Last month, from Bangladesh to Kenya to Washington DC, over 40,000 activists in nearly 20 countries hit the streets calling on banks, governments and financial institutions to “#FixTheFinance” pushing the planet to the brink. 

It’s clear that we can’t address the climate crisis unless we fix the finance flows that are failing the planet. When we know that we have hardly any time left to avoid runaway climate breakdown, it’s absurd that so much of the world’s money is still being poured into fuelling climate change, while barely any is going to the solutions. 

Let’s face it – the climate crisis is really about money, and our choices to use it and make it in really stupid ways.  

G7 offers tepid response to appeal for “bolder” climate action

Many of the world’s most powerful private banks are holding their Annual General Meetings over the next weeks. Banks like Barclays, HSBC and Citibank are pumping billions into fossil fuel expansion, knowing full well that their decisions directly lead to climate chaos and devastating local pollution, particularly for communities in Africa, Asia and Latin America. At their AGMs they will undoubtedly celebrate their profits, self-congratulate on miniscule policy tweaks, and try to ignore the clamour of climate criticism.   

ActionAid research last year showed that these banks are financing an astonishing amount of fossil-fuel and industrial agriculture activities in the Global South, causing land grabs, deforestation, water and soil pollution and loss of livelihoods – all compounding the injustice to communities also getting routinely hit by droughts, floods and cyclones thanks to climate change.  

HSBC, for example, is the largest European financer of fossil fuels and agribusiness in the Global South. Barclays is the largest European bank financier to fossil fuels around the world. And Citibank is the largest US financier of fossil fuels in the Global South. The banks have so much power, and so much culpability, much more than most people realise. But they want us to forget the fact that they are working hand in hand with, and profiting from, the industries that are wrecking the planet.  

The banks can actually turn off the taps. They can end the finance flows that are fuelling the climate crisis. So to avert catastrophic climate change, the fossil-financing banks must start saying no to the corporations destroying the planet.  

But it’s not only private finance that is flawed – public funds are being misused as well. Governments are using far more of their public funds to provide subsidies or tax breaks for fossil fuels and industrial agriculture corporations, than they are for climate action. This is ridiculous – it’s hurting the planet, and its hurting people.  

Public funds instead need to be redirected towards just transitions that address climate change and inequality.  

There is growing appetite for climate action. But this just isn’t yet matched by willingness to pay for it. Or even to stop profiting from climate destruction. 

COP29 finance goal

This year’s COP29 climate talks will be a critical test of rich countries’ commitment to securing a liveable planet. The world’s poorest countries are already bearing the spiralling costs of a warming planet. So far they have only received begrudging, tokenistic pennies from the rich polluting countries to help them cope. The offer of loans instead of grants in the name of climate finance is just rubbing salt into the wounds. 

If we want to unleash climate action on a scale to save the planet, rich countries at COP29 will need to agree a far more ambitious new climate finance goal based on grants, not loans. 

Because if we want to save our planet, we will actually need to cover the costs. 

Tensions rise over who will contribute to new climate finance goal

Last month the International Monetary Fund and the World Bank held their Spring meetings in Washington DC. These institutions are powerful symbols of the planet’s dysfunctional finance systems which urgently need fixing. The World Bank is financing fossil fuels yet being extremely secretive about it. The IMF is pushing climate-devastated countries deeper into debt that often requires further fossil extraction for repayment.

Even as they brand themselves as responsible channels for climate finance, the world’s most powerful financial institutions are pushing our planet to the brink. Their stated aim to get “bigger and better” really amounts to all-out push to get “bigger” but only token tweaks to get “better”.  The Spring meetings ended with business-as-usual backslapping. But if they were taking climate change and its consequences seriously, at the very least, the IMF and World Bank would stop financing fossil fuels and cancel the debts that are pushing climate-vulnerable countries into a vicious cycle.  

Will blossom of reform bear fruit? Spring Meetings leave too much to do

All of these finance flows need fixing. At the moment, the global financial system is better designed to escalate – rather than address – climate change, vulnerability and inequality. The activists, youth and frontline communities who filled the streets last month hope that their calls to stop financing destruction will be heard in the boardrooms and conferences on the other side of the world. 

