Beware solar triumphalism

2017 saw a growing trend for #ClimateOptimism a kind of narrative where influential people and groups tell us that everything is going to be OK. The inference being: don’t worry you can carry on living life as normal, give or take a few minor changes. It is well intentioned, the thinking being that people respond better to hope than despair. But what if it is false hope that we are being sold? This is a theme we will be exploring a little more in 2018. 

Tyler Cowan writing in Bloomberg View on January 2nd:

‘There is now a doctrine of what I call “solar triumphalism”: the price of panels has been falling exponentially, the technology makes good practical sense, and only a few further nudges are needed for solar to become a major energy source. Unfortunately, this view seems to be wrong.’

Articles like Tyler's are a sobering reminder of just how elusive a low carbon future still is.

The hope we need to give is to those who are most badly effected by Climate Change and those who stand to be effected in the very near future. TGT can give that hope and we can deliver on it. TGT projects are proof of that and we want to do a whole lot more in 2018. 
 

How to produce coffee in Nepal

Coffee production in Deusa, Solukhumbo

With funding and support from TGT and Eco Himal Nepal, the Deusa Agro Forestry Resource Centre (AFRC), is enabling farmers in Deusa and Waku, Solukhumbo, to produce and sell coffee. Coffee is a good crop to grow at these altitudes and once established will provide a regular extra source of income for hundreds of farmers.

But, coffee is not immune to the impacts of rising global temperatures and needs to be farmed in a Climate Change aware way. The main threats are invasive insect pests, drought, intense rainfall events and increased average temperatures. Adaptation is possible, and it can be done using organic pesticides and fertilisers, clever intercropping (for example, planting coffee alongside plants that hold water in soil and provide coffee with the shade from intense sunlight) and by planting new crops at slightly higher, rather than lower, altitudes.

We are working closely with Eco Himal and the Deusa AFRC to enable farmers to maximise their income and farm in a sustainable way. These are very early days and it is a long term project. We are opening conversations with stakeholders at all levels of the coffee chain (from bean to cup), who are helping us immensely already. On our recent visit to Deusa, we did some fact-finding to share with those advising us. We are publishing what we found out here too, to provide some information for those interested in how coffee is produced and traded in Nepal. Coffee could become a very important part of the mix for farmers in mountain regions and help them go beyond the perils of subsistence farming. 

How many farmers have mature coffee trees currently? 
300 in main project area, more in neighbouring districts.

On average how many productive coffee trees does each farmer currently have?
10-20

What bean are they growing? What coffee tree varieties have been planted?
Arabica - we are still trying to find out the varietal. It is fully organic.

How many new coffee trees are being grown?
8,000 mature trees currently in main project area, around 5,000 are fruiting, the other 3,000 are one year old. 

Cultivating coffee saplings in Deusa.

How many new coffee trees have been planted that are not yet productive?
20,000 saplings were distributed in 2016, around 50% will survive. 
Planning to distribute a further 15,000 saplings in 2018. 

How many KGs of coffee cherry have been harvested in the last crop harvest?
2,000 KGs harvested in 2017. Around 20% of cherry's were lost. 

Who bought the coffee, for how much and what did they do with it? 
It was bought by a trader in Kathmandu, he mixed them with other beans and sold them onto other traders. He bought the beans for 500 Nepali Rupee / KG and sold on for around 700 rupee /KG. 
It took the trader a long time (several months) to pay for the coffee, which created a very long time lag for the farmers before they received their share of the proceeds. 

How many KGs of coffee cherry are expected from the next harvest?
Expecting 2,500KG in next harvest.

What is the current process for picking, pulping, milling, transporting, selling, roasting etc?
- Cherries are handpicked by farmers
- They carry cherries for around 30 mins in a bamboo basket to a collection point (there are approx. 8 collection points in the main project area). 
- Collection points serve between 5 and 30 farmers
- Pulped by hand turned machine (see photo of machine attached)
- (we have funded 6 pulping machines, these are moved around the project area to collection points as and when needed)
- After pulping beans are left in a sack overnight
- Beans are hand washed next morning to remove husks and then left to dry on trays in the open air
- Moisture content is checked, but only by sound, they do not have moisture meter's yet.
- Once beans are dry, farmers carry them in Bamboo baskets to the Agro Forestry Resource Centre - depending on where the farmer lives in relation to the AFRC, this can take anything between 1 hour and 1 day. 
- AFRC weigh sacks and tag them so they can keep a record of which beans belong to which farmer.
- Before weighing AFRC carry out a basic quality check, they want unbroken beans that have no dust, no mould, no moss and no animal hair. 
- AFRC stores coffee in sacks on top floor of building
- Eco Himal (our partner NGO) transport coffee beans to Kathmandu and store them in their office. 
- It cost 57 rupees / KG to transport to Kathmandu
- There is a 'district development tax' of 5 rupee / KG that has to paid on all produce that leaves Solukhumbo. 
- There are a few small-scale roasters in Kathmandu, but most coffee is exported as parchment for roasting in Australia, New Zealand etc. 

