Typically, the Scandinavian countries and Germany have set the example in the European renewables field. Yet lately, a Southern country - Portugal - has attracted attention after delivering its National Renewable Energy Action Plan to the European Commission this June. Portugal has made dramatic changes in its energy policy over the last five years under the government of Prime Minister Jos Scrates. The country's installed renewable energy capacity more than tripled between 2004 and 2009, from 1,220 megawatts (MW) to 4,307 MW, and renewables now represent roughly 36 percent of electricity consumed. Portugal currently ranks fourth in Europe in energy production from renewables. Of course, Portugal benefits from favorable conditions for renewables: a strong wind resource, great hydropower, good tidal waves potential, and a high sunshine rate. After the country removed several dams in recent years, Scrates' government has focused instead on wind power development, under most conditions the cheapest renewable energy source after hydropower. With more than 600-percent growth in wind energy production between 2004 and 2009, Portugal now ranks sixth in Europe in total installed capacity and third in capacity per capita, behind only Denmark and Spain. Some even expect Portugal to overtake its neighbor Spain in per-capita wind energy production as early as this year. Additionally, Portugal is starting to exploit its solar potential. A photovoltaic (PV) power station located in Moura, operative since 2008 and expected to be fully completed by the end of 2010, will count among the world's largest solar farms. But despite a great progression of installed PV capacity in Portugal (from 1 MW in 2000 to 75 MW in 2009), solar power still lags far behind wind's installed capacity of 3,353 MW. Portugal also deploys other renewable energies, albeit at a much smaller scale. Biomass and biogas represented 3.2 percent of total consumed electricity in 2009, and the world's first shoreline wave power plant has been operating since 2005 on the island of Pico in the Azores, with 400 kilowatt-hours (kWh) of capacity. How did Portugal assume such impressive leadership in the clean energy transition? The key, as usual, lies in ambitious supportive policies. Prior to 2000, Portugal's transmission lines were owned by private power companies that had no interest in investing in renewables, as the deployment of these technologies would require radical changes in the grid infrastructure and therefore raise costs. To address this barrier, the government bought the lines and began adapting the grid to renewables requirements, including more flexibility and a better grid connection in remote areas to allow the production and distribution of electricity from small generators, such as domestic solar panels. A combination of incentives was implemented to attract investors. Feed-in tariffs (FIT) - which guarantee producers of renewable energy a specified price for every megawatt-hour of power fed into the grid - were first introduced in Portugal in 1988 and have increasingly evolved into a highly sophisticated system with individual prices for each renewable energy source. The latest tariff stipulations, issued in 2005 and 2007, take into account environmental considerations, the level of technology development, and the inflation rate. The government also integrated new technologies such as Concentrating Solar Power (CSP) and tidal power into the system. Today, all renewable energy sources in Portugal wil benefit from the feed-in tariff for 15 years, and small hydropower prices are guaranteed for 20 years. The tariffs vary from around 7.5 Euro cents (around 9.5 U.S. cents) per kWh for wind and hydro to more than 30 Euro cents (38 U.S. cents) per kWh for photovoltaic energy. Renewable heating and cooling is also supported under conditions by financial and fiscal incentives, largely for the benefit of small and medium-sized enterprises. The European Commission plays a decisive role in setting targets for each Member State via its 2009 Renewable Energy Directive. Portugal is expected to reach a 31-percent share of renewable energy in its gross final energy consumption by 2020. Also, the European Emission Trading Scheme (ETS) encourages participating countries to cut their emissions of greenhouse gases and therefore move from fossil fuels to renewables, by requiring energy producers and energy-intensive companies to meet strict carbon dioxide emissions targets and to purchase additional permits for overshooting them. According to the International Energy Agency (IEA), Portugal became a net power exporter last year, delivering a small amount of electricity to Spain. Inspired by these good results, Portugal set more ambitious targets in its National Energy Strategy (ENE 2020), adopted by the Council of Ministers on April 15. The country now aims to reach a 45-percent renewables share in its electricity production by the end of the year, and a 60-percent share by 2020. The main focus of Portugal's renewable policy will remain on wind power, a dynamic industry that represents a source of revenue and creates green jobs. The electricity operator Energias de Portugal even invests in wind farms located in the U.S. Midwest. Prime Minister Jose Socrates' government wants to improve the reliability and efficiency of Portugal's renewables supply. Renewable energy production is often challenged by natural flows-including the common criticism that the sun does not always shine and the wind does not always blow, even in Portugal. By the end of the year, the government will set up a system to monitor on-going energy demand and potential supply from various available renewable sources. What is driving Portugal to undertake such changes? One factor, of course, is the fact that the country does not possess any noteworthy fossil fuel resources, as illustrated by 2007 IEA data. Yet in 2005, the bulk of Portugal's gross electricity was generated by three fossil sources: coal (32.7%), natural gas (29.2%), and oil (18.9%). The country is therefore heavily dependent on imports that place a high toll on the national budget - amounting to 86 percent of spending in 2006, according to the European Renewable Energy Council (EREC). In its ENE 2020 strategy, Portugal aims to reduce fossil fuel imports 70 percent by 2020 and cut its energy import balance 25 percent, saving some US$2.55 billion. In order to address initial local conflicts due to the financial costs of intense development of wind power plants, a unique mechanism has been set up. Under the current feed-in tariff legislation, municipalities that host wind farms benefit from additional financial support in the form of a 2.5-percent share of the monthly remuneration paid to local wind project operators. Overall, the IEA's Shinji Fujino tells the New York Times, "So far, the [renewable energy] program has placed no stress on the national budget." Alexander Ochs is director of the Climate and Energy program at the Worldwatch Institute and Camille Serre is a research intern with Worldwatch. They can be reached at aochs@worldwatch.org. This article originally appeared on the Worldwatch blog ReVolt. For permission to republish this report, please contact Alex Kostura at akostura@worldwatch.org.

