Tag Archive for: COP22

France’s 4 Per 1000 Initiative Makes Important Advances

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Published: November 14, 2016

France’s innovative 4 per 1000 Initiative: Soils for Food Security and Climate has made significant progress over the past year in preparation for the COP22 climate change conference taking place now in Marrakesh, Morocco.

As a reminder, the 4 per 1000 Initiative was launched by France in 2015 to bring together all willing partners (national governments, local and regional government, companies, trade organizations, NGOs, research facilities, and others) to commit together in a voluntary action plan to implement farming practices that maintain or enhance soil carbon stock on as many agricultural soils as possible and to preserve carbon-rich soils. Scientific studies have found that an annual increase of 0.4% of carbon stored in soils would make it possible to stop the present increase in atmospheric CO2, which is a major contributor to the greenhouse effect and climate change.

The aim of the Initiative is to demonstrate that agriculture, and agricultural soils in particular, can play a crucial role where food security and climate change are concerned. Some ways that agriculture can achieve this is by using innovative techniques such as no-till farming practices, which increase the amount of microorganisms present in soils and increase soil fertility and carbon sequestration. Other examples include the promotion of agroforestry, introducing more intermediate crops, restoring soil quality in places with poor conditions, and better landscape management. Increasing carbon sequestration in soils enhances soil fertility and combats land degradation aiming to improve food security.

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Implementing Climate Smart Agriculture up for Discussion at COP22

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 Published: November 10, 2016

The Southern African Confederation of Agricultural Unions (SACAU) will join partners to discuss African agriculture at the 22nd Conference of the Parties (COP22) meeting in Morocco, currently underway. COP22 will look at adaptation, mitigation, transparency, and technology transfer to combat increasing greenhouse gas emissions.

SACAU CEO Ishmael Sunga is one of the several high-profile African speakers who will be speaking on Africa Day Side Events at COP 22 on 16 November 2016. The day will open with a high-level panel discussion on Implementing the Nationally Determined Contributions (NDCs) in Africa: Moving from Commitment to Action with speakers from the African Union Commission (AUC), UNECA, African Development Bank (AfDB), President of African Ministerial Conference on Environment (AMCEN), and the Pan-African Parliament.

Sunga will be speaking during a panel discussion on the Implementation of regional climate smart agriculture approaches: the case of East and Southern Africa at a side event.

The session will look at the barriers preventing smallholder farmers from improving their livelihood in the face of negative climate change impact, how systems in which they operate can be strengthened to facilitate transformative change, and how to address youth involvement and gender parity.

Other panelists include Hon Oppah C.Z. Muchinguri (Minister, Ministry of Environment, Water and Climate, Republic of Zimbabwe) and Golden Mahove (Deputy Team Leader and Agricultural Development Facility Lead, Vuna).

“Farmers in southern Africa are at the front-line of this catastrophe, and are arguably the worst affected,” said Sunga before his departure for COP22.

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Regeneration International and Open Team Announce Micro-Grant Competition in Conjunction with Launch of Online Platform to Connect Regeneration Movement Stakeholders

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Regeneration International Will Award Five Micro-Grants to Innovative Regeneration Projects

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
November 15, 2016

Contact:
U.S.: Katherine Paul, katherine@organicconsumers.org, 207-653-3090
Mexico, Latin America: Ercilia Sahores, ercilia@regenerationinternational.org, (55) 6257 7901

MARRAKESH–Regeneration International (RI) and Open Team, in partnership with 17 organizations, today launched The Regeneration Hub (RHub) at the COP22 Climate Summit. RHub is an interactive online platform that connects project holders, individuals, funders and communities focused on regenerative agriculture and land-use projects and other related concepts that address multiple global challenges, including climate change and food security.

In conjunction with the RHub launch, RI and Open Team announced a competition for five micro-grants of US$1000 each to be awarded to five innovative regeneration projects. RI, a project of the US-based Organic Consumers Association, will fund the micro-grants.  The RI Steering Committee will evaluate the projects and announce the winners in January 2017.

“There are regenerative solutions all around us,” said Ronnie Cummins, OCA’s international director and member of the RI steering committee. “But people are working in silos. We need to map out and connect the global regeneration movement in order to accelerate the exchange of best practices and the sharing of knowledge and resources on a global scale.”

