The Parish Church of St John-at-Hampstead

A report on one of the charities supported by the parish

Well, the weather turned out alright for the Olympics, but what a dreadful summer until then! First the drought and then the deluge. The slugs ate all Handley’s attempt to grow runner beans, our veg box supplier just managed to keep up deliveries but says some of his suppliers have been badly hit, and the supermarkets are, to my delight, actually selling the slightly less than perfect fruit and vegetables they normally reject. We will manage, even if rising food prices are a real problem for some of us, but what if the slug-eaten beans and the rotten fields of organic crops were all that stood between us and starvation?

The issue of resilience in the face of climatic change and disaster is one to which Practical Action, a charity supported by the Parish, has been giving of a lot of attention in recent years. They say “Resilience refers to the ability of a system, community or society to resist, absorb, cope with and recover from the effects of hazards and adapt to longer term changes in a timely and efficient manner without undermining food security or wellbeing. Resilience can be thought of as the ability to endure shocks and stresses and bounce back.” 

Action that enables people to face hazards need not be complicated or very expensive. Practical Action sticks to the “small is beautiful” motto and the emphasis on sustainable technologies that inspired it from the start. For example, in Bangladesh, regular flooding means that people are often not able to access clean water as wells become inundated. Building plinths for wells raises them above predicted flood water levels so they are protected now and into the future.

In Peru, faced with climate change – “unseasonal frosts, extended periods of drought, extreme rainfall” – Practical Action initiated a ‘Resilient Farmer Leaders School’. They say “This school successfully trained 31 farmer leaders from 4 project communities in 10 modules of agricultural and livestock production with a focus on risk reduction and climate change adaptation. Once lead farmers were trained they went back to their communities to teach others. This has resulted in increased capacity, productivity and ability to adapt by more than 800 families. For example, communities are now experimenting using a combination of indigenous and new varieties of vegetable and conducting field trials to breed strains of potatoes, maize and alfalfa that have been successful in nearby areas. And such initiatives can spill over. Also in Peru “as a result of learning and experimenting with technology, a group of families have now installed drip irrigation systems in avocado crops with the financial support of municipalities in Yungay province on their own initiative.” Practical Action has supported such spill over with revolving fund programmes run by local farmers’ committees, a model that has “been replicated by other development organizations as it is an exemplary way of ensuring farmer’s own innovation and technologies are strengthened”.

Across the world in Nepal, Practical Action report, “Bee-keeping has been a successful strategy for agricultural diversification. Traditionally bee-keeping was treated as another form of hunting. When honey was removed from the hives, they were severely damaged. The project therefore raised awareness on bee hives and the importance of proper bee keeping skills. The introduction of better hives has reduced losses of bee colonies and increased productivity. Bee-keeping is now a reliable source of income.”
All these projects need practical and technological know-how and start-up funding. Practical Action has realised that much benefit comes from working jointly with other sources of funds – for example in Darfur it has worked with Christian Aid, using its expertise to enhance the success of projects. Its resilience-building focus emphasises the necessity of long term-relationships – for example 15 years of work in Darfur, despite the on-going violence – and the need to work at the middle level. As it tries to draw on and spread the benefits of its experience by linking the district level to national and community levels, work is slowed by lack of support from the donor community. Most disaster relief and resilience “funding goes directly to national governments (e.g. through the Global Facility for Disaster Reduction and Recovery) or to non-governmental organisations (NGOs) for local implementation. Little funding is available to help bridge the gap between national-level policies and local-level plans”.

All these reasons help to make the support that we as a Parish can give to Practical Action particularly important. There is a lot more information on their web-site http://practicalaction.org/ and I’ve drawn on their report at http://practicalaction.org/resilience-in-practice. After seeing what climatic conditions can do even here, I’m the more convinced how crucial is such work and our support for it.