Farmers fighting climate change-from victims to agents in subsistence livelihoods

Focus Article

Farmers fighting climatechange—from victims to agentsin subsistence livelihoodsLennart Olsson∗ and Anne Jerneck

One billion vulnerable subsistence farmers across the global south depend onrisky livelihoods in need of adaptation to climate change impacts. Simultaneously,their aggregated emission of greenhouse gases from land use and fuelwoodconsumption is substantial. Synergies between adaptation to climate change andmitigation should therefore be actively promoted. In the context of poverty, suchsynergies should ideally be designed specifically for the poorest of the poor whoare notoriously difficult to reach by policies and projects. In this experimentalcase on subsistence farming in western Kenya we assume that only the poorestinhabit the most degraded lands and use the simplest form of cooking over openfire. As the study location is typical of sub-Saharan areas affected by drought,flooding, land degradation, diseases and persistent poverty, findings can be scaledup, transferred to and tested in similar settings. Seeking multiple synergies ofadaptation, mitigation, and social change while using sustainability science inintervention research, we reframed peasant farmers from vulnerable victims intoagents fighting livelihood stressors and climate change impacts. In collaborationwith them we performed small-scale experiments on agricultural productionpractices and domestic energy efficiency resulting in multiple synergies. Findingsshow that the ‘smokeless kitchen’ and carbon sequestration from improved landmanagement can mitigate climate change while increasing energy efficiency, healthstandards, food security, and community-based adaptive capacity. Preferably,climate policy should therefore explicitly address synergies and support peasantfarmers’ efforts to create synergies when the ‘food imperative’ limits their agencyto fight climate change alone. 2010 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd. WIREs Clim Change 2010 1 363–373

According to development economist Paul Collier,1 billion people live in nations diverging from

the rest of the world into deeper poverty owingto political, economic, and geographical challengesthat trap them in crisis, conflict, and corruption.In his reasoning, he equals the ‘bottom billion’ tothe total population of a number of nations in sub-Saharan Africa (SSA) plus a few nations in Asia andSouth America.1 But considering the huge nationalinequalities in incomes and livelihood opportunitieswithin and between countries in SSA and elsewhere,such aggregate national population accounts maskreal income distribution and hide the actual prevalence

∗Correspondence to: [email protected]

Lund University Centre for Sustainability Studies (LUCSUS), Lund,Sweden

DOI: 10.1002/wcc.44

of poverty and vulnerability. In contrast, we arguethat with increasing vulnerability to climate changeimpacts, the challenges of poverty are more accuratelycaptured by the Food and Agricultural Organisation(FAO) and International Fund for AgriculturalDevelopment (IFAD) counting more than 1 billionpeople across nation states in hazardous natural andsocial environments where they are food insecure anddepend on risky livelihoods for their subsistence.2–4

This reasoning, we argue, represents a more accurateaccount of poverty indicating that people withinthe same country, region or even locality may besubject to differentiated exposure to various naturalhazards and social stressors. If the success of povertyalleviation and adaptation policies partly dependson how poverty is defined then the FAO definitionoffers a more realistic view and thus a better starting

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point, we argue, for scenario setting and productivepolicies.

In this article, we proceed from the idea thatthe most vulnerable people live in and depend onsocio-ecological systems in South Asia and SSAwhere impacts from climate change are expected toincrease and where natural resources are degradingdue to land use change and biodiversity loss.5 Thissituation calls for politics and economics of climatechange.6–8 Accordingly, new forms of governance andcooperation across scales and geographical bordersas well as new forms of and collaboration inknowledge production and sciences are needed toprevent, mitigate, and adapt to global and localenvironmental change. In response, the Earth SystemGovernance (ESG) Project, within the InternationalHuman Dimensions Project (IHDP), launched a globalresearch agenda in 2009 to address the politics ofpeople and places across the planet.9 As an illustrationto the discussion on asset allocation and agency in theESG program, we designed an experimental case onclimate change, agroforestry, and subsistence farmingin SSA using sites in western Kenya for practicalintervention research. In so doing, we see the agencyamong people who are vulnerable as a capability inrelation to adaptation and mitigation, and strive toanswer the following questions:

• How can peasant farmers become key agentsin reducing vulnerability to climate change andother stressors and thereby strengthen theirsubsistence livelihoods?