The RHub aims to accelerate adoption and development of scalable and replicable regenerative projects across the globe by inspiring and facilitating collaboration between project holders, individuals, funders and communities from the regenerative movement.

“This platform will scale the adoption of local regenerative solutions worldwide by facilitating the work of farmers and environmental entrepreneurs, in collaboration with experts, scientists, businesses, activists, educators, journalists, impact investors, policymakers and consumers, while inspiring an increasing number of individuals to join the global regenerative movement!” said Joanne Schante, co-founder of Open Team.

The RHub was conceived at the Paris Climate Summit in December 2015, where RI brought together 60 foodies, farmers, entrepreneurs, scientists and NGOs from around the world working on regeneration.

Watch this video to learn more:  https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZyIIDYoA0jo

Sign up today: www.regenerationhub.co

Regeneration International, a project of the Organic Consumers Association, is building a global network of farmers, scientists, businesses, activists, educators, journalists, governments and consumers who will promote and put into practice regenerative agriculture and land-use practices that: provide abundant, nutritious food; revive local economies; rebuild soil fertility and biodiversity; and restore climate stability by returning carbon to the soil, through the natural process of photosynthesis.

OpenTeam manages O, a global platform that catalyzes concrete collaboration on a world scale, engaging change makers with all levels of expertise and projects to mutualize their efforts and experiences in order to develop local projects (global initiatives implemented by local stakeholders). This ScaleCamp is the first pilot of a series of forthcoming other such events which aim to continuously fuel global collaboration using O’s open source platform and ultimately shift the climate change paradigm through borderless collaboration.

Appeal to the Representatives of Nations and International Institutions Meeting in Marrakech

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Author: Slow Food | Published: November, 2016

The 22nd session of the Conference of the Parties (COP 22) of the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) will be held in Marrakech from November 7 to 18, 2016. The first objective of the Marrakech conference will be to start work on the implementation of the Paris Agreement.

In the run-up to this event, which will put the climate at the center of global political debate, attention is focused on the energy, heavy industry and transport sectors, while the relationship between food and climate still has a more marginal role in discussions.

And yet, as Slow Food has already pointed out in the document it produced last year for COP 21, not only does food production represent one of the main causes—and victims—of climate change, it could also become one of the solutions.

The profound connection between agriculture and climate change is also highlighted by this years’s State of Food and Agriculture report from the FAO, which states that the agricultural sector is currently responsible for a fifth of all greenhouse gas emissions, deriving primarily from the conversion of forests to agricultural land, as well as from animal and plant production.

According to the IPCC Fifth Assessment Report, the planet’s average temperature has risen by 0.85°C in the last 100 years. Monthly heat records were broken for a record 15th month in a row between April 2015 and July 2016, and forecasts leave little hope for improvement in the future. According to climate simulation models, without limits on greenhouse gas emissions the average temperature could rise by up to 5°C by the end of the century, but a rise of even 2°C would bring devastating environmental and social consequences. Once unusual phenomena, such as extreme heatwaves, floods, droughts and hurricanes are becoming more commonplace, and biodiversity is being eroded at an unprecedented rate. Meanwhile, the rising temperature of the oceans and their increasing acidification is undermining their capacity to stabilize the climate.

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Paris Climate Agreement Enters Into Force: What Does This Mean For Food And Agriculture?

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Author: Bruce Campbell Ph.D.| Published: November 9, 2016

The Paris Climate Agreement entered into force last week, heralding a major milestone in international action on climate change, and an ambitious target to contain global temperature rise to well below 2°C above pre-industrial levels, in this century. Over 100 countries, which account for nearly 70% of global emissions, have ratified the Agreement, and are now obliged to deliver on their commitments and convert their plans into action. But unless countries act decisively and meaningfully, and increase their ambitions over time, this will not be enough to safeguard food and farming.

Future food security in a changing climate
The Paris Agreement is made up of Intended Nationally Determined Contributions (INDCs), which are climate action plans developed by countries, outlining their priorities and measures. The INDCs of countries overwhelmingly put agriculture the top of the list for climate action; over 60% of submitted INDCs included mitigation in agriculture. And of the countries which included adaptation, over 90% included adaptation in agriculture. African countries in particular have expressed a clear desire to tackle these issues: 98% of African countries included adaptation actions in agriculture and 68% included mitigation actions in agriculture.

