Many of the world’s leading drug manufacturers may be leaking antibiotics from their factories into the environment, according to a new report from a drug industry watchdog. This risks creating more superbugs.

The report surveyed household-name pharmaceutical giants like GSK, Novartis and Roche as well as generic companies which make non-branded products for the NHS and other health systems.

None of the 18 companies polled would reveal how much antibiotic discharge they release into the environment, according to the independent report from Access to Medicines Foundation. Only eight said they set limits for how much could be released in wastewater.

Little progress

Only one disclosed the name of its suppliers – a move which is seen as important as it would make companies accountable for their environmental practices.

Dr Mark Holmes, a veterinary scientist at the University of Cambridge, said: “Antibiotic resistance is complex but if we are to deal with this challenge every sector must do their bit.

“The pharmaceutical industry has been a key player in improving public health but a failure to address environmental impacts of antibiotic pollution could undo much of their good work.”

Changing Markets, an NGO which has campaigned on the issue of pharmaceutical waste, added: “Pharmaceutical companies have a clear responsibility to tackle pollution in their supply chains, not least because of the considerable human health impacts associated with untreated waste from pharma manufacturing, prime among the creation of drug-resistant bacteria.

“From our own research in India and China, where most of the world’s generic drugs are made, we know this is an ongoing problem and that very little progress is happening on the ground.

Higher standards

“As the report also highlights, there is a crying lack of transparency about pharmaceutical supply chains which means that we know practically nothing about where our drugs are made. This is a scandal and pharmaceutical companies will face increasing calls to do something about it.”

“There is a crying lack of transparency about pharmaceutical supply chains which means that we know practically nothing about where our drugs are made. This is a scandal.”

Antibiotic waste from pharmaceutical manufacturing leaking into the environment is a neglected driver of antimicrobial resistance – or AMR – according to a global report published in 2016 by ex-finance minister Lord Jim O’Neill.

This is because residues of antibiotics in the environment expose bacteria to levels of the drugs that fuel the emergence of resistance. The ‘superbugs’ that form as a result can spread all over the world.

To tackle the problem, Lord O’Neill called for regulators to set minimum standards around the release of waste and for manufacturers to drive higher standards through their supply chains.

Resistant bacteria

AMR has been described as one of the greatest health problems facing the world. Without effective antibiotics, infections become more difficult to treat and common medical procedures like joint replacements, C sections and chemotherapy care for cancer – which rely on the drugs to kill infection – could become too risky to carry out.

Last year the Bureau of Investigative Journalism reported on a study which revealed ‘excessively high’ levels of antimicrobial drugs – as well as superbugs – in waste water from a major drug production hub in the Indian city of Hyderabad.

The quantities found were strong enough to treat patients, scientists said. This followed an earlier report by the i and the Bureau of resistant bacteria in the wastewater of a factory there which supplies the NHS with antibiotics.

Table shows which pharmaceutical companies have a strategy to minimise the environmental impact of antibiotic discharge from manufacturing; whether they audit their own plants, third party suppliers or external waste treatment plants which they use to dispose of their waste; and whether they set limits for the amount of antibiotic discharge is released into wastewater (either at their own plants or across external suppliers and external waste treatment plants). It shows only eight companies have set limits for antibiotic discharge, and in the majority of cases these do not apply across their entire supply chains. Antimicrobial Resistance Benchmark Report 2018 by the Access to Medicines Foundation 

The Antimicrobial Resistant Benchmark 2018 report – released today at the World Economic Forum conference in DAVOS – evaluated how a cross-section of the pharmaceutical industry are responding to the threat of AMR.

It found none disclosed their actual discharge levels – information the authors said is ‘valuable and vital’ as it could allow governments and researchers to understand the relationship between discharge and the development of superbugs.

Considerable influence

Three generic drug companies – Cipla, Lupin and Sun Pharma – did not show any evidence of a strategy to minimise the impact of their antibiotic manufacturing on the environment, the report found, although Cipla promised to develop one this year.

Of particular concern were external companies that work for the main drug companies. Third-party companies manufacture and supply most drug firms with the key components of antibiotics, known as active pharmaceutical ingredients (APIs); and external waste treatment plants, which many drug companies use to process their discharge from antibiotic manufacturing. Some companies have on-site wastewater-treatment.

Only eight companies set discharge limits for antibiotic waste, and for half the companies these limits only apply to their own sites, rather than their suppliers’ too. Only two companies  – GSK and Novartis – require their external waste treatment plants to follow their limits. Sanofi and Roche, for example, do not monitor the discharge made by their external waste treatment plants, the report notes.

The Medicines Company was the only one willing to identify its third-party manufacturers, a move the report said would enable governments and researchers to assess the impact of individual manufacturers on antibiotic resistance.

The report notes that pharmaceutical companies that sell antibiotics “may be able to exert considerable influence over the environmental risk management of their suppliers.”

The large pharmaceuticals polled were GSK, Johnson and Johnson, Merck & Co, Novartis, Pfizer, Roche, Sanofi, Shinogi. The generic companies were Aspen, Aurobindo, Cipla, Dr Reddy’s, Fresenius Kabi, Lupin, Macleods, Mylan, Sun Pharma and Teva.

Access to Medicines is an Amsterdam-based NGO that receives funding from the UK Government, the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation and the Dutch Ministry of Foreign Affairs.