• How can mechanisms and policies be designedto support their agency?

ON ADAPTATION

Adaptation to climate change is recognized asurgent, inevitable, and expensive. In the decadeto come, adaptation costs are estimated to 27to 66 billion US$ per year10 in countries whereadaptation needs are acute and huge owing to largepopulations vulnerable to climate change impacts.11,12

Under the United Nations Framework Conventionon Climate Change (UNFCCC), industrial countrieshave committed themselves to offer financial andtechnological assistance to such adaptation. As aresult, funds are building up under the administrationof the Global Environmental Facility (GEF).12 Thisprovides a financial opportunity for countries inSSA and elsewhere that see adaptation as a politicalpriority.

However, estimated future costs for adaptationare increasing at a much faster rate than availablefunds.13 This calls for priorities and mechanisms fordisbursing the funds especially as experience showsthat the poorest of the poor are notoriously difficult toreach by projects and policies.14 Adaptation funds andmechanisms must therefore be specifically targetedat the most vulnerable while rules and incentivesmust be designed to be financially and thematicallyuninteresting for others in order to avoid co-optationby other not-so-poor groups.14

Recently, there is a reorientation from seeingadaptation as a reactive measure after events ofclimate change toward proactive adaptation.6 Thiscan be especially inspiring at local levels where small-scale initiatives and creative solutions at individualand community level can combine into synergiesfor sustainable change such as small-scale collectiveagroforestry with multiple social, natural, and climatebenefits.15 If funds and resources are made availablethis could facilitate transitions to more sustainablelivelihoods and a shift from seeing people mainlyas victims to seeing them as knowledgeable keyagents. In this context, it should be noted thatadaptation needs are highly local and contextualand can therefore not be generally prescribed.16 Yet,much can be learned from well-designed experimentalcases that allow findings to be transferred to similarsettings.

ON POVERTYPoverty is a multidimensional and multi-scalar con-dition with systemic and structural as well asindividual and personal origin and solutions. For suchcomplex problems there is no panacea.17 In response,we advocate an integrated socio-ecological approachwhere persistent poverty is tackled at the nexus of foodinsecurity, high disease burden, and sustainabilitychallenges like land degradation, biodiversity loss,water scarcity, and adaptive capacity.14 This impliesthat poverty depends as much on climate changeimpacts and biogeo-physical conditions as on unequalaccess to assets and institutions. This message is crucialfor poverty alleviation.

Asia has the largest absolute number of theworld’s poorest and food insecure people, whereasSSA has a larger share of poor people in relation toits total population.3 Despite large improvements inlife expectancy, health status and living conditions inmany poor regions, there is at least 1 billion peoplein poverty and hunger who depend, for their dailysurvival, on degraded land, dangerous and unhealthyenvironments and risky livelihoods.11 It is indicative,

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and a tragedy, that presently the difference in lifeexpectancy is 80:40 between the richest and thepoorest regions of the world,11 and in SSA the numberof undernourished people is expected to triple by2080 compared with 1990.18 These are stark signsof an aggravating and deeply rooted socio-ecologicalproblem as also emphasized by FAO.3

