Climate change is a human rights issueThe right to food is key for climate-related security issues in Africa

Gaëtan Vanloqueren, Adviser to Olivier de Schutter, U.N. Special rapporteur on the right to food

Paris, February 20th, 2009, Observatoire de l’Afrique

Agenda

1. Climate change impacts on the food situation in Africa

2. Added value of a rights-based approach for climate-related security issues

3. Climate change exacerbates the need for a paradigm shift in agriculture

1. Climate change impacts

Climate change is the largest threat to the future ability of the planet to feed its population

• Climate change impacts in Sub-Saharan Africa: – Yields could be reduced by up to 50% by 2020 (rainfed agriculture, Southern Africa) 3.– Arid and semi-arid areas are projected to increase by 60-90 M ha by 2080 (5-8%)3

– Greater erosion, reductions in crop growth period– Reduction of agricultural output could exceed 15% 4

• Worldwide, risk of increase in the number of hungry people – + 50 M by 20201, + 182 by 20501, + 600 M by 20802

• Threats to security would be consequences of these negative impact– conflict over resources, loss of territory and border disputes, environmentally-induced migration, situations of

fragility and radicalisation, …

1. Oxfam (2008), Climate Wrongs and Human Rights. Oxfam Briefing Paper 117, p 6.

2. Estimate cited by UNDP Report 2007/8. Fighting Climate Change: Human solidarity in a divided world, 2007, p. 90

3. IPCC, Climate Change 2007: Climate Change Impacts, Adaptation and Vulnerability. Working Group II Contribution to the Fourth Assessment Report of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (S. Solomon, D. Qin, M. Manning, Z. Chen, M. Marquis, K.B. Averyt, M. Tignor and H.L. Miller, eds), Cambridge Univ. Press, Cambridge and New York, chapter 9.

4. Cline, W.R. Global Warming and Agriculture. Impact Estimates by Country, Center for Global Development and the Peterson Institute for International Economics, 2007

Climate change comes on top of a deep food crisis

The food crisis was exacerbated in 2008

• Worldwide, 2008 saw a dramatic increase of the hungry

– + 75 M in 2008 (high food prices)– 975 million

• In Sub-Saharan Africa, the overall number of undernourished people increased by 43 million

– from 169 million in 1990-92 to 212 million in 2003-05

Millennium Development Goal 1 will not be realized on 2015

The number of hungry people increases

Who are the hungry?

80% of the hungry live in rural areas

50 percent of the hungry are smallholders, living off 2 hectares of cropland or less.

Small-scale farmers could be the most affected by climate change impacts

2. Added value of a rights-based approach for climate-related security issues

The right to food is a human right backed by an increasingly strong institutional architecture

Early origins

Continuous progresses

Recent legal references & implementation framework

• 1948: Universal Declaration of Human Rights (Art. 25)

“Everyone has the right to a standard of living adequate for the health and well-being of himself and of his family, including food,..”

• 1966: Reaffirmed in the International Covenant on Economic, Social & Cultural Human Rights, Art. 11 (159 states)

• 1999: General Comment No. 12, UN Committee on Economic, Social & Cultural Rights

• Most authoritative legal interpretation of the right to food

• 2004: FAO Voluntary Guidelines to support the progressive realization of the right to adequate food

• Adopted by the 191 FAO member states, including the USA

• First time a “non-HR” international organization debates on a ESCR

• Over 90 Constitutions

• National mechanisms

What is the right to food approach? Key elements of a rights based approach

1. Adequacy– nutritionnaly adequate diet, safe

food, culturally acceptable

2. Accessibility – physically, economically, in dignity

3. Sustainability– ecological, economical, social

“The right to adequate food is realized when every man, woman and child, alone or in community with others, has physical and economic access at all times to adequate

food or means for its procurement.”

