Washington, Mar 16 (EFE).- The Inter-American Institute for Cooperation on Agriculture (IICA) wants to bring a “continental alliance” on agriculture to COP28 in Dubai, so it hopes to bring together more ministers from the region to negotiate it before the climate summit starts in November.
This was defended by the Director General of IICA, Manuel Otero, in an interview with EFE, during his visit to Washington, where he will meet with the US Undersecretary for Agriculture, Alexis Taylor, and the US Ambassador to the Organization of American States (OAS), Francisco Mora, among other personalities, to “establish a common position” for COP28.
This year’s Climate Summit will be held from November 30 to December 12 in Dubai and will be preceded by a meeting of Ministers of Agriculture organized by IICA every two years.
Otero assured that they are working so that most of the region’s Ministers of Agriculture can participate in this ministerial conference, with the aim of bringing it “closer” to the environmental issues of COP28.
The director pointed out that in the last meeting the presence of 13 Ministers of Agriculture was achieved, in addition to reaching a consensus for the Climate Summit that “no other continent in the world achieved.”
Now the objective is to increase the participation to 34 ministers and thus achieve a “union” of the continent in terms of agriculture before COP28.
“No one can be saved alone, not even the most powerful country on Earth. We all have to act knowing that the problems are shared and that the solutions require a collective approach”, claimed Otero.
In this sense, the visit to Washington this week will serve to “explain the scope of this ministerial conference”, as well as “to raise the need for a continental alliance to continue transforming and strengthening agri-food systems”.
According to Otero, one of the main challenges facing the region is “producing more with less inputs”, conserving biodiversity and taking family farmers as “active subjects of their own transformation”.
He also claimed the role of cell phones for the integration of rural areas, which is why IICA is preparing other actions such as events on digital agriculture before the conference of ministers.
This same Thursday, a meeting of the Mercosur agriculture ministers is being held to discuss the effects of the drought and how to combat the lack of water: “We need better genetics resistant to droughts,” he said.
This is another of the points to be addressed in common as a continent, since “drought does not respect, it passes from one country to another and affects an entire ecosystem.”
The Council for the Global Future of the Davos Forum, of which Otero is a member, will work over the next few days on the transformation of agriculture, which today has a series of “bottlenecks” such as the fertilizer crisis and the need for a “new water culture”.
For Otero, the future involves “building bridges with Africa and Asia” and “promoting collective action” through his commitment to “generate a consensus to go to COP28.”
Only in this way, it will be possible to make a call to the international community for the transformation of food systems and “achieve change” in the region.