Poverty alleviation through agricultural mod-ernization and market integration dominates thedevelopment discourse on Africa, particularly sincethe formulation of the Millennium Declaration in2000.19 This is epitomized in the Millennium Vil-lages Project (MVP),20 where a donor driven ‘bigpush’ of massive investments in agriculture, energy,telecommunications, transports, and health, is aimedat assisting 78 selected villages in 10 countries inrapidly reaching the Millennium Development Goals(MDGs). The short-term results are impressive espe-cially when it comes to increased crop yields andreduced malaria prevalence.21 But the high hopes ofmassive poverty reduction have been seriously low-ered while the critique against the MVP is mounting.The critical concerns relate to: the scaling up of sucha capital intensive undertaking22; the promotion ofeconomic growth while ignoring fundamental issuesof rights and equality23; the top–down expert drivenagenda neglecting the local context24; and the difficul-ties in integrating the MVP approach into initiativeswith African ownership such as New Partnership forAfrica’s Development (NEPAD).25 Our field work inwestern Kenya indicated a growing tension betweenMVP villages and disadvantaged neighboring villagesbecause unequal distribution of resources may result inincreasing stratification between poor households. Inconclusion, there is a strong evidence that the ‘trickledown mechanism’ tested in the MVP is not an effec-tive tool for equalizing incomes and life opportunities;neither locally nor globally.

The prime priority of freeing people frompoverty, social exclusion, and destitution thus remainsa supreme and unresolved problem of the giganticpostwar development project. The fact that therich have not (yet) fulfilled the moral obligation ofglobal economic convergence nurtures the notion of‘promises not kept.’26 In addition, climate changeaggravates the problem. But as climate change, incontrast to destitution, is a truly planetary issuethreatening the earth’s life support system and callingfor global action this may serve as a window ofopportunity to eventually fulfill the moral obligationof the rich toward the poor, especially with the legalobligation under UNFCCC of assisting poor countriesin adaptation.

ON SYNERGIES BETWEENADAPTATION AND MITIGATIONIn this article, we launch an alternative to the MVPapproach where we: (1) build on communities ofpractice instead of selected villages; (2) embrace rightsto resources (food security, water, health) insteadof selectively promoting economic returns; and(3) strive to strengthen subsistence livelihoods insteadof market integration. Communities of practice arehere seen as groups of people collaborating on acommon interest.27 In this case, we refer to peasantfarmers, mainly women, who share an interest in theirsubsistence environment and who work together forthe sake of improved livelihoods. The article is basedon climate change related intervention research in SSAfocusing on adaptation and mitigation among sub-sistence farmers in Kenya (2007, 2008, 2010). It alsodraws on field work based research on agroforestryadoption in SSA as a social and natural benefit in sub-sistence farming, including adaptation and mitigationto climate change. The fieldwork was performed onfour occasions (2007–2010) in western Kenya.

We shall discuss two examples that meet ourcriteria of being specifically and solely targeted to thepoorest of the poor.14 They both represent synergiesof mitigation and adaptation that have a potential,if supported, to transform the poorest of the poorfrom victims in vulnerable environments in needof adaptation into active participants, key agents,fighting global climate change through mitigation.The two examples are located in the same research siteand refer to three core activities in subsistence farmingnamely production, reproduction, and consumption.The first example refers to land management inagricultural production for the dual purpose of carbonsequestration and improved land productivity. Thesecond example refers to the management of energyuse in the sequential reproductive process of preparingfood for consumption. Together they represent a rangeof strong synergies between environment, biodiversity,food security, energy use, health, education, andentrepreneurship as well as synergies of adaptationand mitigation. In order to avoid co-option by not-so-poor groups, the examples are designed in directcooperation with the poorest of the poor for thepurpose of favoring them only.14

Furthermore, the two examples in our researchare designed on the basis of three assumptionsfollowing from a literature review and comprehensivefield work experience in several research sites in SSA:(1) only (very) poor people inhabit the most degradedlands with the highest land improvement potential;(2) only (very) poor people use the simplest form ofcooking over open fire with high risks of developing

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respiratory diseases such as chronic obstructivepulmonary disease (COPD)28; and (3) the potential forhealth improvements relating to respiratory diseasesis high, especially for women and children.