Postcards of Hope and Success from Africa Worldwatch Researcher Visits 150th Project, After 21 Sub-Saharan African Countries Lom, Togo-Highlighting Africa-led innovations that offer sustainable ways toalleviatehunger and poverty, Worldwatch Institute senior researcher Danielle Nierenberg visited her 150th site today as part of a one-year tour through Ethiopia, Zimbabwe, Niger, Madagascar, and 17 other countries in sub-SaharanAfrica. The research-driven itinerary, part of Worldwatch's Nourishing the Planet project, will culminate in the January 2010 release of the Institute's flagship publication, State of the World 2011: Innovations that Nourish the Planet. About 120 kilometers outside Lom, Togo, Nierenberg reached this exciting benchmark while spending the day visiting conservation projects with a local organization called "Les Compagnons Ruraux," which is working with communities living in or near the rain forest to help them practice sustainable agriculture and prevent deforestation. Other projects that Danielle has visited to date include: School garden and nutrition projects in Senegal and Uganda that produce healthy food for children while instilling pride in local cultivation practices and a taste for indigenous vegetables; Pastoralists in Kenya who are working to keep both their livestock biodiversity and their cultural traditions alive; Women-run co-operatives and value-added projects in Ghana that improve livelihoods, empower women, and help them face challenges together; Farmer-to-farmer trainings in Mozambique that help farmers share their experiences while valuing and investing in their own local knowledge; Zulu sheep and indigenous breed protection projects in South Africa that preserve the pest-tolerant and drought-resistant animals that are being replaced by exotic and foreign species. "The news media in the West tends to be very negative in its coverage of Africa," says Nierenberg. "We often hear stories about conflict, HIV/AIDS, famine, and disease. But there are stories of hope, too. Everywhere I travel on the continent, I see examples of Africa-led innovations that are succeeding in reducing hunger and poverty where past approaches have not worked. Nourishing the Planet seeks to shed light on these solutions." Nierenberg is reporting daily from farms, co-ops, and offices in Africa, posting updates on the Worldwatch Institute'sNourishing the Planet blog.In addition, she has co-authored dozens of op-eds throughout her travels-often co-written with African innovators-in media outlets that include USA Today, The Seattle Times, the Ghana Daily Graphic, and South Africa's Cape Town Argus. "Nourishing the Planet represents a new research paradigm for Worldwatch," says Worldwatch Institute President Christopher Flavin."The on-the-ground examples featured in State of the World 2011 will demonstrate the success of sustainability innovations in agriculture to policymakers, consumers, and the donor community worldwide." The State of the World 2011 report will focus on agriculture innovations and will be accompanied by derivative materials including briefing documents, summaries, an innovations database, videos, and podcasts. The project's findings will be disseminated to a wide range of influential agricultural stakeholders, including government ministries, agricultural policymakers, farmer and community networks, and the increasingly influential non-governmental environmental and development communities. "One of the main goals of the project is to create a roadmap for the funding and donor communities to ensure that the increasing amount of agricultural funding in Africa goes to projects that are effective and long-lasting even without outside support," says Brian Halweil, co-project director of Nourishing the Planet. "In addition, a local innovation working in rural Cameroon might be something that could be scaled up or replicated in Zambia. We hope to connect projects in different regions and help to improve knowledge sharing."

