow and ice covered areas, speeding their melting. In fact, in the journal Nature Geoscience, almost thirty percent of the warming in the arctic is directly attributable to Black Carbon.

Dead trees, dead-end energy systems, this all sounds like doom and gloom, like the black death....but in fact there is a lot of potential here. The great news is that unlike gaseous CO2 that remains in the air for decades, Black Carbon needs to be constantly thrown up into the air or else it settles, so if we could reduce Black Carbon emissions, then within a short space of time, perhaps two or three years, we could slow the earth’s warming by as much as 30%. This is the best hope for action that could potentially save us from runaway climate change, or at least buy us some time.

A Charcoal Train at dawn, waiting to be unloaded in Maputo. Wood is stacked on top of the bags.

The other great part of this story is something called REDD+. It stands for Reducing Emissions from Destruction and Degradation, and it is one of the few great hopes for Africa’s forests. It is a plan being compiled through the UNFCCC (the folks who brought us the Kyoto protocol) which will hopefully be agreed upon at the COP17, the 17th Conference Of the Parties, which is meeting in Durban, South Africa in December this year. If REDD gets the go ahead it will create a framework for countries like Mozambique to get funding to stop the wholesale destruction of their forests.

Projects and governments in the developing countries that stop or slow deforestation would be paid for keeping their forests standing, essentially monetizing a healthy forest.

The main charcoal train yard in Maputo, Mozambique.

One way this funding could be effective is to cover the costs of a city-wide natural gas infrastructure that gives people a cheaper and cleaner alternative to charcoal. Throughout the country charcoal users cited cost as the main barrier to switching over to a cleaner type of fuel. Mozambique has large offshore natural gas wells, so by paying for the gas infrastructure to be created they could use this local source of energy and stop the destruction of their forest resource.

Unloading a Charcoal Train in Maputo, Mozambique.

Back at the charcoal train yard our assistant returns around eight thirty in the morning with the required letter from the railway director. By nine, thousands of people arrived to start unloading the charcoal from the train one bag at a time. The air filled with black dust and the shouts of wholesalers as they started distributing the city’s energy supply through both official and non-official buyers. The wood on top of the charcoal is thrown off first then the big white bags of precious charcoal are lifted gingerly off the train cars in a vast dance-like operation reminiscent of Dante’s inferno.

This is where the vastness of the charcoal problem in Africa is best seen and understood, and like many problems they are often just “solutions in waiting”.

Ladies collect wood for cooking and charcoal making in Mozambique at sunset.

A System That Supports Wildlife and People

2011-08-31T04:11:00.000-07:00

We entered Zambia over the Zambezi and Chobe river confluence at the Kazangula Ferry. On the other side about ten kilometers towards the Zambian town of Livingingston we pulled off to enjoy the hospitality of some small subsistence farmers who formed a women's group.

They invited us to stay down on their land near the Zambezi floodplain just past the little winter food gardens where they grow basic necessities. We set up camp and asked to meet with the women's group in the morning to discuss the plans for the KAZA Trans-frontier Conversation Area (TFCA), which we are making a documentary about.

The Kazuungula ferry crosses the confluence of the Chobe and Zambezi River. Four of the five countries that make up the KAZA meet here.

On the map that we got from the Director's office of the TFCA project it shows that this area is part of a local conservation project that will possibly be included in the greater KAZA plan. We wanted to sit down and talk about the future park but it was late in the day. As the word went out from the local village to bring the women's group members together in the morning we turned in early. Laying in my tent I was struck by how little night sounds there were, no birds, no animals, pretty much nothing. It is clear that a river crossing and the presence of hundreds of villagers was a somewhat effective barrier for the many African animals that roam wild just a few short miles away.

The next morning dawned clear, with plenty of birds, only they were the more common ones like the persistent 3am rooster and his many rivals vying for hen interest by being earliest and loudest.

We were met by the women's group in the closest little village. They had laid out grass mats and they welcomed us with a song and a prayer, which is fitting since both might be needed if this ambitious park plan is to succeed. We laid out our huge map on the mats and explained to the group the plan for the KAZA and the possible inclusion of their area into it. We were interested to get a real opinion from local farmers about what their feelings were. Unlike in Botswana, the people here had no exposure to tourism and had very little contact with wild animals.

The ladies of a rural women's group in Zambia are excited that the KAZA Park may give them jobs but also worried about food and personal security.

The women's group was led by a man. This might sound absurd yet in this part of Africa women have very little say in the politics within local power structures. So a man had been appointed to speak on their behalf, and while he sat in a chair, the ladies all sat on the mats in front of him in what seemed a decidedly subservient way.

As we explained the project, and the possibilities, many of the women got excited and we filmed them while they each had their say. Overwhelmingly everyone was afraid of wild animals, particularly lions and elephants. The first because they might eat their children while they walked to school, the second because they would destroy their vital food gardens. What became apparent however was that the leader, who was the chief's brother, was telling the ladies to say that they did not want this park project at all, but some ladies would not listen to him.

The ladies of the women's group in rural Zambia welcome the team with a song.

They all explained that they had never heard of the KAZA project, but some of the women got very excited, one exclaiming loudly in excellent English: "I want to be a guide!", many of the women agreed, saying they needed new jobs and opportunities before they were silenced by the leader, who started looking more and more upset.

It was a real moment of clarity for me and the team. Here was the real bare-bones challenge of the park: try to be many things to many people. Here also was the human-animal conflict issue writ small: How will the KAZA provide protection to the small gardens that almost one million rural farmers till to provide basic food for their families?

The meeting wound down, and the end result seemed to be that the women of the village would support the KAZA if they could get jobs and training and have their gardens and children protected. By contrast, in Botswana we found many rural communities and farmers very excited about being included in the park and very knowledgeable about it. Just over the river there was a high level of understanding of how it could help them, and an eagerness to get involved.

Here in Zambia, with a poorer population that have little education, promises of development and inclusion will have to be accompanied by real action and more information if the plan is to succeed. It was very interesting to see first-hand the real fear these people have for wild animals, when only ten miles away thousands of people around Kasane live among wild animals every day without many major incidents.

This fear developed over time as the animals in this area were wiped out during the 1970s and 80s. Park planners and the local government will have to redevelop the community's knowledge of how to deal with potentially dangerous animals so that the fear of reintroduced animals does not lead to further killing.

Victoria Falls spans more than a mile across.

Our team enjoyed a singing send-off as we got on our way to Victoria Falls. As this park plan develops, we will hopefully have a chance to revisit this group of women and get a greater understanding of how the TFCA is meeting these very real challenges.

The falls are one of the natural wonders of the world.

We stopped on the side of the furiously flowing Zambezi River just above Victoria Falls. At the horizon the flow of the river dropped off into the Batoka Gorge for a mile, raising a massive plume of cloud that resembles smoke. As we got closer, the roar filled our ears, showering us in the little rain forest so that I had to put the rain cover on the video camera. We stood there awed by one of the greatest natural wonders of the world. This will be the centerpiece of this grand conservation area and the main point of access. This is the end of the road for this trip into the KAZA and there no place in Africa more fitting to a start or a finish than Victoria Falls.

On the way home we made camp next to a secret waterhole in the Kalahari where elephants washed and drank noisily next to our camp while the Milky Way shined above us.

Thirty miles away the dim lights of a road camp lit the horizon under the stars next to our secret elephant watering hole.

The Wild Chobe River of Botswana

2011-08-23T01:00:00.000-07:00

A Malachite Kingfisher rests and looks for little fish on the bank of the Chobe River in Botswana.

We drove north out of the isolated farmlands of Pandamatenga in northern Botswana and came through a wide open grassland where groups of elephants were crossing this lonely road in a northeast direction towards Zimbabwe. Like ships on the ocean, the grand beasts floated over the grasses, their long legs lost in a sea of green. A small family herd at first headed towards us then veered off and loitered about two hundred meters away, waiting for us to clear out before crossing the road.

This stretch of highway links the populated south with the more empty north, and during the height of Zimbabwe’s political crisis in 2008 it became the main thoroughfare for traffic into Zambia, Malawi and Congo. The road surface was never meant to carry hundreds of thousands of huge trucks, and is now a potholed mess. The government of Botswana is building a new road next to the old one, which further slows our progress from a gallop to a trot that is much more fitting to the scenery and the animals.

A large, slightly annoyed hippo on the banks of the Chobe River, painted up to look like a skunk.

Stopping often to see Lappetfaced Vultures, elephants, and the occasional giraffe, we stopped short of town and drove into a small forest reserve. There in the dying light of day, the sun had set and the night was looming on the eastern horizon. A big black beast broke cover, his white mask and huge scimitar horns unmistakable. It was a Sable antelope, one of the largest ones I have ever seen, and one of the rarest kinds in Africa. I had only seen one once before, on this same road, in 1997. The idea that this magnificent animal might be the same one or a distant relative, and had remained safe here with little official protection comforted me as we pushed deep into the bush under a large tree and made our camp.

The next morning we made our way to the riverside town of Kasane, at the heart of the planned Kavango-Zambezi Transfrontier Conservation Area, or KAZA (read more about this trip and project here) in the Hog, my Toyota Landcruiser.

In Kasane we made contact with a local tour company I have used before and hired a small flat-bottomed riverboat for our small team. At three in the afternoon we boarded the boat and cruised up the Chobe River, into Chobe National Park. This is an amazing experience for anyone with a love for nature. Our little boat was small enough to pull right up onto the bank and we came face to face with many animals that are usually seen only at a great distance. A huge male hippo dressed up in wet mud down his back like a skunk was grazing on the land, and although he threatened us a little, he seemed remarkably relaxed with us only a few meters away, standing in the boat taking photos of him.

We sidled ever-so-slowly up to a tiny little Malachite Kingfisher, one of the most beautiful and shy birds in Africa. With my 400mm lens on my still camera I managed to get an almost perfect portrait of him, only two arm lengths away. He was still resting there as we motored away, further up river.

Sunset on the Chobe River

Giraffe’s bent to drink silhouetted by the setting sun while a fish eagle bided his time on a broken old tree, waiting for fish to rise so he could enjoy his evening meal. Elephants were everywhere, some of the 140,000 of them that call this area home. The sun set through an old tree by river bank while i clicked away, enjoying every moment of this incredible evening.

We forged further into the park, way past the time when we could still see through the fading light of the equatorial day. Our guide stopped us, engine off, next a group of male elephants grazing in the tall grass right next to us. We could feel their exhalations, smell their big muddy bodies, and hear their breathing and quiet munchings right over us. It was a profound moment, the light of day a distant band in the west, the stars shining down, and the intimate sounds of the grandest beasts to walk the earth all around us.

There are an estimated 140,000 elephants in the Chobe River complex, these ones are drinking by the Chobe River at dusk.

The Chobe National Park is the benchmark for much of the planned KAZA park, and after a few days of exploring the town of Kasane and the countryside, we headed off over the Kazangula Ferry and into Zambia, where the lessons of Botswana are being implemented, and the grandest part of the KAZA is starting to take shape in fits and starts.

Sunset over the Namibian side of the Chobe River, near Kasane, Botswana.

Human-Animal Conflict?

2011-08-07T03:43:00.000-07:00

A small fresh-water pan near Pandamatenga, Botswana where elephants often come to drink.

We crossed the cattle fence five kilometers north of Ben’s Elephant Sands, on our way up to Pandamatenga. This isolated farming area is completely surrounded by game areas and wildlife. It is the largest contiguous crop growing area in Botswana and produces much of the produce and grains that the country consumes. The farmlands are protected from elephants by a huge electrical fence, paid for by the farmers and government. Local subsistence farmers are also given lands to plant within this little island of agricultural productivity.

Its odd to be in an area that is the opposite of the rest of the world. In virtually every country place Earth the land is for the people and little isolated protected areas are fenced off for nature. Pandematenga is a little island of humanity isolated in a sea of wilderness.

We have come here to interview Andrea Bolla. She is a geographical scientist from Canada who is researching a PHD on human-animal conflict issues. This petit lady from Vancouver has some pretty big ideas about wildlife and people.

In the agricultural history of the human race, we have, arguably, been in “conflict” with the natural world we rely on. This conflict takes many different guises. Termites eat the fence posts that are built to stop larger game from eating our produce. Before the electrical fence was put in here, elephants or a large herd of buffalo could ruin thousands of acres of productive fields.

But without conflict we would also not enjoy the presence of wilderness on our planet and the very diversity that sustains us. Andrea argues that conflict needs to be studied to find out what constitutes unacceptable loses, and what measures are needed to mitigate those losses.

First, she suggests, lets define conflict. In every farmer’s field all over the world there are losses. These losses are caused by disease, blight, birds, lack of regular moisture, animals, a vast variety of things. Most farmers can handle a small amount of loss, maybe even up to 20%. In Pandamatenga, when the fence was built, ungulates like antelopes and others like warthogs were trapped within this barrier. Big animals like elephants, buffaloes, hyenas and lions were pushed out and kept out for the most part. Without the predators the antelopes increased and often eat the farmers crops. many farmers enjoy the wild animals and have chosen to farm here because of the romance associated with them. These antelope and warthogs and birds and other critters eat their crops, and some feel that this is an acceptable loss for living among them. Other farmers disagree, and call for a major reduction in the numbers of wild animals within the fences in order to boost production. So there is a balance of a sort that is constantly being discussed and maintained. Sometimes there is culling, sometimes there is not.

Andrea asks: “Is this balancing act actually conflict or a man-made semblance of the natural order of things?” She is using this closed system to study the relationships between man and nature, hoping to find guidance or at least some truisms that can be extrapolated from it. I ask her if what she discovers can be applied elsewhere, but she demurs. “Every system, every interaction between man and nature needs to be discussed on its own merits, and although some broad lessons can be learned and applied, we should not assume that what works for one place will work for another”.

She has a very valid point. The farmers in Pandamatenga are an anomaly in the region. Protected by a fence and the wealth to pay for it, they are commercial farmers for the most part, making a profit from their work. But most people in the region are subsistence farmers, operating without resources of any kind, living hand-to-mouth.

In Botswana, where many people make a livelihood from wildlife and nature, the benefits of living and farming among wild beasts are usually better understood than in most areas of Africa, where wild beasts are looked upon with an almost mythical fear we would usually reserve for minotaurs and dragons. The very idea of living with them in peace and harmony is an anathema. Often for good reason. Lions may eat children on their way to school, elephants can trample a family’s only food garden and predators can decimate livestock, leaving a farmer penniless.

This issue is shaping up to be the real challenge of the Kavango Zambezi Transfrontier Conservation Area. The KAZA, once established, will be home to almost a million people within it’s borders. In the Okavango, where wild beasts and people co-exist and mutually benefit from each other, our team has learned what it takes to do that. Read about the Jakotsha Trust from an earlier trip here. These are hard won lessons, and we are on our way to rural Zambia, where farmers and villagers will have to be included from the very beginning in any animal reintroduction that occurs in their area.

It’s clear from our time in Pandamatenga that people and animals can coexist by determining what are the issues and needs of both groups, whether there is indeed a conflict, and what can be done to mitigate that. Whether these issues will relate to the local subsistence farmers is something we are only starting to explore.

Megan Izen, left, from The City University Of New York (CUNY) doing video work while scientist Andrea Bolla looks out over a small fresh water pan near Pandamatenga.

Lions and Elephants: Thrills and Chills

2011-08-01T04:52:00.000-07:00

Nestled among the Aloes: our first camp near Baltimore, South Africa.

This blog has been poorly serviced because I have been on the road. On July 14th we headed into the wilds of Southern Africa to continue my work on a documentary for LinkTV about the Kavango Zambezi Transfrontier Conservation Area. Called the KAZA for short, this massive project is working to create the biggest protected area in the world. Larger than Italy and spanning the borders of Angola, Namibia, Zambia, Zimbabwe and Botswana, it is the most ambitious project of it's kind ever attempted. I have been working on a long-term story about the project and some entries from past trips are found here and here.

Johannesburg's dry wintery cold had lifted a bit by midday. Four of us, including Carl the trainee cameraman and Megan Izen, an intern from the the City University of New York left the city late. We headed due north, up towards the border where Zimbabwe, South Africa and Botswana come together. It's not safe to drive at night in Africa so we found a little spot in a communal area near a town called Baltimore. This little village of concrete houses was about as different as it is far away from US city of the same name.

The Hog, our Toyota Landcruiser, had a small hiccup and decided our fate for us. By the time I had reconnected the little wire that keeps the diesel switch open the sun had set and we felt the chilly African night start to settle in the little valley. Some boys on a donkey cart came, axel-squeaking, toward us from a small woodland and we asked if we could camp there for the night. They smiled largely and said no problem, so we forded the small stream and found a little clearing nestled into the trees and big aloe plants. Wild camping in Africa is usually no problem, but it is important to ask the local people not only for their permission, but for any helpful advice and even their protection. In a small rural community a truckload of people with cameras will be seen and talked about for kilometers around and we are in essence their guests, so it's best act as such.

