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.
“This is a historic day for conservation and a sign that in a divided world, protecting nature and people can triumph over geopolitics,” said Greenpeace in response to an agreement to protect world’s marine biodiversity.
Ocean conservationists expressed elation late Saturday after it was announced—following nearly two decades of consideration and effort—that delegates from around the world had agreed to language for a far-reaching global treaty aimed at protecting the biodiversity on the high seas and in the deep oceans of the world.
“This is a historic day for conservation and a sign that in a divided world, protecting nature and people can triumph over geopolitics,” declared Dr. Laura Meller, the oceans campaigner for Greenpeace Nordic.
“We praise countries for seeking compromises, putting aside differences, and delivering a Treaty that will let us protect the oceans, build our resilience to climate change and safeguard the lives and livelihoods of billions of people,” Meller added.
The final text of the Global Ocean Treaty, formally referred to as the Biodiversity Beyond National Jurisdiction treaty (BBNJ), was reached after a two-week round of talks that concluded with a 48-hour marathon push between delegations at the United Nations headquarters in New York.
“This is huge,” said Greenpeace in a social media post, calling the agreement “the biggest conservation victory ever!”
Rena Lee of Singapore, the U.N Ambassador for Oceans and president of the conference hosting the talks, received a standing ovation after announcing a final deal had been reached. “The shipped has reached the shore,” Lee told the conference.
BBNJ President Rena Lee: "The ship has reached the shore."
The BBNJ Agreement is agreed. pic.twitter.com/28oIVpFaOt
“Following a two-week-long rollercoaster ride of negotiations and super-hero efforts in the last 48 hours, governments reached agreement on key issues that will advance protection and better management of marine biodiversity in the High Seas,” said Rebecca Hubbard, director of the High Seas Alliance, a coalition of over 40 ocean-focused NGOs that also includes the International Union for the Conservation of Nature (IUCN).
Minna Epps, director of the Global Marine and Polar Programme at the IUCN, said the agreement represents a new opportunity.
“The High Seas Treaty opens the path for humankind to finally provide protection to marine life across our one ocean,” Epps said in a statement. “Its adoption closes essential gaps in international law and offers a framework for governments to work together to protect global ocean health, climate resilience, and the socioeconomic wellbeing and food security of billions of people.”
Protecting the world’s high seas, which refers to areas of the oceans outside the jurisdiction of any country, is part of the larger push to protect planetary biodiversity and seen as key if nations want to keep their commitment to the UN-brokered Kunming-Montreal Global Biodiversity Framework—also known as the known as the 30×30 pledge—that aims protect 30 percent of the world’s natural habitat by 2030.
“With currently just over 1% of the High Seas protected,” said the High Seas Alliance in a statement, “the new Treaty will provide a pathway to establish marine protected areas in these waters.” The group said the treaty will make acheiving the goals of the Kunming-Montreal agreement possible, but that “time is of the essence” for the world’s biodiversity.
“The new Treaty will bring ocean governance into the 21st century,” said the group, “including establishing modern requirements to assess and manage planned human activities that would affect marine life in the High Seas as well as ensuring greater transparency. This will greatly strengthen the effective area-based management of fishing, shipping, and other activities that have contributed to the overall decline in ocean health.”
According to Greenpeace’s assessment of the talks:
The High Ambition Coalition, which includes the EU, US and UK, and China were key players in brokering the deal. Both showed willingness to compromise in the final days of talks, and built coalitions instead of sowing division. Small Island States have shown leadership throughout the process, and the G77 group led the way in ensuring the Treaty can be put into practice in a fair and equitable way.
The fair sharing of monetary benefits from Marine Genetic Resources was a key sticking point. This was only resolved on the final day of talks. The section of the Treaty on Marine Protected Areas does away with broken consensus-based decision making which has failed to protect the oceans through existing regional bodies like the Antarctic Ocean Commission. While there are still major issues in the text, it is a workable Treaty that is a starting point for protecting 30% of the world’s oceans.
The group said it is now urgent for governments around the world to take the final step of ratifying the treaty.
“We can now finally move from talk to real change at sea. Countries must formally adopt the Treaty and ratify it as quickly as possible to bring it into force, and then deliver the fully protected ocean sanctuaries our planet needs,” Meller said. “The clock is still ticking to deliver 30×30. We have half a decade left, and we can’t be complacent.”
