Voice Newsletter
May 2006 Edition
To read past editions please visit the archive - click here.
Oxfam's International Youth Parliament (OIYP) Voice Newsletter showcases the positive social change accomplished by Action Partners worldwide. Distributed to over 4500 OIYP Network members in 150 countries, Voice also features relevant news from external partners and organizations for the benefit of our readership. Also Published at www.iyp.oxfam.org/news/
Email us at: iypvoice@oxfam.org.au
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Focus
A Message from this month¡¦s editor, OIYP action partner, Vikram aditya:
This month, Voice brings you a kaleidoscope of exciting OIYP action partner initiatives from all over the world in the area of sustainable development. These initiatives occurring in diverse areas of sustainable growth and social development of livelihoods while preserving the availability and diversity of natural resources, have contributed greatly to the overall development of communities.
Sustainable development initiatives undertaken by action partners are as broad and all encompassing as sustainable development itself, ranging from diverse areas such as dialogues on water management to forest conservation. However, the common thread running through most, if not all of these initiatives is the degree of community participation and consultation. Right from Erkulanu, whose afforestation activities with the participation of communities have reaped in rich benefits to the community, to the work of Teresa Davidas, whose work with the Magapa-Suague River Rescuers Club composed primarily of community volunteers has helped save the biodiversity of the Magapa-Suague river, youth led initiatives in SD have displayed a high degree of community participation, making their projects truly sustainable.
In our story of the month for the May edition, learn more about Erkulanu De Sousa’s inspirational work with communities and community leaders in his country, East Timor, and how his initiative helped save productive forest lands through timely intervention. In the May Feature, my contribution on emerging trends in community forest conservation in the state of Andhra Pradesh examines the implications of joint forest management on forests and forest dependent communities.
We also have several action partner updates portraying the vitality and variety in action partners efforts in the area of sustainable development from Teresa Davidas from the Phillippiines who has been working to save the Magapa – Saugue river, Hind Ottmani from Morocco who has been participating in the Youth Initiative of the Earth Charter, Diana Lopez from Mexico who has been participating in the World Youth Water Forum, and Otto Saki from Zimbabwe, who has been actively involved in human rights issues in his country.
Vikram aditya
Guest editor, May 2006
OIYP Action partner, India
Action Partner News
If you have an update please send it to iypvoice@oxfam.org.au. .
Hind Ottmani, Morocco
OIYP 2004 Action Partner
The Earth Charter is a global consensus declaration on ethics, values and principles for a sustainable future. It is an inclusive document which represents a vision statement and an ethical framework that provides helpful guidance for community programs and policies. The document, developed over ten years through a global consultation, has been endorsed by more than 2400 organizations, including global institutions such as UNESCO and the World Conservation Union (IUCN).
In 1992, the UN Conference on Environment and Development took up the challenge of drafting the Earth Charter, which has afterwards been redacted in 1994, as a result of a world-wide participatory process. A final version of the Earth Charter has been issued in March 2000 and presented during a commission meeting at UNESCO Headquarters.
The mission of the Initiative is to establish a sound ethical foundation for the emerging global society and to help build a sustainable world based on respect for nature, universal human rights, economic justice, and a culture of peace. The objectives of the earth charter are to promote the dissemination, endorsement, and implementation of the Earth Charter by civil society, business, and government, to encourage and support the educational use of the Earth Charter and to seek endorsement of the Earth Charter by the UN.
As part of the Earth Charter Initiative, it is a global network of youth NGOs, local Earth Charter Youth Groups, and individual committed to sustainable development and social justice. The exchange of experience, methods and best practices from youth led initiatives on sustainable development among the ECYI represents an acknowledgement and a support beyond geographical, thematic and cultural gaps.
For more information, visit the website:
Earth Charter Initiative: www.earthcharter.org
Earth Charter Youth Initiative: http://www.earthcharter.org/innerpg.cfm?id_page=50
Hind Ottmani
Earth Charter Youth Initiative Morocco Focal Point
Diana Lopez, Mexico
OIYP 2004 Action Partner
I have had the privilege of participating in the recent World Youth Water Forum (YWWF) that took place from March 16-22 at the Mexican Olympic Centre in Mexico City. This meeting was coordinated by the Mexican Youth Insitute within the framework of the IV World Water Forum. Its objective was to promote youth participation by presenting concrete proposals for the conservation of water, mainly because there were only two youth specific topics within the WWF 4 programme. These were “Youth empowerment and inclusion” and “Empowerment of young people for water management and appropriate use of water”. The elaboration of the “Youth World Water Forum: Youth Declaration” (http://www.worldwaterforum4.org.mx/files/Youth_World_Water_Forum.pdf) included the conclusions of the sessions of the YWWF and takes into consideration the strategic importance of youth participation in future actions for water management.
