By Alain Vidal, Strategy Director a.i. & Senior Partnerships Advisor, CGIAR ConsortiumThe nexus between climate change, development and growth will be high on the agenda at Davos, as the Millennium Development Goals reach their conclusion. But are the global elite really grasping the lengths we need to go to in order to become “climate-smart” and safeguard our future and, in particular, our food supply?
The “Greener Davos Initiative” which champions shuttle buses over car use suggests the answer is no. Buses will be only available from airports, when if we were truly thinking climate-smart, Europe delegates would be coming via rail through Zurich. This partial commitment to both mitigating and adapting to climate change will not suffice.
According to the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, the world needs to produce at least 50 per cent more food than we do today in order to meet the goal of feeding a projected nine billion people by 2050. Furthermore, for the third time in a decade, our planet has warmed to its highest levels on record—which is bad news for the excess of two billion farmers in the world who rely on a supportive climate to grow the food we all depend on. We need to adopt an approach to food production that is “climate-smart”, that will not only adapt to these new conditions, but limit agriculture’s role in contributing to it.
To that end, at the UN Climate Summit 2014, the Global Alliance for Climate-Smart Agriculture (GACSA) was launched as a voluntary partnership of governments, researchers, civil society organizations, businesses, and farmer organizations. Together they committed to delivering outcomes on what we in the Alliance consider as the three inseparable pillars of climate-smart agriculture: strengthening global food and nutrition security, improving resilience to climate change, and reducing the GHG footprint of agriculture.
The Alliance has set a goal to reach at least half a billion farmers with climate-smart agricultural practices by 2030—a mark we must reach if we are to prevent climate change from leaving us hungry.
At CGIAR—a global consortium involving 15 agricultural research centers, thousands of scientists, and hundreds of partners and founding members of the alliance—we have stepped up to assist in meeting this goal by dedicating at least 60 percent of our budget to climate-smart agriculture, broadening our breadth of research and breaking down barriers that are currently blocking vulnerable small-scale farmers from taking up new climate-smart innovations.
Now that GACSA has gathered more than 70 members, it is time to act and move from political commitments to solutions. But for countries to do this, decision makers need access to these solutions. This is where the World Economic Forum at Davos comes in, providing the ideal stage to showcase them.
Because these solutions are out there. The CGIAR Research Program on Climate Change, Agriculture and Food Security (CCAFS) is carrying out exemplary work that is reducing the burden of climate change for poor farmers in developing countries. In India, for example, where overuse of water for agriculture has led to drastically decreased water levels, farmers and scientists have piloted the use of lasers to level farm fields, which can reduce water usage by 30 percent. Weather-indexed insurance for farmers is also showing great promise. With government support, 13 million small-scale farmers in India have obtained insurance with policies that pay out when weather conditions deteriorate, giving farmers the capability and confidence to take necessary risks in farming.
Tackling global food insecurity in the face of climate change means looking at the whole food system—so global diets can also play a key role. According to a recent McKinsey Global Institute report, the most effective ways to reduce food production’s impact on the environment and exacerbation of climate change are portion control, changing food-product formulas, and restricting high-calorie food and drink. But these measures can only be implemented if policy-makers and large food and beverage companies (who are well represented in Davos this week) get on board.
Producing more nutritious food, with less impact on the environment, is also possible. Over the last ten years HarvestPlus, a CGIAR program to improve nutrition, has been remarkably successful, developing and releasing more nutritious, high yielding and disease resistant staple foods crops, such as Orange Fleshed Sweet Potato rich in vitamin A In Africa, and pearl millet that is able to provide the full daily needs of iron and zinc, for children in India. To date, HarvestPlus has reached more than seven million people – a number that could greatly increase with the right support.
If we are serious about being climate smart and developing a climate-smart food production system, it is time to act now. It is not too early in the climate negotiations to put food and agriculture on the table; on the contrary the climate talks in Paris this year will offer a unique opportunity to move forward on the three interconnected issues of food, agriculture and climate.
Every Davos delegate should care what their customers and constituents will be able to eat tomorrow. At key events like this, the global community must engage with policy-makers, private sector, NGOs, researchers, and practitioners on practical solutions that deliver on all three pillars of climate-smart agriculture. Instead of arguing endlessly about trade-offs between pillars, we must understand –—and help others understand—the benefits the poor and vulnerable, and all farmers around the world, can generate from their smart combination. If we choose a climate-smart approach, our future will be food secure.