Dena Hoff is a farmer and activist in eastern Montana, where she has raised sheep, cattle, alfalfa, and corn with her husband since 1979. Hoff is the North America coordinator for La Via Campesina-the "international movement of peasants"-as well as vice president of the National Family Farm Coalition and former chair of the Northern Plans Resource Council. La Via Campesina has been credited with coining the term "food sovereignty." Can you describe what this means and how your work supports and promotes it? Food sovereignty is about a system of agriculture where people get to decide their own food and agricultural policies in their own countries, without being dictated by foundations or institutions like the World Trade Organization, the International Monetary Fund, the World Bank, or trade agreements. People decide what they're going to eat, who's going to produce it, and what's going to be produced. More than that, it's a whole life system that is sustainable, that respects Mother Earth, and that respects human rights and the rights of people to live in dignity, to be well-fed, to be reasonably taken care of, and to have a decent standard of living. Everything that food sovereignty encompasses is human rights, women's rights, and education; everything that makes a good life and protects the planet. Via Campesina is a very large social movement. We're not a legal entity at all, but we are made up of groups around the world. We think that we have as many as 300 million members, though we've never been able to get a direct number. We're growing, growing, growing because people realize that we can only change the world into a place where everybody can live and a world where everybody wants to live by banding together, standing together, sharing each other's stories, and showing solidarity. We need to educate people: people who are not farmers but who, of course, are eaters, people who care about the environment, people who care about human rights and social justice and the environment-they need to be part of this movement. It's going to take everyone. There are too few people who control the power, who control the resources, who control the wealth of the world, and the destiny of the rest of us. I don't like anybody pulling my strings. I am not a puppet. I am an independent human being, and I have wishes and dreams and fears for my own family, my children, my grandchildren, my nieces, my nephews, my community. And I want to see these things become reality, and I'm willing to just keep working forever. The biggest part of that responsibility is educating other people and getting them to stand up to power, and that's a very difficult thing. People do not like conflict; people do not like to stand up to power. They have some idea that the people who are in power are smarter than they are and have something that they don't have-if only they knew that those people who are controlling their lives are just ordinary people! Until we give people the confidence to take back control of their own lives and their communities, nothing is going to change. It's a big, big, task. But it should hearten people to know that there are millions and millions of people around the world who are very dedicated to doing this, and who are willing to do it. What role does gender play in La Via Campesina's work? Gender is extremely important, because most of the world's farmers are women. And a lot of those women are hungry women because they are the people who are being forced off land. They have no access to resources and no access to credit. We started a campaign in Mozambique at our Fifth International Assembly against violence against women, so we have that international campaign, and the young people have just taken it up. They have put on plays and they have dramas and they are doing literature and they are going around to communities and educating people on why it is so important that women have an equal voice, equal rights, and equal opportunities. Gender balance is very important to us. There will never be any real equity in the world until women are seen as equal partners, standing shoulder to shoulder with men. One of our original seven pillars was gender. We also fought very hard in 2000 for gender parity on our coordinating committee, and we got it-we have a male and a female for each of the assigned regions. We have a lot of programs in a lot of countries for training women: in agriculture, in literacy, and also in political training, so that they have an understanding of what's impacting their lives. We also have programs that help them develop means of making a living, so it's very important. What are some of the similarities between what's happening to agriculture across the world and what's happening here in the U.S.? I belong to the Northern Plains Resource Council-that's my state organization in Montana. They have, for years, been trying to protect family agriculture, educate people about its importance, and protect it from energy developers and speculators. The National Family Farm Coalition has been involved since 1987 in policy work in Washington, D.C., trying to get a decent Farm Bill so that we can protect our family agriculture. But when you go lobby, you hear, "We don't need American farmers. We can import everything cheaper." Congressmen will actually say that to you. My question has always been: If transportation, communication, and energy are a matter of national security, shouldn't food be a matter of national security? Shouldn't water be a matter of national security? Instead, it's just a commodity for someone to make money. Land grabs happen in this country, too. In my neighborhood, groups of bankers or lawyers or investors are investing in farmland because I guess they think they're going to get a better return than on some other thing. And farmers have no recourse. I mean, no one here who wanted to expand or who wanted to help one of their children get started in agriculture, they can't possibly match those prices. The land is lost for agriculture. A great big and lovely farming ranch along the Yellowstone River went to a real-estate developer from Maryland who's now running for the legislature in Montana. Land is being turned into hunting or fishing places or little retreats. It's not being used for agriculture. Look at what's happening in Detroit. They have torn down about 40 buildings in downtown Detroit. They're going to tear down about that many more. And there are a lot of vacant lots that can be used for urban agriculture. But, there's a big developer who wants to commercialize it for profits instead of the city giving the lots over to the community for urban farming. That's land grabbing, isn't it? Why are large-scale land acquisitions, or land grabs, problematic? It's problematic because there are a lot of places where land is owned communally, or there's not a deed to the land, and it's just land that communities have made their living with, in some places for over 1,000 years, maybe more. And suddenly, this has a value beyond somebody's livelihood, beyond somebody having to have food and shelter. And someone finds out they can make a profit, and