They say that money talks. This is the year that the climate movement is going to make sure it listens.  

The post How to fix the finance flows that are pushing our planet to the brink appeared first on Climate Home News.

Countries on the front lines of the climate crisis fear that they are still being left to carry the costs, and sink beneath the waves. This global deal has to work for everyone, or it won’t work for any of us.

Here are ten takeaways.

1. No, this outcome is not enough to avert runaway climate change 

Rather than a being a detailed plan to save the planet, the deal is a badly-drawn sketch on the back of an envelope.

It only ‘calls for’ a transition away from fossil fuels, rather than deciding on a full phase out. It makes no requirement of the world’s biggest polluters to act any faster than the lower income countries who have done little to cause climate change.

It doesn’t put in place any finance to deliver any of its goals. And it leans on debunked technologies that the fossil fuel industry use to delay their phase out.

This means that the package does not have a whole lot of structural integrity and does not do much to push the biggest, or pull the smallest, in the right direction.

2. But it may accelerate the stranding of fossil fuel assets  

You might have seen people celebrating the ‘signal’ that Cop28’s call to ‘transition away from fossil fuels’ sends. What does that mean? Does it mean anything at all? Well, yes actually.

The outcome could indeed make waves in the distant boardrooms of banks, investors and asset managers.

For seven years, financial institutions have completely ignored the Paris Agreement’s goal of aligning their financial flows with low greenhouse gas emissions pathways, and have instead continued to provide trillions of dollars to the fossil companies fuelling the climate crisis.

But the call on countries to transition away from fossil fuels is more likely to hit investors’ bottom lines. Bank loans to coal, oil and gas developments in countries that undertake the transition might never be repaid.

Shares and investments in fossil resources that will never be exploited will lose their value. Financial actors are strange, stubborn and unpredictable pack animals. The sensible ones will be planning their fossil exit strategies right now, ahead of the stampede.

3. Appetite for climate action is not matched by willingness to fund it 

There’s no such thing as a free climate target. Cop28 really showed that while the world’s appetite for climate action has moved significantly forward, its willingness to cover the costs lags behind.

The wealthiest countries refused to offer any new finance to help lower income counties to leapfrog the fossil fuel era.

Many developing countries – those already being pushed into debt by the spiralling cost of climate disasters – will now be forced to make impossible choices between economic security and climate action.

If rich countries had been willing to put real finance and fair timelines on the table, the outcome could have been much stronger.

Finding ways forward on climate finance, and how we can cover the costs for the world we want to build together, must now be part of every climate conversation.

4. Saudi Arabia was willing to move (a bit). The US was not 

With Cop28 being held in the UAE, there has been plenty of discussion about the role of the Gulf States, and the fossil fuel industry’s influence on the talks.

Saudi Arabia emerged as the country holding out most strongly against language to phase out fossil fuels.

But in fact, according to sources in the negotiating rooms, the US was the country that refused point blank to allow any language on finance or fair timelines. 

In the final hours of Cop28, the head of the UN Antonio Guterres and of UN climate change Simon Stiell, alluded to ‘arbitrary red lines’, ‘entrenched positions’, ‘blocking tactics’ and ‘landmines’. That gave us insights into how the big beasts were locking horns behind closed doors

Ultimately, the call to transition away from fossil fuels represented Saudi’s willingness to compromise, somewhat. But the lack of finance in the deal showed that the US walked away with most of what it wanted, and gave nothing in return.

5. Developing countries leave Dubai with little  

Unfairness is getting more baked into climate talks with each passing year. In thrall to the powerful players, Cop28 barely registered the needs of the countries who have done so little to cause the climate crisis, yet who are suffering the worst impacts and bearing all the costs.

The Alliance of Small Island States criticised the final document as a ‘litany of loopholes’ and ‘an incremental advancement over business-as-usual, when what we really needed was an exponential step change in our actions and support’.

Finance and fairness are key to ensuring the whole world can get on board with the transition to a fossil-free future. But with developing countries feeling demoted to bystanders in their own negotiations, these essential components are nowhere to be found.

