One year
after the High Level Panel of Experts on Food Security and Nutrition (HLPE) published
a report on Food Security and Climate Change, the two spheres of climate
change and food security have come closer together. Previously, Climate Change was
a topic mainly discussed by the countries with high carbon emissions and the
focus was solely on mitigation. On the other hand, food security always focused
on the world's poor - often living in countries with low emissions.
The panel, which conducts research and advises the Committee on Food Security
(CFS), seeks to bridge these two issues. A side event, which was held at the
CFS, discussed the importance of bringing together both worlds and showed how
far this has progressed.
The
importance of mixing both worlds comes from the fact that the people who are
most food insecure, are also the ones who are most vulnerable to extreme
weather events, caused by climate change.
Prof.
Swaminathan pointed to the example of the Punjab, India, explaining that a warmer climate means that the growing
seasons for staple crops will become shorter. Only one week less of the growing season can
have tremendous effect on yields in the region. In certain situations, rising
temperature requires famers to be proactive
in cultivating new crops, as the traditional crops are not viable. This can,
however, be a great problem, according to Alexandre Maybeck (FAO). He asked "How to teach a farmer what is important to secure his food supply 20 years from now when
he does not even know how to feed his family today?”
The
publications by HLPE and the discussions at CFS had an impact at the climate
negotiations at the last climate COP. Maybeck believes that one year after the
climate change discussion at CFS this has influenced the way we talk about it.
"The two different sectors started to speak to each other. The HLPE report helped as a good
common starting point". In addition, the other two Rome-based agencies
have set up programmes in which climate change and small holder agriculture are
combined.
"Many
people ask me: why is the World Food Programme (WFP) involved in these topics?
For us it is quite simple: climate change will create more shocks and
disasters:" Richard Choularton explains. "The Rural Resilience
Initiative aims to build community resilience on food security and increases
the safety nets that are required to deal with food shortages. Actually 98% of
what we do is risk reduction."
The WFP, for
example, invests in livelihood diversification so farmers are not depended on
one source of income. They have, additionally, taken up the advice of an Ethiopian
farmer who asked to work for his insurance as he could not afford to pay for
it. Chourlaton says that these initiatives are promising. Choularton was asked whether
working more hours for insurance did not represent a burden for farmers. He explained that great attention was paid to the labour demand on
farmers, and that community labour was never requested during their own farming
season, but rather in low-demand labour times, a system that worked well for
the farmers.
Another cross-cutting
programme is the Adaptation for Smallholder Programme (ASAP) by the
International Fund for Agricultural Development (IFAD). Elwyn Grainger-Jones
explained that the main goal of ASAP is to make climate change finance available
for smallholders. "Climate change alters the way we do projects as it
forces us to take into account much more risks. We have, for example, projects that introduce more saline resistant crops to adapt to sea
level rise, or early warning systems which can help farmers prepare when bad
weather is coming".
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