Food justice: what’s at stake in Paris?

Five key fights at the UNFCCC

The build-up to the December Paris climate summit is focusing world attention on the issue of climate change. In the process, there is significant opportunity to raise and highlight justice issues that lie at the intersection of climate change and food – for example, the fact that climate change will threaten the right to food, with the gravest impacts on the poorest and most vulnerable, through devastating impacts on food production. A second critical issue to highlight is the central role played by industrial systems of agricultural production in causing climate change, in particular through massive emissions from industrial meat production, production and use of synthetic chemical fertilizers, and large-scale monocultures of commodities shipped around the world.

How do these issues land within the current battles in the UNFCCC? What are the most important fights on the road to Paris where food campaigners can engage and bring a vision for food justice and a different way of producing food? Here are five key fights:

1. For a temperature goal that protects the rights to food and water – with actions towards that goal based on equity.

For food sovereignty, 2°C warming is too much. Already crop yields are decreasing, and with further increases in temperatures we expect significant impacts on the right to food, lives, and livelihoods, particularly of the poor and most vulnerable. To minimize these impacts we need a target to keep temperature rise as far below 1.5°C as possible; with ambitious, equitable, and fair sharing of emissions cuts; and accompanied by the means of implementation (climate finance, technology, capacity building) necessary to meet this target.

Equity in determining who does what is critical – it means not placing the burden of emissions reductions on poor countries. Developed countries must assume their fair share of both emissions reductions and the finance needed to help other countries decarbonize their energy sectors and adapt. The sharing of the emissions burden must be based on historical responsibility, capacity, and repayment of climate debt. A temperature goal without these additional provisions is likely to put undue burden on developing countries.

While language recognizing the right to food and water is not likely to be included in the text itself, we must judge the Paris outcome based on whether those rights can be realized – which for much of the world will be very difficult or impossible at 2°C.

2. For principles and reference to rights to ensure that mitigation efforts do not compromise access to food – that is, fighting against carbon markets and landgrabbing UNFCCC-style.

Carbon markets in trees and soils were only the beginning. The idea that we can use land and trees to sequester emissions is seductive and viewed by some key actors as an alternative to emission reductions, or as a way to buy time as we transform the fossil fuel economy. Markets in soil and trees have not turned out to be the finance panacea thought by many, but soil and trees are still seen as the solution to long term temperature rise – through geoengineering. This is the new face of the old threat – that new land-based mitigation techniques, such as biochar, bioenergy carbon capture and storage (BECCS) and other types of carbon dioxide removal (CDR) geoengineering approaches, as well as old “solutions” like biofuels, will compete with the use of land to feed people.

The agreement will likely contain minimal language referring to carbon markets or land use. Instead, the relevant text is likely to be simple enabling language which opens the door for markets and the development of new or revised rules for land use accounting. Fighting against this type of language in the UNFCCC is difficult as conversations are obscured in technical decision language to enable rules to be developed in work programmes that will start in 2016. That said, these are still live fights.

Campaigners inside the talks are trying to secure language in the core agreement that can constrain those rules:

Parties shall, when pursuing actions in the land sector in addition to actions in other sectors and consistent with all relevant international obligations, prioritise the protection, maintenance and restoration of natural ecosystems; undertake emissions reductions and removals in an equitable manner; and the governing body shall develop principles and guidelines for ensuring social protections, food security, ecological integrity, transparency and comparability in relation to such actions. 

To be clear, this is compromise language. There are a number of NGOs inside the talks very happy to develop rules for carbon markets. More critical voices are needed to strengthen this language and to ensure that it can make it into the final agreement.

3. For a mechanism on loss and damage.

The slow onset processes of temperature rise, sea level rise, salinization, ocean acidification, and desertification all pose substantial and ever increasing threats to future food production and the lives and livelihoods of food producers and fisherfolk. There are very clear limits to adaptation to these constantly increasing pressures, leaving those who depend on the land and water with no options but to find alternate livelihoods, often through migration.

