Opinion: UNEP and the Green Economy – Four Decades in Development

Environment Ministers Meeting in Nairobi Will Mark 40^th Anniversary

By Achim Steiner, 

UN Under Secretary General and UN Environment Programme (UNEP)

40 years ago in the Swedish capital city of Stockholm, history was made at a UN conference on the future of humanity and the planet that would propel Kenya and its capital into the centre of international environmental affairs.

Amid rising concern over pollution over the air, the land and the seas; the growing loss of species and the dying of forests as a result of acid rain, governments agreed that a UN body charged with coordinating a global response to such challenges should be established.

Between June 1972 and the UN General Assembly that year, many countries lobbied to have this new environmental body including Mexico, India, the United States and the UK.

But in the end the Kenya won the diplomatic debate and in doing so became the first developing country to host a UN headquarters.

UNEP, as it became known, had its first headquarters in the Kenyatta International Conference Centre.

Black and white photographs taken on 2 October 1973 at the inaugural celebrations show President Kenyatta, flanked by forest rangers and game wardens, waving his signature fly whisk while 43 year-old Canadian Maurice Strong, UNEP’s first Executive Director, stands to attention.

Two years later UNEP moved into its premises in Gigiri on the site of an old coffee farm where it remains to this day employing around 1130 local and international staff and acting as a hub for a strategic network of regional offices in Bangkok, Panama City, Washington DC, Geneva and Bahrain.

For many Kenyans going about their daily lives, UNEP and its work can sometimes seem remote.

It was originally set up to coordinate the rest of the UN system’s activities on environmental issues and to provide the science to member states on emerging trends in environmental change.

The emphasis on science has perhaps been among UNEP’s most important contributions that in turn has led to governments negotiating key global treaties to address emerging environmental crises.

The Montreal Protocol on Substances that Deplete the Ozone layer—the protective shield that filters out dangerous levels of the sun’s ultra violet rays—is a case in point.

It became clear in the 1980s that certain chemicals used in products such as fridges to fire-fighting equipment were attacking the ozone layer.  By 2010, this UNEP treaty had coordinated the phase-out of over 100 of these harmful gases.

Without the Montreal Protocol, atmospheric levels of ozone-depleting substances could have increased tenfold by 2050 which in turn could have led to up to 20 million more cases of skin cancer and 130 million more cases of eye cataracts, not to speak of damage to human immune systems, wildlife and agriculture.

Bringing forward the science and convening treaty negotiations continues to this day.

Only a few months ago, governments from across the world met in Gigiri to push forward plans for a global agreement on mercury—a notorious heavy metal that damages the nervous system.

The Mad Hatter in Alice in Wonderland was so called because hat makers once used mercury to strengthen the brims of hats and breathed in the fumes.

In the late 1980s, as the world was struggling to understand the implications of rising greenhouse gases in the atmosphere UNEP and the World Meteorological Organization established the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change.

Its scientific work has become the premier risk assessment and reference work for governments on the likely trends and impacts of global warming and the Panel’s findings played a key role in the decision to establish the UN climate convention and its emission reduction treaty, the Kyoto Protocol.

Following the famous Earth Summit of 1992, UNEP was given more opportunities to evolve its work as an implementing agency of a new multibillion-dollar fund, the Global Environment Facility.

Kenya has been among several developing countries where maps of solar power and wind speeds have been developed that in turn are assisting the government and overseas investors to install renewable energy.

The expansion of Kenya’s geothermal electricity potential in the Great Rift Valley has been made possible in part by a UNEP-led project to bring in new, more reliable and cost effective drilling techniques.

Since 2008, the organization has been championing the Green Economy as a way of generating development and employment but in a way that keeps humanity’s footprint within ecological boundaries.

Kenya’s energy policy of the past few years is part of that transition as is its new engagement on restoring and rehabilitating its ecosystems.

Part of the Green Economy work has been to assess and communicate to governments the multi-trillion dollar services that nature provides, but which until recently have been all but invisible in national accounts of profit and loss.

Here in Kenya, UNEP has partnered with the government to assess the value of the Mau forest complex, which over the past few decades has lost some 30 per cent of its cover.

It is estimated that the services this forest generates—water for around a dozen rivers systems that for example feed the Maasai Mara and Lake Nakuru; moisture for the tea industry and carbon storage—are worth in total up to $1.5 billion a year to the Kenyan economy.

These estimates have assisted in tipping the balance in favour of restoration rather than degradation of this key natural asset.

Often large UN conferences can seem to outsiders like talk fests and certainly assisting over 190 nations to agree and to cooperate can sometimes prove frustrating.

But often the real benefits, especially in respect to environmental action of what nations agree only emerge years or even decades later.

At the World Summit on Sustainable Development in Johannesburg in 2002, UNEP was asked to spearhead a partnership in order to accelerate a global phase-out of leaded petrol: Lead is especially damaging to the brain of infants and the young.

