| I've just received a draft version of the agriculture section of the agreement in Copenhagen. The document has a number of items in still up for debate, which are noted in brackets. Here's what they've got:
First off, they call for increasing efficiency and productivity in a sustainable manner. This worries me, because "sustainable" has become a very fungible word. In other words, it gets thrown around a lot and applied to things that are NOT sustainable at all. Also, this language reaffirms the idea that yield and efficiency are all that matter. More food! More food! What we need is healthy food and equitable distribution. Yes, we need to have enough for all of us, but we DO have enough for all of us and we still have record numbers of hungry people. And among those who have enough (or too much) to eat, we have epidemic health problems. So clearly, we're missing something there.
Next up, they say they recognize the interests of small and marginal farmers, the rights of indigenous people and traditional knowledge and practices. THAT is awesome. They also plan to take into account the link between agriculture and food security, and they plan to make sure that the agreement to reduce emissions and combat global warming will not adversely affect food security. Cool! There's also an up-for-negotiation point in there recognizing the problem of land degradation. So that one might not make it into the final agreement.
The next point kind of sucks. They have a bit in there about international trade, basically noting that the climate agreement shouldn't mess with international trade. Given that international trade is the cause of so many agricultural problems in the first place, this isn't something I find reassuring. I worry that free trade orthodoxy will mean that nations will be prohibited from enacting meaningful carbon laws and then importing their food from countries with lax, pollution-promoting laws instead.
After that, they make a point that's kind of the meat of the whole agreement. All parties who sign on should work on reducing man-made emissions of greenhouse gases, especially when they can do so while also improving agricultural productivity in a sustainable manner. They may or may not include bits specifying that the efforts to reduce greenhouse gases should also safeguard food security and livelihoods security. That remains to be seen.
My hunch is that the language here is loose enough that the U.S. could sign on and still stick to business as usual while claiming they are trying to improve productivity and sustainability. This also paves the way for the expansion of industrial agriculture into the developing world. Yuck. |