Coffee pulping machine at Deusa AFRC

How many pulping machines are there? What do they look like?
Currently six. We are hoping to fund a few more as production expands.

What sort of intercropping is happening?
Mostly banana and bamboo trees to provide shade, but also other native trees. Paulownia, Moringa, Ginger, Tumeric, Orange trees are all being tested. Plants that retain water in the soil, fix nitrogen and provide shade are favoured. If they are plants that can be farmed commercially and sustainably too all the better. 

At what altitude is the coffee being grown? 
1,000 - 1,500m 

What is the potential to upscale production, how much land is potentially available for coffee production?
In the main project area (Deusa) enough trees have been planted to treble, possibly quadruple production in the next 2-3 years. In neighbouring district (Waku) which is also part of our project area, coffee production is just starting and it has the potential to be just as productive. There are other neighbouring districts with similar capacity. So could expand production by a factor of 10 or 15 in the coming years. We are taking great care to ensure coffee is one of many plants farmed here. Biodiversity is supremely important to climate change adaptation. 

Forthcoming monitoring visit to Nepal

Our UK Co-Director Dr. Morgan Phillips talks us through his forthcoming visit to Nepal. 

On Tuesday (November 7th) I am setting off on my second visit to Nepal. I will be there for just over two weeks and have a lot to fit in. I will be monitoring projects, looking at potential new locations for work, meeting up with TGT supporters on the trail to Everest, planning our brand new schools partnership work, meeting sector colleagues and collecting evidence and data to measure the difference we, YOU, are making. Here is a brief outline on what I am hoping to achieve:

Nawalparasi

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Overlooking the terraces in the village of Dhahaba and the extensive Terai plain that stretches deep south into India (February 2017) 

Less than 18 hours after touching down in Kathmandu, I will be back at the airport for an early morning flight to Bhartapur, a small city on the very northern edge of the extensive Terai plain. This is the gateway to Nawalparasi, the foothills of the Himalaya and, more importantly for us, the stop off point for the hilly district of Deurali.  

Working with our NGO partners HICODEF and Practical Action, we have been enabling climate change adapatation in Deurali for over four years now. I will be accompanied on this field visit by Dinanath Bhandari, a TGT volunteer and climate change adaptation specialist from Practical Action. We will also, for the first time, bring Narayan Dhakal to Deurali. Narayan is Executive Director at Eco Himal who are our partner NGO for the projects we support in the eastern Nepali regions of Solukhumbo and Sankhuwasaba. Narayan's visit is part of our effort to bring Climate Change adaptation professional's together in meaningful ways - facilitating shared learning and knowledge transfer across Nepal. 

Nawalparasi was significantly impacted by the extensive flooding suffered by Nepal, India and Bangladesh this summer. As a consequence road links have been disrupted and we will be needing to hike several (hilly) miles to reach the three villages we are working with currently. I am particularly excited about heading back to Dhahaba, a community that is pretty much cut off by a huge river in the summer months, we are back working there this year after a two year gap and I hope to see much progress being made. In Durlunga I will get to see the completed and operational irrigation system that was under construction when I visited first back in February. I'll be needing a glass or two of that water too I think, the road is currently not open to vehicles and we have a four hour uphill trek to reach Durlunga! We have had some great news there recently too, the local government has agreed to match-fund an extension to this irrigation scheme. We will therefore be taking a closer look at the land and families that will benefit from the new water supply - and doing what we can to ensure the local government comes good on their promise.  

Our last stop in Nawalparasi will take us outside of Deurali to the village of Kirtipur. Here I will be meeting the families who received support from us after the 2015 earthquakes. I am keen to update the many TGT supporters who so generously donated crisis relief funds. I will be reporting on the homes and lives that money helped to rebuild.

