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EDITORIAL WEdnESdAY, MArCh 7, 2018 4 Acting Editor & Publisher : Jobaer Alam Telephone: +8802-9104683-84, Fax: 9127103 e-mail: editor@thebangladeshtoday.com Wednesday, March 7, 2018 reforming and improving the civil services It is high time to take up the tasks of carrying out deep and driving reforms in the country's civil services. The reformative activities in the country's civil services have become all the more important and justified in the backdrop of the recently increased raises in the salaries and perks of civil services members across the board. It is too simplistic to think that these showering of higher salaries and benefits on civil servants will prompt them to become more dedicated, honest and sincere in attending to their tasks. For experiences show all too clearly that members of civil services were always too good on absorbing any pay rise and other benefits as if these were their birth rights.They never felt any mentionable pricks of conscience that they should al so deliver better to deserve the higher salaries and benefits. Thus, there is every reason to think that this time around also they will just perceive their added monetary and other gain sas their legitimate dues without feeling that they have a duty of care to respond to these added payments by discharging their services with greater scrupulousness and efficiency. There fore it is high time to ensure that civil servants are only obliged to earn their increased earnings and privileges. Reformsofthecivilservicesshould start basically with making the present system of recruitment to the services completely free from corruption. This corruption was reflected in the leakage of question paper and other ills in the recruitment examinations of the services. The next task is proper training of the new civil servants. The Bangladesh Public Administration Training Centre (BPTAC) in the main trains new members of the civil services. But allegedly, the standard of this body has deteriorated over the years. The trainers themselves are considered as not sufficiently resourceful to train well. Therefore, BPTAC itself needs restructuring and at the centre of such restructuring should be appointment of persons of proper background and competence as the trainers. Besides, teaching of morality and service to people should be important parts of the training programmes so that the new members in the civil services can go to their first posts with a sharpened conscience. In many cases, government offices are found overstaffed particularly at the lower and mid-levels. Such overstaffing should be dealt with to conserve resources and reduce bureaucracy. In other cases, a dearth of specialist manpower is seen in some departments, particularly at the higher levels, that hampers the efficient functioning of these departments. The cases of such understaffing should be addressed by recruiting such specialist manpower on contract and other basis with special incentive salary and other facilities, where necessary. They may be inducted into the civil services by amending the present uniform rules of the services as special cases. Such recruitment will end the unwanted domination of the services by generalists who cannot give specialist decisions or attend to decision making of a complex or technical or managerial character and, thus, lend dynamism to the functioning of the services. The present system of promotion in the civil services is based mainly on seniority. The annual confidential report (ACR) on a civil servant produced by a senior officer is also taken into account while promoting a person. But such ACRs presently have no way of assessing the officer's true worth, efficiency, integrity and attainments. In most cases, the officers are blindly promoted to the next higher posts on completion of a certain number of years in their services. Therefore, in order to truly reward the efficient and the capable, promotion should be mainly based not on seniority but on the basis of the actual efficiency, dedication to the job and achievements of the person to be promoted. For this purpose, more than the ACR, a system should be devised in which the civil servants will be given targets to fulfill at the start of a year. The targets may range, say, from meeting tax collection targets to the number of sterilisation operations carried out in the family planning programme. Target attainment and meeting of other standards should become the basis of promotion and not just seniority as is the case now. Besides, failure to attain targets and noted lapses in other areas should lead to suffering of penalties such as withholding of increments to event dismissal from services. In other words, civil servants must be made to perform under the awareness that they are accountable for their jobs and that their jobs are not sinecures. They could expect rewards for the right things they do and penalised for what they do not do or do wrongly. Only an accountable structure of this sort-- and enforced rigorously-- has any chance of improving the standard of the civil services. All elected governments from now on should also resolve not to try and politicise the administration during their tenures. This would contribute to not only efficiency of the civil administration but lend to the country's political stability as well. The result of the Italian election on Sunday was