Environment
Blog Post: Posted July 20, 2010, 11:13 pm by Elizabeth Hallinan
Greening Afghanistan
Country: Afghanistan
I’m just going to say it — people think of Afghanistan as a pile of rocks. I see where the mental image comes from; photos on the news do seem to showcase the sand and rocks in their effort to capture the grittiness of soldiers at war. But I know an Afghanistan of a different color: green.
In northern Afghanistan — where I work on a project promoting improved livelihoods through agriculture, infrastructure and livestock — there is the rich green carpet of potato plants in Takhar, the red-tinged green leaves of saplings in our timber plots in Badakhshan and technicolor green seedlings in the new rice paddies in Baghlan.
Our agriculture projects are not the only opportunities for supporting a greener Afghanistan. Now, we are using ‘greening’ techniques on our infrastructure projects as well. Northern Afghanistan is home to snowy mountains and rushing rivers, and as a result flood protection and erosion control are a major concern. The project builds retaining walls, wash culverts and canals to channel and control the water, but recently we have started looking far upstream to try to address the deforestation and soil erosion that make these floods so devastating.
The Yakatal "super passage" wash culvert in Taloqan, Takhar province, serves as a testing ground for this approach. This massive culvert is 120 meters (almost 400 feet) across and protects a local irrigation canal from being washed out by floods by channeling water up and over the covered canal. The culvert basically serves as a highway that contains the water as it runs downhill. This year, the new culvert contained the spring’s heavy flooding, but the sheer volume of water convinced Takhar Program Manager Kerry Sly of the need to work with the local shura (council) to control flooding at the source.
Yaka Zarang village resident Mohammad Ahmad explains the nature of the problem with relying on super passages alone: “Construction of super passages has its benefits, like quick protection of an area which is under threat of flood. After years, the passage will be destroyed by heavy floods anyway. All heavy floods are caused by consecutive rain fall in naked land which has nothing in its soil, and flood washes out everything from the surface of the land, like top soil and fertile land, and eventually farmers or people can not use that land for anything. Also, the river becomes full of mud and dirt which is washed away from the hills of upper areas.”
The Yakatal village elders remember a time when the hills above the village were covered with trees and shrubs and there was better land for grazing. They were eager to work with Mercy Corps to mitigate the current problems with soil erosion and deforestation to protect their downstream land. The shura agreed that the village would provide labor for starting nurseries, replanting trees and constructing a reservoir, as well as a promise to ensure that no more trees would be felled for fuel.
Mohammad Ahmad explains, “If we cover the area with forest and plants, we can easily reduce the floods' effects. Trees, plants and bushes absorb the water into soil, and roots keep the ground strong not to be swept away by fast rain. If we made terraces around the hills it is another way of reducing the flood flow, in the terraces we can plant pistachio, Russian willow and acacia, and these are all soil erosion controllers.”
With the help of the community, Mercy Corps targeted a 200 hectare (almost 500 acre) area that will be replanted with local varieties appropriate to the current dry conditions — and best suited for preventing erosion and improving soil moisture — such as pistachio, lilac, aspen, juniper, acacia, Russian willow, almond and walnut.
Trees thrive in Afghanistan, if given half a chance. By rebuilding a watershed, the community will restore the horticultural tradition and protect their agricultural land from future floods.
Blog Post: Posted May 16, 2010, 8:24 pm by Miguel Samper
Video: Traveling in the Chocó
Country: Colombia
Boats, horses, motorcycles ... and lots of mud. Watch how Mercy Corps staff travel in the rugged and remote Darién region of Colombia.
Traveling in the department of Choco, Colombia, is not easy. This is a look at how Mercy Corps' staff get around when traveling to visit beneficiaries in this remote part of the country.
Blog Post: Posted May 14, 2010, 9:19 am by Dan Sadowsky
Video: Conserving the mangroves in Bocas Del Atrato
Country: Colombia
Topics: Environment
See how we're helping an Afro-Colombian fishing community along Colombia's northern coast conserve mangrove forests that protect their homes, secure their livelihoods and sustain the region's biodiversity.
Blog Post: Posted March 31, 2010, 1:21 pm by Mary Tam
Putting aside the climate change debate
Topics: Environment, Climate Change
I can still remember being recruited by my friend, Reena, for the “Save the Earth Club” in high school. My first activity was helping out at a community garden and learning more about the importance of respecting the environment. It must have had some effect on me, because now I do my best to recycle, compost, take public transportation and conserve water. Target area for improvement: my heating bill. What can I say, I’m an islander living in San Francisco!
Climate change has become an even hotter topic than it was a decade ago. There are those who feel the issue requires immediate attention and those who argue it is simply propaganda. Then there are those who must deal directly with current environmental challenges and harsh circumstances, regardless of where you or I may fall on the debate spectrum.
