Solving five global challenges that will shape our future

CIFOR-ICRAF has set its sights on five, with the international community raising its eye over the chaos of the Covenant-19 epidemic and focusing on critical global action for the next decade. Key Challenges for Mankind.

These include deforestation and biodiversity; Spoiled food systems (including land and water resources); Climate change; Inconsistency; And unsustainable supply and value chains.

At CIFOR-ICRAF 2022 Science Week, 6–10 June 2022 – a mixed internal conference involving 500+ scientists from around the world – these five challenges were highlighted.

The focus was timely and urgent.

Food prices are rising; Conflict is disrupting value chains; Business leaders are being called for green cleaning; And severe weather events are affecting people, homes and livelihoods.

These broad issues are interrelated and require a systematic response.

At the opening session of the ICRF Center in Nairobi, Kenya, five experts responded to each of the challenges during the opening session of the conference, which was attended by scientists from the CIFOR Center in Bogor, Indonesia and around the world.

First, Jennifer Clap, Chair of Global Food Security and Sustainability Research and Professor at the School of Environment, Resources and Sustainability in Waterloo, Canada, spoke about global food change.

“As they are now organized, the food systems are clearly broken,” Clap said. “By all accounts, we are in the midst of a global food crisis that is hampering the supply of food, fertilizer and energy during the Ukrainian war… but even before that, food systems were in dire straits. More than 800 million people were suffering from chronic malnutrition. Increasing number in recent years; Nearly 2.4 billion people suffer from moderate to severe malnutrition; And nearly 2 billion adults are overweight.

She also listed additional issues, such as widespread micronutrient deficiencies; Unbalanced quality of food environments; Living standards in gender; Unbalanced power distribution between supply chain actors; And overstepping the boundaries of the planets, exposure to severe environmental degradation and climate change.

Clap went on to address some of the policy issues needed to address this, such as centralizing food human rights; And expand our understanding of food security to include issues such as agency and sustainability. “A bold change of diet is urgently needed,” she said. “Significant policy changes are needed to support sustainable food systems and improve our hopes of achieving sustainable development goals.”

Responding to questions, Bernard Lehman, now chair of the World Food Security Committee’s senior experts (Jennifer is now vice-chairperson), highlighted the importance of civil society agency and sustainability to address global food insecurity. Safety. “Agency” refers to the ability of people to understand their choices in how food is produced, processed, transported and eaten, and, basically, how democratic food systems are or are not.

Professor Cheikh Mbow, Director General of the Center de Suivi Ecologique – a leading regional center in West Africa working on the implementation of environmental sustainability – provides an African perspective on food security in the context of climate change, reinforcing these points.

He spoke candidly about the urgency of working to restore food security.

“We want action,” he said. “The action window is shrinking and the 2030 target is very small, so we need to take action now.”

He said the benefits of agricultural inputs such as pesticides and fertilizers to increase productivity and resilience by expanding agro-forestry system, including increasing the production of traditional crops and varieties in the state.

Protecting biodiversity will be key to ensuring the future of global food systems, said Andy Purvis, professor at the Museum of Natural History in London. He was bold in the review.

“The loss of biodiversity is here,” he said. “We guess [Intergovernmental Science–Policy Platform on Biodiversity and Ecosystem Services] Globally, one million species of animals and plants are at risk of extinction: 700 backbones and 500 plants have been lost in the past 500 years, but this trend is relatively small compared to what is happening. But it is not just because endangered species and species are dying, but often more so. ”

At the same time, the world needs to focus on protecting the environment from extinction, which means that there are many species that are endemic to disease.

“In terms of human well-being, we depend on the ecosystems that work and the biodiversity that is important for those ecosystems to function, and for this biodiversity index, the remaining percentage of natural biodiversity is important.

He said different biodiversity goals need to be balanced.

“There is no such thing as biodiversity,” he said. “Instead, we need to have big, coordinated and consistent goals.”

One of the many challenges to biodiversity at the same time is to focus on conserving areas that are rich in species and high in carbon, many of which are forests.

The cost of delay is huge and it is wise and prudent to do so now. In a work with his colleague Adriana de Palma, for example, he states: “Delaying deforestation for ten years will almost double the cost of rehabilitation and double the cost of biodiversity. Targets in 2050.

But the reality is: “We really can’t afford another declining decade.”

System Ecologist Ranil Senaike, who heads the Land Renewal Foundation, spoke about his work to support and encourage renewal by creating green value chains.

The Foundation’s novel Biosphere, Lifeforce, offers a variety of benefits at no cost by measuring positive externalities from activities such as tree planting, such as solar power, groundwater purification, operation cooling, oxygen production, and carbon sequestration.

“Basically, what we are doing is working with farmers to write down the difficult times for tree maturation and encourage them to take care of it during this time,” Senanayake said.

He also expressed the hope of expanding the project, conserving healthy soil and rehabilitating it, and measuring living biomass in general.

Throughout the session, speakers highlighted inequitable ways in which environmental, economic, and social crises affect members of the international community.

In her final presentation, Susan Caria highlighted gender equality in the field of agricultural research and development among African women. She noted that there are differences between gender at the gender level in nutrition and productivity, services and markets, as well as at the highest levels of organizations. She made a number of points for intervention, such as ensuring that women’s voices and participation are centered on shaping policies at the community level. Pushing for policies that promote equal rights and access and that respond to gender; Ensure that national institutions take appropriate action to support such changes.

One of the key issues in the discussion is a clear conflict on a global and local scale. Clearly, domestic action needs to have a global impact, but some developed countries have a significant role to play in the development of global policies and equitable access to equitable policies by imposing large amounts of food and sugar on the planet. And provide financial support to solve global problems.

When meeting environmental needs, it is important to pay attention to the specific solutions that contribute to solving global problems and work on the scaled scales.

CIFOR-ICRAF Managing Director Robert Nassie said in his closing remarks that “now is the time to focus on what needs to be done – well understood – how to do it.” The CIFOR-ICRAF strategy is designed to develop practical solutions.

This insightful opening session paves the way for CIFOR-ICRAF’s current research and practical solutions to global challenges.

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