Press Release: Climate change negotiations must address needs of small-scale farmers
5. December 2011
The Ecumenical Advocacy Alliance (EAA), together with ACT Alliance and representatives from DanChurchAid, FinnChurchAid, Caritas South Africa, the Fellowship of Christian Councils in West Africa (FECCIWA), and leading academics and climate change negotiators, made a strong case for supporting small-scale farmers at all levels of the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) discussions and implementation.
In the side event titled ''Can we achieve food security in a world challenged by climate change?" held on 3 December in parallel with the Climate Change Conference in Durban, Mr Mattias Söderberg, DanChurchAid, drew attention to the fact that 60 percent of livestock has died in Ethiopia leaving tens of thousands of pastoralists without livelihoods. Söderberg stressed that smallholder farmers will continue to be at higher risk of crop failure, livestock disease and mortality, unless strong steps are taken to provide them with support.
The 17th Conference of Parties (COP 17) of the UNFCCC in Durban, which continues until 9 December, offers an important opportunity to address these challenges. Organizers and participants in the side event stressed that there is a critical need to shift from carbon-intensive industrial farming to low-carbon, knowledge-intensive agro-ecological approaches. Doing so would be of benefit to developing countries: food security would be strengthened, emissions reduced, and adaptation to climate change enhanced.
Rev. Dr. Tolbert Jallah, FECCIWA Secretary-General and member of the EAA Food Strategy Group, spoke about his concerns for smallholder farmers in Africa given the critical role they play in the economies of the countries of the region. "Food security and climate change are tightly interlinked and the poor and most vulnerable smallholder farmers are the ones who suffer greatest," he said. Rises in temperature increase the frequency and severity of drought and can also impact the viability of various crops. "Farmers need to be supported with smart investment in agriculture to help them adapt to the effects of climate change," stated Jallah.
Dr. George Wamukoya, Climate Change Advisor for the Common Market for Eastern & Southern Africa and negotiator from South Africa, described how agriculture was being discussed in multiple parts of the UNFCCC negotiations, including adaptation, mitigation, technology, land-use, land-use change and forestry, and reducing emissions from deforestation and forest degradation.
Wamukoya stated that the Nairobi Work Programme, which assists UNFCCC Parties to increase their understanding and evaluation of their climate situation and helps them to make educated decisions, needs to transition from making assessments to developing action plans. "We can't eat workshops" he stated, "and the needs in agriculture are great and undisputed."
Wamukoya encouraged civil society to submit their recommendations for safeguarding the rights of farmers to the Subsidiary Body for Scientific and Technological Advice of the UNFCCC so that they can feed into the development of these assessments. "Guidance should come from scientific and technical substance, not the political arm."
Söderberg concluded the session by calling on negotiators to ensure that mitigation and adaptation measures prioritize the right to food. "People today, who have little or no historical responsibility for the climate crisis, should not pay the price for mitigating the emissions for the future; nor should they be denied their basic human rights."
For more information contact:
Sara Speicher
sspeicher@e-alliance.ch
+44 7821 860 723
The Ecumenical Advocacy Alliance is a broad international network of churches and Christian organizations cooperating in advocacy on food and HIV and AIDS. The Alliance is based in Geneva, Switzerland. For more information, see http://www.e-alliance.ch/