These Authors

Madlen Davies is an award-winning journalist who writes about health, food, the environment and international development.
She is investigating antimicrobial resistance at the Bureau of Investigative Journalism. 

Sam Loewenberg is a journalist who covers the intersection of global health, politics, and public policy. He was a 2012 Nieman Fellow at Harvard University. 

Investigative journalism is vital for democracy. Help the Bureau of Investigative Journalism to tell the stories that matter. Join its new Friends of the Bureau scheme. Find out more about supporting its work. 

The climate change target of 1.5°C of average global temperature rises will be breached in less than two decades unless immediate action is taken and carbon emissions fall significantly below today’s rate, according to leading researchers.

Dr Philip Goodwin from the University of Southampton and Professor Ric Williams from the University of Liverpool have projected that the earth’s global average temperature is likely to rise by 1.5°C within the next 17-18 years, and by 2.0°C in 35-41 years respectively under business as usual. The findings are set out in their latest paper, published in the February issue of Nature Geoscience. 

These new projections could be the catalyst the world has sought to determine how best to meet its obligations to reduce carbon emissions and better manage global warming as defined by the Paris Agreement.

New technologies

Dr Goodwin and Professor Williams advise that cumulative carbon emissions needed to remain below 195-205 PgC (from the start of 2017) to deliver a likely chance of meeting the 1.5°C warming target while a 2°C warming target requires emissions to remain below 395-455 PgC.

“Immediate action is required to develop a carbon-neutral or carbon-negative future or, alternatively, prepare adaptation strategies for the effects of a warmer climate,” said Dr Goodwin, Lecturer in Oceanography and Climate at Southampton.

“Our latest research uses a combination of a model and historical data to constrain estimates of how long we have until 1.5°C or 2°C warming occurs. We’ve narrowed the uncertainty in surface warming projections by generating thousands of climate simulations that each closely match observational records for nine key climate metrics, including warming and ocean heat content.”

Professor Williams, chair in Ocean Sciences at Liverpool, added: “This study is important by providing a narrower window of how much carbon we may emit before reaching 1.5°C or 2°C warming.

“There is a real need to take action now in developing and adopting the new technologies to move to a more carbon-efficient or carbon-neutral future as we only have a limited window before reaching these warming targets.”

The next generations

This work is particularly timely given the work this year of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) to develop a Special Report on the Impacts of global warming of 1.5oC above pre-industrial levels.

Through their previous research published in December 2014, Dr Goodwin and Professor Williams were able to provide a single equation connecting global warming to the amount of carbon emitted, warning of the detrimental effects of the nearly irreversible nature of carbon emissions for global warming.

This latest research reinforces their previous conclusions that “the more cumulative carbon emissions are allowed to increase, the more global surface warming will also increase. This policy implication reinforces the need to develop carbon capture techniques to limit the warming for the next generations.”

The paper ‘Pathways to 1.5 and 2 °C warming based on observational and geological constraints’ is published in the February 2018 issue of Nature Geoscience.  

This Author

Brendan Montague is editor of The Ecologist, and tweets at @EcoMontague. This article is based on a press release from the Universities of Southampton. 

The climate change target of 1.5°C of average global temperature rises will be breached in less than two decades unless immediate action is taken and carbon emissions fall significantly below today’s rate, according to leading researchers.

Dr Philip Goodwin from the University of Southampton and Professor Ric Williams from the University of Liverpool have projected that the earth’s global average temperature is likely to rise by 1.5°C within the next 17-18 years, and by 2.0°C in 35-41 years respectively under business as usual. The findings are set out in their latest paper, published in the February issue of Nature Geoscience. 

These new projections could be the catalyst the world has sought to determine how best to meet its obligations to reduce carbon emissions and better manage global warming as defined by the Paris Agreement.

New technologies

Dr Goodwin and Professor Williams advise that cumulative carbon emissions needed to remain below 195-205 PgC (from the start of 2017) to deliver a likely chance of meeting the 1.5°C warming target while a 2°C warming target requires emissions to remain below 395-455 PgC.

“Immediate action is required to develop a carbon-neutral or carbon-negative future or, alternatively, prepare adaptation strategies for the effects of a warmer climate,” said Dr Goodwin, Lecturer in Oceanography and Climate at Southampton.

“Our latest research uses a combination of a model and historical data to constrain estimates of how long we have until 1.5°C or 2°C warming occurs. We’ve narrowed the uncertainty in surface warming projections by generating thousands of climate simulations that each closely match observational records for nine key climate metrics, including warming and ocean heat content.”

Professor Williams, chair in Ocean Sciences at Liverpool, added: “This study is important by providing a narrower window of how much carbon we may emit before reaching 1.5°C or 2°C warming.

“There is a real need to take action now in developing and adopting the new technologies to move to a more carbon-efficient or carbon-neutral future as we only have a limited window before reaching these warming targets.”

The next generations

This work is particularly timely given the work this year of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) to develop a Special Report on the Impacts of global warming of 1.5oC above pre-industrial levels.

Through their previous research published in December 2014, Dr Goodwin and Professor Williams were able to provide a single equation connecting global warming to the amount of carbon emitted, warning of the detrimental effects of the nearly irreversible nature of carbon emissions for global warming.

This latest research reinforces their previous conclusions that “the more cumulative carbon emissions are allowed to increase, the more global surface warming will also increase. This policy implication reinforces the need to develop carbon capture techniques to limit the warming for the next generations.”

