Food and Agriculture Organization of the UN
Mr. Arthur van Leeuwen, Ir.
Programme Coordinator IMKB,
Agro Business Advisor United Nations
Team Internationalisering MKB
Rijksdienst voor Ondernemend Nederland
Netherlands Enterprise Agency
Prinses Beatrixlaan 2 | 2595 AL | Den Haag PO Box 93144 | 2500 EC | Den Haag Tel (+31) 088 602 1461
arthur.vanleeuwen@rvo.nl www.rvo.nl/tio
Voor actuele informatie over aanbestedingen en financieringsmogelijkheden bij VN, WB, EU, AfDB, AsDB en IDB ga naar onze LinkedIn groep http://www.linkedin.com/groups?gid=7414050&trk=my_groups-b-grp-v
De Rijksdienst voor Ondernemend Nederland (RVO.nl) stimuleert Duurzaam, Agrarisch, Innovatief en Internationaal ondernemen. RVO.nl is per 2014 ontstaan uit de fusie van Agentschap NL en Dienst Regelingen.
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Invitation to participate in online consultation on CSA knowledge products
Dear colleagues,
FAO and CGIAR’s Research Programme on Climate Change, Agriculture and Food Security (CCAFS) invite you to share your ideas on key knowledge products to be developed for the wider implementation of the Climate-Smart Agriculture (CSA) approach. To do so, kindly participate in the following questionnaire: www.surveymonkey.com/s/58VRF6Q
This questionnaire has been developed as a second step towards meeting knowledge needs for CSA, and builds on the results of our first questionnaire held in April 2014. Both previous and new respondents are welcome to participate in the current questionnaire, which will be open until Thursday, 16 October. It should take no longer than 15 minutes to complete. Thank you for your support!
Please take the questionnaire today, and kindly share it widely among your networks.
We look forward to receiving your inputs!
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Join live-streatmed launch of Gender and Social Inclusion Toolbox on 15 October
Dear Colleagues,
You are invited to join the live-streamed launch of Gender and Social Inclusion Toolbox on International Day of Rural Women (15 October)! More information posted here and below.
Download official event invitation and share with friends, colleagues and networks.
Regards,
Cara
The CGIAR Research Program on Climate Change, Agriculture and Food Security (CCAFS) Gender and Equity theme is, together with the World Agroforestry Centre (ICRAF), organising a special event on Wednesday 15 October, looking at the development and use of gender-sensitive approaches in the context of climate change and agriculture research.
The event will launch a Gender & Inclusion Toolbox: Participatory Research in Climate Change & Agriculture. The toolbox is a participatory methodology guide on how to create socially differentiated research for climate adaptation and mitigation projects.
The event will feature speakers from ICRAF, CCAFS, CARE International, and the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations (FAO), all involved in the development of the Gender Toolbox.
How to join online?
The event will be live-streamed to a global audience between 10:00-12:00 am East Africa Time [8:00-09:00 UK Time]. There will be opportunities to ask questions to the presenters via online chat using #gendertoolbox during the seminar.
To get a reminder about the live-stream and to express your interest in joining, email Risper Nyairo: r.nyairo[at]cgiar.org.
The web stream will be available on ICRAF’s live-stream page.
Interested in joining in person?
The launch will take place at the World Agroforestry Centre (ICRAF), in Nairobi, Kenya, in the Conference Hall. After the presentations, onsite participants will be able to join a Gender Networking Lunch. The afternoon will include fun games, activities and challenges, all reflecting on the value of gender and social differentiation in agriculture and climate change programming.
Program outline [in East Africa Time]
– 10:00-12:00 Livestreamed launch of Gender Toolbox
– 12:00-13:30 Gender Networking Lunch for onsite participants
– 13:30-15:30 Gender and Social inclusion discussions and games.
Learn more about the Gender Toolbox: Coming soon: a gender and climate change manual made by many
Reserve your seat by 8 October by sending an email to Risper Nyairo:r.nyairo[at]cgiar.org. Please indicate name, number of attendees, organization and contact information.
