Introducing Uprooted: Talking COP27
Ahead of the 2022 UNFCCC Conference of Parties, IATP is rebooting our podcast Uprooted with a limited series: Talking COP27.
Our industrialized food and farming systems are both driving the climate crisis and threatened by it. The upcoming United Nations global climate conference, COP27, is a chance to shine a light on these connections and push for real solutions. In this four-part podcast series, hear from policy experts at the Institute for Agriculture and Trade Policy on the nexus of agriculture and climate change, what we expect to see happen at COP27 and what must be done to create more resilient food systems in the face of a heating planet.
Listen to a preview here, and subscribe to the series on Spotify, Apple Podcasts or wherever you get your podcasts.
Visit our COP27 page for more information on this year's climate convention.
Transcript:
00:00:02 Shefali Sharma:
But that's what's happening. What's happening is that our models have heavily underestimated all the impacts and we're seeing that. It's so clearly with the floods in Pakistan, the droughts and your fires and the droughts in the US, like it's everywhere.
00:00:19 Lilly Richard:
Coming soon from the Institute for Agriculture and Trade Policy, a four part podcast series on climate, agriculture and the upcoming United Nations Climate Conference, COP 27.
00:00:34 Steve Suppan:
There's two main funding mechanisms right now, the United Nations Adaptation Fund and the Green Climate Fund, and both of these are notoriously underfunded.
00:00:47 Ben Lilliston:
One of the things about these COPs is that they're very much like a trade show. In some ways. There's governments making announcements about what they're going to do, and then there's the actual negotiations taking place, kind of behind closed doors. But then there's also a lot of other interests there, so the corporate interests are very prevalent, of all different sectors. So, you know, fossil fuel industry is there. So is agribusiness.
00:01:15 Shiney Varghese:
And that's where the exclusive focus on profit making motive comes in the way of transformative solutions. So in fact, even at the COP, we see that push for what they call is a net zero solution. It means that those, you know emitting greenhouse gases, can continue to do so, as long as someone else, somewhere else, happens to be involved in some mitigation action, irrespective of whether that is new, additional action be initiated to reduce greenhouse emissions or not.
00:01:50 Tim Wise:
Farmers there were the ones who told me this is climate stupid agriculture, because why in the 21st century facing climate change would you try and get us on a path dependent on fossil fuel inputs?
00:02:06 Sophia Murphy:
I think this this piece on democracy is one of the ones that separates agroecology from, say, “climate smart” agriculture. Agroecology is about modern science and traditional knowledge and looking for ways to bring the best of those worlds together.
00:02:27 Shefali Sharma:
We don't do this work 'cause we think nothing is going to change. We do this work 'cause we feel like damnit, we can change things.
00:02:34 Lilly Richard:
Every year the UN hosts an international climate conference known as the Conference of Parties or COP, to try to coordinate a global response to the climate crisis. And as the connections between climate and agriculture gain more attention, we’re seeing countries grapple with how to transform farming to mitigate climate change as well as create resilient food systems on a warming and increasingly unstable planet. But for many, the conversation between the agriculture space and the climate space is new. And the COP is a difficult beast to navigate. Global power imbalances, and narrow focus on emissions at the expense of other vital pieces like biodiversity and food sovereignty, leave space for false solutions to proliferate – in a moment where we don’t have any time to waste. We’ll explore all of these questions in the lead-up, and follow up to this year’s COP. Coming soon, the Institute for Agriculture and Trade policy brings you a limited 4 part series: Uprooted: Talking COP27.