The paper ‘Pathways to 1.5 and 2 °C warming based on observational and geological constraints’ is published in the February 2018 issue of Nature Geoscience.  

This Author

Brendan Montague is editor of The Ecologist, and tweets at @EcoMontague. This article is based on a press release from the Universities of Southampton. 

The climate change target of 1.5°C of average global temperature rises will be breached in less than two decades unless immediate action is taken and carbon emissions fall significantly below today’s rate, according to leading researchers.

Dr Philip Goodwin from the University of Southampton and Professor Ric Williams from the University of Liverpool have projected that the earth’s global average temperature is likely to rise by 1.5°C within the next 17-18 years, and by 2.0°C in 35-41 years respectively under business as usual. The findings are set out in their latest paper, published in the February issue of Nature Geoscience. 

These new projections could be the catalyst the world has sought to determine how best to meet its obligations to reduce carbon emissions and better manage global warming as defined by the Paris Agreement.

New technologies

Dr Goodwin and Professor Williams advise that cumulative carbon emissions needed to remain below 195-205 PgC (from the start of 2017) to deliver a likely chance of meeting the 1.5°C warming target while a 2°C warming target requires emissions to remain below 395-455 PgC.

“Immediate action is required to develop a carbon-neutral or carbon-negative future or, alternatively, prepare adaptation strategies for the effects of a warmer climate,” said Dr Goodwin, Lecturer in Oceanography and Climate at Southampton.

“Our latest research uses a combination of a model and historical data to constrain estimates of how long we have until 1.5°C or 2°C warming occurs. We’ve narrowed the uncertainty in surface warming projections by generating thousands of climate simulations that each closely match observational records for nine key climate metrics, including warming and ocean heat content.”

Professor Williams, chair in Ocean Sciences at Liverpool, added: “This study is important by providing a narrower window of how much carbon we may emit before reaching 1.5°C or 2°C warming.

“There is a real need to take action now in developing and adopting the new technologies to move to a more carbon-efficient or carbon-neutral future as we only have a limited window before reaching these warming targets.”

The next generations

This work is particularly timely given the work this year of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) to develop a Special Report on the Impacts of global warming of 1.5oC above pre-industrial levels.

Through their previous research published in December 2014, Dr Goodwin and Professor Williams were able to provide a single equation connecting global warming to the amount of carbon emitted, warning of the detrimental effects of the nearly irreversible nature of carbon emissions for global warming.

This latest research reinforces their previous conclusions that “the more cumulative carbon emissions are allowed to increase, the more global surface warming will also increase. This policy implication reinforces the need to develop carbon capture techniques to limit the warming for the next generations.”

The paper ‘Pathways to 1.5 and 2 °C warming based on observational and geological constraints’ is published in the February 2018 issue of Nature Geoscience.  

This Author

Brendan Montague is editor of The Ecologist, and tweets at @EcoMontague. This article is based on a press release from the Universities of Southampton. 

The climate change target of 1.5°C of average global temperature rises will be breached in less than two decades unless immediate action is taken and carbon emissions fall significantly below today’s rate, according to leading researchers.

Dr Philip Goodwin from the University of Southampton and Professor Ric Williams from the University of Liverpool have projected that the earth’s global average temperature is likely to rise by 1.5°C within the next 17-18 years, and by 2.0°C in 35-41 years respectively under business as usual. The findings are set out in their latest paper, published in the February issue of Nature Geoscience. 

These new projections could be the catalyst the world has sought to determine how best to meet its obligations to reduce carbon emissions and better manage global warming as defined by the Paris Agreement.

New technologies

Dr Goodwin and Professor Williams advise that cumulative carbon emissions needed to remain below 195-205 PgC (from the start of 2017) to deliver a likely chance of meeting the 1.5°C warming target while a 2°C warming target requires emissions to remain below 395-455 PgC.

“Immediate action is required to develop a carbon-neutral or carbon-negative future or, alternatively, prepare adaptation strategies for the effects of a warmer climate,” said Dr Goodwin, Lecturer in Oceanography and Climate at Southampton.

“Our latest research uses a combination of a model and historical data to constrain estimates of how long we have until 1.5°C or 2°C warming occurs. We’ve narrowed the uncertainty in surface warming projections by generating thousands of climate simulations that each closely match observational records for nine key climate metrics, including warming and ocean heat content.”

Professor Williams, chair in Ocean Sciences at Liverpool, added: “This study is important by providing a narrower window of how much carbon we may emit before reaching 1.5°C or 2°C warming.

“There is a real need to take action now in developing and adopting the new technologies to move to a more carbon-efficient or carbon-neutral future as we only have a limited window before reaching these warming targets.”

The next generations

This work is particularly timely given the work this year of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) to develop a Special Report on the Impacts of global warming of 1.5oC above pre-industrial levels.

Through their previous research published in December 2014, Dr Goodwin and Professor Williams were able to provide a single equation connecting global warming to the amount of carbon emitted, warning of the detrimental effects of the nearly irreversible nature of carbon emissions for global warming.

This latest research reinforces their previous conclusions that “the more cumulative carbon emissions are allowed to increase, the more global surface warming will also increase. This policy implication reinforces the need to develop carbon capture techniques to limit the warming for the next generations.”

The paper ‘Pathways to 1.5 and 2 °C warming based on observational and geological constraints’ is published in the February 2018 issue of Nature Geoscience.  

