AS the world prepares to "seal the deal" at the 15th United Nations Climate Change Conference in
Copenhagen this month, climate change is front page news.
Much of the news focuses on emission ceilings, carbon trading, geo-engineering, increased financial
and lower greenhouse gas emission commitments from industrialised countries, and other complex
issues that have been on the table for years.
While many of these discussions should and need to take place, we are also in need of innovative and
radical ideas that are more focused and more appropriate to local situations.
These discussions are often not at the spotlight of international meetings, but need to be addressed as viable solutions that countries themselves can implement, particularly in the global south.
Some have already taken up that call. Egypt is currently engaged in a controversial and highly
innovative project of greening its desert in order to alleviate its crowded urban centres and increase
the amount of arable land available for farming.
Approximately 95 per cent of Egyptians live on less than five per cent of the country's land mass, and
are mostly located along the Nile Valley and Delta. Although the original idea has been around for
decades in Egypt, the government is now moving on to mega-projects pumping water to areas that
will green millions of acres of land, and plans on reclaiming up to 60,000ha per year.
However, critics argue that the newly created farm land is not as productive as it could be due to
engineering problems and inefficient farming techniques as only rudimentary irrigation systems were
set up.
Limited water resources are an additional weak link. As Egypt siphons water from aquifers and the
Nile into the desert, countries upstream may begin to question the efficiency of the project.
In recent years, 11 African Nile basin countries have questioned the legitimacy of colonial-era
agreements signed with Britain that have hampered their economic development.
Under the 1929 and 1959 agreements, Egypt was given the lion's share and effective control of the
Nile, the world's longest river.
Other African countries are also rising to the challenge, employing prevalent technology such as cell
phones to monitor climate changes, through weather stations in new and existing mobile phone
towers, and keep farmers informed of upcoming droughts or increases in rainfall.
The widespread use of mobile telephones in recent years has spurred a number of activities that keep
the population in rural areas informed.
For example, the "Weather Info for All" initiative is a public-private partnership run by the Global
Humanitarian Forum, in collaboration with the World Meteorological Organisation (WMO), mobile
telecommunications companies Ericsson and Zain, and the Earth Institute at Columbia University in
the US.
The initiative will use mobile network sites across the continent as locations for automatic weather
observation stations and provide timely and critical information to farmers on any climatic changes.
Currently Africa has less than 200 weather stations that meet WMO requirements. The initiative is
aimed at creating an additional 5,000 stations across Africa, with initial focus, over the next three
years, on setting up almost 500 stations in the Lake Victoria region where thousands of people die
every year from storms and other accidents.
This partnership is another example of harnessing local resources to help the population in dealing
with climate changes that affect them directly.
It seems we are slowly reaching a time where without the ingenuity Thomas Homer-Dixon, author of
"The Ingenuity Gap" so often points to, we will not be able to close the widening gap between the
problems we face and our ability to address them through new ideas.
While ingenuity may have saved us from crises in the past and, we could argue, is in our nature,
without serious consideration to the long-term effects of climate change, and without taking a few
risks by employing new and innovative local solutions to a problem we cannot accurately predict or
control, we may be fighting a losing battle.
As states meet in Copenhagen to exchange ideas, agree on common goals, and discuss the latest
scientific findings, they should also be focusing on encouraging and fostering innovation within local
governments, institutions and the private sector. Local stakeholders will be the ones who know the
way climate change has influenced their countries best, and they can make changes happen locally.
This is not to say that local solutions are the remedy to a global problem like climate change.
However, countries cannot rely solely on the international community to propose specific plans of
local action. Rather they should employ their own resources to address their specific concerns
drawing on the knowledge available and in a fashion that complements international strategies.
Hany Besada is a senior researcher and program leader and Karolina Werner is the project
manager at The Centre for International Governance Innovation (CIGI) in Waterloo, Ontario,
Canada.