Climate change continues to be one of the most serious threats facing poor farmers in developing countries. Yet there are many things that can be done them adapt to climate change and play a role in mitigating its continued escalation.
On Friday 18 January 2008 at 20:30 GMT, BBC World’s acclaimed environmental series “Earth Report” took viewers to a remote corner of China’s Guangxi province, a region that up until five years ago was affected by severe deforestation and soil erosion. Featuring an IFAD-supported project working in 10 counties in the province, the documentary examines how simple biogas technology is improving local environmental conditions and reducing poverty.
Since its inception, the West Guangxi Poverty Alleviation Project has helped farmers in more than 30,000 poor households build biogas digesters, enabling them to produce bio-methane gas from animal and human wastes. Methane is a major greenhouse gas, second to carbon dioxide in the amount generated but with a global warming potential 22 times more damaging. Burning bio-methane reduces methane’s more damaging global warming effect.
As the documentary demonstrates, with just one cow or two pigs poor farmers can produce enough biogas to cook meals and light homes, eliminating the need for wood or coal. As a result of the project’s efforts, it is estimated that 56,600 tons of firewood are saved in the project area each year, equivalent to the recovery of 7,470 hectares of forest. At the same time, as poor households adopt biogas systems, women no longer spend up to three hours a day collecting wood for cooking. And as the film illustrates, with additional time to invest in other activities like tea planting or silk-worm production, women are now contributing to a rise in household incomes.
