Secondary residences in Switzerland, a lack of targeting?

The threat that secondary residences are destroying the landscape in touristic area in Switzerland is not a new topic.  Already during my master studies in 2004, the amount of houses with closed shutters and low return for the touristic area were considered as a problem. Indeed, ghost villages are not authentic and do not attract tourists. It is therefore crucial that there are whole-year-residents in these villages, also to take care of the holiday homes. But because of the rush for secondary residences land price go up and locals cannot afford building and living in these areas anymore. They move out of the attractive landscapes, to live outside in cheaper location and commute for work, leaving the touristic villages empty.

The fascination to this topic had lead to my master thesis. It looked at the particular case of the Engadin, the touristic region in the East of Switzerland, where St. Moritz is located.

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With a system dynamic model, I tested several possible policies, among other fixing a maximum percentage of land for secondary residence, or separating land markets for residents and for non-residents.
The model showed that only policies that split the land market for resident and non-resident were efficient , as it would keep housing prices low and affordable for residents who could stay in the touristic area and keeping it authentic. Threshold policies would slow-down the urbanization but would not solve the problem of locals having to move to the periphery. 

Not only i was fascinated by the topic of secondary residences, but also some people took political actions. Last year the Swiss population accepted a popular initiative (a political procedure through which the population can propose a new law) that foresees to fix the maximum secondary residences to 20%. If a municipality already has more than this threshold, then no more secondary residence can be built, which is now binding the construction in all touristic areas.

Somehow it reminds me of discussions I had in Ethiopia. It is clear to  everyone that every location is different and therefore a different solution should be applied. But what do you expect from a developing country? they can only develop threshold based policies, though context specific policies would work much better... but Switzerland is not a developing country, yet context specific policies seem to be very difficult. And the lack of differentiation between the different context had consequences. It has lead to an almost comical drama. It was unclear from when the limitation on the construction for new secondary residences enters in force, at the day of acceptance of the popular initiative or January 1st 2013 as proposed by the government. In the meantime many construction authorizations have been requested and accepted in touristic areas, in order to build just before the new law enters in force.
Some weeks ago, the highest tribunal of Switzerland had to decide when the construction limitation enters in force and decided that it would be the voting day. In many touristic regions, this is a drama as many of these recently accepted project cannot be implemented anymore, and everyone fears economic slow down.  Politicians from these touristic cantons are already looking for new options, and even think of an initiative to contra-balance this initiative...  At least the Swiss political system offers escapes...

Here the new announcement of the tribunal's decision 

It is just a brilliant example of what happens when policies are implemented without accounting for different contexts. Stays that developing context specific policies are very challenging. What is fair and who decides about this? how to avoid corruption?

starving for science?

Last week i reported about a pretty critical movie on the genetically modified rice named golden rice. Europeans have sometimes a bit hypocritical vision of GMOs, as they use this technology daily almost without knowing it in medicine but refuse the technology in agriculture (also most European consumer ignore that genetically modified soya is imported to Europe and fed to animals that end up in our plates). Some years ago i read the book starving for science, a book that made me think about GMOs in a more differentiated way than  black and white.



If you are interested into the GMO debate, then this book is defintily a good entry point.

Here the book description
"Heading upcountry in Africa to visit small farms is absolutely exhilarating given the dramatic beauty of big skies, red soil, and arid vistas, but eventually the two-lane tarmac narrows to rutted dirt, and the journey must continue on foot. The farmers you eventually meet are mostly women, hardworking but visibly poor. They have no improved seeds, no chemical fertilizers, no irrigation, and with their meager crops they earn less than a dollar a day. Many are malnourished.
Nearly two-thirds of Africans are employed in agriculture, yet on a per-capita basis they produce roughly 20 percent less than they did in 1970. Although modern agricultural science was the key to reducing rural poverty in Asia, modern farm science—including biotechnology—has recently been kept out of Africa.
In Starved for Science Robert Paarlberg explains why poor African farmers are denied access to productive technologies, particularly genetically engineered seeds with improved resistance to insects and drought. He traces this obstacle to the current opposition to farm science in prosperous countries. Having embraced agricultural science to become well-fed themselves, those in wealthy countries are now instructing Africans—on the most dubious grounds—not to do the same.
In a book sure to generate intense debate, Paarlberg details how this cultural turn against agricultural science among affluent societies is now being exported, inappropriately, to Africa. Those who are opposed to the use of agricultural technologies are telling African farmers that, in effect, it would be just as well for them to remain poor.