6. False solutions get a foot in the door 

Most people who have done the maths understand that carbon markets, and technologies like carbon capture and storage, simply can’t solve the climate crisis.

But these dangerous distractions provide a lifeline to the fossil industry, who are desperate to repeat the disproven claim that it’s fine carry on burning their products as long as unicorns, sorry I mean ‘new technologies’, take emissions out the air afterwards.

Cop28’s text leaning on these debunked approaches proved a triumph of lobbying over science. Meanwhile, technical negotiations trying to develop rules to govern carbon markets collapsed, with weak drafts deemed dangerous and unfixable.

Efforts to regulate nonsensical concepts will pick up again next year

7. Adaptation is unfunded 

Climate change is bringing erratic rainfall patterns, warming oceans, floods, droughts and stronger cyclones to developing countries.

It is causing crop failures, destroying homes and drying up water sources. Governments are desperate to scale up adaptation to help communities strengthen their resilience to these impacts.

But the money that should be coming from the rich countries that are causing the climate crisis, is not forthcoming. Rich counties deleted any language reassuring countries that they will get the support they need.

8. Loss and damage fund finally agreed 

There was some good news on the first day of Cop, two long weeks ago. Technical negotiations that took place throughout 2023 put forward an imperfect but important proposal for a loss and damage fund.

Unusually, this proposal was agreed in the opening plenary, and some minor funding announcements began to trickle in. Nothing like what is needed, but a start.

For the first time ever we have a pot that can help countries to rebuild and recover in the aftermath of climate disasters.

We now need to see much more finance, and for the World Bank that was controversially agreed as host, to fix its ways of working so that it can deliver funds directly to the communities in need.

9. Thank civil society for the focus on fossil fuels  

We have civil society to thank for the focus and immense pressure on fossil fuels at Cop28. Thousands of organisations strategically echoed the call together for a fossil fuel phase out through their lobbying, networking, stunts and media work, until this became the one big demand that everyone came to expect from Cop.

Although we didn’t get the language we needed, the call to ‘transition away from fossil fuels’ would not have happened without civil society.

10.Finance and fairness will be the goals at Cop29 

Ultimately, the Cop28 outcome is deeply unfair, putting an equal burden on rich and lower income countries, requiring no additional action or finance from those that have caused the climate crisis even as the global south bears the spiralling costs of a warming planet.

Cop29 in Azerbaijan is set to agree a new global target on climate finance. Already we know that rich counties want to avoid doing their fair share.

Instead of actually providing grants, they’ll try to claim that loans should count as climate finance, that their own corporations’ activities should count as climate finance, and that their purchasing of carbon offsets should also count.

All of that will not only undercut real finance outcomes, but will deepen rich countries’ neo-colonial grip on the global south, exploiting and exporting yet more profit, under a climate mask.   

But if we – all of us – are to have a chance of a safe future, we need the richest countries to move beyond narrowly defined set of self-interests at climate talks, and provide the real finance that can put us on a path for real cooperation and global climate action.

There is much to do to change the terrain of what is possible. But we need to work together to get the public and the politicians on board with the idea that if we want to save our planet from self-destruction, we may actually need to cover the costs.

Teresa Anderson is Action Aid’s global lead on climate justice

The post We have to fix unfairness: Ten takeaways from Cop28 appeared first on Climate Home News.

But the real challenge that underpins almost all questions of climate action and ambition is that old and distasteful chestnut – money.

The Summit for a New Global Financial Pact hosted by French president Emmanuel Macron in Paris last week and the UN climate negotiations in Bonn earlier this month both underlined the unavoidable fact that there is a gaping hole in the funding needed to pay for climate action.

If we are to have a chance of meeting the Paris Agreement goal of limiting global warming to 1.5°C, we need to dream big.

Rich world’s leaders fail to commit to Paris global financing summit

We have to talk about a fair, equitable and funded phase-out of fossil fuels. We have to scale up a renewable energy transformation in solar, wind and energy efficiency, and address many countries’ and communities’ lack of access to energy.

We have to remove key blocks to climate action in all corners of the globe by ensuring real technology transfer and waivers of intellectual property rights on key technologies such as renewable energy. In addition, those who are suffering the real impacts of the climate crisis urgently need support to cope.