revolutionary, but not unexpected. The politics of the center-left government, totally subordinated to the EU left, has ruined Italy's economy and above all created a sense of estrangement from the people. Many Italians feel they have lost sovereignty and control of their homeland, and are calling for a government to restore order and security. Unregulated mass immigration has created pockets of delinquency to which the police, blocked by the government, could not respond. It has also created a parallel labor market that, combined with competition from the countries of the Far East, has produced worrying unemployment, especially in southern Italy, whose people are forced to emigrate to look for poorly paid work in Germany or England. Thus the electoral result: In the south there was a victory for the Five Star Movement, a populist, antiestablishment group founded by the comedian Beppe Grillo; in the north there was an excellent result for the League, a center-right party whose young leader, Matteo Salvini, is a candidate to lead the entire conservative coalition in place of Silvio Berlusconi, leader of Forza Italia. Many Italians feel they have lost sovereignty and control of their homeland, leading to an election triumph for populists and Euroskeptics The only coalition government possible at the moment seems a League-Five Star alliance, but that would be be difficult because the ideas of the two parties on ALTHOUGH the Senate election is finally concluded despite all the apprehensions expressed over the past one year regarding a possible postponement on one ground or the other, the allegations about big money being used to lure provincial and national legislators to vote in a certain way continue to reverberate. The media has been awash with stories of 'horsetrading' and money changing hands. No evidence is produced in support of such claims but candidates winning without sufficient votes from their respective parties is cited as the major ground for such allegations. For example, the PPP won at least two additional seats in Sindh, apparently with the support of MQM MPAs. It also managed to win two seats in Khyber Pakhtunkhwa despite its relatively small number of MPAs there. The PTI won a seat in Punjab which could only be possible with the votes from the MPAs of other parties adding to PTI votes It is, however, important to point out that although most of the legislators vote in the Senate elections along party lines, the law does not bind them to do so. The law requires MNAs and MPAs to vote in the Senate election through secret ballot and that is why voting against party direction in these elections is not considered defection and hence not grounds for disqualification. Even in India, where the Rajya Sabha election is conducted through an open ballot and state legislators are allowed to show their Death is raining down on Eastern Ghouta. The suburban district outside Damascus is one of the last remaining rebel enclaves near the Syrian capital. It's been under siege for half a decade, battered by bombs and stalked by starvation. The last humanitarian convoy to arrive was in November. And now it is under relentless attack. As my Washington Post colleagues have reported, air strikes carried out by the Syrian regime and its Russian allies have pummelled Eastern Ghouta since last week, with "circling squadrons" of jets, drones and helicopters hitting hospitals, schools and residential buildings. Many of the approximately 400,000 people still trapped in the rebel-held area are cowering in basements. Numerous medical facilities were destroyed, with doctors telling media that they now are resorting to using expired drugs to treat the many wounded. According to human rights monitors and aid agencies, the strikes have killed more than 300 people in the space of a few days and injured hundreds more. Eastern Ghouta, it should not be forgotten, was hit in 2013 by a regime chemical-weapons strike that allegedly killed hundreds. But the current moment is potentially even more terrifying. "We in Ghouta have been getting hit by air strikes for more than five years and this is not new to us," a hospital director in Eastern Ghouta told CNN. "But we have never seen anything like this escalation.""As the pace of death A vote for order and security issues such as family, abortion, euthanasia and the maintenance of traditions are so different. The only certainty is that the League has won the elections in Lombardy, the "engine room" of Italy, and the new president, Attilio Fontana, an experienced League man, has promised the restoration of order by announcing the expulsion of 100,000 illegal immigrants, the deportation of extremist preachers and tough measures against criminals, starting with drug dealers. Relations with Europe will certainly be reformulated, because both the League and Five Star are Euroskeptic movements, but certainly Italy will remain in the European channel with a strong focus on the Mediterranean, whose stability and security are also vital for Italian security. This will require strong, authoritative and reliable partners in the moderate Arab world. MAx FErrArI UN Special Rapporteur on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples Victoria Tauli- Corpuz said that indigenous peoples are the best guardians of world's biodiversity. In fact, from time immemorial, the indigenous peoples have inhabited the globe. They lived their lives