A rights-based approach to climate change

Posted on January 24, 2012 by Kate Morioka| Comments Off

By Kate Morioka, Research Project Manager

Over the past three months I have been analysing and making sense of the data collected from the field, using ActionAid’s rights-based approach as the framework for the analysis.

We often speak broadly about a rights-based approach and why it should underpin all development interventions. But what do we mean by a ‘rights-based’ approach? What does it look like? And how does it explain the problem of climate change? I found myself asking these very questions.

Without spoiling the gist of the research report – which is due to be released next month – I can say that a rights-based approach is about challenging the power imbalances that exist between developed and developing countries, and between men and women. It’s about identifying basic rights that may be compromised by climate change – whether it be the right to food, water, health, housing – and holding governments responsible for their legal obligations in promoting and protecting these rights. However, what appears to be missing from all the global climate change discussions is this rights-based approach. Climate change is not just a scientific problem. It is a development issue that threatens the lives of people all around the world, especially the 1.3 billion people who live in conditions of poverty.

When considering the rights implications of climate change, we need to bear in mind that human rights are:
- universal (they apply to everyone by virtue of being human)
- indivisible (all rights, including civil, political, economic, social and cultural, are inter-connected so that an advancement in one leads to improvement in another, and conversely, a deprivation of one right adversely affects another right) and
- inalienable (they can not be taken away from people).

Tackling climate change using a rights-based approach means putting people at the centre of discussions and decisions, and holding world leaders to account for their responsibilities in safeguarding people’s rights.

The research report, A Climate for Change: Understanding women’s vulnerability and adaptive capacity to climate change from ActionAid’s rights-based approach – case studies from Papua New Guinea and Solomon Islands will be available for download on this blog in February 2012.

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Beyond domestic chores: treating women as equals

Posted on October 10, 2011 by Kate Morioka| Leave a comment

By Kate Morioka, Research Project Manager

At the crack of dawn the women of Aisiko are up fetching water needed for the day and preparing breakfast for their families.  Once breakfast is over, women get ready to go to the garden, where they will spend 4-6 hours tending to their crops.  Aside from taking a couple of short breaks to drink water, women work through into the afternoon, then they head back to their homes before walking down to the stream to fetch water for the evening. There they do the clothes washing and carefully watch over their children who playfully swim in the rock pool.  Then they will fill up numerous bottles with stream water and head back to their homes to prepare the evening meal.  Once everyone is fed, they tend to the clean up and prepare for the next day, and often they can be the last ones to go to bed.

Whether the woman is young or old, or if they have young children or not, she is responsible for performing household duties and taking care of children. Culture defines the role and responsibilities of women, determining the types of duties and accountability they have.  At the same time, culturally defined gender norms can delineate the rights of women, which in turn can lead to the exclusion of women from certain activities.

Women are likely to exercise a high degree of influence within their homes because of the domestic and reproductive roles they perform.  They can make decisions about what food to grow and harvest in their gardens, what household items to buy or how much of their household incomes they should contribute to church, school, community or family activities.  They can also make decisions about the delegation of household chores.

Whilst women may have control over decisions about household affairs, their participation in decision making is likely to stop there.

At the community level, only a handful of women are likely to be appointed to leadership positions.  They are most likely to be representative spokespeople for other women in the community.  Some women may go onto become leaders at the provincial level but not at the national level – Solomon Islands is one of 12 nations in the world with no female parliamentarians (five of them are in the Pacific region.  Next year, PNG will be added to this list when its only female member of parliament, Dame Carol Kidu, retires from office).

For women in Solomon Islands to fully realise their rights, they must be recognised and valued beyond their domestic and reproductive roles.  Cultural norms that deny women of their participation in the public sphere need to be challenged and changed. Women have the right to be treated as equals. Failing to do so is pretending that the other half of the population doesn’t exist.

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Predicting false seasons

Posted on October 4, 2011 by Kate Morioka| Leave a comment

By Kate Morioka, Research Project Manager

Indigenous knowledge of the weather is very important in determining the beginning of new seasons so people know when to prepare, plant and harvest their gardens. In Solomon Islands, people use seasonal calendars passed on from their parents and grandparents to predict cyclones, wind changes and start of dry and wet seasons.

However the seasonal calendars which people in the Solomons have used for generations are proving to be no longer effective due to the changes in weather patterns caused by climate change.  ActionAid’s research in Siarana on the island of Ghella Pile in Central Province and Aisko in Central Malaita indicated that women and men are puzzled as to why the weather is so different to what their parents and grandparents have taught them.

