The ideas marketplace showcases lessons learned, innovative ways of working and new approaches.
Click on the linked titles to read more.
Exhibition Booths
Exhibition booths display products, services and achievements to a wide-ranging audience from agricultural scientists and decision makers to industry leaders.
Side Event 14 Dec
The event brought outputs from Agriculture and Rural Development Day and Forest Day to the negotiating table at the UNFCCC climate change talks.
Ideas Marketplace
Session 1: 14.30 – 15.00
Bioversity International
Using climate change models and location coordinates of genebank samples to select crop varieties pre-adapted to future climates
Climate change projections indicate that areas of Africa and South/Southeast Asia will become less suitable for growing crops that provide the foundation for agriculture and food security for poor farmers. Local agriculture must rapidly adapt to future climatic conditions to protect farmers’ livelihoods, yet governments in these regions are often the least able to invest in critical agricultural research. Farmers will need to replace current crop varieties with others better-adapted to future conditions. Crops now growing in climates similar to those projected to occur elsewhere are likely to be pre-adapted to successfully produce under predicted conditions.
Bioversity and our sister CGIAR centres have collected over 650,000 crop samples from around the world, conserving them in genebanks where they are available to all. We have developed an information system allowing users to learn about individual genebank samples through a user-friendly web portal. Location coordinates associated with seed sample collection sites are translated into climatic parameters, including average or extreme temperatures, length of growing period and precipitation regime, thereby assisting researchers, breeders and farmers to determine the growing conditions of varieties when first collected. Projected future climates can be used as a filter to select samples from locations whose current climates match those predicted elsewhere. Thus, genebanks and information systems help match conserved seeds to future needs. Bioversity is applying these systems in Ethiopia (for durum wheat and barley) and Papua New Guinea (for sweet potato and taro), to identify locally-adapted varieties for women farmers to test on their farms.
City and Guilds Centre for Skills Development
Training for rural development: agriculture and enterprise skills for women smallholders
The City and Guilds Centre for Skills Development has undertaken a research project looking at how training for rural development can meet the needs of women smallholders. It analyses a range of international donor-funded projects, as well as four case study projects in India and Ghana. The project has focused on understanding practical approaches to engaging women in relevant and effective training in order to reduce their susceptibility to crisis and increase their adaptability in the face of increasingly volatile agricultural conditions.
The presentation will discuss lessons from the research regarding how training can:
Support resilience to crisis by encouraging women to build up financial safety nets through savings schemes and financial management; by facilitating social support structures which activate community resources to provide mutual support and insurance; and by teaching strategies to diversify livelihoods, reducing women’s reliance on a single productive activity.
Reduce vulnerability in the market by improving women’s knowledge and confidence in negotiating terms for their produce and services, and helping them strategise to improve these terms.
Improve long-term security by helping women insist that local government policy and processes address their needs.
Cornell University and Ecoagriculture Partners
The state of agricultural landscapes GHG measurement
This session will explore the state of tool and methodology development around agricultural landscape GHG monitoring, reporting and verification (MRV) systems. Until very recently there have been few rigorous tools and validated methodologies for assessing agriculture related emissions, but these are now emerging for specific components of agricultural land use — for example, soil organic matter enrichment, conservation tillage, agroforestry, grassland management, etc. However, there is generally a piecemeal approach to this methodology development, with each land use being treated separately, creating skepticism that climate investment benefits in one component of an agricultural landscape will be undermined by increased emissions elsewhere in the landscape. Better methodologies are needed that employ an integrated approach to landscape-level carbon accounting. They must account for diverse land uses and management practices and provide for rigorous, cost effective monitoring of large-area carbon sequestration investment programs in heterogeneous, dynamic landscapes.
In this session:
Seth Shames of Ecoagriculture Partners will provide a synthesis of news from key players in the field as they move towards filling key research and methodology gaps.
Antonio Bento, Sam Bell and John Fay from the Cornell Center for a Sustainable Future (CCSF) will discuss Community Markets for Conservation, a conservation agriculture initiative in Zambia, as an illustration of the technical challenges and emerging solutions for integrated MRV methodology.
The discussion will explore unresolved technical and policy issues around agricultural landscape MRV, and ways to improve coordination to advance these methods.