We were heading for the ancient kingdom of Mapungubwe. By the 10th century, Mapungubwe had become the center of power in Southern Africa. Connected by trade all the way to the coast of Tanzania, the kingdom reigned supreme until the arrival of slavers. It is now the site of the Greater Mapungubwe Transfrontier Conservation Area that spans the borders of South Africa, Botswana and Zimbabwe. We came to get a sense of what a working TFCA looks like. Lodges and guest houses as well as community camps dot the area, which is also known as the Tuli Block, a place notorious for smugglers, elephants, buffalo and of course, lions.

That night, after crossing over to the Botswana side, lions circled our little bush camp. We lay in our tents, hearts beating as first one then two lions started booming their WUh HU hu hu hu sound on either side of our flimsy shelters. My heart was so loud I was sure the lions could hear thumping against the earth. During dinner our small party had relocated to the roof of the truck when a lion boomed the first time. Plates and all, most of us finished our tasty curry perched on the top of the canopy of the Hog.

I was not too worried on account of that old truism: you don't have to run faster than the lion, you just have to run faster than your slowest friend. I have always been a good runner. Nevertheless, lions very rarely tear into a tent, and many a night I have heard them, breathing, pacing and circling the camp. They are more curious than anything else, I am sure, but regardless I usually wait until first light to make a trip to the latrine.

Our Camp on the second night of the trip in the Greater Mapungubwe Transfrontier Conservation Area that was surrounded by lions.

The next day, bright eyed and less bushy tailed we headed up to the very edge of the KAZA park itself to visit some farmers and lodge owners who are interested in integrating their lands into the conservation area.

Botswana is big, and despite an early departure we only arrived at my friend Ben Mueller's Elephant Sands camp a few hours after dark. Ben is a large personality of a man, and he loves elephants. Some jokingly refer to him as the elephant whisperer. Ben has turned his three farms into a conservation area all his own. He is happy to share it though and has already been approached by the KAZA park officials and local chiefs to see if he is interested in being included in the park. He wholeheartedly agrees. like most people in Botswana, he has seen the benefits of tourism firsthand, and already runs a successful lodge and bush camp.

His farms are designated cattle country, but tell that to the thousands of elephants that pass by his waterhole every year on their annual migration from Botswana's Kalahari desert and into Hwange National Park in Zimbabwe.

Cattle do not thrive here. They fall prey to lions and some of Africa's only free ranging wild dogs, but it's the tsetse flies other insects that prey on them that really make it difficult for cattle ranchers. This trouble is also a boon, and Ben wants to join in the KAZA park plan to offer these rare animals official protection. "We want any future fence around the KAZA to encircle us too," he explains, sitting on his sunny front porch next to a swimming pool that serves elephants as much as it does the guests to his lodge.

"The chiefs are behind the plan, and the local people have already contacted us. If possible, some other farmers in the area are also keen to have their farms included. Of course not everyone feels this way, but we can be part of this if the park planners are interested, its been a dream of mine for some time." This forward thinking man's love for elephants and nature is legend.

The notorious "elephant pool" at Elephant Sands in Botswana.

A small injury from an angry and confused female elephant has done nothing to deter him. Earlier this year a baby elephant fell into his swimming pool. The mother jumped in after it, but the pool was too small for her to turn around. In the resulting chaos, Ben jumped into the pool and helped the baby elephant to safety at considerable risk to his own life. The mother made it out but not before damaging the pool and getting very worked up. Later in the evening she came to the bar, cornered Ben, and charged him -lifting him up off the ground with the force of her impact and sending him flying across the bar floor. Only the solid roof of the structure prevented her from trampling him. In response, Ben widened the pool and made big elephant-sized steps for the beasts to safely get out. He also grudgingly made a small fence around the bar area to protect clients from what he calls "the possibility of future confusion". He does not regret the attack, and feels that people and elephants can get along with mutual respect and understanding. He blames himself for not making sure his trunked guests were as catered for as him two legged ones.

From my journal:

Today is a rest day here at Elephant Sands. Last night over dinner a lone bull elephant came down to the waterhole next to our table and slaked his thirst noisily as we enjoyed the cook's best fare. The cook, named Lazarus, came to check on us and made sure we had everything we need. Thirty years ago there were few elephants here, he told us, but now there are more elephants than ever. The Botswana government's official protection has been a shining example for conservation throughout the continent, and shows that like Lazarus' namesake, ecosystems like this one can be brought back from the dead.

Megan Izen, working with the project as an intern from the City University of New York (CUNY) on her first African assignment. The top of the truck is a safe place for star gazing and escaping from predators.

The Furniture...Er -I mean the FUTURE of Journalism

2011-07-06T01:55:00.000-07:00

Watch and listen to the angriest climate scientists you ever heard. This is the power of multimedia, make your point, make it well, and use everything you can to make it work.

In the background glow of all the information, propaganda, and the incessant rain of data, sometimes there are a few items that stand out. This week I have been doing some web surfing, looking for a few multimedia projects that really make me proud of my colleagues.

This nascent medium is all the rage now, and here in Johannesburg I am working with Megan Izen, a student of multimedia from CUNY, the City University of New York. This school's journalism course no longer offers separate degrees in print or television. Everything is taught together, and they are getting recognition and support from early web adopters like the New York Times and Time Magazine.

LinkTV.org and the UK's Ecologist Film Unit investigate the hydraulic fracturing, or fracking, of the Marcellus Shale in Pennsylvania. A shattering look unveiling the human and environmental cost of unregulated natural gas exploration and production.

So what is multimedia and what can it do? I started working with this medium about five years ago, merging television and film production with my photojournalism. It is essentially anything that delivers dynamic online content that is not the pure written word or a still photo or a TV broadcast. It could be slide shows with voice over, or a short film, or an interactive graphic, or really...anything! It's possibilities and permutations are endless. It has become the catch phrase for everything newsy that the web can do that TV and print could not, and it is in demand.

There are some drawbacks however. At the moment, great multimedia pieces are difficult and time-consuming to produce. They require a great crossover of skills. They often try to be too many things at once, and hence do not often succeed at being great at any one thing. Most newspapers look at them like attractive but uncomfortable pieces of furniture on their sites, good for keeping up with the Jones' but unsure how to use them, and not at all interested in paying for the time and energy needed to produce them well.

It is probably not news to any of the readers of this blog that there is a crisis of cash in journalism. So the greatest news, and most costly, delivery potential of the web comes along at a time when the resources to pay for it are at their most limited. So often multimedia pieces are labors of love, and like many labors, most would qualify as acts of desperation.

A short animated movie that appeals to the linguistic back flips English is capable of while enthralling with it's slow unraveling of modern arguments against science.

A five minute news piece for television ten years ago might cost as much as ten to fifteen thousand dollars to produce, and make the producers even more than that. A more complex multimedia piece today of the same length will very luckily be bought, after being produced for nothing, for about 500 dollars, maybe a thousand in the best case scenario. So when I say desperation, I mean it.

These are a smattering of commentary in the case of the great piece by the angry scientists or the cartoon about scientific discourse, but my piece at the end and the story about fracking are indeed journalism of the kind we will hopefully see more of.

When you look through these pieces remember they are short little pieces of people working in the best way with a new medium. They are my own choice of the new vanguard, forging a new system of communication at a time when most journalists and producers are staggering around like victims of a bomb blast.

So while many of our colleagues are wondering what happened and where did their careers go, some of us are trying to pick up the pieces and soldier on by using all their little bits, any way we can.

And my own piece (since this blog is also about shameless self-promotion)
Africa is known for sunshine, AIDS, famine, war and...a new fully electric automobile?

Planning to Save Civilisation?

2011-06-29T23:23:00.000-07:00

The highly polluted waterway between two oil refineries flows directly into the ocean 10km south of Durban. To the right is the SAPREF refinery. Mondi Paper operates next to the two refineries. Between the three pollution both in the air and water has seriously affected the health of many nearby residents.

Durban, South Africa. I made a television program last year about how high-tech their dump is, you can watch that here. However, their regulatory infrastructure for emissions and industrial waste is poor at best, and maybe criminal at worst. With the capability the city has shown at their landfills, it is surprising that they are unable to enforce laws on pollution. If a city like Durban cannot change it’s dirty habits, what chance do the other developed and developing countries of the world have? The world's politicians and activists are coming here to debate just that.

This story I shot with the LA Times shows how children and babies living near the Sasol, Petro SA and Mondi plants south of the city have debilitating heart and lung problems. The sea is so polluted that hazard levels for industrial and chemical wastes exist for fifty miles south of the city. Perhaps it is fitting that the world will gather through this smokey-stinky veil in five-month’s time to discuss how we are going to save the planet.

So how are we?
I am getting excerpts from World On The Edge on my email. It’s a fascinating read by futurist and thinker Lester Brown. I just ordered the whole book, and look forward to getting in to it. This is a man that has continually mapped a changing plan for the continuation of our species, and the chances we have of making it. Far from being a “chicken little” running around shouting that the sky is falling, Brown is a level-headed realist with some great numbers and ideas about how we can make our lives easier, cleaner, more healthy and save the planet all at the same time.

His Plan B series is worth checking out if you, like me, sometimes wonder how we will fix everything that we need to. It really is a Plan B, and that is very important. My brother made shirts this year from some signs I photographed, and it says There Is No Planet B. Well thankfully there is a Plan B, and Brown’s most pressing arguments and plans really provide a snapshot of where we are in the current climate and pollution crisis and where we need to be going, with tangible things we can do to get us there.

So where are we and how are we getting there?
It is vital that governments work now on the beginnings of an agreement to ratify at the Durban Climate Conference in November to December this year. Right now the framework of a new binding agreement to reduce pollutive greenhouse gases should be taking shape, one that takes the place of the Kyoto Protocol. However, large utility companies in both the US and Europe are helping to stymie progress, hoping to keep a business-as-usual approach to regulation and reduction. Some of them wield great power within the committees and discussions taking place at a mid to high political level and the South African press reports that they are using that power to prevent early drafting of real emissions targets that can be met.

There is also much posturing by China, vilified in Copenhagen for their obstinate stance on emissions reductions, and evidence that they will use their new-found friends in Africa (where they have been investing heavily) to help push for a weak deal, or no deal at all. That this would hurt the countries of southern Africa the most seems irrelevant within the political arena..

This is all to be expected. But true courage and the possibilities of a deal are never to be completely discounted. The talks are happening this year in South Africa, a place where dreams do seem to come true sometimes. Trevor Manuel ran the National Reserve Bank and the Tax system of the country, and helped mediate the end of apartheid for the ANC. He is deemed by many to be the best man for the job of making sure that the Durban Conference is a success. He has his work cut out for him.

South Africa as flag bearer?
South Africa is not leading from the front on climate change. If the west was hoping that South Africa would adopt a hard line in favor of strong action to reduce carbon emissions, they may be in for a surprise. In the last week South Africa ended the green tariff subsidy for power that is generated without emissions, nipping a promising incentive for green energy in the bud.

Thembeka Duba, 20 She lives next to the Sappi Paper mill, about 40 km south of Durban, and blames the mill for her Asthma, where she is standing is just 500 Meters from her front door, with the paper mill in the background.

The country also seems intent on nuclear power, ignoring all the bad news out of Japan and forging ahead with plans for a second nuclear power station in the country. They are also planning on building lots of new coal-fired power stations, one of the main greenhouse gas culprits. These actions are the antithesis of the original draft of the Kyoto Protocol, which sought to provide incentives to developing countries like South Africa to evolve along a lower-carbon path, reliant and successful in implementing the new power technologies of the future.

Tit For Tat
However, there is a game that could be getting played here. If South Africa plans all these coal fired power stations, and then does not build them, they can get emissions credits from not building them. The new systems and more importantly the companies that build the green technology alternatives would be financed by the first world’s carbon markets. South African companies, doubtless some of them owned by government and the people in government, would get free or very cheap alternative energy infrastructure. This could be a sort of blackmail that the South Africans and other countries (most obviously China again) will use to leverage out money from developed nations to pay for new clean electrical infrastructure, and also stop themselves from having to reduce their own carbon emissions.

There is also a large component of any new climate agreement that sees billions of dollars in support for countries like South Africa to "adapt" to climate change. South Africa sits in a group of countries that have the least capital and the most exposure to the catastrophes associated with climate events.

Rennee Smith, 26 stands defiantly in front of the Engen Oil Refinery in South Durban, a few blocks from her apartment where she lives with her mother and her young son Kyrone. She blames the refinery for the failure of Kyrone's lungs when he was just 6 weeks old.

Just Posturing?
It could also not be some sort of posturing or plan. Scarily the country may just be that behind and fail to see how great being a renewable energy leader in the world could be. In World On The Edge and his other books, Lester Brown tracks how investing in clean energy technology can boost a country's GDP and bring long term growth through both intellectual and regular capital inflows.

Drop into this mix my earlier blog post about "Fracking The Karoo", a new plan to extract coal bed methane from the last virgin area of the country and that in two years radioactive mine water polluted with heavy metals may reach ground level in the entire city of Johannesburg, then perhaps this land of promise is not the best place to host a meeting of this kind.

At least the delegates who attend will not be able to avert their gaze from the polluted haze of Durban every day. Maybe that will help focus their intent on the task at hand.

A view from one hotel where delegates to the next UNFCCC Conference (COP17) will stay. Pretty to look at but you would not want to swim here: Chromium, zinc, lithium, lead, arsenic, and e coli levels 1000 times the WHO standard, these are just a some of the stew of pollutants flowing into the Durban seafront.

Chemicals Be Gone: A Sustainable Answer To A Changing Climate

2011-06-16T07:51:00.000-07:00

Daniel Kampani's field with his compost heap and his maize stalks protecting the soils where another crop will grow with the coming rains.

“With conservation agriculture, we need less rain”. Says Daniel Kampani, 48, who is farming in the hills west of Lilongwe, Malawi. He has been using fertilizer and planting his small plot next to his one bedroom house for ten years, and each year only managed to get about three hundred pounds of maize from it. Two years ago he stopped using the expensive fertilizer and started mulching the field, using last year’s maize stalks and other plant compost as fertilizer. He lay the fertilizer right across the field, sheltering it from the sun and rain. This year he managed to harvest seven hundred pounds of maize from that plot. Because of this technique, the field also needs less moisture, something that is becoming harder and harder to find.

Daniel Kampani with his wife Clara. The two stand in front of their first big peanut harvest, which is going to bring in enough money to buy more pigs and send their children to school. In the past their tobacco crop barely gave them enough cash to buy basic foods they could not grow.

A farmer like Daniel understands all too well the effects of a changing climate. “We are doing this because of climate change”, he says as he stands next to his wife, Clara who helps farm their land, “here we have had less and less rainfall every year, and when it does come, it rains very hard, but for a shorter time.”

Daniel and Clara are part of a new trend in Malawi. They are members of NASFAM, the National Smallholder Farmers’ Association. This group is seeking to change old habits among the roughly seven million smallholder farmers in this country of thirteen million people. 85% of all the farmers in the country are subsistence farmers, that means they eat pretty much everything they produce. There is only one short growing season, from December to March and after smallholders consume their produce, they struggle to get through what some call the “hunger season”. This is the three months when the rains have come but the new food has not been harvested yet.

The country is small and has a limited amount of land, and that means Malawian farmers must make the most of it. But deeply ingrained agricultural habits have led to severe soil depletion. The people here believe that if they burn their fields in the long dry winter it will ensure a healthy crop, but this is far from the truth. Not only do the active fires throughout the country contribute to bad health and the release of noxious greenhouse gases, but the technique depletes the soils, kills healthy earthworms, and reduces crop yields dramatically. So why would people here do this?

Bumper harvests like this peanut harvest have been made possible through sustainable agricultural practices spread through NASFAM with support by Irish Aid in Malawi.

“They do not have the information that we do”, explains Daniel, “we are trying to get everyone in this area to stop this, but it is hard, it is a traditional thing. We must return humous to the soil, we must make it healthy again.” NASFAM has grouped together small farmers and gotten them to support each other in this new green revolution. As a group the farmers help each other and trade know-how. NASFAM has also helped them to diversify into peanut production, getting small buying stations out into rural areas where they can get a fair price for their produce, without having to truck it to town.

The peanuts replace tobacco as the smallholders’ cash crop, and are a great change for a diet that was very protein and vitamin poor. Legumes like peanuts help replenish nitrogen in the soil after years of maize and tobacco production and their shells make excellent fertilizer.

Irish Aid, the assistance arm of the Irish government, actively assists NASFAM with half a million euros to keep their outreach programs running. Networks of volunteers like Daniel and Clara help spread the conservation agriculture message into remote rural areas. In just a few years they have managed to lift about twenty percent of the farmers in the area out of subsistence farming and into the cash economy.

Deforestation in Malawi is acute, only eight percent of the trees are still standing, and many experts agree that the loss of forest cover contributes to local climate changes. Farmers like Daniel know this all too well, “We also need to plant trees. We need them for fuel, we need them for shade, we need them for fruit, some of them our animals can eat the leaves of in the dry season... they assist in so many ways.”

Daniel now has money to raise pigs, food in his granary, and sells his peanuts on the international fair trade market. He no longer has to worry if he will make it through the hungry season.