But ambitious goals require real money; this is where the planet’s climate plan is failing.

The fact is that the money promised to lower income countries so that they can implement their climate plans still hasn’t appeared.

What does “unabated” fossil fuels mean?

The hole in the planet’s climate finances put a massive damper on climate talks in Bonn, as developing countries were reluctant to make yet more commitments to action they fear they may never get the funds for.

After all these years of broken promises, developing countries no longer want to take that leap of faith.

Three years late

Rich countries are three years late in meeting the already-insufficient target of $100bn a year in climate finance. What they have provided has been mostly in the form of loans instead of grants. This is pushing climate vulnerable countries deeper into debt to pay for a climate crisis they did not cause.

ActionAid’s recent research shows that 93% of climate vulnerable countries (where data is available) are in or at significant risk of debt distress. The cost of recovering from cyclones, floods, droughts, rising sea levels and crop failures is pushing countries deeper into debt, and preventing many from paying for basic services such as education or healthcare, let alone climate action.

But the problem gets worse. To find the funds to repay their external debt, lower income countries are perversely forced to expand the fossil fuel, deforestation and industrial agriculture activities that are causing the climate crisis. And so the vicious cycle continues.

Even though many have paid back their original loans, a combination of rising interest rates, successive currency devaluations, fluctuating global commodity prices and the destructive impacts of climate change have kept the debt repayment finish line perpetually out of reach.

Unconditional debt cancellation and scaled-up climate finance in the form of grants are therefore urgently needed to help countries sinking deeper into climate-destructive debt, and to give the whole planet a real glimmer of climate hope.

World Bank to suspend debt repayments for disaster-hit countries

Last week’s summit – held in the same city that hosted the historic Paris Agreement – rightly diagnosed that the lack of climate finance is the single biggest threat to our planet’s survival.

What a disappointment, then, to see so many world leaders come together to pledge so very little.

Big dreams on climate action were met with tiny concessions on financing. Rich countries said there was a “good likelihood” they would meet their $100bn target this year, but most of that will still be in the form of loans not grants.

Future loans may be granted a brief two-year debt relief pause in repayments in the aftermath of climate disasters.

Rich nations pledge $2.7 billion for Senegal’s renewable rollout

We saw growing interest in new tax regimes on shipping and financial transactions, which, if implemented carefully to be progressive and avoid putting more burdens on the poorest, could make a real contribution in future. However, nothing was actually agreed, other than a roadmap of processes whose outcomes are still unclear.

The summit also failed to even discuss the need to scale down lending to fossil fuels.

The only real announcement of note was from the World Bank and the International Monetary Fund. Amid much fanfare about “unlocking funds for climate action,” the big announcement actually boiled down to the World Bank giving more loans to developing countries.

Unlocking real money

All this hoo-ha to tell countries on the frontlines of the climate crisis that they need to get deeper into debt to pay for the crisis they did not cause. The Bridgetown emphasis on “private finance” i.e. loans, not grants, means this isn’t justice, or even a handout; it’s a slap in the face.

Fossil fuels, planes, ships and shares – What will be taxed for climate funds?

It’s time for powerful governments to unlock real money rather than simply give out more loans. Global action on tax is urgently needed and could be transformative.

But more immediately, at the very least, they need to recognise debt cancellation as a key part of the climate solution. Because climate finance is not only about making climate action fair. It is about making climate action possible.

Teresa Anderson is global lead on climate justice for ActionAid International

The post Dreaming big on climate action means finding the money to pay for it appeared first on Climate Home News.

As yesterday’s landmark report by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) spells out, it is unequivocal – climate extremes are becoming more frequent and intense, and urgent action on a global scale is needed to avert climate catastrophe.

But in a recent series of key international climate meetings, rich countries  showed reluctance to put forward the funding needed to enable developing nations to cope with and respond to the climate crisis.

Twelve years ago, wealthy countries committed to provide $100 billion a year by 2020 for climate adaptation and mitigation in developing countries. Not only are they failing to deliver on that promise, 80% of the funds they are putting forward is in the form of loans or private finance, instead of grants.

