BONN, GERMANY (MAY 10, 2018) – Solutions from the Land (SfL) salutes the North American Climate Smart Agriculture Alliance (NACSAA) for its hard work and leadership in successfully advancing recommendations that were integrated into the Koronivia Joint Work Program on Agriculture and subsequently adopted today by UN climate negotiators at their meeting in Bonn, Germany.
Last March, NACSAA, a farmer led platform focused on utilizing climate-smart agriculture (CSA) strategies to enhance the adaptive capacity of North American agriculture, submitted a series of recommendations to two subsidiary bodies established by the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) charged with developing a joint agriculture work plan. That the impacts to – and opportunities for – agriculture with regards to global climate change are now being considered by the UNFCCC is a major policy development. This decision acknowledges the critically important role agricultural landscapes can play in sustaining productivity, enhancing climate resilience, and contributing to the local and global goals for sustainability.
SfL also extends its appreciation to USDA for backing NACSAA’s recommendations, which reflect and embrace all forms and scales of agriculture from small landholders to midsize and large-scale producers, in the negotiations leading up to the adoption of the Koronivia Work Program. The voice of North American producers must be represented in discussions of this scale.
SfL commends the foresight of the negotiators from across the globe who developed the work program approved by the Subsidiary Body for Implementation (SBI) and the Subsidiary Body for Scientific and Technological Advice (SBSTA), both established by the UNFCCC.
This week’s vote is the beginning of a 30-month negotiating process that will lead to a final report to the UNFCCC round of global climate talks in November 2020.
NACSAA’s recommendations, now included in the joint work agreement, are principally focused on soil health, livestock productions systems, crop and nutrient management, agroforesty, water resource management and integrated solutions including bioenergy.
“The diversity of voices in support of our shared recommendations give them much greater weight and respect,” said SfL President and NACSAA facilitator Ernie Shea, who is in Bonn this week for the negotiations. “Thanks are due to all for getting the agricultural work program approved by the UNFCCC. Now the hard work of developing a road map that will allow for the full range of goods and services agricultural landscapes can deliver from the land begins. SfL looks forward to helping NACSAA contribute to and shape this strategy and decades-long action plan.”
“I am grateful and pleased that virtually all of the recommendations by NACSAA have been incorporated within the agricultural work program of the UNFCCC,” said NACSAA Chairman Fred Yoder, an Ohio corn, soybean and wheat producer and past president of the National Corn Growers Association. “Common sense and practical solutions will get us to where we need to be. We are all in this together, and by all the parties focusing on solutions that can be implemented to make real change, we will indeed be in a better position to feed a hungry world while improving our world’s environment simultaneously.”
“I join other North American ag producers in taking great pride and satisfaction in contributing to this material road map that can take us well into 21st Century agriculture,” said Don McCabe, an Inwood, Ontario no-till corn, soybean and wheat producer, a past president of the Ontario Federation of Agriculture and a NACSAA Steering Committee member. “As farmers on the ground, we know much work lies ahead in order for us to attain the levels of sustainable production needed over the next several decades. Given the right policy tools that this agricultural work program can generate, we will be ready to meet the production challenges posed by growing demand and a harsher climate.”
Solutions from the Land (SfL), which facilitates NACSAA, is a not-for-profit corporation focused on land-based solutions to global challenges. SfL’s mission is to identify and facilitate the implementation of policies, practices and projects at a landscape scale that will result in land being sustainably managed to produce food, feed, fiber and energy while protecting and improving critical environmental resources and delivering high value solutions to combat climate change. For more on Solutions from the Land, click HERE.
