The ICRAF policy brief calls for an innovative and integrated approach to financing sustainable smallholder agriculture. The policy brief is a collaboration between ICRAF, the CGIAR Research Program on Climate Change, Agriculture and Food Security (CCAFS) and experts from the public sector, private finance and civil society that draws on evidence from project experiences to date.

The policy brief underscores the need for climate finance – public- and private-sector finance that supports sustainable development, reduced climate risk and the reduction of greenhouse gases from the atmosphere – to drive the transition to low-carbon, climate-resilient and sustainable agricultural practices that benefit farmers’ productivity, food security and livelihoods.

Climate Finance for Agriculture and Livelihoods calls new approaches to finance for the benefit of smallholder farmers.  According to the policy brief, we need to think in integrated ways, across disciplines and sectors, if we are to achieve development, adaptation and mitigation aims.  It floats the following criteria for finance that works for agriculture and livelihoods:

• Up-front public sector funding is to overcome high start-up costs, reduce investment risk and leverage private capital towards sustainable agriculture.
• To build on pre-existing local development institutions, strengthen local institutional capacity and secure land tenure to help ensure that project benefits reach farmers.
• Investment in smallholder agriculture that takes a holistic approach, focusing on the issues of food security and livelihoods and regarding mitigation as a co-benefit.
• To improve climate change adaptation schemes by focusing on developing pro-poor insurance markets, ensuring affordability for poor farmers, building human resource capacity and using distribution channels that have a large outreach.
• To combine investments in sustainable practices across a wide range of countries, landscapes, farm types, crop cycles and sizes to overcome the high risk associated with smallholder farmers and drive investment to promote sustainable practices at large scales.

Read the policy brief here.

The cost for members/affiliates is US$150 and US$200 for non-members . The cost includes individual membership. Table Top Exhibits are available for this workshop for US$650, which includes one attendee (spaces are selected onsite – first come first served).

Click on these links for the workshop flyer and the online registration form. You can register online, fax to 772-463-0860 or phone the CaribDA office at 772-781-8507.

Credit: Caribbean360.com

The United Nations Institute for Training and Research (UNITAR) is now accepting applicants for the new online course on “Climate Change Adaptation, Loss and Damage”.

The five week long Climate Change Adaptation, Loss and Damage course will run from June 3 to Juny 7, 2013. This course aims to facilitate international negotiations, public sector work, and diplomatic engagement in relation to climate change impacts. In addition, adaptation measures through an enhanced understanding of its science, the international policy framework, and the key negotiation issues pertinent to the UNFCCC process will be covered.

By the end of the course, participants should be able to:

• Comprehend climate change science and the observed and projected impacts of climate change;
• Track and explain the international adaptation and loss and damage policy framework, in particular the negotiations under the UNFCCC;
• Define and understand adaptation, loss and damage from climate change impacts and its links to mitigation;
• Appreciate international considerations for climate change decision-making;
• Appraise the key issues in the ongoing international climate change negotiations, and how to build and move forward from the outcomes of COP18.

The course is designed for mid to senior-level government officers in ministries preparing for and/or taking part in conferences as well as staff of intergovernmental/nongovernmental organizations. It also targets entry-level and mid-career diplomats working in a multilateral setting. Private sector specialists and students whose work or studies are related to this subject are also encouraged to apply.

Please find more information on registration, fees, and course content here.

 This 6-month course covers environmental management as an integrated interdisciplinary field. The broad curriculum is organized in modules comprising issues of global sustainable development, environmental governance, environmental security, environmental economics and accounting, environmental awareness and public participation, applied ecology and ecosystem management, conservation of biodiversity, water management, recycling and waste management, energy for sustainable development, environmental assessment and environmental management systems, cleaner production and products and eco-efficiency, sustainable mobility, sustainable tourism as well as rural and urban land use planning.

Target Groups:

This course is particularly designed for decision-makers of public administration both at national and local level requiring an overall-competence in environmental matters. A first university degree is required to successfully pursue this course.

 Learn more about funding and application details here.

Credit: Google

The 9th International Convention on Environment and Development will be held in Havana, Cuba on July 8-12, 2013, under the slogan “urge a major change for the future we want”. The convention, which is aimed at researchers, decision-makers, teachers, specialists, managers, entrepreneurs, and the general public, started in 1997, five years after the landmark United Nations “Conference on Environment and Development” (UNCED), informally known as the Earth Summit.

The ninth staging of the gathering comes a year after the staging of the momentous Rio+20 Summit. Its main objective is to promote integration, implementation, and coherence between what must be done and what was identified for action at recent international conventions and summits.

The Convention is organized in groups for congresses and colloquiums, covering many current environmental contents. There will be 6 congresses on Climate Change, Environmental Education, Protected Areas; Environmental Management, Management of Ecosystems and Biodiversity, and Law and Environmental Justice, and four colloquiums on Environmental management, Sustainable Land Management, Environmental Regulation, and Transport and Environment.

In addition, renowned national and international experts will give lectures and roundtable discussions on priority environmental issues. An exhibition fair associated with technologies, environmental projects and experiences will be also held. Independent professional contributions are also strongly encouraged.

Find out how to register for this conference here.

“The Caribbean Community Climate Change Center in Belize is managing the regional response.”

The expose also quoted significantly from the Centre’s landmark Implementation Plan: Delivering Transformational Change 2011-21. Implementing the CARICOM Regional Framework for Achieving Development Resilient to Climate Change.

“Twenty-one of 64 regional airports could be inundated. About 5 percent of land area in the Bahamas and 2 percent of Antigua & Barbuda could be lost. Factoring in surge from more intense storms means a greater percentage of the regional population and infrastructure will be at risk.”

