Climate: Real problem, false solutions. No.4: Climate-Smart Agriculture

Grassroots International’s global partner, La Via Campesina, is one of the key global social movements addressing the root causes of climate disruption around the world, particularly from an agricultural perspective. They are currently in Paris participating in the alternative People’s Climate Summit and other associated strategizing activities. The following is a piece they produced exposing the so-called “climate smart” agriculture solutions that multinationals are proposing as solutions to climate change.

Read the full post on the Via Campesina website: “Climate: Real Problem, False Solutions No. 4: Climate-Smart Agriculture”

To solve the global warming crisis, multinationals are suggesting false solutions. Far from solving the problem they are contributing with their share of damages. This article is the 4th in a series of five to appear this week.

On 23 September 2014, at the UN Climate summit convened by Ban Ki-moon in New York, the FAO and World Bank launched the Global Alliance for Climate-Smart Agriculture. This should enable agriculture output to be increased, agricultural systems’ resilience to be strengthened and greenhouse gas emissions to be reduced all at the same time! So, this is what could solve three of the major challenges we are dealing with: feeding the global population, fighting climate change and guaranteeing the sustainability of agricultural systems.

Really?

Using chemicals and GMOs is allowed, as is producing industrial agrofuels. Multinational companies such as Yara (the world leader in fertilizer), Monsanto or Syngenta are indeed major stakeholders in this new international alliance. It is therefore easier for us to understand that Northern and Southern industrial agricultural systems, which are more harmful for the environment, are spared. This alliance supports the development of an agriculture that eliminates peasants by stripping them of their land, their practices and their knowledge. In short, the real objective is to continue and speed up the industrialization and financialization of agriculture. Climate-Smart Agriculture is a new tool from multinational companies to generate even more money out of agriculture!

Corporate solutions are false solutions, and will not solve the climate crisis.