Andrew Onapito, Communications Officer. ActionAid International Uganda. PHOTO/FILE
Even the most ardent climate change denialists would have been stumped by the extraordinary weather patterns across Uganda and other African countries over the past few months.
A recent trip from Kampala to Katakwi via Nebbi brought me face to face with the harsh realities of climate change.
Every region of Uganda has not been spared by the destructive effects of climate change. Seeing floods sweep away roads and hear of a child drowning, left me in a pensive mood.
Unless decisive climate action is taken, history will judge our generation harshly for neglecting a just cause for climate justice.
The discourse on factors fuelling the climate crisis has mostly focused on fossil fuels, as the largest contributor of greenhouse gasses.
Meanwhile, the role of industrial agriculture has somehow managed to fly under the climate radar. Many people assume that industrial agriculture is the solution to food insecurity. But, it is worsening climate change and causing widespread destruction of natural ecosystems, threatening livelihoods, and contributing to severe health risks.
New research by ActionAid, titled “How the finance flows: The banks fuelling the climate crisis” noted that since the Paris Agreement was signed in 2016, the world’s biggest banks have provided US$370 billion to industrial agricultural activities in the Global South.
In the same timeframe, a further US$3.7 trillion has funded fossil fuel activities in the Global South. This is 20 times more financing to fossil fuels and agribusiness activities in the Global South than Global North governments have provided as climate finance to address issues of loss and damage, adaptation, and mitigation.
The time has come for communities on the front lines of the climate crisis to hold banks to account for the decisions made in their distant boardrooms. The world’s money flows must move away from funding the biggest drivers of the climate crisis and destruction and move towards funding the future of our planet. It is time for governments to ramp up support for real and sustainable solutions such as agroecology.
There is a misconception that agroecology – in which farmers use clever techniques to farm with nature instead of against it - cannot feed nations at the scale that industrial agriculture is believed to. Interestingly, research has shown that smallholder farmers produce approximately 80 percent of the food supply in Asia and sub-Saharan Africa.
In any case, industrial agriculture is inclined towards exports rather than meeting local food demands with most of the profits controlled by a few multinational corporations rather than returning to farmers’ own pockets.
Scaling up agroecology requires more financial support. It is important that public financing is channeled to the transition to sustainable food systems in the form of agroecology.
The approach towards food security must emphasise food sovereignty which places the welfare of smallholder producers, the soils, and the environment at the centre of the discourse replacing harmful chemicals with sustainable alternatives.
This is a call to take a moment and reflect on the “Only One Earth” slogan from the 1972 United Nations conference on the human environment. Unless we act now, future generations will not have much left to inherit.
Andrew Onapito, Communications Officer. ActionAid International Uganda
