Posts filed under ‘Go Green’
It’s never too late….To Plant a Tree
By Patrick Lindsay
Think of it putting something back into the earth.
Most of the time we take from it.
Help redress the balance.
Plant a new life. Nurture it.
Take pleasure in watching it grow.
After you plant one, you’ll want to plant more.
Nurture them.
Encourage others to do the same.
“Nature never did betray
The heart that loved her”
William Wordsworth
Good News-Ethiopia’s forest cover triples
ADDIS ABABA — The total forest cover of Ethiopia has tripled in size since 2000 as a result of large-scale reforestation campaigns, the authorities announced on Thursday.
The impoverished Horn of Africa nation, which suffered from chronic droughts and famine in the past, has in recent years undertaken massive tree-planting campaigns to help reduce land degradation and improve its biodiversity.
“Ethiopia was able to increase its forest coverage to nine percent now from only three percent previously,” the agriculture ministry said in a statement.
“The increase… is attributed to the forestation campaign launched all over the country since the last decade,” it added.
Ethiopia covers 1.1 million square kilometres and is sub-Saharan Africa’s second most populous country.
“River basin-based… conservation activity carried out in the last 10 years is the major factor for the … increase in forest coverage,” the ministry said.
Ethiopia planted more than 700 million trees in 2007 alone, according to the UN, besting Mexico which planted 217 million and the rest of the world in a drive to combat climate change through new lush forest projects.
The country’s high demand for fuel wood and land for cropping and grazing had slashed its forest cover from about 35 percent of its territory in the early 20th century to just three percent by 2000, environmentalists say.
Experts say trees help absorb carbon contained in the heat-trapping gases blamed for climate change.
Copyright © 2010 AFP. All rights reserved. More »
Taking organic farming to Ethiopia
He started out as an Ethiopian refugee and is now a successful small-scale farmer in Canada. But Berhanu Wassihun still has much he wants to achieve. He speaks of his plans to take subsistence farming back to Ethiopia, where he hopes to teach others the trick of growing chemical-free, nutrient-rich crops – armed with just a few animals, pumps and generators
Wassihun at his stall in Montreal. Photograph: Nachammai Raman
When I left Ethiopia it was a communist country controlled mostly by an uneducated junta that would use bullets, guns and power to push us around. As an educated person, it was not safe for me. I had gone to what was then Yugoslavia for higher studies in agriculture and I decided not to go back to live in Ethiopia any more. Instead I went to Italy and became a refugee. From there, I made an application to Canada and they accepted me. I came here in 1990 after two years in Europe.
I didn’t like the taste of the food when I arrived. I couldn’t get a decent job either. Looking at my CV, prospective employers said that I was overqualified. Finally, I lied and said that I had finished only high school and they hired me for odd jobs in factories and such. I didn’t really like it. My mind couldn’t accept it. I asked myself: “How can I establish myself?”
Eventually, I went back to school. I studied agriculture again, at McGill University in Montreal. In the meantime, I had started gardening. I found the best crops that I could grow and continued doing this on the side. Many farmers wanted me to start organic farms for them. One farmer took me to Ontario and I worked with him for about eight years. When I started my family I found that the hours were too long and the pay too little. So I was a bit down when I had my first child. I was unemployed for a while before I became a tenant farmer in Ontario. Independent farming is not easy, but at least I can pay my bills.
I have very diverse produce on my farm. I have my own beef, butter, eggs, milk, chickens, strawberries, raspberries and several types of vegetables in the 50 acres of land that I’m now renting. A couple of years ago the agriculture students at McGill approached me for organic produce and I started working with them. I now bring my produce to sell at the campus once a week. I also offer a few wraps, biscuits, breads and cakes based on Ethiopian cultural traditions.
My farm is basically a family effort, but two of my teenagers have already left for university. So that leaves me, my wife and three young children under nine at home. My wife and I have a knack for handling a heavy workload. We sometimes have students who come in to help us, and we’re doing well. I sell my produce at various grocers and farmers’ markets, which are very popular in the summer.
My farming life doesn’t come to a halt in winter. I have a cold room in the basement where I store some of the produce. In addition to this, I use a special technique of burying vegetables, such as carrots and potatoes, in the ground. They come out looking as fresh as if they were picked yesterday. When they’ve just been in the cold room, the taste isn’t the same. It’s something I discovered by trial and error, which is mostly how I function.
I love my work. It’s clean and blessed. I love being outside, winter or summer. I don’t need an alarm clock to wake me up in the morning. I would say that I’m a workaholic – I work more than 16 hours a day, seven days a week, and I take naps whenever my body needs rest.
People really like the things I grow, and it’s a good example of how small-scale farming can feed communities. Large-scale farmers in Canada are finding it increasingly difficult to cope because they have thousands of hectares they need to treat with expensive pesticides and fertilizers, and a lot of machinery worth half a million dollars on average. As a result, they end up just paying the interest on their loans.
In small-scale farming, you’re self-sufficient and you don’t have much debt. That’s the best way forward, in my opinion. Instead of having a small percentage of big farmers, countries are better off with a large number of farmers with small farms that produce a variety of crops.
The advantages of organic farming are that the soil will always be rich in nutrition and micro-organisms, and the crops tastier and healthier. It’s simple. At the most, you’ll need an irrigation system; but not here in Canada, where there’s a lot of rain and snow and the land is fertile.
It’s my dream to help people. I want to use my expertise to give something back to Ethiopia. The people there are willing to work hard on their land. If somebody could lead them and give them a boost, they would be able to do a lot. Ethiopia has a reputation for drought, aridity and disease. If you give a little bit of hope to people by training them and giving them models to duplicate, there will be a change. Giving them grains and flour when they’re starving doesn’t bring any change. Their problems will just come back.