The young people at the YWWF agree about emphasize that education is a fundamental tool in the building of a sustainable development, and also that "water is a universal and unalienable human right that must be incorporated into the constitution of each country".
For me, this meeting was a learning and enriching experience, promoted by the cultural interchange, similar to OIYP, and the sharing of experiences about local actions for a global change. Conversely, the YWWF also represented a new and strong call to work hard to achieve true sustainable development, as I had the opportunity and honour as youth representative at the WWF4 official closing ceremony, of making a public call for investment in young peoples’ education, taking into account local knowledge, and stressing the key role that young people play in implementing local actions.
Teresa Davidas, the Philippines
Participant in the Youth Exchange on Trade Justice, Hong Kong December 2005
Teresa Davidas from the Phillippines works for the MSSRC, the Magapa-Suague River Rescuers Club which she founded along with other youth members. Teresa is part of the Youth Exchange on Trade Justice, a forum for youth working in trade and related areas, conducted by Oxfam Hong Kong and Oxfam International Youth Parliament.
Located in the central most part of the Iloilo Province, Philippines, the Magapa-Suague River reached its arms to the six (6) municipalities of Janiuay, Mina, Pototan, New Lucena, Badiangan and Maasin. The basin of the Suague River is 26, 028 hectares with inhabitants basically dependent on farming for their livelihood. In 1997, the Panay Rural Development Center, Inc. (PRDCI) initiated a study of the upper portion of the Magapa-Suague River and it was found out that the resource was already in a critical condition, despite its being a major source of livelihood for many people. Consequently, PRDCI organized the different stakeholders to mobilize them to take part in the rehabilitation of the degraded watershed.
In 2001, a youth educational tour was facilitated by PRDCI, which created concern about the dying river through the formation of the “Magapa-Suague River Rescuers Club (MSRRC). This Club, composed of young residents of the Magapa-Suague River Watershed became a venue for the youth and children sectors’ participation and rehabilitation and protection of the river’s watershed and water courses.
Since its inception up to the present, MSRRC have already done various activities that directly and indirectly rehabilitates the river. These include tree growing, river clean-up, building capabilities among the youth through different kinds of trainings (Leadership, Gender Sensitivity, and Resource Management etc), educational tours, annual assemblies and summer camp. The Club also conducts biodiversity inventory in order to come up with a list of the existing flora and fauna in the watershed.
Another significant role of the MSRRC is in raising the awareness of the different stakeholders regarding the critical condition of the river, in order to mobilize them to participate in the rehabilitation efforts. The Club conducts photo exhibits in different strategies areas in the watershed, distribute information materials within the different municipalities and conducts orientations about the critical condition of the river in different schools and communities. With these initiatives, MSRRC hopes to bring life to a dying river and eventually contribute to the sustainable management of the resource and to the sustainable development of the community.
STORy OF THE MONTH
Our story of the month focuses on the work of Erkulanu De Sousa in East Timor since the Oxfam International Youth Parliament in July 2004. This article has been chosen as the story of the month because it depicts the difference and positive change that involvement of the affected community and community consultation can make to a project on sustainable development and natural resources management.
Following my involvement in the Oxfam International Youth Parliament 2004, I started an organization called Youth in Action Towards Sustainability (Y-ACTS) along with my colleagues and friends. We have been implementing a project on sustainable development through a small grant given by OIYP, called Community based environmental management, which started in July 2005 and ended in February 2006. The objectives of this project were to increase community awareness regarding environmental management issues, to reactivate traditional systems, norms and structure in order to control the use of natural resources, and to engage youth participation in the process towards a sustainable environmental. Through the implementation of this project, we have contributed in multiple ways towards sustainable development in East Timor. One significant success stands out.