Global Donor Platform for Rural Development
The way forward for agriculture and climate change
The climate change debate and the agriculture and food policy debate are often conducted in parallel. The Global Donor Platform for Rural Development recognised the need to bring the two debates together and produced a series of issues papers. The latest paper will be presented at the marketplace with an outline of the Platform’s future work in climate change and agriculture.
Created in 2003, the Global Donor Platform for Rural Development is a network of 33 bilateral and multilateral donors and international financing institutions who share a common vision of the role effective aid to agriculture and rural development plays in reducing poverty. Platform Members work together to strengthen the impact of aid in agriculture and rural development.
The presentation will be based on recent case studies in Mali and Ethiopia focusing on climate vulnerability and adaptation among pastoralists and agro-pastoralists. It follows an adapted Sustainable Livelihoods framework, focusing broadly on three main themes:
Trends in livelihoods and risks, including issues such as recent trends in livelihoods and climate risks, perceptions of changing risks, including the importance of climate change, and status and trends in factors affecting vulnerability.
Livelihood strategies and outcomes, including what local coping and adaptation responses exist, and what effects they have on household assets, constraints and barriers in response strategies.
The role of institutions in mediating responses to livelihood risks, including the role informal and formal institutions.
The Kyoto Protocol authorizes buying and selling of carbon allowance and offset credits as a “flexibility mechanism” to meet Green-House Gas reduction commitments. According to the economic theory of carbon trading, carbon prices will signal to major GHG emitters when and how much to invest in GHG reduction technology. This theory, and indeed, the KP do not anticipate a secondary market of carbon derivatives or the effect of such derivatives on the primary carbon market.
According to our analysis of draft U.S. climate change and derivatives legislation, several provisions create strong potential for the extreme carbon price volatility that would send confusing price signals and impede GHG emitter investment decisions, to judge by the history of the European Union’s Emissions Trading Scheme. We evaluate some legislative proposals to design a primary carbon market that may contribute to achieving GHG reduction commitments.
The American Clean Energy and Security Act (ACES) anticipates that carbon derivatives will be bundled into commodity index funds, along with agricultural and non-agricultural futures contracts. In 2007–2008, energy dominant index funds drove agricultural futures prices. Given the high price correlation between carbon and energy futures contracts, in the industry projected $2 trillion carbon market of 2017, carbon bundled index funds likely would induce extreme price volatility in agricultural futures. Increased reliance on “market based approaches” for GHG reduction, proposed by the U.S. and EU, could have the perverse affect of making traditional price risk management techniques too unreliable for net food import dependent developing countries to use effectively.
Livelihoods in Sub-Saharan Africa are closely linked to agriculture. Outcomes in agriculture, in turn, are closely linked to climate. But climate is becoming more variable as climate change intensifies in the region. While climate change impacts, in the form of yield declines, are less severe in Africa than Asia, for example, Africa is much more vulnerable to climate change as a result of extremely low adaptive capacity — linked to high levels of poverty and poor infrastructure, as reflected in the high dependence on rainfed agriculture.
Accessing carbon credits through agricultural mitigation could alleviate some of the financial resource constraints farmers face under climate change and could support farm- and community-level adaptation efforts. The potential for mitigation through agriculture in Africa is estimated at 17 percent of the global total, and the economic potential is estimated at 10 percent of the total global potential, valued at US$4.8 billion annually.
Claudia Ringler, Senior Research Fellow, IFPRI, and Alexander Alusa [invited], Consultant, Coordinator, Climate Change Coordination Unit, Prime Minister’s Office, Kenya, will discuss the synergies among adaptation, mitigation, and crop productivity objectives, as well as the potential for farmers in developing countries — and particularly in Eastern Africa — to benefit from incorporating agricultural mitigation into the climate change negotiations. The presentation will be based on research conducted in Kenya with the Kenyan Agricultural Research Institute, International Livestock Research Institute, and the University of Georgia (USA), and previous research implemented in Ethiopia with the Ethiopian Development Research Institute and the Ethiopian Economics Association.