Since then around 80 developing countries including Ghana, Kenya, Tanzania, South Africa, Vanuatu and several in the Caribbean have removed lead from transport fuels and only now are the enormous benefits emerging.

Scientists calculate that improvements in IQ, reductions in cardiovascular diseases, and decline in criminality are among the annual US$2.4 trillion benefits linked to ridding the world of leaded

These economic benefits may prove to be even higher if other diseases and factors such as cancer and rising urbanization, where the impacts of lead pollution are higher, were brought into the calculations.

It is one example of how environmental measures and action also links directly to the social factors and issues of poverty, equity and livelihoods.

Kenya has benefited from hosting UNEP, but so too has UNEP benefited from being in East Africa.

The inspiration, determination, humility, humour, advice and support of someone like the late Nobel Peace Prize laureate Wangari Maathai has shaped this institution in ways that have built UNEP’s confidence to go that extra mile and eschew the status quo.

So what of the future? As environment ministers gather in Nairobi for their annual meeting of the UNEP Governing Council in February 2012, all eyes are on the follow up to the Earth Summit of 1992.

Rio+20, taking place in June, may prove to be an opportunity where the Green Economy initiative is translated into a fresh and forward-looking way of finally realizing sustainable development for seven billion people, rising to over nine billion by 2050.

Some governments, including Kenya and Germany, are also signaling that the time has come to strengthen UNEP itself perhaps into a World Environment Organization.

40 years ago many of the challenges facing people and the planet were still theoretical today they are fast becoming reality.

The emergence of UNEP from Stockholm in 1972 was for some a surprise package—whether June 2012 will evolve the UNEP story onto a higher level, only time will tell.

Kenya and Tanzania are major ivory smuggling routes, says TRAFFIC

By Ochieng’ Ogodo

Journalist-Kenya

Kenyan and Tanzanian ports accounted for the largest seizures of illicit ivory from Africa by the close of last year.

This happened against a backdrop of 2011 recording the largest number of large ivory seizure globally, reflecting the sharp rise in illegal ivory trade underway since 2007

Although official confirmation of the volume of ivory involved in some cases was not yet been registered, it was clear this was a dramatic increase in the number of large-scale seizures, over 800 kg in weight took place in 2011—at least 13 of them.

According to TRAFFIC-a joint programme of IUCN and WWF-this compares to six large seizures in 2010, whose total weight was just less than 10 tonnes. A conservative estimate of the seizure weight in the 13 largest seizures in 2011 puts the figure at more than 23 tonnes, a figure that probably represents some 2,500 elephants or possibly more.

The most recent case in these that came to light was of 727 ivory pieces discovered on December 21 concealed inside a container at the port of Mombasa, and was destined for Asia.

“In 23 years of compiling ivory seizure data for ETIS, this is the worst year ever for large ivory seizures—2011 has truly been a horrible year for elephants,” said Tom Milliken, TRAFFIC’s Elephant expert in a press release of December 29.

If the records of hundreds of smaller ivory seizures are compiled, 2011 could pass as the worst year ever for elephants in the database.

“The escalating large ivory quantities involved in 2011 reflect both a rising demand in Asia and the increasing sophistication of the criminal gangs behind the trafficking. Most illegal shipments of African elephant ivory end up in either China or Thailand,” said Miliken

From the seizures, the smugglers appeared to have changed from using air to sea freight as in the early 2011, three of the large scale ivory seizures were at airports, but later in the year most were found in sea freight.

“The only common denominator in the trafficking is that the ivory departs Africa and arrives in Asia, but the routes are constantly changing, presumably reflecting where the smugglers gamble on being their best chance of eluding detection.”

In 2011 six of the large seizures, Malaysia was a transit country in the supply chain, a role that TRAFFIC first drew attention to in 2009.

In early December, Customs in Malaysia seized 1.4 tonnes of ivory concealed inside a shipping container from Kenya to Cambodia.

Once inside Asia, the documentation accompanying an onward shipment is changed to make it appear as a local re-export, helping to conceal its origin from Africa.

“That’s an indication of the level of sophistication enforcement officers are up against in trying to outwit the criminal masterminds behind this insidious trade,” said Milliken.  “As most large-scale ivory seizures fail to result in any arrests, I fear the criminals are winning.”

New plant discovered in Fiji

 Press Release

Gland, Switzerland, 19 January 2012 – A new flowering plant belonging to the Medinilla plant group has been discovered in the highlands of Matasawalevu village, on the island of Kadavu in Fiji. The plant was found during a biodiversity assessment of the Nakasaleka district carried out as part of IUCN’s Water and Nature Initiative (WANI).