maintaining their livelihood banking mainly on the places where they lived, especially the forests. The only coalition government possible at the moment seems a League-Five Star alliance, but that would be be difficult because the ideas of the two parties on issues such as family, abortion, euthanasia and the maintenance of traditions are so different. The only certainty is that the League has won the elections in Lombardy, the "engine room" of Italy, and the new president, Attilio Fontana, an experienced League man, has promised the restoration of order by announcing the expulsion of 100,000 illegal immigrants, the deportation of extremist preachers and tough measures against criminals, starting with drug dealers. Along with leading their lives with ease, they have lent sustainability to their lands. By so doing, they have done great favours to their surrounding and world climate as well. However, with the advent of intruders in the their lands in the shape of colonisation, globalisation and so on, things started to become painful for them as they were being robbed of their homesteads and means of livelihood. This article encapsulates discussions on Money and politics AhMEd BILAL MEhBooB ballot to their authorised party representatives before casting it, voting against party direction is not considered defection. The framers of the election laws, therefore, did not envisage a vote strictly along party lines and an allowance seems to have been made for conscience voting. It is, therefore, not correct to assume that voting against party lines was automatically motivated by personal gains. The allegations of money-for-votes, however, seem more plausible in some cases, especially where party discipline has weakened as in the case of the MQM or where voters are independent such as in Fata. The allegations of 'horse-trading' are considered serious enough that Prime Minister Shahid Khaqan Abbasi and PTI chairman Imran Khan have openly accelerates in Eastern Ghouta, so do preparations," wrote my colleague Louisa Loveluck. "Pathologists and gravediggers in the enclave said before the violence accelerated that they had 20 to 50 graves on standby at any given time. They said that was not enough." "We are overwhelmed," one man said, speaking to Washington Post on the condition of anonymity. "We are throwing body parts in mass graves. It's all we can do." The violence has elicited the usual international denunciations and fits of hand-wringing. Western columnists likened the killings to the war crimes at Srebrenica; editorials lamented the chronic impotence of institutions such as the United Nations. UN Secretary General Antonio Guterres described the situation in Eastern Ghouta as "hell on earth" and, once more, urged a cessation of hostilities. "My appeal to all those involved is for an immediate suspension of all war activities in Eastern Ghouta, allowing for humanitarian aid to reach IShAAn ThAroor and forcefully called for a change in the system of Senate elections. It is unlikely that such a change will be possible in the short run but the question of placing adequate checks and controls on the role of money in politics has very much taken centre stage and will need to be addressed. A major question left unaddressed in the Elections Act pertains to the limit on poll spending. The question of money in The framers of the election laws, therefore, did not envisage a vote strictly along party lines and an allowance seems to have been made for conscience voting. It is, therefore, not correct to assume that voting against party lines was automatically motivated by personal gains. The allegations of money-for-votes, however, seem more plausible in some cases, especially where party discipline has weakened as in the case of the MQM or where voters are independent such as in Fata. politics in general and of political finance in particular will assume much greater importance as we enter the active campaign period for the general elections scheduled no later than August this year. A major question that the Elections Act, 2017, has left unaddressed is the limit on election spending by political parties. Although our election laws have traditionally set all those in need," Guterres said, adding, "I believe Eastern Ghouta cannot wait." But it certainly will. Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov shrugged off calls for a truce, saying that "the fight against terrorism cannot be restricted by anything." Authorities in Damascus played down the suffering of their countrymen, claiming that rebel groups were using civilians as "human shields." Indeed, this may be only the beginning of a more intense onslaught against East Ghouta as the regime of President Bashar Al Assad launched a final offensive. In the past week, ground reinforcements have been massing along the outskirts of the suburb under the command of one of Al Assad's top generals. The regime views the Islamist rebel groups occupying the enclave as terrorists. Sana, the Syrian state news agency, said dozens of rockets and mortar rounds fired in the past two days by these factions hit various neighbourhoods in Damascus, killing more than a dozen people. The scenario various issues of indigenous peoples as well as their long, strong and modern struggles against many odds. Nation States across the globe have hardly found it comfortable to accommodate the issues and concerns of indigenous peoples. Thus, there