IPCC: Five takeaways from the IPCC’s 2021 climate science report

Last month’s meetings of the Green Climate Fund (GCF) board, G20 climate ministers and a broader group of climate ministers in the UK repeated this distressing pattern.

Instead of announcing clear finance targets, wealthy countries fobbed the world off with pledges to “work together” to “deliver a plan” to meet the $100bn pledge.

When observers warn that delivery on climate finance is essential to a successful Cop26, this is because developing countries urgently need those funds to be able to respond to the climate crisis – and because consensus cannot be built on the crumbled foundations of broken promises.

But at the last GCF meeting, executive director Yannick Glemarec told the fund’s board members: “We used to have more money than projects. Now we have more projects than money.”

As funds dry up, the GCF, which was set up to distribute climate finance to developing countries, is considering the prospect of halving the funds available in 2022.

To make matters worse, vulnerable countries fear their proposals for adaptation projects are being turned down by the GCF technical panel on the basis that they could also be classed as “development”. They say the panel insists on arduous technical requirements and data collection that low-income and post-conflict countries simply cannot meet.

This artificial distinction between “climate adaptation” and “development”, and lack of understanding from the side of wealthy developed countries is creating further hurdles for those that urgently need adaptation support.

This failure by rich countries to meet their finance commitments is leaving impoverished communities in the lurch, paying for a crisis they contributed to the least.

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In Bangladesh, climate impacts mean that by 2030 almost one million people will face displacement every year, even if Paris Agreement targets are met – and double that if not. Bangladesh’s per capita emissions are roughly one tenth those of the average person in the UK, and thirty times fewer than those in the US, Canada or Australia.

Climate finance will be critical for countries like Bangladesh to enhance the resilience of crops, lands and livelihoods to floods, droughts and cyclones, and to support individuals to weather those disruptions.

Adaptation does not only require investment in infrastructure, but also social protection in the form of job guarantees, retraining and re-skilling to adapt, as well as housing, food and cash support to bridge crises and prevent spiralling poverty when disaster strikes.

The paltry $100 billion pledge (and the failure to meet it) must be viewed in the context of the likely costs of climate action for mitigation, adaptation and addressing loss and damage.

The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) estimates costs of $1.6-3.8 trillion annually for transformation of energy systems alone between 2016 and 2050. The Global Commission on Adaptation (GCA) estimates that annual costs of adaptation are likely to be $180 billion a year between 2020 and 2030. And modelling from Climate Analytics estimates that the costs of climate-induced loss and damage will reach around $300 billion by 2030 in the Global South alone.

Set against the trillions needed each year, the $20 billion a year in grant-based finance provided by developed countries highlights the growing chasm between accelerating needs and broken promises.

Not to mention the fact that every year $40 billion more wealth flows from Africa to the global north in the form of resource extraction, tax avoidance and debt repayments, than is received in the form of aid, loans and remittances.

With the climate crisis entering a dangerous new phase of warming and impacts, rich countries must not only deliver on their promises, but set new commitments that are in line with the actual need.

Otherwise, the risk of a climate finance drought may leave Cop26 – and the potential for future climate action – in crisis.

Harpreet Kaur Paul is a climate policy adviser at ActionAid International.

Teresa Anderson is a climate policy coordinator at ActionAid International.

The post The climate crisis is intensifying. So why is climate finance drying up? appeared first on Climate Home News.

Later this year, UN climate negotiations are scheduled to discuss its role in supporting and protecting the most vulnerable communities affected by climate-induced loss and damage.

Given that in 2020 almost every country in the world rolled out new social protection measures to help households and economies cope with the Covid-19 pandemic – including cash transfers, food support, sick pay, furlough pay and replacement school meals – the vital importance of such programmes to help communities weather crises has been proven beyond doubt.

It’s now time to make sure that countries put in place social protection systems that can respond to shocks caused by the climate crisis and ensure they are gender-responsive, as we know women, girls and the most marginalised are hardest hit by the impacts of global warming.

Climate change is increasingly affecting rainfall patterns and farmers’ crops. Floods and cyclones are destroying fields and homes. Farmlands and villages are disappearing under rising sea levels. Warming waters are affecting fish stocks.