Nianapu and Oebaha village were renowned for not having access to clean drinking water and several problems ensuing from this issue which had its basis in deforestation of forest lands. Forests used to supply water throughout the year for the village. The only remaining water source was small and far away, forcing women and children to wake up at 3 am to line up and collect water. Through the implementation of our project, we have conserved one hectare of land around the water source of each village with the complete participation of the community. This has included construction of a fence around the water source and planting 1000 trees in each location. Building and maintenance of gardens near the water sources is not allowed, and has been included in the agreement between the community members, local government and traditional leaders through a ceremony. The trees are growing well now, due to plentiful rains and availability of resources. This coupled with effective means of protection has ensured the survival and continued growth of the plantations.
Reforestation and afforestation is not a new concept to East Timor, but has taken a back seat in recent years due to non involvement of community members in the project implementation cycle. Plantation activities of trees have not taken the needs of the community into consideration, and so the community has lost a sense of ownership and responsibility towards planted and newly forested areas, and ended up destroying them for fulfilling their own needs.
Based on these past approaches and our experiences, we have adopted a more participatory oriented and community based environmental management system. In the implementation of our activities, we ensure the complete participation of relevant and affected communities in the design and conceptualizing of the project to suit their needs, implementation of the project, as well as monitoring and evaluation of the project. Since the project addresses the needs of the community, the benefits and the results of the project are also shared by the community that has participated in the project. The result of our activities is that men and women of the communities including young people actively participated in out project and developed their own system and strategy to maintain and control the project sites after the completion of the project.
Erkulanu Desousa
OIYP Action Partner, East Timor
Feature Article
The feature article is from Vikram aditya, OIYP action partner from India.
Sustainable development, in spite of being a very ambiguous term because of its multifaceted nature, has been embarked upon by thousands of villages surrounding forests all over India through the Joint Forest Management Programme, India’s version of peoples participatory forest management. The Joint Forest Management programme, when it was initially proposed in 1990, was supposed to radically change the character of conservation in India by amalgamating the then contradicting ideas of development and income and employment generation with forest management. The concept was to entrust management of limited area of forests to village level committees set up specifically for the purpose, called Vana Samrakshana Samithi’s or literally Forest Protection Committees. It was the responsibility of these committees to undertake forest management and conservation activities such as undertaking plantation activities in bare patches through afforestation and reforestation, constructing earthen bunds, check dams and percolation pits for water and soil conservation, carrying out inventorying and census of floral and faunal resources, and protecting the forest from destruction by violators. At the same time, VSS were supposed to harvest the forest resources available to them sustainably, through activities such as periodic cutting down of wood yielding plantations for auctioning, collection and selling of tobacco leaf, collection of minor forest produce such as fruits and roots and imposition of fines on violators. The income generated through these activities was left to the VSS in varying fractions. Over the course of the next five to 10 years, thousands of VSS committees were set up all over the country in most states. Over 6600 exist in my state, Andhra Pradesh.
However, the JFM programme did not yield the expected results due to several problems, most easily noticed in the Vikarabad forest range of Andhra Pradesh, where my project is based. There were problems with the very nature of the forests. Forest land allotted to VSS was too small to sustain and produce sufficient income. Forests, being mainly composed of scrub and thorn species, was characteristically different than the plantation species specified in the JFM notification, and the hard wood species planted in monoculture ended up destroying the biodiversity of the scrubs. Forest land was not sufficiently rich enough to support the hard woods, and they died as fast as they were planted. There were problems with insufficient training to VSS. The VSS ended up destroying several compartments of the existing forest with semi mechanized tilling and planting. They built percolation tanks at the wrong contours, and the infrequent rains filling the pits ended up drowning several acres of forest. Inventorying and census of wildlife was not carried out accurately because of inadequate training, and resulted in faulty figures.
The greatest problem that emerged however was that the VSS committees failed to gain any real income out of their sincere efforts in conserving the forests. Several of the timber yielding plantations such as Eucalyptus, Acacia, Terminalia, Tectonia etc, failed to grow and dried up in the initial stages due to bad selection of species. Collection of tobacco leaves stopped almost immediately due to non availability of the tobacco leaves in the forest year round. Investment in trees and saplings went down the drain as they dried up prematurely. Several VSS committees were finding it difficult to operate under the JFM mandate. There were also other irregularities with the JFM, such as centralized control and flow of funds and unequal gender representation. The JFM was given a facelift in Andhra Pradesh in 2001 and an improved version of JFM, the CFM or community forest management, was announced. The CFM programme promised to rectify the shortcomings of JFM and involved equal gender representation, with 50% of the committee seats, usually 15-20, allotted for men and women. It also involved more decentralized decision making with regards to village beat wise forest management
The CFM programme however, failed to ameliorate the situation of forest management in Vikarabad and the state, with more and more VSS committees being shut down and farmers facing severe losses. Our work with the VSS committees in the forests of Vikarabad range started after the inception of CFM. We have been investigating affects of CFM on forests and VSS committees with Vikarbad as our field. Our observations have revealed that the very core of the original JFM programme, which stipulated species to be used, time between plantations, etc, was inappropriate for local conditions, and were conceptualized without considering local forest and land conditions and without involving communities and farmers, the essential stakeholders. Future sustainable development models, especially that involving community forest management, need to be developed with community involvement right from the start.