Read the widely published report here.

Learn more about Climate Change Resilience and Building Codes here.

Through the Media Awards on Water, GWP-C hopes to inspire Caribbean journalists in the areas of print, television, radio and multi-media to report more on water related issues in the region.

Journalists working across these platforms are required to submit original published pieces on any of the water related topics outlined in the competition’s guidelines. Peruse the details (Announcement, Guidelines and Registration Form) on the GWP-C Media Awards on Water 2013 are available here.

There are great prizes and awards up for grabs!

Projektipäivät 2012 keynote by Ian T. Dunlop on the same issues he spoke about at the UN. From Infocrea on Vimeo.

Energy expert Ian Dunlop and policy-planner and scholar Tapio Kanninen delivered a stark message in New York at the end of April that even limiting global warming to 2°C could eventually produce sea level rises of up to 6 to 7 metres (23 feet), wiping out coastal cities like New York, London, Shanghai and Tokyo. They told shocked audiences at the United Nations that if we continue with current policies, temperatures could rise 4°C or more, leading to sea level rises of up to 70 metres (230 feet).

See CARICOM’s Liliendaal Declaration on Climate Change and Development (2009), which calls for  global average surface temperature increases to be limited to  below 1.5° C of pre-industrial levels.

Kanninen and Dunlop were in New York to address a series of packed meetings and panel discussions, organised by the Finnish Mission to the United Nations, Friedrich-Ebert-Stiftung, the Club of Rome, the Temple of Understanding and the UN Department of Economic and Social Affairs.

They presented new evidence demonstrating the severity of the crisis of global sustainability and global survivability and discussed with diplomats, political decision‐makers, sustainable development experts and NGOs how to persuade the UN and other international institutions to take immediate emergency action.

Commenting on recent scientific findings, Ian Dunlop – with over 30 years’ experience at the Royal Shell Group as engineer and senior executive and a former leader of Australia’s Emissions trading panel said: “Today’s leaders refuse to accept that climate change science and the concept of peak oil condemns the international community to a catastrophic future. Why are we still exploring for fossil fuels, since we can only burn off 20-30% of reserves if we wish to keep climate change to the 2 °C limit, while current policies will result in warming of 4-6 °C?” he asked.

This level of temperature rise means that the globe can only carry 0.5-1 billion people, not the present 7 billion, leading experts evaluate.

Tapio Kanninen, a former long time UN staff member and policy-planner, said that scientists have determined a number of “tipping points” that exponentially and dramatically accelerate global warming trends. As they begin to kick in, in a matter of years not decades, we must take action before it is too late to avert a catastrophe.

The severity of the global crisis goes unrecognised: we need a global emergency response and new policy models

Dr Kanninen said current international and national institutional and political systems are incapable of preventing the increasing severe global crises; it requires a change in the entire system plus an emergency response. If runaway climate change leads to rising sea levels the next move has to be to urgently overhaul the UN and our global governance system so it is capable of dealing with rapidly changing global and regional conditions.

Ian Dunlop said that many scientists and practitioners are wrongly dubbed ‘alarmist’, but diplomats, politicians and the whole intergovernmental system have failed to grasp the severity of the crisis. If we fail to act we could find ourselves like a ‘ship of fools’ floating on rising sea levels.

Failing to institute a major global policy change will inevitably lead to the gradual implosion of the economic, ecological and social structures on which we depend, and they called for “An urgent joint effort by member states, NGOs and scholars to improve the quality of global negotiations on climate change and sustainable development”.

Setting up new structures

Faced with the reality gap between what scientists predict and what politicians are prepared to do, part of the solution to global inertia lies in creating an independent Global Crisis Network of regional, national and local centres with a global coordination unit that will interact with a revamped UN.  Eventually, the UN Charter has to be totally rewritten to correspond to the new global reality.

Source: The Club of Rome, an international think-tank, based in Switzerland, with 1500 members and over 30 National Associations. Its mission is to undertake forward-looking analysis and assessment on measures for a happier, more resilient, sustainable planet

The Limits to Growth, a 1972 report to the Club of Rome was written by Denis Meadows, Donella Meadows, Jorgen Randers and William Behrens III. It used computer models to project possible future scenarios with different assumptions of how humans would react to earth’s physical limitations.

Dr Tapio Kanninen is Senior Fellow at the Graduate Center of the City University of New York and a Co-Director of the Project on Sustainable Global Governance. He was Chief of the Policy Planning Unit in the Department of Political Affairs (1998–2005) at the United Nations and worked earlier to set up a global environmental statistical framework in a UNEP-funded project in the UN Statistical Division. He is a member of the Club of Rome.

Ian Dunlop is an Australian Energy Expert, a fellow to the Centre of Policy Development and a former senior executive at the Royal Dutch Shell Group. He is Chair of Safe Climate Australia, Deputy Convenor of the Australian Association for the Study of Peak Oil and a Club of Rome member.

Friedrich-Ebert-Stiftung is a German political foundation with over 100 offices around the world, including an active UN office. It is the Germany’s oldest organisation to promote democracy, political education, and promote students of outstanding intellectual abilities.

The Temple of Understanding is an interfaith NGO working to promote global survivability, and an active member of the NGO community working on the inside of the United Nations to advance social justice.

Credit: CGIAR Challenge Program on Water and Food

To learn more, read Mulligan, M., et al. 2010. The Andes basins: biopphysical and development diversity in a climate change. Water International. Vol. 35 No. 5.