ICRISAT
Advancing a ‘hypothesis of hope’ for climate change in the semi-arid tropics
During 2008, ICRISAT’s crop modelers, GIS experts, crop physiologists and plant breeders met in Hyderabad, India for one week. Using a range of weather data driven tools, they initiated research to test the hypothesis that “in the medium term (2010–2050), ICRISAT is well placed to help farmers mitigate the challenges and exploit the opportunities that are posed by climate change through: (i) the application of existing knowledge on crop, soil and water management innovations, and (ii) developing better adapted cultivars and / or the re-deployment and re-targeting of the already available germplasm of its mandate crops. (Sorghum, Pearl Millet, Groundnut, Pigeonpea, Chickpea)
While the further testing of this hypothesis, both through additional ex ante analyses and field studies, remains on-going, early outputs support the hypothesis.
Specifically, the ex ante analyses focused on increasing temperatures and indicated the following:
The impact of increasing temperatures on the yields under low input agriculture is likely to be minimal as other factors will continue to provide the overriding constraints to crop growth and yield.
The adoption of currently recommended improved crop, soil and water management practices, even under increased temperatures, will result in substantially higher yields than farmers are currently obtaining in their low input systems.
The re-targeting of existing crop germplasm and / or the development of better ‘temperature-adapted’ varieties could result in the almost complete mitigation of climate change effects that result from temperature increases.
The presentation ends with suggested key steps forward for climate change adaptation research.
Session 2: 15.15 – 15.45
Hamburg University of Applied Sciences
Reducing vulnerability to climate change and global market developments
Mono-cropping farmers increasingly need to deal with the fact that modern intensive agricultural systems which are characterized by increased need for fertilizers and irrigation, i.e. nutrients and water, may become more sensitive to climate change in terms of lower productivity, higher vulnerability and reduced sustainability in future. Moreover, food systems in developing countries are currently experiencing enormous organizational changes, reflected in the ongoing reorganization of supply chains, ranging from farm to fork. Being at the end of the chain, especially the small-scale producers have to cope with global consumers’ demands, reflected in the necessity to deliver high-quality products on time and at competitive prices. These high requirements can represent a serious barrier to small farmers ‘participation in higher value chains. St. Lucia’s farmers therefore need to diversify their production, e.g. by adopting fair trade production standards, and tap new domestic as well as niche markets by means of improved commercialization to sustain food security and poverty reduction endeavors.
Considering that small island developing states where agriculture still represents a backbone of society increasingly have to face these two global challenges — globalized markets and climate change — and recognize their impacts already today, this poster session/short oral presentation will explore the future impacts of climate change on the Caribbean region, discuss the potential impacts of climate change for smallholder agriculture in St Lucia and elaborate on the importance of information, training and capacity building not only in terms of improved diversification and commercialization of agricultural produce, but also for raising the adaptive capacity of small-scale farmers in St Lucia by providing sustainable adaptation options for farm-level diversification in the light of climate change.
Agroforestry technologies hold significant potential for reducing emissions, enhancing soil carbon stocks, and enhancing farmers’ resilience to the impacts of climate change. Agroforestry systems can help farmers diversify their production, and tree-based systems are less vulnerable to variable rainfall. The tree species Faidherbia albida, for example, provides significant benefits on farms. This indigenous acacia-like tree is widespread throughout the continent. In addition to storing carbon, the tree’s pods and leaves are used as protein-rich livestock fodder; its bark as a medicine and its wood for construction, fuelwood, and charcoal. But what makes it special are its nitrogen-fixing properties, and its unusual habit, known as ‘reverse leaf phenology’. Faidherbia is unlike virtually all other trees. It goes dormant and sheds its leaves during the early rainy season. Its leaves regrow when the dry season begins. This makes it highly compatible with foodcrops because it does not compete with them for light, nutrients or water. In fact, annual crops in the vicinity of Faidherbia trees tend to exhibit improved performance and yield. Faidherbia can be part of the climate change solution, if a global climate change deal takes into account the potential for trees on farms to contribute to emissions reductions goals while providing significant adaptation benefits to smallholder farmers.
