United Nations

Reports of the global land rush come to Washington

“You can have food in the stores, but will people in the community be able to buy it?” This was the question posed by Buba Khan, of ActionAid in Africa, to attendees at a Congressional briefing IATP co-hosted last week with ActionAid, Oxfam America and the Heinrich Boll Foundation.

Carbon markets: performance and alternatives

Produced for Economic Perspectives on Global Sustainability by the International Union for the Conservation of Nature (IUCN) and the Commission on Environment, Economic and Social Policies (CEESP).

Group Comments Submitted to the Subsidiary Body for Scientific and Technical Advice (SBSTA)

The following three documents were submitted to SBSTA by a coalition of groups providing comments on Decision 1/CP.18. #1 - Non-market-based approaches: Decision 1/CP. 18, paragraph 48: Views from Parties and admitted observer organizations on the matters referred to in paragraph 47 of document FCCC/CP/2012/L.14/Rev.1.

How to invest justly in small-scale agriculture

As the Rome-based Committee on World Food Security begins preparing principles for “responsible agriculture investment” (RAI), its advisory body, the High-level Panel of Experts (HLPE), gets ready to revise its report on “Smallholder agriculture investment.” It is hoped that the RAI principles, if crafted with input from small-scale food produce

From platforms to gateways: How do we address the failure of the International Climate Regime and our governments?

The 18th annual climate negotiations of the U.N. Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) just ended Saturday night.

Soil for food, not for carbon

To its most dedicated proponents at the U.N. climate talks in Doha, “climate-smart agriculture" (CSA) is the fairy tale success story on agriculture and climate change. To the World Bank, the U.N.

Climate finance debated while climate change rages

One of the many fierce debates at the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change Conference of Parties (CoP), which opened this year on November 26 in Doha, Qatar is about climate finance.

What's at stake for agriculture in COP 18?

The biggest threat for agriculture at the 18th Conference of Parties (COP) of the UNFCCC is the certain likelihood (oxymoron intended) of “non-decisions” for setting ambitious emissions reduction targets for the post-2012 period, when the Kyoto Protocol’s first

The CFS comes of age

I came away from the 39th session of UN Committee on World Food Security (CFS) last Saturday tired but hopeful. In a world where many are skeptical of global institutions' ability to solve the world’s most challenging problems—not least of which, climate change—the CFS offers a new approach to global governance, and is getting results.

A global step forward on climate and agriculture

Last week in Rome, the United Nations’ Committee on World Food Security (CFS) agreed on key principles on how governments must address the massive food security challenge that climate change brings.