Kathmandu

Sandwiched between my two field trips I have three days in Kathmandu. During this time I will be meeting with colleagues from Practical Action Nepal, Himalayan Adaptation, Water and Resilience (HI-AWARE) and Eco-Himal. I also hope to meet with representatives from UN Environment and will catch up with long time TGT collaborator DJ Regmi. 

Solukhumbo

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Seedlings grow at Deusa AFRC demonstration nursery. (February 2017)

My trip wraps up with a field visit to Solukhumbo and our project work in Deusa and Waku. The visit will be led by Narayan Dhakal from Eco Himal and we will be joined by our Nepal Co-Director, Richard Allen and Mary Peart, former headteacher at GSIS school Hong Kong.

We will also host four TGT supporters from the Alpine Club. Led by Tony Westcott, a team of four will warm up for their trek along the path to Everest base camp, by hiking to and around Deusa and Waku with us. Tony, a long time TGT supporter and friend of our founder Robin Garton, has long wanted to visit Deusa to see first hand the projects we are enabling there. We are very much looking forward to showing him and his party around the Deusa AFRC and all the other fantastic work there. 

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Dilisher Rai with his coffee plant in Deusa, Solukhumbo. (February, 2017)

One of my focus points in Deusa will be coffee. Several farmers here have been growing coffee under the guidance of our Eco Himal colleagues. They hope to develop this further and begin to generate significant income for the community over time. I recently met with the founder of Fairtrade coffee experts Falcon coffees and was offered some fantastic advice on how coffee production in Deusa might be scaled up. So I have a fact-finding mission and a checklist of questions to work through. 

Mary Peart is joining us to spend time planning our new partnership programme. Mary is the recently retired Head teacher from a Hong Kong international school, GSIS. In 2018, we will organise a field trip to Deusa for students and teachers from GSIS school. GSIS will, in return, commit to raising funds for our project work in Deusa and Waku. Mary and I will be meeting with the local Secondary School to discuss how the partnership will operate and how students from both host and visiting schools will benefit. 

Finally, either on the way, or way back, from Solukhumbo, we will visit the village of Kavre, a few hours west of Kathmandu. It is a scoping visit for TGT and a chance to assess Kavre's suitability as a location for an environmental education programme we are currently developing. 

Please keep an eye on our Social Media streams - Facebook, Twitter, Instagram - as well as this blog, where I aim to update on my trip as I go. I will report in more depth via our newsletter when I return. 

We thank you again for your support, you make all this amazing work possible. Please continue to enable climate change adaptation in Nepal by making a donation or by visiting our shop. 

Siân Brooke joins The Glacier Trust

We're very excited to announce that star of stage and screen, Siân Brooke, has joined The Glacier Trust as our new ambassador! 

Sian Brooke has had an incredible 12 months. She is one of the UK's most talented actors. In the space of just one year, she had starred alongside Benedict Cumberbatch TWICE, first as Ophelia in the critically acclaimed Hamlet at the Barbican theatre and then as Eurus Holmes, Sherlock's long lost and slightly terrifying sister. More recently she has starred in another BBC drama, Doctor Foster and you may have caught her in the wonderful mini-series The Moorside alongside Sheridan Smith back in February. Sian has barely been off our screens, we are incredibly fortunate that she has made time to support our work and help raise our profile.  

We spoke to Sian, asking her thoughts on Climate Change and the work of The Glacier Trust: 

Climate Change is so often talked about as something that will have an impact 'in the future', but it is already affecting people's lives and we need to help them today. The Glacier Trust is doing this in Nepal, enabling some of the most remote Himalayan communities to adapt to the changing conditions; it is great to be involved. 

We need to do more to raise awareness and support for those already suffering from Climate Change.

We will keep you updated on Sian's work and involvement with the charity in the coming months. She sent us a few snaps of our exclusive T-Shirts. You can buy one of your own through our online store. 

Welcome Sian, it is fantastic to have you on board!

On giving

The truly inspired School of Life popped up in our inbox this afternoon with some wisdom on 'Gifts for Life, not just for Christmas'. Now that we have our own little online shop, we thought that it was worth sharing a couple of paragraphs: 

The arrival of winter has a habit of making us feel particularly closed off from the world. The blustery cold and drawn-out nights fill us with the instinct to retreat, to seek shelter and warmth, as well as distraction from the goings-on of a busy social calendar.