The CGIAR WorldFish Center, on behalf of the multi-agency Partnership on Climate, Fisheries and Aquaculture
Food from troubled waters: adapting fisheries and aquaculture to climate change
The world’s 520 million fishery-dependent people are among the most exposed to climate change – they harvest the natural, climate-driven bounty of our rivers, lakes and seas, and they live in the worlds’ coastal zones and floodplains. Over 90 % of them are from developing countries. This marketplace aims to communicate the potential impacts of climate change on fishery production systems, and identify ways to adapt to those impacts and benefit from any opportunities that climate change may bring.
A group of fisheries, aquaculture and climate specialists, drawn from the Partnership on Fisheries, Aquaculture and Climate (PaCFA), will answer your questions and collate your suggestions for ways to adapt fisheries and aquaculture to climate change. We want the sector to be included in policy debates on how best to adapt our food production systems to climate change. We also want to learn about ways in which seafood can be produced more efficiently, with lower energy inputs and greenhouse gas emissions.
The session will share the knowledge of participants through a short question and answer format, supported by access to published materials by PaCFA institutions. We can’t anticipate all your questions, but these may include: How can small-scale fishers adapt to projected impacts of climate change? Which countries are most vulnerable? Are fisheries included in NAPAs? Is sea-level rise good for fish production? How serious is coral bleaching? How can coastal fish-farms be made hurricane-proof? Can fish farming be carbon neutral? Do mangrove forests qualify for REDD+?
Instituto do Homem e Meio Ambiente da Amazon (Amazon Institute of People and the Environment) with Friends of the Earth Brazilian Amazon, National Wildlife Federation, and the Forest Footprint Disclosure
Reducing emissions from deforestation for cattle expansion in the Brazilian Amazon — solutions exist
Emissions from cattle ranching are Brazil’s largest single source of GHG’s. What are the prospects for change in order to reconcile increased production with decreased impacts on emissions? This session will describe the latest news from Brazil on initiatives to reduce deforestation, explaining the hurdles which until now have prevented this revolution in cattle ranching in the Amazon, as well as introducing a new report on total emissions of the Brazilian livestock industry.
Brazil has the world’s largest commercial cattle herd, and the cattle industry is responsible for over three quarters of deforestation in Brazil, leading to around half of the country’s GHG emissions. Recent reports on the extent of deforestation have stirred up controversy, law enforcement efforts and company commitments. We organized an international workshop which produced agreement that there are four essential building blocks towards environmentally and socially responsible cattle production:
Sustainable intensification techniques can increase the number of cattle per hectare while decreasing GHG emissions per cow;
There should be no more deforestation for cattle production;
A system to trace cattle from birth will assure buyers they are avoiding ‘deforestation’ products; and
Smart financing is essential for the transition.
The session will cover results of new research and ferment in the cattle industry, as well as initiatives to develop a system of certification.
A new report will be announced, presenting the first full GHG ‘cattle footprint’ for Brazil, showing emission levels under different management scenarios, and from different stages of the production chain.
National Wildlife Federation
From source to sink: reducing commodity agriculture’s impacts on natural lands
The National Wildlife Federation introduces its new publication, which sets out the role of land use change in global greenhouse gas emissions and describes the relative importance of industrial agriculture in global deforestation. We present the latest research findings on patterns of agricultural expansion, focusing on commodities with the largest impacts on forest conversion, including key countries, their production areas and export markets. An increasing global population with reasonable aspirations for a better diet is projected to accelerate demand, and the need for more agricultural land will lead to increasing pressure on forests and other ecosystems. Valuing forests for their carbon stores may help to protect them but their financial worth needs to filter down to individual landowners and users.
We look at existing voluntary tools for certification, in place for a number of key commodities, and examine their achievements and limitations. Land-use decisions regarding forests are determined by local factors including land availability and socio-economic factors, as well as forest governance and these too are considered. The decision to clear forests for commodity agriculture occurs at the individual farm level. The paper introduces a range of financial tools aimed at providing upfront economic incentives for agricultural operators to protect forests.
The session will set out the key findings of the publication and present ideas for further discussion, including the challenges of testing the suite of tools presented to compensate agricultural operators for reducing emissions from their land.
Platform for Agrobiodiversity Research
Climate change and agrobiodiversity: strengthening adaptability and resilience; facilitating adaptation and transition
Agrobiodiversity is already proving to be important in helping rural communities and farmers throughout the world adapt to climate change. Diversity (genetic, species and ecosystem) in production systems can improve adaptability and resilience and is an essential part of adaptation to changing production conditions.
