by
Jim Harkness & Anne Laure Constantin
IATP's Jim Harkness and Anne Laure Constantin are in Bangkok at the global climate talks. Below, Anne Laure blogs on what is at stake for agriculture.
Bangkok is humid (as it should be at this time), and much of South Asia is under heavy rain, with disastrous floods in South India and The Philippines hitting international headlines. Advocates for climate action are rushing around the UN Conference Center in Bangkok pointing to the floods as yet another example of the perils of climate change. The talks have been on for about 10 days and will end this week.
Further away from the conference center (a painful 40-minute ride in Bangkok’s busy traffic), the Asian Farmers Association is holding a series of meetings on agriculture and climate change, with some looking particularly at the role of women farmers. AFA also took an active part in the meeting we organized on Sunday with farmers' groups and climate activists.
And so, slowly, the new and growing call around international circles for the need to include agriculture in a new climate treaty is trickling down to those who really matter: farmers who grow most of the world’s food! As things move forward swiftly inside the climate negotiations, it is urgent that the voices of small farmers and Indigenous peoples be heard by negotiators working on agriculture. This is what we argue in our Benchmarks for Copenhagen and we will keep working to make it happen!
