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Briefing Note
IISD Reporting Services (IISD RS) has produced a briefing note from this Conference. To download our report, click the HTML or PDF icons below. |
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First Africa Food Security Conference – “Harnessing Ecosystem based Approaches for Food Security and Adaptation to Climate Change in Africa”
20-21 August 2013 | UN Environment Programme (UNEP) headquarters, Nairobi, Kenya
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The First Africa Food Security Conference will be held in Nairobi, Kenya, from 20-21 August 2013. Convened by the UN Environment Programme (UNEP), in collaboration with the UN Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO), other UN agencies, governments and other stakeholders, the Conference will explore possible solutions to get Africa out of food insecurity, focusing on ecological based approaches.
The severe droughts experienced in the Sahel in 2012 and in the Horn of Africa in 2011 have highlighted the urgent need for sustainable solutions to reduce the vulnerability of a great majority of Africa's one billion citizens to the impacts of climate change on food production. Africa’s population is expected to constitute about 23 percent of the global population by 2050. Increasing population and changes in dietary preferences will put a significant strain on food production over the coming years, so new measures and approaches will be needed to help countries to adapt to a changing climate and to build sustainable food systems that eliminate food insecurity.
One such approach is ecosystem-based adaptation (EbA). EbA provides flexible, cost effective and broadly applicable approaches for building robust food systems on fewer inputs and for reducing the impacts of climate change. Practices such as agro-forestry, buffer strips, on-site water conservation and use of native species have demonstrated that ecological based approaches can provide the right framework for catalysing large scale transformative change. Adopting ecological based approaches could help build efficient food systems and resilient livelihoods, and ultimately achieve global food security in a changing climate.
Key objectives of the workshop include: to aggregate lessons shared into common solutions for food security and climate change adaptation; to share information on targeted ecological actions that provide opportunities for addressing perennial food insecurity in Sub Saharan Africa; and to identify key challenges hindering the scaling-up of ecosystem based adaptation practices and how these can be overcome.
Download the IISD RS briefing note from this Conference in HTML or PDF format.
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| Funding for coverage of this Conference has been provided by UNEP |
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Conference resources
 Conference website
Draft Conference programme
Concept note
Conference documents
IISD RS resources
IISD RS coverage of It’s Down 2 Earth - Global Conference on Agriculture, Food Security and Climate Change, 31 October - 5 November 2010, The Hague, Netherlands
IISD RS coverage of the World Summit on Food Security (WSFS), 16-18 November 2009, FAO headquarters, Rome, Italy
IISD RS coverage of the High-Level Conference on World Food Security: the Challenges of Climate Change and Bioenergy, 3-5 June 2008, FAO headquarters, Rome, Italy
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