Tuesday 23 February 2016

Zika virus in Brazil is clearly caused by dams

A recent study linking mega dams to malaria points to the reason for Zika that no one has considered: mega dams. Brazil's thirst for energy means that over 252 dams are operating, far ahead of its closest neighbour Peru, with 77, soon to be an end to free flowing water in Brazil by 2050 if planned dams go ahead.



Dams create breeding grounds for malaria in Africa


Large dams in sub-Saharan Africa may be responsible for at least one million cases of malaria every year, according to a recent study. Journal de l’Environnement reports
Malaria is the most widespread parasitic disease in the world. Of 198 million diagnosed cases in 2013, 90% were in sub-Saharan Africa.
New treatments have cut mortality rates by more than half since the 1990s, but malaria still killed 584,000 people in 2013 alone.
Anopheles mosquitos, the carriers of this disease, reproduce in stagnant water. Health experts fear that communities based near large bodies of fresh water, like the reservoirs made by damming rivers, could suffer from higher rates of the disease. This phenomenon has already been observed in Cameroon, Zimbabwe, Kenya and Ethiopia.
In order to better quantify the public health impact of dams, both locally and across the African continent, Solomon Kibret and a team of researchers from Australia’s University of New England collected data from 1,268 villages in sub-Saharan Africa. They compared the prevalence of malaria in communities that lived close to dams with those that lived further away.
Up to 320% more prevalent
Around 20 million Africans live within five kilometres of a dam. Almost three quarters of these people also live in areas of high risk for contracting malaria. The researchers found that the closer people live to the water, the higher their risk of contracting malaria.
In countries where the prevalence of malaria is stable, people who live less than one kilometre from a dam are 92% more likely to catch the disease than those who live more than five kilometres away.
The contrast is even starker in countries where the prevalence of malaria is unstable, for example due to annual or seasonal variations in temperature or rainfall. In these countries, dams act as a stabiliser for the epidemic, and the risk of contracting malaria is up to 320% higher among people who live within one kilometre of a reservoir than those who live more than five kilometres away.
According to the researchers, dams may be responsible for at least 1.2 million cases of malaria in Africa every year. But the real figure could be as high as two million.
Lack of data forced the team to exclude around 800 other dams from their study, most of which were situated in areas of high malaria prevalence.
Many new dams planned
Based on the figure of 1.2 million cases per year, dams are responsible for under 1% of Africa’s malaria epidemic. This may make them a small factor in the big picture of the continent’s struggle against the disease, but they are no less important on a local level. And as climate change increases the risk of water scarcity, many more dams are planned.
The researchers counted 60 projects in countries with high levels of malaria, which they estimated would cause a further 61,000 cases per year. And these figures do not take into account the fact that dams attract new inhabitants to the area, notably farmers in need of water.
Solomon Kibret’s research team argued that any newly constructed dams should be accompanied by a series of measures to prevent the disease. These measures could include draining the reservoirs during the mosquitos’ reproduction period, financing distribution programmes for mosquito nets laden with insecticide to local populations, or introducing species of fish that eat mosquito larvae.
This article was previously published by EurActiv France
https://www.euractiv.com/section/development-policy/news/dams-create-breeding-grounds-for-malaria-in-africa/ (Accessed: 23/02/15)

Dam Peoples Amazon lauch February 2016

This is the funding proposal that gave birth to DPA:
  1. Briefly describe your project, including the main objectives and anticipated outcomes. Dam Poeples Amazon is a non-profit organisation founded by Ian Lee  to develop the network of those organisations working to empower riverside communities and those affected by deforestation and dam projects to build sustainable livelihoods. 'Responsible Holidays' is a social value project to create another strand of income by promoting eco-tourism. I am now acting as the UK partner for the non-profit organisation NAPRA in Rondônia, Brazil, http://www.napra.org.br/o_napra.htm, whose mission for the last 20 years has been to bring help (health, and vocational training, organisation of production, promoting sustainable development and livelihoods (multiple use and harvesting in the forest) which avoid deforestation. I am now researching and developing the costing and packaging of an ethical birding tour product for Brazil and Bolivia (with a ‘Native Journey’ package for Bolivia http://benativejourney.com/). We are looking for an ornithologist to train indigenous and traditional communities in leading tours, to add to their ancestral knowledge to create another income strand. Although rich in Amazon bird species, there is as yet no eco-tourism in the Rio Madeira region of Brazil. A percentage of profits will also finance an expanded programme of training and organization of sustainable production with NAPRA; to teach these communities their rights related to traditional knowledge, habitats and livelihood; to train university students from Brazil (and possibly UK) to have a deeper understanding of the region and its peoples. It promotes new models of ‘development’ validating ancestral knowledge of indigenous and traditional Amazon communities. The project is a true carbon offset in that profits are reinvested sustainably at the place of impact to the environment through birding. 