There are around 193 known species of Medinilla, occurring in Madagascar, Africa, South Asia and the Pacific Islands. Of the 193 species, 11 can only be found in Fiji. One of them is the Tagimoucia flower, Medinilla waterhousei, the floral emblem of Fiji.

IUCN’s WANI works with local communities to help them better manage water resources on Kadavu island. The team was monitoring the degradation of the river basin in the area when the new plant was discovered.

“The discovery of this previously unknown species of plant gives us a sense of just how fragile nature can be,” says Dr Milika Sobey, Water and Wetlands Programme Coordinator at IUCN’s Oceania Regional Office. “The fact that it was found during work on a watershed management project is one more lesson in how important it is that nature is included in the priorities for water management.”

“Through the Water and Nature Initiative IUCN has shown in more than 30 countries worldwide that by working with local people and partners, it is possible to put in place sustainable solutions that meet the water needs of both people and nature,” says Dr Mark Smith, Director of the IUCN Global Water Programme.

The species was found on the border of grassland and primary forest. This location makes it highly vulnerable to bush fires that are common in the area.

“We only managed to find one plant of this kind,” says  Mr Marika Tuiwawa, of the University of the South Pacific’s Institute of Applied Science, IUCN member and partner in the WANI project, who discovered the species. “Commercial agricultural activities and uncontrolled bush fires are the main threats to this species. A simple fire could destroy it in a matter of minutes.”

The plant’s common name has not been confirmed yet but the name Medinilla matasawalevu has been suggested to illustrate its location.

“The fact that only one plant of this kind was found so far and that it occurs in such a vulnerable place should set alarm bells ringing,” says Dr Jane Smart, Global Director of IUCN’s Biodiversity Conservation Group. “The challenge now is to protect the new species and raise awareness of its importance among local communities, to secure its long term future.”

Work is currently underway to confirm the exact classification of the new species, for which DNA research may be carried out

Alien Crayfish a threat to Africa's unique endemic aqauatic animals species

By Ochieng’ Ogodo

 Journalist-Kenya

A ‘weird’ alien fish that eats fish eggs and fingerlings is beginning to cause worry across Africa. It is feared that the Red Claw Crayfish, also known as the  Louisiana Crayfish with  much less edible meat-native to the United States of America and is one of the species from the northern hemisphere-is becoming a threat to unique endemic species of aquatic animals in  lakes and other water bodies.

It is not known exactly when the first Louisiana Crayfish were imported to Africa but it is thought in the 1970s both into Kenya and South Africa.

Geoffrey Howard, Global Coordinator for Invasive Species, Invasive Species Initiative, IUCN Species Programme, said the Red Claw Crayfish was imported to South Africa as an aquaculture species for specialty food supply. It was brought to Lake Naivasha in Kenya to breed up and send the crayfish to Scandinavia where native freshwater crayfish had been wiped out by a disease brought to Europe by the same Louisiana Crayfish much earlier.

In Kenya, they were also brought to the dams around Nairobi, Kiambu and Limuru to rid them of the freshwater snails that are the vectors for bilharzia.

But the Red Claw Crayfish, which is bigger and more aggressive and so more dangerous, can kill and eat the native freshwater crabs, other crustaceans and many forms of aquatic life according to Howard.

It can reduce fishable fish population

“By eating fish eggs and fingerlings, said Howard, “they can reduce the populations of fishable fish and so affect fisheries.  By removing animals and plants from wetlands they can upset the balance of ecosystems and reduce valuable ecosystem functions.”

But of greatest importance to conservationists and those interested in biodiversity is their threat to unique endemic species of aquatic animals in three eastern Africa Great lakes of Malawi, Tanganyika and Victoria where there are hundreds, probably thousands, of species found nowhere else. 

 If the crayfish gets into the lakes and become invasive, they could remove many of the unique species forever.

They are not native to Africa and have no natural enemies or competitors to keep their populations in check.  They are omnivorous and can eat small fish, fish eggs, other crustacea, molluscs and water plants.  They also burrow into the edges of dams, rivers and lakes to make nests and can destroy the dam infrastructure or the banks of rivers and lakes. The burrowing behaviour can cause water canals to leak and earth dams to collapse.

Unlike most aquatic animals, said Howard, the freshwater crayfish can stay out of water for many hours at a time, especially at night and on wet days.  Thus they are not restricted to the catchments of any particular water bodies and can walk across dry land for many kilometers. 

“Walking” fish

“They can also walk and swim upstream in rivers that feed lakes and can even more easily move downstream in rivers and streams.  In addition, they have been moved by people using them as fishing bait and possibly for food and those collecting specimens for aquariums,” he said. 

In these ways the crayfish have become widespread although it is not possible to be precise how far because there has never been any funding in Africa to detect and map their spread. 

In Kenya, for instance, they are now quite widely distributed in the Lake Victoria Basin, in the Naivasha Basin and its feeder rivers; in the Ewaso Ngiro (north) Basin and in many water bodies and wetlands around the wetter areas of the country. 

