Climate change and human rights: Adapting food production to climate change – An inclusive approach
In this column, Christian Timmermann and Georges Félix claim that we need to focus our attention on creating innovations that can be reproduces with spare local parts and as little external inputs as possible, to ensure that the innovations reach the neediest. The authors argue that to address the human right to adequate food in the upcoming years and decades, policy-makers have assigned the globalized knowledge economy the task to deliver the necessary technological solutions. However, this approach fails to include the inventive capacity and active involvement of smallholders. The authors argue that while adaptation is portrayed as solely coming from the scientific laboratories in the Global North, an inclusive approach in which smallholders are actively involved is necessary to ensure food security for the most deprived. They argue that the promotion of research schemes that include indigenous knowledge to develop locally-adapted options is needed. Three cases (in Burkino Faso, Mexico and Costa Rica, Indonesia) are presented in which farming families have come up with their own innovations to counter climatic variability while maintaining crop production.
The column is part of a Global Policy’s e-book in which different columns from academics and practitioners are bundled, leading up to the 2015 Paris Conference. Other columns of the series can also be found here. You can join the twitter debate #GPclimatechange.