is a tendency to use the term 'tribal' in place of 'indigenous'. The author, however, prefers the word indigenous as preferred by the scholars and the activists of the modern age. In fact, the term indigenous represents the tribal peoples in a comprehensive fashion and lends true importance to the existence, unique customs and cultures of the peoples uprooted and being uprooted from their own territories by means of colonisation. In this article, both the words, tribal and indigenous, have been used interchangeably for better understanding of the readers. Indigenous peoples are those peoples whose social, cultural, and economic milieus make them different from other sections of the national community and who are very keen to uphold their own institutions. According to the Guardian, the world's estimated 370 million indigenous people are spread across the world in more than 90 countries and speaking around 7,000 languages. Among them are the Indians of the Americas, the Inuit and Aleutians of the circumpolar region, the Saami of northern Europe, the Aborigines and Torres Strait Islanders of Australia and the Maori of New Zealand. Source : Arab News limits on election spending by individual candidates and these limits have been considerably enhanced in the new law, there has never been a limit placed on election spending by political parties. This probably was not so much of an issue in the past when overall party spending was rather limited and almost all election-related expenses were incurred by the candidates, but over a period of time the dynamics of elections have changed. Political parties now play a much greater role and exercise a much greater influence on the election. As evidenced by the exit polls and through several other manifestations, the percentage of voters who vote based on party loyalties has steadily increased as politics matures in Pakistan. The expenses incurred by political parties have, therefore, also increased since the last three elections especially 2002 when the electronic media entered the electoral arena as a major player. Political parties are increasingly using electronic media for their direct and indirect political messaging. These advertisements are not constituencyspecific and, therefore, spending on these cannot be technically and legally counted towards the spending for a particular constituency for which there is a limit prescribed by the law. Advertisements in the electronic media are generally a big-ticket item and usually constitute the single largest item in election spending. Source: Dawn The world sits by as another massacre unfolds in Syria According to human rights monitors and aid agencies, the strikes have killed more than 300 people in the space of a few days and injured hundreds more. Eastern Ghouta, it should not be forgotten, was hit in 2013 by a regime chemical-weapons strike that allegedly killed hundreds. But the current moment is potentially even more terrifying. is similar to the regime's slow, destructive reconquest in 2016 of rebelheld areas in Aleppo. At the time, both Syrian and Russian officials hailed the "liberation" of the city from Islamist radicals and trumpeted their efforts to evacuate civilians and deliver humanitarian aid. But then, as now, footage and photos from inside the besieged areas told a different story - of neighbourhoods laid to waste, whole families wiped out, and wounded children, rescued from the rubble, sitting mute and alone. "What's the goal? Is it to crush Ghouta on the heads of everyone like they crushed Aleppo?" Osama Nasser, a veteran anti-government activist, asked my colleagues. For now, the focus remains on the desperate struggle for survival of those caught in the crossfire. "There have been many massacres," Huda Kyayati, a relief worker with the Syrian nonprofit group Women Now for Development, said to Loveluck. "I cannot handle the idea of going down to the basement because I cannot imagine what it would mean to be bombed and die under the rubble." "We don't have enough ambulances left to ferry the injured, meaning many people die before they reach us," a doctor identified as Malik told the website Middle East Eye. "The hospitals have been overflowing with blood. We are doing what we can to help, but the situation is becoming unbearable." Source : Gulf News
ENVIRONMENT WEDnESDay, MarCH 7, 2018 5 Two koalas are sitting on a bulldozed log pile in Queensland. Photograph: WWF australia: the land of global deforestation hotspot MiCHaEl SlEzaK Australia is in the midst of a full-blown land-clearing crisis. Projections suggest that in the two decades to 2030, 3m hectares of untouched forest will have been bulldozed in eastern Australia. The crisis is driven primarily by a booming livestock industry but is ushered in by governments that fail to introduce restrictions and refuse to apply existing restrictions. And more than just trees are at stake. Australia has a rich biodiversity, with nearly 8% of all Earth's plant and animal species finding a home on the continent. About 85% of the country's plants, 84% of its mammals and 45% of its birds are found nowhere else. But land clearing is putting that at risk. About threequarters of Australia's 1,640 plants and animals listed by the government as threatened have habitat loss listed as one of their main threats. Much of the land clearing in Queensland - which accounts for the majority in Australia - drives