The conference kicked off with an address from the Irish Minister of Land Use & Biodiversity, Pippa Hackett. Minister Hackett spoke to the upcoming COP26 event and the necessity of 2021 being a “Year of Action”. She also addressed her current concerns over the difficulties associated with engaging all stakeholders. Specifically the importance of including farmers in the discussions from the onset.
This years conference addressed five action areas from the UN Food Systems Summit:
- Nourishment of all People
2. Boost Nature Based Solutions
3. Advance Equitable Livelihoods, Decent Work and Communities
4. Build Resilience to Vulnerabilities, Shocks and Stresses
5. Means of Implementation
The first panel, comprised of Maureen Muketha, Connell Foley, Sinead Mowlds and Maximo Cullen focused on the Key Commitments of the upcoming IFIAD year. The consensus among the four was centered in meaningful participation of national governments along with their transparency in the political process.
The conference’s focus was clear; now is the time for urgency. Dr. Charles Spillane, Director of the Ryan Institute at NUI-Galway as well as the Chairman of IFIAD closed the conference with a hint of evident frustration over the length of time it is taking to create meaningful change. For more than two decades world leaders have been negotiating the terms for how to reduce greenhouse gas emissions, yet the carbon ppm continues to rise and the if IPCC is to be taken at face value, the temperature of the planet will rise no matter what we do now.
Dr. Spillane uses his closing statement to bring up another interesting point, this time about transformational change. He states that incremental changes can be difficult to measure as each small change effects each system gradually and therefore has a trickle down effect to all adjacent systems. However, he argues that the danger of transformational change is the risk of making a mistake. Choose the wrong large change and the system may come crashing down.
One of the questions posed by host Aine Lawlor was “how should we feel about about the current state of the global efforts to combat climate change?” Is our glass half full or half empty? My Irish-born grandmother always said, “It doesn’t matter if the glass is half-full or half-empty, either way you look at it, there is more room in the glass”. The subjectivity of how one is feeling regarding a scientific subject as complex as climate change generally would not be taken seriously. Although in this case, subjectivity is important. Action is obviously required, and therefore enthusiasm to take action is necessary, in which case subjectivity is warranted. Human emotion over the state of the world is exactly what is going to be the deal breaker when moving the needle.
References / More Sources
http://www.ifiad.ie / https://ukcop26.org / https://www.nuigalway.ie/ryaninstitute/ /