This Author

Brendan Montague is editor of The Ecologist, and tweets at @EcoMontague. This article is based on a press release from the Universities of Southampton. 

The climate change target of 1.5°C of average global temperature rises will be breached in less than two decades unless immediate action is taken and carbon emissions fall significantly below today’s rate, according to leading researchers.

Dr Philip Goodwin from the University of Southampton and Professor Ric Williams from the University of Liverpool have projected that the earth’s global average temperature is likely to rise by 1.5°C within the next 17-18 years, and by 2.0°C in 35-41 years respectively under business as usual. The findings are set out in their latest paper, published in the February issue of Nature Geoscience. 

These new projections could be the catalyst the world has sought to determine how best to meet its obligations to reduce carbon emissions and better manage global warming as defined by the Paris Agreement.

New technologies

Dr Goodwin and Professor Williams advise that cumulative carbon emissions needed to remain below 195-205 PgC (from the start of 2017) to deliver a likely chance of meeting the 1.5°C warming target while a 2°C warming target requires emissions to remain below 395-455 PgC.

“Immediate action is required to develop a carbon-neutral or carbon-negative future or, alternatively, prepare adaptation strategies for the effects of a warmer climate,” said Dr Goodwin, Lecturer in Oceanography and Climate at Southampton.

“Our latest research uses a combination of a model and historical data to constrain estimates of how long we have until 1.5°C or 2°C warming occurs. We’ve narrowed the uncertainty in surface warming projections by generating thousands of climate simulations that each closely match observational records for nine key climate metrics, including warming and ocean heat content.”

Professor Williams, chair in Ocean Sciences at Liverpool, added: “This study is important by providing a narrower window of how much carbon we may emit before reaching 1.5°C or 2°C warming.

“There is a real need to take action now in developing and adopting the new technologies to move to a more carbon-efficient or carbon-neutral future as we only have a limited window before reaching these warming targets.”

The next generations

This work is particularly timely given the work this year of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) to develop a Special Report on the Impacts of global warming of 1.5oC above pre-industrial levels.

Through their previous research published in December 2014, Dr Goodwin and Professor Williams were able to provide a single equation connecting global warming to the amount of carbon emitted, warning of the detrimental effects of the nearly irreversible nature of carbon emissions for global warming.

This latest research reinforces their previous conclusions that “the more cumulative carbon emissions are allowed to increase, the more global surface warming will also increase. This policy implication reinforces the need to develop carbon capture techniques to limit the warming for the next generations.”

The paper ‘Pathways to 1.5 and 2 °C warming based on observational and geological constraints’ is published in the February 2018 issue of Nature Geoscience.  

This Author

Brendan Montague is editor of The Ecologist, and tweets at @EcoMontague. This article is based on a press release from the Universities of Southampton. 

Having driven 45 minutes outside Tallinn early on a Monday morning, one thing is very clear. There are a lot of trees in Estonia. And not just any trees. The side of the motorway is lined with dense clusters of pine and spruce as we head towards Lahemaa National Park. 

In an odd quirk of history, the Lahemaa National Park wasn’t with the borders of what we would call Russia today, but in one of its far-flung outposts, Estonia, which was under Soviet occupation until 1991. 

Founded in 1971, Lahemaa was the first national park of the Soviet era (when Estonia was still under USSR occupation) and remains protected to this day. Indeed, its foundation was partly designed to protect the country’s vast forest areas. 

Cutting the forests

The country’s official tourist board puts Estonia’s forest areas at 50 percent of the country’s territory, with 30 percent protected. Though not inaccurate, per se, there are caveats to this statistic. 

Artur Talvik – campaigner, filmmaker and now leader of the Estonian Freedom Party – greets me in his office at the Estonian parliament. He says: “Half of the land is forest, and half of it is state owned. But forest land doesn’t mean it’s covered with trees… when you cut all the trees down, it’s still forest land. That’s the tricky thing in the sense of statistics.”

Talvik tells me that there is more forest now than in years gone by. But, he adds: “The pressure [on] the forest is absolutely bigger. Recently, Parliament passed a law which says that you can cut younger pine trees and spruce trees. Earlier the age was 80 minimum. Now it is lowered to 60. Which means that it’s also moving towards the industrial forests”. 

The activist is keen to clarify that his opposition is not to the cutting down of trees under any circumstances – he loves high-quality wooden furniture and owns a wood-built home – but to the lower quality of the forests that are growing, and an imbalance between areas that are heavily protected and those which are not. 

All the while, the level of cutting in areas that are used for felling is quite severe. “The problem we see today is that… they loosen the regulations of cutting the forests in the national park areas or the protected areas and that is very strange…  

Greener mentality

“The machinery is very advanced now, so they can cut quickly and aggressively. The machinery is very expensive, so it should work 24 hours [a day]. This is also dangerous.” 

While Talvik is intricately wrapped up in the political debate that rage over Estonian forests, there are concerns from those outside mainstream politics as well. 

Siim Kuresoo, deputy chairman of the Board for the Estonian Nature Foundation (ELF) told The Ecologist: “In my view, all elements of sustainable forestry are presented in [the] Estonian forest policy, but they are currently badly under balanced in favour of economic interests of intensive logging oriented forest owners and wood industries. 

“The current level and methods of logging cannot be called sustainable in the true meaning of this word, as they harm biodiversity… As a very forested country with distinct age patterns in these forests, we have had a unique chance to maximize all goods and benefits that forests have to offer – biodiversity, mitigating climate change, offering sustainable and meaningful jobs and self-realisation for rural communities.”