General Comment 12, UN Committee on ESCR

Fundamental components

The right to feed itself rather than to be fed

The right to adequate food

What is the right to food approach? Key elements of a rights based approach (II)

• Focus on States’ accountability States as duty bearers, are obliged to respect, protect, and fulfill (facilitate) human rights

Respect States must respect existing access to adequate food and must not take any measures preventing or destroying such access

Protect States must take necessary measures to ensure that third parties (such as individuals, companies, or other countries) do not deprive people of their access to adequate food

Fulfill States must pro-actively engage in activities intended to strengthen people’s access to food and food producing resources with maximum efforts

Most common violations:• Forced evictions by the State from land, forests or

fishing grounds• Destruction of an individual’s or group’s food

producing resourcesThese violations are usually linked to:

• Dams, Mining, Oil exploration, Industrial fishing, Creation of natural reserves, Local land conflicts

Most common violations:• Inadequate regulation of corporations leading to

the pollution or capture of water and other resources

• Labour rights abuses (minimum wage, dismissal)• Inadequate protection against local landlords

Most common violations:• Lack of implementation or irregularities in land

reform programs (access to land)• Malfunctioning of social transfer programs• Inadequate post-disaster resettlement (natural

disaster or conflict)

What is the right to food approach? Key elements of a rights based approach (III)

• Progressive realization– Not all countries have similar resources for the full realization of the right to food

– Yet all have obligations :

1. Using maximum of available resources to realize rights

2. Taking immediate steps for implementation

3. Starting with the most vulnerable people/individuals

4. Non-discrimination & transparency

• National step by step approach (FAO Voluntary Guidelines)

Assessment of legal situation

Assessment ofpolicies

Mapping of the right to food

situation

Monitoring of progress

Complaint and recourse procedures

• Extraterritorial dimension (Effects of State‘s action abroad, transnationals)

Added value of the right to food for climate change

Applying a human rights-based approach to adaptation policies could function as a strong reference system without creating new conditionalities

• Added value (1)

1. Shift of focus on the effect of CC on people’s lives, particularly the most vulnerables

– Empowers the vulnerable as rights holders (avoid further marginalization)

– Prioritises actions to assist most vulnerable populations (budget and policies)

2. Provides an additional accountability framework (complaint procedures)

3. Helps to set up procedural guarantees for the affected communities

– Access to information, Participation

4. Reduce the accountability-gap

– Stimulates the analysis of the causes of entitlements-failures and a more precise description of roles, obligations and responsabilities of the different actors

5. Derives from widely accepted international human rights

1. This includes elements from “A rights-based approach to adaptation. Prioritizing people most vulnerable to climate change. Submission by Germanwatch, Bread for the World and CARE International to the Ad-hoc. Working Group on Long-term Cooperative Action (AWG-LCA), 6th December 2008

3. Climate change exacerbates the need for a paradigm shift in agriculture

The Green revolution model

• Green Revolution model (Asia, Mexico, Latin America, 1950s-onwards)– Focus on increasing productivity with a restricted technology package

– Seed, fertilizer, irrigation - Rice & wheat– Succeeded in raising production but with many social & environmental costs

– Benefited to large-scale farming more than to small-hold farmers (indebtness, landless, further marginalization of women)

– Sustainability of programs questioned (subsidies, reduced yield increases, …)• Africa bypassed

– Alliance for a Green revolution in Africa (AGRA)– Large resources (Gates & Rockfeller foundation)– Engagement of public and private organizations– Fear that lessons from the first Green revolution are not learned

The Green revolution model and climate change

• Climate change is not sufficiently taken into account

1. Fertilizers >< CO2 emissions + Peak oil

2. Resilience– Are plants with improved drought-tolerance sufficient to resist droughts ?

– Very few exist today – Droughts require resilient systems, not just resilient plants

Consensus on the need for a paradigm shift

• IAASTD (International Assessment of Agricultural Science and Technology for Development)– The result of 3 years of research and consultations involving 400 experts – co-Sponsors: FAO, GEF, UNDP, UNEP, UNESCO, World Bank & WHO– over 60 governments approved its conclusions in April 2008 – ~ beginning of ‘IPCC for agriculture’

• Conclusions – Solutions exist. They are known, and they are within reach– Strategic focus on the small-hold farmers in key to achieving future sustained growth– Need to focus agricultural knowledge and technologies to achieve specific development

goals & livelihood & environment outcomes rather than productivity

“The way the world grows its food will have to change radically to better serve the poor and hungry if the world is to cope with a growing population and climate change while avoiding social

breakdown and environmental collapse”

Consensus on the need for a paradigm shift

• Immediate recommendations– Re-invest in local and regional food systems– Build national capacities in agroecological farming– Increase focus on drylands, fisheries, mountain and coastal ecosystems, orphan crops,

crop-livestock systems, and climate change impacts– Build rural safety nets and non-farm rural employment– ….