By planting trees, making his harvest more climate change proof, and increasing soil productivity, farmers like Daniel are uplifting poor countries and making a positive contribution to our planet. They can also teach the rest of us a few things about sustainable agriculture in a warming world at a time when agribusinesses have trying to convince everyone that the only way to combat climate change is through their fertilizers, chemicals and pesticides.

In Malawi and the rest of southern Africa there is an urgent need for projects of this type. As poor countries cry out in international forums for financing to adapt to the climate change wrought by the rich western world, it is programs like this that should be held up as an example for everyone to follow. But while countries like Ireland and the United States struggle to keep their own economies afloat, small inputs like the one keeping NASFAM running are in danger of disappearing. That would be a crisis for Malawi, and a great loss to our collective ability to adapt to the changing world around us.

Something to sing about: A women's farming group from NASFAM get together to share peanut growing secrets and support each other's new conservation farming practices.

Don't Frack With Africa

2011-06-08T01:25:00.000-07:00

Flowers in the springtime near Karoo-Tankwa National Park. The fragile desert ecosystem, including this very area of the Karoo, is under threat from oil companies

Most people around the world, particularly in the United States, know what hydraulic fracturing is: shooting a crude and secret mixture of chemicals and water deep into a shale deposit to break up the rock and release the trapped natural gas.

The process needs millions liters of water mixed with an unknown blend of chemicals including (but not limited to) benzene, toluene, ethyl benzene, xylene, ethylene glycol (antifreeze), diesel fuel, naphthalene (moth ball) compounds, boric acid, arsenic, poly nuclear organic hydrocarbons, and other carcinogenic and toxic compounds.

For a great primer on hydraulic fracturing (called fracking) and what it has done to rural communities across America, particularly in my home in western Colorado, see my fellow videojournalist Josh Fox present his award winning documentary Gasland. It is a must-see for anyone who cares about clean drinking water, clean air, justice, and the human story behind fracking.

To Frack or Not to Frack?
Here in South Africa this year a debate has been raging across the country's last pristine environment, the Karoo Desert. An unlikely alliance of farmers, civil society organizations, foreign royalty and local environmental activists managed in April to get Mineral Resources Minister Joyce Shabangu to call for a moratorium on all shale gas exploration while her office conducts a comprehensive study on the process.

The players are the typical mixture of well-funded oil companies. Shell is the most high profile, but US based Falcon Oil and Gas and South Africa's Sasol have also been granted concessions to explore. As it stands today, no one has fracked yet, but in a recent public meeting with farmers Shell's hired representative Tisha Greyling of Golder Associates said, "If its not Shell, it will be someone else".

This sense of complete dominance is scary, even more so for someone like me, who has followed the fight to prevent more than three thousand gas wells being drilled in Garfield County where the Colorado River runs. If well-funded Americans could not keep these corporations out of their own back yards what chance do Africans have on a continent where money always talks the loudest? But there is a growing worldwide anger at these companies and a gathering wealth of information which is starting to wake consumers up to the destruction being done in their name. See Fracking Hell, The Untold Story on LinkTV here.

The Karoo Desert of South Africa is an ancient ecosystem with a vast and poorly understood groundwater system. Without knowing everything about how this water system works, it is impossible to say with any certainty that fracking there would be safe. Shell's proposed prospecting area includes about 100000km² of South Africa's arid heartland, and they have suggested they will blast seawater into the wells with the toxic slurry because the millions of liters of fresh water needed for the process would be too difficult to find in the desert.

The entire area subsists only on sub-surface water. There are no rivers, so almost every drop for drinking, irrigation and livestock is pulled up out of the ground. There is also the very real danger of radioactive pollution, since much of the Karoo has uranium in the ground. The long term impact of shooting toxic sludge into the ground is completely unknown, and any suggestions to the contrary are not based on facts writes researcher Glen Ashton.

South African billionaire mining magnate Johann Rupert and Princess Irene of the Netherlands both own farms in the region and have joined forces to fight Shell's plan to frack in the Karoo. Much of the area that Shell has been granted is private land, but the mineral rights are held by the government. This gives the company carte blanche to plow roads into ecologically sensitive areas, commandeer land from private owners, and even sink gas wells in areas that are currently protected. One site in their concession is next to the largest telescope in the Southern Hemisphere, the SALT, at Sutherland. That the government would grant these concessions to the detriment of such national landmarks does not bode well for any suggested oversight they claim they would have once drilling commences.

The Southern Africa Large Telescope (SALT), the biggest one in the southern hemisphere. The area around the telescope, known for it's clear skies and starry nights, may soon become polluted by gas wells.

Get the Frack out of the Karoo
Nevertheless it is not impossible to foresee rational thought finally turning the tide against these companies. The Karoo is just big oil's latest battleground, but everywhere in the world communities and governments are waking up to the potential and real dangers of fracking. Last week an earthquake in Blackpool England brought a stop to fracking there. Across America from a local to a national level the impunity that oil and gas companies have operated under is being gradually eroded away. If communities and powerful individuals around the world stand up together, the Karoo fight for people's basic rights may just end up being the industry's Waterloo.

Get Involved
There are lots of ways to get involved, and even if you aren't in South Africa, this is a worldwide fight.

Sign the petition on the Petition Site here..

Have you experienced fracking? Been a victim of gas exploration and production activities? Then the Minister should hear directly from you.
Address:
Susan Shabangu, Minister of Mineral Resources of the Republic of South Africa
Private Bag X463
Pretoria 0001
RSA

Write to Shell, tell them you won't buy their products, ever, because of their activities in the Karoo. Then take your business elsewhere. Here is their address:
Shell headquarters
Carel van Bylandtlaan 16,
2596 HR The Hague, The Netherlands
Postal address:
PO box 162, 2501 AN The Hague, The Netherlands
Tel. +31 70 377 9111
Or email them here: royaldutchshell.shareholders@shell.com

Marginal farmlands like this in South Africa's Eastern Cape are totally dependent upon irrigation from groundwater supplies, and the most sensitive to Fracking.

Into The Wild Future of the KAZA Park

2011-05-27T23:35:00.000-07:00

This picture embodies the essence of the Okavango for me: Forging a future for the area that sees communities of people and nature working together for a common good.

Our Camp just after sunset under the Jackleberry Tree deep in the Okavango Delta.

We made it into the Wild once again.

The northern heart of the Okavango Delta is a wilderness of papyrus and grass dotted with small islands. During high water, like there is now, the islands shrink and the animals are pressured into smaller areas, becoming more crowded. The larger islands are to the south of us, and most of the larger predators have followed their prey species there.

Journal:
I was just awakened by the odd sawing sound of a leopard prowling around our camp under the Jackleberry tree.

We cleared the area under the tree yesterday of all the elephant dung that had accumulated here since Max camped here a year or so ago. As we were cleaning his loo, so to speak, a large old bull came walking through the water towards us, veering off as he realized his favorite poo-ing spot was taken up by a bunch of pesky two legged critters.

We followed him in the Makoro canoes, listening as his powerful legs surged loudly through the water near us. We beached the canoes once he was up on the island and carried on foot. Tracking a large bull elephant on foot on a small island is not difficult but does have its obvious dangers. Seeing wildlife from the safety of a big metal vehicle is all well and good but there is nothing like walking up to them on African soil, an appropriate surge of adrenaline in the veins, and a clear eye out for an escape route.

Its time to get up. Dawn has arrived and our biological clocks have long been reset to the natural rhythm of the night and day. I have been recording the dawn chorus of birdlife on my sound machine, and although I missed the leopard sounds, maybe I will catch them tomorrow morning if he is back.

We are in the Jakotsha Communal Trust lands on the far western edge of the Moremi Wilderness Reserve. Here there is the possibility of seeing pretty much every large African mammal, as well as a bewildering array of birdlife, snakes, insects and of course lots and lots of trees.

Max, our guide, said this was grass snake but it looks remarkably like a Green Mamba that I filmed in Mozambique last year (LINK HERE).

Our second day in the heart of this vast wilderness started with this journal entry, and we went for a nice long walk in the morning to scout out the island.

The island is about a mile long and half a mile wide, covered with trees and shrubs, and dominated by the magnificent Baobabs.

Baobabs are an amazing tree species. They store water in their trunks, swelling during the rains and then shrinking during the long dry season, looking old and wrinkled by the end of it. They resemble an upside down tree with the roots sticking upwards. Their bark is shiny, and in a further backwards way, they blossom during the dry season and often shed their leaves during the rains, unlike virtually any other green growing thing in the region. Towering above most other trees they are an unmistakable symbol of Africa. Fortunately for them, their wood is useless for building and fire making. Its more like a stringy fiber. This fiber was used for thousands of years by Africans to make surprisingly strong and soft fabrics. The trees were harvested while standing, then regrew their skin. Many old giants still bear the scars of this sustainable use, but there are other reasons for those scars too.

The author in an ancient Baobab Tree, scarred by elephants and hollowed by time, which served as a shelter from two large bull elephants.

Baobab trees are an important part of most southern African ecosystems and here it is possible to see the ancient role they played in the wild cycle of the African bush. They provide a soft fibrous food with high water content for elephants, especially during the long dry season. In areas of Africa where the elephant has long disappeared the scars they left on the many old baobabs can be seen centuries later. Their fruit is edible, and has a high level of vitamin C. The oil from their seeds is widely appreciated in the cosmetics industry today for its moisturizing properties, and many forest communities have started preserving their baobabs and selling the fruit to international buyers. The elephants and many other animals are clearly the big beneficiaries of this abundance in the Okavango, the hard shells of the fruits are scattered everywhere, cracked open and looted for their treasure.

Baobab Trees, like the elephants that feed on them, are pillars of the Okavango Delta's Ecosystem.

We took refuge inside an old Baobab while two large old bull elephants passed nearby, and this was not an isolated use. In Mozambique and Zimbabwe I have seen many big old Baobabs used as places of refuge from marauding armies and animals alike. People have built bars and cafes into the big ancient trunks, and there is a local belief in Malawi that the trees harbor the spirits of the ancestors who sheltered under their boughs in ages gone by.

Our days were full in the Delta. We traveled to nearby islands for walking safaris with Max, who showed us local salts, how to harvest waterlily blossoms, how to use the stems of the plant for a filtering drinking straw, and where to catch a safe swim... safe at least from everything except leeches.

Carl liked eating the succulent inner stalks of the papyrus that tickled our faces as we swept by the in the fiberglass Makoros, but the little sand fleas liked eating him more. He bore the bites for two weeks after our trips, hundreds of them on each leg that drove him nearly mad with the itching. Clearly he was tastier than Martin and I, who did not get bitten by anything other than the odd leech and sole mosquito.

The cycle of life: Carl eats the Papyrus that house the bugs that ate Carl.

The protection this place receives today is clearly not sufficient for it's long-term survival. There is virtually no government oversight. There are signs of poaching, overfishing and unsustainable timber harvesting. Max and the other community members we talked to all agree that the creation of the KAZA (Kavango Zambezi Trans-frontier Conservation Area) is an important step in the preserving the area. Max would like to see permit systems developed that are more enforced, community protection units formed that patrol the area, and a stronger central trust system with real power to protect their natural heritage.

Clearly the community trust system in Botswana has been working up to a point, where communities feel ownership over their resources, and want to preserve them. I was surprised and heartened to hear not only that Max and the other guides support these initiatives that are supposed to be part of the larger park plan, but that they had their own ideas that went even further.

Sitting under the big shady Jackleberry tree during one of our last days in the Delta, Max explained: "We are the only ones who can look after this place, and we need to make sure we benefit from the use of it, then the people will stop poaching the fish and animals." The wind blew lightly, bringing the essence of the Okavango with it. "Five years ago, we would have seen lots of fishermen here, that has been stopped by us, without Geoff Randall's Makoro Project, this very tree would have been cut already...We can make a difference here, and we will make more of one in the future with help and better organization, -we know we can do it, who else will?"

The long trip out of the Delta took us two days, and we made it back to my Landcruiser, the Hog, without any trouble. But that pesky old clutch barely got us to Windhoek, Namibia where Carl and I, together the help of the high-lift jack at Wild Dog Safaris lifted the truck and changed the clutch. Sparing you all the gruesome details, eleven hours later with our friendship still intact, we had the clutch replaced, the gearbox back in, and the truck rolling again. I said goodbye to Carl and Martin, two of the best partners ever, and picked up a new crew for two weeks into the wild and wet river valleys of Namibia.

Max, right, poles us through the Hippo Pools at sunset into the heart of the Okavango Delta.

The proposed KAZA park plan.
John Barbee, my father, who is a constant source of inspiration and motivation suggested I put in a map of the park so everyone could visualize what this protected area bigger than Italy will look like.

Postscript:
The Documentary that our team has been making on the KAZA park will be shown later in 2011 on LinkTV.

The Okavango Delta - Inspiration and Motivation

2011-05-19T01:44:00.000-07:00

click on them to enlarge the photos

Driving through the floodwaters with a bad clutch to the place we will leave the Hog and start our transfer to Nguma Island Lodge in the Okavango Delta.

Loading up the canoes and boats for our first transfer. We then unloaded onto one of the lodge's trucks, drove about four miles, then loaded everything back onto more Mokoros for the final leg to the camp.

Martin and Carl's first-ever time on a Mokoro, Carl's shirt reads: "The Kalamari Dessert" in spray paint.

Into the Delta.

The Okavango Delta is a symbol of the types of problems and successes facing the future of the proposed Kavango/Zambezi (KAZA) transfrontier peace park. This vast area is one of the largest inland deltas in the world, the largest swamp in the southerm hemisphere, and the numbers help tell the story. The Okavango Delta fluctuates between 6, 000 to 8,000 square kilometers during the dry season, swelling to 15,850 square kms during the flood, which is happening now.

The Kavango River flows from the Angolan highlands 1100 kilometers away, then through Namibia and out onto Botswana’s Kalahari Desert in a huge alluvial fan. It never reaches the sea, but languishes in the hot dry air creating an unique habitat for an amazing array of birds, plants and wildlife. There are 150,000 little islands dotting the Delta, which get bigger or smaller depending on the time of the season.

Only a small part of the Delta is actually protected by a designated National Park. Moremi National Park is in the central northeast of the Delta, and with Chobe National Park to the west, covers about a third of the Delta’s area. The rest is not totally unprotected, but maintained by a community concession type of system that allows mixed use of the land, isles and wildlife. Some of these activities include hunting, fishing, and even wood cutting.

Our last transfer to Nguma Island and the first time we meet Max, left, who became our guide and dear friend over the next five days.

The future of the Delta is in doubt. These are desert countries, and this is a lot of water. There have been many plans to divert or utilize the flow of the Kavango River which would dramatically change the nature of this dynamic system. One of the reasons behind the creation of the KAZA is to protect this ecosystem, and make it work for the communities that live along side of it. That means that community concessions must play a vital role in protecting it, probably a bigger role than they are playing now.

Our trip combines elements of community conservation systems, private lodges, and local people who will guide us through this fascinating place.

Nookie and Jeff Randall started Nguma Island Lodge years ago in the upper northwestern part of the Delta, near the town of Gumare. They bring in tourists during the high water season with a series of boat and truck transfers that really create a feeling of isolation. Their gorgeous lodge rests on the edge of Nguma lagoon, and they cater for tourists of all sorts, even campers like us.

They also enjoy a successful public-private partnership with the local Jakotsha Community Trust, who run the NG 24 Concession in this part of the Okavango Delta. The polers they employ all come from the local community, and far from being simple men who push a boat, these guides are encyclopedias of knowledge about the animals, plants and issues affecting the Delta.

Geoff, Nookie’s husband sadly passed away a few years ago, but some of the projects he started live on. An avid outdoors-man with a love for nature, he saw that increased tourism for the Delta was difficult for one very obvious and important reason. The boats, called mokoros, that people use to get around in the thick reeds are long, and thin, and traditionally made from big hardwood trees.

The delta is a swamp dotted with islands, and on these islands are a limited number of trees, but the number of tourists wanting to see the Delta is increasing exponentially. So the people of the communities were cutting down old trees that anchored the islands in the shifting waters, and using them to make boats that lasted about three years. This was clearly unsustainable, and after many attempts to get government oversight onto the problem, Randall and his team of local guides had an epiphany, why not make replica boats out of fibreglass?

And so began a period of experimentation in making makoros that look and feel like wood, but are lighter, stronger, and far more durable that the wooden ones that were made traditionally. His final product is a masterpiece of innovation and appropriate technology that has changed the face of transport in the Okavango Delta, and probably saved thousands of vital trees. Their lifespan is unlimited, since they can be fixed simply, and they are perfectly water-tight, so the bums of high-dollar tourists don’t get damp while out on a makoro safari. They are easier to pole as well and can carry a much higher payload, with a minimum of effort.

Before my readers start to talk about the environmental impact of using polymer and glass-based fibre systems, keep in mind that two well-ventilated and well maintained shops can and did supply virtually the whole Delta with these mokoros, and if Nookie has her way, they will again. Geoff fixed any fiberglass mokoro for free if someone brought one in, essentially guaranteeing them for life.

