Guest Post —Restoration: An interdisciplinary concept in response to local development problems in Southern Madagascar

Guest Post —Restoration: An interdisciplinary concept in response to local development problems in Southern Madagascar

Safidy Ramarolahy, F4CR Madagascar Local Chapter Leader

In this blog post, guest author Safidy Ramarolahy discusses the restoration and development work underway in communities across Southern Madagascar. The training programs in these communities have fostered widespread commitment to ecosystem restoration, as well as providing resources for leaders to continue developing sustainable practices and solutions for the local environment and community.

6,000 people at 21 sites were sensitized and trained on the concept of climate restoration as part of a four-month mission between April and August 2022. The initiative was carried out by the local chapter of the Foundation For Climate Restoration (F4CR) and the Programa Vonjeo ny Tsy an’Asa — Unemployed Programa Madagascar (PVTA).

The South of Madagascar has been a center of research and experimentation for scientists, while remaining a cemetery of development programs and public policies for successive governments. Over the course of four long-standing Republics, there has been little progress in determining solutions to the interrelated problems of drought and poverty due to lack of political will and governmental stability. Logically, the intervention in the south must be sustainably based in a spirit of restoration in mentality, governance, social, and economic aspects. To bring real development to this specific Malagasy and African situation, climate restoration must be defined as an interdisciplinary concept beyond a simple climatic and environmental aspect. It must integrate epistemo-anthropo-philosophical, socio-economic and governance dimensions while staying a fully-fledged political concept to be transmitted to an entire generation.

The training provided by the local Madagascar chapter of the Foundation for Climate Restoration was aligned with this ideology in order to mobilize beneficiaries, champions, and leaders to bring about a reorganization of local development practices and approaches. The modules provided relate to leadership and political management, initiation to climate restoration, communication, advocacy, and the blue/green economy.

The beneficiaries were mainly young incubators and project leaders, and at the end of each session initiatives were collected to design the actions that will make up the intervention of the F4CR in the South of Madagascar. Initiatives included coastal desalination in Ambovombe to help increase water access, regenerative agriculture on the plain of Ihorombe in order to increase resilience in the face of the territory desertification, agroforestry, the blue economy and fight against unemployment, and a communication and ideological training campaign.

This four-month mission resulted in the mobilization of 6,000 beneficiaries and 50 trainers in 21 localities throughout the south of Madagascar. The Malagasy government continues to support the initiative through the Ministry of Technical Education and Vocational Training, civil society and grassroots communities. At this rate, the objective set for the training of 1,000,000 individuals in four years is achievable, resulting in the attainment of objectives 1, 2, 13 and 14 of the SDGs and a marked improvement of 0.6 points on the country’s HDI (human development index).

Foundation for Climate Restoration

9-23-2022

The Fourth Annual Global Climate Restoration is complete! This year’s Forum brought together world-class experts in youth climate activism, climate policy and advocacy, climate restoration solutions, and more. Participants commented that they learned from both the thoughtful presentations on the first day of the Forum and the engaging, interactive workshops on the second.

Climate Restoration Forums over the years

First Annual Global Climate Restoration Forum: Introducing Climate Restoration

In September 2019, the staff of a fledgling organization called the Foundation for Climate Restoration (F4CR) held their breath as they prepared for the First Annual Global Climate Restoration Forum. Staff members had traveled to Manhattan for this first-of-its-kind event, which would be held at the United Nations Headquarters in the Trusteeship Council Chamber. The Forum was being hosted in partnership with the United Nations Office for Partnerships, and speakers included United Nations officials, venture capitalists, faith leaders, solution entrepreneurs, youth, and more. Over 600 people had RSVPed, but the question remained: Would people actually show up? Would the speakers provide compelling remarks that drove home the importance of climate restoration?

The 2019 Forum was a resounding success, with a packed room and buzzing energy. It paved the way for later conversations with UN Member State representatives, U.S. policymakers, youth activists and organizers, climate scientists, and more. Attendees left with a new sense of optimism about the future: a restored climate really is possible.

Second Annual Global Climate Restoration Forum: Climate Restoration Opportunities Across Sectors

The F4CR team started planning for the Second Annual Global Climate Restoration Forum soon after, but those plans, like so many others, were derailed by the COVID-19 pandemic. Reluctant to cancel an event that had generated so much enthusiasm and awareness, the event was moved online instead. With a virtual format, RSVPs increased from 600 in 2019 to over 800 in 2020. The audience became more global and diverse, and the speakers represented a broader spectrum of fields. What’s more, the recordings of each session were viewed hundreds of times after the event concluded.