Kuresoo raises concerns over risks faced by Estonia’s forests – while arguing that there are high hopes for the future, with a nascent, greener mentality among the country’s population.

Wood products

“There are new threats in runaway bio-energy developments, as well as other wood incentive technologies, that create a need for even stronger safeguards than previously needed,” he says, echoing Talvik. 

A protest on 15th December last year against overlogging saw many people descend on the Estonian parliament. 

Their fears seemingly bolstered by an OECD (2017) report on Estonia’s environmental performance, with details of logging in the country. It reveals a figure of 91 percent of fellings related to annual productive capacity, putting Estonia behind only Belgium in its use of forests as a resource.

The report states: “Forests are used intensively. Over the past decade, logging increased considerably, providing for a forestry industry that represents five percent of exports. Estonia needs to further promote sustainable forestry practices through better co-operation between relevant ministries and dissemination of knowledge among private forest owners.”  

However, there are those who also consider logging of Estonian forests to be sustaiable. Henrik Välja, managing director of the Estonian Forest and Wood Industries Association, a non-profit which aims to promote Estonia’s forests industry abroad and boost productivity, believes the industry is in good health. 

He says: “Forests and wood products play a huge role in the Estonian economy, accounting for five percent GDP and six per cent of employment.” 

Continued debate

He notes that 80 per cent of jobs in the forest industries are located in rural areas, those less likely to have reaped the economic benefits of Estonia’s emergence as a tech hub, often dubbed the Silicon Valley of Europe. 

“I personally believe in the multifunctionality of forests. We need to ensure that the different roles of forests are in good health: biodiversity, recreational [uses] and providing raw materials… we should aim to fill the different roles in the same forest. 

“For that we need to seek a balance between regulations, restrictions and forest owners’ right to use his/hers land to earn a living and provide the society raw material for adding value. I also believe this will be an endless process as the expectations of society change over time but in my opinion, Estonian forests are well maintained.”

With pressures coming from numerous sides (domestic workers in need of livelihoods, international and local observers worried about the loss of forests for ecological, cultural and social reasons), it remains hard to pinpoint just how acute the issue the felling of forests in Estonia is. 

However, with a €1bn paper mill set to open in Tartu, it seems likely pressure on the country’s forest areas is set to be ramped up yet further, leading to continued debate as to whether use of the country’s natural resource is sustainable on a long term basis, and what harm that may have on an ecological level. 

This Author

Ronan J O’Shea is a freelance journalist who has written for The Independent, New York Post, Lad Bible, Escapism, Foodism and National Geographic Traveller.

The race is on to deliver models of agricultural development that are viable and sustainable in a world of accelerated climate change.

The urgency derives from the fact that the food and agriculture sector is both a major contributor to climate change and especially vulnerable to its worst impacts.

Most studies estimate that between 20-35 percent of anthropogenic greenhouse gases are associated with the food and agriculture sector, while some have it as high as 50 percent.

Industrial model

And as drought and extreme weather events associated with climate change increase, the livelihoods of a huge proportion of the world’s population – over 2.5 billion people – who make their living from the sector are on the line.  

Against this background the idea of ‘climate smart agriculture’ increasingly features in high level policy discussions.

Climate smart agriculture (CSA) describes interventions that generate ‘triple wins’: that make agriculture more resilient to the effects of climate change, in ways that reduce poverty and increase yields, while at the same time reducing the substantial emissions created by the agricultural sector.

These goals are widely accepted, but there are vastly different models on offer for how to achieve them, each vying to come out on top. The stakes are enormous, as the model that dominates will shape the future of agriculture for years to come. 

One view, already dominant in policy circles, seeks to apply ‘fixes’ to the existing industrial model of agriculture to make it more sustainable.

Questionable sustainabilty

This model employs a suite of modern technologies and practices including genetic engineering, biofuels, biochar, and increased use of fertilisers that will deliver a ‘sustainable intensification’ of production.

This approach is underpinned by Malthusian assumptions about growing populations and dwindling fertile land, asserting that ‘we’ need to extract more with less to sustainably ‘feed the world’. 

The main champions of this dominant approach are the World Bank, UN bodies such as Food and Agriculture Organisation and the International Fund for Agriculture and Development (IFAD) and large agribusiness corporations.

They find it attractive because it requires only slight changes to business as usual, while providing new opportunities for profit.

CSA projects provide a convenient cover for attempts to introduce controversial technologies into new markets or gain access to growing markets for their products, with questionable sustainabilty impacts.

Food companies

‘Climate smart’ projects such as Water Efficient Maize for Africa (WEMA), for example, establish smallholder dependence on Monsanto’s specially developed proprietary hybrid seeds. 

Not surprisingly, this version of CSA is rapidly being adopted and promoted by transnational business interests, and endorsed by international agencies and initiatives.

Headline CSA programmes such as the GACSA (Global Alliance for Climate Smart Agriculture) and EPIC (Economics and Policy Innovations for Climate-Smart Agriculture) focus explicitly on engaging commercial actors, and CSA is increasingly being mainstreamed into Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR).

Global firms such as McDonald’s and Kellogg’s, for example, have made commitments to ‘climate smart’ approaches as part of the GACSA.

Wal-Mart, meanwhile, has announced its own ‘Climate  Smart Agriculture Platform’ in partnership with its suppliers and well-known food companies like General Mills and PepsiCo, promising to drive the ‘adoption of best practices in agriculture’. 