Matshelo (Max) Thokabotshabelo has been poling the waters of the Okavango since he could walk. He and all the other polers I spoke to agreed that Geoff Randall’s mokoros are the most sought after things in the Delta. Sometimes their own boats are even stolen the demand for them is so high. Standing under a gorgeous Jackleberry tree, Max maintained that without Geoff’s boats, trees like this would be a thing of the past, “The people would have taken down this tree years ago if it wasn’t for Geoff and Nookie, everyone now wants a fibreglass Mokoro, and that is good for our trees”.

It is a rare look at a can-do project in Africa that works, and something that the KAZA program coordinators should look at for inspiration.

Our bushcamp, with the tent where I wrote the journal entry at the end of this story in the middle of the frame behind Carl and Martin.

We woke up this morning on Nguma island in our little bush camp near the main lodge, The guys are outside my tent getting our things packed and ready to board a boat with three of Geoff’s fiberglass canoes on it. We will get transferred into the northern part of the Delta for a three day trip with the local community guides from the Jakotsha Trust. Hopefully we will get out there, wont get stung by any more bees, and come back with a pile a memories and new experiences. The birds are singing a loud dawn chorus and I am excited about everything. It is days like this that make doing this job ever-so worth it. Nothing to worry about except the nature around us, where we will camp, whether we have enough food, how our beer supplies are doing. This is the basics, the things humanity evolved worrying about. Far from cellphones, unit trusts, bills and everything that makes us forget that we are just animals living on borrowed time, on a borrowed land.

Sunset over Nguma Lagoon from our bushcamp near Nookie and Geoff Randall's Nguma Island Lodge.

Out of the Pans, Into The Fire

2011-05-15T00:37:00.000-07:00

Martin at Jack's Camp.

On our last day in the Pans, sitting back next to the fire at our little bush camp, we poured some hot coffee and waited for the sun to go down so we could walk to the brush covered hill overlooking a wet spot in the pans and maybe see some game at sunset. It had been a gorgeous day, not much driving, and lots of bird watching. We had seen some spoonbills and a group of dozens of young Lappetfaced Vultures, as well as many others. The three of us had bonded over the last few days and were looking forward to being in the Okavango Delta. For Martin and Carl it would be the first time, and they had no idea what to expect.

Martin sat forward in his camp chair, and smilingly slapped his leg, "ouch!" another bite of something small...then he saw it was a strange type of bee. He laughed a bit, said good thing he wasn't allergic, pried out the stinger and thought not much more about it. Fifteen minutes later the aggressive poison had raised huge welts, and fifteen minutes after that it became clear he was indeed having his first allergic reaction to a bee sting.

I had carelessly given away my antihistamines two weeks earlier in Cape Town, and not thought to replenish them. I am not allergic to anything and both Martin and Carl thought the same. Even the most well prepared expedition can come up short, however, and now we were in what could be very serious trouble. We were at least two hours hard driving from the nearest clinic, and maybe more. Fortunately we were near Jack's Camp, one of the oldest bushcamps in the Magadigadi Pans, and a five-star fly-in safari destination of some repute. I felt confident that they would have oral and inject-able solutions to Martin's increasingly perilous condition.

Leaving Carl at the camp, we jumped into the truck and I made all safe haste for Jack's, about six miles away. By the time we arrived Martin was struggling but still on his own feet, and within five minutes he had antihistamines in his body. The young but capable staff had a doctor on the radio, and in case of need a medical evacuation flight sitting on the dirt runway.

Thankfully within the hour Martin was stabilized and looking much much better. We arrived back at our camp just after sunset, to a great reception from Carl who had been very worried. There are now both inject-able and oral antihistamines in my medical kit, and from now on they will be fresh and available for future need.

This is a clear illustration of some of the dangers inherent in being alive in the bush. Most people live within thirty minutes of medical help. Once you go beyond that it is necessary to be prepared for most eventualities. I have a wilderness medical certificate, and Martin is a qualified veterinarian, and both of us thought we were covered, because our past experience showed we were not allergic to bees. I carry an extensive medical kit that will take care of most problems in the bush, at least until we can reach a hospital. Yet we did indeed come up up short. The lesson to learn is: Prepare for every eventuality that you can.

We would both like to extend our heartfelt appreciation for the very professional staff at Jack's Camp and the way that they reacted in such a helpful manner. Martin also should be commended for keeping calm, keeping watch over his symptoms, and remaining positive.

After a rest day in Maun near a critical care facility to make sure Martin was indeed fine, we headed up into the Okavango Delta.

Botswana's Magadigadi Pans and Khubu Island in Pictures

2011-05-06T00:17:00.000-07:00

Another Desert Campsite near the Pans.

Lappetfaced Vultures take flight in the Magadigadi National Park in Botswana. The Vultures are an indicator species, and a thriving group of juveniles like this one shows that the ecosystem here is very healthy.

The Granite bedrock of Khubu Island, in the Magadigadi Pans. The Island is still a spiritual center for the both the San Bushmen and the local community.

Travelling across the Pans can be very dangerous in the rainy season. Its best to never leave the main roads, or else you run the rick of slipping into the primordial ooze that lurks beneath the crusty clay.

The Magadigadi Pans National Park, only covers about a third of the pans' area. Here on its Eastern edge our desert campsite, with the Southern Cross on her side above us.

In the shadows of a Baobab Tree, Khubu Island's isolation is ending. This one-time island in a lake is now an island in the vastness of the Pans. It's serenity and beauty draw thousands of tourists a year, who bring in revenue to the local community.

Into the Wild: The Magadigadi Pans

2011-05-03T03:43:00.000-07:00

Khubu Island, in the Magigadi Pans of Botswana. The island was originally populated by a San Bushman people which followed the Leopard Scorpi tradition, and then later in the 1500 and 1600s by a vassal state of the Great Zimbabwe Empire called the Monomatapa. The proposed Kavango-Zambezi Transfrontier Conservation Area (TFCA) will encompass an area the size of Italy through five African countries. The park's core area is centered around the Okavango River and the Delta, which currently has only limited protection.

Into the Magadigadi Pans- Community Based Conservation.

We made it out of Johannesburg on Sunday the 10th of April, traveling in the Hog, my Toyota Landcruiser Diesel 4x4, which is one of the most economical and hardy 4x4s in the world. If anyone has an electrical 4x4 that can drive at least 200 miles in one charge, I would much rather use that, but for now this is our moving platform.

Martin and Carl, my two travel companions, arrived at my garage at around 9am, but it took us about three hours to get our packing system set up and get on the road. We arrived at the Botswana border at around 4pm, and headed up to the farm of a friend where I had worked before on a solar energy project. See that story here.

The next morning we awoke to the sound of goat bells clanking in the still air, and we had coffee with some other farmers in the area and talked about the recent rains, which have been very good. In Botswana the currency is called Pula, which means rain. Clearly in a desert country like this one rain is everything. But the rains which everyone lauded however might complicate the road ahead for us. We are headed into the Magadigadi Pans, a place which fills with water in the rains and becomes one of the most important areas for waterbirds in Africa. We are also trying to get into the top of the Okavango Delta, and already our contact there has suggested in a text message that we may not be able to drive there at all, but she will try to arrange a boat along what is usually a dirt road. So the talk with the farmers was hopeful for Botswana, but slightly disturbing for three adventurers who have only one car and eleven days to travel thousands of Kilometers on rough dirt roads which now may be impassable.

We are returning to the Kaza Park area to investigate further the long-term project I am doing about this most grand of conservation projects for television documentary I am making with LinkTV.org in the United States. The documentary explores how the project is evolving, and the future of tourism and development in Africa, and will answer questions like: How will communities live with wild animals? How will they benefit from tourism? How will the Park change what is happening on the ground today?

On Khubu Island, the Magadigadi Pans’ main tourist attraction, the community has been involved in a local tourism project for eleven years. The Peace Parks Foundation, who is facilitating the dialogue between the five countries that are part of the Kaza Park, brought the Khubu Island community members to the latest planning session in Botswana’s capital Gaborone, in order to learn more about how they have created one of the most successful projects of its kind. So we are headed there today to find out from the main guide there, nicknamed Dragon, what role communities like his might play in the greater KAZA Park.

So after a long day on the road, and a night in the Pans, we arrived at Khubu Island, happy to find the road clear of the great pools of water that collect here during the rains. The place is treacherous for driving at the best of times, but when water permeates the pans, even solid flat soil can become quicksand under the vibrations of the Hog’s tires.
What we learned at Khubu is encouraging, and if these lessons can be learned by the KAZA park creators, then there is a good chance this huge project will be successful.

The fees at Khubu Island go strait to the community, and under a large Baobab tree, Dragon explains how the community would like to see the KAZA park benefit them. The first way, they want to see more wild animals in their area. This is surprising, since most rural communities in Africa are at odds with wild animals. Dragon explains that in fact, many of the people who were responsible for the decline of the wild animal populations around the island were now sorry they had killed them. He and the other community members want more tourists, they can see how tourism money has assisted them, and they know that with lions and elephants and large game in the area, they would have even more visitors. The visitor fees provide cash for a local school, a clinic, and a cellphone tower for communication. It’s very encouraging to find on the ground an “ownership” feeling over the tourism resources in the area, and a willingness to embrace greater conservation measures in order to bring in more cash to an isolated community like this one. Most importantly, Dragon explains that ten years ago, the community had no interest in seeing wild animals in the area and instead wanted more goats and cows on low interest loans from the government. That this is not the case today speaks volumes about the success of this community based tourism model that will hopefully be replicated and be pivotal for the future of the KAZA park.

Link Television: An Alternative View

2011-04-08T01:09:00.000-07:00

So I have been offline here for the beginning of this year. I am sorry about that a little, but after two years it has been good to take short break and focus my intent and interests. My work with Global Post has continued, and I have also been working with LinkTV.org in the United States, selling some of my stories. Throughout this year there will be some short features of mine appearing on TV in the US on Link's channel on the Direct TV satelite system. The first of these is about Mozambique's remote Mt Mabu:

Readers of this blog may remember my stories from last year about the KAZA, the Kavango Zambezi Transfrontier Conservation Area, being created here in Africa between five nations. It will be the biggest park ever created, larger than the country of Italy. Since my trip through there last year I have been working with my assistant, Emily Coppel from Columbia College in Missouri, to create a longer, fifty-five minute documentary about the creation of this vast protected area. We are headed back into the heart of the Kaza on the 10th of April, this time exploring community-based tourism projects in the Okavango Delta which are a model for the future mixed-use plan of the park. We will be eye-to-eye with crocodiles and hippos, and camping among leopards and all sorts of wild animals, all in the name of bringing this important story to the world.

I will be updating this blog and my twitter account: @JeffreyBarbee as we go along, with updates, and tales of adventure, adversity and conservation. It's clear that if we are going to keep our protected places and expand them in a world with a growing population, they are going to have to include people. To that end I have my latest documentary from Mozambique here on the page. Allan Schwarz's Mezimbite Forest Center has been showing how people can become the custodians of the natural resources, and benefit from them financially by not destroying them.

Have a look at the video below:

So I am putting together some blog entries along our route. When the full documentary comes out on Link TV later this year I hope you all tune in!

An Astronaut's View

2011-02-10T08:25:00.000-08:00

Many people have talked about the humbling experience of heading to space. Although I have had many trips, that's not a place I have been yet, however I just spent a few hours vicariously living through the eyes of Astronaut Douglas Wheelock (Wheels). This guy not only writes his heart out, but can take pictures that help us see and share the beauty of our little blue-green planet.

So Come Look at His Images Here

I have nothing else to say except that, from the bottom of my heart, thanks Wheels, you have inspired me on a day when I needed it a lot.

Jeff
Ex/Johannesburg

The Solar Caravan

2011-01-09T12:28:00.000-08:00

In 2011, Crosby Menzies and his crew of committed solar activists are embarking on their Solar Caravan, trying to create a solar revolution in Africa. Join them on their website and through this blog. By visiting individual homesteads and schools in Botswana, the caravan hopes to spark a groundswell of public interest in solar cooking. This may help alleviate some of Africa's dependence on firewood and charcoal, and could be financed in part through carbon trading and monitoring programs.

There is a fear that the initial cost of this technology and the inability of local people to upkeep it will limit it's impact, but there is ample evidence to suggest that when rural people are given options like solar power and solar cooking solutions which work better than the current technology, it can be become widely adopted.

Have a look at this New York Times article about the impact of a solar power panel on a rural home in Kenya.

Observe in this video an electrical photovoltaic panel that this family already had in operation. When the Solar Caravan arrived at the village, the people already had a clear understanding of the power of the sun and within an hour were using the solar cooker on their own.

"This is something we can use", said Halalia Batulo, 62, as she stirred the sizzling vegetables in the pan over the cooker, "How do we get more of them?".

Positive contributions to the future of sustainable technology like these cookers is what people within the industry call a "leap-frog" technology. Instead of first moving from wood to electricity, and then from there to solar cooking like current adopters in the west, people like Halalia and her family can leap-frog strait to solar cooking, reducing the need for coal-based electricity and forest use in rural communities in Africa, while improving their standard of living.

It would be interesting to perform a cost-benefit analysis of introducing low-cost solar cookers like these compared to large coal power plants and maintaining expensive electrical cookers in sunny places like southern Africa. At the moment, it's estimated that electrical cookers account for about 38% of the daily electrical load in nearby South Africa. This is a number that will only increase as urbanization and development increases.

During the day solar thermal cookers like the one highlighted here can boil water in five minutes, and would reduce the amount of electricity (and the greenhouse gases associated with them) nations use, virtually overnight.

To learn more about Solar Cooking and how you can help distribute these systems, visit these sites:

http://www.solarcookersforafrica.com

Solar Cookers International

Happy New Year!

2011-01-05T12:39:00.000-08:00

Mount Nyiragongo, Eastern Democratic Republic of Congo. Millions of tons of molten rock bubble in the crater of this active Volcano along the far west side of the Rift Valley.

"Take up the pen, the cudgel, the internet even...use them with force, stand up and be counted. Nothing is worth having if it is not worth battling for. Keep our world and our country free and out of the hands of evil-doers and their lackeys who would sooner sell us down the river to the oil companies and send the poor to fight an unjust war than protect the children, our water, our education and our Constitution."
-Jeffrey Barbee
Colorado, January 2011

I wrote last year about all of us doing our part. You can read that post here, since it also stands out as the "best of" from this blog I am letting it stand pretty much alone.

As my New Year's resolution I have vowed to use everything at my disposal to work for a more just, greener and healthier planet. I urge everyone to do the same.

Happy New Year!

"Christmas Tree, Oh Christmas Tree, How Sustainable Are Thy Branches...?"

2010-12-18T08:18:00.000-08:00

A Christmas tree with gifts carefully wrapped beneath says abundance, it says peace, it says yes indeed we killed this tree for all the right reasons this season.

Maybe you aren't Christian, maybe you are aren't religious at all, which is why a tree is a good way to celebrate the season. The ancient Europeans in Celtic and other pre-Christian traditions used pine bows to celebrate their connection with the Earth, and the folks at Tolerance.org suggest the tree may be a hold-over from that. Regardless, its a good place to assemble your Kwanza/Channuka/Christmas gifts and stop them from being trodden upon or carted off by carolers, thieves and other drunks.

But what is a healthy happy planet-friendly way of sorting out a tree for Christmas?

You could get a plastic tree, with all its packaging and petroleum-based PVCs and fuel-hungry transport that brings that tree from China to wherever you are. Though it is used every year for five or ten years or so and that helps mitigate some of it's carbon and manufacturing footprint. It doesn't smell like a tree, it lacks that Christmas ambiance, but if you are allergic to pitch and don't like pine needles all over your presents, it can work - but other than the color it is certainly not green.

You could also buy one of those farmed Christmas trees. Transported and shipped halfway across the continent, then wrapped in plastic netting or shrink wrap, this option is hardly much better that the plastic tree, and you have to buy one every year. The folks at North Carolina University have been doing health studies on farms. It does smell like a tree, look like a tree, and lets face it, if you are in a big city there may not be a lot of other options available. Or are there?

A quick search of the net brought many helpful hints on how to make your tree more sustainable. You could have a living tree. The folks at Earth Easy explain to how to pot, keep and maintain a rooted tree all year 'round. This is a great way to hold onto the brainwave of the season: you can be nice to people, give them gifts and be thankful for what you have ALL YEAR.

My folks here in Colorado decorate their living Christmas tree from a few years ago that they planted in the garden. Since our presents would get wet under that tree, and it gets a little cold in Colorado this time of year, it isn't practical to use that particular tree as our main Christmas centerpiece, but its still nice to see it thriving under its heavy blanket of snow and twinkly coalpower-driven lights.

If a planted pine tree is too tough to take care of in a small New York apartment, requiring at least as much attention as an old sofa or chair, then maybe a Christmas cactus could work for you. Another suggestion is to get an old slide projector and keep a projection of a tree up on your wall with the fireplace channel burning next to it on the TV or computer. Anything to get the old Christmas spirit to take possession of you.

Here in Colorado the white Christmases grow on trees, children are below average and around every corner there is a National Forest just waiting to be chopped down so that the gas industry can inject fracturing compounds into our water supply. To assist this very important economic process the folks at the Forest Service have issued us Christmas tree cutting permits.