In Siarana, women and men recalled how their parents used to tell them about the timing of Ara (easterly wind ) and Koburu (westerly wind). The Ara usually began around the month of June and the Koburu in December. “But now the winds come at any time,” one person explained.

Another person in Siarana told us about how people in the village used to sing songs about the weather to help them remember the timing of new seasons. However today the songs no longer match what is happening to the climate.

Similarly in Aisiko, people are confused as to why the weather is so different to the seasonal calendar used by their parents and why they are no longer able to tell the timing of the correct seasons.

“Our seasonal calendar dependeds on everything from the fruiting of nuts and flowers to animal activity, the moon, the wind, the rain and the sun.  But now the seasons are all mixed up and we can no longer rely on our seasonal calendar,” as one man from Aisiko explained.

“I don’t teach my own children about the seasonal calendar because it is not reliable anymore. It can no longer tell the weather because it is unpredictable.”

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Women concerned about food security

Posted on October 3, 2011 by Kate Morioka| Leave a comment

By Kate Morioka, Research Project Manager

Whilst women in Aisiko and Siarana don’t know what climate change is or what causes it, they are certainly aware that the climate is changing.  For most women in Solomon Islands who are the primary producers of food, climate change is having an impact on food security.

Women in both Aisiko and Siarana, the two study communities involved in ActionAid’s research, explained how dry and wet seasons are getting longer and more intense, which consequently impact on their ability to plant and harvest food.

Prolonged periods of rain and sun are especially impacting on pana [a local variety of yam] and yam, which are staples for people living in the Central Province of Solomon Islands.

“Before, pana and yam used to grow well in our gardens but not now.  They are dying because of too much rain and too much sun,” a young woman from Siarana explained. Her experiences were also confirmed by other women in the community.  They believe that their crop yields from their food gardens have been decreasing over the last decade because of the extreme weather changes.

Similar concerns are shared by women of Aisko in the highlands of Central Malaita.  The women in this community explained that when it rains, it rains very hard and as soon as the rain stops, the sun comes out with full force. The women told us that “this extreme change in weather affects sweet potato and taro, which are our staple foods.”

The extreme weather changes are also thought to be causing other problems to food crops, such as the introduction of new diseases and insects. “All our cabbages are being eaten by caterpillars and beetles, where as before we didn’t have this problem,” stated women in the village of Aisiko.

Recongnising the important role that women play in producing food and the potential impact of climate change on food production, both men and women in the two study villages remarked that if women are not able to get enough harvest from the gardens, then their families will go hungry.

People from the two study communities agreed that women are most vulnerable to the impacts of climate change because they are the ones who are responsible for producing food. If there aren’t sufficient crop yields, there are less produce for women to sell at the market and less for the family to eat, affecting both people’s livelihoods and food security.

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Cohesion, diversity and leadership – do they determine adaptive capacity?

Posted on August 31, 2011 by Kate Morioka| Leave a comment

By Kate Morioka, Research Project Manager

What makes communities adaptable or resilient? Are some communities more able to cope with calamities than others? If so what are the social determinants of resilience? How do population size and social diversity and local leadership affect adaptive capacity of communities experiencing climate change?

These are the very questions that I’m trying to answer as I begin analysing the data collected from our two study communities in Madang, PNG.

The Derin community, located on the floodplains of the Gogol Valley has a population of 500 people living in small hamlets based on familial ties.  For example, all of the men (i.e. grandfather, father, brothers, etc) from the same family will live together in one hamlet with their wives and children. So each hamlet itself was a socially cohesive unit consisting of extended family members across three or four generations.  Everyday life is focused on social interactions within the hamlet as well as between hamlets.  The latter interaction occurs informally or formally – conversations are simply struck as people pass other hamlets on their way to their food gardens or through more organised encounters at the market day or at church on Sundays.  Through these social interactions a sense of belonging, a sense of cohesiveness are defined and redefined, and for an outsider like me there was a definite feeling of connectedness in Derin.

The importance of community cohesion was evident when I asked people in Derin about what they thought they could do to cope with the climatic changes they were experiencing.  A large majority of people said they would like to see the community come together to discuss what was happening and develop a community-wide solution. I also spoke to various community leaders, including the leader of the women’s group and they also stated that climate change was an issue concerning everyone in the community and hence responses would need to come from the community as a whole.

Now compare Derin to our second study community of Siar.  This coastal community of 4,000 people is urbanised and land locked between two government plantations.  Despite the land constraints, Siar’s population is growing rapidly, hosting a high number of migrants from neighbouring provinces who come to Madang in search for better social and economic opportunities.  Unlike Derin, the community of Siar is heterogeneous (a social mix of people with non-familial ties), urbanised and ‘socially tense’.

