Farmer's Weekly (South Africa)
New farmer-driven climate change initiative
The pace of climate change is rapidly outstripping humankind’s response to it. This was one of the key concerns discussed at the recent 24th Conference of the Parties to the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change (COP 24) held in Katowice, Poland.
“Right now, we are facing a man-made disaster [on] a global scale, [and] our greatest threat in thousands of years: climate change.” This was the stern warning issued by Sir David Attenborough, who spoke during the opening ceremony of the conference. He warned that if urgent action was not taken, the collapse of civilisations and the extinction of much of the natural world were on the horizon.
During the conference, the World Farmers’ Organisation (WFO) pledged its commitment to taking action against climate change by launching the Farmers Driven Climate Change Agenda, named The Climakers, which aimed to enhance the role of farmers in the global discussion on climate change.
According to a statement by The Climakers, the organisation would apply a bottom-up approach to augment global political processes on climate change and agriculture by putting farmers in a leading role.
“Farmers are feeling climate change every day. No sector is as vulnerable to climate change as agriculture. We need our own climate agenda for farmers, and people at grassroots levels need to take ownership of solutions,” said Dr Theo de Jager, president of WFO. The statement also said that the agenda’s success would rely on the active participation of all relevant stakeholders in the agriculture sector working together in partnership with farmers.
“We call on all farmers of the world to join hands in a global alliance along with research institutions, private sector associations, civil society, and multilateral organisations to have their say in the decision-making process on climate change and agriculture, by proposing solutions that are farmer-driven, science-based and resultsoriented.” – Jeandré van der Walt