Monday 31 August 2009

Handwriting Posters? No Way!

These may be the most astonishing posters I have ever seen. Out of the 300 posters displayed during the WCA 2009 at the UN Headquarters in Nairobi from 23rd to 28th of August, the two posters produced by LAYA are unique. They are all handwritten!

A hard worker shouldn’t find it difficult to inscribe 2000 words on a 50X150 cm poster paper. But bearing in mind the current advanced printing technology, where one can send a poster to a printing company electronically and get a beautiful poster delivered the next day, doing such a cumbersome work is simply unbelievable.

“It took 6 days to write the texts and to draw the illustrations. We employed three people to work on the posters,” explained Venu Gopala Rao, a LAYA scientist responsible for preparing the poster content and overseeing the production.

LAYA is a non-government organization based in Visakhapatnam, Andhra Pradesh, South India. The organization works on finding sustainable land use practice through non wood forest products farming and improving food and livelihood security in the tribal areas of Indian north coastal districts.

Attracting attention is only one of the reasons for handwriting the posters.

“We mean to avoid using plastic. Of course you can find a poster printing company in our town, but it is against our organization’s value if we cannot minimize the use of plastic,” explained Venu, a devoted 40 years old scientist working in LAYA for the last 20 years.

Interesting, isn’t it?

Originally posted on Sun, 08/30/2009 - 06:43 at the following link: http://www.worldagroforestry.org/wca2009/handwriting-posters-laya

Agroforestry System to Save Olive in Italy

Nairobi – 24 August. Adolfo was prompt this morning. Informed that late participants wouldn’t be allowed entrance to the WCA2009 Conference Hall at the UN Compound once President Kibaki is on stage, he had to skip his breakfast to catch the conference bus to depart at 7 a.m. from his downtown hotel.

Arriving in Nairobi on KLM a day before, Adolfo Rosati, an Italian scientist working for the CRA (the government independent council for agricultural research) attended the WCA2009 to find more information about the potential of agroforestry system for the current issue Italy is facing.

“In Italy, we have over a million hectares of olive plantation grown traditionally. The problem is olive becomes economical only if the European funds it. After 2013, they would probably stop the funding risking over a million hectares of olive to become abandoned. If we can turn part of this into agroforestry system, combining olive with pasture or other crops underneath it, then we can make it economical.”

Adolfo said keeping olive in the landscape is historically important to the Italian people as olive is very much part of the history of their landscape. He expected to meet other scientists or organizations to work together on further study of olive agroforestry system.

Originally posted on on Tue, 08/25/2009 - 09:44 at the following link: http://www.worldagroforestry.org/wca2009/agroforestry-system-to-save-olive-in-italy%20

CIFOR-Panos Media Training during WCA2009

Around twenty African journalists, a fraction of more than 100 registered journalists to cover the 2nd World Congress of Agroforestry (WCA 2009), arrived earlier in Nairobi last week to attend a media training facilitated by Panos London and Panos East Africa under the support of Centre for International Forestry Research (CIFOR). The World Agroforestry Centre (ICRAF) Nairobi hosted the training held from 22nd to 27th of August.

According to Ana Abar, one of the Panos facilitators, the training functions as a place for the participants to build an in-depth understanding on climate change issues important to do their work, especially when they come to Copenhagen later this year to cover the climate change talk.

A number of experts on climate change issues from CIFOR and ICRAF were invited to present their ideas. On the second day, Dr Peter A Minang of ICRAF talked about the need for Africa’s common voice on the climate change negotiations. A day earlier, Dr Dennis Garrity, ICRAF’s Director General provided the journalists an overview about the WCA2009 and the ideas on agroforestry as the future global land use.

“The participants are environmental and science journalists working at local-national TV, radio, and print media in Kenya, Uganda, Ethiopia, Sierra Leone, Nigeria, Tanzania, and South Africa. This training is also a venue for them to get to know each other better and build partnership among for future collaborative media work,” said Ana, a Brazilian now residing in London.

Henry Lutaaya from the Sunrise Newspaper in Uganda shared the same idea.

“I came here with a hope to meet and exchange views with other journalists working on climate change issues.”

He suggested an improvement to the program.

“More experts from different background such as economists, social scientists, and environmentalists, to come and talk to us on the subject would be very very good,” said Henry while expressing his delight to be able to work together with Alex Kirby, a BBC veteran environmental journalist.

“We learn a lot from experienced journalists!”

Originally posted on Tue, 08/25/2009 - 13:13 at the following link: http://www.worldagroforestry.org/wca2009/node/60

Tuesday 18 August 2009

Panos Nairobi Climate Change Workshop

Aku bakal ke Nairobi lagi. Kali ini buat ikut Panos Nairobi Climate Change Workshop (21-28 Agustus 09) yang diselenggarakan bagi para wartawan peliput 2nd World Congress of Agroforestry (WCA) di Nairobi, Kenya. WCA itu sendiri diselenggarakan kantorku World Agroforestry Centre (ICRAF) bekerjasama dengan UNEP (United Nations Environment Program). Kantor pusat ICRAF di Nairobi letaknya bersebelahan dengan UNEP di UN Avenue, Gigiri. Menurut cerita, penerima Nobel dari Kenya, Ibu Wangari Maathai akan hadir dan menjadi pembicara dalam acara WCA ini.

Adalah CIFOR dan Panos yang mula-mula berinisiatif mengadakan workshop khusus bagi para wartawan di sela-sela berbagai sesi WCA. CIFOR adalah Pusat Penelitian Hutan yang berkantor pusat di Bogor sementara Panos merupakan lembaga yang mendorong partisipasi masyarakat miskin dan marjinal dalam pembangunan nasional maupun internasional melalui berbagai proyek media dan komunikasi. Kantor pusat Panos berada di London dan memiliki cabang di Nairobi.

Dengan tujuan membekali wartawan dalam peliputan isu-isu perubahan iklim, terutama menjelang Konferensi Perubahan Iklim di Copenhagen akhir tahun ini, CIFOR dan Panos bekerjasama membantu para wartawan memperluas cakrawala tentang isu-isu perubahan iklim. ICRAF Nairobi turut mendukung acara dengan menyediakan tempat workshop. Peneliti senior ICRAF dan CIFOR termasuk yang akan memberikan presentasi.

Kayak apa workshop wartawan? Ntar dech ceritanya kalo sudah sampe di Nairobi.