It is putting together a powerful lobby group - including the USA and the World Bank - pushing for the inclusion of agriculture as a stand-alone component of the expected post-Kyoto agreement on climate change at the upcoming UN multilateral negotiations to be held in December 2009 in Copenhagen, Denmark. It will set the framework for how the world deals with climate change.
The delegation, led by the IFAP President, met with Sally Collins, Director of Ecosystem Services and Markets for the United States Department of Agriculture (USDA). Ms. Collins is responsible for establishing guidelines for measuring environmental services benefits and verifying reports from landowners, such as farmers, which will serve as the basis for a carbon credit and marketing scheme on the national level in the United States, and will also likely serve as a global model for development.
Until now, agriculture has not had a place at the table in the negotiations on climate change. IFAP expressed support for the idea of putting in place an international and harmonized measurement system for carbon and an international trading system for carbon that would reward farmers, with the support of the USDA .
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IFAP expressed support for the idea of putting in place an international and harmonized measurement system for carbon and an international trading system for carbon that would reward farmers, with the support of the USDA .
IFAP also met with Katherine Sierra, Vice President of the World Bank in charge of agriculture and environmental issues, to mainly discuss climate change and other related environmental issues. Ms. Sierra wholeheartedly supported IFAP in including agriculture in the climate change agenda. She said their agriculture group will help position dialogue with an opening to include land and agriculture. Katherine Sierra highlighted that the World Bank efforts on climate change will focus on identifying best practices and building them into their regular development programs in a changing environment, rather than having special programs for climate change. She also indicated that the World Bank will have 50 million dollars over five years available to figure out how to get agriculture mitigation into the Copenhagen outcome. Ms. Sierra is reasonably confident of success, and she said IFAP would be an important partner in this regard. We need to look at the science and the mechanisms, including how the 370 billion in annual subsidies in Western countries that already exist are tied to or can be moved towards an environmental focus, but are not tied to climate change.
IFAP will further collaborate with the USDA and the World Bank in the run up to the upcoming UN Climate Conferences in order to make sure agriculture is put on the agenda.
The IFAP delegation included IFAP President Ajay Vashee, the President of the North Dakota Farmers’ Union, Robert Carlson, IFAP Senior Policy Officer Nora Ourabah, and IFAP Communication Coordinator Neil Sorensen. For more information, or to provide input on IFAP’s climate change related activities, please contact Nora Ourabah, Senior Policy Officer, at nora.ourabah@ifap.org
to provide input on IFAP’s climate change related activities, please contact Nora Ourabah, Senior Policy Officer, at nora.ourabah@ifap.org
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