Third Annual Global Climate Restoration Forum: Sharing Global Progress Toward Climate Restoration

With the successful experience of a global virtual event in 2020, F4CR continued hosting its Forum online. In 2021, F4CR partnered with EarthxTV, which produced and distributed the event for their audience of tens of thousands. Like the two preceding years, the quality and caliber of speakers and sessions continued to improve. Attendees commented on how much they learned, the excitement that they felt and their desire to get involved in climate restoration.

Fourth Annual Global Climate Restoration Forum: It’s Time to Join the Climate Restoration Movement

Now, we’re preparing for the Fourth Annual Global Climate Restoration Forum. The idea of climate restoration is no longer brand new or radical — it’s becoming mainstream, with folks around the world asking, “How can I get involved?” F4CR is delighted to see people embracing the goal of a safe and healthy climate and continues to build pathways to engagement for anyone who wants to join.

This year, we’ll hear from climate restoration activists, young and old, from all over the world and all walks of life. We’ll delve deeply into relevant topics, like how we measure carbon removal and ensure that projects are having their intended impacts over time. We’ll hear what F4CR has been developing over the past year and what is in the pipeline for the coming year.

This Fourth Forum is unique because it is riding on such incredible momentum from policy advancements, growing activism, exciting solution innovations, and more. The Forum will allow us to showcase more nuance and complexity in the world of climate restoration because our audience’s level of sophistication has risen significantly. We can’t wait to share this year’s Forum with you. Register here.

Meet Maria Finnegan, F4CR’s new Chief Development Officer

My name is Maria Finnegan, and I am new to Climate Restoration. My title is Chief Development Officer, and for all intents and purposes, I am a fundraiser. I am also an (occasional) athlete, a bit of a history buff, a wife, and, most importantly, a mother. That last label is still relatively new to me, but it has quickly become my most important job.. Until this one.

Like many environmentally conscious people, I suffer from eco-anxiety. Every day I listen to the news or read the paper, my heart sinks as I learn about the latest disaster caused by the warming of our planet.

Until recently, I thought we were all on the right path. On the micro level, my family shops locally and sustainably, my husband has a plug-in car, and we limit our use of plastics. We are eco-friendly, and according to what I had been hearing, that was enough. Zooming out, I read that companies were working to limit their emissions, and under the Paris agreement, we would all theoretically be net zero by 2050. Things were going to get fixed. The “grown-ups” were working on it. Everything was going to be OK.

But in the last few years, I have realized that we are not going to be ok, that we are not doing enough — and I am now one of the grown-ups who needs to fix this urgently. It had always been a dream of mine to leave big city life and return to New Hampshire, partially so that my future children could have the same carefree childhood I had — a life spent outside exploring the woods and waters of the Granite State. However, once we made the move back, it didn’t take long to observe the very real changes in our climate that had happened since I left. Our summers are hotter, our springs barely exist, and most painful for me as a northeast girl — we are losing our snow. It had been 26 years since I moved away, and things had gotten worse, not better. Everything was not going to be “ok.” A few months ago I looked into my son’s big beautiful brown eyes, and I found myself fearing for his future. What kind of world will he inherit? I remember thinking to myself, There has to be a way to fix this. There must be more we can do. But what?

And then by sheer luck (and a little help from LinkedIn) I learned about the Foundation for Climate Restoration, and the concept of restoring the climate. Honestly, it seemed like a wild idea at the time — people want to pull greenhouse gasses (GHGs) out of the atmosphere? How? But the more I read about it, the more it all made sense. Through the vision of great scientists, naturalists, innovators, and thinkers, solutions have been developed that will not just “mitigate” climate change, but restore our climate. By adopting these methods to remove legacy GHGs from the atmosphere, we have the tools to return our climate to the way it was before industrialization — a time when humans and animals flourished. Many solutions are already here and more are emerging daily; all we need to do is start utilizing them. As I made my way through FC4R’s Solution Series, I started to feel something that I hadn’t in a long time: hope. There is a real reason to feel good about the future of this planet, and I realized that I wanted to be a part of the solution.