Is it already time for golden rice? a reflection on the introduction of GMOs

Last January, i had visited the Philippines and the International Rice Research Insitute (IRRI). I had been impressed by the diversity of the research the insitute was doing. I also discovered the rice growing area near Banaue, where I met farmers that were not rich, but which agricultural system seems pretty sustainable and a diet that seems pretty balanced , thanks to the food also provided by the forest.

Also recently, Swiss TV was making a movie about the golden rice, the genetically modified rice, which vitamine A content is naturally increased. This rice has been developed by ETHZ the technical research insitute in Switzerland and is now further developed by Syngenta and now on the point of being commercialized also thanks to IRRI for smallholders (defined as farmer which turn over is bellow 10 000 usd a year). The movie tries to understand what the current status about the golden rice is, and what people in the test countries, namely the Philippines and Bangladesh is.



It is a pretty scary movie. It shows that in a European perspective, too little research has been made about possible consequences of the introduction of GMOs. Also it shows that the local population just does not want this rice. It confirms my intuition that smallholders in the Philippines are not doing so bad. There are in reality only very little case of people that have big damages due to the lack of vitamin A, also because the Filipino government has the financial and logistical capacity to provide vitamin A to the population at risk. So the willingness of getting the golden rice is relatively low because there is no benefit for the consumer, nor is there for the producer. But local population has not been asked about their opinion, as a result, some provinces of the Philippines are forbidding GMOs by law. Unfortunately the film does not interview people in Bangladesh, where there might be more issues linked to the lack of vitamin A and therefore a market for this type of rice.

It  definitely is an interesting movie to reflect about the introduction of GMOs and how to introduce new agricultural technologies that should benefit the poor. The only part, I really don't like in the movie is that it positions IRRI as the bad guy and the small farmer local organization as a hero who is saving for the traditional varieties. In reality, the biggest rice gene bank is hold by IRRI and it includes the a huge amount of traditional varieties from most agri-ecosystems in the world. You can request samples for free, you do not even need to pay postage for it. When it comes about keeping the genes and the variety of rice, IRRI is definitely the biggest player in the world. Also IRRI is not only working on golden rice, but also looking into improving the traditional systems by improving irrigation and fertilizer use and promotes these improvements.

With increasing population and the impacts of climate change, improving the livelihoods of the rural poor and insuring their food security becomes an urgency. It is therefore crutial that research looks into all possible options, from traditional cultures to the genetically modified one. I don't want to express myself on whether it is already time for commercialization of golden rice, both Syngeta and IRRI do not give enough information about it (at least that's what the movie shows). But it is definitively time understand all options that humanity has to lift rural populations out of poverty, including GMOs. Unlike what the movie tires to make you believe, IRRI as well as the CGIAR in general are not pushing for GMOs just for the purpose of introducing GMOs, but trying looking at broader issues of food security and GMOs are just one of the multiple possible solutions, which we should not ignore. As regular readers of this blog know, there is no silver bullet and solutions are context specific. There might be well defined contexts in which GMOs in future could be one of the best tools to improve livelihoods of rural population and food security. And how will we explain to those people that they have to continue starving because some well fed scared European have refused to look into new solutions?

Tourism for rural development, also an option for developing countries ?

Farm diversification into touristic activities, such as for example agro-tourism, has been recognized as an opportunity to diversify their income in Europe. Why could this concept not work in developing countries and lift rural poor out of poverty?

This week end, i joined a group of young and motivated people that took up the challenge to make tourism work for development in a small gurage village in Ethiopia.Two trips have already taking place.

Flyer for the next trip

The idea is to offer the tourist an opportunity to immerse into Ethiopian rural life, participating in every day rural life. Tourists pay these services, giving the opportunity for the locals to diversify their income and therefore increase their resilience.

Today, the group is not only preparing the 3rd trip but also starting to think about how to make sure that the value added of tourism is spread into the whole community. In other term, how can we make tourism work to become a sustainable, market based tool to promote bottom up rural development?  This is crucial to insure that tourism does not only benefits the few who provide services to the tourist but to the whole community and avoid that disparities in the community increases, making the poor poorer.

It is pretty challenging to find an efficient way to share benefits of tourism to the whole community. Maybe in the Ethiopian case one might make use of existing informal institutions. It is definitely an amazing challenging and interesting topic from which you are likely to hear more about on this blog.

Have a look at the website of the inside travel for more information about next trip.