Well, they got there. After years-long delays due to the COVID-19 pandemic, a relocation from Kunming, China to Montreal, Canada, and following weeks of late-night negotiations peppered with walkouts and protests, a ‘new deal’ for biodiversity has been struck: on 19 December 2022, the Kunming-Montreal Global Biodiversity Framework (GBF) was adopted as the outcome of the 15th meeting of the Conference of the Parties (COP15) to the UN Convention on Biological Diversity (UNCBD).
The failure of the framework’s predecessor – none of the biodiversity targets set at Aichi in 2010 were reached by the 2020 deadline – added to the fraught tenure of the negotiations. The new framework isn’t perfect, as I’ll explain, but there are some important elements that, if implemented effectively and equitably, can make genuine impact.
Perhaps most notable is the target of protecting 30 percent of Earth’s land and sea by 2030. The global nature of the target means that the focus will be on the most biodiverse countries protecting key areas such as the tropical forests of the Amazon, the Congo Basin, and Indonesia – all areas where the Center for International Forestry Research and World Agroforestry (CIFOR-ICRAF) has a strong presence and strong partnerships.
Given it took the global community almost six decades to protect 17% of the planet, this is a lofty goal that will require coordinated – and careful – action. Much protected area creation in the past has been propelled by colonialist ‘fortress conservation’ approaches that fail to take the rights, territories, and contributions of Indigenous Peoples and local communities into account. Such restrictive approaches have had dire consequences for people and nature, with both biodiversity and livelihoods crumbling as a result.
As such, the strong language on these issues in the new framework – which reaffirms the protection of Indigenous rights and territories throughout its 23 targets and four goals, and purports to ensure their voice in decision-making – is to be commended, though as always it will be crucial to pay careful attention to how and if this plays out on the ground. As much of CIFOR-ICRAF’s work highlights, it’s critically important to recognize human agency in the shaping of sustainable landscapes. As a global community, we need to become more skillful at differentiating between human activity that has been harmful and natural resource use that has been, is, or can be sustainable.
On that note, the agreement to develop a multilateral benefit-sharing and funding mechanism, to help put sovereignty over digital genetic code in the hands of those in whose land and sea-scapes it resides (rather than those of biopirates and corporations) is also significant. It was heartening, too, to see a new standalone target on gender equality and women and girls’ empowerment, and the inclusion of the term ‘gender-responsive’ in place of the weaker ‘gender-sensitive’. Also welcome is the (long overdue) target of reducing harmful subsidies for fisheries, agriculture and fossil fuels by at least USD 500 billion annually by 2030: right now, at least USD 1.8 trillion of such subsidies are financing the destruction of biodiversity each year.
Among these victories, it was disappointing to see the watering-down of language promoting and centering agroecology in the framework’s sustainable agriculture target. The final text reads, “The application of biodiversity-friendly practices, such as sustainable intensification, agroecological and other innovative approaches”; sustainable intensification, however, causes significant biodiversity loss and has been shown not to stop agricultural expansion. Another concern is that over-emphasis on protected areas through the 30×30 target could take away from necessary attention on developing biodiverse, inclusive, and resilient food systems – a subject on which CIFOR-ICRAF has a combined 70 years of international experience. Agroforestry and trees on farms, for instance, can play a significant role in restoring and enhancing ecosystems while producing critical food and nutrition.
Discussions on who will foot the bill for biodiversity conservation were also fraught, and wealthier countries’ reluctance to front up prompted the walk-out of delegates from over 70 countries in the Global South at one stage. In the end, the financial target of USD 200 billion a year for conservation initiatives – a sum determined to be critical for the framework’s success – was reached, through some developing countries such as the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC), Brazil and Malaysia expressed disappointment that richer ones did not offer up a larger amount, and that a new fund for biodiversity was not established.
So, now that we have an agreed path towards halting the loss of species and protecting the world’s remaining biodiversity, what lies ahead? By addressing the current polycrisis – biodiversity loss, climate crisis, growing inequalities, broken food systems, unsustainable supply chains – simultaneously through transdisciplinary science, CIFOR-ICRAF is delivering holistic solutions at scale in priority areas with the greatest potential for positive impact: sustainably managing multiple-use landscapes, promoting conservation in productive landscapes through agroecological approaches, and preserving local and global livelihoods. We will continue working to reverse negative environmental trends by generating evidence of the enormous value of trees – in forests, on farms, and across landscapes.
Robert Nasi is the Director General of the Center for International Forestry Research (CIFOR)