It was clear from speaking to people in Siar that there was an undercurrent of mistrust and tension within the community.  Some of the women taking part in our focus group discussions told stories of people stealing food from other people’s gardens and of drinking problems among young men in the community.  Lack of leadership was also raised as a concern – women felt that there were no effective leaders in the community to mobilise people and act on the issues that the community was facing.

When asked about how the community could cope with the rising sea levels, coastal erosion and other climate change impacts, the majority of people in Siar identified outside solutions rather than focusing on solutions inside the community.  Financial assistance from NGOs was commonly mentioned as a solution – it was as if people had lost confidence in the ability and the capacity of their own community to come up with its own solutions.

So this brings me back to the questions I started with…to what extent do local leadership, community cohesion and social dynamics play in influencing adaptive capacity of communities?

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Women in Derin lack access to information about climate change

Posted on August 25, 2011 by Kate Morioka| Leave a comment

By Kate Morioka, Research Project Manager

ActionAid, together with the Bismark Ramu Group, recently completed data collection in Derin, a community of 500 people located on the floodplains of the Gogol Valley in Madang Province.

The research team interviewed 19 households – both male and female household heads – and facilitated group discussions with 50 women and 30 men about their experiences of climate change.

In the group discussion, both men and women’s groups identified women as being most vulnerable to the changes they were experiencing because of women’s role as primary food producers.  Men also noted that women were more vulnerable than men because of the reproductive role that they perform and as such required sufficient food and nutrition to carry on with their work.

When discussing the root causes of why women were more vulnerable to changes in climate than men, some of the women stated that it was because women lacked access to information. They said women could see the changes that were happening around them but they didn’t have or know how to access information about what was causing the changes and how to deal with them.  They felt that even though men had access to such information, they were not sharing it with their wives and other women in the community.

Meanwhile, both women and men agreed that the rainy season was getting longer each year and the weather less predictable.  These changes were having direct and indirect impacts on their living conditions, as well as on their food gardens and general wellbeing. The impacts identified by women and men from the Derin community include:

Impacts on housing and living conditions

• The ground is always wet, making it difficult for finding suitable dry areas to build houses and toilets

•  Housing structures succumbing to the frequency and the prolonged periods of rain – rotting of timber posts and roofing sheets (these are made of weaved sago palm)

•  Constant dampness inside the house, causing mildew and mould build up

• The ground becomes very muddy after the rain so it’s hard for people to stay clean and dry

Impacts on food gardens

•  Crop damage including smaller crop sizes, crop spoilage and decline in crop yields.  Crops most affected were taro, yam, greens and root crops. In particular, changes in colour and taste of yam

•     Severe water inundation, degrading soil fertility.  There is no where for the water to drain, causing flooding

•     Women are spending less time in the garden because of the rain, which means that families are having less and less garden food to eat

•     Food supply shortage is experienced during prolonged periods of rain

•     Before small gardens produced sufficient crop yields but now gardens need to be bigger to produce small crop yields

•     People are not able to tell when they should start preparing the garden for planting

Other related impacts

•     Prevalence of skin diseases resulting from rainwater build up

•     Increased rainfall is causing community concerns for malaria

•     When it rains, it is hard for the children to get to school because the ground becomes very muddy

•     If families have less food to eat then children come to school hungry and have a hard time concentrating in class

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Land is life

Posted on August 7, 2011 by Kate Morioka| 1 Comment


By Kate Morioka, Project Research Manager

Standing on the pontoon, I look straight down into the depths of the Bell Lagoon. The water is crystal clear and inviting. A swarm of tropical fish congregate around a coral mound, hiding from the mid day’s sun. A family of squid is swimming in sync with the incoming tide.

I look across to the other side of the Bell Lagoon – there are dense mangroves and rows of palm trees against a backdrop of rolling mountains that form the Gogol Valley. There is a lady on a timber canoe, casting her line to catch fish for this evening’s dinner.

For the past two weeks, I have been observing and learning about the importance of land (including sea) to the Papua New Guinean people.

My instant reaction in seeing the beautiful natural surrounding in Madang is “how fortunate am I to be here!” This is truly a special place, a place where you would be proud to call home and a place where you wouldn’t think twice about protecting from potential environmental degradation.

The Bismark Ramu Group’s (BRG) core philosophy, “Land is life” clearly sums up the reason for PNG people’s struggle to hold onto their customary land. In the last decade, customary land has been taken away from the rightful owners (often without their consent) through the issuing of the Special Purpose Agricultural and Business Leases (SPABL, also referred to as SABL). Customary land has also been annexed from land owners through the declaration of Special Economic Zones (SEZ), such as that of the Pacific Marine Industrial Zones in Madang. Companies operating within SEZs are given tax holidays and exemptions from complying with labour and environmental laws.