All facetious remarks about gas drilling aside, usually the National Forest Service does have the forest's health somewhere near the bottom end of their top twenty priorities, and selective cutting done at a sustainable level can keep a forest healthy, wealthy and standing. So I trooped up into the White River National Forest the other day with a little yellow tag and chose an overshadowed little pine tree in a tight stand that needed thinning.

Yes, for the first time in my adult life, I chopped down a living wild tree in a wild forest, wrapped it up in a blue tarp that looked appropriately like a body bag, and skied that tree down into the valley to my parents living room here in Glenwood Springs.

So now it stands down there, a symbol of sustainable forestry that may or may not be a permanent blotch on my green Karma. At least the presents are protected from the sloppy boots of marauding carolers, and the house is filled with the fine smell of pine.

Merry Christmas everybody. I just shouldn't have counted the rings.

Sustainable harvesting of timber is one way to keep forests healthy and communities employed as guardians of this important resource.

Skiing-out with the body... I mean the tree.

A sustainably harvested Christmas tree is a great place to keep presents and the planet safe. Jeff and Jade Barbee.

White River National Forest in Colorado, much of which is being exploited by private companies for Gas Well Drilling.

The Malaria Handbook

2010-12-08T00:45:00.000-08:00

Antonio Langa is the informaticist at the Manhica Institute, left, he is examining a blood slide, positive with Malaria, with journalist Jonathan Clayton, on assignment with the photographer from the Times newspaper in London.

Dr. Montse Reno, at her office in Manhica, Mozambique. The Malaria Vaccine Initiative in Manhica, Mozambique is organized by the University of Barcelona and supported by the Gates Foundation.

Mosquito Nets protect Karoline Ntchanga, in Kasongo, DRC, who has been in the local hospital for 2 weeks with her son who is suffering from Malaria.

Malaria is not the worst thing ever, if you have the right medication. Many in Africa do not have good access to anti-malarial medication, and this is the cause of eight hundred thousand deaths per year.

One of the most primal and powerful weapons in the battle for this disease is our own immunity. Many researchers have shown that people who are exposed to the malaria protozoa from a young age develop some sort of resistance to it. In Africa, the disease has been among the population for millions of years, so many people with African ancestry have some sort of immunity or resistance. What might kill a Swedish person may only make a healthy African sick with something akin to the common cold, -unless their immune system is compromised by hunger or HIV.

Malaria mutates quickly according to the latest news from the World Health Organization (WHO), and it seems to get deadlier and more able to cause havoc in the systems of those who were showing resistance. So the disease mutates and creates new strains, resistant to it's victims immune systems as well as the pantheon of drugs thrown at it.

The drugs themselves fall loosely into two categories, ones to stop you from getting it, and ones that cure it. Often there is crossover, where the same preventative drugs are given in shorter, higher doses to cure the illness. For anyone who visits Africa it is prudent to take some of these drugs in combination -according to a knowledgeable doctors advice. But for those of us who live here for years, it is not healthy to take any of the drugs for more than a year or two.

Some of the drugs can be dangerous. People have had heart problems, liver failure, and in some cases permanent dementia. This is probably enough to make most people change their Serengeti holiday plans to the sunny beaches of Florida, and indeed the presence of Malaria partly accounts for the tiny tourism numbers in Africa.

But these drugs are far less dangerous than the disease. Malaria can lead to liver failure, kidney failure, ruptured spleen, stroke and death. For visitors to Africa who are here for less than a year, there are excellent preventative drugs with minimal side effects.

For everyone in a "red zone", Malaria is a reality that we cannot avoid. Sometimes as journalists we choose stories to cover about Malaria as much for our own education as that of our readers. This puts us into contact with some of the most accomplished Malaria researchers in the world, like the Malaria Vaccine Initiative in Manhica, Mozambique who are close to developing a new trial vaccine that might be one more tool to fight this deadly disease.

So now you may have guessed it. I figure I got this case of Malaria about ten days ago in Mozambique. Because the camp I was staying in is far from villages and there is no history of Malaria there, I probably got it somewhere else.

There was one evening where I waited in the post-rain dreariness of mud in a small town for a grilled chicken and chips. It took about three hours, and since I had arrived there from the bush on my way back to camp around 4 pm, I was still in my shorts.

So there I sat, hang-dog hungry for hours while being food for the whining multitudes buzzing hungrily around me. The mosquitoes were thick under the table, and the place had all the Malaria sign posts: wet, populated, poor health care, and after dark.

Well I had my dinner, the mosquitoes had theirs, and now I am doing battle with the legions of parasites they sent to feast on me, breaking open my red blood cells to use for their own replication.

I am laying on my sofa in Johannesburg, watching a long epic from the Pacific in World War Two with the sound turned very low to stop my head from pounding. I can't help identifying those fresh faced young marines with my own white blood cells, valiantly defending island-like organs, getting drug-filled reinforcements from pill-like ships.

Delirious.

I think of visiting the Malaria Vaccine Initiative, where I asked Spanish Researcher Dr. Rontse Reno whether she had enjoyed the occasional brain busting bout of the disease. She laughed, "We all get it, all the time, this is a Malarial hotspot, so we take our cure quickly, we take a few days off... if you have the drugs, this is not a serious thing".

But there was that classic 100 yard stare in that pregnant pause and the unsmiling look behind the grin spoke volumes. It is the same one seen in soldiers and combat journalists, it is the "I have been to war, and I don't really want to talk about it" look. Anyone who has been there knows it's not cool to get shot at and its even less cool to have Malaria.

So here are a few life-prolonging tidbits to take on holiday:

Most Mosquitos that carry the disease only come out after sunset, so cover up with trousers and long sleeves.

If you are worried about the effects of DEET, that evil smelling stuff in mosquito spray, put it on your long clothes (especially your back), and the backs of your hands and neck.

No Malaria mosquito was born with it, they just get it from people they have dined off of. These Malarial mozzies aren't long-distance fliers, they have to have bitten someone else with Malaria, and then flown to you. So if you can help it, try to sleep and relax in the evenings at least 300 meters from the nearest possible Malaria victim. If they snore, that should be easy.

Travel in Africa with a fold-up mosquito net, its easy to put up, small to carry and oh-so-romantic.

If caught in the first few days, Malaria is not so serious. When it is allowed some time to establish itself it gets ugly. Watch these signs and assume its Malaria first.
1. headache behind the temples and eyes
2. sweaty and then chilled
3. aching joints

Many Africans and long-term expats will travel with the cure, and take it as soon as they think MIGHT have it (including yours truly). The up-side is, if you think you have it, you probably do, and the quicker you treat it the better. The down side is you may actually have the flu, but at least that won't kill you.

Only a few Malaria strains re-occur, and even then there are drugs to cure pretty much all of them completely.

Most doctors in the west don't understand Malaria, so do your own research on drugs and side effects, especially on these sites:
Roll Back Malaria (WHO)

The Center For Disease Control (CDC) Traveler page.

A negative Malaria test DOES NOT mean you don't have Malaria. Its a sneaky disease and can hide easily on a blood side.

If you are worried, speak to a doctor in the country you are visiting to get the best information.

Are You Part of the Solution?

2010-11-27T09:18:00.000-08:00

A healthy Forest near Dondo, left is rapidly turned into wasteland, right, by corrupt logging and charcoal making, followed by intentionally-set fires to clear the land for two seasons of cultivation.

I am just back from the Mezimbite Forest Center in Mozambique. I am working on a long term project there, chronicling the work of the project and its founder, Allan Schwarz. Schwarz is trying to slow the destruction of Mozambique's woodlands. No one knows how much forest is being lost but Ashoka Fellow Schwarz says at the current rate of loss, within fifteen years most of the country's remaining forest will be logged and burned out of existence.

As I have mentioned many times in this blog, the forest is mostly being lost to power the energy needs of rural and suburban people of Southern Africa. Rural people earn rare money by making the forest into charcoal, and selling it to urban dwellers. They also move onto these cleared areas and farm for a few seasons before the land fails, and then they move on, leaving scrubland in their wake.

Even though I have been to the area many times, the actual frontlines of the forest destruction is far from the project, which has been focusing on replanting areas already lost. But last week I went looking for the "battle front" of the destruction and I ran into an unholy alliance. Loggers, working for a Chinese company, were clearing out the big hardwood trees, and the charcoal makers were felling the small ones, piling them up into big mud-covered roasters, making charcoal on a huge scale out of what was left of the forest.

It affected me deeply, and today I spent the day in a deep hole of unhappiness. There is really no one in the area other than Schwarz trying to stop this cycle of destruction, which is being played out on a massive scale throughout the region. Why aren't the logging companies forced to replant the forest? Why are they not working sustainably, cutting only what the forest can sustain? Why doesn't the money they give the government help support local communities so they are not forced to hammer their only resource, turning it into charcoal and unproductive farmland?

Schwarz is only one man with one project, and try as he might he can't make even a small dent into what is going on just in his province. The enemies (corruption, greed and mismanagement) are too strong and it is clear that without an international effort, they will prevail.

Americans and Europeans buy hardwood flooring from China all the time in big warehouse stores for as little as a dollar per square-foot. Where do clients think these woods come from? China? Not on your life. They come from Mozambique and other corrupt countries in Africa, and the cutting of these woods and the Chinese loggers presence here leads to other losses like poaching.

In South Africa 198 Rhino have been lost this year to poaching. Elephants and many many other animals are being wiped out in Mozambique, Malawi and Tanzania on a scale never seen before by members of these logging syndicates. Much of this destruction is funneled out of the countries by corrupt officials in cahoots with the logging workers.

But strangely, unlike the 1980s, there is no huge international outcry.

The silence of people in Europe, America, and other democracies is astounding. That lack of interest and outrage is as much a part of the poachers arsenal as high caliber bullets and corruption. And that means your inattention, your lack of interest. In our resounding silence and lack of outrage these nefarious killers of biodiversity are making a mockery of conservation on an international scale.

When you buy hardwood from China, you are paying for this death, it is your fault directly. There is a war against the last bastions of nature on our planet and if you are not part of the solution, you are the problem. The sides are clear. Recycling at home is not enough. You need to be informed about your decisions because you are responsible, your money is driving this destruction. And yet being a smart consumer is only part of the solution. Everyone must become an active participant in stopping this, because if you are not active you really are the problem.

So now you may be sitting there thinking, "but what can I do?" "I try to be thoughtful, and recycle, and walk to the store more and bring my own bags instead of using paper or plastic. Isn't this enough?" From someone at the battle zone, watching things you and your children will never see simply disappear, I can tell you that it is not.

But here is the good news. You don't have to do anything different, or tie yourself to a tree to stop the loggers or live in penury (yet). Right now all you have to do is your job. If you are an architect join Architects Without Borders and design appropriate low-cost solar housing for the 3rd world in your spare time. If you are an accountant, create a group of accountants that audits and follows the paper trail of multinational corporations who are paying for the widespread destruction. Name and shame offenders on blogs, Twitter and newspaper websites. As I said before, nefarious projects and poachers operate with our silent consent because we do not choose to practice oversight.

If you are a writer, take time out every month to write something about the environment, and research NGOs like the Mezimbite Forest Project that are important parts of a global solution, sharing them with the rest of the world. If you are a politician, teacher, librarian, used car salesman or concerned parent, do your job. Do it for our home, the Earth, on a regular basis.

Stock the library with consciousness raising books and articles and create an email newsletter that shares that list with your community. Troll the internet looking for news articles that are raising these issues, and share them through social networking sites and put pressure on companies bankrolling this chaos to stop. Everyone can be a part of the solution to this problem.

Sticking our collective heads in the sand will not make this problem go away. Our planet is really in peril. Our coastlines are under threat, our migrating species are dying, our oceans are being plundered on a scale that is hard for experts to measure, and our forests are being wiped out of existence for the profit of a few. Sticking our collective heads in the sand will not make this problem go away. Get active, get involved, get informed and stop being part of the problem.

Skeletal trees hang in the sun after loggers and charcoal makers have reduced this forest to ruin near Dondo, Mozambique.

Chinese logging companies remove hardwood trees and the charcoal makers move into the forests, creating a double-destruction cocktail that leaves the land bare and unproductive.

Forests are wiped out after charcoal makers and logging companies level forests. The charcoal makers like this one are aware the forest is in danger, but they say, "we are poor, what can we do?"

After logging and charcoal making few of the hardest trees are left standing, their skeletons seeming to reach imploringly to the sky.

Getting out there, making a difference

2010-11-18T00:04:00.000-08:00

Villagers using a solar cooker for the first time, near Kanye in Botswana.

Crosby Menzies from Solar Cookers For Africa is traveling through Africa, visiting isolated communities, and trying to create a groundswell of public interest in Solar cooking. This former Wallstreet worker has created a project that takes him out from in front of his computer and into the wilds of Africa, and the reactions are overwhelmingly favourable. Armed with cookers, a simple flyer, and a huge smile, Menzies has made solar cookers his mission. I joined the Solar Caravan in Botswana, near the town of Kanye.

This country of 2 million people enjoys one of the highest solar indexes in the world, and last year the government made a commitment to develop solar energy over the next 20 years. At the moment, most of the people of this desert country use scarce firewood for their household energy needs, but Menzies sees a time when 80% of those needs will be met with solar, using today's technology.

Under the big Botswana sky Menzies trundles up in his white 4x4, bringing technology and new ideas to rural Africa.

Crosby Menzies is on a mission to distribute Solar Cookers all over Africa.

Earnest Batulo 11, learned how to use the Solar Cookers For Africa cooker in less than five minutes.

Good News....Great News!

2010-11-02T01:43:00.000-07:00

Hells Gate National Park, the Home of Africa's Geothermal Future
Okaria 3 has about 100 Megawatts of Proven Geothermal reserves, with about 50 Megawatts developed by 2010. It sits in Hells Gate National park in Kenya. Ernest Mabwa is the Plant Manager, and he has about 30 full time employees. It is the only privately owned and operated geothermal plant in Africa.

When I was down in Cape Town last week visiting the sea and old friends, one of them mentioned to me that most of the reporting on the environment and in fact much of my blog is fairly negative. Now, it is my and other journalists role to bring up the problems in the world and hope we reach a critical mass of people that can actually change things, so people do need to know the problems around the issues. So don't expect this column to be a rosy greening over of the very serious environmental train-wreck we seem to be heading towards. However, sticky ego aside, its also true that there is much to be excited and proud about. See my column about standing on the shoulders of giants like John Muir for a positive synopsis of our past environmental heroes.

Anyone interested in seeing some great stories with some great news for humanity, look no further than Energy Entrepreneurs at Global Post. This fascinating 25 part series has upliftment aplenty for those of us looking for positive environmental news. Follow 25 entrepreneurs across the globe working to create a greener economy.

These are people with vision and drive working on their dream of a sustainable future. Overlook the fact that Shell Oil paid for the advertising, someone has to and with their oil money we have been able to make something truly unique and inspiring.

Too Many Of Us

2010-10-17T10:40:00.001-07:00

Gliese 581c, By Graphic Artist John Kaufman

There is simply too many of us. Looking around the world, traveling as I do for my job, its obvious that there are simply too many humans. We are eating ourselves out of house and home. Tiara Walters, a South African journalist working for the Sunday Times here in Johannesburg wrote in her column today that "human demand on the biosphere more than doubled between 1961 and 2007, but the global population is only projected to stabilize at 9.22 Billion people in 2075".

Already, according to Lester Brown and other thinkers, we have passed the Earth's renewable carrying capacity and are living on ancient water deposits and borrowed time.

That we are running out of food, fuel and everything needed to make people happy and healthy members of society may not be apparent to people in developed nations. They have the financial resources to stand closer to the front of the growing queue. But in Developing countries such as Mozambique or Bangladesh the people are much further behind, lacking the cash resources to afford the rising costs that are becoming a measure of food scarcity. Bread riots last month in Mozambique are a perfect example of how even a modest cost rise can lead to civil unrest when people are living hand to mouth.

What is about humanity that we think that the right to reproduce is inalienable and permanent? This is clearly at odds with the carrying capacity of this particular piece of farmland that we call the Earth. So I have been thinking up solutions, some off the cuff and some simply impossible, but the status quo must change, of that there is no question. Population pressure will push out all of our wilderness into city parks and the margins of maize fields, with a massive extinction and an even higher risk of the sensitive food distribution system collapsing. (Systems become more susceptible to catastrophic failure the more highly organized they become, according to the law of entropy).

This is scary stuff. Not many voters, writers or thinkers are seriously even considering espousing many of these ideas, since they inevitably smack of the "one child" Chinese policy, with all its ghastly implications like infanticide. I have left out the more nightmarish "final solution" type ideas and focused on what may be the most equitable and random way of doing away with our excess folks.

1) Create a breeding ticket lottery. A yearly lottery is held that prospective people can enter and receive a breeding ticket, completely randomly.
Hitch:
This idea can only work in highly organized societies, the kind of societies where a rising birth rate is not a problem today, replete with good medical care and a draconian civil police force with informers and the idea of neighbors ratting out neighbors about that secret child in the basement.

2) Cyanide capsules on a rolling system that slightly increases the death rate in an equitable fashion.
Hitch:
This needs a less organized society and is a much more democratic process since everyone would be required to participate. However, the idea of popping a pill once a year in the chance that you will be that unlucky one in fifty that kicks it would probably turn off voters.

