In response to the threats of climate change, which impacts heavily on small scale men and women farmers in Asia, AFA calls on world leaders, policy makers, and other stakeholders:
Cut green house gas emissions!
Promote sustainable agriculture!
Support small scale men and women farmers now!
Women leaders from farmer organizations belonging to AFA called on international leaders involved in climate change talks to craft policies with a gender and agriculture perspective and to support capacity building for women on climate change adaptation.
In a consultation entitled “Asian women farmers reclaiming space for food sovereignty amidst climate change” held last October 6-8, 2009 in Bangkok, Thailand, the women leaders shared experiences and views on the effects of climate change and how they adapt to it.
Climate change is seen as a real global issue affecting small scale farmers, and Asia is one of the most affected areas, where unpredictable and extreme weather conditions are now being felt.
AFA joined around 2,000 individuals from different NGOs and POs from different countries in a peaceful march to the UN office in Bangkok last October 5 to demand climate justice.
United under the banner of “Asian People’s Solidarity for Climate Change”, the marchers called on the developed countries (the north) to give full reparations for the ecological debt and climate debt they owe to developing countries (the south) and to undertake deep, drastic cuts of GHG emissions through domestic measures, among other demands.
Represented by farmer leaders from Indonesia (API), Philippines (PAKISAMA), Cambodia (FNN), Thailand (SORKORPOR), Taiwan (TWADA), Japan (AINOUKAI), and Korea (KAFF), AFA joined the march just a day before its own consultations on food sovereignty, climate change, and marketing among its members.
The farmer leaders wore green headbands and held placards saying “Cut green house gas emissions!”, “Promote sustainable agriculture!”, and “Support small scale men and women farmers now!” in different Asian languages.
They also chanted “Save the Earth! Save the farmers!” in different Asian languages.
Click here to read the “Statement of the Asian Peoples’ Solidarity for Climate Justice”.
A high-level forum of experts will address the challenge of feeding the world this week. The World Food Week begins Monday in Rome as part of efforts by the UN’s Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) to draw the attention of the world to the plight of over one billion hungry people. A series of major events have been planned for the forum which will also mark World Food Day on Friday.
High Level Experts
Keith Wiebe, the Deputy Director of Agricultural Development at the Economics Division of the FAO told VOA Nightline’s Akwei Thompson about 300 experts from across the world – from research organizations, private companies, non-governmental organizations, farmers organizations and all other different backgrounds have been invited to encourage a ”wide variety of view points on the challenges the world faces.”
Wiebe said the forum is “an effort to capture the attention that the world has put on food and agriculture in the last couple of years” and to look at the current crisis as well as the longer term challenges looming in the horizon.
We, the Asian Peoples’ Solidarity for Climate Justice, are gathered here in Bangkok, Thailand to take our stand in the face of an unprecedented conflict.
It is a conflict over resources, a conflict driven by unfettered profiteering and the slavery of consumption, it is a conflict brought about the domination and ascendancy of private interest over public good.
Among the direst consequences of this conflict is global warming and the planetary impacts that are just beginning to unfold as we speak, such as rising seas, mass forced migration due to massive drought and the increase in frequency and severity of extreme weather events. The impacts also include rapid economic meltdown and the destruction of jobs and livelihoods, because the environmental ills the world is facing today are inextricably wedded to the global economic and financial system.
Unless the call for equity and justice prevail over this conflict, we will continue to face the sustained — and progressively worsening — violation of human rights on a global scale and the destruction of all ecosystems.
UXBRIDGE, Canada, Oct 2 (IPS) – Rocketing food prices and hundreds of millions more starving people will be part of humanity’s grim future without concerted action on climate change and new investments in agriculture, experts reported this week.
The current devastating drought in East Africa, where millions of people are on the brink of starvation, is a window on our future, suggests a new study looking at the impacts of climate change.
“Twenty-five million more children will be malnourished in 2050 due to effects of climate change,” such as decreased crop yields, crop failures and higher food prices, concluded the International Food Policy Research Institute (IFPRI) study.
“Of all human economic activities, agriculture is by far the most vulnerable to climate change,” warned the report’s author, Gerald Nelson, an agricultural economist with IFPRI, a Washington-based group focused on global hunger and poverty issues.
The report, “Quantifying the Costs of Agricultural Adaptation to Climate Change”, may be the “most comprehensive assessment of the impact of climate change on agriculture to date”, as IFPRI claims, but researchers concede that there is no current way to quantify all of the future repercussions of changing weather patterns on the food supply.
Gerald C. Nelson, a Senior Research Fellow at the US-based International Food Policy Research Institute (IFPRI), makes a case for agriculture in the first of a series of commentaries by various experts in the run-up to the UN climate change talks in Copenhagen in December to reach a global accord on cutting greenhouse gas emissions.
Climate change compounds the challenges facing agriculture. Nine billion people will live on our planet by 2050, an increase of 50 percent over today. Most of the growth will occur in what is now the developing world.
We all hope that they will live better lives than their parents, with adequate food and higher-quality diets. Even without climate change, meeting this increased demand while preserving our natural resources would be difficult.
Agriculture also contributes to climate change, accounting for almost 15 percent of annual greenhouse gas emissions. The developing world accounts for nearly half of global agricultural emissions, with 80 percent of those emissions due to changes in land use and forestry. But it can also mitigate greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions from elsewhere, sequestering carbon above and below ground.
Climate change negotiators should recognize and act on three key points: (1) Improve our understanding of the impact of climate change on agriculture (2) Help poor farmers in the developing world adapt to climate change (3) Pursue climate change mitigation through agriculture.
BANGKOK — A deadly typhoon that scythed through Southeast Asia has underscored the area’s vulnerability to climate change — but it may have also finally given regional nations a voice at crucial environment talks.
Delegates from 192 countries are meeting in Bangkok until October 9 in a desperate bid to thrash out the draft text of a global warming treaty that world leaders aim to sign in Copenhagen in December.
Small nations most likely to suffer the effects of global warming have in the past been overshadowed in climate talks, with major greenhouse gas emitters such as the United States, Europe, China and India taking centre-stage.
But after Typhoon Ketsana killed more than 300 people in the Philippines, Vietnam, Cambodia and Laos this week, Southeast Asian nations suddenly found themselves with a podium from which to call on richer nations to do more.
