Presentation by Alexander Mueller at the Global Landscapes Forum 2015, in Paris, France alongside COP21. For more information go to: www.landscapes.org.
3. The TEEBAgFood study is designed to
provide
• a comprehensive economic evaluation of the
‘eco-agri-food systems’ complex, and
• demonstrate that the economic environment
in which farmers operate is distorted by
significant externalities, both negative and
positive, and
• a lack of awareness of dependency on
natural and social capital
4. ‘The Good’ – some
examples+ Agriculture employs 1 in 3 people of the world’s
economically active labour force, or about 1.3 billion
people. For the 70 per cent of the world's poor living in rural
areas, agriculture is the main source of income and employment.
+ Smallholder farms (i.e. less than 2 hectares)
represent over 475 million of the world’s 570 million
farms and, in much of the developing world, they produce over
80 per cent of the food consumed.
+ Food production systems produce approximately
2,800 calories per person per day which is enough
to feed the world population today.
5. - Eighty per cent of new agricultural lands have replaced
tropical forests since the 1980s, a trend resulting in
significant biodiversity loss and ecosystem degradation.
- Crop and livestock farming produce between five and
six billion tons of CO2-equivalent in greenhouse gas
(GHG) emissions each year, the agricultural sector is still
expanding.
- The agricultural sector utilizes 70 per cent of the water
resources we withdraw from rivers, lakes
and aquifers, raising serious concerns in terms of
sustainability and security.
- Still 825 Mill. people are hungry.
‘The Bad’ – some examples
13. TEEB –
three different levels of action:
1. Recognizing value – identifying the wide range of benefits in
ecosystems, landscapes and biodiversity, such as provisioning,
regulating, habitat/supporting and cultural services
2. Demonstrating value – using economic tools and methods to
make nature’s services economically visible in order to support
decision-makers wishing to assess the full costs and benefits of
land-use change
3. Capturing value – incorporating ecosystem and biodiversity
benefits into decision-making through incentives and price signals
15. • The System of Rice Intensification (SRI) includes intermittent
flooding as part of the production package.
• SRI advises transplanting of young (eight to ten days old) single
rice seedlings, with care and spacing, and applying intermittent
irrigation and drainage to maintain soil aeration.
• In addition, the use of a mechanical rotary hoe or weeder to aerate
the soil and control weeds is encouraged.
Rice Study
Conventional vs SRI production
17. Increasing rice yields vs
Reducing water consumption: switching to
SRI
Senegal
– Society would save about US$ 11 million in water consumption related health
and environmental costs.
– At the same time, the rice producer community would gain a total of US$17
million through yield increases – a clear synergy.
The schema presents the study´s framework, outlining the processes and relationships that characterize eco-agri-food systems. An important element of this framework are the positive and negative externalities which will be consider to be ‘material’ to the discussion. While this schematic forms the basis for the structure of the TEEBAgFood study overall, it is more specifically intended for TEEBAF Foundations and its structure/wireframe.
Ecosystems and agricultural & food systems are typically evaluated in isolation from one another, despite their many and significant links. However, ecosystems are the ecological home in which crop and livestock systems thrive and produce food for humans, and in turn agricultural practices, food production, distribution and consumption impose several unquantified externalities on ecosystem health.
The draft wireframe for the Foundations report is based on the need to characterize the linkages between the three main components of this nexus, i.e. (i) ‘human (economic and social) systems’ (ii) ‘agriculture and food systems’, and (iii) ‘ecosystems and biodiversity’.
Science and technology provide a number of inputs to ‘agriculture and food systems’.
‘Labor’ is a factor of production but might also include more broadly ‘human capital’, i.e. human knowledge of agro-ecological processes (e.g. composting, crop livestock integration).
There are positive outputs from ‘agriculture and food systems’. Some of these are visible and generally marketed (such as ‘food’ and ‘raw materials’.) In other cases there are positive impacts that are invisible (or less visible).
There are also negative externalities from ‘agriculture and food systems’. Some affect human welfare directly, such as health impacts arising from agro-chemicals.
The final element of the schematic is the inputs provided by ‘ecosystems and biodiversity’ to ‘agriculture and food systems’. The agricultural sector is and always has been more intertwined with ecosystems (and dependent on their provisioning of services) than most other industrial sectors.
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The schema presents the study´s framework, outlining the processes and relationships that characterize eco-agri-food systems. An important element of this framework are the positive and negative externalities which will be consider to be ‘material’ to the discussion. While this schematic forms the basis for the structure of the TEEBAgFood study overall, it is more specifically intended for TEEBAF Foundations and its structure/wireframe.
Ecosystems and agricultural & food systems are typically evaluated in isolation from one another, despite their many and significant links. However, ecosystems are the ecological home in which crop and livestock systems thrive and produce food for humans, and in turn agricultural practices, food production, distribution and consumption impose several unquantified externalities on ecosystem health.
The draft wireframe for the Foundations report is based on the need to characterize the linkages between the three main components of this nexus, i.e. (i) ‘human (economic and social) systems’ (ii) ‘agriculture and food systems’, and (iii) ‘ecosystems and biodiversity’.
Science and technology provide a number of inputs to ‘agriculture and food systems’.
‘Labor’ is a factor of production but might also include more broadly ‘human capital’, i.e. human knowledge of agro-ecological processes (e.g. composting, crop livestock integration).
There are positive outputs from ‘agriculture and food systems’. Some of these are visible and generally marketed (such as ‘food’ and ‘raw materials’.) In other cases there are positive impacts that are invisible (or less visible).
There are also negative externalities from ‘agriculture and food systems’. Some affect human welfare directly, such as health impacts arising from agro-chemicals.
The final element of the schematic is the inputs provided by ‘ecosystems and biodiversity’ to ‘agriculture and food systems’. The agricultural sector is and always has been more intertwined with ecosystems (and dependent on their provisioning of services) than most other industrial sectors.
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