MSc. Climate Change, Agriculture and Food Secuirty

This is a quick overview of what I did over the summer as part of the masters programme. In May of this year I got the opportunity to work with CGIAR as I mentioned in an earlier! While I was working with them, I reviewed a lot of migration material for the climate, migration and conflict nexus.  

From this work I gained a lot of knowledge in the area of migration. This then became a starting point for my thesis. I also learned that the region of the horn of Africa was likely to experience a lot of migration due to climate change. Ethiopia was then picked from this area as it experiences both internal and external migration. From the regular meetings in CGIAR and hearing the vast amount of work they complete in a variety of areas, my interest also grew in the area of policy coherence. My thesis would be based on policy coherence in the domains of climate change, agriculture, security, and migration in Ethiopia.

I did experience some challenges regarding such as policies being in Amharic. I would have liked to have been able to meet people in person and carry out interviews on the opinions of policy work at ground level and also discuss with them what climate smart agriculture techniques would they implement to adapt to the impacts of climate change as part of my work but this couldn’t be carried out due to the Corona Virus Pandemic.

Overall, I really enjoyed my experience working with CGIAR and completing my thesis on the country of Ethiopia. I feel I have learned a lot more about research and it importance and about the troubles facing the world from climate change from my college course although there were complexities because everything was done online.

I will include some of the papers that a worth looking at if you are interested in the nexus that exists between climate, migration, agriculture and conflict domains.

https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/10.1177/1070496517727325

https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1080/21632324.2015.1022973

https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1080/09709274.2009.11906172

Friday the 27th of August I can finally say I have completed my thesis. The title of my thesis was “Mapping policy coherence between climate, secuirty, agriculture and migraiton domains in Ethiopia“.

Many thanks to everyone that has helped me thoughout my college experience. I thank all who contributed to the thesis, especially my two main NUIG program supervisors, Prof Charles Spillane and Dr. Peter McKeown. In the thesis, I explored the existing gaps in current policies in Ethiopia on the topic of policy coherence. This thesis is my most significant written piece to date. Following on from this submission it is hoped that this will be published as a short info note.

Earlier in this blog i wrote about food systems, today i came accross a tweet from the UNDP Climate which addressed the five considerations for reforming food systems which were:

1. The goals of the Paris Agreement cant be reached without transformation of our food systems.
2. Policy Coherence is required to support a sustainable change in our agri- food systems.
3. Overcoming challenges in coordination, data availability and finance are necessary to build resilient food systems
4. Partnerships with private sector bodies can lead to benifits for action on climate issues
5. Specific sectors can target adaptation and mitgation targets in Nationally Determined Contributions through the transformation of food systems.

It was good to see the inclusion of the policy coherence mentioned in the five key takeaways from the food systems summity. I believe it si of upmost importance throughout the world to reduce negative spill overs accross policy domains.

You can read more about the key considerations of the summit by clicking on the link below:

https://www.adaptation-undp.org/scala-five-key-considerations-for-transforming-food-systems

• Policies in Ethiopia dont gernally mention the term “policy coherence”
• Most climate agriculture policies focused on adaptation rather than the reduction of Greenhouse Gas Emissions
• The term climate impacts was not mentioned many times throughout climate policies

Communication is very important when displaying a scientic result. The communication, I believe needs to be short, to the point and more important than anything else it needs to be easy to understood by everyone.

I struggle with how i would present my results in my thesis. I didnt want my results to appear complex so i devised a simple traffic light illustration i.e. a different colour displayed based on the number of times the result occured. For example the policies where, there was no result recoded they appear in red, where there was a result between 1 and 50 these appeared in yellow and where there was a result higher then 50 these appeared in green, the number was also noted in the box to account for those who are colour blind. This i hope makes the results easier to understand for everyone!!

In my thesis there is a focus on migration policies and the impacts that policy can have on migration. I have attached a video here that highlights some of the problems that can occur in migration policies.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6G2SQLMtO-E

Today the IPCC 2021 report was published.It highlighted there needs to be big changes made throughout the world to keep warming below 2 °C.

Some of the main points in the report are:

1. Humans are undeniably responsibile for the changes in our climate
2. Every corner of the eart has been affected by climate change
3. We are getting closer to the point of no return
4. We are lightly to pass 1.5C by the year 2040.
5. Limiting the production of Greenhouse gas emissions are key to reduce the earths warming

This report highlights the probelms that are occuring in our world at the moment. I believe that at the moment reports like this are falling on deaf ears. It really is a code red for humanity. I believe our time to change is now. Recovering from the Corona Virus Pandemic offers us an opportunity to build back better and greener than before!!