In sum, we proceed from a transdisciplinaryperspective seeing subsistence farming as an integratedsocio-ecological system where the quality of assets andhow they are employed in activities of productionand consumption depend strongly on interactionsbetween nature and people. Based on that we seeksynergetic responses to climate change impacts. Forthat purpose, we designed an experimental case forintervention research aiming at social change.29 Indoing so we involved poor communities of practiceas stakeholders. Regarding objectives our interventionresearch involved the following steps: (1) developing,(2) introducing, and (3) evaluating improved cookingstoves and their implications for the community. Thetwo examples will be discussed further on under theheadings of production and consumption.

ON ADAPTATION FROM THEPERSPECTIVE OF THE POORESTOF THE POOR

Our research in SSA points at fundamental conditionsof food insecure livelihoods that prevent peoplefrom grasping income and production opportunities.In synthesis we suggest a concept called the foodimperative for describing this. It is defined as the stateof a person’s mind in which acquiring food for yourselfand your household is a constant superordinatepriority that cannot be postponed in favor of othergoals, such as the planning and financing of short-term production oriented experiments or long-termchanges in your livelihood.14 Similarly, we introducethe concept of the health imperative, as the state ofa person’s mind in which keeping the family strongenough to perform the daily tasks of acquiring food,fuel, and water is a constant superordinate prioritypreventing the planning and performance of manyother (productive) tasks.

Proceeding from Sen’s conceptualization ofdevelopment as ‘a process of expanding the realfreedoms that people enjoy’30 these imperatives canbe defined as constraints that prevent freedom fromhunger and freedom from ill-health. For the purposeof understanding how poverty is perpetuated andreproduced to become so persistent at the nexusof multiple scales and stressors (climate variability,land degradation, disease),31 we need to explorethese imperatives further as attempted below in theexamples on production and consumption.

In our study area, we identify certain furtherconstraints for peasant farmers to counteract vulner-ability and improve their subsistence livelihoods. Forexample, we argue, that for those suffering from thefood imperative, time is the biggest constraint. Col-lecting water and fuelwood for daily subsistence is avery time consuming activity. By the provision, say, ofwater harvesting facilities and energy efficient stovesthere will be time for peasant farmers to improve otherlivelihood activities that can reduce vulnerability. Thetwo examples are explored in the following text.

PRODUCTION—SOILS AND TREESFOR FOOD SECURITY AND CARBONSEQUESTRATIONThis example serves to show how subsistence farmerscan become agents in mitigating climate changewhile improving their land management throughagroforestry and agricultural practices. First wediscuss the dynamics of the process and then itsimplications both for the climate and for peasantfarmers. Carbon sequestration in the context ofsubsistence farming means that agricultural practicesand land use activities are drawn into the process ofstoring carbon in ecosystems and agricultural systems.Increased carbon sequestration can be achieved bylarge-scale application of immediately deployableland management practices such as increased useof agroforestry, green fallow periods, conservationtillage, increased use of rotational crops, and return ofcrop residues.32,33 Among those land managementpractices, agroforestry probably has the highestpotential because of its combined benefits rangingfrom income diversification and spiritual/aestheticalvalues to other benefits like protection against: soilerosion, land degradation, deforestation, and climateextremes. The highest potential for increased soilcarbon content is most likely found in severelydegraded ecosystems. Estimates of the potential ofimproved land management for carbon sequestration,ranging from 0.4 to 1.2 Gt C per year, correspond to5 to 15% of the annual accumulation of CO2 in theatmosphere.34

Under natural conditions soils contain largequantities of carbon in the form of organic matter andhumus. Soils can actually store much larger amountsof carbon than above-ground vegetation but it mustbe noted that soils still depend on vegetation becausethe soil carbon content is determined by the balancebetween the input of plant debris (leaf, branch, androot litter) and the losses through decompositionprocesses. Although only a small fraction (1%) ofthe carbon entering the soil actually remains there on