Different perspective

Fertiliser companies such as Yara, Mosaic and Haifa Chemicals Ltd are also among the members of GASCA.

These companies are joined by a number of fertiliser lobby groups such as Fertilisers Europe and the Fertiliser Institute, as well as NGOs partnered with fertiliser companies such as Agriculture for Impact.

Their involvement reflects the fact that nitrogen fertilisers require an enormous amount of energy to produce; fertiliser production accounts for 1-2 percent of total global energy consumption and produces about the same share of global greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions.

Embracing CSA through such initiatives allows these firms to claim to be part of the solution, rather than a major source of the problem.

A fundamentally different perspective on what makes agriculture ‘climate smart’ comes from a mix of social movements, farmers’ organisations such as Via Campesina, small-scale fishers, NGO alliances and academic researchers.

Organic food

These groups are heavily critical of the mainstream CSA discourse, which they see as only further entrenching unsustainable and unjust practices.

For example, the civil society group ‘Climate Smart Agriculture Concerns’ first came together in late 2014 to reject the premise of CSA as a form of corporate greenwashing.

Among its members are La Vía Campesina, Greenpeace, ActionAid International in addition to a number of farmer organisations and human rights organisations.

These critics argue that since industrial agriculture is one of the key drivers of climate change, it is unlikely solutions to global warming will come from that system.

They advocate instead combinations of agroecology, permaculture, food sovereignty, and organic food production.

Climate resilient

For them, what is needed is a ‘farmer first’ rather than ‘corporate first’ approach to determining which technologies, inputs, institutions and land and ocean management strategies are most likely to deliver socially desirable and ecologically viable agriculture.

They have come together at strategic international events like COP21 to denounce mainstream Climate Smart Agriculture programs, while also putting forward new initiatives for the convergence of land and water struggles, finding common ground under the banner of food sovereignty, agroecology, gender equality and human rights.

Yet to date, judging by a suite of recent reports and the nature of debate at recent rounds of UN climate change—including the ‘Agriculture Action Day’ at the Bonn negotiations in November 2017 and the 2016 COP22 in Marrakesh, labelled the ‘Action for Agriculture CoP’—the dominant view is winning the race to define CSA.

Those who stand to gain from the mainstream CSA model are mobilising most vociferously in proposing only those ‘solutions’ that further reinforce their market and political power.

The problem is that the more that corporate-friendly models of CSA dominate the landscape, the more they undermine the ability of alternative models of climate resilient agriculture to flourish.

This is a critical moment to avoid the debate about climate smart agriculture being reduced to a set of techno-fixes that benefit agribusiness corporations and to make the case that the system of industrial agriculture itself has to be fundamentally transformed if we are to live sustainably. 

These Authors

Peter Newell is a Professor of International Relations at the University of Sussex. He is a member of both the ESRC STEPS centre on sustainability and the Centre for Global Political Economy at Sussex. Twitter: @stepscentre.

Jennifer Clapp is a Canada Research Chair in Global Food Security and Sustainability and Professor in the School of Environment, Resources and Sustainability at the University of Waterloo, Canada.

Zoe W. Brent, works as a researcher for the Transnational Institute (TNI), Agrarian and Environmental Justice Team, while pursuing her PhD at the International Institute of Social Studies (ISS). Twitter: @zoebrent

A new special issue on the Journal of Peasant Studies that has open access to the public has a series of articles on different aspects of Climate Smart Agriculture.
      

The race is on to deliver models of agricultural development that are viable and sustainable in a world of accelerated climate change.

The urgency derives from the fact that the food and agriculture sector is both a major contributor to climate change and especially vulnerable to its worst impacts.

Most studies estimate that between 20-35 percent of anthropogenic greenhouse gases are associated with the food and agriculture sector, while some have it as high as 50 percent.

Industrial model

And as drought and extreme weather events associated with climate change increase, the livelihoods of a huge proportion of the world’s population – over 2.5 billion people – who make their living from the sector are on the line.  

Against this background the idea of ‘climate smart agriculture’ increasingly features in high level policy discussions.

Climate smart agriculture (CSA) describes interventions that generate ‘triple wins’: that make agriculture more resilient to the effects of climate change, in ways that reduce poverty and increase yields, while at the same time reducing the substantial emissions created by the agricultural sector.

These goals are widely accepted, but there are vastly different models on offer for how to achieve them, each vying to come out on top. The stakes are enormous, as the model that dominates will shape the future of agriculture for years to come. 

One view, already dominant in policy circles, seeks to apply ‘fixes’ to the existing industrial model of agriculture to make it more sustainable.

Questionable sustainabilty

This model employs a suite of modern technologies and practices including genetic engineering, biofuels, biochar, and increased use of fertilisers that will deliver a ‘sustainable intensification’ of production.

This approach is underpinned by Malthusian assumptions about growing populations and dwindling fertile land, asserting that ‘we’ need to extract more with less to sustainably ‘feed the world’. 

The main champions of this dominant approach are the World Bank, UN bodies such as Food and Agriculture Organisation and the International Fund for Agriculture and Development (IFAD) and large agribusiness corporations.

They find it attractive because it requires only slight changes to business as usual, while providing new opportunities for profit.

CSA projects provide a convenient cover for attempts to introduce controversial technologies into new markets or gain access to growing markets for their products, with questionable sustainabilty impacts.