• Medium-Long term – Build & reform AKST skill base (basic sciences, social, political and legal knowledge) and

innovation capacities of rural communities and consumers– ….

Transformation are possible with existing low-tech agroecological approaches

INERA

World Agroforestry Centre

Rehabilitation of eroded hills with terraces

(Machakos-Kenya)Over 60 years, population density x 5

but value of agric prod x 11)

Fight against desertification with stone barriers(West Africa)

Water holding capacity x 5 to 10Biomass production x 10 to 20

(Diop, 2001)

1

3

Rehabilitation of dryland regions with agroforestry techniques

(Tanzania)350,000 hectares rehabilitated

(World Agroforestry Centre)

2

Low-tech agroecological approaches increase yieldResource-conserving technologies (Pretty, 2006)

• 286 recent interventions – in 57 poor countries

– covering 37M ha, 112.6 M farms

• Resource-conserving technologies: – Integrated pest management

– Integrated nutrient management

– Conservation tillage

– Agroforestry

– Aquaculture

– Water harvesting

– Livestock integration

• Potential carbon sequestrated = average of 0.35TC/ha

Global studyAverage crop yield increase was 79%

Mean changes in crop yield after or with project

Pretty, J (2006) Environmental Science and Technology

Doubling of Yield

Average yield increase

Organic or near-organic farming increases yields in AfricaOfficial report from UN organizations demonstrates (FAO-UNCTAD, 2008)

• Analysis of 114 projects in 24 Afric. Countries (based on Pretty)

• Increase in food availability– Yields do not fall and increase over time,

matching those in input-intensive systems

– + 116% yield on average – Productivity of established farms

exceeded traditional farms and matched high input modern farms

• Benefits to natural environment – In 93% of cases, benefits to soil fertility,

water supply, flood control and biodiversity

• Benefits to community– knowledge, education, skills and health

Large benefits to farmers, environment and community

FAO-UNCTAD 2008 report on Organic agriculture and food security

“The potential contribution of organic farming to feeding the world maybe far higher than many had supposed" Achim Steiner, head of the UN's Envir. Programme

Climate change needs resilient systems

• Capacity to return to a normal functioning after an important stress

• Resilience is an agricultural issue… – Agroecology: diversification, soil restoration, yield + yield stability,…– Agroecological well suited for use in the less-favoured environments (eroded hillsides, semi-

arid areas, …) (areas where the need for food production is greatest)

• …but also a human issue– Uncertainties on impacts of climate change (type, scale and timing of impacts)– Need for continuous adaptation requests adaptation skills/resources

• Agroecological approaches improve people’s management capacities– Knowledge-intensive technologies – Process is key

– Knowledge generation by farmer– Farmer involvement (farmer schools, farmer-to-farmer agric innovation)

– Technology transfer vs Diffusion of technology – Enhancement of human abilities to make decisions, manage resources, evaluate,..

– Well suited for use by the less-favoured households

Conclusions

1. There are solutions to improve the (food) security situation – Climate change require pro-activity – Knowledge on required action exists

2. Various agri-food paradigms may contribute differently – Agroecology has a strong potential to create resilient systems– There is currently a huge missed opportunity in under-investing agroecological

approaches. Need to scale up existing projects. – Need for a balance the investments in both paradigms (Complementarities in the field ><

Competition for resources)

3. Climate change is a human right issue. Human rights contribute to security – Climate change has and will have impacts on human rights

– In Africa, the right to food will be massively impacted– The human rights framework has built-in mechanisms that are useful for security:

obligation to act in order to prevent, focus on the most vulnerable, accountability mechanisms

Conclusions

4. There is an urgent need to connect climate change and human rights– The human right perspective has much to bring to Copenhagen (post-Kyoto deal)

– Link UNFCCC and HRC frameworks together – UNFCC Adaptation Fund: operationalising strategic priorities

– Climate change issues must be integrated in new Agriculture-related initiatives – Madrid Conference and Global partnership on Agriculture and Food ; WTO Doha

Round; AGRA– Synergies exist

– Harnessing carbon financing to boost sustainable farming