Unlocking Public Finance for Agroecology: Catalysing the potential of agriculture in achieving the Sustainable Development Goals
Food and agricultural systems around the world are currently stuck at a crossroad. On the one hand, they are continuing to contribute a lion’s share to climate change, land degradation and the loss of biodiversity – on the other hand, the movement of people calling for a radical transformation of the way we relate to food and our environment is stronger than ever. An approach that is gaining attention worldwide among a wide range of actors as an answer to this call is agroecology.
Unfortunately, the funding for community-led initiatives or civil society organisations implementing agroecology at the grassroots level still remains insufficient. Given the potential of agroecology in achieving progress on several development objectives, this report is providing further evidence on the multiple benefits that agroecology comprises before presenting a set of recommendations for governments, (inter-)national development agencies and global financial mechanisms of how to actively support agroecology.
The eight case studies presented in this report show the successes behind a diverse range of agroecological practices in spatially and culturally diverse settings. By relating their grassroots work to the rather abstract SDGs, different civil society actors and community-led initiatives show how agroecology can constitute a pathway towards achieving sustainable development.
Cases in this publication:
Probioma, Bolivia: Microbial biocontrol agents as an agroecological contribution to
food security and sovereignty in Bolivia
Cenesta, Iran: Increasing plant genetic diversity in farmers' fields for resilient
communities and food sovereignty in Iran
Keystone Foundation, India: Mixed gains from cash and subsistence crops. Agroecology of indigenous people in the Indian' Nilgiri Mountains
Rainforest Rescue International, Sri Lanka: Analog forestry as an agroeological tool ensuring food security, biodiversity and climate resilience in Sri Lanka
Institute for Culture and Ecology, Kenya: Promoting agroforestry and indigenous seed varieties for healthy agroecosystems and livelihoods in Kenya
Enda Pronat, Senegal: Farmer-managed natural regeneration and other agroecological practices to restore soil fertility and improve agricultural production in Senegal
CAATINGA, Brazil: Coexisting with semiarid conditions: Combining agroecological practices to face climate change and desertification in Brazil’s drylands
Southern Roots Organics, UK: Productivity and resilience through a cooperative, agroecological, community-supported market garden in the United Kingdom
This publication has also been translated to German in collaboration with INKOTA-Netzwerk e.V.
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Dossier
The merits of community-based restoration
Globally, the area that is suffering desertification and land degradation is ever expanding. Unsustainable and often large-scale agricultural practices, including the copious use of pesticides and fertilisers, are a major driver of land degradation, aprocess that is further exacerbated by climate change, causing more erratic rainfall patterns, longer periods of drought and unpredictable growing seasons. This is very problematic not only for the hundreds of millions of people who directly depend on land and water for their livelihoods, but also for life on earth as a whole. It is clear that this process must be stopped and reversed, better sooner than later. But how to go about it?
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News / 16 August 2019
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.
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News / 18 March 2022
International Forests Day: the importance of forests for livelihoods and a healthy environment
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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Publication / 7 March 2022
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Event / 6 September 2019, 13:00 - 15:00
UNCCD COP14: Communities regreen the Sahel
At the UNCCD COP14 in India, which is taking place from 2-13 September 2019, Both ENDS is co-organising a number of side events.
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Alternative
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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Press release / 7 March 2022
New report: investment in agroecology necessary for healthy global food system
A recent study by Profundo for Both ENDS and Oxfam Novib shows that investment in agroecology is necessary for a sustainable and inclusive global food system. Today, some 768 million – one in ten – people suffer from hunger or a severe shortage of food on a daily basis. Conflict, economic stagnation caused by the Corona epidemic, and the climate crisis present an immediate threat to the production of and access to sufficient nutritious food. Agroecology, a form of agriculture that places small-scale farmers, the natural environment and short supply chains at the centre of food production, makes communities in developing countries more resilient and helps them combat hunger. The study concludes however that major donors, including the Netherlands, are so far providing insufficient support for agroecology.
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Publication / 22 April 2021
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Publication / 14 January 2019
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Alternative
Regreening
In various countries in the Sahel, vast tracts of land have been restored by the local population by nurturing what spontaneously springs from the soil and protecting the sprouts from cattle and hazards.
