How seed diversity can help protect our food as the world warms

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A new documentary explores the dangers that climate change poses to agriculture — and the seed savers who are working to make food systems more resilient.

By Charly Frisk, Yale Climate Connections

Planting seeds is a radically hopeful act. Sowing a seed is predicated on the idea that there will be a future — one that will support and nurture the seed.

Join young documentary filmmaker and climate storyteller Charly Frisk as she travels across Nordic regions to meet with people who are working to preserve the diversity of the world’s seeds. She encounters seed savers recovering ancient varieties from older generations, visits farmer’s markets that are revitalizing old traditions, and tours gene banks that are working at the intersection of science and culture.

A key take-away from the film is that the seeds used to grow food have become radically less diverse since the 1900s. In place of a profusion of varieties that vary across geographic regions — or within a single field — many farmers now use agricultural systems in which plants of a single food crop are genetically similar to each other. The world has lost 75% of seed diversity among food crops since the 1900s, according to the Food and Agriculture Organization.

That lack of diversity presents a severe risk to the security of global food systems. Without seed diversity, it’s difficult for plants to adapt to pests, diseases, and changing climate conditions — a particular concern as the world warms. But the film offers hope that seed biodiversity will be preserved, ensuring our food systems are resilient to climate change — safeguarding the ancient, diverse, heirloom varieties that enrich our lives here on planet Earth.

Charly Frisk is a master’s student at the Yale School of the Environment.

‘Our choices will reverberate for hundreds, even thousands, of years.’

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In 2018, the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) highlighted the unprecedented scale of the challenge required to keep warming to 1.5°C (or 2.7°F). Five years later, that challenge has become even greater due to a continued increase in greenhouse gas emissions.

The warning

The IPCC’s Sixth Assessment Synthesis Report warns that the pace and scale of climate action are insufficient to tackle climate change. More than a century of burning fossil fuels as well as unequal and unsustainable energy and land use has led to global warming of 1.1°C (2.0°F) above pre-industrial levels. This has resulted in more frequent and more intense extreme weather events that have caused increasingly dangerous impacts on nature and people in every region of the world.

According to the IPCC, every increment of warming results in rapidly escalating hazards. More intense heatwaves, heavier rainfall, and other weather extremes further increase risks for human health and ecosystems. Increased warming also increases food and water insecurity. As risks combine and grow, they become even more difficult to manage.

Taking the right action now could result in the transformational change essential for a sustainable, equitable world.

The challenge

We need to cut greenhouse gas emissions by nearly half by 2030 to create a safer and more sustainable world. We need to scale up practices and infrastructure to enhance resilience. This climate action needs to happen along several dimensions and needs to be designed for diverse contexts. Further, increased financing for climate action at a level three to six times the current climate investment is needed.

The hope

Mainstreaming effective and equitable climate action now will reduce losses and damages. We currently have multiple, feasible, and effective options available to reduce greenhouse gas emissions. We have the ability to adapt to human-caused climate change.

Integrating measures to adapt to climate change with climate action provides wider benefits:

  • Improving people’s health and livelihoods
  • Reducing poverty and hunger
  • Providing clean energy, water, and air

The resilience

Fairness is one of the solutions. and lies in developing climate resilience. This involves integrating measures to adapt to climate change with actions to reduce or avoid greenhouse gas emissions in ways that provide wider benefits.

“Climate justice is crucial because those who have contributed least to climate change are being
disproportionately affected.”

-Aditi Mukherji, one of the 93 authors of this Synthesis Report

Climate resilient development becomes progressively more challenging with every increment of warming. This is why the choices made in the next few years will play a critical role in deciding our future and that of generations to come.

Resiliency to be effective needs to be rooted in our diverse values, worldviews, and scientific, Indigenous Knowledge, and local knowledge. This approach will allow locally appropriate, socially acceptable solutions.

Our climate is interconnected with society and ecosystems. Effective and equitable conservation of approximately 30-50% of the Earth’s land, freshwater, and ocean will help ensure a healthy planet. Changes in the food sector, electricity, transport, industry, buildings, and land use can reduce greenhouse gas emissions, foster low-carbon lifestyles, and enable health and well-being. A better understanding of the consequences of overconsumption can help people make more informed choices.

Addressing the global water crisis through collective action

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Cover of "Turning the Tide: A Call to Collective Action," by the Global Commission on the Economics of Water

A sustainable and just water future can be achieved; however, it requires a significant change in how we value, manage, and use water.