As part of my thesis i will be researching policy coherence in Ethiopia.

Policy coherence can be defined as the “the systematic promotion of mutually reinforcing policy actions across government departments and agencies creating synergies towards achieving the defined objective” (Glass and Newig, 2019; Oecd, 2000).

Policy coherence is recognised by the international community. It is mentioned in Target 17.14 of the UN Sustainable Development Goal 17 which seeks to “enhance policy coherence for sustainable development” (Brugere, Troell and Eriksson, 2021).Policy coherence helps to achieve positive outcomes from policy implementation. It strengthens the impact of induvial policies by identifying synergies across all relevant policy areas, reduces trade-offs between social and environmental policy areas, and helps to reconcile domestic policy objectives with international agreed objectives (OECD, 2015) . It is important because it helps to develop mutually beneficial connections and cooperation between governmental sectors and prevents the duplication of work (Janetschek et al., 2020). Policies can change over time due to political preferences and issues in current policy, as a result policy coherence can become a moving target over a period. Policy coherence requires continuous efforts to ensure that it is successful across political domains (Barry, King and Matthews, 2010).

Video which breifly explains the concept of policy coherence:

https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/epdf/10.1002/eet.1589?saml_referrer

References

Barry, F., King, M. and Matthews, A. (2010) ‘Policy coherence for development: Five challenges’, Irish Studies in International Affairs, pp. 207-223.

Brugere, C., Troell, M. and Eriksson, H. (2021) ‘More than fish: Policy coherence and benefit sharing as necessary conditions for equitable aquaculture development’, Marine Policy, 123, pp. 104271.

Glass, L.-M. and Newig, J. (2019) ‘Governance for achieving the Sustainable Development Goals: How important are participation, policy coherence, reflexivity, adaptation and democratic institutions?’, Earth System Governance, 2, pp. 100031.

Janetschek, H., Brandi, C., Dzebo, A. and Hackmann, B. (2020) ‘The 2030 Agenda and the Paris Agreement: voluntary contributions towards thematic policy coherence’, Climate Policy, 20(4), pp. 430-442.

Oecd 2000. DAC Guidelines on Poverty Reduction: Volume 1 (Draft: June 2000). OECD Development Assistance Committee

OECD 2015. Policy Coherence for Sustainable Development in the SDG Framework. Paris.

For the last 10 days in Ireland the temperatures have been approximately 30 °C which is very unusual. I have attached an article below which highlights that this weather is not common in Ireland but it seems to be occurring more often!!

https://www.irishexaminer.com/news/spotlight/arid-40344488.html

My thesis is going to be based on Policy Coherence in Ethiopia. First i will give you a brief background of Ethiopia.

Ethiopia, country on the Horn of Africa. The capital is Addis Ababa (Wubneh, 2013). Ethiopia is the largest and most populated country in the Horn of Africa and it is landlocked. Migration is a significant problem..Although some areas tend to benefit from migration other areas suffer due to the competition for limited resources. It has been noticed that in recent years that there has been more low skilled female migrants in Ethiopia (Zewdu, 2018). The climate has also been changing in the last number of years. The temperature has been increasing in Ethiopia and rainfall has been decreasing. This putting agricultural systems at risk (Zegeye, 2018).

Due to the problems posed and the threat of migration due to climate change the Government of Ethiopia has implemented policies that will which tackle climate change, migration and agriculture in the country. Some of these policies can be found on the WHO website which I will link below.

In a few days time i will decribe what policy coherence is and why it is important!

References

Wubneh, M. (2013) ‘Addis Ababa, Ethiopia – Africa’s diplomatic capital’, Cities, 35, pp. 255-269.

Zewdu, G. A. (2018) ‘Ethiopian female domestic labour migration to the Middle East: patterns, trends, and drivers’, African and Black Diaspora: An International Journal, 11(1), pp. 6-19.

Zegeye, H. (2018) ‘Climate change in Ethiopia: impacts, mitigation and adaptation’, International Journal of Research in Environmental Studies, 5(1), pp. 18-35.

Website

https://extranet.who.int/nutrition/gina/en/policies/1427