In News: First Food and Agriculture Pavilion at the 27th Conference of Parties (COP) to the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) began at Sharm El-Sheikh, Egypt.
The only program under UNFCCC on agriculture & food security was the Koronivia Joint Work on Agriculture (KJWA), established in 2017 at COP23 in Bonn, Germany.
About:
The Pavilion is hosted by the United Nation’s Food and Agriculture Organization(FAO), CGIAR and The Rockefeller Foundation at the climate conference.
Need: The unprecedented drought situation in Europe, the United States and Africa, the heatwave that impacted India’s wheat crop and floods and droughts in Pakistan and China are all stark evidence of how food production is at risk from extreme weather events.
Organisations representing over 350 million farmers and producers wrote an open letter to world leaders; warning that global food security is at risk unless governments boost adaptation finance for small-scale production and promote a shift to more diverse, low-input agriculture.
Objectives: Discussions to include adaption for resilient agriculture in Africa, climate security for drylands, vulnerability of food systems to global food crisis, conflicts and trade shocks, and low emission climate resilient development strategies.
Significance: Will put the transformation of agrifood systems at the heart of the COP agenda and as an important part of the solution to the climate crisis.
Suggestions: Due to bulk of the emissions are from industrial agriculture sector; there needs to be a shift to agroecology.
Agroecology means working with nature and local communities to support food security, livelihoods, biodiversity and help to buffer temperature extremes and sequester carbon.
Industrial Agriculture:
Agriculture is a victim of climate change but is also responsible for more than a third of all greenhouse gas emissions.
Industrial models of agriculture are reliant on agrichemicals and monoculture cropping.
Concerns: They have failed to end hunger, are depleting natural resources, exacerbating climate change and are highly vulnerable to shocks, be they from supply chains or from climate extremes.
Small-scale traditional and biologically diverse forms of agriculture have comparatively minimal input to GHG emissions but are disproportionately impacted by climate change.
Hence, the need for urgent climate justice action and transforming food systems away from industrial agriculture.
Greenwashing Industrial Agriculture at COP27:
Greenwashing is a communication and marketing strategy adopted by companies or other organizations. It consists in putting forward ecological arguments in order to forge an ecologically responsible public image.
Examples: “zero emissions cars”, “Clean energies”, green computing, etc.
In industrial agriculture, food corporations are using the term ‘nature-based solutions’ to “hijack the food system sustainability agenda”, bundling it with unproven carbon offsetting schemes that are risky for land competition, the climate and entrench big agribusiness power.
For instance, the US and UAE-led Agriculture Innovation Mission for Climate (AIM4C) launched at COP26 has been criticised by favouring big businesses and promoting uncertain techno-fixes.