Food companies

‘Climate smart’ projects such as Water Efficient Maize for Africa (WEMA), for example, establish smallholder dependence on Monsanto’s specially developed proprietary hybrid seeds. 

Not surprisingly, this version of CSA is rapidly being adopted and promoted by transnational business interests, and endorsed by international agencies and initiatives.

Headline CSA programmes such as the GACSA (Global Alliance for Climate Smart Agriculture) and EPIC (Economics and Policy Innovations for Climate-Smart Agriculture) focus explicitly on engaging commercial actors, and CSA is increasingly being mainstreamed into Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR).

Global firms such as McDonald’s and Kellogg’s, for example, have made commitments to ‘climate smart’ approaches as part of the GACSA.

Wal-Mart, meanwhile, has announced its own ‘Climate  Smart Agriculture Platform’ in partnership with its suppliers and well-known food companies like General Mills and PepsiCo, promising to drive the ‘adoption of best practices in agriculture’. 

Different perspective

Fertiliser companies such as Yara, Mosaic and Haifa Chemicals Ltd are also among the members of GASCA.

These companies are joined by a number of fertiliser lobby groups such as Fertilisers Europe and the Fertiliser Institute, as well as NGOs partnered with fertiliser companies such as Agriculture for Impact.

Their involvement reflects the fact that nitrogen fertilisers require an enormous amount of energy to produce; fertiliser production accounts for 1-2 percent of total global energy consumption and produces about the same share of global greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions.

Embracing CSA through such initiatives allows these firms to claim to be part of the solution, rather than a major source of the problem.

A fundamentally different perspective on what makes agriculture ‘climate smart’ comes from a mix of social movements, farmers’ organisations such as Via Campesina, small-scale fishers, NGO alliances and academic researchers.

Organic food

These groups are heavily critical of the mainstream CSA discourse, which they see as only further entrenching unsustainable and unjust practices.

For example, the civil society group ‘Climate Smart Agriculture Concerns’ first came together in late 2014 to reject the premise of CSA as a form of corporate greenwashing.

Among its members are La Vía Campesina, Greenpeace, ActionAid International in addition to a number of farmer organisations and human rights organisations.

These critics argue that since industrial agriculture is one of the key drivers of climate change, it is unlikely solutions to global warming will come from that system.

They advocate instead combinations of agroecology, permaculture, food sovereignty, and organic food production.

Climate resilient

For them, what is needed is a ‘farmer first’ rather than ‘corporate first’ approach to determining which technologies, inputs, institutions and land and ocean management strategies are most likely to deliver socially desirable and ecologically viable agriculture.

They have come together at strategic international events like COP21 to denounce mainstream Climate Smart Agriculture programs, while also putting forward new initiatives for the convergence of land and water struggles, finding common ground under the banner of food sovereignty, agroecology, gender equality and human rights.

Yet to date, judging by a suite of recent reports and the nature of debate at recent rounds of UN climate change—including the ‘Agriculture Action Day’ at the Bonn negotiations in November 2017 and the 2016 COP22 in Marrakesh, labelled the ‘Action for Agriculture CoP’—the dominant view is winning the race to define CSA.

Those who stand to gain from the mainstream CSA model are mobilising most vociferously in proposing only those ‘solutions’ that further reinforce their market and political power.

The problem is that the more that corporate-friendly models of CSA dominate the landscape, the more they undermine the ability of alternative models of climate resilient agriculture to flourish.

This is a critical moment to avoid the debate about climate smart agriculture being reduced to a set of techno-fixes that benefit agribusiness corporations and to make the case that the system of industrial agriculture itself has to be fundamentally transformed if we are to live sustainably. 

These Authors

Peter Newell is a Professor of International Relations at the University of Sussex. He is a member of both the ESRC STEPS centre on sustainability and the Centre for Global Political Economy at Sussex. Twitter @stepscentre.

Jennifer Clapp is a Canada Research Chair in Global Food Security and Sustainability and Professor in the School of Environment, Resources and Sustainability at the University of Waterloo, Canada. Twitter: @envwaterloo
https://twitter.com/envwaterloo

Zoe W. Brent, works as a researcher for the Transnational Institute (TNI), Agrarian and Environmental Justice Team, while pursuing her PhD at the International Institute of Social Studies (ISS). Twitter: @zoebrent

A new special issue on the Journal of Peasant Studies that has open access to the public has a series of articles on different aspects of Climate Smart Agriculture.
      

The race is on to deliver models of agricultural development that are viable and sustainable in a world of accelerated climate change.

The urgency derives from the fact that the food and agriculture sector is both a major contributor to climate change and especially vulnerable to its worst impacts.

Most studies estimate that between 20-35 percent of anthropogenic greenhouse gases are associated with the food and agriculture sector, while some have it as high as 50 percent.

Industrial model

And as drought and extreme weather events associated with climate change increase, the livelihoods of a huge proportion of the world’s population – over 2.5 billion people – who make their living from the sector are on the line.  

Against this background the idea of ‘climate smart agriculture’ increasingly features in high level policy discussions.

Climate smart agriculture (CSA) describes interventions that generate ‘triple wins’: that make agriculture more resilient to the effects of climate change, in ways that reduce poverty and increase yields, while at the same time reducing the substantial emissions created by the agricultural sector.