3) Focus the capital of the world in the pockets of a few countries that are insulated, with enough food to get them through bar environmental catastrophe, and let rest of the world's uneducated and poor people starve slowly to death.
Hitch:
The moral implications of this are perhaps the most ghastly, rivaled only by Hitler
-no wait, even he killed most people quickly.

With the discovery of Gliese 581c only twenty light years away, there could be a chance we could get off of this planet and take over another. Obviously twenty light years is still far away, too far even, but the implications of this discovery go beyond this odd little world that has all the goldilocks qualities we have been looking for. The reason we found it is because it is so close to its dim, cold star. But since there is a planet that could be habitable in such an unlikely planetary system, most astronomers feel that planets could be as common as pickled cabbage at a Korean wedding. Meaning that aside from euthanasia, breeding tickets and certain death for the poor, there may be a close-by neighbor we could invade and occupy in our time-honored human tradition.

All levity aside, what do we do? Its a conundrum, it is serious, it is the worst kind of political hot potato, and its only going to get worse. So rather than point fingers at people who may have taken the go forth and multiply idea a bit far, we should all be thinking about what we can do to sort it out, or nature will do it for us.

An Energy Revolution: Micro-Hydro Power

2010-10-11T00:01:00.000-07:00

Watch The Video:

Pat Downey lives in the tiny little town of Hofmeyer, South Africa. This little town on the edge of the great Karoo Desert seems like an unlikely place for one of Africa's most innovative water engineers to live. There is a small general store, a gas station where you have to wake up the attendant, and surprisingly, a lot of rushing water in the Fish River, used to irrigate the dry farmland scattered around the desert hills.

Downey is a gentle, unassuming man, with the language of an inventor and a slightly stooped gate. Since the 1970s he has been pioneering technology that generates electrical power from small water-driven turbines. These turbines do not need a dam to build up water pressure, but rather they divert a small part of a river and harvest electricity from the kinetic energy generated by a small drop in height.

Water is a storehouse of kinetic energy. The hydrological cycle that lifts water out of the oceans and off the land through evaporation is run on solar energy. The sun heats the water and the air, evaporation occurs and the kinetic energy from this process is stored in the water. Then the water, full of energy, falls on distant mountains high up, and runs down rivers to the sea, all the while giving up that energy as splashing waterfalls and crashing rapids. Every gorgeous waterfall is a massive release of stored kinetic energy.

For a large-scale hydro-electric dam, those gorgeous waterfalls are flooded by a big lake, the stored water is backed up into a stunning gorge that will forever be lost to admiring eyes. Not so with micro-hydro systems like the ones Downey makes.

These smalls systems divert a small amount of water around the waterfall. Generally less than 1% of the total flow. The water falls through a pipe, spins a small turbine, and is dropped into the little pool at the base of the waterfall. For an average sized river like the Fish, a little fifteen foot (4m) drop can generate enough electrical power for fifty low-cost houses.

Small hydro systems like this can survive floods, they have a very small impact on the environment, they never silt up, and they can operate for as long as they are maintained, unlike massive dams which fill up with sediment and become useless over the years.

So why are they not more widespread?
Electricity in South Africa has been kept at an artificially low price for decades. The country sought to spur investment and growth with electricity subsidies to farmers and towns. Downey tried to sell these systems, but their initial cost was just too high. That has changed now. The national electrical grid has had to become profitable, and to do that they have had to raise prices by a whopping 140% in the last three years.

Correspondingly the demand for his systems has gone through the roof. At today's prices, the systems pay for themselves in three to four years. Today he cannot keep up with all the orders, "the emails just come flooding in, we can't keep up!" He explains in his wavering excited voice.

For a man who struggled and worked for years in obscurity, waiting for just this moment, he is clearly enjoying every moment of it.

Accessorizing Sustainability- An Economic Model for Forest Conservation

2010-09-30T03:33:00.000-07:00

Cutting raw Palpretto logs from a sustainably managed forest. Every tiny piece of these logs will be used for something.

Small offcuts after the logs have been processed.

Turning the offcuts into small cosmetic jars

American model and activist Summer Rayn Oaks showing off the finished jars filled with sustainably harvested forest oils for skin care, made by subsidiary Bom Oils of Mozambique.

I have just returned from another trip to Mezimbite Forest Center, a project run by Ashoka Fellow Allan Schwarz. Schwarz has been pioneering projects around the city of Beira, Mozambique from his small replanted forest grove. The area has been hard hit by deforestation for the energy trade. Most of it has fallen for charcoal, to power the stoves of the rapidly growing urban population. This area is not unique. Throughout Africa, as I have mentioned in previous posts, there is a massive problem with deforestation.

Cosmetic jars for the Bom products, like lip balm, all made from wood offcuts from forests that are managed sustainably.

Charcoal is the main form of energy for most rural and urban households, and this has driven the continuing destruction of the forests. As the forests "run away" the cost of getting the charcoal into the cities rises, and the cost of charcoal goes up, making it more lucrative to cut the trees. It is an energy cycle that is completely un-sustainable, since virtually no one is replanting the forests. No one except for a few individuals like Schwarz.

He runs the biggest network of nurseries in the region which have been used to replant forests under his care. He pays for this by carefully removing certain trees from these well-managed forests and employing former charcoal cutters to be trained as skilled wood turners. Communities then see a greater value in their forests than making charcoal and have managed to keep some of them standing.

Tables for the European Market

One aspect of Schwarz's operation is value adding along the supply chain. Instead of selling this sustainable wood harvest at a premium, he has a working mill that employs between forty and a hundred people at any one time.

Every tiny little scrap of wood is used for something, from crochet needles for the eastern market, make-up compacts for American women, to bangles and jewelry for the French. A tree that falls for charcoal will end up being valued at roughly $1.50 for the end product of charcoal, and only 25 US cents for the cutters. With Schwarz's model however, a single tree may net thousands or even tens of thousands of dollars, with that money equitably distributed to communities, workers and crafts-people. A craftsman at his facility earns about 250$ a month, more than twenty-times the average income in Mozambique.

Knitting needles made from wood offcuts at the Mezimbite Forest Center

Value adding at a local level is driving projects like this around the world. Schwarz believes that only by including local communities in this value chain can he create awareness that forests are more economically productive as a healthy system than as charcoal. Communities are the only guardians of their forest resources, but they must benefit directly, and in Mezimbite they are included as an important part of an economic system that puts special products in the hands of environmentally aware consumers.

Far from being clunky symbols of green, the art he and his team creates is sleek, gorgeous and just happens to make the world a better place. Go to his website, or the AD Schwarz design site and explore some his designs. This award winning designer, architect and forester has created a model of sustainable design that symbolises the finest of African conservation and craftsmanship.

Homegrown Wind Power For Africa

2010-09-13T05:11:00.000-07:00

What is an appropriate technology transfer from the western world for African villages? The answer, as Bob Dylan suggests, is blowing in the wind, at least on the Mozambiquan coastline. Jason Morenikeji explains in this short film.

These are big ideas, and they deserve a good hearing. The film I created is short but there is scope here for a much larger conversation (and a longer film- anyone interested to help?) about cross-platform sharing and sustainable power solutions that are not only in the bush but atop our apartments, houses, and even cars.

Jason, who is here in Johannesburg for an investors conference, suggests that power solutions, offered by companies like his, should be comprehensive and utilizing all available forms of generation. No wind? Use your solar panels. Stormy day? use the wind. As a back up for important medical equipment or in case of an emergency, have a basic diesel generator that can be turned on. In some sites, near hills or mountains, it is possible to put a small hydroelectric generator in as well.

These are not pie-in the sky technologies. As Jason shows us in the video these things are being crafted using local resources and skills even in the most back-water places of the world. A local pilot project using a hybrid system of wind and solar can pay back the cost of the system in saved diesel fuel in eighteen short months. Far from being over-priced or too complicated to maintain, these are the systems of the future, investors take note.

Creating A Sustainable Energy Future For Africa

2010-09-09T01:40:00.000-07:00

Today in Africa there are many people working to make a difference and create a future for the continent that is based on sustainable energy and resource conservation. These dedicated individuals are battling against artificially low energy costs, red tape, and the continuing degradation of lands and resources. Many times their battles are private, and their successes unknown and uncelebrated by any but a small group directly surrounding the projects. But these small kernels of hope have within them a profound ability to affect change in a positive way in Africa and the rest of the world.

Energy in Africa is derived from burning trees, a whopping 91% of the continent gets it's energy in this way. Deforestation is rife, with some countries losing 5 to 7 percent of their trees every year, and its getting worse. This is a loss to everyone on planet Earth, since our oxygen and carbon dioxide know no borders. When forests are destroyed, so are all the animals and rainfall systems that depend on them. In African's search for energy to cook their meals the destruction of her environment is sown. When the trees are gone, rainfall drops, crops whither and die, and more pressure is put on the few intact ecosystems and forests. Any project that seeks to address this spiraling devastation is worth investigating and sharing. Some stand out as examples of "best practice", and I am following these projects and the people behind them in order to share what makes them so successful.

In Johannesburg, the South African company Sunfire Solutions has developed a solar plan: to get out into Africa and distribute solar cookers. If you think these machines are too clumsy, too difficult to use, or hard to set up and maintain, wake up to Africa's energy future and watch this short movie.

These stoves do have problems, the most pressing is their cost. To address this issue, Sunfire Solutions has developed a business model that utilizes private donations, non-governmental organization's (NGO) funding, carbon trading and Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR) programs. Each stove can directly stop eleven tons of CO2 going into the air each year, as well as remove more CO2 from the air by preventing the destruction of Africa's woodlands.

Another problem is their distribution. Crosby Menzies, the Director of Sunfire Solutions is putting together a team to take their solar cookers on the road, traveling from South Africa, to Mozambique then on to Zimbabwe and maybe Malawi. Already they have been distributing their cookers in the Luangwa Valley in Zambia, and have had a great response. A video piece by Tina Stollard is up on their Youtube channel. Along the way they will stop at small and large communities, showing how to use the stoves and distributing as many as they can. They also hope to make contact with NGOs and small businesses in the areas they visit, leaving behind a distribution system that works for the long term.

As a small part of the change that is happening in Africa, Menzies is passionate about what they are doing. He has wagered his own financial future on the success of solar cookers in Africa, and believes that the change he is helping to bring about is vital to the future of the continent.

Traveling around Africa for the last three months working on a Multimedia series with Global Post called Energy Entrepreneurs has opened my eyes to the incredible potential and possibilities that exist here for people with drive, vision and hope. They should be an example to all of us to be the change we most want to see in the world.

The Wild Wet Wilderness of Mozambique

2010-08-24T05:01:00.000-07:00

Snorkeling through the coral reefs of the Quirimbas Archipeligo

I have been spending the last three weeks in the far northeast of Mozambique. This is the Cabo del Gado province, and it is here that some of the last remaing wilderness areas in Africa can be found. Pemba is the capital city, and at the moment it is best known for its pristine white beaches, the new Quirimbas National Park with dozens of coral islands boasting an amazming varirty of wildlife. Dugangs or Sea Cows, much like the Manitee, live in inland mangrove swamps and bays, ducking among the brachiated coral. Humpback whales come here at this time of the year to breed, and from the top of the lighthouse on nearby Goa Island I watched a pod breaching high into the sky and cavorting in the waves. But there is a dark cloud on this clear blue horizon, more than one.

Here there has just been an announcement by US oil company Anadarko of a discovery of oil and natural gas offshore. Already the Texas swagger can be seen at local resteraunts along with trucks full of military guards driving through the old portuguese town with oil workers under armed guard, ostensibly to deter piracy and kidnapping - two problems which have never been a real problem in sleepy Pemba before. The dark shadow of the BP oil spill has not even entered the debate of whether drilling for oil in this island paradise is a good thing or not. It seems to be a foregone conclusion that it will happen, and the lack of debate about it makes it even more worrying, since the size of the oil deposites may be huge and a cash boon for one of the ten least developed countries in the world. But there is little evidence to suggest that oil money would ever reach the population. Other African countries like Angola and Nigeria that rake in trillions of dollars remain some of the most desperate places to live in the world.

But inland there is also a problem. The new Quirimbas National Park and Niassa Game Reserve are being shot out by poachers. There seems to be collusion or at least aquiescence by the local authorities, who have done less than nothing to stem the flow of illegal elephant ivory from these shores. North of Pemba elephants used to surf in the azure waters, but they have not been seen for four years. Reliable reports suggest that poachers have adopted a more deadly approach to their trade: using rat poison on the beasts' watering holes. A crate of ivory from here that reached Singapore seems to support this idea. Tiny tusks the size of a man's finger were found, suggesting they even hacked them from the very young animals.

Private lodge owners are banding together to fight the poachers with little official support. They have about twenty five private guards and a helicopter, but this is far from adequate, and they are urgently appealing for greater support from the Mozambiquan government and the internationalcommunity. At least two hundred rangers are needed to make any impact on this lethal trade, where every day the pochers are emboldened and the numbers of elephants diminish. Links between the poachers, local businesses, arms smugglers and drug dealers are discussed at length around lodges and bars.

Trees are being felled all over the region. For twelve kilomteres oustide of Pemba there are just wood mills, sawing up the downed hardwood trees and exporting them to the far east, mostly to China. Export permits are a joke and can be bought from corrupt officials. Much of the expensive mahogany wood is already gone, but much also remains that could still be saved. This blog has touched many times on African deforestion issues, but here there is still a chance to stop the majority of the wood loss and choose a different path than the rest of the continent.

Pemba is one of the last frontier towns in southern Africa. Until recently it was isolated -a forgotten town at the dead end of thousand mile road, with no link to nearby Tanzania. But this has changed. In May 2010, a new bridge over the Rovuma River linked the two countries for the first time ever, and trade goods, cars, tourists and local people are flowing back and forth. Development is happening, and it will be up to the people of Cabo Del Gado Province to decide what the future of this incredible wilderness will look like.

Good News

2010-07-28T01:31:00.000-07:00

After a busy trip to Durban, on South Africa's Indian Ocean shore last week, I am taking stock of some of the news in the world. The story I was pursuing is about alternative energy, for a Global Post series called Energy Entrepreneurs.

It's a fascinating world-wide look at incredible possibilities for the future of energy production that any consumer or energy producer would do well to read. Utilizing Global Post's unrivaled group of videographers, the news site has profiled solar energy projects in Guatemala, household geothermal systems in Palenstine, and many other surprising projects that create a sense of how humanity will power itself in the post-oil period. Coming at a time of deep disillusionment with oil in the wake of the Deepwater Horizon spill in the Gulf of Mexico, these are profiles we should all be inspired by.

Pollution Oversight:
The New York Times reports that the Environmental Protection Agency in the US is investigating chemical fracturing's impact on ground water quality throughout the country. In Colorado, beautiful valleys like the Grand have been besmirched with thousands of gas wells, and one of the country's most important waterways, the Colorado River has had millions of tons of waste water from this process dumped into it. Hard questions have not been answered by gas companies like Haliburton and others about the ingredients in their hydraulic fracturing solutions, and from this perspective of a Colorado native, this is clearly unacceptable. Unlikely coalitions between environmentalists and farmers are driving a rethink on the wholesale drilling on our private and public lands, and the federal government should take heed. Anything that gets former adversaries like farmers and environmentalists into bed together should worry gas drilling companies that have again and again chosen profit and secrecy over disclosure and open discussion. Under the Bush administration these companies had free reign, but it seems those days may over. Groundwater belongs to everyone, and if these companies have endangered our future heath and that of our children, no amount of domestic gas production will make up for that.

Options
The Chevy Volt and the Nissan Leaf both go on sale this year. Almost the first fully electric cars that are available to all Americans, they represent the future of motoring throughout the world and the end of the cosy relationship between oil companies and automakers. They also represent a sea-change in attitude that will drive innovation and creation of new options that will move the United States towards greater reliance on all sorts of different types of energy. The cars are the rallying cry of the legions who have been held prisoner by oil. The Volt cares not if it is charged from a solar array, a nuclear power station, or methane power generation from rubbish.

This brings me back to my trip to Durban. This coastal city is a world leader in landfill waste. They create specially designed landfills that take advantage of the fact that landfills generate thousands of tons of the global warming gas Methane. Methane is 21 times more powerful a greenhouse gas as Carbon Dioxide. Every landfill in the world produces methane as a by-product of the breakdown of waste. In Durban they collect this waste gas, pipe it into massive engines and generate enough power to run more than five thousand city homes. In a city of millions, this is a pittance, but the technology is cheap enough to implement anywhere and by preventing noxious gases from escaping, and using them to supplant the dirty coal power that South Africa relies upon, the project is highly successful and self-supporting. In their final coup, Durban turns the old landfills into indigenous gardens and parks that beautify this hilly city by the sea.

African Odyssee- The Pans of Botswana

2010-07-12T05:00:00.001-07:00

Mystical Khubu Island. The former king used to sit at the top of this granite spire, looking out over the Makgadikgadi Pans.