Over the past 18 months the Platform for Agrobiodiversity Research (PAR) has compiled information on the experiences of indigenous peoples and rural communities who are using agrobiodiversity to help adjust to changing conditions and provide improved livelihood strategies. Some challenges that have emerged include:
The need to ensure that there is sufficient diversity within production systems to maintain adaptability;
The importance of maintaining traditional adapted materials (crop and livestock varieties) within production systems and of allowing them to evolve and adapt to changing conditions;
The need for new materials in many situations and hence improved methods of dissemination and exchange of resources and information;
The recognition that farmers, pastoralists, forest dwellers, and fisher folk are having to adopt alternative livelihood strategies and need to exchange skills, knowledge, practices and experiences;
The importance of combining traditional knowledge and experiences with new scientific developments
Ensuring that rural communities and farmers around the world can meet these challenges requires new knowledge and new partnerships that embed agrobiodiversity maintenance and use in climate change response strategies.
Bayer CropScience
Climate protection contributions by Bayer CropScience
As part of Bayer’s climate program, BCS is contributing solutions, relating to GHG mitigation and adaptation to climate change in agriculture in support of its customers — the farmers. These solutions are key to food security and rural development in developing and developed countries.
BCS’s contributions are threefold:
R&D developments: BCS’s key competency lies in developing innovative agricultural technologies, two of which are currently in the pipeline: a) stress-tolerant plant varieties that help plants adapt to short term abiotic stresses, like drought or salinity, b) nitrogen use-efficient varieties, which will help mitigate the GHG: nitrous oxide (N2O).
Current technology solutions: Overall healthier and more resilient plants varieties adapt better to changing weather pattern. Chemical stress shield technologies not only protect plant health, they also make plants more resilient to abiotic stresses. BCS’s hybrid sorghum seeds are used by smallholder farmers in drought prone areas in India to better withstand dryer periods and better ensure farmers’ livelihood.
Good Agricultural Practices (GAP): Promoting GAP is an integral part of the services provided by BCS to its customers. Integrated land management approaches such as conservation tillage are important regarding CO2 mitigation and sequestration. Through conservation tillage fossil fuel savings reach up to 50% and reduce CO2 emissions accordingly. Organic material in the soil is increased, hence more CO2 is sequestered. Conservation tillage is often facilitated through the use of post-emergence herbicides and herbicide-tolerant plant varieties, technologies provided by BCS.
Secretariat for Swedish International Agricultural Network Initiative (SIANI)
Reconciling conflicts of interest in the implementation of ‘low-carbon agriculture’
The implementation of carbon emission reductions and associated adaption measures for ‘low-carbon agriculture’ will involve tough decisions which are likely to be contested by a large number of stakeholders. Most of these decisions and actions will involve changes in resource allocations, domestic economic and environmental policies, and producer and consumer choices. These are, in turn, characterized by intricate interdependencies between European rural development and consumption, and agricultural development and food security in low-income countries. It is crucial already now to anticipate these conflicts of interests between sectors and stakeholder groups which will have to be addressed from 2010 onwards.
This exhibition shares reflections from Swedish representatives of relevant sectors (agriculture, energy, trade, finance, environment etc.) on the conflicts of interests which will have to be reconciled post-COP15, with emphasis on the interdependencies between EU and low-income countries. The exhibition also suggests possible avenues for how such reconciliation can take place.
We conclude with presenting the Swedish International Agricultural Network Initiative (SIANI) as a multi stakeholder platform for government, civil society, private, research and education sectors to address these controversies in a systemic and integrated manner. Its mission is to foster a Swedish response to the 21st century’s crucial need for agricultural development strategies that ensure global food security and sustainable production.
Ecoagriculture Partners
Future directions for agricultural landscape carbon
The project-level approach to GHG crediting, modelled after the industrial sector, is not conducive for GHG reduction efforts in agricultural landscapes. Terrestrial carbon market opportunities are currently being pursued piecemeal, for A/R, REDD and soil carbon. Moreover, most GHG emission reduction and offset projects are designed as small-scale, single-intervention projects, thus creating skepticism that climate investment benefits from land use will be significant and real.
