THE REGIONS
In this section:
Mexican Farmers Learn New Irrigation Methods
USAID Fights Cholera, Malaria in Senegal
Cambodian Landowners Get Help to Protect Rights
Bosnian Banking System Undergoes Reform
LATIN AMERICA AND THE CARIBBEAN
Mexican Farmers Learn New Irrigation Methods
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Rosaura Diaz Aquino, one of the Oaxaca farmers benefiting
from new irrigation systems, stands among her crops.
Virginia Foley, USAID |
OAXACA, Mexico—Two years ago, farmers here wanted
to build new wells and expand their fields. They took their
request to Mexico’s National Water Commission and were
turned down. They were told that the groundwater level in
the valley was depleted—too low because of drought and
inefficient water use.
So the farmers turned for help to USAID, which created a
local Groundwater Technical Committee. Through the group,
farmers learned new methods of irrigation. They also learned
how to produce organic vegetables and other basic crops while
efficiently using water and energy resources. And farmers
were taught about the causes and effects of watershed problems
and how to adopt new technologies.
“USAID decided to fund this project based on the farmers’
interest and [as an] incentive to improve their agricultural
business model through enhanced technologies and better agricultural
practices,” said Jorge Landa, who is the energy and clean
production specialist for the environment program at USAID/Mexico.
Thanks to production and irrigation training, farmers in
the valley of more than 3,000 square kilometers are growing
more crops and earning higher incomes, even in the face of
limited access to water.
The key is the new irrigation system. Housed inside a 1.5-hectare
greenhouse, it works through an automated system that applies
pressure to supply water and nutrients to the soil inside
and outside the complex.
The National Water Commission contributed half the cost
of constructing new irrigation systems, while local governments
picked up 25 percent of the tab. Farmers like Ricardo Sosa
and Rosaura Diaz Aquino pitched in the rest.
Eighty of the 88 families in Sosa’s community now use
the new systems, complete with walking sprayers, sprinklers,
and drip lines.
Sosa says his neighbors are growing new crops too, such
as fodder and beans. The old crops, such as alfalfa and maize,
were less profitable.
Aquino said farmers in her community now harvest twice a
year and can leave their fields after turning on the valve.
A widow and mother of seven, Aquino relies on her corn and
fodder crops for survival.
Other farmers are getting a boost from what is happening
inside the greenhouses. Tomatoes and peppers—two of the
main crops grown there—have proved more profitable than
the older crops.
Shoppers in Oaxaca are a natural market, and farmers are
now negotiating to supply multinational supermarkets and other
stores with the produce.
Producers are planning to increase the size of the greenhouse
so they can expand the irrigation system.
Meanwhile, the National Water Commission reports that the
groundwater level in Oaxaca valley is returning to healthy
levels.
AFRICA
USAID Fights Cholera, Malaria in Senegal
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USAID, through Christian Children’s Fund (CCF),
is fighting to curb a cholera outbreak in flooded areas
such as this one, in a district of Dakar called Darou
Salam. CCF runs a health post at a school nearby.
Richard Nyberg, USAID/Senegal |
DAKAR, Senegal—Torrential rains in September
led to the worst floods in 20 years here, causing an outbreak
of cholera and other water-borne diseases. An outbreak of
malaria is feared, and efforts are underway to prevent it.
Senegal has reported 320 deaths from cholera and a total
of 24,111 cases since January, according to the World Health
Organization (WHO). In the first week of October alone, 1,212
new cases were reported.
USAID granted $50,000 in assistance to the nongovernmental
organization Christian Children’s Fund (CCF) on Oct.
12. CCF, which already has a well-established health program
in urban areas, is distributing water disinfection kits, plastic
buckets, and insecticide-treated mosquito nets at subsidized
prices. The group is also ramping up its health and hygiene
education and awareness-raising efforts at the community level.
Cholera is an acute, diarrheal illness. Approximately 5
percent of those infected develop a severe form of the disease,
characterized by profuse watery diarrhea, vomiting, and leg
cramps. In these persons, rapid loss of body fluids leads
to dehydration and shock. Without treatment, death can occur
within hours.
A person may get cholera by drinking water or eating food
contaminated with the cholera bacterium. In an epidemic, the
source of the contamination is usually the feces of an infected
person. The disease can spread rapidly in areas with inadequate
treatment of sewage and drinking water.
“Rainfall levels during the annual rainy season from
July to September this year are three times the normal amount,
and have fallen after a period of prolonged drought,”
said Jennifer Adams, health team leader at USAID/Senegal.
“During these dry years, substantial internal migration
resulted in the proliferation of new settlements on low-lying
basins close to the water table. This year’s extensive
rains then flooded new settlements.”
The disaster has centered on Dakar’s impoverished outer
suburbs, where a lack of street drains and sewage systems,
coupled with a breakdown in refuse collection due to the floods,
has spawned disease.
“All the conditions are united for spreading the epidemic,”
Papa Salif Sow, who heads the infectious disease ward at Dakar’s
Fann Hospital, told the Reuters news agency. “Water,
dirt, dead animals, and leaking sewage. It’s the same
as in Louisiana.”
Some 60,000 people have been displaced from their homes,
while three times as many were living with water around their
ankles weeks after the storms.
Senegal’s last cholera epidemic was in 1996. But this
year the disease has been cutting a deadly trail across West
Africa, killing more than 1,000 people. WHO reports cases
of cholera in nine West African countries: Burkina Faso, Côte
d’Ivoire, Guinea, Guinea-Bissau, Liberia, Mauritania,
Mali, Niger, and Senegal.
