September 14, 2009
Countdown to Copenhagen and Beyond – Issue One
Critical Link Between Climate Change and Food Systems
The UNFCCC negotiations, culminating this December in Copenhagen, have elevated government action on energy and climate change. The goal of the UNFCCC is to establish a global climate treaty for post-2012 when the Kyoto Protocol expires. In tandem with this international process, governments are intensifying efforts to produce national energy and climate legislation.
However, what is still little acknowledged—on both international and national fronts—is that industrial agriculture is one of the major contributors to climate change. According to figures published in the United Nation’s 2008 Intergovernmental Panel Fourth Assessment report on Climate Change (IPCC), global industrial agriculture contributes a minimum of 13.5 percent and as much as 32 percent of total greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions (view IPCC report). Despite startling statistics, energy and climate agendas are failing to regulate industrial agriculture’s GHG emissions, and are not recognizing the vital role that ecological food systems— “cool foods”—can play in reducing emissions.
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November 10, 2009
Countdown to Copenhagen and Beyond Newsletter – Issue Two
Global Climate Negotiators Are Ignoring What’s On Their Plates
The leaders of industrialized nations are talking about bringing their expertise and technical prowess as solutions to what’s become the environmental issue of our time. But in all that’s being discussed, from high-tech solutions to the burgeoning trade in carbon credits, could it be that the Copenhagen delegates are ignoring the impact of what’s already on their plates?
World leaders meeting in September at the United Nations climate summit took stock of the sobering reality that an effective global pact on climate change very likely will not be achieved, as anticipated, in Copenhagen this December. Many proposed solutions in the Countdown to Copenhagen negotiations—officially known as the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC)—are highly technical and expensive fixes. However, a potent solution is being overlooked—a transition toward ecological, organic agriculture. Transforming our food systems wouldn’t cost governments exorbitant amounts of money and wouldn’t require elaborate—and in some cases, untested—technologies that are currently the main focus of UNFCCC climate negotiations and many national policies.
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December 2009 Update
Spectacular Failure: Global Climate Pact Deadlock and Where We Go From Here
BEFORE IT EVEN STARTS, Copenhagen is a spectacular failure. What some thought was apparent several months, and even a year ago, is now official—there will be no climate accord reached when world leaders meet in Copenhagen in December.
This newsletter summarizes the primary factors that have led to failure in the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) negotiations. And, we ask: What can be done to find a way to achieve meaningful, necessary reductions in greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions?
There are a few pivotal reasons that the negotiations stalled:
1) The U.S. failed to bring any domestic policy or plan to reduce its own emissions to the table, even though its less than 5 percent of the world’s population spews out 25 percent of GHG emissions.
2) With less than 20 percent of global population, developed countries have emitted nearly 75 percent of GHG gases. However, industrial nations dismissed the concept of “climate debt,” which would take into account this historical record of emissions when determining countries’ emission-reduction targets.
3) Developed nations are unable and/or unwilling to commit financial resources so that developing countries can leapfrog over fossil fuel-based energy sources to alternative, cleaner energy technologies.
Running through these issues, however, is a central failure of governments, as well as some sectors of civil society, to recognize and respond to the realities of people’s lives on the ground.
Climate talks have been built on the assumption that expensive, complicated technologies are the primary way to reduce GHG emissions. Few dispute that countries must develop cleaner energy sources and move away from the madness of intensive fossil fuel-burning societies. Yet we set ourselves up for certain failure when dialogues begin with solutions that require massive financial resources in a time when even rich-country governments simply don’t have, or won’t commit, such funds.
