UN FAO joins the call for soil carbon trading

The world food crisis has seen the UN Food & Agriculture Organisation (FAO) call for farmers to have access to soil carbon trading to help increase food production and avoid the forced displacement of large populations in search of food. The FAO crisis meeting in Rome earlier this month urged governments to help the world's farmers to participate in financial mechanisms to support climate change adaptation.* The High-Level Conference on World Food Security: the Challenges of Climate Change and Bioenergy, convened by UN Food and Agriculture Organisation (FAO), 3-5 June, 2008 has called the international community to increase the resilience of world's food systems to climate change. On climate change, the conference Declaration said: "It is essential to address question of how to increase the resilience of present food production systems to challenges posed by climate change... We urge governments to assign appropriate priority to the agriculture, forestry and fisheries sectors, in order to create opportunities to enable the world's smallholder farmers and fishers, including indigenous people, in particular vulnerable areas, to participate in, and benefit from financial mechanisms and investment flows to support climate change adaptation, mitigation and technology development, transfer and dissemination. We support the establishment of agricultural systems and sustainable management practices that positively contribute to the mitigation of climate change and ecological balance."


One hundred eighty-one countries participated in the FAO Food Summit – 43 were represented by their Head of State or Government and 100 by high-level Ministers. Sixty Non-governmental and Civil Society Organizations were present as well.