CLimate Statement Dec 2024CLIMATE, AGRICULTURE AND FOOD SYSTEMS –

Seeking a just transition for smallholder farms in South Africa

• Yet another tropical cyclone has hit Southern Africa in recent weeks. Cyclone Chido has caused major destruction in the Indian Ocean island of Mayotte, parts of the Comoros islands and in northern Mozambique and southern Cyclone Chido followed cyclones Kenethe (2018) and Iday (2019), compounding the damages already inflicted on impoverished nations and vulnerable peoples in our neighbouring countries such as Madagascar, Malawi, Mozambique and Zimbabwe: destruction of infrastructure, housing, health and education facilities, forcing displacements, killing thousands of people and livestock and other species, disrupting agriculture and food production, destroying crops and livelihoods, and national economies.

 

• While South Africa has not experienced the full impacts of these cyclones, the country has been experiencing increased frequency and intensity of other climate change related events: drought, heatwaves and flooding associated with climate change in different parts of the Although less severe, SA has experienced similar impacts to those witnessed in our neighbouring SADC countries.

 

• As an organisation working with a South African collective of affiliated rural land and subsistence and smallholder farmers’ movements and associations, concerning themselves with unrealised agrarian reform and with food production, “global warming, climate change, agriculture, food supply chains and food systems’’ are critical areas of engagement, while situating ourselves in our broader human, socio-economic, political and geographical contexts.

 

 

• Smallholder farmers are part of the multiple interest groups participating in food systems supply chains, with countries and actors contributing to and experiencing climate change differently, with Africa increasingly bearing the burden of climate change impacts while having contributed the least to the problem. Marginalised smallholder farmers, are much more vulnerable to the impacts of climate events and losses of production, productive assets and uncertainty of livelihoods and any investments diminish possibilities to escape Thus, the need to engage in the proposal of alternatives and mobilise for a just transition.

Current manifestations and predicted changes for our SADC region as a result of global warming: Overall forecasts by scientists, depending on the future levels of temperature rises (contained to 1.5º or rises up to 3ºC) will have dramatic socio-economic impacts on our societies: increased and longer periods of droughts; greater frequency of extreme rainfall events; large biodiversity losses, changes in freshwater and marine ecosystems and in natural vegetation landscapes; shifting and shortening agricultural seasons (declines in yields have already been registered in maize and wheat), the greatest impacts likely to be seen amongst smallholder and subsistence farmers (most relying on rainfed production; conflicting demands for limited water for

 

agriculture, energy, mining and social needs, threatening food production, livelihoods, health, industrial/commercial output and jobs; increase in the range and transmission of infectious diseases (e.g. cholera) and vector diseases (e.g. malaria and dengue fever) and human deaths; new tick species and livestock diseases; increasing and shifting migration patterns within South Africa but also between SADC countries (and beyond) leading to increases in conflicts and in informal settlements, higher levels of hunger and malnutrition, declines in education access and achievements, and rising conflict with desperate people seeking food, livelihoods and means of survival.

• How is our government in South Africa proposing to deal with ongoing impacts of climate change on food production? Climate change is already increasing and deepening socio- economic inequalities particularly between the Global North and the Global South and between social classes. Likewise in South Africa, but here we also have the additional racial colonial and apartheid legacies that remain entrenched despite the formal end of apartheid in 1994. Lessons from the last 30 years suggest that class, racial and all other inequalities, including gender, are likely to continue rising as we face new challenges brought by climate change destructive Our government (and others in the region) continues to implement neo-liberal policies, privatising our social services, imposing austerity budgets. Almost all small holder farmers do not have access to insurance. When the climate calamities and disasters hit them they stand to lose everything they have worked hard for.

 

 

No agrarian reform has been undertaken: no significant land reform and little support for those who did receive land. Agriculture continues to be dominated by white owned large industrial farms, propagating the myth that it is ensuring food security not only for South Africa but also for the region, while the aim is to export, and food access is mediated through financial markets while hunger and malnutrition levels keep increasing.

