Pay Farmers to Protect the Earth: UN
Urban Ecology News. 2007.11.15
Paying farmers to protect the environment - rather than just for their produce - will help ensure that increasing food demand does not destroy the planet, says UN report.
According to a report, "The State of Food and Agriculture", by United Nation's Food and Agriculture Organisation (FAO):
Paying for environmental services will link two of humanity's greatest challenges: beating poverty and safeguarding the environment.
Farming has the potential to degrade the Earth's land, water, atmosphere and biological resources - or enhance them, depending on the decisions make by the more than 2 billion people whose livelihoods depend directly on crops, livestock, fisheries or forests.
Many governments already subsidise farming but rarely do so to protect the environment. Current incentives tend to favor the production of food, fiber, and increasingly biofuels, but typically undervalue the environmental services that farmers provide.
Environmental services include: the storage of carbon dioxide in plants and soil which can help slow global warming; water provision from flood prevention and water filtration through roots and soil; and nature conservation.
Deforestation is estimated to produce at least 18 percent of global greenhouse emissions. Paying poorer countries not to chop down their forests would help reduce these emissions.
Incentives can be given to make farming less damaging, for example, encouraging shade-grown coffees rather than intensive production where forest canopies are destroyed.
Problems
Environmental payment schemes risk reducing food output for hungry populations.
Such schemes might benefit relatively wealthy landowners more often than the extremely poor who own nothing.
Links
Source: Paying farmers to protect the planet is future: UN. Robin Pomeroy & Philippa Fletcher. Reuters. 2007.11.15
Refer: The State of Food and Agriculture 2007 - Paying farmers for envirionmental services. Food and Agriculture Organisation. United Nations. 2007
Refer: Paying Farmers to Protect the Environment? Food and Agriculture Organisation. United Nations. 2007.11.15