Dr. Paul Oquist Kelly1, Nicaragua’s representative to the Climate Change Conference COP25 in November 2019, gave an address to the conference. In this blog I will share with you the successes this Nicaraguan government has had regarding climate change and poverty. Next week I will continue with more of the essence of his speech.From 2007 to 2018, Nicaragua moved from 25% renewable energy to 62% while expanding electrical coverage to 95% of households. In 2007 the coverage was only 54%.
Nicaragua is committed to restoring almost 7 million acres of forest that had been historically deforested through agriculture. The government is also committed to the Forest Carbon Partnership to capture 11 million tons of CO2(e) [carbon dioxide equivalent] over the next five years.
Nicaragua is also adapting the dry corridor (like the area we live in) to the new reality of climate change…like planting trees with roots that are shallow and spread out to hold water and planting crops that do better with less rainfall and need less irrigation. The government has planted lots and lots of trees in roadway medians and during the dry season trucks come along and spray water on them.
Since 2007 when this administration won the elections, all of the above steps have been happening up through 2019 (when the speech was given). Besides those steps in just twelve years they have also:
- Reduced maternal mortality rate from 92.8 per 1,000 to 34.1;
- Reduced infant mortality rate from 29 per 1,000 to 12;
- Reduced chronic malnutrition in schools by 66%;
- Reduced general poverty from 47.9% to 34.1% and extreme poverty from 17.3% to 6.9%;
- Lowered the inequality in consumption from a GINI2 scale of 0.41 to .0.33 according to the GINI (1 being equal).
- Raised the equality of gender in government, society and businesses from being ranked 90th in the Gender Gap Index of the World Economic Forum to 5th in the world, only ranking below the Nordic countries;
- And allowed the indigenous and Afro-descendant population along the east coast of Nicaragua to set borders and gain titles of 37,800 square kilometers of ancestral lands as well as set up their own local government and have control of its own resources.
Quite impressive, I think. I read all of this and then hear MY president at a rally in Milwaukee3 talking about bringing back incandescent lightbulbs, dishwashers that use a lot of water, eliminating restrictors on faucets, shower heads, and toilets. And I sigh.
-Kathleen
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1Dr. Paul Oquist Kelley is Minister-Private Secretary for National Policies Presidency of the Republic of Nicaragua
2“In economics, the Gini coefficient (/ˈdʒiːni/ JEE-nee), sometimes called the Gini index or Gini ratio, is a measure of statistical dispersion intended to represent the income or wealth distribution of a nation's residents, and is the most commonly used measurement of inequality. It was developed by the Italian statistician and sociologist Corrado Gini and published in his 1912 paper Variability and Mutability (Italian: Variabilità e mutabilità).
The Gini coefficient measures the inequality among values of a frequency distribution (for example, levels of income). A Gini coefficient of zero expresses perfect equality, where all values are the same (for example, where everyone has the same income). A Gini coefficient of one (or 100%) expresses maximal inequality among values (e.g., for a large number of people, where only one person has all the income or consumption, and all others have none, the Gini coefficient will be very nearly one).” https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gini_coefficient
3https://www.realclearpolitics.com/video/2020/01/15/milwaukee_crowd_cheers_trumps_promise_to_deregulate_dishwashers_give_you_more_water_so_you_can_actually_wash.html
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