Ensuring Transparency And Accountability Of The Global Alliance For Climate Smart Agriculture In The Perspective Of COP21

Institute for Sustainable Development and International Relations (IDDRI)

Global

In a context where most stakeholders recognise that the achievement of FNS under climate change requires changes in food systems, the role of the GACSA should foremost be that of a platform for experiences and knowledge sharing in order to:

– a. Analyse the respective strengths/weaknesses of different agriculture development models—including agroecology—with clear and explicit performance criteria;

– b. Propose explicit representations of the transformative pathways which could lead food systems to sustainably deliver FNS in contrasted situations.

To play such a role, the GACSA should be endowed with clearer accountability mechanisms with a need to:

– a. Render explicit both the objectives and the set of guidelines the projects carried out under the GACSA umbrella have to follow;

– b. Establish a monitoring system to assess the social, economic and environmental impacts of projects developed by Alliance members altogether with their compliance with the above-mentioned guidelines.

The Alliance should explicitly respond to the concerns publicly expressed by civil society organisations (CSOs), in reaction to which those CSOs could reconsider their refusal to get involved in the GACSA. The Lima Paris Action Agenda (LPAA) aims to create a broad platform to support cooperative initiatives between state and non-state actors. Its overall objective is to provide a solid ground for the implementation of the expected Paris 2015 agreement. Agriculture is among the sectors targeted by this Action Agenda. Climate change and agriculture indeed relates with respect to three sets of issues: food and nutrition security (FNS), adaptation and mitigation. In this perspective, the inclusion of the Global Alliance for Climate Smart Agriculture (GACSA/the Alliance) in the LPAA is currently discussed. The Alliance indeed aims at supporting the adoption of  » climate-smart agriculture  » (CSA), a concept coined 5 years ago  » to promote a paradigm shift in agriculture at all levels « 

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Aubert Pierre-Marie