http://www.ishs.org/news

Over sixty of the world’s most prominent agricultural scientists and leading thinkers in development issued a warning about the almost total absence of agriculture in talks leading up to the UN Climate Change Conference. Signatories of the statement include five World Food Prize laureates, former heads of development agencies, former Ministers of Agriculture, and heads of the world’s leading alliance of agricultural research centres. You can read the full statement and view all the signatories on the Global Crop Diversity Trust website http://www.croptrust.org/climatechangestatement.html

Let us all hope this will add to a growing momentum surrounding crop diversity.  Early November José Emmanuel Barroso, President of the European Commission, spoke about the importance of crop diversity in tackling climate change and food insecurity, and called for governments in developed countries “to translate their commitments into hard cash”.  Later that month, world leaders at the Rome Summit on Food Security unanimously declared that “Any recipe for confronting the challenges of climate change must allow for mitigation options and a firm commitment to the adaptation of agriculture, including through conservation and sustainable use of genetic resources for food and agriculture”.

Put another way, you cannot adapt to climate change without adapting agriculture, and you cannot adapt agriculture without crop diversity.  Fortunately, in contrast with the complexity surrounding most aspects of climate change, the conservation of crop diversity is very much within reach.  The science is understood, the institutions exist, and the political agreements are in place – it is just, to quote Barroso, the translation of “commitments into hard cash” which is missing.

Cary Fowler, Executive Director, Global Crop Diversity Trust
www.croptrust.org