They are also in Rwanda, Uganda, along the Nile and especially common in Egypt; and in the Zambezi basin.  Seychelles and Mauritius are no exception and are also wild in some parts of South Africa.

Said Howard, “No statistics because they are rarely seen or recognized as a threat.  But they have certainly affected the fishery in Naivasha.”

Whereas it is possible to control (eradicate) crayfish from very small water bodies by trapping and possibly poisoning, research is developing hormonal and pheromonal methods but these are not yet available to us.  Mechanical barriers can be used to stop their spread – but only if we know their precise distribution. That is the problem at present.

Arne Witt, invasive-species coordinator for CABI said, with no host specific natural enemies (predators, parasites and/or diseases) it to proliferate - as a result it can build up populations rapidly to the detriment of indigenous plant and animal species.

“ It has the ability to feed on green plants, animals including aquatic invertebrates, especially insect larvae, amphibians, plant detritus, plankton, periphyton and benthos – it has been held responsible for the disappearance of many aquatic plant species from specific systems especially floating-leaves and submerged native species,” he said

Louisiana Crayfish has the ability to change or switch diets based on the availability of food items and as such has an impact on the ecological functioning of any water body. It can also change water quality affecting habitats for native aquatic fauna and flora.

Whereas some people have benefited from catching and eating or selling the crayfish, it is a bit of a boom and bust venture as crayfish can build up numbers quickly and then the populations can collapse once they have eaten themselves out of house and home and no industry can sustain itself on an irregular supply of a natural resource according to Arne.

Need for control

It obviously reduces the amount of prey items available for other organisms such as fish and birds. “It destroys the whole ecological balance in systems – all life on this planet is dependent on diversity – if we were to become dependent on one resource we could put ourselves at immense risk.” 

Arne said there is not much that can be done in water bodies where it currently exists but in long term a host specific disease may be found to reduce abundance. In the short term we may consider enhancing or facilitating the capture of this crayfish on a regular basis in order to reduce numbers. Removing water hyacinth and other aquatic weeds from water bodies such as Lake Naivasha may also expose them to higher levels of predation by birds. We also need to ensure that people stop moving them around – this should be made illegal and punishable by law.

It poses a significant threat to the ecological integrity of our water bodies.

Malaria deaths are down but progress remains fragile

News release

13 December 2011 | Geneva - Malaria mortality rates have fallen by more than 25% globally since 2000, and by 33% in the WHO African Region, according to the World malaria report 2011, issued today by WHO. This is the result of a significant scaling-up of malaria prevention and control measures in the last decade, including the widespread use of bed nets, better diagnostics and a wider availability of effective medicines to treat malaria.

However, WHO warns that a projected shortfall in funding threatens the fragile gains and that the double challenge of emerging drug and insecticide resistance needs to be proactively addressed.

Malaria incidence and mortality rates fall

"We are making significant progress in battling a major public health problem. Coverage of at-risk populations with malaria prevention and control measures increased again in 2010, and resulted in a further decline in estimated malaria cases and deaths," says Dr Margaret Chan, WHO Director-General. "But there are worrisome signs that suggest progress might slow."

During the past decade, malaria incidence and mortality rates have been cut in all regions of the world, according to the report. In 2010, there were an estimated 216 million cases of malaria in 106 endemic countries and territories in the world. An estimated 81% percent of these cases and 91% of deaths occurred in the WHO African Region. Globally, 86% of the victims were children under 5 years of age.

There were an estimated 655 000 malaria deaths in 2010, which is 36 000 lower than the year before.¹ While this 5% year-on-year decline represents significant progress, the mortality figures are still disconcertingly high for a disease that is entirely preventable and treatable.

"With malaria deaths in Africa having fallen significantly since 2000, the return on our investment to end malaria deaths has been greater than any I have experienced in the business world. But one child still dies every minute from malaria - and that is one child and one minute too many,” says Raymond G. Chambers, the UN Secretary General's Special Envoy for Malaria.

“The toll taken by the current economic crisis must not result in our gains being reversed, or progress slowed. With Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon’s charge for near zero deaths by end of 2015, turning back now is not an option,” Mr Chambers adds.

Steady progress in malaria control measures

Long-lasting insecticidal nets have been one of the least expensive and most effective weapons in the fight against malaria. According to the new report, the number of bed nets delivered to malaria-endemic countries in sub-Saharan Africa increased from 88.5 million in 2009 to 145 million in 2010. An estimated 50% of households in sub-Saharan Africa now have at least one bed net, and 96% of persons with access to a net use it.

There has also been further progress in rolling out diagnostic testing, which is crucially important to separate malaria from other febrile illnesses. The number of rapid diagnostic tests delivered by manufacturers climbed from 45 million in 2008 to 88 million in 2010, and the testing rate in the public sector in the WHO African Region rose from 20% in 2005 to 45% in 2010.