Bring safe drinking water to 1 million people with one click!

A post written by Lieselotte Heederik, co-founder of Nezava 

In rural Indonesia like in other many other developing countries only very few people have access to  safe drinking water from their tap. Each year 27,000 children die because of water borne diseases such as diarrhea. 70% of the population (168 million people) depend on a well for their household water, this means that their water is contaminated and unsafe for consumption. 25% of the population boils their water on wood which puts an enormous labor burden on women, causes respiratory diseases and CO2 emissions. Bottled water is expensive and of inconsistent quality so it still needs to be boiled.
The technology to solve this humanitarian disaster exists, but now it’s time to get it to the people
that need it most. We started Nazava Water Filters in 2009 in Indonesia. Nazava markets the safest and best affordable water filters to those households that earn less than 7 USD per day.
Find out more about it in this movie.

 


By 2016 we expect that our technology will
1. improve health of almost 1M people
2. increase disposable income of $ 12M
3. reduce CO2 emissions of 39,000 TONS carbon dioxide equivalent
4. employ for 350 people
Join us in our mission to provide safe and affordable drinking water, to everyone, everywhere.
Please vote for our participation at the Sustainable Brands Innovation Open in San Diego in June,
where we will be able to pitch our cause to impact investors and high level marketing innovators on this site http://www.sustainablebrands.com/events/sb13/innovation-open/vote.

Or visit us at http://nazava.com/english/index.php or facebook/nazava. You can also make a financial
contribution through our partner organization Kopernik at http://kopernik.info/en-us/proposal/drinks-are-on-me-0





Liselotte is my former housemate who one day decided to not only talk about a better world but contribute to it. I really admire her and her husband for their work they do on the ground in Indonesia. With this guest writer post, I hope you will join me in voting for them and give them a chance to join Sustainable Brands Innovation Open in San Diego.

Can livestock reverse climate change?

Last week, i reported on how sauerkraut juice  could be used for climate change mitigation. It was clearly a technology that suits the organic farms in humid  Europe. A colleague of mine from ILRI last week sent me a very interesting link about a technology that sounds pretty contra-intuitive but can help to mitigate climate change in arid areas.

Desertification, is one of the driver of climate change, as biomass is decreasing on that land and less CO2 is absorbed by plants. Today, it is often believed that livestock is one of the drivers of desertification and loss of soil fertility. Therefore, one often talks of "destocking", reducing the amount of livestock to a sustainable level, hoping to slow down the desertification process.

Allan Savory in this TED talk shows that this intuition is wrong and that stocking up massively in arid areas can in fact restore the ecosystem. A pretty impressive talk, convince yourself :



Allan's shows that seasonal grassland can only develop well when they have been destroyed in dry period. The bigger the herds, the more there is destruction. As they urinate they fertilize the soil but also poison their own food, obliging the herd to move on, preventing from overgrazing. So by stocking up livestock dramatically, then one can insure that all the grasslands are destroyed enough but not overgrazed and in the next rainy season will grow well, producing biomass and roots that allow more water to infiltrate the soil and producing more food for livestock.  This sounds so contra-intuitive but seems to work.

How sauerkraut will save the world!

You hear it everywhere  climate change and the loss of soil fertility are two issues that threaten our food security. Last week, on Swiss TV, I came across a pretty hilarious report on how sauerkraut juice could both increase soil fertility and contribute to climate change mitigation. Sauerkraut could therefore save us all from starving and insure a sustainable agriculture.

This is a pretty funny and unexpected  but serious idea. As Thomas Rippel explains : if you mix manure with sauerkraut juice then the manure will not rot anymore and lesser ammonia (a gaz responsible for climate change) gets lost in the atmosphere and the fertility of the manure is increased. That manure combined with coal increases soil fertility and traps CO2 in the soil. And therefore European farmers could contribute to reduces the CO2, and join the emission trading, making the whole effort profitable.

A pretty amazing idea that I will never be able to explain as well as the man behind the idea :



This is the report from the Swiss TV in German with an interview of Thomas Rippel



and here is a presentation given by Thomas Rippel in English

Economics of natural disasters

My recent trips to the Philippines made me discover a new part of the world but also opened my eyes on natural disasters. In the Philippines, one should live far from the beach because of the tsunami, somewhere is the valleys to be protected from typhoons, but also not too near to the rivers to avoid flooding. Not talking of earth quake which could happen everywhere... So one is left with living on the slope of a volcano, which activity seems at least for now to be minor :-S.