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Why We Could See Progress on Agriculture at the Marrakesh Climate Talks

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Author: Dana Miller and Jade Lu | Published: November 8, 2016

The interactions between the agricultural sector and climate change have undeniable implications for both global food security and our environment. Despite this global significance, and perhaps due to the complexity of the subject, there has been little progress to date on agriculture in the United Nations Framework on Climate Change (UNFCCC) process. However, this could be about to change.

The impetus of Paris Climate Agreement and leadership by the Moroccan presidency could unlock the opportunity to advance agricultural issues at the climate talks, known as COP22, taking place this week in Marrakesh. Furthermore, country actions and targets as inscribed in the Nationally Determined Contributions (NDCs) both show commitment to the agricultural sector and help highlight key common practices that could form a basis for international collaboration.

While much of COP22 will be focused on laying groundwork for the Paris Agreement, agriculture could be an area of significant progress in Marrakesh, potentially resulting in a COP decision or work program on agriculture.

There is a strong need to address agriculture in COP22

Agriculture at once contributes significantly to climate change and faces some of the greatest risks posed by climate change. Agriculture is estimated to contribute one-third of all emissions. Conversely, climate change is projected to have negative impacts on agriculture, especially in developing countries. With 800 million people currently undernourished worldwide, the majority of whom depend on agriculture for their livelihoods, and a projected population increase of more than 2 billion people by 2050, it is no wonder that “Zero Hunger” is identified as the 2nd Sustainable Development Goal by the UN and that adequate nourishment is interwoven with almost every goal listed.  However, agriculture has yet to be codified within the UNFCCC framework.

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Regenerative—Not ‘Climate-Smart’—Agriculture Needed to Feed the World and Cool the Planet

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FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
November 9, 2016

Regeneration International’s Ronnie Cummins Addresses ‘Climate-Smart’ Panel at COP22 Climate Summit

MARRAKECH—“World governments spend $486 billion a year to subsidize an industrial food and farming model that the United Nations estimates, contributes 43-57 percent of total man-made greenhouse gas emissions,” said Ronnie Cummins, international director of the Organic Consumers Association (OCA). “It’s time to stop subsidizing agricultural practices that contribute to global warming, and start subsidizing food, farming and land-use practices that restore the soil’s capacity to draw down and re-sequester excess carbon from the atmosphere and store it in the soil.”

Speaking to a panel hosted by the Social Innovation and Global Ethics Forum in conjunction with the COP22 Climate Summit, Cummins told participants that “Climate-Smart Agriculture” (CSA), is a clever term used to describe a limited approach to adapting to climate change and to addressing global food insecurity through agricultural practices that fail to meet the standard of regeneration.

“Scientists tell us that even if we achieve zero emissions tomorrow, the planet would continue to heat up for another thousand years,” Cummins said. “Our best hope to avert a climate disaster, restore public health and revitalize rural economies must include a plan that not only achieves zero emissions, but also draws down the billions of tons of excess carbon already in the atmosphere. That plan exists. It’s call regenerative agriculture, or agroecology.”

The Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) and the World Bank coined the term “Climate Smart Agriculture” at the 2010 Hague Conference on Food Security, Agriculture and Climate Change. The FAO floated the concept as a “triple win” for a type of agriculture that could reduce greenhouse gas emissions, help crops adapt to changing climate conditions, and increase yields.

Last year, more than 350 national and international civil society groups, including OCA and Regeneration International, a project of OCA, signed a letter urging decision-makers to reject what the groups called the “growing influence and agenda of so-called ‘Climate-Smart Agriculture’ (CSA) and the Global Alliance for Climate-Smart Agriculture (GACSA).” The groups criticized the lack of criteria for deciding what can or cannot be called “Climate Smart,” and pointed to the potential for agribusiness corporations that promote synthetic fertilizers, industrial meat production and large-scale industrial agriculture—big contributors to global warming—to co-opt the term.

In the U.S., fossil-fuel-intensive agribusiness corporations like Monsanto, who are members of the North American chapter of GASCA, claim to be practitioners of CSA.

