Africa: Farmers Could Earn 'Green' Money

Windhoek

Lack of information is the main obstacle to paying African farmers as an incentive to protect the environment, according to a UN Food and Agriculture Organisation report.

Payment for environmental services (PES) has been applied in parts of the world since the 1980s, and could help to address growing concerns about climate change, biodiversity loss and water supply, suggested 'The State of Food and Agriculture', a UN Food and Agriculture Organisation (FAO) report released on Thursday.

Applying PES in Africa could be critical in mitigating some of the impact of climate change, said Keith Wiebe, chief of FAO's Comparative Agriculture Development Service and one of the main contributors to the report.

Hundreds of payment programmes for environmental services are being implemented around the world, mainly as part of forest conservation initiatives. "But relatively few programmes for environmental services have targeted farmers and agricultural lands in developing countries," the report said. Payments can take a variety of forms as voluntary transactions involving farmers, communities, taxpayers, consumers, corporations and governments; they can also be direct payments by governments to producers or indirect transfers by means of surcharges paid by consumers willing to do so.

"Agriculture employs more people and uses more land and water than any other human activity," said FAO Director-General Jacques Diouf in his foreword to the report. Overall, the future does not look rosy. Projections by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change expect food production to halve by 2020; about 25 per cent of Africa's population do not have easy access to water, a figure that is expected to jump by another 50 million by 2020 and more than double by 2050. Agriculture is a notable source of the three major greenhouse gases: carbon dioxide, methane and nitrous oxide. "Carbon dioxide is most significant in relation to global warming, but methane and nitrous oxide also make substantial contributions," the FAO report noted.
"Agricultural activities and land-use changes contribute about one-third of the total carbon dioxide emissions and are the largest sources of methane (from livestock and flooded rice production) and nitrous oxide (primarily from application of inorganic nitrogenous fertiliser)."

Africa's mostly small-scale or subsistence farmers are not responsible for "carbon emissions on the same scale" as their counterparts in the developed world or Asia, "but through tree planting or improved agricultural practices - such as conservation agriculture - they can offset carbon emitted elsewhere and be compensated through payments for environmental services," said Wiebe.

Less deforestation, planting more trees, reducing tillage, increasing soil cover and improving grassland management could, for example, lead over two billion tonnes of carbon being stored in around 50 countries between 2003 and 2012, the FAO said.