Agricultural Ministers of Africa meet to discuss ‘climate-smart’ future

The Agricultural Ministers of Africa met in Johannesburg last week to discuss how they can provide farmers with the technological support needed to maintain ‘climate-smart’ agricultural practices.

The conference, Africa: A Call to Action, resulted in a sixteen point communiqué as to how this can be realistically achieved. Most notable are the proposals that will be presented to world leaders at the climate change summit, COP 17, in Durban later this year.

The proposals put forward by the Ministers focused primarily on the combined effort needed from all associated with African agriculture, with countries, partners, programmes and organisations all called upon to do their bit in securing a prosperous and sustainable future for farming in Africa.

Earlier this month Maite Nkoana-Mashabane, South Africa’s International Relations and Cooperation Minister, stated how COP 17 would provide a unique opportunity to address world leaders on the problem the continent was facing not just with sustainable farming, but with food shortages and the impact of global warming and climate change. The outcome of Africa: A Call to Action was therefore what she described as key to lobbying their cause of addressing the link between food security and poverty alleviation to the broader debate of climate change.

Key points of Communiqué

• The acceleration of farming programmes and projects, which include the Comprehensive African Agricultural Development Programme (CAADP), and the AUC-NEPAD Agriculture and Climate Change Adaptation-Mitigation Framework

• Emphasize the importance of government-led partnerships with non-state agencies in designing strategies, policies and appropriate market based approaches to promote climate-smart agriculture;

• Urge African countries to invest in research, technology and information dissemination to facilitate the adaptation and application of climate-smart agriculture

• Reiterate that developed countries and partners should provide scaled-up, new and additional, predictable and adequate financial support to developing countries

• Call on developed countries and other partners, to support the implementation and scaling-up of early action programmes

• Encourage countries to leverage private sector investments through public private partnerships in support of climate-smart agriculture

• Call on African countries and the international community to ensure that financial support to climate- smart agriculture benefits

• To use every opportunity to ensure that African negotiators at COP 17 / CMP 7 engage with representatives of the agriculture sector

• Call upon the Conference of the Parties of the UNFCCC in approving the design of the Green Climate Fund to ensure recognition of the importance of adequate financing for agriculture in both adaptation and mitigation

 

The 2011 United Nations Climate Change Conference will be held in Durban, South Africa, from 28 November to 9 December 2011.