I just found an interesting video from Aljazeera on the effect of natural disaster on the economy : It discusses that the problem is not only the extreme event, but the effect of the event is much bigger due to the lack of natural resource management such as forests in rural area. Furthermore urbanization leads more people to cities. The poor have to move to the areas where cheaper land which is located in higher risk zones. As the poor also live more densely, a disaster will touch more people and the poorer ones...


Have a look at this interesting movie!




http://aje.me/RoHyjM

Women's day : is empowering women a mission impossible?

The 8th of March is Women's day, a day made to reflect on the position of women in the world. Last year I have shown the women I had met in rural Ethiopia and how they live (see http://catherinepfeifer.blogspot.ch/2012/03/8th-of-march-international-womens-day.html). Often they do very hard work, have very little power in their families and social environment. But not all is bad, even in Ethiopia you can find women that are slowly making their way or in rural communities or the agricultural sector and get more and more their voices heart. Today I would like to introduce you to some of these women who somehow impressed me and are part of a change.



Women presenting their work in Gorosole watershed

Firstly, last year I coordinated focus group discussions in 4 communities in Ethiopia (see http://catherinepfeifer.blogspot.ch/2012/06/giving-rural-communities-voice-adapting.html), and we worked with women separately so that their voice could be heart. Some of these women never had a pen in their hand and first were afraid to draw the map and to even say something.





Women working on a participatory mapping exercise in Maksegnit

But along the discussion, most women started feeling more comfortable, started talking and even tried to take a pen and draw or use the glue. They discovered that they are in fact capable of doing many things, but they simply had never tried before. They also discovered that their opinion was valuable to us, and not just the one of their husbands. At the end of the exercise women presented their work to the men's group. I was impressed how these women managed to defend their work, when men started to criticize, something most of them had not done before.



Women presenting their work in Shambu

But it is not only about getting women into expressing their opinions in community discussions but it is also about getting more women in trainings and pushing them to gain experience. We tried to involve women into the moderation of focus group discussions. For all of them it was their first moderation exercise, they were already so much more sure of themselves for the second round... so hopefully not it was not their the last one.


training the female moderator for the focus group discussions

Also we tried to get women into all the trainings, with more or less of success. Like in the western world, it is very difficult to find women working in engineering or ict.


The only Ethiopian female participant in a training for water practitioners

Also, during the GIS training, some of the class was taught by the Ethiopian female GIS specialist of IWMI, who after giving the class once became a good teacher.



The GIS training with the female participants on the left, and the female GIS specialist second from the right

I also once had an Ethiopian intern who was very shy. It took energy and training. But when she left she gave such a breath taking presentation of her work, sure of herself and ready to defend her work.



The Ethiopian women's run last year with the Ethiopian intern



I am impressed by all these women, who all have made a big step given the situation there are in. They all show us that in fact, it does not take so much to empower women. Far from being a mission impossible, it was just a matter of giving to each of these woman the chance to do something she had never done before and giving her the possibility to grow. So why doesn't it happen more often?

A stop to urban sprawl in Switzerland

This week end, the Swiss population accepted among others the new land use law. The new law aims at limiting urban sprawl by freezing the amount of development areas for the next twenty years. The basic principle behind it is to limit the areas that are converted from agricultural land into urban land, but increasing the density within the urban areas.

Indeed, in Switzerland, local zoning plan define how densely a certain area can be build by fixing the percentage of square meter a construction is allowed to cover, as well as a maximum volume that can be built on a plot. Sometimes also the maximum of floors are fixed. On paper it is relatively easy to change these values and allow new and bigger constructions.

See the a short history of urbanization of Switzerland (by Swiss TV in German)


But is it really so easy? if the intensification does not take place, then Switzerland will be lacking in housing capacity and the already high rents might go up. I am now living near to one of these areas where the intensification potential is already there. Some investor bought villas with big gardens, and wanted to build more intense, with flats. This is exactly what the new land use law is expecting. But the project never took place, because the population stood up and wanted to keep the historical picture of the town... so the success of this law will depend on our capacity to let old constructions go and get more modern buildings.

The most interesting part of the new law is its new financial tools coming with it. A new tax will be perceived on land that has been reclassified from agricultural land to urban. This allows to raise money for developing infrastructure in rural areas and landscape (or paying out the people for the plots that would be reassigned from urban to agriculture). A great financial tool that was already discussed a lot in the Netherlands during my PhD time.

I am looking forward to see how this law will be implemented!