Signs of integration.

I arrived in Vientiane a couple of weeks ago. The city greeted me with heavy rain and a thunderstorm. Obviously it was a very heavy thunderstorm as they said in the local newspaper the next day that two elephants had been killed in the outskirts of the city by the lightning (!?). Now the weather has improved though and we haven’t had any rain this week (so far). One can hope the rainy season is over. Wishful thinking?

It was great to come back to Vientiane- this time long term as I’m planning to stay here for the next year and a half. In comparison to other Asian capitals with millions of inhabitants and endless traffic chaos I must say Vientiane is a quite atypical Asian capital with a slow beat and almost a sleepy feeling (although the number of vehicles has increased a lot just during the past few years here as well).

A few signs of slight integration into the Lao way of life are probably 1) wearing a sin which is a traditional skirt Lao women wear and can be found in various colours and embroideries. Yesterday I got my first sin done and it’s a beautiful sin! 2) Walking under an umbrella, not because it’s raining, but because it’s sunny. The 3^rd step for me will be learning the language. On Monday I’ll start a 4 week crash course studying 3 hrs a day, 5 days a week. That will just be the beginning of it but I’m hoping I’ll get some basics. Luckily I have Dorn, Boua and Bouasy, plus night guards to practice with!

Work-wise I’ve so far mostly been fixing all kind of pratical issues related to the office and bureaucracy. Met some people from other organizations working in the same field, and on Wednesday I attended ERIA’s (Economic Research Institute for ASEAN and East Asia) ”1st East Asian Summit Energy Efficiency Conference” which was hosted by the Ministry of Energy and Mines of Lao PDR. The conference was held at Lao Plaza and there were probably around 200 participants from various countries around East Asia. It was interesting to learn how the East Asian countries with varying levels of economic development have coped with energy efficiency issues. The presentations of the conference elaborated the different energy efficiency policies some East Asian countries had implemented, which I hope other countries can learn from. The conference also draw scenarios on future energy demand in the region, which obviously is increasing due to economic development, as well as pointed out challenges and opportunities for energy efficiency. In most countries energy efficiency was important firstly because of energy security issues and economic development. On 3rd place was climate change. One of the presentations (by UN ESCAP) underlined also the social aspects of energy and energy efficiency and its importance for development issues. Energy efficiency was also seen as an important source of energy as improving energy efficiency will give more energy out of the same amountof primary energy. Lao PDR’s hydro power potential was highlighted during the conference and the country was recognized as “the battery of the region” having substantial reserves and potential to feed the region with renewable energy..

Phob kan mei! (see you soon)

Hanna

Workshop: Climate change from a Southern perspective

Last week a group of us from the FFRC team took part in a workshop organized by Kepa, an NGO that functions as a service base for Finnish development NGOs. Titled “Climate change from a Southern perspective”, the workshop presented the view from the grassroots level of how climate change and the increased amount of climate change projects and funding have affected local NGOs and civil society in the South. These perspectives were delivered to us by people from four of Kepa’s regional offices in Nicaragua, Tanzania, Mozambique and the Mekong region. Besides hearing of the climate policies and actions of these countries, the workshop also presented the concerns of local NGOs and civil society. The diversity of all the countries presented and their differing circumstances make it quite a challenge to generalize results, however, a few themes did stand out.

A cross-cutting concern voiced by all regional offices was the simultaneous challenge and opportunity presented by the increased amount of climate change funds available. On the one hand, there are large amounts of money available from both development banks and bilateral initiatives. Then again, it appears that national climate change policy planning debates are still very top-down, and civil society participation occurs late, if at all. The processes tend to be donor or money-driven, which raises the question of diverting attention away from more pressing issues, for example land grabbing in the Cambodian case. Finally, a large part of the money available is intended for mitigation projects, and especially local advocacy work receives little funding.

Another concern filtered from the various countries was the lack of knowledge at all levels of administration and public awareness. For example, the representatives from Tanzania and Mozambique told us several answers to the question “What is climate change?”, ranging from ideas about drought and floods to confusion with ozone depletion. The confusion over the causes and consequences of climate change is heightened by the lack of reliable data. In many cases, climate change seems to have become an umbrella term under which to pinpoint all local environmental problems.

Despite all the concerns voiced, there arose possibilities for local NGOs and civil society. Since a large part of climate finance projects are still at an initial level, the opportunities for influencing their direction still exist. However, many voiced concerns that local civil society would merely be used to legitimize government policies or implement projects as advised by international donors.

Specifically from the Mekong region, we heard the insights of Timo Kuronen from Kepa’s regional office in Bangkok. Timo commented on the difficulty to find information on climate change funding in the region. Certainly the rapidly increasing amount of funds, especially to Clean Development Mechanism projects in Thailand and Vietnam, affect this. Otherwise the civil society concerns voiced by Timo differed greatly based on national circumstances. For example, Cambodian NGOs were mainly concerned about climate change projects diverting attention and funds away from more pressing issues. In Thailand, the active discussions on climate justice by the Thai Working Group on Climate Justice (TCJ) succeeded in pushing local mitigation effects into the agenda of the Thailand’s National Master Plan on Climate Change (2010-2019).

On the whole the workshop gave us at FFRC an overview of what is currently happening and how local civil societies are reacting. Based on the active questions and discussions, I’m sure we all left with new information and a will to attend more events like this.