A loss and damage mechanism that can address these losses must be anchored in the agreement. A mechanism was established in Warsaw a few years ago (the Warsaw International Mechanism for Loss and Damage), but developing countries are looking to anchor that temporary institution into the legal agreement, with the possibility to strengthen it by expanding its mandate. The mechanism to be anchored in the Paris agreement must at a minimum be able to: address slow onset climate impacts beyond adaptation; provide for reparations for permanent loss and damage; and protect climate migrants. These elements are all fundamental to protecting the right to food under the climate change regime.

4. For the right kind of climate finance to the right kinds of projects.

Several important fights are brewing at the Green Climate Fund (GCF), with developed countries on one side and developing countries and civil society on the other. Two of the biggest battles are about who gets to disburse climate finance (national entities vs. private banks, multilateral development banks, and large intergovernmental agencies like the FAO) and under what terms (grants vs. loans). These battles will spill over into the discourse in Paris as frustrations around an overall lack of climate finance run high.

As it looks now, monies are more likely to be channeled through multi-lateral development banks and large intergovernmental agencies like the FAO than through national entities. Anyone who has been following FAOs leadership of the “climate-smart” agriculture agenda should be concerned that climate finance decisions will follow their priorities rather than those determined at a national scale.

There is no shortage of support needs for communities to address the impacts of climate change in agricultural systems, including support for adaptation for vulnerable regions and transformation to sustainable and resilient food production systems, built around local food economies. In particular, GCF monies should be directed towards small-scale community- and ecosystem-based adaptation projects and away from “climate-smart” agriculture. A number of civil society organizations are working to define the right kinds of projects for the GCF to fund, which will lead to real and necessary transformations.

5. Against “climate-smart” solutions in the Lima-Paris Action Agenda (LPAA).

The Paris outcome will include the legal agreement and accompanying decisions, submission of intended nationally determined contributions, a finance package, as well as a random assemblage of voluntary initiatives bundled together under The Lima-Paris Action Agenda. The initiatives are collected together under themes, one of which is agriculture. The initiatives will be showcased on specific days during the COP, with agriculture scheduled for 1 December.

The FAO and the French government are in charge of the agriculture theme. Given that pairing, we should expect “climate-smart” agriculture to be prominently featured. Indeed, the French government has been heavily invested in promoting “climate-smart” agriculture, including through support of the Global Alliance for Climate-Smart Agriculture. In addition, Stephane LeFoll, the French agriculture minister, has a pet research initiative called “4 pour 1000” or “votre carbone nous interesse” – “your carbon interests us,” which he plans to launch in Paris. LeFoll claims that if the soil carbon concentration in all the soils around the world was increased by 0.4% every year it would compensate for the total yearly carbon emissions from all sources.

Civil society groups are campaigning to keep “climate-smart” agriculture out of the LPAA solutions agenda, including with a widely supported sign-on letter calling on governments “not to endorse Climate Smart Agriculture as a solution to climate change, nor to label any other initiative that would be part of the "agenda of solutions" as part of the concept.”

U.S. corn growers farming in hell

This is what climate change looks like.

US corn yields seriously threatened as soils dry and temperature climbs

 A preview of climate impacts to come.

For the second year in a row, farmers and agriculture analysts are watching temperatures rise during peak pollination time for the U.S. corn crop. Corn pollen is sensitive to high temperatures, and heat waves during pollination time will lower yields, as happened last year.

Now the heat wave in the Midwest is coupled with record low levels of soil moisture, leading to added stress on pollination and added anxiety all around

A bitter cup of tea

Tea production fell in 2011 in both Kenya and Uganda, compared with 2010. While two data points do not indicate a trend, crop and climate scientists anticipate drastic reductions in tea production in these two countries in the coming decades. Last year the International Centre for Tropical Agriculture (its acronym CIAT derives from the Spanish version of its name) released two important studies: Future climate scenarios for Uganda's tea growing areas and Future climate scenarios for Kenya's tea growing areas, both predicting significant falls in production and export earnings from the crop in these two countries.

Kenya's tea producing zone will shift 500m up in elevation by 2050; lower elevation production areas will see severe drops in suitability for production. A shift in elevation will put forests and protected areas at risk of conversion and will leave many producers in lower elevations in need of new sources of livelihoods.

