Agriculture Expert Group Meeting in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia from 16 – 18 May 2013

Between the 16th and 18th May 2013, agriculture experts will meet in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia to deliberate on agricultural issues as relate to climate change negotiations. The experts are a sub-group of the African Group of Negotiators (AGN) and will address technical issues aimed at strengthening the AGN negotiating position. This is one of the build-up activities leading to Africa’s participation in the 19th Session of the Conference of the Parties to the UNFCCC (COP19) scheduled for November 2013.

Negotiations on agriculture and climate change under the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) have since the fifteenth Conference of the Parties (COP 15) in Copenhagen gained momentum judging by the number of high level and side events during the subsequent Conference of the Parties and inter-sessional meetings. Nonetheless, at the seventeenth Conference of the Parties (COP17) in Durban in December 2011, negotiations on agriculture advanced from cooperative sectoral approaches under agenda item 1(b)(iv) of the Ad hoc Working Group on Long Cooperative Action for effective implementation of the Convention (AWG-LCA) to the thirty sixth Subsidiary Body for Scientific and Technological Advice (SBSTA 36).

At the conclusion of COP17, parties were invited to submit their views on issues related to agriculture, which submissions would then form the basis of negotiations, with a view to reaching a COP decision at the eighteenth Conference of the Parties (COP18). By March 2012, several Parties and Observer Organizations had submitted their submissions on issues relating to agriculture that they wanted considered by 36th Session of SBSTA. However, in spite of the long hours of negotiations and continuous engagement with other interest groups, at SBSTA 36 and SBSTA 37 in Bonn, June 2012 and in Doha, November 2012, respectively, during minimal progress was realized towards reaching a consensus text for a COP decision. This has been partly attributed to the lack of a clear common position among the African group of negotiators (AGN) as well as the G77 and China.

Given the importance of agriculture, therefore, it is imperative that Africa takes the leadership role in matters relating to agriculture in the negotiations because the region is already bearing the brunt and will be the most impacted by climate change.  It is against this background that there is an urgent need to review AGN’s strategy and approach in the negotiations in matters relating to agriculture, and hence the need to formulate a position paper that would inform AGN in the negotiations.