More information about the presentations, featured speakers and outline of the meeting will soon be posted here!
There is a need to move beyond an ‘add women and stir’ approach to climate change and development is imperative if we are to create relevant and useful gender-sensitive knowledge for a climate-resilient future. Therefore, join the gender-discussions on 15 October!
The event is carried out in collaboration with CGIAR Research Program on Climate Change, Agriculture and Food Security (CCAFS) Gender and Equity Theme, CARE International, and World Agroforestry Centre (ICRAF).
The Toolbox has been put to the test. Learn more from this blog.
Call for Proposals- ( Farmers)
Documentation of proven practices, tools or policies that promote resilience and help farmers to address the challenges posed by climate change – #NRC-CC-MITIGATION
I’m having master degree on agroecology and climate change in Turkey and surely collaborate.
Please see my attach” Climate Change Adaptation” project final report .This project completed Sahara Welfare Foundation Pakistan.
Bakht Muhammad, Chairman, Sahara Welfare Foundation,P.O. Ghawar Kali, Post Code 23080, Tehsil Dargai, District Malakand, Khyber Pakhtunkhwa, Pakistan.
The following attachments were removed from this message and stored in the library:
AnimalChange project Regional Workshop Budapest 30-31 October
Dear all,
The EU FP7 Project Animal Change will hold a regional workshop on Livestock and Climate Change, 30th to 31st October, 2014, Best Western Hotel Hungaria, Budapest, Hungary.
Topics include:
– The challenge of climate change as it relates to Central and Eastern Europe
– Technical solutions to the challenges
– Greenhouse gas inventories
– Policy support to the Livestock Industry to meet the challenges
Free registration, but places are limited so to ensure your attendance please register before 17 October.
Further Information on the programme and how to register: http://www.animalchange.eu/Content/Budapest2014.html
Kind regards,
Anne Mottet
Livestock Policy Officer
Livestock Information, Sector Analysis and Policy Branch (AGAL)
Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations
Viale delle Terme di Caracalla 00153 Rome, Italy
Room C 540
Tel: (+39) 06 570 55068
EXTENSION: Online consultation on CSA knowledge products open until October 16
Dear colleagues,
Due to popular request, the deadline for participation in the second online consultation of the Knowledge Action Group of the Global Alliance for Climate-Smart Agriculture (ACSA) has been extended for one more week!
If you have not already done so, kindly take the questionnaire today, and please feel free to share it widely among your networks:
www.surveymonkey.com/s/58VRF6Q
The survey will close on 16 October.
Many thanks for your inputs,
The Knowledge Action Group
View this contribution on the web site https://dgroups.org/_/vgszmf52
A reply to this message will be sent to all members of Climate-Smart Agriculture Discussion group.
To reply to sender, send a message to Alashiya.Gordes@fao.org.
Hi all,
I am from the Caribbean (Barbados) working globally and mostly in Africa on issues of agriculture. Just came back from a trip to Madagascar and I am sure some of the issues there are relevant to Mauritius and the Caribbean. Maybe starting a discussion or more specified discussion on SIDS has some merit?
Best regards
Leisa
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TWN Climate Info: Climate-smart agriculture is corporate green-washing
Subject: TWN Climate Info: Climate-smart agriculture is corporate green-washing
Title : TWN Climate Info: Climate-smart agriculture is corporate green-washing
Date : 25 September 2014
Contents:
TWN Info Service on Climate Change (Sept14/05)
25 September 2014
Third World Network
www.twn.my
Climate-smart agriculture is corporate green-washing
Published in SUNS #7881 dated 25 September 2014
New York, 24 Sep (IPS/Thalif Deen) — On the sidelines of the UN’s heavily hyped Climate Summit, the newly-launched Global Alliance for Climate-Smart Agriculture announced plans to protect some 500 million farmers worldwide from climate change and “help achieve sustainable and equitable increases in agricultural productivity and incomes.”