The villages of Vikarabad forest range have experienced several changes since the inception of JFM. Forests have become increasingly vulnerable and disturbed, invasive species have entered the forests, and farmers have become increasingly prone to losses. However, a sense of ownership of the forests in returning to the villages, and with it, a sense of protectionism. Under the CFM, legitimate power over forest management is returning rightfully to the villagers to whom the resources belong. With this, there is an accompanying sense of hope that the natural progression of the relation between man and nature will continue to flourish and grow, with the survival and well being of both.
Vikram aditya
OIYP Action Partner, India
resources
Online Resources focusing on sustainable development
http://www.ictsd.org/
The website of the International Center for Trade and Sustainable Development, focuses on a range of issues ranging from agricultural sustainability and environment to trade issues.
http://www.iisd.org/
The website of the International Institute for sustainable development, which develops papers and policy recommendations on natural resource management, climate change, trade and investment, community sustainability and others.
http://www.un.org/esa/sustdev/
The UN Department of Economic and Social Affairs division of Sustainable Development, has a variety of publications, case studies, reports, reviews etc in the area of sustainable development, climate change, multilateral environmental agreements including Agenda 21, Earth Summit, ES +5 etc.
http://www.fao.org/
The website of the food and agriculture organization of the United Nations, has resources on agricultural sustainability, biodiversity, food security etc.
http://www.unep.org/
Website of the United Nations Environment Programme, has resources and publications on biodiversity conservation and environment protection, natural resource management, sustainable land management, global warming and climate change etc.
Letters to Voice
Dear Voice,
From 2nd to 9th of April, 80 young diplomats convened in St.Petersburg for a simulation of the upcoming G8 summit of the head of states. Karsten Wenzlaff (karsten.wenzlaff@gmx.de), IYP Action Partner since 2000, took Part as German Minister for Education and Social Care.
The young people committed themselves to a fairer distribution of basic resources such as sustainable energy and water, social resources such as education and health-safety, and institutional resources such as the promotion of good governance and official law enforcement. They affirmed the importance of the UN millennium goals and stressed the need to reform the global institutions, such as UN and WTO, to enter into a fair dialogue between developed and developing countries. They stressed that the global problems, such as poverty, climate change, and violent conflicts can only be solved in a global, multilateral framework.
In a speech during the final event of the Model G8 Summit, I stressed that our responsibility as young decision-makers is not only to hold conferences and draft statements, but to follow-up on our proposals and enter into a critical dialogue with our governments on the implementation of their commitments. Each youth conference consumes natural resources because of people flying all across the globe, so these have to be justified by a follow-up process, as exemplified within the network of TakingItGlobal and the International Youth Parliament.
The German delegation reported about their work at their online blog (www.blog.g8youth.org). The results of the summit can be found at the homepage of the organizing team (www.dipl.spb.ru).
Karsten Wenzlaff
OIYP 2000 Action Partner, Germany
Dear Voice,
Last year the organization I work with, WYPIN - Western Young People's Independent Network, developed and delivered a peer education program on water conservation to a number of schools in our community. The report documenting the results of our research and the outcomes of the project was recently launched and the report itself is now available online from the Smart Water website at http://www.smartwater.com.au/mainf.asp
Many thanks,
Thao Pham
OIYP 2004 Action Partner, Melbourne, Australia
Endnote
A closing thought to inspire you this month.
Be still when you have nothing to say, when genuine passion moves you, say what you've got to say, and say it hot.
D.H. Lawrence (1885-1930)
One can never consent to creep when one feels an impulse to soar
Mahatma Gandhi (1869-1948
The contents of this newsletter do not reflect the views of its subscribers or Oxfam Australia. 