Impacts are predicted to be even more severe in Uganda: "The report reveals that tea will become increasingly less suited to conditions in Uganda, posing a serious threat to the livelihoods of Uganda’s many smallholder producers and their families."

Fears of British super-drought after record low rainfall this winter

Mexico's drought reduces agricultural production by 40%

Drought may cause shutdown of Texas rice production

I wonder how long it will take for US leadership -- both political and agricultural -- to wake up to the real threat climate change poses to agricultural production here, and hence to one of the only sectors that provides significant export earnings.

African maize yields will fall under increasing temperatures

To those following the scientific research on climate impacts on agriculture in Africa, the theme of this post should come as no surprise. Stanford research David Lobell and colleagues merely add to work that has already been published by that research group. Their latest study adds much more empirical data analysis to much modeling already undertaken, with confirmation of the grim scenarios foreseen for agriculture on the African continent.

Using data from maize/corn variety trials carried out over more than ten years across Africa they provide further evidence of the effects of temperature on maize production. In particular, the number of degree days that exceed 30 degrees C has significant effect -- "each degree day spent above 30 degrees C reduced final yield by 1% under optimal rain-fed conditions, and by 1.7% under drought conditions."

High temperatures affect the moisture status of the soil, thereby increasing stress on the plant. As well, high temperatures were especially problematic during silking and pre-silking stages.

Their work concludes with analysis of the cumulative impact of degree days above 30 degrees C -- linking the impacts of daily temperature maximums seen during a season with what would be expected over the next decades with each 1 degree C of warming seen.

For sites with average temperatures above 25 degrees C yields decline rapidly with increasing temperatures, "because of frequent exposure to temperatures above 30 degrees C, with more than 10% yield loss per degree C of warming... Under drought conditions, even the coolest trials are harmed by 1 degree C warming, with losses exceeding 40% at the hottest sites."

The graphs and maps included in the paper are sobering.

Climate change in your coffee cup

Changing climates in Colombia threaten coffee prices and a way of life.

"Heat damages Colombia coffee, raising prices."

Pepsi and IDB

PepsiCo and Inter-American Development Bank Sign Agreement to Spur Development in Latin America and Caribbean

Here's what I wrote to a colleague about this rather lopsided and misguided venture:

Pepsi invests $2.6 million and the farmers take out $40.4 million in microloans. And they (Pepsi) get sunflower oil much cheaper than their current sources -- currently US and Canada i'm guessing. Geez, who wins there? So the farmers can produce oil for the junk food that makes Mexico second only to the US globallly in the number of obese inhabitants.

But I'm guessing that climate change in Mexico means they won't produce sunflowers there for that long. Too bad for the farmers that put all that effort into converting from food to oil production.

Sigh.

Reframing the question: Bolivia's challenge to the Copenhagen Accord methodology

How to fairly and equitably distribute the remaining carbon budget left for a 2°C (or a 1.5°C) world? That’s one way to frame the central question on emission budget allocation under consideration by both the UNFCCC AWG-KP and the AWG-LCA, the approach taken by Ambassador Pablo Solon of the Plurinational State of Bolivia during his presentation on 3 August to the AWG-KP workshop on the scale of Annex I emission reductions.

If we start with the irrefutable premise that there is a carbon budget -- a certain amount of carbon that can be emitted, say between 2010 and 2050, to have a reasonable chance of staying below 2°C or 1.5°C -- then the most logical way forward is to first quantify the total size of the budget, then collectively develop the criteria to use to divide up that budget.

The methodology is really not much different from the process for allocating a household budget. There are constraints imposed by a monthly salary. If you spend all your salary in the first week of the month, eating will be difficult for the rest of the month. Rather than ad hoc spending, a wiser approach would be to discern all possible expenditures for the month and then prioritize and allocate the budget based on personal criteria.

This is the logic laid out by Ambassador Solon in his presentation to the AWG-KP. Using numbers generated by well-known climate experts, he proposes that a budget for 2010-2050 and a 1.5°C world is 420 Gt of carbon. For a 2°C world, emissions during the same four decades could amount to 750 Gt. It is now time for countries to engage in the necessary exercises of prioritization and allocation; if some countries spend all or most of the global carbon budget in the first ten years of the period, we will have a serious crisis on our hands.