But the announcement by the Global Alliance, which includes more than 20 governments, 30 organisations and corporations, including Fortune 500 companies McDonald’s and Kelloggs, was greeted with apprehension by a coalition of over 100 civil society organisations (CSOs).
It is a backhanded gesture, warned the coalition, which “rejected” the announcement as “a deceptive and deeply contradictory initiative.”
“The Global Alliance for Climate-Smart Agriculture will not deliver the solutions that we so urgently need. Instead, climate-smart agriculture provides a dangerous platform for corporations to implement the very activities we oppose,” the coalition said.
“By endorsing the activities of the planet’s worst climate offenders in agribusiness and industrial agriculture, the Alliance will undermine the very objectives that it claims to aim for.”
The 107 CSOs include ActionAid International, Friends of the Earth International, the International Federation of Organic Agricultural Movements, the South Asia Alliance for Poverty Eradication, the Third World Network, the Bolivian Platform on Climate Change, Biofuel Watch and the National Network on Right to Food.
Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon, who gave his blessing to the Global Alliance, said: “I am glad to see action that will increase agricultural productivity, build resilience for farmers and reduce carbon emissions.”
These efforts, he said, will improve food and nutrition security for billions of people. With demand for food set to increase 60 per cent by 2050, agricultural practices are transforming to meet the challenge of food security for the world’s 9.0 billion people while reducing emissions, he asserted.
But the coalition said: “Although some organisations have constructively engaged in good faith for several months with the Global Alliance to express serious concerns, these concerns have been ignored.”
Instead, the Alliance “is clearly being structured to serve big business interests, not to address the climate crisis,” the coalition said.
The coalition also pointed out that companies with activities resulting in dire social impacts on farmers and communities, such as those driving land grabbing or promoting genetically modified (GM) seeds, already claim they are climate-smart.
Yara (the world’s largest fertiliser manufacturer), Syngenta (GM seeds), McDonald’s, and Walmart are all at the climate-smart table, it added. “Climate-smart agriculture will serve as a new promotional space for the planet’s worst social and environmental offenders in agriculture.
“The proposed Global Alliance on Climate-Smart Agriculture seems to be yet another strategy by powerful players to prop up industrial agriculture, which undermines the basic human right to food. It is nothing new, nothing innovative, and not what we need,” the coalition declared.
Meenakshi Raman, coordinator of the Climate Change Programme at the Malaysia-based Third World Network, told IPS the world seed, agrochemical and biotechnology markets are dominated by a few mega companies.
She said these companies have a vested interest in maintaining monoculture farming systems which are carbon intensive and depend on external inputs.
“These companies will do all they can to maintain their market dominance and prevent genuine agroecology agriculture from gaining ground in countries,” she said.
It is vital that such oligopoly practices are disallowed and regulated, said Raman. “Hence the need for radical overhaul of the current unfair systems in place with real reform at the international level.”
Meanwhile, the Washington-based Consultative Group on International Agricultural Research (CGIAR), said the world’s foremost agriculture experts have determined that preventing climate change from damaging food production and destabilising some of the world’s most volatile regions will require reaching out to at least half a billion farmers, fishers, pastoralists, livestock keepers and foresters.
The goal is to help them learn farming techniques and obtain farming technologies that will allow them to adapt to more stressful production conditions and also reduce their own contributions to climate change, said CGIAR.
These researchers are already working with farmers in sub-Saharan Africa and South Asia to refine new climate-oriented technologies and techniques via what are essentially outdoor laboratories for innovations called climate-smart villages.
The villages’ approach to crafting climate change solutions is proving extremely popular with all involved, and now the Indian state of Maharashtra (population 112.3 million) plans to set up 1,000 climate smart villages, CGIAR said.
Asked for specifics, Bruce Campbell, director of the CGIAR Research Programme on Climate Change, Agriculture and Food Security (CCAFS), told IPS countries in the tropics will be particularly impacted, especially those that are already under-developed because such countries don’t have the resources to adapt and respond to extreme weather conditions.
These include many countries in the Sahel region, Bangladesh, India and Indonesia, plus countries in Latin America.