pollution into rivers that drain on to the Great Barrier Reef, adding to the pressures on it. And of course land clearing is exacerbating climate change. In 1990, before short-lived land-clearing controls came into place, a quarter of Australia's total greenhouse gas emissions were caused by deforestation. Emissions from land clearing dropped after 2010 but are rising sharply again. "It has gotten so bad that WWF International put it on the list of global deforestation fronts, the only one in the developed world on that list," says Martin Taylor, the protected areas and conservation science manager at WWF Australia. In Queensland, where there is both the most clearing and the best data on clearing, trees are being bulldozed at a phenomenal rate. Stopping the clearing in Queensland is possible. Indeed, under its Labor premier Peter Beattie it brought its land clearing problem under control. Tough laws passed in 2004 meant that by 2010 land clearing had dropped to an all-time low of about 92,000 hectares. But when the Liberal National party's Campbell Newman was elected in 2012 he broke an election promise to keep the laws, gutted them, and introduced several ways for farmers to clear land easily. The bulldozers roared back into action immediately, bringing the state to the point it is at now. About 395,000 hectares of native vegetation were cleared there in 2015-16, 33% more compared with the previous year. And despite the re-elected Labor government promising changes to rein it in, notifications of planned land clearing in Queensland have jumped a further 30%, suggesting woodlands could be bulldozed even faster in coming years. To visualise what clearing of that magnitude looks like, Guardian Australia has created a tool that will lay an area that size over any location you choose. Mapped over Sydney, for example, 395,000 hectares covers an area stretching from the central coast in the north, to Campbeltown in the south, and the Blue Mountains in the west. That equates to more than 1,500 football fields worth of native woodland and scrub being cleared each and every day in Queensland. Queensland clears more land each year than the rest of Australia put together, and the rate at which it is destroying its vegetation is comparable with the infamous deforestation that occurs in the Brazilian Amazon. Brazil bulldozes about 0.25% of its part of the Amazon each year; Queensland clears about 0.45% of its remaining wooded areas. The recently re-elected Queensland Labor government has promised to change the laws. But in the meantime other states have begun to follow Queensland's lead. In 2016 the New South Wales Coalition government announced it was going to axe three pieces of legislation that protected native vegetation and wildlife, and replace them with a single act that would make land clearing easier. A conservation scientist from the University of Queensland, Hugh Possingham, sat on the NSW government's advisory board for the changes but resigned in protest, warning they could lead to a doubling of clearing rates in NSW. Possingham says exactly how much the laws will impact clearing rates is unclear, since there are other drivers of clearing, including climate and economics. "But if you look at Queensland, their example is so dramatic," he says of the effects of law changes there. renewable energy powering scores of cities EllE HunT The number of cities reporting they are predominantly powered by clean energy has more than doubled since 2015, as momentum builds for cities around the world to switch from fossil fuels to renewable sources. Data published on Tuesday by the not-for-profit environmental impact researcher CDP found that 101 of the more than 570 cities on its books sourced at least 70% of their electricity from renewable sources in 2017, compared to 42 in 2015. Nicolette Bartlett, CDP's director of climate change, attributed the increase to both more cities reporting to CDP as well as a global shift towards renewable energy. The data was a "comprehensive picture of what cities are doing with regards to renewable energy," she told Guardian Cities. That large urban centres as disparate as Auckland, Nairobi, Oslo and Brasília were successfully moving away from fossil fuels was held up as evidence of a changing tide by Kyra Appleby, CDP's director of cities. "Reassuringly, our data shows much commitment and ambition," she said in a statement. "Cities not only want to shift to renewably energy, but, most importantly - they can." Much of the drive for climate action at city level in the past year has been spurred on by the global covenant of more than 7,400 mayors that formed The capital iceland gets 100% of its electricity from renewable sources. Photo: alamy in the wake of Donald Trump's decision to withdraw from the Paris accord. Burlington, Vermont, was the only US city reporting to CDP that sourced all of its power from renewable sources after having fully transitioned in 2015. Research from the Sierra Club states there are five such cities in the US in total. Burlington is now exploring how to become zero-carbon. Mayor Miro Weinberger said to CDP that its shift to a diverse mix of biomass, hydro, wind and solar power had boosted the local economy, and encouraged other cities to follow suit. Across the US 58 towns and cities, including Atlanta and San Diego, have set a target of 100% renewable energy. In Britain, 14 more cities and towns