Worldwide, the volume of antimalarial medication delivered to the public sector has also increased. In 2010, 181 million courses of artemisinin-based combination therapies (ACTs) were procured, up from 158 million in 2009, and just 11 million in 2005. ACTs are recommended as the first-line treatment for malaria caused by the most deadly malaria parasite, Plasmodium falciparum.

Projected shortfall in funding

Despite significant progress in 2010, the projected shortfall in malaria funding threatens the hard-earned gains of the last decade.

International funds for malaria control reached US$ 1.7 billion in 2010 and US$ 2 billion in 2011, but remained significantly below the US$ 5-6 billion that would be needed annually to achieve global malaria targets. According to projections in the report, despite increased support from the United Kingdom, malaria funding will slightly decrease in 2012 and 2013, and will likely drop further to an annual US$ 1.5 billion by 2015.

Triggered primarily by the reduction in available funding within the Global Fund to Fight AIDS, Tuberculosis and Malaria, this decrease will considerably alter the malaria control landscape and threaten the sustainability of the multipronged approach to fight the disease, which relies heavily on investments in bed nets, indoor residual spraying, diagnostic testing, treatment, research and innovation.

"We need a fully-resourced Global Fund, new donors, and endemic countries to join forces and address the vast challenges that lie ahead. Millions of bed nets will need replacement in the coming years, and the goal of universal access to diagnostic testing and effective treatment must be realized," says Dr Robert Newman, Director of WHO's Global Malaria Programme. "We need to act with urgency and resolve to ensure that no-one dies from malaria for lack of a 5 dollar bed net, 1 dollar antimalarial drug and a 50 cent diagnostic test."

Emerging threats

Plasmodium falciparum resistance to artemisinins, which was confirmed on the Cambodia-Thailand border in 2009, has now also been identified at additional sites in Myanmar and Viet Nam. WHO has recommended that all countries ban the marketing of oral artemisinin-based monotherapies, which have been one of the major factors fostering the emergence and spread of resistance. Despite continued international pressure, 25 countries still allow the marketing of oral artemisinin-based monotherapies and 28 pharmaceutical companies continue to market these products (down from 39 in 2010).

The problem of mosquito resistance to insecticides also appears to be growing, although to date has not been linked to widespread failure of malaria vector control efforts. According to the World malaria report 2011, which includes data on insecticide resistance for the first time - 45 countries around the world have identified resistance to at least one of the four classes of insecticides used for malaria vector control; 27 of these are in sub-Saharan Africa. Resistance has been reported from all WHO Regions except the WHO European Region. India and malaria-endemic countries in sub-Saharan Africa are of greatest concern due to widespread reports of resistance - in some areas to all classes of insecticides - combined with a high malaria burden.

Current malaria control efforts are heavily reliant on a single class of insecticides, the pyrethroids, which are the most commonly used compounds for indoor residual spraying, and the only insecticide class recommended - and currently used - on long-lasting insecticidal nets. In response to this emerging threat, WHO is currently working with a broad group of stakeholders to develop a Global Plan for Insecticide Resistance Management in malaria vectors, which will be released in early 2012.

Notes to editors

The World malaria report 2011 is an annual publication from WHO. It summarizes information received from malaria-endemic countries and malaria control partners, and analyses prevention and control measures according to a comprehensive set of indicators. This year's report builds primarily on data received from countries for the year 2010. For the first time, the report contains individual profiles for 99 countries with ongoing malaria transmission.

For more information, please contact:

Zsofia Szilagyi

Mobile: +41 79 500 6538

E-mail: szilagyiz@who.int

Samantha Bolton

Mobile: +41 79 239 2366

E-mail: samanthabolton@gmail.com

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¹ The total number of estimated malaria deaths presented in World malaria report 2011 (655 000 deaths) is substantially lower than the number presented in the World malaria report 2010 (781 000 deaths). This is partly because of an actual decrease in the number of malaria deaths (36 000), and partly because of a downward revision of child mortality estimates for all causes and diseases - for the past decade - by the UN Inter-agency Group for Child Mortality Estimation. This revision reduced malaria mortality estimates in the WHO African Region by approximately 11%.

New farming technolgies putting money into onion farmers pockets

By Ochieng’ Ogodo

Journalist-Kenya

[NAIROBI] In his two-acre farm in West Kieni in Nyeri County, Central Kenya, Simon Nderitu stooped as he scrutinised his red bulb onions crop for the season.

“Before the project, I was farming because it was what everybody else did here to get food. But things have changed significantly for small-holder farmers who embraced a farming project led by Farm Concern International,” he said. 

Nderitu is among participants in an initial pilot project spearheaded by Farm Concern International (FCI) started with 2,000 people in 2007 but has since been scaled up to include 10,000 farmers in Kieni site.