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a long-term basis this is still a significant amountin the context of the global carbon cycle. Mostattempts to make use of vegetation for capturingalready emitted CO2 are related to forestry, i.e. above-ground biomass. Another option for capturing andstoring CO2, while simultaneously contributing to amore sustainable agriculture, is to manage croplandin such a way that carbon in the soil is built upin the form of organic matter, i.e. below-groundbiomass. Degraded and depleted soils have a higherpotential for increasing the carbon storage than soilsin good condition.33 This means that there is astrong reason for the poorest of the poor to applysuch management of crop land because they oftendepend on degraded land and depleted soils. If thebuildup of carbon in agricultural soils resulting fromimproved management of degraded land and soilscould be measured and verified it would becomea source of income for the land owners,35,36 i.e.the poorest peasant farmers. Such practices implyseveral potential synergistic advantages, particularlyin severely degraded areas in tropical and subtropicalregions.32,35,37–40 If properly managed they maycounter land degradation, and, by increasing water-holding capacity, they may contribute to stoperosion. In sum, they have the potential to increaseproductivity, resilience, and sustainability of theseagro-ecosystems.

The second reason for focusing on degradedagricultural regions is that low-input agro-ecosystemsin most poor countries may have a higher potentialfor net carbon accumulation than intensive formsof agriculture where inputs in the form of fertilizerand energy are associated with high carbon costs.41

The third reason is that low-input agriculture is lessdamaging to biodiversity than intensive forms ofagriculture, even when these latter systems are in theform of ‘no-tillage’ because many no-tillage systemsuse herbicides to clear weeds.

CONSUMPTION—STOVES FORIMPROVED HEALTH AND ENERGYEFFICIENCYIt is often assumed that poor people’s emissions ofgreenhouse gases are negligible; but this is false.Their emissions of fossil carbon are negligible buttheir emissions of carbon from wood energy are oftensubstantial. Woodfuel is a renewable energy source,but if the consumption is greater than the regrowthof trees, it represents a net emission. Furthermoreif the regrowth is greater than the consumption ofwood, it represents a reduction of atmospheric carbonand hence a valuable mitigation of climate change.

And peasant farmers can be important agents in thisprocess.

Peasant farmers can play another important rolein the management of carbon fluxes. The cuttingof trees for fuel and timber represents one kind ofactivity releasing the carbon from ecosystems whereasthe cultivation of land represents another. Landscapesthat have been degraded in terms of their above andbelow ground carbon storage represent a potentialcarbon sink. Estimates suggest that vast land areasacross the globe are in a degraded state.42–45 Ifthese degraded lands can be restored this means thatcarbon would be drawn down from the atmosphereand stored in the ecosystems, both above and belowground. We argue that peasant farmers, of whichthere are around 1 billion in the world,3 can play arole in altering these fluxes. Reducing emissions fromcutting trees has an immediate effect while changingland management practices have a more subtle andlong-term effect.

Different estimates of wood fuel consumptionfor the purpose of cooking suggest that in SSAthe consumption of dry wood varies from 1 kgto 3 kg/capita/day with an average of 1.6 (basedon compilations from Sahel46 and from SouthernAfrica47). Similar estimates from North East Indiasuggest substantially higher consumption rates, 2.6 kgto 4.2 kg/capita/day with an average of 3.2.48

Converted to annual CO2 emissions per capita thesefigures correspond to 0.7 and 1.5 T respectively. Ifthese emissions were reduced through, say, moreefficient cooking stoves, and if it resulted in a netreduction of deforestation it would mean that there isa substantial potential for climate change mitigationamong poor people. At the same time this couldalso improve their health and lessen the workloadfrom collecting firewood which is often women’s (andchildren’s) task.