The Qaxo community completed a large natural resources management project to reduce water erosion and restore land for use. The project, consisting of earth and rock bunds planted with aloe vera, stretched over five kilometers and was completed by 250 people in 16 days. Photo: Mervyn Lee/Mercy Corps
For example, communities in Ethiopia face extreme conditions ranging from floods to droughts. In the past, soil degradation and recurrent drought have resulted in inadequate pasture supply for livestock. In "Protecting Ethiopia’s people, animals and environment", Emma Proud describes how the people of Samatar have put together a proposal, demonstrating how they will address these sorts of challenges and what assistance is needed from Mercy Corps in order to be successful.
Programmes have already begun, with locals receiving a daily stipend to dig water diversion channels. These trenches will trap run-off, allowing water to soak back into the soil and regenerate pasture. As Proud notes, “In this way, this simple cash-for-work activity will protect the environment, the livestock that feed on it and the people who rely on the animals for their livelihoods.”
April 22 marks Earth Day, and the Climate Change debate continues. Roughly 15 years after I first joined the “Save the Earth Club,” I am still discovering how people and the environment affect each other, and how we might learn to get along.
Blog Post: Posted March 22, 2010, 4:30 pm by Alan Grundy
A marginalized culture moves closer to gaining its own power
Country: Colombia
A micro-hydroelectric energy project is making a difference for one of Colombia's most isolated and marginalised ethnic groups.
Mercy Corps Colombia is helping Nasa Paez communities in the country's impoverished Tierradentro region address their energy needs while protecting the environment. When the project is completed, the Nasa Paez will become the first indigenous group in the country that's autonomous and self-sufficient in energy production.
You can learn more about the project and meet some of the people involved in this video:
Blog Post: Posted March 9, 2010, 7:25 am by Jim Jarvie
Haiti, nine weeks after the earthquake — what happens next
Country: Haiti
Week 9 post-earthquake: Mercy Corps, like our partners and peers, has been focused on emergency response. We’ve been busy with distributions, Comfort for Kids, water and sanitation provision, and more.
But what should we do now that contributes to long-term recovery? The context is challenging at best. Consider these statistics:
- Haiti is the poorest country in the Western Hemisphere
- It is ranked 146th out of 177 countries in terms of human development
- 80 percent of Haiti's people live in abject poverty
- Unemployment here is somewhere between 70 and 80 percent
- Literacy is only 62 percent
- About 96 percent of the land is deforested and its soils and slopes eroding — which makes it more vulnerable to hurricanes and other storms
Then, of course, there's the impact of the earthquake. There’s a lot to do. And so the Mercy Corps Haiti team took a pause last Sunday to prioritize focus and direction, to consolidate thinking and strategy. Programme managers who'd helped direct emergency responses in places like Darfur, Indonesia's Aceh Province and Sri Lanka shared their experience in moving from disaster to long-term recovery.
The strategy that arose — which reflects what we've been planning since shortly after the earthquake — is that we’re going to roll out a recovery strategy based on job creation through urban regeneration and resilience, rural infrastructure development, and business development focused through small and medium enterprises. All of these things are interlinked and will integrate issues surrounding youth, education and vocational training, environmental responsibility and disaster risk reduction (DRR).
It's a complex but complementary strategy to address a wide range of challenges, many of which existed well before the earthquake struck.
In the short-term, we’ll still need to focus on emergency recovery, but we want to start targeting activities in ways that will blossom into long-term revitalisation. In rural areas — where we're focusing on places hosting displaced people from earthquake-shattered cities — this will likely include working on improving feeder roads to help deliver produce to markets; improving irrigation; and recovering degraded land for tree planting for cash crops and fuel wood.
In urban areas, we’re looking at DRR measures in anticipation of coming rains and the hurricane season; waste management measures — particularly those focusing on income generation such as organic waste composting; and critical upgrades to water and sanitation service delivery.
For the long-term — through approaches including small business development, community associations, microfinance and related services — we intend to build on current activities to create sustainable jobs in agricultural markets and urban recovery.
In a post-disaster environment clear goals are needed, but plans need to flexible to make sure we achieve them on a road that’s bound to be full of surprises. We have those goals now, and hope to be on the road to achieving them.
Blog Post: Posted March 4, 2010, 3:09 pm by Emma Proud
Protecting Ethiopia's people, animals and environment
Country: Ethiopia
Photo: Emma Proud/Mercy Corps
We’ve been in the car for a long time in the last couple of days. We’re in Gashamo, a small town in the desert. A couple of days ago we drove for nine hours drive on bumpy sandy tracks from the Somali Region capital of Jijiga.