they come in and take it. Mali has put food sovereignty in their constitution. Their president leases large amounts of arable land to the Saudis for 10 years. That's totally against the constitution-it's totally illegal-but there doesn't seem to be a national or international mechanism to force governments to abide by their own laws and their own constitutions. It just seems like increasingly the world is a more lawless place, where anything goes if it makes money. How does global agriculture and trade policy affect the environment, global hunger, and poverty? We had all the hype about how industrial agriculture was going to end hunger, how GMOs were going to end hunger, and look what's happened: there are a billion hungry people, almost half a million of those are in the United States. Hunger is increasing, poverty is increasing, and all of the industrialization hasn't done one single thing to end hunger, and we've been destroying the environment. So the solution actually turned out to be very, very damaging-far more damaging than the problems that we had before industrial agriculture was proposed as the solution to hunger and the environment. Look at the deforestation for biofuels in Brazil, the destruction of traditional agriculture in Indonesia in favor of palm plantations for biofuels. Shoving people off the land and forcing them to the cities where there are no livelihoods is not the solution. Or forcing them to become slaves as is happening all over the world. We like to think that we're in the 21st century, and slavery is something of the past. It isn't. It's worse. It's getting worse every day. There are so many examples of people being forced into slavery, literally having their livelihoods taken away from them because somebody else wants to make a profit off of the resources that they made a modest living with. And then, if they wish to survive, they can become practically slave labor for these people who just took away their livelihood. If that's not slavery, I don't know what the definition is. Do you think there's any role for multinational corporations to play in improving the situation for farmers and peasants here and across the world? I'm not sure that's the role they want. Their mission is their bottom line, to pay dividends to their investors. Their mission is not to do good. Their mission is not to protect the environment or nurture societies. They're doing what they're set up to do, and they've been given far too many rights and too much power. Equal protection under the law for a corporation? A friend of mine who was inside [the corporate world] used to say, "What kind of craziness is that?" Corporations have no soul to save and no ass to kick and they are totally unaccountable to anyone. What happens when they do something ugly that causes people to lose their lives? If I would do something accidentally like kill someone in a traffic accident, that would be manslaughter, I would be brought up on charges, I would have to suffer the consequences. You don't really hear about anyone in a corporation having to take responsibility for the lives they cause to be lost through their greed and negligence. They have the same protection as any individual, but I guess they don't have the same responsibility. How could agencies like the World Bank and the UN Food and Agriculture Organization do a better job to support La Via Campesina's mission? They could do a better job by ensuring that people in countries that need food aid have access to means of production, so they can feed themselves and not rely on charity-to make them self-reliant. Education, condemning the privatization of water, health care-the poorest people don't get those basic things, and they don't get basic services because they simply can't pay. There's all this hype about corporations being able to produce more, but producing more is not the answer. You can go to the markets in the poorest countries and you can see mountains of food, and people are starving to death right nearby. If they have no means to a livelihood, they have no means to feed themselves, and they have no means to make a living, then they can't buy food. There can be all the extra food in the world, but if they don't have money, they die. How can people get involved to help La Via Campesina's efforts? We always need people to hook up with our organizations in all of our countries and support legislation in those countries that will turn governments around, so they do the right thing for civil society and are not totally governed by corporations. We have six organizations in the U.S. that belong to Via Campesina. And we're always looking for people who can help with translation. We want people to take an interest in the policies of their own countries, in the plight of family agriculture, family fishermen, migrant workers and landless workers, and get educated about what these people face. And also how it impacts you! Because even if you think you are isolated and insulated from all the trouble that's happening, it impacts everybody because everybody eats. Everybody eats! If there are only huge massive plantations producing our food with basically slave labor, if workers have no rights, if the environment is just sneered at (because no one enforces environmental laws), if human rights are not protected, and if people are not well paid and allowed to be brought into the country illegally or otherwise and then just dumped if they're injured or hurt, that does not reflect very well on us as a society or as people, especially for those of us who like to be called "good Christians." So much of La Via Campesina's work is about mobilizing people. What agricultural or economic policies do you think could be implemented to address the needs of small-scale farmers and agricultural producers in order to help create the change you envision? Certainly a decent Farm Bill with a farmer-owned reserve, and a Farm Bill that actually gives farmers a price so that they can live and support their communities. It isn't just about farmers. The money they make supports an entire community, our states. And I think people need to understand the importance of agriculture to this country, and what happens to countries that let their agriculture go and depend on importing all their food from somewhere else. There are plenty of examples in the world of countries that can no longer feed themselves because somebody decided it was cheaper or more intelligent to buy all their food from somebody else. Everybody has to become an activist, even if it's just educating themselves. Even if it's just making a phone call or planting a garden, or looking around and seeing if your neighbors are one of the one-in-eight people who are hungry. Be aware of what's going on around you! Ronit Ridberg is a research intern with the Worldwatch Institute. Visit Worldwatch's Nourishing the Planet blog to learn more about the fight for food sovereignty in industrialized and developing nations. This article appeared in its original form on the Worldwatch blog Nourishing the Planet. For permission to republish this article, please contact Alex Kostura at akostura@worldwatch.org.