With this approach, the next step is to collectively develop the criteria whereby the remaining atmospheric space will be allocated. The Bolivian proposal, as presented by Ambassador Solon, is to use two basic criteria to determine equitable division of the remaining atmospheric space: population and historical responsibility. Using a per capita approach, where cumulatively over the next four decades the A1 countries house 16% of global population and non-A1 countries are home to 84%, yields the following carbon allocation:

	percent of global population	carbon allocation for a 2C world	for 1.5C world
Annex I	16%	120 Gt	67 Gt
Non-Annex I	84%	630 Gt	353 Gt
Total	100%	750 Gt	420 Gt

Using the approach of historical responsibility, with 1850 as the reference year for historical contributions, yields the following carbon allocation for the total 1300 Gt emitted in the last century and a half:

	a fair allocation	the actual allocation	global emissions debt
Annex I	25% = 325 Gt	72% = 932 Gt	-607 Gt
Non-Annex I	75% = 975 Gt	28% = 368 Gt	+607 Gt
Total	1300 Gt

Ambassador Solon had no desire to mince words in commenting on the historical numbers, telling the Annex I countries in the audience directly: “You have overused atmospheric space.”

Unfortunately, the current approach of the Annex I countries is to ignore historical responsibility, spend what might be in their per capita budget now, and hope for the best. According to the analysis outlined by Ambassador Solon, the average annual carbon expenditure of Annex I countries in the next ten years is estimated to be 13.3 Gt. Over the course of the next decade, the Annex I countries could well spend their entire carbon paycheck.

The approach of the Copenhagen Accord (CA) pledges, and indeed the approach used to derive the first commitment period pledges under the Kyoto Protocol (KP), is illogical and irresponsible, driving us far beyond 2°C and threatening serious climate disruption. The CA approach is this: put the supposedly politically feasible emission reduction pledges on the table and if things don’t add up, well, we’ll deal with that problem sometime in the future. It’s a fundamentally irrational process, deliberately designed to obscure the fact that developed countries are claiming a much larger share of atmospheric space than is fair and equitable.

Spoiled: Organic and Local Is So 2008 | Mother Jones

Our way of producing food and feeding people has to change. Not many who look at food production and distribution doubt that. The UN Agriculture Assessment says it pretty succinctly: "business as usual is not an option." What, then, is to be done? Good article here by Paul Roberts provides his two cents.

Town Green - In Connecticut, Turning Cow Manure Into a Growth Industry - NYTimes.com

Continuing on that cow manure theme...

Op-Ed Contributor - Yellow Is the New Green - NYTimes.com

Human and animal waste are vastly underused sources of nutrients for agricultural production. Yet globally prices of fertilizers, nitrogen and phosphorus in particular, have been skyrocketting. Phosphorus supplies are finite, and we'll soon start hitting the wall with our phosphorus supplies. The sooner we start figuring out how to recycle wastes on a large scale for use in agriculture, both human and animal wastes, the better.

Crop Scientists Say Biotechnology Seed Companies Are Thwarting Research - NYTimes.com

This is a very strong statement from a community that is not known for its political engagement -- university researchers. Things have to be pretty bad for them to speak out. Of course, the stifling of research by biotechnology companies has been going on for decades, so it's about time the scientific community made a fuss.

Newly Poor Swell Lines at Food Banks Nationwide - NYTimes.com

New Yorkers Try Composting With Worms - NYTimes.com

One step at a time, connecting the cycles that power the ecosystems that feed us.

In eat local movement, Cuba is years ahead | Environment | Reuters

Texas Ranchers and Farmers Struggle in Drought - NYTimes.com

Next year floods? Hurricanes? The uncertainty of distribution and timing of climate change impacts will make adaptation to these extreme climatic variations very, very difficult.

Food for the next administration

Beyond the useful resources on the website with respect to food and farming in the greater New York City area is a link to a great panel presentation on US food policy. The speakers featured are: Mark Ritchie, Judith Redmond, Michael Berwick and Michael Pollan.

Sustainable Food Monitor | Growing Better Global Food Policy