The Makgadikgadi Pans

View of Khubu Island

It may come as some surprise, but the winter in the desert wastes of Botswana is not a hot time. Dry, yes, barren, certainly, but not hot. Last night it was freezing cold on the Makgadikgadi pans, and the chilly wind tore through my glacier jacket as if it had come off the highlands of Greenland. We camped on the edge of the Pan, the Hog (My Toyota Truck) parked on the former grassy banks of this inland sea so that we could roll it down onto the flat salt plain in the morning to start it.

These and the Nxai Pans used to be an inland lake a hundred feet deep, but climate change and tectonic plate movement drained the pans thousands of years ago. Now they are a vast inland sea of salt and odd prickly grasses, that is about as empty as places can ever be, except where water still gathers. Water attracts animals of all types, and at night the sounds of lilting jackals mix with lion grunts, hyeana laughter and all sorts of screams and chortles, carrying across the pans for miles.

The Photojournalist in the Pans

Driving is treacherous and not recommended except on marked tracks. Without rain parts of the pans carry the prints of cars for decades after they zoomed past. The salt hides a primordial ooze beneath it's crust that can be deep enough in places to swallow a truck whole.

Climate change is writ large here, and although this particular type of climate change is from our far distant past and not linked to human causes, it is a dry and withering example of what parts of our planet could look like when our climate changes. Trees are only found on the former banks of the lake, undulating in the distance and levitating off the ground with the mirage as the cool still air of the day mixes with the hot reflected sunlight.

People lived here, and still do. Outside of the protected areas of the pans, which is most places, there are cattle and sheep farms, and more and more trees are going the way of the ax. Botswana is richer than most countries in Africa, and its obvious that barbed wire has become very useful to the people here. Nevertheless its possible to blast out on a track into the these vast wastes and get as lost as your are willing to be. Lost is realtive term here, where tracks lead kind of everywhere, and a simple compass is enough to make sure that you head in the right direction.

The last night in the pans we visited Khubu Island, a granite outcrop that has been home to Boababs, succulent trees, and groups of people throughout the pre-history of southern Africa. It has gained almost mythic proportations, with "have you been to Khubu Island?" the litmus test for a well travelled adventurer in Africa. It fell into a sorry and trashed state over the last decade, as uncontrolled tourism saw people dumping their rubbish here, but now it's possible for people to visit through the help of the local people, who benefit from travellers who stay at their modest and clean camp on the island, which depsite it's name is actually more of an isthmus out into the pans.

It is a fitting place to end our trip, sitting at the King's seat, high on a granite spire, watching the sun sink over the barren whiteness of the pans.

Clarity, self-awareness, personal growth, these are things many people seek when they travel, and in this place, surrounded by nothing, they all seem more attainable, -and the view is amazing.

Our last desert campsite in the Pans.

African Odyssee: Northern Botswana

2010-07-07T05:07:00.000-07:00

A shy elephnat passes our camp in the last light of day near the Okavango Delta, Botswana.

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The roads of northern Botswana can have a detrimental effect on your vehicle.

The Hog deep in the bush at Bone Camp (splintered femur mandatory).

Is is a landing strip? A road? Our mystery path traversing northern Botswana.

Livingston, Zambia, near Victoria Falls was, I believe, was the place I entered some of my journal. We have been traversing the areas that make up the KAZA International Peace Park. Our car battery died about three days ago, so we have been scouring the countryside we have been passing through for camps that allow us to give the hog a small push. It has made for slightly stressful but interesting times, and for about three days, we saw no one, not a 4x4, not a plane. No Cellphones, no internet. Nothing. I would love to give all the details of this place but I suggest to find a place that yourself, it makes it much more satisfying. We may have bent a few rules, and passed a few do not enter signs, but for sure I never saw them.

So now we are near Maun, in Botswana, and the Okavango Delta scatters light across the ceiling the of the airy Audi Camp bar, where I managed to pick up some Wi-Fi access. We have camped with crazy-looking and acting honey badgers (Badger Camp) lions sounding off in the distance while we cook dinner, (Lion Camp), and once got tenderly passed by a considerate elephant, who left his dropping, but no other sound as he passed in the night.

Moremi National Park and the Okavango Delta is flooded, delightfully so, and outside its border we watched shy creatures sip water at forest water holes. The animals are all scattered crazily in the distant areas of the delta by the biggest floods in fifty years. The delta is swollen, ripe with rain and from dozens of miles it's scent wafts upon the desert winds.

I will put together a small section of my journal when we get back to Johannesburg in the next week. Today we are leaving our wired comfortable pit-stop and heading into the pans of the Makadikadi. It will be wet. How wet and how far we can drive will mostly depend on nerve and the state of the flood, because when the Okavango is wet like this, it spills over into the pans, and turns them into a tropical paradise of long flat lakes filled with zebras and flamingos, but treacherous to 4x4 vehicle travel.

Into the KAZA: Victoria Falls

2010-07-02T03:50:00.000-07:00

Victoria Falls By moonlight. A time exposure of about 20 seconds at F8

Today we are off to Kasane from Livingstone, Zambia. It has been great to see the falls again and enjoy the nature. This morning Sebastian, my travel partner in crime, woke me up while watching elephants cross the Maramba River in front of our campsite. Nice to hear their tais flicking and the sounds of their passage so close through the bush.

There is a decrepit old ferry crossing the lower Chobe River where Zimbabwe, Namibia, Botswana and Zambia all meet. This is really the heart of the KAZA park, and there has been talk of a bridge here for years, but for now, the old ferry will do us nicely. In the chaos we hope to slip through with one of the trucks and end up tonight in Kasane, a Botswanan town right in the middle of a wilderness area, where elepahnts sometimes roam past the local Shopright supermarket.

The Hog continues to run well, but the roughest most hardcore driving is still to come, so its off to the bush!

African Odyssee: The KAZA Park

2010-07-01T08:54:00.000-07:00

Jeffrey Barbee
Livingston Zambia

In 1858, as artist Thomas Baines and the rest of Livingston's Expedition approached the roar of Victoria Falls through dense vegetation they could hardly have imagined that they were about to discover one of the seven natural wonders of the world. As he sat down with his paints to sketch the falls, Baines could not have known that these images would launch a worldwide plan of conservation making Victoria Falls the centerpiece of the world's biggest wildlife park. The Kavango-Zambezi Transfrontier Conservation Area, Shortened to KAZA, is the most ambitious conservation plan of it's kind ever attempted.

On the 18th of June, 2010, the German government allotted twenty million Euros to the Peace Parks Foundation to support KAZA, the latest in a series of g payments that are slowly helping to establish the biggest conservation area in the world. The area embraces the countries of Angola, Botswana, Namibia, Zambia and Zimbabwe, making up 29 million hectares, roughly the size of Italy. More than thirty national parks and conservation areas already exist within the boundaries of KAZA, and the project is bridging the gaps in the protected areas and creating jobs, employment and more opportunity to the local communities.

Some of the popular places the park covers are Victoria Falls, Hwange National Park in Zimbabwe, The Okavango Delta, and the Chobe River system. But less known, and less explored are the Eastern Parks of Angola, closed to travelers for thirty years by conflict and land-mines. The mines are being taken out, and the Angolan authorities say that as the mines are removed, the elephants are quickly taking back areas of bush where they were never found before.

Elephant Lands
And this is elephant territory. Actual numbers are hard to pin down, but it is estimated that the area holds as much as a third of Africa's remaining elephant populations. Chobe National Park is expected to be one of the "seed" parks for the area. It is well managed, with good buffer zones that allow the free movement of animals in and out of the park. And authorities is Botswana acknowledge that the sooner they get some of their elephants out of the park, the better. Chobe has been terraformed by the beasts. Former woodland is now grassland, the trees have been eaten, but other habitat has also been created that harbors other animals that prefer grass rather than trees. Nevertheless the park is without a doubt beyond it's elephant capacity, and as more safe areas around it are established, as it becomes part of the greater KAZA Park, elephants are moving into these new areas.

Politics
Although KAZA was one of the first Transfronteir Parks ever imaged, it has been one of the longest in the making. Not until Angola's Bush war ended eight years ago was it possible for the country to even discuss the possibility of inclusion in the park. Zimbabwe's shaky political situation also prevented the process from moving forward, and historical antagonism between Namibia and Botswana has not helped. However, the park seems to be bringing the countries closer together and now there is real movement forward, with the money from the Germans showing how much the international community believes in the project.

As this massive park moves from conception into implementation, communities will be incorporated into the park. It is from these communities that workers, guides, scouts and mechanics will be hired, providing people with an alternative to subsistence agriculture. Vivian Nchope lives outside of Livingston, and he has worked for local hotels as a tree planter. He makes wood crafts in his spare time to sell to tourists who come to see Victoria Falls. "This park is so important to us, we need to benefit from our wildlife, and stop cutting down so many trees for firewood, if you ask me, making a park like this will be great for the area, and maybe it will bring more tourists."

African Odyssee: Zomba Plateau Malawi

2010-06-26T06:22:00.000-07:00

The first stop on our trip is Zomba Plateau. The Hogs is running well so far (only a few hours out of Blantyre) and the views from the mountain are nothing short of astounding. Today we drive to Zambia, but this special place where I spent a few Christmas Holidays with my family when I was younger and we lived in Malawi requires mentioning. It is places like Zomba where a new environmental ethos is evolving in Africa, as governments realise that forest cover is vital to retaining scarce water resources.

An indigenous tree stands at sunset on the top of Zomba Plateau, the whole mountain used to be covered in forests, but now only about 8% is left.

The view from Zomba Plateau over the southern Rift, towards gleaming Lake Chilwa and the Mulanje Massif in background under moonlight.

My travelling companion, raconteur, and environmentalist Pierre Pretorius putting out a running grass fire on Zomba Plateau. The fires ravaged the newly planted forests in the dry season, preventing new growth and hampering attempts at regeneration.

In 1958, Emperor Haile Selasie visited Malawi and stood on the top of Zomba Plateau and clearly stated the importance of forests.

"When our forests are properly conserved, they protect the fertile soil of the nation from erosion, they render the landscape green and beautiful. But when forests are neglected and gradually destroyed, the wealth of our land is progressively reduced and the country slowly becomes bare and barren"

Fires sweep the former forest lands of Zomba

What is at stake? The woodland of Zomba Plateau.

Despite this, much of Africa has become barren and bare. On Zomba Plateau itself, the forest was chopped down, and this massif, rising more than six thousand feet from the base of the southern Rift valley was ravaged by erosion and then replanted with foreign pine and other alien vegatation. Today the Malawian forestry department is busy removing the pine, and hoping that they can restore some of the indigenous forests that have been lost, securing the abundant rainfall so that the rivers once again run clean, and the waters flow all year around. The following images clearly show some of the original forest that is still left, and running grass fires that are inhibiting the restoration project.

An African Environmental Journey

2010-06-21T23:56:00.001-07:00

Lake Malawi and the mighty Shire River are under threat from deforestion. This image is taken from Khandi beach

This is the first post of an African Odyssey. I am in Malawi, getting ready to drive through Zambia, Botswana, maybe Namibia and on to South Africa. My big diesel truck,called the Hog, a Toyota Landcruiser, will be our vehicle for the journey. It is well tuned, but will still be pumping out noxious greenhouse gases like CO2 and CO, but sadly without an electric 4x4 vehicle, it is our best way to get around in the remote areas of southern Africa. When a plug-in electric 4x4 that can travel at least 200 Miles is available, I will be getting one. Until then, I will rely on the Hog.

Along the way we will be meeting up with people who are making a difference in their communities and countries by starting to reverse some of the massive deforestation that is happening here. We will try to make up for all those noxious Hog exhaust fumes by planting some trees that will grow large and strong for many years to come.

Right now I am in Blantyre, Malawi. Outside it is wet and cold and rainy, with some patches of scattered sunlight just starting to break through. Blantyre sits nestled between a group of granite mountains. Until twenty years ago, these mountains were home to huge forests that supplied water to Malawi's biggest city all year. Streams, covered with cycads and fern-shaded mosses cascaded all around the town. Deep in the forests leopards and hyaena hunted for their food among the populations of small forest deer and warthogs. The forests are almost gone now, felled for a burgeoning population and humanity's insatiable desire for food and energy. They have not been replanted, and now most of the peaks are laid bare, covered with withered grass and mud and ringed by squalid wet townships and shacks that are prone to being flooded out by rains that are not retained by the roots of the old forest giants.

But there are possibilities here, chances at an alternative future. Plans are afoot to replant many of the peaks and hills with much of the natural forest they have lost. Rafiq Hajat, the executive director of the Blantyre-based Institute for Policy Interaction, is putting to gether a plan that links government, civil society, AIDS assistance groups, international Non-Government Orgiansations (NGOs) and the people of Malawi to start a reforestion campaign using indigenous trees.

As we sat on the airplane together on my way back to Malawi, he outlined a clear plan that seens local people creating rare tree-oil businesses from the newly planted forests, and in turn, benefitting from the increased rainfall and slope stabilisation systems that the trees will bring. Their crop yields will increase, their income from the oil will provide an entry into Malawi's cash economy, and the renewed access to fresh water will increase the health of the population.

Through this convergence of goals and needs among the many stakeholders, it is possible to rebuild and regenerate at least some of the forests Malawi has lost. Hajat and donor contries (Malawi gets 38% of its annual budget from the international community) see tree planting as an investment in the future of Malawi. Malawi gets most of it's power from hydroelectric dams on the Shire River. These dams are badly affected by deforestion as the silt and old forest materials from deforested hillsides are washed into the Shire and gum-up the turbines. The country experiences electrical blackouts daily, and are a major drain on it's development and a hindrance to economic activity and investment.

Malawi is a Microcosm of the rest of the world and it's large population and small land area means everything that is happening to the trees and forests around the world are happening here more quickly, severely and with disatrous consequences. It is ironic that countries like Canada and the United States, which are currently in the process of cutting down their own old-growth forests, have been so active in trying to get Malawians to replant theirs.

More updates from the road will be forthcoming.

Dear Dad, A reply to my Father

2010-06-10T09:41:00.000-07:00

The "slimes" Dam at the Cullinan Diamond Mine, outside of Johannesburg, South Africa. Could cleaning up sites like this demonstrate an "enlightened" and mentally evolved human race?

Hi Dad,

Thanks for your very thoughtful letter, I have to say I think you may have hit the nail on the head, but also there is always an undercurrent of social change that indirectly drives our scientific and material gain. The psycho-social development as us as a people seems to have lagged behind the "material" developments of our societies, yes. Though I think if we look into the history of the human thought and social change, we do see a parallel evolution of human thought that had driven, reflected, and been an intergral part of the material developments. I am thinking of those suffragettes, including the Mayor of New York's wife at the time, ready to stand and fight for their real role in society, and be judged upon that. I think of the social networks of people who quietly got on with a diversified life within the confines of Victorian England (think Sir Richard Francis Burton) or others like Galileo during the Inquisition.

So much of that evolutionary thinking, the development of a higher understanding and a high ability to understand and even empathize, I feel is tied to a more "enlightened" approach to human interactions. It is difficult to put into words, but the gist of what I am thinking is that our development as a species on the psycho-social front is inextricably bound to our human progress, and although it looks like the one lags far behind the other, it is only through discourse like this, and many other "high-level" empathetic interactions that we can raise the bar on it.

Here in South Africa, we often see the back and forth interplay of more animalistic notions like greed to the real "evolved" emotions of empathy, kindness and selfless giving. It is one of the defining charachteristics in this society where people are essentially ungoverned and un-policed. Everyone must look out for each other, and on any given day its possible to see the most babaric acts of horriblness, juxatposed next the most heart-breakingly giving acts of kindness. If there is anywhere that more tellingly illustrates the "war" between hatred and empathy, between evolved emotions and simple stupidity, and between the chance to add something positive to our social world instead of tearing it down, it is here.

Mix into that the natural human ability to judge upon looks, upon black and white, upon education versus ignorance, and all the potential trouble-making stew of personal grievances, past injustice and papered-over fissures, South Africa is one of the frontline states in the war for the future spirit of humanity.

I feel strongly that environmental stewardship, essentially good house-keeping, sits squarely in the "enlightened" camp. This is because only when we feel like we all have a collective future, that we are all responsible for the effects we have on our material and spiritual worlds, can we make the hard decisions that will take care of our children and our future selves. Saving money, planning to make our planet better and healthier, making informed choices about our bodies, our communties and how we want them to look, these are all part of the process of "enlightenment" that brought us electricity, social equality, and the end of slavery. They are a process that must continue. We must love our future selves, and that is sometimes a very hard thing to do, but we all got here by doing just that, to a greater or a lesser degree, and it's our collective responsibility to continue that process.

Love
Jeff

An Evolution In Psycho-Social Growth? A Letter From My Father

2010-06-06T05:24:00.000-07:00

Australopithecus Sediba, this recent hominid discovery in South Africa has the world's scientists excited. But, asks my father, has our emotional evolution kept apace with our physical evolution?

For my regular readers, I extend an apology for missing out on the last month. I have been very busy with World Cup of Soccer work, renovations, paperwork and all the daily-life stuff that becomes such a time suck. Fortunately my time is my own again.