These goals are widely accepted, but there are vastly different models on offer for how to achieve them, each vying to come out on top. The stakes are enormous, as the model that dominates will shape the future of agriculture for years to come. 

One view, already dominant in policy circles, seeks to apply ‘fixes’ to the existing industrial model of agriculture to make it more sustainable.

Questionable sustainabilty

This model employs a suite of modern technologies and practices including genetic engineering, biofuels, biochar, and increased use of fertilisers that will deliver a ‘sustainable intensification’ of production.

This approach is underpinned by Malthusian assumptions about growing populations and dwindling fertile land, asserting that ‘we’ need to extract more with less to sustainably ‘feed the world’. 

The main champions of this dominant approach are the World Bank, UN bodies such as Food and Agriculture Organisation and the International Fund for Agriculture and Development (IFAD) and large agribusiness corporations.

They find it attractive because it requires only slight changes to business as usual, while providing new opportunities for profit.

CSA projects provide a convenient cover for attempts to introduce controversial technologies into new markets or gain access to growing markets for their products, with questionable sustainabilty impacts.

Food companies

‘Climate smart’ projects such as Water Efficient Maize for Africa (WEMA), for example, establish smallholder dependence on Monsanto’s specially developed proprietary hybrid seeds. 

Not surprisingly, this version of CSA is rapidly being adopted and promoted by transnational business interests, and endorsed by international agencies and initiatives.

Headline CSA programmes such as the GACSA (Global Alliance for Climate Smart Agriculture) and EPIC (Economics and Policy Innovations for Climate-Smart Agriculture) focus explicitly on engaging commercial actors, and CSA is increasingly being mainstreamed into Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR).

Global firms such as McDonald’s and Kellogg’s, for example, have made commitments to ‘climate smart’ approaches as part of the GACSA.

Wal-Mart, meanwhile, has announced its own ‘Climate  Smart Agriculture Platform’ in partnership with its suppliers and well-known food companies like General Mills and PepsiCo, promising to drive the ‘adoption of best practices in agriculture’. 

Different perspective

Fertiliser companies such as Yara, Mosaic and Haifa Chemicals Ltd are also among the members of GASCA.

These companies are joined by a number of fertiliser lobby groups such as Fertilisers Europe and the Fertiliser Institute, as well as NGOs partnered with fertiliser companies such as Agriculture for Impact.

Their involvement reflects the fact that nitrogen fertilisers require an enormous amount of energy to produce; fertiliser production accounts for 1-2 percent of total global energy consumption and produces about the same share of global greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions.

Embracing CSA through such initiatives allows these firms to claim to be part of the solution, rather than a major source of the problem.

A fundamentally different perspective on what makes agriculture ‘climate smart’ comes from a mix of social movements, farmers’ organisations such as Via Campesina, small-scale fishers, NGO alliances and academic researchers.

Organic food

These groups are heavily critical of the mainstream CSA discourse, which they see as only further entrenching unsustainable and unjust practices.

For example, the civil society group ‘Climate Smart Agriculture Concerns’ first came together in late 2014 to reject the premise of CSA as a form of corporate greenwashing.

Among its members are La Vía Campesina, Greenpeace, ActionAid International in addition to a number of farmer organisations and human rights organisations.

These critics argue that since industrial agriculture is one of the key drivers of climate change, it is unlikely solutions to global warming will come from that system.

They advocate instead combinations of agroecology, permaculture, food sovereignty, and organic food production.

Climate resilient

For them, what is needed is a ‘farmer first’ rather than ‘corporate first’ approach to determining which technologies, inputs, institutions and land and ocean management strategies are most likely to deliver socially desirable and ecologically viable agriculture.

They have come together at strategic international events like COP21 to denounce mainstream Climate Smart Agriculture programs, while also putting forward new initiatives for the convergence of land and water struggles, finding common ground under the banner of food sovereignty, agroecology, gender equality and human rights.

Yet to date, judging by a suite of recent reports and the nature of debate at recent rounds of UN climate change—including the ‘Agriculture Action Day’ at the Bonn negotiations in November 2017 and the 2016 COP22 in Marrakesh, labelled the ‘Action for Agriculture CoP’—the dominant view is winning the race to define CSA.

Those who stand to gain from the mainstream CSA model are mobilising most vociferously in proposing only those ‘solutions’ that further reinforce their market and political power.

The problem is that the more that corporate-friendly models of CSA dominate the landscape, the more they undermine the ability of alternative models of climate resilient agriculture to flourish.

This is a critical moment to avoid the debate about climate smart agriculture being reduced to a set of techno-fixes that benefit agribusiness corporations and to make the case that the system of industrial agriculture itself has to be fundamentally transformed if we are to live sustainably. 

These Authors

Peter Newell is a Professor of International Relations at the University of Sussex. He is a member of both the ESRC STEPS centre on sustainability and the Centre for Global Political Economy at Sussex. Twitter @stepscentre.

Jennifer Clapp is a Canada Research Chair in Global Food Security and Sustainability and Professor in the School of Environment, Resources and Sustainability at the University of Waterloo, Canada. Twitter: @envwaterloo
https://twitter.com/envwaterloo

Zoe W. Brent, works as a researcher for the Transnational Institute (TNI), Agrarian and Environmental Justice Team, while pursuing her PhD at the International Institute of Social Studies (ISS). Twitter: @zoebrent

A new special issue on the Journal of Peasant Studies that has open access to the public has a series of articles on different aspects of Climate Smart Agriculture.