Copenhagen: ‘A deal without agriculture, is no deal’

Agriculture and Rural Development Day
Agriculture and Rural Development Day will take place in Copenhagen on Saturday, 12th December 2009.  The event will attract a big grouping of policy makers, donor agencies, researchers and activists involved in the broad agricultural sector in developed and developing countries. With this event partly in mind, both the IATP and the FAO have just released reports on different aspects of agriculture and climate change.  

IATP briefs on agriculture and climate change
IATP, December 2009

To effectively address global climate change, policy solutions must support a transition toward more sustainable agriculture systems that recognize the critical role agriculture plays in the world, concludes a series of issue briefs released by the Institute for Agriculture and Trade Policy (IATP).

The climate series covers a wide range of topics:

• Agriculture and Climate—The Critical Connection, by Jim Kleinschmit, gives an overview of the science of agriculture and climate change.
• Putting Agriculture on the Global Climate Agenda, by Anne Laure Constantin, sets benchmarks for including agriculture within global climate negotiations.
• U.S. Climate Policy and Agriculture, by Julia Olmstead, reviews how agriculture is considered in U.S. legislation and makes recommendations for a better approach.
• Speculating on Carbon: The Next Toxic Asset, by Steve Suppan, analyzes how Wall Street speculators could influence agriculture and climate goals.
• Eye of the Storm: Integrated Solutions to the Climate, Agriculture and Water Crises, by Shiney Varghese, explains water’s role in the climate and agriculture crises.
• Climate Inequity, by Shalini Gupta and Dr. Cecilia Martinez, traces the historical inequities that have contributed to climate change, and proposes a more equitable climate policy.

Harvesting agriculture's multiple benefits: mitigation, adaptation, development and food security
FAO, December 2009

The paper explores potential synergies between food security, adaptation and climate change mitigation from land-based agricultural practices in developing countries, which could help to generate the multiple benefits needed to address the multiple demands placed on agriculture. It indicates promising mitigation options with synergies, options that involve trade-offs, possible options for required financing, and possible elements in designing country implementation processes.

Key conclusions:

• A more holistic vision of food security, agricultural mitigation, adaptation and development is needed if synergies are to be maximized and trade-offs minimized. This needs to be mainstreamed into global agendas and national strategies for addressing climate change and food security.
• Realizing the synergies and minimizing trade-offs between agricultural mitigation and food security will require financing for up-front investments, opportunity costs and capacity building. Current levels of agricultural investment are inadequate to meet these and other costs.
• The magnitude of potential financing for land-based mitigation, relative to overall investment requirements for agriculture, indicate that leveraging mitigation finance to support climate smart agricultural development strategies and investments will be necessary to capture synergies between mitigation, adaptation and food security.
• There is currently no consensus on measuring, reporting and verification (MRV) for financing mechanisms, but decisions in this regard would affect the costs and viability of different agricultural mitigation activities.

1. Capturing synergies and managing trade-offs between food security and agricultural mitigation can be part of the solution to these two challenges and this should be reflected in the outcome reached at the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) Conference of the Parties (COP15) in Copenhagen.
2. The formulation and implementation of climate change and food security strategies will benefit from greater awareness of the potential synergies and trade-offs between these two policy areas within the agriculture sector, and how they might be best managed to generate multiple benefits rather than perverse outcomes.
3. Capturing the potential of agricultural mitigation and its co-benefits will require new and additional resources, multiple funding streams, innovative and flexible forms of financing, and the unequivocal eligibility of agriculture, including soil carbon sequestration, in existing and any new financing mechanisms.
4. Beyond Copenhagen, possible next steps that Parties may wish to consider, include:
   1. A work programme on agriculture initiated within the UNFCCC Subsidiary Body for Scientific and Technological Advice (SBSTA), with technical support provided, inter alia, through already ongoing Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) - FAO cooperation. Such a work programme could address methodological issues, including those related to reference levels, financing, and MRV. A decision in this regard could be taken by the UNFCCC COP, at its fifteenth session in Copenhagen.
   2. A suite of country-led pilots launched to build readiness, confidence and capacity for implementation of nationally appropriate agricultural mitigation action. The modality of implementation could be a phased approach, linked to country-specific capacities, circumstances and sustainable development processes.