A combination of holistic extension and advisory approaches, it instills good agro-practices for higher quality production, treats agriculture as means to social integration, brings farmers and traders together in mutual business understanding, and ensures government agricultural officers deliver service at the point of need.

It fosters new technologies adoption and advises farmers on sound financial practices like savings. Ultimately, it aim at value addition from the farm to consumers.

Nderitu now knows how to prepare his land, secure affordable right seed varieties and plant based on seasonal projections and market demand. 

Yields trebled

The project has enabled him to more than treble his farm yields.  “Before 2008, I used to cultivate open pollinated varieties, which gave me on average 4,500 kilograms in a good season. But after adopting hybrid variety in 2008 and employing other good farming practices, the same piece of land yielded for me 7000 kg in my first harvest under the project,” said Nderitu.

An onion farm

Convinced by this huge gain, he dedicated two thirds of an acre to hybrid onion in 2009, and the yield shot up by 2000 kilograms. Today, the father of three is a proud owner of an eight-roomed decent timber house, dairy cattle and his children have been moved from public schools to a private academy for quality education.

Coming from a laid-back peasantry economy in a semi-arid area, he now knows how to space seeds when planting and what varieties will fetch good returns. “I have learnt how to identify the right fertilizer and the amount to apply, when to start weeding and how to cure the onions to prevent them from rotting after harvesting,” he added.

From the nursery to maturation, onions take on average 120 days and a kilo middles at KSh.30 to KSh.50 (US$ 0.318-0.531) compared to four years ago when same could fetch only KSh.5 (US$ 0.053) a kilo.

Nderitu, the chairman of Embaringo Commercial Village - a consortium of farmer groups within a given administrative village-said they have seen a revolution since 2008 with farmers moving from mainly subsistence production to commercial farming.

Socio-economic transformations

“Many children are now able to go to school, good houses are coming up and the young are turning to farming instead of migrating to urban centers for the ever elusive promise of employment,” he said.

The project directly links farmers to traders eliminating crafty middlemen that dominated sale and fleeced farmers. He said some middle men are resorting to onion farming after seeing the possibility of lucrative returns and others play the role of bulking during low production within the villages.

Nderitu, the personification farming revolution in the project, said opportunities have been created. Shopping centers in the once poverty stricken sleepy village of Embaringo is a clear indication.

The Embaringo Commercial Village, he explained, coordinates production, sales, collective savings, looks into the welfare of farmers as well as negotiates for bulk farm inputs at a much lower cost compared to individual purchases.

Gerald Ngatia Watoro, Market and Trade Manager for Mount Kenya Region project that combines both Kieni West and East said the pilot has made a huge impact.

“The communities then had no organised mechanism in production and market development. We, therefore, decided to focus on hybrid red bulb onion having realised that it would not only lift many out of total penury but positively impact on development in this rural setting. On average production was low at, about 1500 kg per acre and the quality of the onions was poor,” he said.

FCI launched the project with the involvement of the Ministry of Agriculture Officials, the local Provincial Administration and the farmers. “We wanted an all-inclusive process built on a consensus rather than a top-down approach. We wanted the people to own the concept for it to work,” he said.

New technologies

A key component of the discussions was technologies that could be adapted. These included right seeds, proper agronomical practices and good post harvest technologies.

The project started with administrative villages made up of 150-200 households and created groups called commercial group, which formed an umbrella consortium called Commercial Villages.

These are members who have agreed to work together to form an economic bloc with common leadership.

Next were well-functioning community forums with various stakeholders including agro-input dealers, agricultural extension officers, onion seeds suppliers, traders and local administration. That has continued to date.

Farmers were trained in the science of small-scale commercial farming like good land tilling methods, nursery management and transplanting, weeding, use of herbicide on proper spraying methods and programmes, especially more effective and less costly preventive spraying. 

It also includes lessons on natural resource management and soil fertility: how to keep soils fertile through practices like crop rotation, water management through harvesting of path and roadside water run-offs into their gardens, digging of trenches to conserve water in farms and to check soil erosion.  

They have been trained on record keeping, both at individual farm level and for the village groups.

Farmers have been taught how to build ventilated onion multi-storage facilities. Onions are placed on raised wire mesh inside the building and farmers are encouraged not to stack more than four bags on top of one another.

After that you create another floor of wire mesh above and repeat the same process creating up to four different compartments in one storage area. It must have wind side not left open to avoid rain water being carried into it when it is raining. Onions must be turned every two weeks whilst in storage.

Today, project participants realise on average 10,000 kilogram of onions per acre and this fetches up to US$ 3194. Farm inputs and overhead costs averages US$ US 532 leaving a farmer with a profit of US$ 2662 from an acre of hybrid onion.

 They plant seed verities like Red pinoy FI, Jamba FI, and Red star, marketed by different seed dealers.

