On Wednesday the 20th of October 2021, the Irish Forum for International Agriculture Development (IFIAD) held their annual conference titled “A Year for Action: Food and Climate” which I attended. During the conference, there were presentations from Pipa Hackett (who is serving as Minister of State for Land Use and Biodiversity), Connell Foley (Concern Worldwide), and Maximo Torero Cullen (Chief Economist, Food and Agriculture Organisation of the United Nations (FAO)), amongst others. All the speakers were interesting in their own right and were incredibly effective in portraying their points. A lot of key issues were raised during the conference with regards to climate change and COP 26, but two recurring issues that I am going to focus on are the sense of urgency for action and the importance of food systems.
Key Issues
A key issue that was outlined by nearly every speaker during the conference was one of urgency. With our global temperature rising at such a fast rate the urgency to start introducing plans and policies now is highly important. As outlined by Professor Charles Spillane during the opening of the conference, if we do not decrease our emissions quite drastically and soon, irreversible damage will be inflicted on the planet which will change the lives and livelihoods of everyone. For example, the likelihood of reaching a 1.5 degree change in the next 10 years is high if there isn’t a change to our systems. Since we have already experienced quite drastic weather events from current temperature rises, this could be incredibly detrimental.
Another issue that stood out to me was the importance of the food systems approach. “Food systems comprise all the processes associated with food production and food utilisation: growing, harvesting, packing, processing, transporting, marketing, consuming and disposing of food remains (including fish)” (Van Berkum et al., 2018). The importance of efficient and sustainable food systems was exclaimed by quite a few of the speakers. Ana Maria Loboguerrero, CGIAR Climate Change, Agriculture and Food Security (CCAFS) program, highlighted how important the correlation was between food systems and environmental issues. One of the biggest challenges to having efficient and productive food systems is the food systems themselves. As the environment is relied on more to alleviate food shortages, its ability to produce weakens with enhanced climate change. This is particularly evident for smallholder farmers in developing countries who have and will continue, to suffer most from the effects of climate change (Suleman, 2017).
Lack of Consensus
A lack of consensus that I noticed throughout the conference was while the climate change key issues that we face were outlined, there wasn’t exactly a mention on who has the power to carry out these changes. This is an underlying issue with the fight against climate change as a lot of people in government do not want to take the initiative and introduce environmental policies that would negatively affect their own agendas. Goals within politics are generally short-term based but the environment is not.
Another issue that was outlined by Sinead Walsh was perhaps a lack of coherency and structure within agencies to combat climate change issues. An inequality of resources between developed and developing worlds was also an issue outlined. Sinead mentioned her recent first-hand experience with this as she was working in South Sudan, a country that has had their prime minister arrested in a military coup just this past weekend. Countries that suffer from unstable governments are less likely to receive a suitable amount of resources and are subject to inequality by not even being included in the conversation.
The Covid-19 pandemic was also outlined as causing issues with the efficiency and productivity of food systems. Before the pandemic, the discourse amongst the food research community had been dominated by the design and manufacturing of healthy and safe foods (Bakalis et al., 2020). With the overbearing nature of the pandemic on all facets of the economy, it was the main focus of governments, putting the importance of food systems to one side.
In conclusion, I thought this IFIAD conference was very effective in outlining the issues that need to be addressed for COP 26. The UN Summit is the most important to date due to the vast size of the issues that Climate Change has caused, and the urgency of which they need to be addressed. Hopefully, this can be achieved.
References:
BAKALIS, S., VALDRAMIDIS, V. P., ARGYROPOULOS, D., AHRNE, L., CHEN, J., CULLEN, P., CUMMINS, E., DATTA, A. K., EMMANOUILIDIS, C. & FOSTER, T. 2020. Perspectives from CO+ RE: How COVID-19 changed our food systems and food security paradigms. Current Research in Food Science, 3, 166.
SULEMAN, K. K. 2017. Upscaling climate-smart agriculture in sub-Saharan Africa.
VAN BERKUM, S., DENGERINK, J. & RUBEN, R. 2018. The food systems approach: sustainable solutions for a sufficient supply of healthy food. Wageningen Economic Research.
The Economist. 2018. Africa has plenty of land. Why is it so hard to make a living from it?. [online] Available at: <https://www.economist.com/middle-east-and-africa/2018/04/28/africa-has-plenty-of-land-why-is-it-so-hard-to-make-a-living-from-it> [Accessed 23 October 2021].
Sustainablefoodcenter.org. 2020. What Makes Up a Food System? Breaking it Down into 4 Parts. [online] Available at: <https://sustainablefoodcenter.org/latest/blog/what-makes-up-a-food-system-breaking-it-down-into-4-parts>.