Obama, Kerry, Vilsack commit U.S. to ‘climate-smart agriculture’
September 23, 2014 | 10:51 AM
NEW YORK CITY — President Barack Obama, Secretary of State John Kerry and Agriculture Secretary Tom Vilsack will all commit the United States to supporting “climate-smart agriculture” here this week at the U.N. Climate Summit and related events.
The commitment will consist of membership in and support for the Global Alliance for Climate-Smart Agriculture, a new organization that will attempt to focus “direct political attention” all over the world on the intersection between agriculture and climate change, an executive branch official said Monday in a background briefing.
The climate events will begin today when Obama travels here to tell a United Nations audience that the United States has made progress in reducing emissions under his Climate Action Plan and announce U.S. leadership and participation in more than a dozen new climate change partnerships launched at the summit including the one on agriculture.
Obama will also announce that a new executive order that will require federal agencies to factor climate resilience into the design of their international development programs and investments, a White House official said in a statement late Monday that was embargoed until this morning.
Vilsack will make a presentation today at the U.N. to participants in the GACSA or CSA, as officials call the alliance, and will participate in its inaugural meeting at a New York hotel on Wednesday that will be webcast. (See link to register below)
After that event, Kerry will host the participants at a reception at the Waldorf-Astoria Hotel, where the U.S. ambassador to the United Nations has a residence, and will make remarks.
The alliance will not make grants and will have only a small secretariat operating out of the U.N. Food and Agriculture Organization in Rome, but officials hope it will have a powerful reach with both governments and the private sector.
The idea appears to have originated with the Dutch government. The Dutch held a meeting for potential participants July 9 to 11 and are paying for two Dutch officials to make up the initial secretariat.
On July 17, Chris Hegadorn, the director of Kerry’s Office of Global Food Security wrote in a blog post on the State Department website that the meeting had included government officials, farm leaders, the private sector, civil society organization representatives, David Nabarro, who is U.N. Secretary General Ban Ki-moon’s special adviser on food and nutrition security, and various U.N. development experts.
About 50 countries and other groups are expected to announce their participation this week.
Hegadorn, who has served at the U.S. mission to the agencies in Rome, said the Climate-Smart Agriculture approach has been described by FAO as being designed “to identify and operationalize sustainable agricultural development within the explicit parameters of climate change, It is composed of three main pillars: sustainably increasing agricultural productivity and incomes; adapting and building resilience to climate change; and reducing and/or removing greenhouse gases emissions where possible” — i.e., a “triple win.’”
At the August 4 U.S.-Africa Leaders Summit in Washington, the United States, Liberia, Malawi, Niger, Nigeria and Tanzania confirmed their intention to join GACSA.
U.S. officials have emphasized the contributions the U.S. government has made to the climate change effort through research, USDA’s Climate Hubs program and the U.S. Agency for International Development’s Feed the Future agricultural development program. But Vilsack is expected to make a further commitment to support the alliance this week.
During the first year, participants are expected to identify a list of priorities and determine how to address the mix among the goals of increasing productivity, adaptation and mitigation of greenhouse gases, a U.S. official said.
The alliance already has working groups “on knowledge, on the enabling environment and investment,” the U.S. official said.
Besides FAO, two other Rome-based agencies, the International Fund for Agricultural Development and the World Food Program, are involved on a day-to-day basis and are incorporating the climate agenda. CGIAR, an international network of research institutions, and the World Bank will also be involved.
A small steering committee composed of “committed groups” of each type in the alliance is expected to meet throughout the year and there will probably be “a single high-level event hopefully at the ministerial level,” the official said.
For ideas on how to promote the climate agenda, the alliance will look to other efforts, starting with the Climate and Clean Air Coalition to Reduce Short-Lived Pollutants, another U.N.-related group.
The alliance will not focus on the promotion of biotechnology or genetic modification because the U.S. position that biotechnology increases productivity and that drought-resistance seeds will be important to increase food without expanding the footprint of agriculture are “already clear,” a source said.
The most important target of the alliance is “the poorest of the poor” and will attempt to bring best practices in agriculture to them and to make sure officials are “not sitting in one agency doing our own thing without contemplating the broader issues,” the U.S official said.
The focus of the alliance will be on land-based agriculture, but it will also include forestry and fisheries because the FAO includes those in its definition of agriculture.
On Thursday, Kerry will host an event, “Our Ocean: Next Steps on Sustainable Fishing and Marine Protected Areas.” It will focus on a range of ocean conservation measures including sustainable fishing and its relationship to food security, promoting marine protected areas and coastal adaptation, and resilience to climate change, according to a State Department media advisory.
Kerry will participate in a separate event on climate change and the oceans on Thursday.