And yet, since this is such an important time of year for exchanging gifts, we also must think carefully about the needs and unspoken desires of those around us. When buying gifts for others, there can be a strong temptation to seek out things which appeal to our sense of glamour or luxury, even though – on some level – we know the recipient might prefer a present which carries more emotional and psychological significance.

The School of Life has its own fantastic range of gifts, well worth exploring. We have a range of T-Shirts that we hope might find their way into the stockings of your nearest and dearest. We're also partnered with the Alpine Club who are donating £1 from the sale of every pack of their stunning Christmas Cards to our work. 

What is Agro Forestry and how does in help Nepal?

The Agro Forestry Resource Centre in Deusa, fifty miles south of Mount Everest, is one of our proudest achievements. We interviewed Til Bahadur Rai and Keshab Rai to find out how they felt about what has been achieved there so far. They explain what Agro forestry is, why the centre is needed in Deusa and tell us how the community has benefited over the last three years. It is a great insight into the difference our work is making in Nepal, enabling some of the most vulnerable communities to adapt to the impacts of Climate Change. These fantastic outcomes are only possible with your support.

The Glacier Trust featured in Third Sector magazine

Our Co-Director Morgan Phillips has written a guest column for Third Sector magazine.  We will publish in full here in a week or so, meanwhile, here is a snippet: 

Medium and large charities, because of their bureaucracies, are not as agile as businesses of a similar size or smaller charities. They move slowly, especially in reaction to external changes and shocks; failing to react, to change, to innovate. It can occasionally be fatal for an organisation. This is not news to many in the third sector I’m sure, but the tortoise-like nature of some international aid charities is not the only reason they lack agility and suffer when the world moves. 

The Glacier Trust online T-Shirt shop opens today

Last month we produced a short run of T-Shirts for our five #TeamTGT Velo Birmingham cyclists. People loved them and asked if they could buy a T-Shirt for themselves. So today, with the help of the brilliant Teemill platform, we are officially opening our online T-Shirt shop!

We are starting off with a small range of T-Shirts that feature the iconic TGT logo and celebrate the theme of Climate Change adaptation. They are available in a range of colours and on T-Shirts to fit children and adults. 

The T-Shirts are sold through Teemill who print T-Shirts on demand and ship them straight to your door. This is a wonderful online platform and perfect for small charities like ours. There are no upfront costs, no minimum orders, no postage or payment transfers to deal with and a fantastic, easy to use, website that makes the design process very simple. The Glacier Trust receives proceeds from every T-Shirt sold, this varies depending on the colour of the T-Shirt (trade secret: we receive more if you buy a white T-Shirt), but it is enough to make a difference to our work - especially if everyone in your family gets a TGT T-Shirt for Christmas this year!

The other great thing about Teemill is that the designs are printed on Rapanui T-Shirts. They are made from certified organic or bamboo and made in an ethically accredited, wind powered factory. They feel great too, super soft and lightweight. 

We will be doing a bigger launch next month, so please look out for that, but in the meantime, please browse the online shop and select a T-Shirt or two for you or a loved one. And do please send us your feedback, we'd love to hear your thoughts on the t-shirts, the shop, the buying process and this initiative as a whole

How women are disproportionately impacted by Climate Change

On the path to Waku in Solukhumbo, February 2017. The Glacier Trust is working with Eco Himal Nepal in Waku to enable families to adapt to the impacts of climate change. 

Earlier this month ICIMOD published a very important paper on the gender imbalances experienced in the Hindu Kush Himalaya region. Noting that the situation is particularly acute in Nepal, this article from Juhi Chaudhary for thethirdpole.net provides an excellent summary of the report and its findings. 

Juhi Chaudary:

Gender structures and deeply entrenched socio-cultural ideologies that marginalise women’s work make women more vulnerable than men. Mountain women, who have great a resilience and the knowledge to adapt to various stresses, are often left out of key decision-making processes and are marginalised further, even though they are likely to suffer more in the future. Climate change is bound to increase these gender inequalities further in many ways.

The Glacier Trust recognises and addresses these gender issues in project design and delivery, but we are acutely aware of the need for fundamental structural solutions to gender inequality in Nepal and worldwide.