had signed up to the UK100 local government network's target of 100% clean energy by 2050, bringing the total to 84. Among the recent local authority recruits were Liverpool City Region, Barking and Dagenham, Bristol, Bury, Peterborough, Redcar and Cleveland. But the CDP data showed 43 cities worldwide were already entirely powered by clean energy, with the vast majority (30) in Latin America, where more cities reported to CDP and hydropower is more widespread. In the six months to July, Latin American cities reported having instigated $183m of renewable energy projects - less than Europe ($1.7bn) or Africa ($236m). Europe topped the list for projects open for investment, but laid claim to just 20% of the 101 cities to be predominantly powered by clean energy. The Icelandic capital Reyjkavik, sourcing all electricity from hydropower and geothermal, was among them. It is now working to make all cars and public transit fossilfree by 2040. Eating habit and the climate change question ruTH KHaSaya Oniang'O Did you know that what's on your plate plays a larger role in contributing to climate change than the car you drive? When most wealthy people think about their carbon footprint, or their contributions to climate change, they'll think about where their electricity and heat come from or what they drive. They'll think about fossil fuels and miles per gallon, about LED lights and mass transit - but not so much about combine harvesters or processed meals or food waste. Few consider the impacts of the food they eat, despite the fact that globally, food systems account for roughly one quarter of all manmade greenhouse gas emissions. That's more than the entire transportation sector, more than all industrial practices, and roughly the same as the production of electricity and heat. Meanwhile, the most immediate threat of climate change for most of the global population will be at the dinner table, as our ability to grow critical staple crops is being affected by the warming we've already experienced. Between 1980 and 2008, for instance, wheat yields dropped 5.5 % and maize yields fell 3.8% due to rising temperatures. Climate change threatens the food security of millions of poor people around the world. Young people are increasingly keen to protect the environment by shifting to animal-productfree diets. They seek plant proteins which taste like meat, while insects are also growing popular as an alternative. What these inverse challenges - that food and agriculture are both enormous contributors to climate change, and massively impacted by it - really tell us is that our food systems, as currently structured, are facing major challenges. There is a much larger problem that implores us to look beyond farm and agricultural practices. We need to open our eyes to solutions that address the full scope of the challenge to create more sustainable and equitable food systems. That way, we can provide healthy food for all people while we protect our planet's resources at the same time. So what are food systems? Everything from seed and soil to the supermarket to the plate to the landfill. Food systems include the growing, harvesting, processing, packaging, transporting, marketing, consumption, and disposal of food and food-related items. While farming alone accounts for 10- 12% of global greenhouse gas emissions, when we look at entire food systems the contributions to climate change more than double. A recent report published by the Meridian Institute lays out the many factors throughout food systems that spell trouble for the climate, and also explains why a broad systems-wide perspective is necessary for implementing effective changes. Consider deforestation and soil. A narrow view of agriculture alone would neglect the fact that a full 80% of the forests that are clear cut or destroyed are done so to create farmland. Forests are massive carbon sinks. So is soil, locking away two to three times as much carbon as there is present in the atmosphere. But farmers can help restore ecosystem functions and build resilient communities by producing crops and livestock in productive ways that sequester carbon and protect forests. Or consider food waste. Not just the scraps that you throw away, but throughout the entire food system. A staggering 30-40% of the food produced in the world is never eaten. Some never gets harvested, some spoils before it reaches consumers, and a lot is tossed away by retailers, restaurants, and at home. For the sake of comparing emissions, if food waste were its own country it would be the third largest greenhouse gas emitter in the world, after only China and the United States. This says nothing of the gross injustice of wasting so much food while so many in the world go hungry. In the developing world, improving infrastructure along the food chain - including cold storage - would prevent much good food being lost. In the developed world, retailers can prevent large amounts of waste by finding outlets for slightly blemished goods and consumers can limit waste by buying food in amounts they actually want and need. There are countless more examples of challenges and solutions all throughout the food system - from production of fertiliser to distribution systems to the production of dried and purified foods that make up processed meals to the diets and lifestyles of the public. Everyone has a role to play; these challenges cannot be solved in a