  1. Describe specifically the social problem your project is trying to address and state the target beneficiaries of your project. What evidence do you have that their needs are unmet? Target beneficiaries are mainly riverside communities of the devastated southern Amazon, made up of indigenous peoples who are ‘half-modernised’ and the descendants of the rubber migrants who still live in the region. These peoples lack opportunities to earn a living without contributing to forest degradation, or face urban migration and poverty. Standard models of development encourage deforestation for monoculture or beef or soya, which is driven by desperation and lack of self-esteem regarding their heritage. The necessary training and capacity to negotiate with local government and agribusiness who consult or dictate to them new lifestyles is lacking. In addition, they lack fundamental services such as access to medical and dental help, all of which NAPRA addresses. My social entrepreneur project creates additional livelihood in their present Amazonian environment. Empowerment to conduct ecotourism such as the birding project will stand alongside training in harvesting of Non-Timber Forest Products, already an important alternative strand of income for traditional communities. ‘Self-esteem’ capacity building addresses the influence of development models in Brazil often stigmatise traditional means of livelihood which drives beneficiaries to deforestation or urban migration. I know that the needs I have mentioned from personal experience (having visited the Amazon since 1982), from the data and history of NAPRA, Survival International, and sociological, anthropological and geographical journals and databases.
  

  1. What products and/or services will you deliver to solve this social problem? Who are your actual and potential customers or if you are currently already trading who are your current customers? I am getting together a ‘Native Birding’ package with NAPRA (http://www.napra.org.br/o_napra.htm) in the Brazilian Amazon and a ‘Native Journey’ Holiday (with birding too eventually) for the Bolivian Amazon to offer to ethical British Travel Agents such as http://www.responsibletravel.com/ and https://www.muchbetteradventures.com/, and market   directly to the public. The Native Journey is already a fully developed and costed packaged product (benativejourney.com) run by Julián Katari, an experienced and qualified native guide who has previously led a birdwatching tour, but the Brazilian project needs more work. I/we wish to hire an ornithologist to train local people in modern techniques of bird watching tourism to add to their ancestral knowledge and empower them to lead subsequent holidays to create ongoing livelihood. This will add to the vocational opportunities being developed alongside the NTFPs that reduce incentives to convert the forest for ranching and soya production, so empowering community forestry, and raise the capacity of NAPRA. Potential customers are, of course, the more serious birdwatchers, plus those interested in wildlife, the Amazon and the native experience. In terms of potential birdwatchers in UK alone, the RSPB has about 400,000 people who take part in the annual RSPB big garden birdwatch, about 16,500 people take part in the BTO Garden Birdwatch scheme, and about 10,000 people have contributed data to the bird atlas project, the latter being the most dedicated. It is a mostly male sport with an average age over 50. I hope this project will appeal to the ethically minded who may be happy to offset their carbon footprint by contributing to sustainable development in the Amazon.
  

4. How is this a sustainable solution and potentially a viable social enterprise? This birding tour package, if successfully sold to travel agencies in a piggy back would earn ongoing income for riverside community members as tour leaders, for me marketing and running the project from the UK, and for other staff eventually employed in this social value business. It is an opportune time to offer ethical holidays in the Amazon region, with the recent climate change summit and the fact that carbon offsets are gaining in popularity. Birding eco-tourism, along with NTFP community forestry maintain habitat intact for wildlife. For customers, this project is an attractive and credible offset in the sense that bird watchers can be sure that the impact on the environment their pastime causes will be directly compensated in the local area impacted, and some profits are reinvested in the training and empowerment of riverside peoples to live more sustainably harvesting in the forest, such as Brazil nut production. My idea to employ an ornithologist to train trainers (indigenous and traditional nature experts) has been well received by my Amazonian partners, promising to be a long term project for all involved. They are excited about my proposal to develop birdwatching (something NAPRA have not considered), and have chosen Lake Cunia, as the first place to develop such holidays. If carried through long term it could give impetus to the local economy, extending to other locations are along the Rio Madeira, where NAPRA operates. Extended tours could also be arranged linking to the endangered Tapajos river, the Patanal or the Alto Madidi Park in Bolivia.  



5. Why are you undertaking this project and what do you personally hope to achieve by undertaking this project? I am undertaking this project because it is my personal conviction (especially since attending climate change summit events in Paris at COP 21 in 2015) that supporting sustainability in the Amazon region is important for urgent humanitarian and environmental reasons, to the home community and the wider world. With my present contacts and past experience, I feel I will, by putting my shoulder against the wheel of the issues faced there, make a difference. My friends at NAPRA have many skills (being PhD students and professionals) in many fields, who have given their services mainly voluntarily, but have lacked the creative and entrepreneurial skills that are needed to extend their impact, and make their programmes less subject to chance of who volunteers. By bringing new activities to them, such as birdwatching tours/ecotourism (something they had not previously thought of), they are now thinking of developing the Cunia lake for this purpose. My full time commitment to this project and loyalty to their mission promises to produce a happy and long-term partnership which will be my full-time job on graduation in June 2016. I am interested to see how we can develop these projects and which of the possible lines of activity (organising birding tours/eco-tourism development of Lake Cunia/Prospecting markets for NTFPs) will work out over time.