The following op-ed originally appeared in The CharlestonGazette. CHARLESTON, W.Va. -- If you drive just a few miles out of Charleston you'll see fields cleared for livestock and agriculture, mountaintops blasted for mining, and the Kanawha forest in its own safely protected area. But what you won't see is all of these elements of nature working together. While a few farmers in the United States might plant trees around fields to prevent wind erosion, most clear fields of trees for grazing or planting. In Kenya, Malawi, Zambia, and many other countries across sub-Saharan Africa, however, farmers are planting trees along with crops to help conserve and clean water and air, build up soils, provide feed for livestock, and -- perhaps most importantly -- increase yields and incomes. Agroforestry, a land management practice that integrates trees with crops, is a simple approach that has been used by farmers for generations. Trees play a crucial role in both rural and urban environment by providing food, shade, livestock fodder, fuel and medicinal ingredients. They also hold soil in place, regulate water flows, and improve both quality of life and incomes. Despite its enormous potential, agroforestry has often been overlooked by commercial farmers, development agencies and funders in favor of "higher-tech" ways of increasing yields. Organizations like the World Agroforestry Centre are trying to reverse this trend. Researchers are working with farmers on agroforestry projects that will help improve food supplies and nutrition in some of the world's poorest, most malnourished countries and also position farms on the front lines of combating climate change. The Centre is located in Nairobi, Kenya, though you wouldn't know it from the surroundings. It sits on a lush campus, thick with vegetation, offering a quiet oasis away from a city of racing matatus and ubiquitous pollution. The Centre is hoping to help farmers respond to the many challenges they face -- low use of agricultural inputs, degraded soils and food insecurity -- through what they call "Evergreen Agriculture." The growing of nitrogen fixing trees, including the indigenous Faidherbia albida, along with maize or in rotations have succeeded in improving soils, raising productivity and reducing costs for farmers. More than a million farmers in sub-Saharan Africa are planting or nurturing natural re-growth of leguminous trees and shrubs in conjunction with crops, in many cases doubling or tripling yields of cereal crops. The agroforestry systems reduce the need for expensive mineral fertilizers and actually increase the effectiveness of the small amounts of fertilizer that farmers can afford. Dr. Dennis Garrity, the Centre's Director General, hypothesizes that although the Evergreen Agriculture system is still undergoing research and development, it may increase maize yields and provide greater household food security, while significantly reducing the smallholders labor and lowering overall investment in maize production. "We also have evidence," he said, "that it will improve drought resilience and increase above and below ground carbon sequestration as well." This is an increasingly important component of any agricultural system as the effects of climate change become more evident in sub-Saharan Africa and across the globe. Agriculture is the human endeavor that will be most affected by climate change. But agriculture, livestock grazing and forestry -- responsible for nearly one-third of global greenhouse gas emissions -- is the only near-term option for large-scale greenhouse gas sequestration. Agroforestry, which reduces erosion and enriches soils with organic matter, when combined with other environmentally sustainable agriculture practices, could offset one-quarter of global greenhouse gas emissions, while also increasing yields. Nature's own approach, strengthened by science, provides many benefits. Agroforestry is one method that could provide the kind of efficiency we need to strengthen rural communities, like those in West Virginia and Africa, improve livelihoods, rebuild ecosystems, fight climate change, and help alleviate global hunger. The mountains and fields of West Virginia have given us so much, maybe it's time to put something back in. Place is an economist and head of impact assessment for the World Agroforestry Center. Nierenberg is a senior researcher with the Worldwatch Institute in Washington D.C writing from Africa at NourishingthePlanet.com.