COP15: Voices from the global biodiversity conference

The Global Alliance for the Future of Food and a number of our partners have come together in Montreal, Canada, for the UN Biodiversity Conference. The two-week summit, also known as COP15, has convened groups from around the world to set out the details for a new global biodiversity framework, one that will hopefully lay out the actions needed to halt and reverse an alarming rate of biodiversity loss.

December 14 is Food Day. The Global Alliance is one of the sponsors calling on government negotiators to transform food systems to reverse biodiversity loss, achieve food security and nutrition by 2030, and ensure a healthy, resilient, sustainable, diverse, and equitable food systems — for all.

Food Day will discuss how the world’s industrial food system threatens our planet and all species, human and non-human. But more importantly, it is a time to talk about how transforming food systems is the single most important opportunity to save the planet and ourselves.

Here’s a summary of some of the stimulating conversations the Global Alliance has been having at COP15.

• Agroecology and food sovereignty could reverse and halt biodiversity loss, but meaningful change is being held back by corporate consolidation and status quo vested interests. Though food systems transformation would have profound long-term positive impacts on people and the planet, this isn’t motivating food industry lobbyists who benefit from upholding industrial practices.
• “A good example is what we’re seeing at [COP15] negotiations where the corporations have captured the governments and they’re pushing their agendas through,” says Sabrian Masinjila, Research and Advocacy Officer with the African Centre for Biodiversity. Whether it’s blocking the trade and sale of unregistered native seed varieties, excluding farmer and Indigenous voices, or jockeying for the continuation of monoculture farming, there are many players who don’t want to shift from business as usual.
• We need political will. Summarizes Lim Li Ching, Senior Researcher with the Third World Network: “We must address the perverse incentives that support and lock in industrial agriculture. This includes regulating the corporations that are responsible for perpetuating industrial agricultural approaches and a commitment to phase out industrial agriculture.”
• Accounting for the true cost of food could kickstart this political will. According to Pavan Sukhdev, an environmental economist and leader in quantifying the economic costs of ecosystems and biodiversity, one of the main reasons why farms grow food the way that they do is because it’s profitable.
• Peering behind the curtain of conventional farms reveals a range of negative health, social, and environmental consequences. True cost accounting offers a more nuanced calculation of the costs and benefits of farming practices. Pavan gives the example of Community Managed Natural Farming in Andhra Pradesh, a province in his home country of India. Here, more than 500,000 farmers have shifted from chemically intensive agriculture to natural farming that recognizes and respects the environment.
• “The techniques [farmers] deploy are as old as time itself and yet they are working,” Pavan says. “They are working to improve their incomes and the health of the farmers. They are reducing water and retaining more carbon in the soils. All of this is a win-win-win situation.”
• An equitable and effective approach to conservation requires the recognition that people also inhabit these landscapes. Sustainable use of ecosystems is possible. While we applaud efforts to conserve 30% of the earth’s land and sea through the establishment of protected areas, we must ensure that smallholder farmers, Indigenous Peoples, and communities remain able to access and steward the land. Highly biodiverse ecosystems are a place to cultivate and harvest food, forage medicines, and attain a sense of spiritual connection. Let’s not continue to make the mistake of erasing people from the land and perpetuating a “fortress approach” to biodiversity conservation.
• Sustainable use and planetary stewardship requires many to make a global mindset shift. “One of the major causes preventing the reversal of biodiversity loss is this thinking that our planet is limitless,” says Georgina Catacora-Vargas, President of the Latin American Scientific Society of Agroecology. “But it’s not true, and to hold back that loss we need to act in all dimensions of our human behaviour from a place of respect and care towards the different expressions of life, including human beings.”
• Food systems transformation requires us to work together in new, creative ways. There needs to be more collaboration across sectors and borders, connecting those with experiential wisdom and knowledge with scientists and policymakers. Forums like COP15 should provide a platform for these voices, and incorporate more diverse perspectives into the ways in which we view biodiversity.
• “We need to reform, to reframe the narrative, and to reinvent new ways of co-learning and research. We need to decolonize the approach and inform, disseminate, and engage for strong actions in favour of transformative change,” summarizes Marie-Christine Cormier-Salem, Director of Agropolis Fondation. It’s only when we recognize many forms of evidence and viewpoints that we can truly create food systems that work for everyone.

It has been a pleasure and privilege for the Global Alliance to work alongside so many colleagues at COP15. There are still a few days left, and we remain hopeful that agroecology and food systems can be included in the Global Biodiversity Framework.