Aside from the direct poaching of land, indigenous people’s land, and food and water sources have been damaged by logging, agro-forestry, mining and fishing. On top of this, climate change poses a serious threat to the ecosystems which people depend on for subsistence.

Unlike other countries of the world where indigenous people have been alienated from their land, over 90% of land in PNG is in the hands of the people. The future of PNG will be determined by people’s struggles to keep control of their customary land. This is in contrast to the idea of landownership understood in Western countries, where land is treated as a commodity rather than a source of life.

The West and its neoliberalist understanding of land, has gone it wrong. Very wrong. The rich marine life and the landscape I see before me are not resources to be turned into cash – they are the reason why we exist. The PNG customary land owners’ struggle to protect their land could in fact protect us all.

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Inquiry begins into Special Purpose Agricultural Business Leases

Posted on August 1, 2011 by Kate Morioka| Leave a comment


By Kate Morioka, Research Project Manager

A full page spread from Acting Prime Minister appeared in today’s edition of The National, signalling the commencement of the Commission of Inquiry (COI) into the Special Purpose Agriculture and Business Lease (SPABL).

The newspaper advert follows the announcement made by Acting Prime Minister Sam Abal back on May 20, when he called for a COI to be established to probe into the issue of SPABLs.

The use of land for commercial agricultural and business activities in PNG require companies to obtain a SPABL. This leasing scheme has resulted in the PNG Government annexing the control of customary land from its owners, often without informed consent.

From 2003 to 2011, more than 5.2 million hectares in the country have been covered under the SPABLs, equating to about 10% of customary land being alienated from landowners through the SPABL. The leasing scheme allows companies to use the land on 55 and 99 year terms, and gives them the power under the Forest Clearance Authorities to clear any forest on the area covered by the lease.

There have been reports that the SPABLs are being issued without informed consent of the customary land owners, denying them of their right to control and make decisions over their land. Not only is this practice unethical, it is also illegal and unconstitutional.

On May 21, women from Kwanga, Middle Ramu District of Madang staged a sit-in protest over the SPABL at the Ben Semri Soccer Tournament. The women, who had been stripped of their land without their consent, covered themselves in mud as a sign of loss and grief. In hearing of the protest, Mr Ben Semir, local Member of Parliament, sent police to disperse the protestors. The protest spokesperson was reported to be beaten by police.

According to sources, when Mr Semri was asked about why he allowed the SPABL, he was quick to point the finger at another local member of parliament, who also avoided questioning over the granting of various SPABLs across the Madang Province.
Just like the above case, land owner groups and NGOs have been putting pressure on the government, calling for an investigation into the issuing of SPABLs and to place a moratorium on the issuing of new leases as well as a suspension of all Forest Clearance Approvals granted under the existing leases.

Although the Acting Prime Minister responded favourably to the demands made by the landowner groups and NGOs in May, some were doubtful that the COI would ever commence its investigation and whether the moratorium will be fully enforced.

Today, after two months since Abal’s announcement, his advert in the paper reads:

“I am very happy to inform the people of this country that the COI into the SPABL is ready to commence public hearing starting today…I want to urge those who have information or are affected one way or the other by the SPABL to come forward and register their interest to make submissions on the operations of SPABL.”

The Commission has been given 3 months starting 12 July to complete the Inquiry. According to the advert, the COI will identify possible reforms and enable the government to balance development, climate change and landowner issues.

However, it is clear from Abal’s advert that the COI will not only focus on the abuse in the issuing of SPABLs but also on the “good stories” that demonstrate how SPABLs have worked to “allow people to grow the economy in a sustainable way.”

The landowners and NGOs will be keeping a watchful eye on the Inquiry, especially when its findings will be revealed in late September.

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No injunction on mine waste disposal

Posted on July 26, 2011 by Kate Morioka| 1 Comment


By Kate Morioka, Research Project Manager. Posting from Madang, PNG

Today an important court hearing took place in Madang. A hearing, if decided in favour of the Ramu landowners, could have ended the Ramu Nico Mine from dumping its tailings into the Astrolabe Bay.

The ‘could have’ seemed almost certain in the first two hours of the hearing as Judge David Canning accepted the scientific evidence provided by the landowners that the disposal of mine tailings would cause irreparable damage to the ecology of the Bay. The Judge also noted that such environmental consequences will seriously harm the lives and the future of the plaintiffs and other coastal people in Madang.

