santa fe sneak peek

A few photos from a trip to Santa Fe, New Mexico. I’ll post more on my istockphoto and regular portfolio pages (links above).

Photherapy

Our Mongolian friend, Byamba, who is currently studying in Vienna, recently wrote us to say she visits our image gallery often, especially when she misses her friends and family in Ulaanbaatar. “They really make me feel better. Never knew I was such a homesick person!”

For many of us, the bulk of our photographs are condemned to sit on a hard drive, slowly succumbing to bit rot.  So it’s satisfying to know at least a few of our images are warming a homesick heart.

Reducing peatland fires in Indonesian Borneo

In early August, the provincial governor of Central Kalimantan, located on the Indonesian part of Borneo Island, issued a decree that had the Asia Program folks at IRI jumping for joy. Ok, scientists at IRI aren’t really in the habit of jumping about their work. But they did get quite excited about the governor’s statement.

“The decree is a landmark document on at least two counts: it moves away from previous government approach that banned the use of fire by farmers to one of controlled burning, and, it specifically mentions the use of climate information beyond weather–both of which we advocated in our work,” says Shiv Someshwar, head of IRI’s Asia and Pacific program. “Our efforts have translated into changed policy.”

Indonesia has faced increasing pressure from other Southeast Asian countries to get its fire problem under control. In turn, it has put pressure on its provinces to act. As a result, the Central Kalimantan government banned farmers from using fires in 2006. But the strategy, sporadically enforced, imposed serious burdens on poor farming communities, who claim the ban significantly decreased their livelihoods.

Now that the ban has been lifted, tensions should ease. But challenges remain. The decree doesn’t give details on what “controlled burning” entails, which authority will monitor or oversee the burning and how exactly climate information will be incorporated into decision making. There are other issues as well, which I will get to shortly. But first, some background on the situation.

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Dry season in West Timor

Pak-Ludo, my colleague from CARE, spent the better part of an afternoon driving me to some of the area villages outside of Kupang. It’s easy to see why people can have such difficulties making a living from farming here. The soil is rocky and shallow, and dust-dry.

[Photo: Kupang outskirts. Francesco Fiondella]

The climate-food security connection in Indonesia

Nusa Tenggara Timur, or East Nusa Tenggara, is a remote province located 1,200 miles from Jakarta (map). It is home to more than four million people, spread across 550 islands. The province is among the poorest in Indonesia–at least a third of its population earns below the poverty line.

Not surprisingly, NTT faces real development challenges, including periods of serious food insecurity. Since irrigation systems are virtually nonexistent, farmers here are almost wholly dependent on monsoon rains to supply water to their crops. But even in years of normal rainfall, the province can expect to distribute between 20 and 25 thousand tons of food aid to families. During El Niño years, which typically result in significantly less rainfall, the aid figure can be twice that. Rates of malnutrition, especially in children, can reach 25% during these periods.

Scientists at the International Research Institute for Climate and Society want to reduce these impacts by using seasonal climate forecasts to alert government authorities about periods when below-average rainfall is expected. Indonesia has a good system in place to respond to food insecurity, but the challenge is generally one of timing. From the moment a problem is declared to the moment the first shipments of rice and other aid is unloaded, half a year may pass. The hope is to give agencies and humanitarian organizations such as CARE Indonesia months of lead time to stock up on food supplies, jump-start their monitoring activities and set aside funds and other resources in case the food problems materialize.

We’ve organized a workshop for tomorrow in NTT’s capital, Kupang, with CARE Indonesia, Bogor Agriculture University (IPB) and the provincial food-security agency in order to share the latest research findings and discuss their potential use in food-security planning. This latter goal is critical. We can issue the best forecasts in the world, but if there’s no institutional system in place to understand and act on them, they’re essentially useless.

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southeast asia route

The map below shows the rough itinerary of my upcoming trip to the Philippines and Indonesia. I’ll be going there with a few of my colleagues to report on the climate-risk management projects IRI had been involved in. If you’re a journalist based in the area and are interested in writing about climate-change adaptation, please contact me using my @gmail.com address- – francesco.fiondella

View AsiaPac Trip 2008 in a larger map

Mongolia’s Roads, cont’d.

We won’t see pavement again until we reach the edge of Kharkhorin later tonight. A huge effort is underway to rebuild the existing highway, as evidenced from the multitude of trucks and other heavy duty equipment we pass en route. This construction forces us off the paved road and onto a dirt one, which then unbraids into half a dozen roadlets that thread across the steppes. Mongolians don’t particularly care to keep to one official detour. Our driver too decides at times it is better to scour a new path across the grass than to follow the existing rutty drags.

This is a rough, beautiful country, a lost one, with a broken history and stoic people. The landscape is endless and ragged, a thin skin of grass stretched over lumps of bones. In the tucks of mountains and hills, people have set their gers, which are bright dots against the dark and enveloping grass.

At Lun, about four hours from UB and far along enough to get a pompeiian dose of dust and heat, we had decided there was no way that we could make it to Tsetserleg in one day as the other team had done. The roads won’t improve and the travel was taking a toll on both N and A. I should say, however, that I have been amazed at how well our little one is managing so far. His sleeping and eating schedule is totally whack, but he seems as wide-eyed and hilarious as usual, easily endearing himself to the Mongolians. N deserves all the credit for this, for making sure he gets full and undisturbed sleep when he needs it. That she’s still breastfeeding has also made it easier for Augú to be fed and to be comforted.

Driving out of UB

We leave the city limits just before the morning traffic starts to boil. Because I have the fattest ass, I get the honor of being in the front passenger seat. Nikki, Augú in his car seat, Uyanga and male Byaamba have to share the back. The first hour or so of driving passes without event. Our driver, whose name I never did catch, puts in a cassette of a very popular singer, whom I’ve heard countless times blaring out of cabs and stores during my walks around the city. His excellent, operatic voice makes me wish I had spent my childhood years in the Mongolian countryside, just so I could use his songs to reminisce.

N had spoken to G last night, who told her the drive to Tsetserleg is about 12 hours, not eight, as the group had originally estimated. “The roads are dusty, but generally in good condition,” N says, recounting G’s words. She has been taking 500 mg of Panadol every 6 hours to combat the fever and looks and sounds much better this morning. I admire her strength, for deciding to come with the kiddo to this country, for deciding to embark on a long road trip to the Mongolian bush with nary a day to recuperate from her day of fevers and chills.

Her fortitude is about to be tested, because soon the highway will end, and we’ll be forced to drive on dirt. For the next eight hours.

Although G was technically correct in his synopsis of the road conditions out of UB, I would have perhaps used a slightly more robust word than ‘dusty’. What the cars are churning up as they speed by, and as the picture here shows, is soil by the ton. Sun-blockin’, lung-fillin’, dinosaur-killin’ dust that slips into the air vents and between the window seals until it cakes you and everything else in the car. I feel like we’re in a mobile tandoori oven.