Richard Nyberg contributed to this article.
ASIA AND THE NEAR EAST
Cambodian Landowners Get Help to Protect Rights
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A resident of Koh Pich displays her plot number, assigned
as land was measured to ensure fair compensation.
Kim Leng, PILAP |
PHNOM PENH, Cambodia—When they were issued an
eviction order in late 2004, the residents of Koh Pich, a
lush 68-hectare river island just minutes from downtown Phnom
Penh, had no idea their plight would become a symbol for a
larger Cambodian struggle.
The eviction order came shortly after local officials, along
with representatives of a major Cambodian financial institution,
began pressing residents to leave the island to make way for
its redevelopment as a “satellite city,” complete
with luxury villas and hotels. The residents, many of them
illiterate farmers, were easily intimidated by threats and
misinformation. Many families accepted a paltry sum of less
than $2 per square meter for their land and relocated to a
crude resettlement site outside the city, far from the farms
that sustained them.
A group of remaining residents turned to lawyers from the
USAID-funded Public Interest Legal Advocacy Project (PILAP),
which seeks cases that generate public debate and demand accountability
and respect for legal norms.
In an environment where illegal land-grabbing occurs with
impunity—evictions and forcible relocations are on the
rise all over Cambodia as private interests seek to develop
land, often with backing from government officials—the
Koh Pich island dispute presented an opportunity to uphold
and publicize important legal principles.
The Cambodian Constitution and the Land Law grant rights
to people residing on unregistered land. The law also establishes
the principle of “fair and just compensation” prior
to any government “taking” of land for a public
interest.
Armed with these regulations, PILAP lawyers went to work
analyzing the claims of all the island residents. To strengthen
their position, they conducted an appraisal of land values
on different portions of land, finding that some plots were
worth $30 per square meter.
After nearly six months of intense negotiations with city
officials, residents were offered a compensation package based
on the strength of their legal claims and locations of their
property. To date, more than 40 families have accepted the
offer and relocated to places of their own choosing.
“By asserting these farmers’ legal right to ‘fair
and just compensation,’ PILAP successfully facilitated
negotiations and settlements with government officials and
private developers—parties who were only recently attempting
to evict our clients from the island,” said Vineath Chou,
a PILAP attorney.
“We hope that this example, here in the heart of the
capital, can set an example of how responsible development
should occur in Cambodia,” he added.
The highly publicized, high-impact approach is one of the
first collective legal actions in Cambodia to help a community
assert its legal rights to land.
PILAP, which is housed at the Community Legal Education
Center, a Cambodian nongovernmental organization, is continuing
its negotiations on behalf of its remaining clients and has
been approached by other communities facing similar abuses
of their land rights. One of those cases involves a community
that stands to be displaced by a road-widening project, and
another involves property in the Rattanikiri highlands that
was illegally purchased by a private party.
Jehanne Henry contributed to this article.
EUROPE AND EURASIA
Bosnian Banking System Undergoes Reform
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A Bosnian resident uses a “Bankomat,” or
automatic teller machine, in Sarajevo.
Kasey Vannett, USAID/Sarajevo |
SARAJEVO, Bosnia-Herzegovina—Bosnia’s businessmen
once had to keep their money in government-held accounts and
were unable to use their profits as they wished. But USAID
helped abolish the old system, and today entrepreneurs work
with a flourishing commercial banking industry that is overseen
by modern regulatory agencies.
Payment bureaus were started in the 1950s to manage socially
owned resources through control of the financial sector. They
required entrepreneurs to deposit all of their earnings daily.
At the start of each business day, they could claim the money.
The payment bureaus decided how much of a cash flow a business
could have. They were also in charge of routine business functions,
such as auditing, tax collection, and statistical analyses.
All this caused a tremendous drain on businesses, said Anka
Musa, vice governor of the Central Bank of Bosnia and Herzegovina
(CBBH).
Musa, who once headed a branch of the payment bureaus, became
a part of an advisory group that helped create a detailed
report on the payment bureaus’ functions in 1998. The
group helped determine how and to what institutions the payment
bureaus’ functions would be redistributed.
USAID then oversaw the successful transfer of funds from
the bureaus to commercial banks at the start of 2001. The
Agency provided technical and financial assistance to the
CBBH, which ensured that commercial banks were licensed and
properly equipped to handle the increased business.
Commercial banks quickly filled in the space, which would
not have been possible with the payment bureaus in place,
Musa said.
Additional U.S. support helped set up, equip, and train
personnel at the newly created regulatory banking agency,
which enforces international regulatory standards
Musa said establishing a deposit insurance agency also played
a big role, as it has won citizens’ confidence.
Bosnia had some 30 banks when the payment bureaus were abolished.
But, as the regulatory entity began examining existing banks,
it found that many were inefficient and financially unstable.
It proceeded to close a number of those banks, even as it
examined new foreign banks that were entering the market.
“Everything that we have now in the banking sector
we either didn’t have before, had little of it, or it
was wrong from a market-economy point of view, dating from
socialism,” said Mustafa Brkic, the banking agency’s
deputy. “But our new system covers all the necessary
elements.”
Bank supervision, anti-money laundering, ethics and professional
conduct, accounting, and auditing are just a few of the training
courses the banking agency has provided.
Bosnia’s banking system has become so stable and competitive
that when USAID decided to close its lending program in 2003,
local banks competed to buy the portfolio of about 400 outstanding
loans. In the end, four Bosnian banks bought the portfolio.
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