Commercial Village concept

Even more interesting about the project is the Commercial Village concept. It is an association of groups within a village known as Commercial Producer groups with various sub-committees and functions as a business hub.

Each sub-committee votes its nominees to the executive levels of the umbrella organ, the commercial village. The overall body comprises the production and natural resource management; Finance, Micro-insurance and Investments, Marketing and Value addition, Village Social Capital and Youth integration committees within functional and strong governance structures.

According to Watoro, the FCI market development strategy directly links farmers to traders and thus eliminates middlemen influence in the value chain.

Before planting begins, the traders will have met with farmers and discussed future market projections.  This is done under the village business forums where farmers from across the villages visit the markets for direct interaction with traders and knowing first hand what the market needs.

Traders too visit villages and farmers now have a growing database of onion traders in Nairobi, Mombasa, Karatina and Kisumu accessed easily from cell phones.

Onion traders are also trained in cash flow management, business development plans, transportation, customer selection and formation of traders associations. “What we want is sustainability, which is only possible if all the components are working efficiently and making profits,” Watoro explained.

Kieni has largely been considered developmental backwater. But Watoro said banking institutions are moved in and marked increase in those holding accounts has been seen.

According Stanley Mwangi, FCI Strategy and Partnership Director, they have focused on giving farmers the right knowledge and changing the attitude of farmers to see farming as commercial venture. They seek to make farmers develop habits like making savings and linking them with research institutions. Their new frontier in extension services will be the ICT.

Extension services still a major challenge

Providing rural people with access to knowledge and information for increased productivity and sustainability to improve life quality and livelihoods is still a major challenge in Kenya.

Farmers transplant onions in Kieni West-Nyeri

Those in less-favoured areas who depend on agriculture for their livelihoods have very poor access to agricultural services, including advice and training on new products and technologies due to poorly developed systems for access of local level service providers to new knowledge and products, the private sector’s inability to deliver services, poor resourced public extension services, weak infrastructure, and limited technical capacity among certain service providers like NGOs.

The Kieni project is an outpost of how efficient target oriented extension and advisory services on an area and groups can lead to tremendous rural development.

Ochieng' Ogodo is a Nairobi journalist whose works have been published in various parts of the world including Africa, the US and Europe. He is the English-speaking Africa and Middle East region winner for the 2008 Reuters-IUCN Media Awards for Excellence in Environmental Reporting. He is the former chairman of Kenya Environment and Science Journalists Association (Kensja). He can be reached at ochiengogodo@yahoo.com (primary email address),  or ochiengogodo@hotmail.com, or ochiengogodo@gmail.com.

Vaccine Targeting Latent TB Enters Clinical Testing

One-third of the World's People have Latent TB

COPENHAGEN, DENMARK/ROCKVILLE, MD, USA, December 1, 2011 – Statens Serum Institut and Aeras today announce the initiation of the first Phase I clinical trial of a new candidate TB vaccine designed to protect people latently infected with TB from developing active TB disease.  The trial is being conducted by the South African Tuberculosis Vaccine Initiative (SATVI) at its field site in Worcester, in the Western Cape province of South Africa. Dr. Hassan Mahomed is the principal investigator.

“Two billion men, women and children live with latent TB infection,” said Jim Connolly, President and Chief Executive Officer of Aeras. “It’s daunting to comprehend that there is a vast reservoir of people with a 5-10% lifetime risk of becoming sick with TB. A vaccine that prevents TB disease in this population could save millions of lives, and this trial is a first step in assessing a vaccine candidate designed for this purpose.”

The candidate TB vaccine (SSI H56-IC31) is a subunit vaccine containing recombinant TB proteins formulated in a proprietary adjuvant IC31^® from Intercell. It is being developed under a consortium of researchers led by Peter Andersen at the Statens Serum Institut (SSI) based in Copenhagen.  The consortium is supported as part of the Grand Challenges in Global Health, an initiative that fosters scientific breakthroughs needed to prevent, treat and cure diseases of the developing world. 

“The development of urgently needed new TB vaccines requires a global effort,” said Prof. Peter Andersen, the Vice President of Vaccine Research & Development at SSI. “The advancement of this candidate from an idea to the clinic working in collaboration first with the Grand Challenges consortium and now with Aeras and SATVI is an important and exciting milestone for all the researchers involved.”

This clinical trial will be the first to test this vaccine candidate in people.  It will assess the safety and immunogenicity of SSI H56-IC31 in 25 adults, including participants with and without latent TB infection. SSI H56-IC31 has been tested in several pre-clinical studies with no safety concerns and has shown efficacy in small animal models administered both before infection and to latently infected animals. The vaccine was also shown to control clinical disease and reactivation in a non-human primate model. This is the first time a South African research institute has led a first-in-human Phase I clinical trial of a new TB vaccine.