In SSA, we assume that 80% of the population,corresponding to 780 million people, depends onwoodfuel.49–51 This means that the total emissionof CO2 is 564 Mt per year corresponding to 7% ofthe total global emission. This is clearly a substantialpart. The most common form of cooking in SSA isin a pot placed on three stones forming a triangleon the ground (or actually on the floor of the indoorkitchen). Most fuelwood is used for such open firesencased by the three stones. This technology can easilybe replaced by an improved stove with a flue pipethat offers a range of positive ancillary benefits. Suchtechnologies for reducing the emissions have existedfor centuries; it is therefore a puzzle why they are notin common use.

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Improved cooking stoves became particularlypopular among development organizations in the1970s and 1980s. They were introduced primarilyas a response to the emerging awareness of a globaldeforestation trend.52 Results varied and in the 1980sthe success versus failure of improved cooking stoveswas subject to a heated discussion.53–55 Eventually, thepopularity of the improved stoves among developmentorganizations declined as a result of low adoptionrates. However, the problems arising from rapiddeforestation, fuel wood shortage, and indoor airpollution (IAP) persist and are even exacerbated,with IAP causing 1.6 million deaths globally peryear (28,56). As an illustration, the provision offuelwood was reported by our respondents as eithervery time consuming (up to 2 h per day) or expensive(50 KSh per day corresponding to 0.6 US$), andhealth problems relating to respiratory diseases arecommon, serious, and costly for the individual victimto treat.

Recent research has shown much more opti-mistic figures on the potential of improved stoves toreduce fuel consumption and health problems fromIAP.57–59 Moreover, the reduction of fuel consump-tion has been reported to be up to 67% compared toconventional stoves.58 In spite of their obvious ben-efits, the adoption of improved stoves among poorfarmers is surprisingly low and only very few of theinterviewed households owned or used them.

But when we reframed the use of improvedcooking stoves, from an energy issue into a healthconcern, all of our informants (30) in WesternKenya (2007, 2008) responded that smoke fromcooking over open fire was a very big problem.This was also confirmed by a recent health surveyin the Nyando district, Kenya, where 22% ofchildren were reported to suffer from acute respiratoryinfection.60 When asked about economic implicationsof health problems, many of our informants reportedthat coughing was a severe problem because itoften necessitated a visit to the clinic, purchaseof medicine, and sometimes even the need for anx-ray investigation, which is comparatively expensiveespecially for households with low budgets. Whenasked why they did not use an improved stove therespondents often reported that stoves are expensiveand that the benefits are small. When asked if theywould be willing to invest in a stove that removedthe smoke from the kitchen, all responded positively.The most important benefits from introducing suchsmokeless kitchens are:

• Health: every year over 1.6 million peopleglobally, mainly women and children, die of

respiratory diseases from IAP from cooking overopen fire.28,56

• Social and economic: less time needed for thecollection of fuelwood leading to increasingopportunities for children and youth to attendschool and for women to plan and perform moreproductive tasks, or to experience more leisuretime.

• Environmental: less demand for wood resultingin decreased deforestation and reduction ofgreenhouse gas (GHG) emission. Conditions forbiodiversity may also improve.

We argue that many deaths from IAP couldbe prevented. As a response to the great interestshown by our informants in Kenya, we designedan improved stove for a smokeless kitchen. Theimprovement is dual. Partly, it involves a reductionin the amount of fuelwood needed for cooking acertain meal or boiling a certain amount of waterand partly it involves the removal of smoke fromthe kitchen through a simple flue pipe (Figure 1). Inour tests with the new stoves the fuel consumptionwas halved compared to the amount needed forthe three stones. This is on par with results fromexperiments documented in the literature.57,58 Thedesign of the stove for the smokefree kitchen emergedin collaboration with local expertize with Rose thepotter as a key person. The operating team consistedof a local potter, a tin smith, a mechanical engineer,and women who tested the stove. The project wasinitiated through our intervention research involvinga small-scale community-based entrepreneur, Benson,who cooperated with a potter, Rose, on the detaileddesign and distribution of the stoves that were thentested by women in the community of practice in theresearch sites. The process, spanning the steps fromdesign to installation and use, is documented in a filmin the LUCSUS outreach program.61

We now sum up the discussion by showing thepotential implications of introducing agroforestry andof introducing improved stoves as compared to aClean Development Mechanism (CDM) project in theregion.