The Foundation for Climate Restoration is an incredible organization, unlike any other. We exist to teach, to share, to advocate, and to galvanize the world about this very real potential to restore the climate. It is absolutely thrilling that we now have the methods to restore our climate, but somehow, they are still a big secret. People are still operating on the same information and guidelines that were widely accepted nearly 50 years ago. I mean, I was! But that is not enough, not even close.

The world needs to adopt a commitment to restore the climate. F4CR is changing the narrative and spreading the word so that we can make climate restoration not only a household term but one that is spoken daily at the highest levels of national and international government. We need the resources to make all of this happen because tools are useless without people to use them. That’s where I come in.

I joined this organization because I believe wholeheartedly in our mission, and I want to use my talents and skills to create the change needed to make climate restoration a reality. It is my hope — no, my goal — to restore the climate, not only for my son but also for myself. And to do that, I need to raise money to fund our incredible outreach and education programs, and to provide resources for our chapter groups and young leaders. So, let’s get to work!

Click here to make a tax-deductible contribution to F4CR.

Boosting CDR Innovation Through the Inflation Reduction Act

There’s no doubt that the Inflation Reduction Act (IRA) is the broadest, most expansive climate bill ever passed by the US government. At $369 billion over 10 years, it funds some of our most urgent climate priorities.

Most of the objectives in the IRA are rooted in an old paradigm: “If only we can stop pumping more greenhouse gasses into the atmosphere, everything will be ok.” Unfortunately, that ship has sailed, and we now must do much more than curb emissions in order to ensure a climate in which future generations can survive and flourish. Don’t get me wrong, we absolutely need to fully transition to clean energy sources, and we are pleased that the IRA focuses on much-needed mitigation efforts. But, in order to return to proven-safe levels of atmospheric CO2 and reverse climate change, we must commit to climate restoration in conjunction with mitigation.

With this in mind, we at the Foundation for Climate Restoration (F4CR) are happy to see some focus on carbon dioxide removal (CDR) in the IRA. One promising area of CDR explicitly mentioned in the IRA is the use of CO2 as an input in construction materials like concrete, which is otherwise a “hard-to-abate” product. The IRA provides $100M for the Environmental Protection Agency to identify and label low-embodied carbon construction materials and products. It is our hope that a consistent and transparent labeling system like this will incentivize the widespread adoption of climate-friendly materials that turn concrete from a major source of CO2 emissions — responsible for 8% of global emissions — into a carbon sink (i.e., a means of safely storing atmospheric carbon).

We were also pleased to see reference to greenhouse gas removal (GGR), which includes the removal of harmful greenhouse gasses like methane in addition to CO2. Most GGR solutions are new to the marketplace or are still being researched and developed. When these solutions are ready to be scaled, they will need the kind of government support provided to the solar industry starting in the 1980s and to the fossil fuel industry for the past century.

One GGR solution that gets a lot of love in the IRA is Direct Air Capture (DAC).* A credit of up to $180 per metric ton of carbon removed through DAC will further incentivize innovation and efficiency as DAC technology emerges from its infancy. Importantly, these DAC credits focus on where the removed carbon will be stored, like in geologic formations or in oil and gas fields. To be a viable climate restoration solution, carbon must be sequestered safely for at least 100 years, but preferably for over 1,000.

As DAC and other GGR methods scale, thanks in large part to this new support from the federal government, it is essential that carbon removal is not used as a justification for ongoing carbon emissions. Carbon removal will only be effective in restoring the climate if it is done in tandem with urgent and comprehensive emissions reduction and elimination.

And finally, we are glad to see that over 40% of the $27B investment in the EPA’s climate change projects will go to low-income and disadvantaged communities. This will connect these communities with financing for emissions-reduction projects, but other equity issues remain, namely the exclusion of disadvantaged groups from the discussions leading up to the creation and passage of the IRA bill.** It is also worth noting that the 40% is slated for emissions reduction only and does not address the significant climate pollution that already affects these low-income communities. Additionally, it is unclear how the benefits of these new investments will be equitably distributed to the groups who have been most — and longest — impacted by climate change.

**Wondering how equity fits into climate restoration? Read our recent white paper “Equity as the Fourth Principle of Climate Restoration”

So, while the IRA is a significant legislative achievement in many ways, we must all stay vigilant and not become complacent. Restoring the climate will require more than one bill. We — you, I, and other climate restorers around the world — must embrace the opportunity and momentum created by the IRA to push for more investment, greater ambition, and an unwavering commitment to equitable processes in future climate legislation.