“SATVI is delighted to be part of the trial at this early stage, which is testament to the high-regard that the developers have for our TB vaccine clinical research expertise to conduct these crucial early trials in humans,” said SATVI Director, Professor Willem Hanekom.

SSI H56-IC31 is being developed for both adolescent and adult populations.  The trial has been approved by the Medicines Control Council of South Africa. Preliminary results of this trial are expected at the end of 2012.

###

About Statens Serum Institut (SSI)

SSI (www.ssi.dk) is a state owned enterprise under the Danish Ministry of Health and Prevention. The Institute is integrated in the national Danish health services. SSI´s mission is to prevent and control infectious diseases, biological threats, and congenital disorders. The institute strives to be a highly-regarded and internationally recognized research, production and service enterprise.

About Aeras

Aeras (www.aeras.org) is a non-profit product development organization dedicated to the development of effective vaccines and biologics to prevent TB across all age groups in an affordable and sustainable manner. Aeras has invented or supported the development of six TB vaccine candidates, which are undergoing Phase I and Phase II clinical testing in Africa, Asia, North America and Europe. Aeras receives funding from the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, other private foundations, and governments. Aeras is based in Rockville, Maryland, USA where it operates a state-of-the-art manufacturing and laboratory facility, and Cape Town, South Africa. 

 COPENHAGEN, DENMARK/ROCKVILLE, MD, USA, December 1, 2011 – Statens

Serum Institut and Aeras today announce the initiation of the first Phase I clinical trial of

a new candidate TB vaccine designed to protect people latently infected with TB from

developing active TB disease. The trial is being conducted by the South African

Tuberculosis Vaccine Initiative (SATVI) at its field site in Worcester, in the Western

Cape province of South Africa. Dr. Hassan Mahomed is the principal investigator.

“Two billion men, women and children live with latent TB infection,” said Jim Connolly,

President and Chief Executive Officer of Aeras. “It’s daunting to comprehend that there

is a vast reservoir of people with a 5-10% lifetime risk of becoming sick with TB. A

vaccine that prevents TB disease in this population could save millions of lives, and this

trial is a first step in assessing a vaccine candidate designed for this purpose.”

The candidate TB vaccine (SSI H56-IC31) is a subunit vaccine containing recombinant

TB proteins formulated in a proprietary adjuvant IC31® from Intercell. It is being

developed under a consortium of researchers led by Peter Andersen at the Statens Serum

Institut (SSI) based in Copenhagen. The consortium is supported as part of the Grand

Challenges in Global Health, an initiative that fosters scientific breakthroughs needed to

prevent, treat and cure diseases of the developing world.

“The development of urgently needed new TB vaccines requires a global effort,” said

Prof. Peter Andersen, the Vice President of Vaccine Research & Development at SSI.

“The advancement of this candidate from an idea to the clinic working in collaboration

first with the Grand Challenges consortium and now with Aeras and SATVI is an

important and exciting milestone for all the researchers involved.”

This clinical trial will be the first to test this vaccine candidate in people. It will assess

the safety and immunogenicity of SSI H56-IC31 in 25 adults, including participants with

and without latent TB infection. SSI H56-IC31 has been tested in several pre-clinical

studies with no safety concerns and has shown efficacy in small animal models

administered both before infection and to latently infected animals. The vaccine was also

shown to control clinical disease and reactivation in a non-human primate model. This is

the first time a South African research institute has led a first-in-human Phase I clinical

trial of a new TB vaccine.

“SATVI is delighted to be part of the trial at this early stage, which is testament to

the high-regard that the developers have for our TB vaccine clinical research expertise to

conduct these crucial early trials in humans,” said SATVI Director, Professor Willem

Hanekom.

SSI H56-IC31 is being developed for both adolescent and adult populations. The trial

has been approved by the Medicines Control Council of South Africa. Preliminary results

of this trial are expected at the end of 2012.

#

About Statens Serum Institut (SSI)

SSI (www.ssi.dk) is a state owned enterprise under the Danish Ministry of Health and

Prevention. The Institute is integrated in the national Danish health services. SSI´s

mission is to prevent and control infectious diseases, biological threats, and congenital

disorders. The institute strives to be a highly-regarded and internationally recognized

research, production and service enterprise.

About Aeras

Aeras (www.aeras.org) is a non-profit product development organization dedicated to the

development of effective vaccines and biologics to prevent TB across all age groups in an

affordable and sustainable manner. Aeras has invented or supported the development of

six TB vaccine candidates, which are undergoing Phase I and Phase II clinical testing in

Africa, Asia, North America and Europe. Aeras receives funding from the Bill & Melinda

Gates Foundation, other private foundations, and governments. Aeras is based in

Rockville, Maryland, USA where it operates a state-of-the-art manufacturing and

laboratory facility, and Cape Town, South Africa.

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