This last week I have been talking a lot with my father, John W. Barbee, a giant (literally and figuratively) of the sustainable development movement around the world. He has worked tirelessly in Tadjikistan, Iraq, Afghanistan, Malawi and many other places assisting local people to lift themselves out of desperate situations. His take is one of vast experience and empathy with the people he works with. He is my real-life hero and a man of action.

Letter from My Father,
Glenwood Springs, Colorado
(edited)
June 2, 2010

Dear Jeff

Right now (beginning the second decade of the 21st centruy) we are in the midst of an evolutionary revolution, being clobbered with disasters (nearly all man-made, or man-induced) and opportunities. And the magnitude of the latter seems definitely related to the magnitude and frequency of the former.

Many of the issues relating to our ability to respond to the opportunities is that for the last 10 years or more we have been using "the hammer" in response to problems, and this has led us to preceive the shape of the nail in every problem.

We seem, at the same time, to be gaining knowledge of our development as a species AND lacking understanding and insight of what that means, as well as its usefulness in informing our adaptation. What a paradox.

I got ahold of a fairly new book that is good food for thought....and adaptive action. "The Nature of Technology." It's written by a guy with a "understanding complex systems" perspective. He describes the process and progress of "technologies" and the interaction & complementarity of science & technology. What captured my thinking most from this book is that the "human systems" of thought, activity and their psycho-social effects seem to be the most elusive in developing and replicating adaptive & effective technology and science.

I believe the answer is that we still have not acquired the insight of ourselves as a species integrated into our global existence. We have achieved incredible development in technologies & science of electronics, micro & macro aspects of physics & chemistry, bio/genetics, etc. but only a little of the technology and science of psycho-=social development, even though much of the necessary ingredients are available. The result is that we confuse "approach" with "solution" and disregard process by over-focusing on short-term product.

The "building blocks" are there, but we have neither recognized them as such, acknowleged their essential nature in the psycho-social & civil society nor recognized them as technology/science (and therefore integrated with all the others).

Just as gravity (and its lack) are forces fundamental to the universe and our existence, so is trust (and its lack) a necessary and very basic feature to us and our existence in the universe. And trust is based on our ability to understand, communicate and engage amoung ourselves & other life forms and the universe at large. Building this -- a "civil" society of our species and those that have evolved with us -- within the universe is the primary imperative of the 21st century, and for our success as a species.

Love,
Dad

Make A Difference

2010-05-03T00:05:00.000-07:00

Departing Johannesburg, The Adventure Diaries.

Many people are talking these days about how to make a difference. The problems of Climate Change, poverty, AIDS, deforestation and the wanton destruction of our earth seem insurmountable. How can one person make a difference?

Making a difference is easy. Often it's as simple as just deciding you want to, and then showing up. Those two actions somehow make it possible for all sorts of things to happen. Within the world of journalism at least half the stories I work on are impossible to plan very well. Most of the time I just arrive at the place, and maybe have one or two contacts, and suddenly the whole story opens up in front of me, as if it "expected" me be there. This is so common in journalism that there is even an unwritten rule called the 80% law: 80% of the story is just showing up, being there, and trying to grasp the situation. The other 20% is putting it together so that it makes sense, and then delivering it on time.

Start by saying you want to. Then physically get involved in something. Show up to town meetings when they discuss things like recycling, land use, and any issue you feel strongly about (you will be amazed how few people actually come). Research facts and make it your hobby, your Sunday activity even, to find out all the sides of an issue. Figure out your home energy budget, and calculate your carbon footprint, then take steps to reduce it and and write a blog for your family and friends so they can benefit from your new knowledge. Everyone has a part to play in changing our society into a more healthy, happier, and less destructive system.

On Saturday four of my friends departed on their own voyage of action and discovery. They are driving small delivery bikes 3700 Kilometers up through Africa, from Johannesburg to Dar Es Salam. On the way they are meeting with orphans, planting trees, swimming with dolphins, and camping out underneath the wide open African sky. You can follow their adventures from their site: www.adventurediaries.co.za

They are office workers who have a dream, and they are following it. Along the way they will be posting photos, videos and stories of the people and places they visit and share with, so follow their trip and get inspired!

Everyone can make a huge difference and with the right attitude even have fun in the process. Just show up.

Earth Day

2010-04-22T00:06:00.000-07:00

Light-hearted but deadly serious about the need to preserve nature:
Werner Conradie from South Africa, Martin Hussein from Tanzania, Dr. Julian Bayliss from Wales, Dr. Bill Branch from Port Elizabeth South Africa (with the rubber band), Hassan Patel from Malawi, Colin Congdon from Tanzania, and Steve Collins from the African Butterfly Research Institute. They are deep in the forests of Mt Mabu, working to study and preserve this untouched paradise. They are some of my environmental heroes, and long may they and those like them struggle to help save our wild places.

Thank goodness for Google. Without the search engine as my start-up page, Earth Day may have indeed passed me by here on southern tip of Africa. That usually shouldn't matter, because to me, every day is Earth Day. But nevertheless, I am glad to be reminded, because its a great day to give thanks to all those folks who have really made a difference.

Sometimes it is hard working on the front lines of the battle for our trees, our air, and our planet's diversity to realize that we stand as conservationists on the shoulders of giants. So many battles are lost. So many fish are gone. So clear after I traveled up through the Atlantic three years ago on a sailing boat with two friends. Our seas are polluted, our beaches soiled, our migrating birds exist in piles of West African rubbish, our island biodiversity is wiped out. Now I work in forests, and they too are being hammered out of existence. A year ago I worked very hard for a few months trying to save a forest in Malawi. It's gone now too, like so much else. That particular loss rankles because it was so personal. It was the forest behind my spiritual home. If I can't save that, what can I save? But today is a day to sit back, and also see what we have accomplished.

It is important to remember that every single protected area that we have in the world today was a battle to save. Someone wanted to destroy it, so someone had to protect it, and some had to be protected by the president himself. When Teddy Roosevelt as president camped out high in the Sierra with the famous conservationist John Muir for a few nights with just the two of them alone camping under the stars, something changed. Their meeting spawned the first National Park in the whole world, and led to the great system of parks that exist in every country today. But it wasn't easy. Every park was a battle, and for the people who struggled to protect these last outposts of nature, it was often a losing battle. Even Muir failed to save his beloved Hetch-Hetchee valley, but he did save so much else.

I am reading John Muir's book Nature Writings, compiled by The Library of America. It is a timeless snapshot given to me by my father. Written in amazingly modern language and full of feeling and love of his subject, Muir communicates beautifully the answer to the question, why should we save it?

The issues he is discussing, on how growth should happen, whether forests and wild places are intrinsically valuable to our human spirit, the inner workings of the human mind's need to dominate and destroy in the name of growth -these are current issues relating directly to conservation today. It was his impassioned articles in the early 1900s that woke America up to the grand heritage of nature that she was losing in her dash for development. There have been so many like Muir who have dedicated their lives to helping change our behaviour towards our Earth, and it is because of them that we have anything left to save today.

So if, like me, you sometimes despair that all is already lost. That the only nature left in the future will be weeds and weedy species like cockroaches and crows, get a grip. So much has been acheived and there is of course so much more to do, but today there is finally a real groundswell of public interest from around the world. The days of the big oil companies and mining conglomerates deciding environmental policy in the White House are over. Today environmentalism is a unifying factor across the world, with broad based support from conservative Christians to long haired, tree-climbing activists. Our political leaders better take careful stock of that when facing issues like Global Climate Change and the advancement of renewable energy. The battle, in some ways has just really begun, for once the armies are more evenly matched, and despite right-wing howls to the contrary, being green is now not just good for the planet and your conscience, but vital to our national security.

Perspective is sometimes lost, especially for soldiers on the front lines of a battle. The best perspective I have gotten recently was another gift from my Dad, a series called The National Parks, America's Best Idea. Award winning film maker Ken Burns follows the battles around the creation of our National Parks system. It is jaw-droppingly beautiful, but the message is clear. We have this system because dedicated people fought for it, tooth and nail, and sometimes died for it. Each park is a monument to a local success, as is almost every park in the whole world. These protected lands, often saved in the face of overwhelming opposition, are symbols of what we can do when even a few dedicated individulas care. Make this DVD an Earth Day present to yourself and your family, and get inspired by the giants upon who's shoulders we stand.

Today, give thanks to these environmental pioneers and saviours, both past and present. Right now, there are people around the world, making a difference, fighting for every green tree, every coral reef, and their legions are growing. The best way to thank them is to get involved and become the change you want to see.

Lessons From A Volcano

2010-04-19T02:19:00.000-07:00

This incredible image, taken by photographer Ragnar th. Sigurdsson, shows some of the lightning storms within the eruption. Go to his website and see some of his other amazing images and read The New York Times interview with him from Iceland.

It is there on our TVs, internet, facebook pages and if you or your money are unlucky enough to be lost in the travel chaos, it's all around you. So far, above Europe the ash cloud cannot really be seen, but it's effects are everywhere. 200 Billion dollars is lost already by airlines, but the knock-on effects throughout the business, entertainment and political spheres are rocketing around the world faster than...well faster than a parked jet airplane.

Here in South Africa on the front page of the nationwide newspaper Business Report are dire predictions about the possible effects to the World Cup of Soccer, held here in just over six weeks time -unless the cloud dissipates. The headline reads "Volcanic Ash Spreads Cloud Over World Cup".

The London Book Fair, where 46 South African authors were to fly and present their latest works will only see 13 of them. Flowers and fruit exporters to the EU, reliant upon regularly scheduled air freight, have seen millions of dollars in losses at a time when the economy is just emerging from The Great Recession.

Insurance companies are working overtime trying to gauge the effects of the aircraft grounding and whether something like this is covered in their policies. In the South African press this morning, Lloyds of London insurance spokesman Bart Nash said that "It's too early to tell what type of insurance contracts the Icelandic Volcano may trigger, however we are currently assesing any exposure we may have". The crisis is rocking every industry in the world.

So we are dealing with a large-scale environmental event, something that is immediately affecting the air, our commerce, and our very delicately balanced modern system of trade. Suddenly, some of the most wealthy and developed countries in the world lost their air travel overnight, and there is little to suggest that everything will quickly be fine again in the next day or two.

Like the big freeze in the UK at the beginning of this year, this crisis once again shows how at the mercy of the Earth our civilisation really is. There are talks of potential food shortages in parts of Europe, the collapse of the aviation fuel industry, and other, darker clouds on the horizon. So this is it, we must accept that in a world of instant messaging and air travel, our societies are so interconnected in every way that even a modest event like this one can have extreme consequences.

Now in the world of Global Warming, Climate Change and the many different extreme scenarios that may or may not be visited upon us, it would be wise for leaders and individuals to wake up to how delicate a high-wire we are on. If a really serious storm closed Europe, like it did around 11,000 years ago, and dropped dozens of meters of snow, which happened on a regular basis, any idea of "adaptation" would be laughed at. By today's reckoning, millions would die of hunger, economies would shut down, air travel would be crippled. Our world economy may crumble.

When we look and peer into the future, trying to see how our human activities may lead to an unbalancing of the systems that make our world a comfortable place to live, this volcano becomes a great tool to understand how these future environmental changes may affect us. Because our modern system of worldwide commerce is so susceptible to even small disruptions, we now know more about what effects a man-made environmental calamity might cause. It isn't pretty.

Never A Truer Word Spoken

2010-04-12T05:27:00.000-07:00

A rare deforestion poster in Mulanje, Malawi. It says in Chichewa, "The Evil Of Fire" -Most of the forest in the country is gone to slash and burn agriculture and energy.

The wind is blowing an unseasonable mist over the city of Blantyre. It's cold, too cold for late summer, and the torrential rain of last week has only slightly abated. Here in Malawi's southern region, millions of people live from harvest to harvest, dependent completely on whether the rain comes at the right times of the year.

The planting starts in December, or these days November. It's anyone's guess and everyone's gamble. Monsanto maize, bought by farmers, who are supplied with the vital Monsanto fertlizer by the government, have but three short months where their yearly crop must grow, fruit and then dry in the fields. If too much or too little rain falls at one of these crucial parts of the process, the crop will be lost. This is hand-to-mouth living, right on the edge of survival, dependent soley upon the weather, and the weather has been getting unpredictable.

One of the most important mitigators of rainfall and run-off has been lost. Flying from Lilongwe, in the central region, down to Blantyre, in the south, the plane soars at only twenty thousand feet. Close enough to see that the forests that covered this whole country have been decimated. So gone are they that the uneducated observer would not believe they were ever here, and that the bare hills and valleys, cut by erosion, were ever thus.

So without forest to protect against torrential flooding, or to bring the rain, as outlined in this excellent study at Columbia University, the people of Malawi and virtually all of Africa are at the mercy of Climate Change.

Paul Krugman, Nobel Prize winner, writes in the New York Times Magazine this week about what can be done to Build a Green Economy, and how to make big sweeping changes in the way we pollute and control CO2 by simple processes that have already worked well in the United States. His is a welcome exploration of the issues around climate science and he gives a chilling and urgent reminder that responding to this crisis is not negotiable, no matter where on political spectrum your beliefs may lay.

Other climate thinkers like writer Paolo Bacigalupi, economist Nicholas Stern, and The Earth Policy Institute's Lester Brown have all agreed that it is poor countries who are facing the worst hazards of climate change because of their precarious food security, and that this is just a taste of things to come for all of us.

If the indian monsoon did not come for one single year, the world's total food production would not be enough to feed all of the people who would go hungry. Bacigalupi's "contraction" would begin, and "growth" and "development" will become quaint terms, lost to our dwindling human population.

Brown believes that a contraction may already be under way, and that the current recession is as much about commodity prices and water resources in the face of global scarcity than it is about the price of oil, or the United States' credit market. The latter, says Brown, just fell because it was the most unstable, like the first to topple in a house of cards.

Krugman gives us a chance. He sees the obstacles to cleaning our air and greening our businesses and economy as surmountable, and carefully regulated carbon markets can successfully regulate pollution, be cost effective, and there is a lot in his article to suggest he is right. I certainly hope so.

There are millions of individual reasons here in Malawi to start reducing our greenhouse gas emmissions today, and hopefully part of that Cap and Trade system also sees third-world countries replanted with their lost forests as a way to further remove the carbon already in the atmosphere, bring back regular rainfall, and stop erosion. Maybe then not only will the rich emitting states enjoy good schooling, three meals a day, and the chance to live without fear of hunger.

What is it about Aid that is not working?

2010-04-06T00:50:00.000-07:00

The view over Malawi's southern Lakeshore, from Zomba on the left, all the way to Cape Maclear on the right.

Water, development, health, HIV/AIDS, education, environmental degradation, poverty, more and more people working in development feel that all of these issues are inextricably linked together. It sounds like a huge pile of work and energy to solve them all at once, and many groups and governments around the world have been trying to tackle just a few, but the trillions of dollars poured into Africa through "aid" and other philanthropy that has clearly not worked shows us that the current status quo needs rethinking.

For anyone who is interested in extreme models of development, a more interesting model than the Pacific island of Bouganville could not be found. In the fascinating and uplifting documentary the Coconut Revolution, the BRA (Bouganville Revolutionary Army) uses sticks and then captured weapons to drive the company Rio Tinto off of their island, after it poisoned rivers, stole their land, and dug a massive open-pit mine in the rainforest. Australia bankrolled and trained the Papua New Gineau Government to fight the BRA, and imposed a total sea blockade for more than five years.

What happened is nothing less than miraculous. The islanders turned to local skills, in medicine, power generation and agriculture, and for the first time since colonialisation, the islanders became self sufficient. Their diets and health improved, and more than 50 small hydroelectric power stations gave them electricity to light their homes. In isolation the islanders even made diesel fuel for their cars out of coconut oil, fuel which is cleaner, safer and more efficient than that which used to be shipped in by sea.

In Africa today, any suggestion that Africans may develop best if simply left alone is anathema. The idea fo leaving starving people to die of drought and disease is simply not an option, but in her book Dead Aid, Zambian economist Dambisa Moyo suggests that although assistance in the most critical times may be rendered, by and large all foreign aid assistance to Africa should be rethought. She examines countries in Africa that turned down Aid, and compares them with those that have welcomed it. Across the board the results are surprising, in all countries that accepted it, "overreliance on aid has trapped developing nations in a vicious circle of aid dependency, corruption, market distortion, and further poverty, leaving them with nothing but the “need” for more aid."

In Malawi, there is an urgent need for everything. Trees are being cleared to make way for a growing population that still has an exploding birthrate in one of Africa's most populous countries. The trees are gone and flooding off the steep hillsides wipes out villages and fields, taking lives and livelihoods. Children forced to work to help increase crop yeilds receive no education, and have children themselves when they are still in their teens, succumbing to AIDS and Malaria by their mid 40s. But in Malawi things are also different, here there is a concerted and real effort by the government to try and address these issues, but good development models can be hard to come by.

At least half the country's economy is supported by foreign governments through direct foreign aid. Aid that has increased only to see virtually every socioeconomic indicator decrease at the same time. So the status quo is not working, and people like the Bouganvillers and Dambisa Moyo have other suggestions. Maybe it's time we listened to them?