To address climate change linked to agriculture, and allegedly to also address poverty, unemployment and inequality, in 2018 the SA government published the Draft Climate Smart Agriculture (CSA) Strategic Framework (CSADSF) for Agriculture, Forestry and Fisheries, but fails to clearly define or explain what key elements of CSA are. Thus, we have to look elsewhere,

Agriculture and food systems negotiations at COP 28 and CP 29: Having identified the dominant industrial agriculture model as emitting up to a third of global greenhouse gases (GHGs) the world was urged to change this production model. Formal incorporation of agriculture in the UN climate negotiations only happened since COP 28 (2023, Dubai, UAE) exposing the conflicting interests and contradictions in the global agriculture trade and production models. “Climate Smart- Agriculture” (CSA) emerged as a favoured form of “sustainable agriculture” production. Central to CSA production are the usage of corporate driven and factory produced chemical (and sometimes even organic) fertilisers as well as the use of hybrid and GM seeds. We, and millions of others continue to be critical and reject these CSA solutions as false. They do not address the roots of the problems, do not radically reduce emissions and just advance the interests of corporate agri-business. Although not legally binding, adoption of CSA was signed by 130 countries. A Global Alliance for Climate Smart Agriculture (GACSA) has been launched with the backing of some of the (failed) AGRA (Alliance for Green Revolution in Africa) funders. GACSA has over 200 members, which include some governments, businesses, civil society organisations such as NGOs, social and farmers’ movements, etc.

 

Linking agriculture and climate negotiations at COP: We know that climate negotiations nearly collapsed at COP 29 after a walkout by representatives of “Least Developed Countries” and Small Island States over failing negotiations on new finance targets. It had previously been agreed

 

that rich countries (responsible for 80% of emissions) would pay $1.3 trillion per year by 2035 to countries mostly experiencing climate events but that have not contributed to carbon emissions. However rich countries were only committing to pay $250 billion per year. Eventually, 33 hours later, a still controversial compromised agreement was reached: rich countries will pay “developing countries” $300 billion a year (for adaptation, including for “making farming more sustainable” and for mitigation), with a target of reaching $1.3 trillion per year by 2035. This new agreement is still far short of what vulnerable countries need – insufficient to prepare for climate disasters, rebuild after emergencies (loss and damage fund) and pay for reparations. The $300 billion will come from “all public and private sources” in rich countries with the involvement of international mega-banks, like the World Bank and private investors.

 

Grants or loans? Since 2016, around 70% of public climate finance has been delivered in the form of loans. Rich countries say that only private investment will be able to raise the trillions of $ needed – as climate-adaptation projects in the poorest countries do not generate profits to attract private investors, compared with mitigation projects like clean energy. On the other hand, “developing countries” argue that much of the finance needed should be from public grants from rich countries, otherwise they get burdened with increasing debt that prevents socio-economic delivery and meeting basic needs: in Sub-Sharan Africa 7 out the 38 countries are already in debt distress and 18 are at high risk, forcing countries to choose between life and debt repayment. Private lenders charge poor countries high interest rates (6- 10%), while they lend to governments in rich countries (e.g. UK and USA) at low (0-1%) interest rates.

 

The politics of carbon: South Africa (and Global South countries) remain trapped in colonial patterns of exporting unprocessed food and non-food products destined to the Global North. Even smallholder farmers are being integrated into these global food system chains through contract farming. Industrial agriculture commodity production in the Global South decreases GHG agriculture emissions in the Global North while it increases GHG emissions in the Global South. Meanwhile the Global North continues exceeding their GHG emission limitation targets, as it pursues moving to more renewable energy and new technologies, while maintaining their levels of overconsumption.

Thus, carbon markets emerged as the main tool in global efforts to address climate change since the Kyoko Protocol (COP3). Trading in carbon credits simply constitute an attempt to create another commodity and new goods to trade in capitalist markets, to expand their reach and reproduce and exacerbate processes of inequality within and between countries. Linked to this are an array of ever increasing schemes and allied terminologies that few can understand (“nature-based solutions”; debt- for-nature swaps; carbon farming, carbon sequestration; carbon offsetting; net-zero-emissions; etc etc). Carbon trading relies on natural resources from the Global South and continuing the legacy of colonial resource dispossession and violence against the black peoples of the Global South in new waves of land and resource grabbing and colonisation.

