3rd Global Conference on Agriculture, Food and Nutrition Security and Climate Change

3 to 5 December 2013. Johannesburg, South Africa. 3rd Global Conference on Agriculture, Food and Nutrition Security and Climate Change. This Conference was organized by the governments of the Republic of South Africa, the Netherlands, and in collaboration with other partners, including FAO and the World Bank.

The purpose of the Conference was to:

• Promote a Climate – Smart Agriculture Alliance;
• Share knowledge, information and good practices among public, private and civil society stakeholders;
• Promote the mainstreaming and up-scaling of climate-smart agriculture within the broader development goals;
• Facilitate the implementation of concrete actions linking agriculture-related investments, policies, and measures with the transition to climate – smart agriculture ;
• Build global partnerships for resilience of agriculture, forestry and fisheries to climate change;
• Promote the application of scientific solutions, information and policies conducive to increased and sustainable agricultural production yields, productivity and sustainable development;
• Explore and share knowledge and responses of agriculture to climate change with emphasis on climate-smart agriculture; low carbon farming practices; conservation and new technological approaches conducive to productivity, adaptation and mitigation.

You can download this programme in PDF format by clicking on this link.

FANRPAN CEO, Dr. Lindiwe Sibanda

Special Representative for Climate Change, World Bank, USA, Mr. Patrick Verkooijen

Ms. Xiangjun Yao, the Director of FAO Climate, Energy and Tenure Division

 The CEO of ARC (Agricultural Research Council), Dr. Shadrack Moephuli

Background

The first Global Conference on Agriculture, Food Security, and Climate Change was held in The Hague, Oct. 31 - Nov. 5, 2010. The conference, organized by the government of the Netherlands in close cooperation with the governments of Ethiopia, Mexico, New Zealand, Norway, and Vietnam, the World Bank, and the FAO, was the first global conference of its kind to bring together the agendas of agriculture, food security and climate change. In September 2012, the second Global Conference on Agriculture, Food Security and Climate Change was held in Viet Nam, where agriculture ministers called for utilization of climate-smart agricultural practices to sustainably increase agricultural productivity and build resilience to environmental pressures while simultaneously assisting farmers adapt to climate change while reducing greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions.

Related:

Creating a Sustainable Food Future: Interim Findings
A menu of solutions to sustainably feed more than 9 billion people by 2050
Authors: Tim Searchinger, Craig Hanson, Janet Ranganathan, Brian Lipinski, Richard Waite, Robert Winterbottom, Ayesha Dinshaw and Ralph Heimlich
Analytic contributors at L’Institut National de la Recherche Agronomique (INRA) and Le Centre de Coopération Internationale en Recherche Agronomique pour le Développement (CIRAD): Maryline
Boval, Philippe Chemineau, Patrice Dumas, Herve Guyomard, Sadasivam Kaushik, David Markovsky, Stephane Manceron, and Ben Ari Tamara (overconsumption).
Special contributors: Sarah Harper (Oxford Institute of Population Ageing) (fertility analysis) and Stefan Wirsenius (Chalmers University of Technology) (livestock analysis).December 2013, 144 pages

The World Resources Institute (WRI), the UN Development Programme (UNDP), the UN Environment Programme (UNEP) and the World Bank have issued a report on achieving a sustainable food future. ‘Creating a Sustainable Food Future: Interim Findings' recommends reducing waste and demand for animal products, as well as following other "climate-smart” guidelines. The publication is the 2013-2014 issue of WRI's World Resources Report.

The report was released at the Third Global Conference. The final version of the report, expected to be released in mid-2014, will further quantify the contribution of each “menu item” toward closing the food gap.

• According to WRI, the world must meet food demands "in a way that creates opportunities for the rural poor, limits clearing of forests, and reduces greenhouse gas emissions from agriculture."
• The report finds that the world is unlikely to close the food gap through yield increases alone. Instead, it recommends: cutting the rate of food loss and waste by 2050; reducing excessive demand for animal products, thereby sparing hundreds of millions of hectares of forests that otherwise would be cleared for grazing; and achieving replacement level fertility by helping sub-Saharan Africa in its efforts to reduce fertility rates through improvements in healthcare and education.
• The report also recommends: improving soil and water management; improving pastureland productivity; using degraded lands; avoiding shifting agricultural land from one place to another; and focusing on bringing the most inefficient farmers up to standard farming efficiency levels.

Dr Tim Searchinger of the World Resources Institute addressed The 3rd Global Conference on Agriculture, Food and Nutrition Security and Climate Change on the 3rd December 2013.

Download the presentation of Dr. Tim Searchinger
Creating a Sustainable Food Future: Interim Findings