According to Tiffany Nonggor, who represents the plaintiffs, the Ramu landowners, the Judge stated that there were three factors which were in their favour:
1. The landowners had a genuine interest in the matter
2. Sufficient scientific evidence was given to prove the irreparable damage likely to be caused by deep sea tailings process
3. The dumping of tailings, or also known as Deep Sea Tailings Placement (DSTP), was “quite clearly contrary to the national goals and directive principles”

The hearing was sounding very promising for the landowners who were demanding an injunction. It was definitely inching closer in favour of the landowners and the possibility of this case setting a precedent for other DSTP was very high.

Ramu Nico is a Chinese majority owned company with Highlands Pacific, a Brisbane based mining group, having a 8.5% stake.

Then in the final hour the Judge ruled against an injunction, overwriting the considerable body of evidence that had been presented by the plaintiffs. The Judge’s reasons were as follows:
1. The landowners have delayed bringing the matter to court
2. The dumping had been permitted for the last ten years and Ramu Nico had built the mine based on the assumption that the permits will continue
3. The dumping was lawful because Ramu Nico had a permit to do so
4. Forcing Ramu Nico to use an alternative method of tailings disposal would place a significant financial burden on the company, which would cause delays to the project and in turn cause economic impacts at both provincial and national levels
5. An injunction may have negative effects on investor confidence

The Judge did however order Ramu Nico to ensure that it regularly informs the landowners about the dumping process for the entire life of the mine.

But how could the Judge dismiss the evidence presented by the landowners, demonstrating the significant environmental impact of the tailings disposal? There was no denial that there would be substantial harm to the ecosystem of the Bay, including hundreds of families who depend on the Bay for their livelihoods.

The landowners are certainly not giving up and are considering an appeal to the Supreme Court.

For now however, it seems that despite having sufficient proof that DSTP will have irreparable damage to the environment and to the current and future generations of people in PNG, in the end what matters is the economic benefit.

Perhaps after today’s hearing, DSTP can also stand for: Damage+ Suffering + Threat = Profit.

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Communities can’t wait

Posted on July 25, 2011 by Kate Morioka| Leave a comment


By Kate Morioka, Research Project Manager

For most communities in Papua New Guinea, climate change is not an unfounded phenomenon – it is real and happening right now.

Coastal flooding and erosion, salination, landslides and frequency of cyclones and king tides highlight the immediacy of the climate change impacts being felt by people in PNG.

Whilst both sides of the Australian politics debate the merits of a carbon tax, neighbouring island nations like PNG bear the consequence of political complacency and inaction, both domestically and abroad.

According to UNDP’s Human Development Report 2007/2008, the Pacific island countries contribute to a mere 0.03% of the world’s total carbon dioxide emissions. This compares with Australia’s contribution of 1.1%.

The Office of Climate Change in PNG is the responsible government agency on climate change. It was established under the decision of the National Executive Council in March 2010. The Office has the tasks of conducting consultation on climate-compatible development at national and provincial levels, launching fast start adaptation and mitigation initiatives, preparing PNG Government’s Climate Compatible Development Strategy and developing a clear financial investment plan for supporting international climate change negotiations.

With the Office being only 18 months old and its predecessor, the Office of Climate Change and Development being disbanded due to governance issues, implementation remains a huge challenge. This is also causing delays in donor-allocated climate change adaptation funds from being channeled to the Office, which has a flow on impact to the provincial, local and community levels, where urgent funding is needed the most.

For example, the Australian Government’s Agency for International Development (AusAID) has a ‘bucket of funds’ sitting idle, waiting to be allocated to the Office of Climate Change for adaptation initiatives. The funds form part of the Australian Government’s commitment made at the COP16 Meeting, which called on developed countries – the major emitters of carbon – to make contributions towards the International Climate Change Adaptation Fund.

So far Australia has contributed AUD$169 million towards its International Climate Change Adaptation Initiative, with up to AUD$80 million to support Pacific Island Countries understand the likely effects of climate change.

The reality however, is that communities in coastal and low-lying atolls cannot wait for funds to ‘trickle down’ from the top. They need information, finances and tools to cope with the climatic changes.

Although the islanders have been resilient to calamities for thousands of years, the frequency, the severity and the unpredictability of climate change-related disasters demand new knowledge and technology to inform and enhance indigenous understanding of the land, weather and seasons.

In the case of PNG, there appears to be a bureaucratic bottleneck. Top down processes are far too slow to respond to the effects being felt right now by people who are bearing the brunt of climate change and this is why some communities have turned the tables by focusing on bottom up approaches, demanding provincial and national governments to act fast – because they can’t wait.

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