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News / 17 June 2021
Celebrating community led initiatives on World Desertification, Land Degradation and Drought Day
Today is World Desertification, Land Degradation and Drought Day. Such a day is more than needed to get attention for desertification, land degradation and drought that are threatening and hitting hundreds of millions of people in many regions throughout the world. While the causes - such as large-scale agriculture, use of pesticides, water extraction and climate change - are clear and need to be stopped, it is just as important to focus on solutions like restoration and sustainable land use.– in line with World Desertification, Land Degradation and Drought Day's theme for this year: 'Restoration. Land. Recovery. We build back better with healthy land', we will therefore especially focus on inspiring solutions during the next few weeks.
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News / 30 August 2019
Dealing with drought: the UNCCD COP in India
Worldwide, hundreds of millions of people live in areas where the soil is depleted; often they are forced to, or the region they have been living in for generations has become increasingly arid over time. The desert is advancing and this is a global problem. Opinions about the causes of land degradation and desertification, but especially about the solutions, are very divided. To discuss this, the biennial global conference on desertification will take place from 2 to 14 September. This is where policymakers, scientists, NGOs, female and male farmers and pastoralist, herders and companies from all over the world come together. Our colleague Nathalie van Haren is present at the conference and explains why.
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Dossier
Inclusive ways to sustainable and healthy food for all
All around the world small-scale farmers are using sustainable and inclusive methods to produce food. Working together with nature and each other, they provide their families and communities with sufficient and healthy food. But their production methods are under pressure from large-scale agriculture and the globally dominant system of industrial food production. Together with our partners, Both ENDS is trying to turn the tide in favour of sustainable, local practices that are mostly known as 'agro-ecological' or 'nature-inclusive'. Why are we focusing on these methods, ? Agro-ecological practices are climate-proof and inclusive and increase the opportunities for communities around the world to produce their food sustainably.
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Alternative
Inclusive Land Governance
Both ENDS works with partners around the world to ensure that land is governed fairly and inclusively and managed sustainably with priority for the rights and interests of local communities.
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News / 15 March 2021
How well is the Netherlands progressing in achieving the SDGs?
In 2015, the United Nations instigated the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs). These seventeen interrelated goals are intended to result, by 2030, in a better, fairer and more sustainable world in which no one is left behind. As a member of the UN, the Netherlands is committed to promote the SDGs and every year Statistics Netherlands (CBS) and the central government publish reports on the progress made. The initiators of 'SDG Spotlight Nederland' however believe that there is a need for an annual report on the Netherlands' performance on specific SDGs from a different perspective. Fiona Dragstra and Stefan Schuller of Both ENDS contributed to the report on 2020 and tell us here why they think it is so important.
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News / 15 November 2018
All Eyes on the Amazon: the future of protecting forests in Brazil
On Wednesday, November 14, Dutch Newspaper De Volkskrant published a joint op-ed by Both ENDS, Hivos, Greenpeace Netherlands and Witness about the deforestation in the Amazon region which is still going on rapidly, having disastrous consequences for the indigenous people who live in the area, for biodiversity and for the climate. The Netherlands is one of the largest buyers of Brazilian agricultural products such as soy and beef, and should ensure that deforestation, land grabbing and human rights violations do not occur in these production chains. Unfortunately, this is not at all the case yet.
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Publication / 28 January 2019
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News / 2 August 2019
EU unveils 'Action Plan' on Deforestation
The EU is still one of the world’s largest importers of deforestation: EU demand for commodities like soy, palm oil, beef, coffee and cacao requires millions of hectares of tropical rainforest to be cleared. This deforestation has significant biodiversity and climate impacts, and is often linked to human rights violations and violence against local communities and indigenous peoples. Both ENDS and partners have been actively lobbying the EU Commission to adopt a robust action plan to address and prevent human rights violations and deforestation ‘embodied’ in EU imports of agricultural commodities.
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News / 30 September 2021
Agroecology in Kenya: fighting water pollution while securing food production
About 75% of Kenyans earn all or part of their income from the agriculture sector which accounts for 33% of the country's Gross Domestic Product (GDP). However, agricultural productivity has stagnated in recent years. Various factors have contributed to low agricultural productivity, including an overall decline in soil fertility because of the continuous removal of nutrients by crops; poor farming practices; land degradation and overuse/misuse of synthetic fertilizers that acidify the soil. The solution against these problems is: agroecology.
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Publication / 8 April 2019