Too many communities on the frontlines of climate change are losing their livelihoods, their savings, their food security and their homes, as climate change disproportionally affects the global south.

Cyclone Eloise shatters Mozambique’s progress to recover from 2019 storms

People without deep pockets cannot cope with the loss of a season’s income or rebuilding of a home, and often find themselves sinking deeper into debt. They may not have the resources to plant crops next season. They may be forced to give up farming, leave their land, and migrate to urban areas where life may be even more precarious.

Women farmers make up nearly half of the agricultural workforce in Asia and sub-Saharan Africa. Yet their gender means they frequently face barriers in accessing land, finance, markets and agricultural support services, and may have extra responsibilities of fetching water and feeding families – making the challenges of climate change all the more extreme. The impacts of climate change can send households, regions and entire economies into a poverty spiral that is hard to break out of.

Social protection tools offer huge potential to help women, farmers and communities to become more resilient to climate impacts, to recover more quickly in the aftermath of disasters, or even to change jobs or relocate to safety if needed.

ActionAid and Rosa Luxemburg Stiftung’s new report Avoiding the Climate Poverty Spiral: Social protection to address climate-induced loss and damage outlines how such measures can help to safeguard human rights in a range of climate scenarios, and how governments and UN negotiations can put in place effective systems of gender-responsive social protection.

Schemes that can scale up to provide income support, food transfers or temporary employment in response to disasters can be a vital lifeline for farmers facing climate-induced crop losses, for example. One-off payments can help rebuild homes lost to flooding. Job guarantee schemes can be combined with the building of climate-resilient community assets and infrastructure, to help those facing loss of livelihoods as a result of sudden disasters or slow-onset impacts.

John Kerry promises ‘significantly’ more climate finance at adaptation summit

And there are many more forms of social protection that can be tailored to meet the needs of women and vulnerable communities, helping them to bridge the gap and get back on their feet more quickly.

Sometimes communities do receive this type of support after disasters, particularly from humanitarian agencies. But there is a clear need for systematic and comprehensive coverage, planned and implemented by governments, and primed to take action as quickly as possible.

Rather than waiting for disaster to strike and then starting from scratch, preparedness and early action can minimise the domino effect of deepening poverty that disasters can trigger.

Strategic design such as early warning systems to trigger early response to low rainfall, or inclusive community processes to reflect on changes caused by rising sea levels, can also help to address slow-onset climate impacts, which may take place gradually over many years, and are often less immediately visible.

If systems are not designed to specifically address inequalities and gender bias, however, women and marginalised community members can be left out of support systems and fall through the cracks. Policies and programmes must therefore take into account the reality of women’s daily lives, their responsibilities and barriers to participation, and make sure that inclusivity and gender-responsiveness are built into the system from the start.

Rich nations accused of inflating climate adaptation finance figures

It is increasingly recognised that ‘universal’ systems that offer coverage to anyone fitting certain criteria, are more effective at reaching the people in greatest need, than efforts to specifically target them, as the process to gather data on those with low incomes can be costly and inaccurate, while also spreading discrimination and creating additional barriers for marginalised households.

Alongside adaptation and disaster risk reduction approaches, therefore, governments’ strategies to minimise and address loss and damage must include putting in place gender-responsive social protection systems that are universal and designed to respond to shocks such as those caused by climate change.

If done well, implementing social protection measures can bring multiple development benefits, strengthen resilience and respond to climate impacts. A combination of international climate finance, debt relief and progressive taxation can generate the resources needed to deliver these systems.

With the UN’s Warsaw International Mechanism on Loss & Damage (WIM) scheduled to discuss approaches to risk management later this year, the time is right for governments to support and scale-up social protection systems that can help communities recover more quickly from the escalating impacts of climate change.

Teresa Anderson is climate policy coordinator at ActionAid International

The post Covid-19 normalised social protection. Now apply it to the climate crisis appeared first on Climate Home News.

ActionAid’s emergency teams report that many villages are almost entirely flooded, with homes destroyed and crops lost.

Some farmers have benefited from adaptation efforts to improve soils and crop diversity that protect their harvests from floods and winds, and early warning systems that enabled them to harvest and get to safety before the disaster hit.

