Advanced BioFuels USA

(Solutions from the Land)  … Climate Week is an annual event – first launched in 2009 and held alongside the United Nations General Assembly – that puts heightened emphasis on the commitment needed from all to address the ongoing escalation of dangerous climactic conditions. Among those facing the biggest risks are farmers, ranchers and forestland owners: A UN report released last month says climate change is putting dire pressure on the ability of humanity to feed itself.

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Unfortunately, many of those voices – as they have at other global negotiating scenarios that deal with food and land – will call for over-simplified, “back-to the-garden” proposals. Misguided interests would reject current, technologically enhanced means of producing the food, feed, fiber and, to some extent, energy, that have gone a long way toward meeting the needs of a population that has grown exponentially over the past century.

The urgency with which the world must produce sufficient food and resources is underscored by population growth rates ….

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With the advent in global climate negotiations more than two years ago of the Koronivia Joint Work on Agriculture (KJWA), the sector took an important step forward in the talks being held under the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change. The KJWA emphasizes the importance of agriculture and food security in the climate change agenda. By mainstreaming agriculture into the UNFCCC processes, the KJWA can support and grow current agricultural and food systems by addressing the synergies and trade-offs between adaptation, mitigation and agricultural productivity.

Key to achieving the goal of ensuring adequate production of food, feed and fiber in the coming decades is the inclusion of the voices from agriculture and forestry into ongoing negotiations. Solutions from the Land and the North America Climate Smart Agriculture Alliance (NACSAA) are farmer-led organizations that have been at global climate talks over each of the last three years, assuring those who work the land can help mold the policy that will enable them to adequately meet the needs of the world under the growingly stressful conditions imposed by a changing climate.

In their work on the KJWA, SfL and NACSAA have called on other negotiators to respect a strong set of guiding principles developed to insure that farmers be at the center of all discussions and decision-making. The principles, which assert that findings must be science-based, also recognize that there is no silver-bullet solution for enhancing the resilience of agriculture. The KJWA must embrace a systems approach that recognizes the tremendous diversity of agricultural landscapes. Furthermore, outcomes (rather than means) applicable to any scale of enterprise must be emphasized, without predetermining technologies, production type or design component. READ MORE

Guiding Principles for the Koronivia Joint Work on Agriculture

• As affirmed in the communique from the 8th Meeting of G20 Agricultural Chief Scientists (MACS), science-based decision making should be the foundation for the adoption of climate smart technologies and practices for sustainable agriculture and global food production.

• Production and production efficiency per unit of land must increase going forward to meet the food needs of the future while incurring no net environmental cost.

• As reflected in the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) of the United Nations, outcomes (rather than means) applicable to any scale of enterprise must be emphasized, without predetermining technologies, production type or design components.

• Adaptation strategies must be recognized to require system approachesiv that utilize a combination of improved efficiency, substitution (e.g. new crop varieties and breeds), and redesign/system transformation to reflexively respond to continuous short- and longterm changes in climate’s impacts on cultivated and natural ecosystem conditions.

• Peer reviewed academic, business and farmer climate smart agriculture research and knowledge sharing recommendations outside of the UNFCCC should be considered by the SBI and SBSTA and integrated into the final KJWA report.

• There is no silver bullet solution for enhancing the resilience of agriculture: KJWA must embrace a systems approach that recognizes the tremendous diversity of agricultural landscapes and ecosystems and enables producers to utilize the systems and practices that best support their farming operations.

• Farmers must be at the center of all discussions and decision-making; significant input will be needed from a wide range of agricultural stakeholders, including technical agricultural experts drawn from farmer organizations, academia, industry, and international and regional organizations, especially those outside of the UNFCCC structure.

• Context-specific priorities and solutions must be aligned with national policies and priorities, be determined based on the social, economic, and environmental conditions at site (including the diversity in type and scale of agricultural activity), and be subject to evaluation of potential synergies, tradeoffs, and net benefits.

i G20 Japan. 8th Meeting of Agricultural Chief Scientists (MACS) Communiqué [Press Release]. (2019). Retrieved
from http://www.affrc.maff.go.jp/docs/press/attach/pdf/190427-3.pdf
ii Pretty, J. (2018). Intensification for redesigned and sustainable agricultural systems. Science, 362(6417), eaav0294.
iii Campbell, B. M., Thornton, P., Zougmoré, R., Van Asten, P., & Lipper, L. (2014). Sustainable intensification: What
is its role in climate smart agriculture? Current Opinion in Environmental Sustainability, 8, 39-43.
iv Tittonell, P. (2014). Ecological intensification of agriculture—sustainable by nature. Current Opinion in Environmental Sustainability, 8, 53-61.
v North American Climate Smart Agriculture Alliance (2015). A platform for knowledge sharing and application of
climate science to agriculture [Report]. Retrieved from: https://www.sfldialogue.net/files/sfl_formation_plan_2015.pdf     READ MORE

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