vacuum. The complex, dynamic, and widely diverse forms of the world's many food systems yield some wildly divergent outcomes in terms of nutrition, health, and environmental and climate impacts. It is critical that we start to better examine what works in some systems and what must be improved in others, in order to produce more equitable, just, and sustainable outcomes around the world. Just as there's no universal crop that grows everywhere, there's no "one size fits all" model food system to implement across the world. A broader systems-wide perspective is necessary if there is any hope for truly transformative change. It's time to look beyond farming and agriculture and to see the whole picture, to create systems that cause less harm to the climate and are more resilient to the impacts we're already suffering from global warming. Food is a fundamental human need Deforestation drives up indonesia's greenhouse gas emissions. Photo: Sutanta aditya and to eat is a basic human right. Our food systems must deliver that need, fairly and equitably, without worsening the impacts of climate change. restoring forests are vital to environmental balance HugH Biggar At present, roughly 12 million hectares of intact forests are lost annually in the tropics every year, according to the Center for International Forestry Research (CIFOR), and in turn contribute to a number of consequences from loss of biodiversity to food insecurity to social unrest. Forest landscape restoration - the subject of a GLF Bonn session in last December - involves both restoring degraded landscapes and doing so in ways that benefit local communities and are ecologically sustainable. Forests are also seen as vital carbon sinks that help sequester global warminglinked carbon from the atmosphere. Germany has stepped up to tackle these challenges head on through BMZ, the country's Federal Ministry of Economic Cooperation and Development, which supports more than 30 countries and 10 regions with its Forest Action Plan (FAP). Between 2014 and 2016, BMZ increased its commitment to an ongoing portfolio of 2 billion euros ($2.5 billion) which is a steep increase of 25 percent, said Birgit Gerhardus, head of division, rural development, land rights and forestry at BMZ. "We also look at forests not only from the climate perspective, but from the rural development perspective," Gerhardus said. "The responsibility for forests shifted from our climate department to our rural development department." Successful restoration practices can include tree planting (based on what the land can naturally support), smart land management, reducing erosion, improving management of livestock, protecting biodiversity and wildlife, improving water quality and management, and developing alternative ways to provide local communities with income. On the heavily-logged island of Borneo in Indonesia, for instance, a health clinic uses non-cash payments to discourage locals from cutting down trees to pay for care. Costa Rica provides a ready example of how active forest recovery can take place. The Central American nation had lost about 85 percent of its tropical forests by 1987 as it cleared land for cattle ranches and other development, according to the World Bank. The destruction damaged sensitive ecosystems, and impacted local communities and an economy dependent on tourism and forest products. But through innovative financing, policy reforms, To tackle climate change a new approach called forest landscape restoration has been introduced across the globe. Photo: Collected and assistance to landowners, Costa Rica's forests recovered by 50 percent by 2010 and the country has also experienced a boom in ecotourism, the World Bank reports. With success stories such as Costa Rica in mind, the international community has recently launched larger regional initiatives. In 2011, the Bonn Challenge called for restoring 150 million hectares (about three times the size of Spain) of lost and degraded forests by 2020. And in support of the Bonn Challenge, the AFR100 is a country-led effort to bring 100 million hectares of land in Africa into restoration by 2030. In Latin America, Initiative 20×20, aims to restore 20 million hectares of degraded land. Meanwhile, the New York Declaration on Forests extended the Bonn Challenge to 350 million hectares by 2030. Even so, challenges remain including issues of land rights, access to lands and resources, public policy alignment between government agencies and greater funding for forest landscape restoration. One report by the U.N. Food and Agriculture Organization and the U.N. Convention to Combat Desertification found that between $36 billion and $49 billion are required every year to achieve agreed upon forest landscape restoration targets. The report also points out that such restoration is mostly beneficial in regions with developed legal and regulatory frameworks - conditions not met yet in a number of sub-Saharan African countries. According to a new report, in some tropical ecosystems natural regenerating naturally passive can be effective. The study found that natural regeneration of tropical forests could boost further large-scale restoration goals for a fraction of the cost of active restoration. But the study also had concerns about the possible rate of return of biodiversity and the socioeconomic impact on local populations.
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