The drive was long and uncomfortable, captivating and bone shaking. We drove through areas of acacia woodland, the dry, prickly trees providing animals much-sought shelter. Tiny dik diks often scampered across or away from the road, startled by the car. Their spindly legs barely seem strong enough to carry these miniature deer, but they dart almost as quickly as the car.
The trees flattened into shrubs, other acacia. Two grey foxes with bushy tails crossed the track in front of us. Shrubs thin. At times the road is so thick with sand that it crashes like waves over the car as we drive. The windscreen wipers push it to sand banks at the bottom of the windscreen. As we approach Gashamo, the sand becomes steadily redder until shrubs disappear, leaving only occasional tufts of grass, pushed into mounds where the termites are demolishing it before livestock can graze.
Early the next morning, after a breakfast of Somali injera doused in sesame oil and glasses of thick sweet tea, we head another hour out of town. We pass the village of Samatar. Ahmed Osman — our incredibly smart, dedicated Natural Resource Officer — explains that he conducted a process of natural resource mapping in this kebele (village) and the community described how during the rainy season the village is cut in half by floods.
It’s hard to imagine that in an environment so parched, but the evidence is there to be seen. The roads that we’ve been traveling on the last couple of days are literally tracks in the desert. For a while, a particular track is used. After a time, someone takes a detour and others follow – a new road is forged. The old roads, with their packed sand and furrows, become gullies. At first sight it appears that the area is fortunate enough to benefit from seasonal streams but, under the tutelage of Ahmed, I learn that these are the old roads, filled with sand washed down by rain.
As part of the natural resource mapping process, the community from Samatar had designed a community action plan detailing how they will address the challenges they currently face and the assistance they would like from Mercy Corps. They detailed the soil and water conservation structures they’d like to build, to prevent the rain and sand from washing to their village and to get more benefit from the rain where it is most needed — on the rangeland, to generate pasture. Last week, Ahmed began these soil and water conservation activities as part of a cash-for-work programme. Members of the village are paid according to the amount of work completed to undertake this valuable task.
Photo: Emma Proud/Mercy Corps
Five kilometers outside the village, we reach the area that’s been carefully designated to trap the run-off. As soon as we get out of the car, the work is visible. There’s no immediate sign of anyone around, but a mesmerizing sound of rhythmic singing carries on the wind.
We follow the trenches and freshly dug soil bunds and approach the voices. A workforce of 60 people have been working on the 55 acre site. Men are hard at work with axes and shovels. They have dug five water diversion channels, with rows of soil bunds in between. These bunds are semi-circles of nearly two-foot deep trenches, with soil piled up on the far side of the water flow. The rain will be stopped here, allowing time for the water to soak back into the soil and regenerate pasture.
Soil degradation and recurrent drought have decimated pasture in recent seasons, leaving livestock wanting and demolishing seed banks. The community will protect this area from livestock until it’s regenerated so the full benefit can be felt by pastoralists and their livestock.
In this way, this simple cash-for-work activity will protect the environment, the livestock that feed on it and the people who rely on the animals for their livelihoods.
Blog Post: Posted February 15, 2010, 11:53 pm by Elpido Soplantila
Let the children enjoy the world
Country: Indonesia
It is almost midnight here in Ambon, Indonesia. I’m about going to sleep but I realized that I haven’t visited the Mercy Corps Blog today. Since morning I was too busy at the office completing some work and didn't have any chance to do my everyday ritual — reading the blog.
So, late at night here, I took a few minutes to read some of the new entries. And again, I was so impressed how the Mercy Corps Blog can become a powerful medium to present our agency's work to the world.
From some recent entries, I found out that there are at least five contributors who have written on the topic of children. And I am quite interested with what Bija Gutoff has shared in her piece, "Second graders rally around Haitian classmate." It is so amazing how even very young children can express their empathy and take action to help others.
I’m proud of what Mercy Corps has done to support children in Haiti because during disasters, children are the ones who suffer most from trauma and need something to help them heal. It takes time for them to return to some sense of normalcy. And it made me think of some of the work we're doing here in Ambon, involving children in conflict-affected communities.
Our Water and Environmental Sanitation project has taught us that children in Ambon can be great champions and role models who can teach the whole community about the importance of keeping the environment clean and healthy. Mercy Corps has been working here in Ambon for more than ten years now, since the Maluku conflict divided communities along religious lines, displaced thousands of people and traumatized entire families. As in Haiti, we started with emergency response and then shifted into more long-term development programmes. Water and Sanitation is now one of the major aspects of our current programme here, and children are among our most helpful partners in this work.