 

Growing concerns over corporate influence and calls for a reform of the COP processes: COP 28 was the first COP meeting where delegates were reportedly required to declare their affiliations. At negotiations on climate at COP 29 reports were that 1,773 fossil fuel lobbyists and least 480 lobbyists working on carbon capture and storage participated. Some of the world’s largest agribusinesses were also present: giant agro-chemicals and seed (Bayer (Monsanto), Dow Inc, DuPont Pioneer, Syngenta, Limograin) as well as giant food companies (Cargil, Nestle, Unilever, General Mills, PepsiCo, Kellog Co.) and animal pharmaceuticals (Elanco, merck animal health, zoetsis). And so was JBS (a meat supplier linked to deforestation in the Amazon). These fossil fuel and agribusiness lobbyist seemingly got in as part of trade associations and as country representatives, which grants them “privileged access”.

 

Social movements and other civil society have expressed concerns over the increasing numbers, overrepresentation and influence of corporate interests at COP climate negotiations. This included an open letter from a group of climate leaders including former UN Secretary- General Ban Ki-moon, former President of Ireland Mary Robinson, and former UN climate chief Christiana Figueres, who stated that a just transition cannot be achieved “without fair representation of those most affected.”

 

Facing global warming and climate change – What do we call for? We think that the COP negotiations have once again failed us, the peoples of the Global South.

• We remain critical and reject CSA as a solution to our food production. CSA and carbon trading do not radically reduce emissions and just advance the interests of corporate agri-business, while destroying our ecosystems, grabbing forests, land and other resources from the Global South.

 

• We call for implementation and support for agroecology (AE) and defend food sovereignty, as keys towards addressing climate change and a Just Transition in Food Systems. AE offers us a move away from industrial food systems and can contribute to local food security. We call for implementation of UNDROP (UN Declaration on the Rights of Peasants and People Working in Rural Areas) Saving, multiplying and sharing seeds from our farmer managed seed systems, adapted to our local environments are the basis of our life-force.

 

• Multi-sectoral support from the South African government for smallholder producers. The Department of Agriculture, the Department of Land Reform and Rural Development, the Department of Forestry and the Environment and the Department of Water and Sanitation need to engage with smallholders for inclusive planning and implementation of use of our resources. We also advance that the provision of social security measures, (e.g. a Basic Income Grant – BIG) is essential to move towards a Just Transition.

 

• Defence of a different development model. We live in a finite planet and the focus on permanent economic growth and extractivism of non-renewable resources is We believe that it is not possible to achieve Just Transitions in energy and food systems without addressing contradictions of the capitalism system. All governments can raise more money for climate finance by taxing the big polluters, develop and enforce mechanisms to end tax avoidance and evasion by corporates and the rich, and address unfair trade rules.

 

• Decolonisation and global justice and challenge the Global North to deal with their social and environmental debt to the Global South and call for reparations. While ruling governments and elite interests in the Global South connive with and profit from these arrangements, as the climate emergencies become more pronounced we see unbearable levels of suffering, deaths, environment and biodiversity destruction, unsustainable socio-economic exploitation and political instability as unsustainable debt repayments destroy our societies.

 

• Building alliances and networks with others who support, subscribe and advocate similar principles worldwide. More specifically we need to build solidarity with our sisters and brothers in the SADC region, who currently are even more vulnerable to the devastations of extreme climate change events and cyclones.

 

• Changes are needed at COP talks and processes – ongoing imbalances are likely going to be replicated at the next COP 30 (2025, Belem, Brazil).

 

• International Court of Justice hearings on responsibilities of states on climate change: We look forward to hearing about the outcomes of hearings that took place at the International Court of Justice between 2 and 13 December 2024, on the responsibilities of states under international law to address the climate crisis. The hearings follow a request submitted by the UN General Assembly (Resolution A/RES/77/276) and agreed to in March 2023.