▪ Global Alliance for Climate-Smart Agriculture
▪ — Climate-Smart Agriculture Sourcebook
▪ — Executive Summary
▪ Webcast — Inaugural Meeting
▪ John Kerry Remarks at the 2014 Frontiers in Development Forum
▪ Alliance for Climate-Smart Agriculture: ‘A Triple Win’
▪ Climate and Clean Air Coalition to Reduce Short-Live Climate Pollutants
▪ — Annual Report 2013-2014
The commitment will consist of membership in and support for the Global Alliance for Climate-Smart Agriculture, a new organization that will attempt to focus “direct political attention” all over the world on the intersection between agriculture and climate change, an executive branch official said Monday in a background briefing.
The climate events will begin today when Obama travels here to tell a United Nations audience that the United States has made progress in reducing emissions under his Climate Action Plan and announce U.S. leadership and participation in more than a dozen new climate change partnerships launched at the summit including the one on agriculture.
Obama will also announce that a new executive order that will require federal agencies to factor climate resilience into the design of their international development programs and investments, a White House official said in a statement late Monday that was embargoed until this morning.
Vilsack will make a presentation today at the U.N. to participants in the GACSA or CSA, as officials call the alliance, and will participate in its inaugural meeting at a New York hotel on Wednesday that will be webcast. (See link to register below)
After that event, Kerry will host the participants at a reception at the Waldorf-Astoria Hotel, where the U.S. ambassador to the United Nations has a residence, and will make remarks.
The alliance will not make grants and will have only a small secretariat operating out of the U.N. Food and Agriculture Organization in Rome, but officials hope it will have a powerful reach with both governments and the private sector.
The idea appears to have originated with the Dutch government. The Dutch held a meeting for potential participants July 9 to 11 and are paying for two Dutch officials to make up the initial secretariat.
On July 17, Chris Hegadorn, the director of Kerry’s Office of Global Food Security wrote in a blog post on the State Department website that the meeting had included government officials, farm leaders, the private sector, civil society organization representatives, David Nabarro, who is U.N. Secretary General Ban Ki-moon’s special adviser on food and nutrition security, and various U.N. development experts.
About 50 countries and other groups are expected to announce their participation this week.
Hegadorn, who has served at the U.S. mission to the agencies in Rome, said the Climate-Smart Agriculture approach has been described by FAO as being designed “to identify and operationalize sustainable agricultural development within the explicit parameters of climate change, It is composed of three main pillars: sustainably increasing agricultural productivity and incomes; adapting and building resilience to climate change; and reducing and/or removing greenhouse gases emissions where possible” — i.e., a “triple win.’”
At the August 4 U.S.-Africa Leaders Summit in Washington, the United States, Liberia, Malawi, Niger, Nigeria and Tanzania confirmed their intention to join GACSA.
U.S. officials have emphasized the contributions the U.S. government has made to the climate change effort through research, USDA’s Climate Hubs program and the U.S. Agency for International Development’s Feed the Future agricultural development program. But Vilsack is expected to make a further commitment to support the alliance this week.
During the first year, participants are expected to identify a list of priorities and determine how to address the mix among the goals of increasing productivity, adaptation and mitigation of greenhouse gases, a U.S. official said.
The alliance already has working groups “on knowledge, on the enabling environment and investment,” the U.S. official said.
Besides FAO, two other Rome-based agencies, the International Fund for Agricultural Development and the World Food Program, are involved on a day-to-day basis and are incorporating the climate agenda. CGIAR, an international network of research institutions, and the World Bank will also be involved.
A small steering committee composed of “committed groups” of each type in the alliance is expected to meet throughout the year and there will probably be “a single high-level event hopefully at the ministerial level,” the official said.
For ideas on how to promote the climate agenda, the alliance will look to other efforts, starting with the Climate and Clean Air Coalition to Reduce Short-Lived Pollutants, another U.N.-related group.
The alliance will not focus on the promotion of biotechnology or genetic modification because the U.S. position that biotechnology increases productivity and that drought-resistance seeds will be important to increase food without expanding the footprint of agriculture are “already clear,” a source said.
The most important target of the alliance is “the poorest of the poor” and will attempt to bring best practices in agriculture to them and to make sure officials are “not sitting in one agency doing our own thing without contemplating the broader issues,” the U.S official said.
The focus of the alliance will be on land-based agriculture, but it will also include forestry and fisheries because the FAO includes those in its definition of agriculture.
On Thursday, Kerry will host an event, “Our Ocean: Next Steps on Sustainable Fishing and Marine Protected Areas.” It will focus on a range of ocean conservation measures including sustainable fishing and its relationship to food security, promoting marine protected areas and coastal adaptation, and resilience to climate change, according to a State Department media advisory.
Kerry will participate in a separate event on climate change and the oceans on Thursday.
▪ Global Alliance for Climate-Smart Agriculture
▪ — Climate-Smart Agriculture Sourcebook
▪ — Executive Summary
▪ Webcast — Inaugural Meeting
▪ John Kerry Remarks at the 2014 Frontiers in Development Forum
▪ Alliance for Climate-Smart Agriculture: ‘A Triple Win’
▪ Climate and Clean Air Coalition to Reduce Short-Live Climate Pollutants
▪ — Annual Report 2013-2014