We read Turning the Tide: A Call to Collective Action, by the Global Commission on the Economics of Water, which was published this month, and share the following synopsis.

A systemic water crisis headed for massive collective failure

Our current systemic water crisis is growing into a global tragedy on local and global levels. Nations and regions are connected through the water cycle in profound ways. More than two billion people still lack access to safe water. The report points out that one child under five dies every 80 seconds from diseases caused by polluted water.

This water crisis is also linked to climate change and the loss of biodiversity. The global energy imbalance intensifies the water cycle, “adding about 7% of moisture for each 1°C of global mean temperature rise.” Deforestation and depletion of wetlands and land degradation impact precipitation patterns, soil moisture and vapor (green water), and runoff and liquid flows (blue water). Extreme events in the forms of unprecedented floods and droughts, cyclonic storms, and heat waves have caused a devastating toll on human suffering, and in some cases, wiped out decades of human development in weeks.

The report points out that the water crisis imperils all the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs):

…from SDG 6, ensuring universal access to safe water and sanitation; to food security and health; to ending poverty and inequalities; to enabling trade for sustainable growth; to our chances of delivering the Paris Climate Agreement, and avoiding conflict within and across borders.

Another contributor to the water crisis is water mismanagement. We have failed to preserve freshwater ecosystems, manage overuse, prevent contamination, and develop and share water-saving technologies. The report notes that we face the prospect of a “40% shortfall in freshwater supply by 2030, with severe shortages in water-constrained regions.”

Water also plays a role in climate mitigation and adaptation strategies, including the protection wetlands provide against floods and droughts.

Hope through collective solutions

The report points out that a sustainable and just water future can be achieved; however, it requires a significant change in how we value, manage and use water. This collective action begins with treating water as our most “precious global collective good, essential to protecting all ecosystems and all life.”

Collective solutions enable us to reinvigorate our economies, benefit people globally, and unlock progress on the SDGs. However, we must act urgently with a collective resolution.

Seven-point call to collective action

The report sets out a seven-point Call to Collective Action which provides a path for immediate implementation. The Call to Collective Action includes the following requirements:

  1. Manage the global water cycle as a global common good, to be protected collectively and in the interests of all. It requires the recognition that communities and nations are connected regionally and globally and that water is critical to food security as well as all the SDGs. In addition, water justice and equity are required to put water on a sustainable trajectory.

  2. Adopt an outcomes-focused, mission-driven approach to water encompassing all the key roles it plays in human well-being. We must deliver on the human right to safe water and act collectively to stabilize the global water cycle. We can act collectively by mobilizing multiple stakeholders, public, private, and civil society as well as local communities.

  3. Cease underpricing water. We need to properly price water and provide targeted support for the poor. We need to also account for water’s non-economic value in decision-making to ensure we protect nature and our biodiversity.

  4. Phase out some $700 billion of subsidies in agriculture and water yearly, which tend to generate excessive water consumption and other environmentally damaging practices. We also need to reduce leakages in water systems (“non-revenue water”) that cost billions annually and prioritize sustained maintenance efforts. The report also calls for the acceleration of water footprint disclosures.

  5. Establish Just Water Partnerships (JWPs) to enable investments in water access, resilience and sustainability in low- and middle-income countries, using approaches that contribute to both national development goals and the global common.

  6. Move forward at scale on opportunities that can move the needle significantly in the current decade such as fortifying freshwater storage systems, developing the urban circular water economy, reducing water footprints in manufacturing, and shifting agriculture to precision irrigation and less water-intensive crops.

  7. Reshape multilateral governance of water, which is currently fragmented and not fit for purpose. Trade policy must be used as a tool for more sustainable use of water, by incorporating water conservation standards, highlighting wasteful water subsidies, and ensuring that trade policies do not exacerbate water scarcity in water-stressed regions.

The report describes the need to learn from past failures. Our past approaches have been too narrow, too local, too short-sighted, too divided, and too incremental. We can correct these failings with more systems thinking and bolder collective actions at local to global levels to manage water in a more integrated, inclusive, and effective way.

A new framework for the economics of water calls for managing the global water cycle and regarding water as a global common good to be protected collectively and in the interests of all.

The report cries out for a new social contract with an integrated, holistic approach that places justice and equity at the center of our actions. It ends with a reference to learning from the wisdom of Indigenous Peoples and traditional communities who understand and treasure water as a shared resource, across generations.