But the Covid-19 pandemic is bringing to light many more vulnerabilities and inequalities in the food system. As lockdown measures hamper farmers’ ability to sell produce, even farmers whose crops have survived the cyclone may still lose their livelihoods.

Globally, cyclones, droughts and locust swarms continue to devastate food security and farmers’ livelihoods, and the combination of climate change and the pandemic threaten to seed a global hunger crisis in the year to come. We must therefore seize this moment to fix our broken food system.

For the past decades, the industrialisation of crop and livestock production has devastated the world’s ecosystems, soils and agricultural biodiversity, produced excess greenhouse gases that heat the planet, and left farming vulnerable to the weather extremes caused by climate change.

At the same time, agribusiness penalises smallholder farmers, leaves them more exposed to climate impacts, and concentrates land and wealth in fewer and fewer hands.

Shorter supply chains needed to end hunger after pandemic: UN envoy

For these reasons, last year’s Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) special report on land and climate clearly set out that we must shift from dependence on big, industrialised agribusiness, towards ‘agroecological’ practices that work with nature instead of against it, that are sustainable and climate resilient, and that safeguard the livelihoods of the people who grow our food.

However, the coronavirus pandemic and the necessary measures taken to stop its spread are having a devastating knock-on effect that is causing widespread hunger and pushing farmers into debt around the world. Unless the rising hunger caused by the Covid-19 crisis is addressed, we will see food insecurity deepen next year while also setting back the climate agenda.

ActionAid works with rural communities around the world, many of whom report that sickness and lockdowns are preventing farmers and workers from accessing farms and harvesting crops.

Lockdowns have meant the closures of local and street markets, on which smallholder farmers – particularly women farmers – usually rely on to sell their produce. Food is being wasted, as vegetables and grains are rotting unharvested in fields, livestock are being killed and buried, and milk is being thrown away.

Meanwhile, many people in lockdown have been left unable to earn an income or access the street markets and informal systems on which poorer communities often rely to buy their food. Even supermarkets, with their long and vulnerable supply chains, have had empty shelves.

From Brazil to Bangladesh and India to America, farmers around the world are facing losses, spiralling debt and bankruptcy. Many may be unable to afford the costs of planting for next season. This threatens food supplies in the longer term, and may extend the duration of the food crisis. The UN has warned that in combination with climate change, Covid-19 may trigger famines of “biblical proportions”.

Clean energy is vital to the Covid-19 response in the world’s poorest countries

There is a risk that if smallholder farmers and small businesses go under, bigger polluting agribusiness operations are likely to capture more of the market, concentrating yet more wealth and land in fewer hands, and increasing the food system’s contribution and vulnerability to climate change.

Social protection safety nets are therefore urgently needed to prevent the pandemic from pushing farmers, particularly women, out of the food system, and ensuring that people have enough to eat. Farmer income support, cash and food transfers, replacement school meals for hungry children, and public procurement policies that support smallholder farmers are key.

But to strengthen the resilience of food systems to future climate and pandemic emergencies, longer-term systemic changes are needed.

Covid-19 has witnessed a growing trend of smallholders selling directly to local customers, as people realise that short supply chains are less likely to be interrupted.

This approach can help food systems be more resilient to pandemics and better for the climate, while enabling farmers and local economies to thrive.

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Policy makers must support this momentum, and complement it with a shift towards agroecological farming practices, as well as less and better meat. As Covid-19 has shown the importance of social protection measures for farmers, workers and the food system, this lesson should also be applied to protect farmers from climate disasters.

Governments must maximise the synergies between food, climate and Covid-19. As relief, bailout and recovery packages roll out, they can benefit from Just Transition in Agriculture principles and Green New Deal thinking.

These approaches can strengthen national plans to improve pandemic-and-climate resilience, and transition to greener economies, particularly in the National Adaptation Plan (NAP) and Nationally Determined Contributions (NDC) policy processes that are so key to the implementation of the Paris Agreement. This is a key moment to build back better.

Teresa Anderson is ActionAid International’s climate policy coordinator and Climate Action Network’s agriculture working group coordinator.

The post Now is the time to climate-and-pandemic-proof our food systems appeared first on Climate Home News.