Climate change: new global partnership at UN Climate Summit 2014

Worldwide attention on climate change at the UN Climate Summit in New York last 23 September. New actions to immediately tackle climate change were announced by government, business, finance and civil society leaders at the United Nations Secretary-General’s Climate Summit in New York. The initiatives for finance, farming, forests, as well as coalitions bringing together cities, businesses and citizens aim at cutting emissions and strengthening resilience to the impacts of climate change and global warming in order to enable a meaningful global agreement in 2015.

“Change is in the air. This Climate Summit has shown an entirely new, cooperative global approach to climate change,” UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon said. “The actions announced by governments, businesses, finance and civil society show that many partners are eager to confront the challenges of climate change together.” The initiatives announced at United Nations headquarters in New York range from actions that will have a profound impact on global financial markets to more local actions that will reduce the emissions of smallholder farmers.

Talking about agriculture, actions to promote Climate-Smart Agriculture were announced with the goal of helping 500 million smallholder farmers reduce their emissions and build resilience to the impacts of climate change. A newly launched Global Alliance for Climate-Smart Agriculture was supported by more than 40 governments, organizations and companies. Countries joining represent millions of farmers, at least a quarter of the world cereal production, 43 million undernourished people and 16 per cent of total agricultural greenhouse gas emissions. An Africa Climate-Smart Agriculture Alliance will help some 25 million farming households across Africa practice climate-smart agriculture by 2025. Fortune 500 companies, including Kellogg Company, McDonalds and Walmart, committed to increase the amount of food in their respective supply chains produced with climate-smart approaches.

Olio Officina