Regeneration International has organized and/or is participating in numerous events at the COP22 Climate Summit in Marrakech, with a focus on regenerative agriculture and land-use as a critical strategy to reduce greenhouse gas emissions and draw down excess carbon from the atmosphere.

Regeneration International, a project of the Organic Consumers Association, is building a global network of farmers, scientists, businesses, activists, educators, journalists, governments and consumers who will promote and put into practice regenerative agriculture and land-use practices that: provide abundant, nutritious food; revive local economies; rebuild soil fertility and biodiversity; and restore climate stability by returning carbon to the soil, through the natural process of photosynthesis. 

Sustainable Agriculture Deserves Center Stage in Marrakech

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Author: José Graziano da Silva | Published: November 8, 2016

Agriculture, including forestry and fisheries, is the sector most threatened by climate change. At the same time, the agricultural sectors produce a fifth of the world’s greenhouse gas emissions.

The transformation of the agricultural sectors to address climate change for adaptation and mitigation is essential to tackling hunger and poverty, and offers considerable benefits and opportunities for preserving natural resources.

At the COP21 summit in Paris, countries made unprecedented commitments to adapt to and mitigate climate change. The agreement recognizes “the “fundamental priority of safeguarding food security and ending hunger, and the particular vulnerabilities of food production systems to the adverse impacts of climate change”. This is echoed in country commitments where the agricultural sectors stand out as a priority.

Now, at COP22 in Morocco, we have the opportunity to make significant progress, by making agriculture a major part of the solution.

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COP22 Host Morocco Launches Action Plan to Fight Devastating Climate Change

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Author: Celeste Hicks | Published: November 7, 2016

Last December we had temperatures of 25C. Normally it is 1 or 2C at that time of year,” says Mohammed Ibrahimi, a farmer with one hectare of apple trees in Boumia, a village near Midelt in Morocco.

“These trees need at least 1,200 hours of near-freezing temperatures in the winter to help them to regenerate. This year they flowered very late; the harvest was a month late and I harvested just 20 tonnes when I’d expected 40 tonnes.”

“When we were kids the mountains had snow on them until at least June, sometimes even all year. We had ample underground water sources. We used to have to dig about 4m down to find water – now it can be [many times deeper]. How can we irrigate our crops with that?” says Ibrahimi.

Like most African countries, Morocco – where 40% of the population still works the land – is already feeling the impacts of climate change on its agricultural production. Last year, during the exceptional season Ibrahimi describes – caused in large part by the regular El Niño weather pattern – Morocco went without rain for more than two months. Overall it received 42.7% less rain during its main planting season than in an average year. The impact on the harvest was catastrophic, particularly on the “zone bour” (dry zone) areas where crops such as wheat, barley and maize are planted. Ministry of Agriculture estimates predicted total output falling 70% on the 2015 season.

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Agriculture Takes Center Stage As COP22 Begins in Morocco

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Author: Judith Schwartz | Published: November 7, 2016

COP21, the global climate conference in Paris last year, resulted in an agreement on cutting atmospheric carbon. Now, COP22, which starts today in Marrakech, Morocco, will focus on how the world will adapt to climate change and mitigate its effects, especially in developing countries. The meeting is expected to have a greater focus on agriculture, and specifically on Africa.

In Paris, agricultural solutions—notably soil’s role as a carbon sink—entered global climate discussions. The chief vehicle was the French-led 4-per-1,000 Initiative, a pledge to increase carbon stocks in agricultural soils by 0.4 percent a year, a rate that proponents said would stem the rise of atmospheric carbon. The objective, says the French Ministry of Agriculture, “is to show that agriculture is part of the solution. It aims to increase organic carbon storage in soils, with a goal of improving food security and mitigating and adapting to climate change.”

Four-per-1,000 has more than 170 signatories, including 32 countries. The U.S. has not publicly supported it, instead aligning with the Global Alliance for Climate-Smart Agriculture, which is more oriented toward industry and includes biotechnology as one approach.

A new initiative, Adaption of African Agriculture (AAA), would place agriculture at the heart of climate talks. At a September meeting, a coalition of 27 African nations adopted the “Marrakesh Declaration,” which calls attention to the continent’s vulnerability to climate irregularities—such as the drought that has left 30 million southern Africans food insecure—and the risks borne by smallholder farmers.

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