An action agenda is drawn up at the Glasgow climate change international summit!
Yes, it looks to be the only hope for standing up to the Climate Change Challenge facing the world. The stark message from the world leaders from the COP 26 Summit the just concluded Glasgow summit of climate change meet gives hope and raises expectations of the world leaders who assembled for the G-26 nation’s summit during the October-November dates in a sense historical and timely.
The unasked question is whether the world leaders are ready to do the near-impossible targets. After all the cynical reality is that the big powers are the big polluters also. And there would be heavy resistance from the big corporates and other vested interests.
We have been living beyond our means and this reality hit the big powers more than the other nations.
One happy outcome of the summit is the new emphasis on agriculture. We now seem to realize and wake up for the climate change threat and also the pollution and other threats to our living environment. The summit has had another important message. It is for the future of agriculture in almost every other small and middle-level country across all continents.
Farming, as everyone knows, constitutes. 14 percent of our economy. The annual greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions come from agriculture and agri-related activities like livestock. 55 percent of this harmful gas comes from the livestock sector.
The agri experts who met at the summit have put forward many suggestions for agri reforms. Like Conservation farming and zero budget farming and many more suggestions. The new suggestions are in fact not anymore new but some reiteration of old suggestions only like climate resistance seeds etc.
The many international centers engaged in agriculture and also various branches of farming in various climate zones are all doing very constructive research and also new ideas like the latest rice research institutes. rice seeds etc give hope. But here we like to draw one critical aspect of farming in the new century.
Farming has many agendas. One is the feeding of the world’s poor. Hunger and poverty are also great realities in many parts of the world.
So how to balance the conflicting targets, feeding the poor and towards this goal we have to produce and distribute and trade in agricultural fields on an equitable basis. Towards this goal we have to work with the UN organizations and the UN itself has to be strengthened and big power politics won’t be of much help.
More and innovative research in agri field is also a crying goal. Big agri economies like India and other countries have to turn their attention. For more and bigger research budgets. In the end, there must be bigger publicity and propaganda. For wider awareness on the high priority for agriculture in the countries. Development agenda, agriculture and its future hold such a critical priority that we have to concentrate on rural development issues too.
Climate change, it is said has a political agenda. From the 1648 Peace of Westphalia to this day the concept of sovereignty almost limited the states’ Powers. Yet wars didn’t go away. Today the climate change has disrupted the states’ powers and anyone can enter into other territories and cause wars. This, anyone, can’t do, thanks to the climate threat.
This realization must be fed through the countries only through UN agencies. New ideas and new strategies must be welcomed by the wider world. Let us hope this realization can be brought about in our generation. That would be a great day, indeed!
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