I’d like to start a farming model in my village in Ethiopia. I’d train young people, who, when they became independent, would go to other parts of the country and share their know-how. I’d ensure that they commit to being responsible for the education of other people before I took them in. Another requisite is that they be on a par with the local people – that means no car, no frills, no perks. We’d farm with animals and a few pumps and generators.
People are encouraging me on this path and a fund-raising dinner is on the agenda. With some start-up capital – CDN$5,000-10,000 – I’ll be ready to launch the project.
• Berhanu Wassihun was intervewed by Nachammai Raman.
‘Greening Ethiopia’ breaks a vicious cycle
By Samuel Larsson
Mohamed is a Somali refugee living in Sheder refugee camp in Eastern Ethiopia. Through LWF Ethiopia’s involvement in the area he has been trained in nursery management, and now works to replenish the scarce forest coverage in the area – coverage that is put under pressure by the refugee camps? Demand for fuel wood.
In Ethiopia local governments, the private sector and development actors have joined hands in replanting Ethiopia’s once vast forests. The initiative is called Greening Ethiopia, and calls for focused efforts to conserve natural resources and reforesting as a response to the impacts of climate change which are becoming increasingly visible in the country. Among the pledges, Ethiopian Airlines stands out with their promise to plant one tree for each passenger.
LWF Ethiopia program has joined the movement, and has set an ambiguous target for 2010. Half a million trees shall be raised and transplanted in the different projects areas during the year. That implies some 100,000 trees in each project, almost double the normal annual target.
Ethiopia has seen a dramatic deforestation during the past decades. Over 90% of all energy consumption comes from biomass, and every year around one percent of the country’s remaining forests are turned into charcoal and houses, or just burned to make room for the ever increasing need for more farmland.
As a result, peoples of the once green and forested highlands of Ethiopia are now struggling with food insecurity caused by severe soil degradation, decreasing harvests, disastrous erosion and reduced drought resistance. It’s a situation which drives farmers to clear even more forests to feed their families – a vicious cycle, indeed.
Except from trying to reforest Ethiopia with actual tree planting, LWF Ethiopia is also approaching the problem from the other end by teaching farmers a sustainable land use. Improved agriculture practices reduce the need to cultivate more farmland. Soil conserving structures such as soil bunds around cultivated areas protect the lands from erosion during heavy rains, and let the soil keep it’s moist in times of drought.
Tree planting, natural resource conservation and agriculture development are all fundamental parts of LWF Ethiopia’s several Integrated Community Development Projects, assisting a few hundred thousands of Ethiopians to develop their communities and adapt to a changing climate. But they are also activities that have spilled over into the organization’s refugee assistance and humanitarian projects, based on the belief that a sustainable environmental lifestyle is the key to reach food security, in the short and in the long run.
[Any views expressed in this article are those of the writer and not of Reuters.]
Going Green May Reduce Your Taxes
Going Green
When you invest in energy-efficient products, you may be saving money on both your energy bills and your tax return. The Internal Revenue Service wants you to know about these six energy-related tax credits created or expanded by the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act of 2009.
1. Residential Energy Property Credit This tax credit is for homeowners who make qualified energy efficient improvements to their existing homes. This credit is 30 percent of the cost of all qualifying improvements. The maximum credit is $1,500 for improvements placed in service in 2009 and 2010 combined. The credit applies to improvements such as adding insulation, energy efficient exterior windows and energy-efficient heating and air conditioning systems.
2. Residential Energy Efficient Property Credit This tax credit will help individual taxpayers pay for qualified residential alternative energy equipment, such as solar hot water heaters, solar electricity equipment and wind turbines installed on or in connection with their home located in the United States and geothermal heat pumps installed on or in connection with their main home located in the United States.The credit, which runs through 2016, is 30 percent of the cost of qualified property. ARRA removes some of the previously imposed annual maximum dollar limits.
3. Plug-in Electric Drive Vehicle Credit ARRA modifies this credit for qualified plug-in electric drive vehicles purchased after Dec. 31, 2009. The minimum amount of the credit for qualified plug-in electric drive vehicles, which runs through 2014, is $2,500 and the credit tops out at $7,500, depending on the battery capacity. ARRA phases out the credit for each manufacturer after they sell 200,000 vehicles.
4. Plug-in Electric Vehicle Credit This is a special tax credit for two types of plug-in vehicles — certain low-speed electric vehicles and two- or three-wheeled vehicles. The amount of the credit is 10 percent of the cost of the vehicle, up to a maximum credit of $2,500 for purchases made after Feb. 17, 2009, and before Jan. 1, 2012.
5. Credit for Conversion Kits This credit is equal to 10 percent of the cost of converting a vehicle to a qualified plug-in electric drive motor vehicle that is placed in service after Feb. 17, 2009. The maximum credit, which runs through 2011, is $4,000.
6. Treatment of Alternative Motor Vehicle Credit as a Personal Credit Allowed Against AMT Starting in 2009, ARRA allows the Alternative Motor Vehicle Credit, including the tax credit for purchasing hybrid vehicles, to be applied against the Alternative Minimum Tax. Prior to the new law, the Alternative Motor Vehicle Credit could not be used to offset the AMT. This means the credit could not be taken if a taxpayer owed AMT or was reduced for some taxpayers who did not owe AMT.
Links: The American Recovery and Reinvestment Act of 2009: Information Center
Source: IRS