Asked if these countries are succeeding in coping with the impending crisis, he said there are good cases of isolated successes, but in general they are not coping.
For example, one success is in Niger where five million trees have been planted, that help both adaptation and mitigation, but an enormous number of other activities are needed, he added.
Raman told IPS there are many rules in the World Trade Organisation’s (WTO) agriculture agreement that threaten small-scale agriculture and agroecology farming systems in the developing world.
She said developed countries are allowed to provide billions of dollars in subsidies to their agricultural producers whose products are then exported and dumped on developing countries, whose farming systems are then displaced or threatened with artificially cheap products.
Many developing countries, she pointed out, were also forced to remove the protection they had or have for their domestic agriculture, either through the WTO, the World Bank policies under structural adjustment and free trade agreements.
“These policies do not allow developing country governments to protect small farmers and their domestic agriculture,” she said.
Such rules and policies are unfair and unethical and should not be allowed as they undermine small farmers and agroecology systems, Raman declared. +
* This article was written and distributed by IPS news agency. It was published in SUNS #7881 dated 25 September 2014. We thank IPS and SUNS for our re-distributing this article.
[csa event] CCAFS: Webinars on science base for Climate-Smart Agriculture – #NRC-CC-MITIGATION
Fyi forwarding information on CCAFS’s webinars on 1) in Spanish and 2) on rice. Best,
Maria
Subject: Webinars on science base for Climate-Smart Agriculture
Dear Colleagues,
As part of the CCAFS private sector webinar series, we are organizing two webinars on the science base for Climate-Smart Agriculture, this September.
1. La ciencia detrás de la Agricultura Sostenible Adaptada al Clima (12 de septiembre de 2014 – 11:30 a.m., Colombia UTC-5)
For more information, please visit
2. Exploring GHG mitigation potential in rice production (18 September 2014 – 12:30 p.m., UK UTC+1)
For more information, please visit
Registration is free for both webinars, but places are limited. So please register as soon as possible.
Best Regards,
Dhanush Dinesh
Global Policy Engagement Manager
CGIAR Research Program
Climate Change, Agriculture and Food Security (CCAFS)
Collection of news, jobs and articles – #NRC-CC-MITIGATION
Dear Colleagues,
Happy weekend for all.
Below you can find a digest of information, thanks for contacting directly the responsible people through the links.
Kind regards,
Maria Nuutinen
Facilitator of the Community of practice
Website of our learning events: www.fao.org/climatechange/micca/79527
Article: Agroecology: What it is and what it has to offer – IIED 2014 http://pubs.iied.org/pdfs/14629IIED.pdf
Jobs:
http://www.fao.org/employment/currentva-cancies/consultants/en/
LAC Seminar: Family Farmers, Indigenous Peoples Key to Climate Change Adaptation
24 August 2014: Participants at the fifth Latin American and Caribbean (LAC) regional seminar on agriculture and climate change recognized the key role of family farmers and indigenous people in helping the region confront the challenges posed by climate change, protect agrobiodiversity and improve food security.
The seminar, organized around the theme ‘Agrobiodiversity, Family Farming and Climate Change,’ was held on 20-21 August 2014, in Santiago, Chile, and attended by officials from Agriculture and Planning Ministries, national agriculture innovation agencies and international experts.
The seminar aimed at: examining conceptual approaches and experiences in assessing the role of agrobiodiversity in adapting agriculture to climate change; sharing experiences in, and promoting policy dialogue on, the diversification and adaptation of family farming to climate change; and strengthening regional cooperation on protecting and promoting the roles of family farming and agrobiodiversity in climate change adaptation. Presentations included a briefing by an expert from the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) on relevant findings of the Fifth Assessment Report (AR5). Discussions focused on, inter alia, traditional crops such as maize and potato and phyto-genetic resources, and the integration of traditional knowledge with scientific knowledge in evaluating and adapting to climate change.