With funding from UNICEF and Western Union, Mercy Corps helped stage a one-week event here in Ambon, called Festival Pinggir Kali, between February 8-13. Some of the things we focused on during this event were health, sanitation and environmental stewardship. Here are some pictures from the festival, which help illustrate just how involved local children are in our programmes:
These young children demonstrated the importance of washing their hands with soap. They helped teach their classmates and community that clean hands will help keep them from getting preventable illnesses like diarrhoea. Photo: Dany Bell/Mercy Corps
Through a colouring competition, Mercy Corps helped encourage children to love and respect their environment. Many of the poor neighborhoods in Ambon where we work are environmentally damaged, with piles of garbage and polluted streams. Photo: Dany Bell/Mercy Corps
For older children — those 7 to 9 years old — Mercy Corps sponsored a drawing competition to express their creativity. Through their drawings, children showed what they see around their neighborhood and tried to motivate neighbors to keep their environment clean and healthy. Photo: Dany Bell/Mercy Corps
All of this looks so simple, but it can be very powerful. These children have overcome the trauma of the Maluku conflict and its aftermath, but they still need our support. When we give them that support, they can thrive and become true and creative partners in our work to help neighborhoods and families.
Children in Haiti are still suffering in the aftermath of the earthquake and need our support. Together, let's help them recover and let them enjoy the world.
Posted December 9, 2009 by Ross Hornsey
Edinburgh Hotel Helps Deliver Life Support to Colombia’s Poor
Country: Colombia
Top Edinburgh hotel Ten Hill Place, which is owned by the city’s Royal College of Surgeons, has partnered with Mercy Corps to launch a new initiative aimed at powering essential healthcare services for a remote Colombian village, whilst also reducing its’ own CO2 emissions.
The initiative aims to build a micro-hydro renewable energy facility in Minaflores, a remote community of indigenous families nestled deep within Colombia’s mountainous interior. Harnessing the power of a 62 metre waterfall, the facility would deliver enough clean, cheap, reliable energy to safely store life-saving medicines and vaccines while reducing local energy dependence on the use of diesel and kerosene.
Minaflores is a 5 hour hike from the nearest health clinic. It has no source of electricity and no prospect of being connected to Colombia’s national grid. Currently the village gets by using one gasoline generator for emergencies and local midwives are forced to rely on candles and kerosene lamps, severely increasing the risk of complications during night-time childbirths.
The project would further transform villagers’ lives by allowing them to install electric lighting and cooking facilities and also have mobile telephones for emergencies. Ten Hill Place hopes to raise £33,000 for the project from a discretionary £1 charge per night; a sum which represents the cost of each guest’s carbon emissions.
View details of the carbon-offsetting partnership we have with this Edinburgh hotel.
View the hotel’s carbon-offsetting scheme.
Blog Post: Posted November 4, 2009, 4:54 am by Annalise Briggs
Can you spare a square?
Country: Indonesia
These blue bins underneath the freeway in North Jakarta contain organic material for compost to sell as part of Mercy Corps' Community Based Solid Waste Management programme. Photo: Greg Briggs for Mercy Corps
I didn’t expect my first blog post from the field to be about sanitation. I thought maybe microfinance or agriculture programmes or mobile commerce. Something unique, innovative, life changing. But sanitation? Toilets? Hand washing? What could be less cutting edge?
Actually, I was surprised to find out just how innovative Mercy Corps’ approach to water and sanitation is.
In Jakarta, the bustling capital of Indonesia that is home to almost 10 million people, waste and sanitation is a major obstacle. Not washing hands can spread disease and cause life-threatening illnesses. Not only are there not clean toilets with running water or soap but even when you find a clean toilet (like in a hotel or nice restaurant), there’s no infrastructure to properly process the waste. In other words, human waste is seeping into the ground and rivers all over Jakarta. Innovation is not limited to coming up with a completely new concept, but developing a new approach to something totally ubiquitous in our daily lives.
The project I visited today is a pilot project working on a multi-level approach to waste management. There is empty space underneath the freeway, which has been used by make-shift houses that easily catch on fire. Mercy Corps has developed a programme to use this space to process waste from the communities and make compost to sell.
Yatini, a mother of 8 children and 14 grandchildren, who lives next to the freeway overpass makes hand bags with her daughters out of recycled rubbish. Photo: Greg Briggs for Mercy Corps
Waste is collected in the neighborhood, separated and the organic material is made into compost. This solves numerous problems: a positive use for the vulnerable and challenging space underneath the freeway; economic opportunities for people to find work; environmentally safe waste management and communities working together.
There’s more. Some of the women in this neighborhood are recycling plastic coffee, detergent and soap wrappers to make into reusable shopping bags and purses. (I was able to put a considerable dent in their inventory — a woman can never have too many handbags).
Together, Mercy Corps staff is working with these community members to solve daily problems in a completely new way. Now’s that’s innovative.
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