July 2010 – Food insecurity – water and agriculture

This month we are exploring the world of Water and Agriculture. Helped with the connections of the Global Water Partnership and Farming First, we were able to talk to a selection of experts and create several videos and podcasts on the subject of food insecurity with relation to water and agriculture.

Uma Lele, economist, shared her insights over why efforts on mitigation are more advanced and why adaptation is relatively overlooked. In this light, her observations of how developing countries need to take on political ownership of issues around water are particularly relevant. She also considers the implications of how aid has shifted from long-term to emergency assistance.

Limpopo Basin’s Project Leader, Amy Sullivan, discusses water issues on the ground, as discovered from her research. She raises concerns around natural resource access and the need for policy, targeting and priority setting, against a backdrop of international borders.

Charlotte Hebebrand, Chief Executive of the International Food and Agricultural Trade Policy Council, analyses the range of implications climate change has for trade, recommending a single food safety standards, around carbon content, and in particular talks about the need for sustained financing.

CEO of CropLife International, Howard Minigh, explains the role plant science can play around adaptation and mitigation efforts. He notes that although agriculture was not integrated into the Copenhagen Accord, several countries have identified it within their plans.

Isabelle Coche, from Farming First, considers the future of agriculture within discussions at Cancun, observing that one of their main concerns is on measuring emissions and agreeing the methodology behind carbon capture.

Please do let us know if either you found this focused issue helpful or would like to help produce another one. We’ll be in touch again in the second week of August, with hopefully a host of interviews seeing how the climate talks are developing.
Best wishes

Francesca Broadbent

Editor

Climate-Change.tv

Trade and Plant Science

Call for Videos

We’re adding a new dimension to the website – to show videos from NGOs, IGOs and individuals worldwide of action as a result of the climate change negotiations. If you have a video of a project on adaptation, the clean development mechanism, technology transfer, capacity building or mitigation, please email us.