Agricultural, A/R and REDD efforts could be fully integrated if agricultural landscapes were considered as single units from the perspective of GHG analysis and project planning. Such initiatives face several key challenges: methodology for GHG accounting in complex landscapes; organization at landscape scale; and reducing transaction costs with farmers and other actors. But great strides have been made in addressing these challenges, and the window may be opening to develop landscape-scale agricultural carbon sequestration programs.
In this session:
Erick Fernandes of the World Bank will provide an overview of the benefits and challenges of the landscape approach to climate action.
Stephen Muwaya will present the TerrAfrica platform for Sustainable Land Management, as an example of a coordinated investment program that can confront the challenges of agricultural landscape carbon projects and bring them to scale.
Sara Scherr of Ecoagriculture Partners will facilitate a 15-minute discussion among participants about the approach and next steps to develop landscape climate action.
Bowen University, Iwo Nigeria
Impact of climate change on livelihood and food security of artisanal fisherfolks in Lagos State, Nigeria
Artisanal fishery which is basically rural occupies a significant position in the Nigerian economy providing employment for about 5.8% of Nigerian population and supplying 81.9% of the total domestic fish production. However, Climate change is already modifying the distribution of fish species thus experiencing changes in habitat size, species diversification and productivity .Fish supply from this sub- sector has thus, continued to decline. The study, therefore, examined the impact of climate change on livelihood and food security of artisanal fisherfolks in Lagos State, Nigeria
Stratified sampling technique was used to select 58 lagoon, 15 coastal and 15 riverine fishing communities in Lagos State. A total of 311 respondents were interviewed using structured questionnaire. Data collected include socio-economic characteristics, livelihood parameters and fish species and productivity data. Data were analysed using descriptive statistics and stochastic frontier catch function analysis.
The result of the analysis showed that there were changes in temperature and rainfall pattern which is a deviation from the normal trend. A variation in species diversity and abundance was also observed.
There were other sources of livelihood engaged in either as primary or secondary occupation.
Technical efficiency among fisherfolks in Lagoon was 26.4%, Coastal 80% and Riverine 52.9%
There is the need to put in place strategies that will mitigate the effect of climate change by improving access to micro-credit, use of better gear, reduction in fish loss through effective methods of preservation and value addition to their product. Coping strategies which include alternative sources of livelihood can also be encouraged.
The ideas marketplace session is scheduled for the afternoon. It poses an informal opportunity for delegates of partner organisations to share experiences with colleagues in 30 minute sessions – up to 10 minutes presentation to allow at least 20 minutes discussion.
Presentations will take place at the marketstalls. Presenters may use posters if they want. PowerPoints are not envisaged.
NB: The success of the ideas marketplace hinges on informal exchange to contribute to networking and learning. The presentations will not formally feed into the outcome of the day’s proceedings.
Registration for the ideas marketplace has been closed. The steering committee considered all expressions of interest and drew up a selected list of marketplace presenters.
Hardcopy overviews about the presentations will be available during the day and the presentations themselves posted here on the website.
Exhibition Booths
Agriculture Day provides a great opportunity for organisations to display information about their activities in relation to the event’s focus.
The exhibition will be located in the Marble Hall where coffee and lunch is served. Follows a current list of exhibitors and their themes.
Compassion in World Farming
Consultative Group on International Agricultural Research (CCAFS, IWMI, etc.)
Euro-Brazilian Sustainable Development Council (EUBRA)
EU INTERREG-NSR project consortium: Biochar Climate saving soils
Product Board Arable Products and InnovationNetwork of Ministry of Agriculture, Nature and Food Quality
Farming First Coalition
Global Donor Platform for Rural Development
International Federation of Agricultural Producers (IFAP)
International Fertilizer Industry Association
International Fund for Agricultural Development (IFAD)
Rede de Inovação e Prospecção Tecnológica Para o Agronegócio (RIPA)
Side Event 14 Dec
Beyond Copenhagen:
Agriculture and Forestry are Part of the Solution.
How can forestry and agriculture help to mitigate climate change and feed 9 billion people by 2050?
The outcomes of the side event are laid down in the Joint Statement (PDF) of the organizers of the side event.
