Widespread environmental degradation is undermining explosive commodity growth in Asia.
Editor’s Note: In East and Southeast Asia, public policies and private investments to expand agricultural production of commodities have seriously undermined terrestrial and coastal ecosystems. In just a few decades, the region rapidly switched to monoculture export agriculture, supported by high chemical inputs, that reduced land quality and prompted overexploitation of soil, water, and biodiversity resources, with degradation only further driving expansion of farms into formerly pristine forest. This not only provoked resistance from local people dependent on those resources, but also triggered pushback from international market traders and consumers of their products. The economic, social and environmental repercussions have been far reaching, compelling governments, producers and civil society alike to look for alternative strategies. The forthcoming book Steps Toward Green proposes that governments look to Agriculture Green Growth. Co-author Sara J. Scherr explains.
Join the experts on September 15th in a panel discussion on commodity agriculture, development, and policy in East and Southeast Asia.
Agriculture Green Growth is a practical solution, but what is it exactly?
Agriculture Green Growth (AGG) is an investment framework that addresses the challenge of producing more food in ways that sustain the full range of products and ecosystem services required from finite land and water resources. The AGG framework identifies current and emerging opportunities for harmonizing agricultural development and regional food security with local poverty reduction and ecosystem conservation. The framework proposes a model for partnerships between international and national investors, national and local governments, and civil society including farmers, local communities and NGOs. These partnerships develop a set of investment principles, and design institutional arrangements and investment strategies that deliver economic, social and environmental benefits through agricultural development. The framework also identifies promising technologies and innovations for transforming the agricultural sector which recognize ecosystems as key productive assets. Agricultural development can leapfrog over conventional technologies to follow a new course in which farmers embrace technologies and management systems that produce more food with fewer inputs, less waste, and less pollution. The AGG framework positions the agriculture sector as a principal engine for human and economic development within an overall national Green Economy or Green Growth strategy.
Tea picker works on a plantation in Yunnan Province. Conversion of natural forests to ‘economic’ forests have resulted in severe impacts on soil stability and local hydrology. Photo provided by Prof. Yuan Wei, Tea
Research Institute of Yunnan Academy of Agricultural Sciences.
What are the benefits of ‘Agriculture Green Growth’?
As elsewhere around the world, governments, civil society, and the private sector in the region are working together to develop and implement ‘Green Economy’ and Green Growth strategies to generate equitable, sustainable economic development. They are realizing that finite resources and a new climate of opportunities and risks necessitate new, green development strategies.
The approach moves beyond environmental and social safeguards. The approach encourages society to recognize that agricultural landscapes must provide a range of goods and services—not just food—and that markets increasingly reward farmers for doing so. In this way, resource conservation, efficiency, and sustainability are not costs of doing business. Rather, they are woven into the core logic and business case of all new land-based investment. AGG recognizes that the most sustainable and least risky farming systems will be those that build in agronomic, environmental, and social management practices resilient to climate change and other risks and shocks.
Successully restoring and sustaining healthy agricultural landscapes will require concerted action by private sector, civil society, farmer organizations and other stakeholders. But to achieve agri-environmental goals at scale, well-organized government policy goals, framework and strategy for Agriculture Green Growth are essential.
Greening Commodity Agriculture
September 15th Book Launch & Panel Discussion
This event will take place in Washington, D.C., and made available worldwide through a live webcast.
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Agriculture and Climate Change in National Green Growth Strategies
Sara J. Scherr is the founder and president of EcoAgriculture Partners, and co-author of the forthcoming book Steps Toward Green. She is an agricultural and natural resource economist specializing in land management policy in tropical developing countries and the chair of the secretariat of the Landscapes for People, Food and Nature Initiative.
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