Opinion: "Sustainable land use needs radical policy change"
Today, an op-ed by Nathalie van Haren and Stefan Schüller was published in the Dutch national newspaper De Volkskrant about the IPCC's latest report "Climate Change and Land". Below you find the English translation.
Read the Dutch version on the website of De Volkskrant.
The IPCC's latest report, which was published last Thursday, is dealing with the current dominant model of land use. The Dutch media have managed to quickly simplify the solutions proposed by the report to "We consumers must eat less meat." The IPCC report, however, proposes a range of fundamental solutions that go far beyond eating or not eating meat, and specifies how we should proceed to speed up the transition to sustainable land use.
The report confirms that around the world, there are sustainable land use methods in place that show that food can be grown while taking climate change and healthy soils into account. These production methods are successful because local land users have a central role, so that the methods fit within the social and ecological context. This leads to a diverse range of sustainable, locally-driven initiatives such as agroforestry in Costa Rica, the harvesting of non-timber forest products in India and small-scale rooibos tea from South Africa. Closer to home there are food forests such as Ketelbroek near Groesbeek, about which de Volkskrant recently wrote.
Regreening the Sahel
A strong example of sustainable land use that responds to the challenges of climate change is the regreening of the Sahel. Farmers (f / m) and nomadic livestock farmers in Niger, Senegal, Mali and Burkina Faso have shown that by protecting trees and bushes, that spontaneously sprout from the soil, against dangers such as grazing cattle and desert winds, desertification can be turned around and the soil recovers. This way food can be grown again in the dry Sahel. Not only do the trees bear fruit for the farmers' own use or for the market, they also provide shade help manage the groundwater levels, which is good for the yield of the fields between the trees, helps livestock survive and prevents further land degradation.
The core message of the IPCC is that sustainable forms of agriculture focus on local land users. Local support and land rights are crucial. After all, if people have control and certainty over their land use and see that what they do is bearing fruit, they will invest more time and energy in trees and soil fertility.
Negative impacts of Dutch policies
Governments, international companies, banks and investment funds should therefore support these local initiatives instead of investing in large-scale solutions designed and imposed from a head office. And that offers a challenge for the Netherlands, far beyond the simple recommendation to eat less meat. Our agricultural and foreign trade and investment policies currently have a major negative impact on people and the environment around the world. The Netherlands is one of the largest importers of soy (for animal feed) and palm oil (for food, cosmetics and cleaning products) in the world. Its production leads to large-scale deforestation, land degradation and water pollution in countries such as Brazil and Indonesia, and puts great pressure on local communities that manage their land sustainably. In the light of this IPCC report, Dutch diplomatic support for the "soy corridor" in Jair Bolsonaro's Brazil is an incomprehensible choice.
Local land users worldwide, with their various methods of sustainable land use, show us how things can be done differently. With the IPCC report at hand, policymakers inside and outside the Netherlands can feel supported to realise a true transition to fair and sustainable land use, which will keep the earth livable, now and in the future.
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Event / 5 September 2019, 13:00 - 15:00
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Publication / 11 July 2019
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News / 18 March 2022
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Today is International Day of Forests. An ever more important day, as the amount of forest and forested area's on this globe is shrinking at a fast pace. One the main causes is our ever increasing demand for products such as soy and palm oil from area's that have been deforested for their cultivation. The current proposed EU-deforestation law to prevent this, is not strict enough and does not include the protection of other crucial natural areas such as grasslands, savannas and swamps, as well as the human rights of the millions of people living in these area's. During these past few weeks we therefore participated in the campaign #Together4Forests, calling on citizens to send a letter to their own responsible ministers. The campaign paid off: almost 54,000 letters were sent to European ministers across the European Union, demanding a strict forest law that guarantees the import of only deforestation-free products in Europe.
To celebrate this International Day of Forests, we would like to emphasise the great value of forests and other natural areas, directly or indirectly, for the livelihoods of at least 2 billion people. Below, we selected some examples that show how, throughout the world, local communities use many different ways to collect and produce food and other natural products in a sustainable way, while protecting and restoring the forests and forested area's they are so dependent upon.
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News / 17 June 2021
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News / 10 August 2021
Opinion: The genie will escape from the bottle if we don’t change our approach to nature
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Publication / 28 January 2019
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Event / 12 April 2019, 14:15 - 15:30
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'Positive vibes from the Sahel: from regreening to slam poetry'
Facilitator: Andrew Makkinga
The Sahel region from Chad to Senegal is often seen in the Netherlands as an immensely dry, infertile area where extremists and smugglers serve and where hunger thrives. But there is so much more to tell about the Sahel region.
Over the last decades, a large number of positive social initiatives have been taken up both in the cities and in rural areas. Initiatives that create and stimulate self-esteem, culture, education, climate resilience and prosperity.
Young people are often the driving force behind these movements, which is not surprising considering that almost 70 percent of the population in a country like Niger is under the age of 25.
In this workshop Both ENDS and Voice4Thought want to tell the other story of the Sahel by highlighting some of these positive initiatives, and by showing how they are interlinked and part of a larger, bottom up movement in this area.
Hope to see you there!
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Event / 25 April 2022, 10:00 - 11:30
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Event / 11 September 2019, 08:00 - 10:00
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News / 14 March 2021
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Dossier /
Rich Forests
Rich Forests promotes a sustainable and future-proof production system and supports, among other things, the transformation of degraded land into food forests. With this, people provide for their livelihood, increase their income and at the same time restore soil and biodiversity.
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News / 10 May 2022
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News / 15 June 2023
Combating drought by protecting saplings
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News / 23 November 2018
Yacouba Sawadogo receives Right Livelihood Award!
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