32 African Countries have converged in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia to set a Roadmap for better understanding and inclusion of Agroecology to, during and beyond COP 27.
This comes as the world is struggling with occurring issues of Climate Change.
Million Belay(PhD), AFSA General Coordinator said the purpose of the high level engagement was to bring consensus among African Actors on climate, such as governments, civil society organisations, Academia, religious leaders and media among others.
According to him, it was to bring this issue to COP 27 because that is a place where agriculture, and adaptation would be discussed as topical issue on the agenda.
He said: “In our engagement with African group of negotiators we could see that they do not have a believe or trust on Agroecology, so we just want to create a consensus amongst the civil society organisations to be transmitted to our various governments.”
Dr. Balley said the consensus was not only aimed at COP 27 but on the way and beyond that.
“What shall we do before COP 27, What shall we do at COP 27 and what shall we do post COP 27, so it is to refine out agenda at COP 27. To collaborate and unite our agenda for Africa. So by bringing all these actors together, we are creating a broad base for advocacy to issues related to the subject matter to discuss, deliberate and advocate,” he averred.
He also acknowledged that there have been too much confusion about what kind of agriculture Africa should have, towards adapting to the climate crises, stressing that “Some of us advocate for agroecology, some say it is climate smart agriculture while others say it is nature based solution , so there is a lot of confusion, lots of agendas which emanate from outsiders”.
However, he averred that as Africa, the agenda was not clear, as Africa traditionally has diverse food but increasingly losing its diversity mainly because of the kinds of policies that they are promoting.
“So we are trying to propose a policy both at the country and continent level which will be coherent amongst us all as often we have lots of policies negating against each other while also bringing food access from all over the world.”
The three days Conference, organised by the Alliance for Food Sovereignty in Africa(AFSA) in partnership with Consortium on Climate Change Ethiopia and Environment Protection Authority began today, Monday September 19 and will end on Wednesday, September 21 2022.
On his part, the AFSA Programme Coordinator, Bridget Mugambe indicated that the AFSA membership in 2018 decided to start a campaign to make agroecology a major policy solution to the climate challenge that is adversely affecting Africans’ social, economic, and ecological well-being.
She said
”In Africa, the impact of the climate crisis is intense and is felt primarily on farming, food production, and food systems. Women food producers are often the first to suffer from these impacts,” she said.
She said, current African policy solutions placed further pressure on small-scale food producers to participate in industrial agricultural programs such as climate-smart agriculture, GMO seeds, and chemical inputs derived from fossil fuels.