In her opening remarks, UN Economic Commission for Latin America and the Caribbean (ECLAC) Executive Secretary Alicia Barcena emphasized the need for LAC to: develop more diversified and resilient agricultural systems; and to ponder the role of family farming, indigenous peoples and traditional knowledge in adapting the region’s agriculture to variable climate conditions, protecting agrobiodiversity and promoting food security. Raúl Benítez, FAO Regional Representative for LAC, noted that 80% of LAC farmers are family farmers and 50% of LAC rural employment is on family farms. He called for providing resources and other assistance to family farmers to modify their practices to better promote biodiversity conservation and climate change adaptation. He further emphasized the importance of addressing poverty and hunger among family farmers and indigenous people.
The seminar was the fifth in an annual series launched in 2010 by ECLAC and FAO’s Regional Office for Latin America and the Caribbean (FAO/RLC). The fifth iteration was supported by the French Cooperation and sponsored by Oxfam UK and the Organization of American States’ (OAS) Interamerican Institute for Cooperation on Agriculture (IICA). [ECLAC Release] [FAO Press Release (in Spanish)]
Funds:
Peru Opportunity Fund – Agriculture and Rural Development in Peru
Deadline:
31 Jan 2015
The Peru Opportunity Fund supports smallholder farmers in Peru with information, simple technologies, and capital. Grants can be made to nonprofit charitable organizations in the USA and in other countries (e.g., Peru) that have equivalent charitable status.
The Fund requires at least 50% counterpart funding. The Fund invites project profiles from 01 August through 31 January of each year.
Climate compatible development Impact Research Fund
Deadline for initial applications: Friday 26 September, 12:00 UK time (GMT+1)
Today, CDKN launches a new global research call. Under the Climate compatible development Impact Research Fund (CIRF), we seek to fund research of the highest scientific standards with clear potential for policy impact.
We are looking for excellent, ambitious proposals under four thematic areas, for applied research projects of 12-20 months’ duration. Research priorities under the four thematic areas are:
1: Robust national plans for climate compatible development transitions
2: Enabling conditions for urban climate compatible development
3: Climate-related disaster risk management and adaptation
4: Climate compatible development and the water, energy and food security nexus
We are seeking to commission 8 – 16 research projects, up to a total value of £3.35 million.
For this call, we welcome research of different geographic scope (from subnational to global scope) and are particularly interested in, but not restricted to, research that relates to one or more of CDKN’s focal countries and sub-regions: Bangladesh, Caribbean, Colombia, El Salvador, Ethiopia, India, Indonesia, Kenya, Nepal, Pakistan, Peru, Rwanda, Uganda.
The call is a two stage process. Eligible organisations and consortia are first required to submit completed Expressions of Interest forms (EOIs) outlining the proposed research project and providing examples of relevant experience.
The deadline for submitting EOIs is Friday, 26th September 2014 at 12:00 (midday) British Summer Time (GMT+1). See the main page for the CIRF research call for further details including how to apply.
If you have questions, please contact researchcall@cdkn.org
Dear Dyamdek and Martial, Thanks for bringing the topic of resilience towards climate change in agriculture up, and defining it. You can have a look at interesting presentations on the topic on this page: FAO/OECD Workshop: Building Resilience for Adaptation to Climate Change in the Agriculture Sector http://bit.ly/1wNUovN
ODI has also published interesting articles on the topic, you may want to have a look at. http://www.odi.org/programmes/climate-environment/ adaptation-resilience
Sometimes people seem to wonder how resilience and capacity to adapt to changing climate are related. What would be your take on that?
Best, Maria Facilitator
Thanks for bringing the topic of resilience towards climate change in agriculture up, and defining it.
You can have a look at interesting presentations on the topic on this page:
http://bit.ly/1wNUovNODI has also published interesting articles on the topic, you may want to have a look at.
http://www.odi.org/programmes/
Maria
Facilitator
[youth] Welcome to the Youth and CSA community – #NRC-CC-MITIGATION
*Worldview Mission is Standing Up ,* Taking Action* , **Making Noise for the United Nations MDGL’s !!!**