COMPARING THREE CARBONSEQUESTRATION PROJECTS—SUGAR,TREES, KITCHENSCooking on improved stoves is a process of carbonsequestration that might prove more sustainable thansolely planting trees as done in agroforestry. Oncethe smokeless kitchen is installed resulting in lower

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FIGURE 1 | Left: The local potter, Rose, making a stove for a smokeless kitchen. Right: The flue pipe from a stove installed in a kitchen in herneighborhood. The total amount of smoke is reduced owing to more efficient combustion with the new stove. Through the flue pipe the remainingsmoke exits the kitchen.

fuel wood consumption and less smoke it is unlikelythat you will return to traditional cooking ‘on threestones.’ Interestingly, it is the elimination of smokein particular that is pointed out as a main reasonfor continued practice, rather than the reduction offuel wood and the higher energy efficiency. This isexplained by the condition that the smokeless kitchenis experienced as a method for overcoming the healthimperative.

The potential benefits of the climate changeresponses in our intervention research are comparedto a CDM project in Western Kenya. This CDMproject, the Mumias Sugar factory, has converted itsuse of energy from diesel generators into biogas frombagass being a by-product of the sugar production.In the table 1, we show the striking difference in

the cost effectiveness and in the number of localbeneficiaries emerging from each of the three projects.In so doing we stress the many ancillary benefitsassociated with the introduction of our smokelesskitchen.

There are several striking differences betweenthe projects, notably the number of local beneficiariesand the cost effectiveness. The number of localbeneficiaries in the case of Mumias Sugar factoryis difficult to estimate. The factory has about 1800employees and it is questionable if they will benefitfrom the CDM project. The sugar cane is producedprimarily by 66,000 smallholders who are underpaidfor their work, according to the Kenyan Ministerof Agriculture.64 A recent survey among contractfarmers confirm the poor conditions under which the

TABLE 1 Comparison of three carbon sequestration projects

Type of Instrument Emission Reduction Total Project Project Number of Cost Efficiencyper Decade Budget (USD) Duration Local USD/ton CO2

(ton CO2) (years) Beneficiaries

Mumias SugarFactory

Clean development 955,216 20,000,000 10 few 20.94mechanism

WKIEMAgroforestrya

Voluntary carbon market(World Bank)

283,000 5,250,000 5 40,000 18.55

SmokelessKitchen

Not yet eligible for funding(Pilot project)

508,173 634,260 10 447,600 1.25

aOnly the above-ground biomass is counted.Sources: The smokeless kitchen example is based on the assumption that 60% of households in the Nyando district in Kenya adopt and use the stoves. Theaverage reduction in fuel consumption is 50%. The stoves are adopted by the households over a 10-year period, starting with 62 households in the first yearand doubling the number of households every year. People’s current consumption of wood is 1.6 kg/day/capita. Figures for the other two projects are takenfrom respective project documents.62,63

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sugar is produced.65 The number of local beneficiariesin the agroforestry project is set to the number ofparticipating households in an ongoing agroforestryproject funded mainly by the GEF/World Bank during2005 to 2009. In our intervention research on thesmokeless kitchen, the number of potential localbeneficiaries is estimated to 60% of the populationin the Nyando district. This figure is based on thefact that the majority of the population is poorsubsistence farmers.63 In terms of cost effectiveness,both the Mumias sugar factory and the Western KenyaIntegrated Ecosystem Managment (WKIEM) projectare on par with the carbon price in the EuropeanTrading System. However, the smokeless kitchen hasdramatically better cost effectiveness than the twoother projects.

