Climate Change and Organic Agriculture

Organiser:  Luis Armando Malo Peniche, IFOAM, Colombia/Germany

Speakers: Pipo Lernoud, IFOAM World Board Vice President, Argentina (Moderator)

Miguel Altieri, University of California, Berkeley, USA:  How to create resilient agroecosystemsbased on traditional knowledge

Johannes Kotschi, AGRECOL, Germany 

Clara Nicholls, University of California, Berkeley, USA:  Diversification of agroecosystems agroecosystems: an agroecological strategy against climatic variability and pest outbreaks

Jan Van Aken, Greenpeace International, Germany:  Major Greenhouse Gas Emissions in Agriculture

Juan Lopez Villar, Friends of the Earth International, Spain

Wanjiru Kamau, KOAN-Kenya Organic Agriculture Network, Kenya:  Food Miles

Outline
The workshop will discuss three important aspects that have to do with the role of organic agriculture regarding climate change. On the opening panel some experts will discuss their “good” practices on adaptation and mitigation. These can be presented as complementary rather than separated method to deal with climate change. After this, the third discussion topic will be foodmiles, currently coming from mainly western countries, including its effect on development for small holders in the South. Last but not least, to make the workshop more useful for the participants, two questions and answers’ session and participatory methods will be arranged between the speakers’ discussion panels

Objectives
The workshop’s main goal is to /inform/ participants about the role that Organic Agriculture plays as a solution to deal with climate change. At the end of the workshop, they should be aware that through the conversion from “conventional" to organic agriculture, many mechanisms against climate change are activated, that lead to adaptation and mitigation by carbon sequestration. Finally, it can be shown how other mechanisms such as “food miles” open a big discussion between the use by industrialized countries and their indirect effect on developing countries.