ConclusionIn this experimental case of field-based interventionresearch among peasant farmers in Kenya we havefound synergies between adaptation and mitigationto climate change impacts that are both urgent andworthwhile to deploy. The study is located in anarea in Kenya affected by drought, flooding, landdegradation, heavy disease burden and persistentpoverty, typical of much subsistence farming in SSA.Findings from our experimental case can therefore bescaled up, transferred to and tested in similar settingsas a precursor to further implementation.

There are several reasons for a widespreaddiffusion of the smokeless kitchen. The strongestreason is the effectiveness by which a sequenceof tangible benefits can be promoted from theadoption of the smokeless kitchen such as: lesssmoke, less work, better health, slower deforestation,and more time left for food securing activitiesin subsistence farming. In addition, local tangiblebenefits are combined with global intangible benefitssuch as carbon sequestration. The smokeless kitchenthereby represents a local to global synergy betweenadaptation and mitigation that we must promote inprojects, interventions, and climate policy.14

In times of climate change there is a huge needfor adaptation especially among 1 billion vulnerablepeople living in and depending on risky livelihoods insubsistence farming in various agricultural systemsacross the global south. While the adaptationneed is huge their aggregated emissions are alsosubstantial calling for synergies between adaptationand mitigation in projects, interventions and climatepolicy alike. In this experimental case of interventionresearch, we have identified a number of promisingoptions for peasant farmers to become active

participants in climate change actions relating to bothadaptation (shortage of fuel wood, disease burden)and mitigation (emission reduction through energyefficiency). We have found that it is important totarget the poorest of the poor directly. This means thatinterventions should be specifically designed for themand in collaboration with them both in order to createadequate initiatives and in order to avoid co-optionby other not-so-poor groups. It is also importantto offer support for sustaining such participatoryprocesses.

In principle, there is little difference betweenoperational CDM projects, such as the Mumias Sugarfactory, and the smokeless kitchen because bothprojects reduce the emission of GHG. The maindifference is in the number of parties involved; in thecase of Mumias Sugar factory there is one commercialparty in contrast to the many noncommercial parties,mainly women and children, in the case of thesmokeless kitchen. There are many institutional andlogistical problems involved in dealing with highnumbers of individual households, but owing to themany prime and ancillary benefits of the smokelesskitchen its deployment is both urgent and worthwhile.Here, it deserves mentioning that the presence ofcommunities of practice in our research sites, asprobably in many other villages with so called self-helpgroups, creates opportunities for extensive learningprocesses involving large numbers of communitymembers including the younger generation.

Emission reductions from affluent lifestyles areoften associated with costs and ‘sacrifices’ for theindividual such as lower consumption and reducedmobility. Emission reductions from the smokelesskitchen introduced in our research on production,reproduction and consumption in the context ofextreme poverty are entirely beneficial, however,involving ancillary benefits such as reduced demandfor fuelwood and labor, improved health and energyuse as well as smarter time management amongpeasant farmers in subsistence farming sufferingseasonal shortages of food. In combination this hasimportant implications for land use options and foodsecurity.

The potentially large reductions of CO2 emis-sions that can be gained from the introduction of asmokeless kitchen, stems from its close link with theeveryday reproductive work of cooking among tens ofthousands of households. It thereby serves as a promis-ing initiative for engaging large numbers of peasantfarmers in the fight against climate change while atthe same time achieving a range of ancillary benefitsfor the poorest of the poor who live in areas affected

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by persistent poverty and multiple other stressors.In sum, the smokeless kitchen can serve as a syn-ergy between adaptation and mitigation. In addition

it serves the dual purpose of addressing, althoughnot solving, the health imperative and the foodimperative.

ACKNOWLEDGEMENT

The authors acknowledge the financial support provided by The Swedish Research Council Formas; theassistance provided by ICRAF, Nairobi; and comments from anonymous reviewers.

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