A report years in the making was released this week at the UN climate talks in Brazil.
It is long, exhaustively edited, and according to at least one expert, “boring.”
And yet it could — just maybe — help settle one of the oldest disputes in conservation: that forests and farms are somehow irrevocably at odds.
“Climate and ecosystem service benefits of forests and trees for agriculture,” published by the UN Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) in partnership with other organizations including Conservation International, reviews years of research. Its conclusion: Protecting forests officially does not hamper agricultural productivity.
Instead, the report finds, forests are critically beneficial to farming — and that this age-old dispute over land use is as faulty as many have been saying for years.
According to Michael Wolosin, senior climate adviser at Conservation International, the politics behind the report matter almost as much as what’s in it. Conservation News spoke with Wolosin, who advised on the report behind the scenes, about what the report means for the future of forests, food and the climate.
This report essentially discusses how forests are good for agriculture and climate — confirming what most of us already know. So what's significant about it?
Mike Wolosin: This report grew out of the “not just carbon”report that I co-authored a few years ago about the climate benefits of forests that go beyond just holding onto carbon. And that started a conversation, including at the Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO), that was trying to reframe this deforestation-versus-agriculture debate at an international scale.
Deforestation has been a sort of dirty word in agricultural spaces — agriculture being the biggest driver of deforestation. This tension plays out in international institutions, and the FAO is the premier global institution that covers both forests and agriculture. So this tension had long existed between the forest and the agriculture camps even within FAO.
One of the insights from the “not just carbon” work was basically — and it's not rocket science — but it's this idea that we need to make common cause with farmers and agriculturalists if we actually want to protect forests. They can't be the enemy.
It’s wild to think of the two camps as ‘enemies.’
Wolosin: Yes — and it’s because we have not successfully brought enough of them into the fold on forest conservation: Conserving forests has always been seen as a cost to farmers. It's never been a benefit. And the forest people for years have been trying to tell the agricultural people, “Hey, all our research says you really need us — you actually benefit from forests,” and from the services that forests provide — water storage, habitat for pollinators, and more.
So talk about the report a little bit.
Wolosin: Well, in the language of science, it's just a synthesis. It's all research that's been published before; there's nothing new here. And synthesis reports are kind of boring. But the news here is really that we are starting to expand the circle of people who recognize the importance of forests for their own interests.
The key messages are important things we already know. The report links forest loss to climate effects. It shows that Brazil threatens its breadbasket if it cuts down its forests. It synthesizes the impact on human health of deforestation, mostly for agricultural workers — the workforce that is harvesting palm oil and soybeans, and cattle ranchers around the world. And it shows pretty clearly that forest restoration can reverse a fair bit of localized warming.
But even when the science is strong, it is still a political struggle to get attention and support on something like this. So the hope is that it's a fertile field for releasing this report in this moment with the climate talks happening in Brazil, and with all the attention right now on funding the protection of the Amazon.
So what happens now?
Wolosin: Change has to happen at multiple scales, and that’s what my hope is for this report.
At the local level, it can point to how farmers can actually make more money if they don’t clear forests on their lands. It happens in state and provincial offices when there's two different agencies arguing over land-use plans. It happens at the national scale and international scales when having conversations about what does food security look like. This one is important because that’s where more government investment goes — it doesn't go to conservation, it goes to food security.
And it becomes a global stamp of approval every time someone needs to say, "Hey, wait a second. Cutting down the forest might not be good for agriculture."
But it also shows that things aren’t hopeless. There are solutions. There are systems that provide for both food and conservation and climate protection. The message here is, we're not going to get to a healthy food system and a healthy planet just by being purists on the conservation side. We have to accept that we need agricultural systems that are productive, and to be productive, they need to exist in balance with nature.
Bruno Vander Velde is the managing director of storytelling at Conservation International. Want to read more stories like this? Sign up for email updates. Also, please consider supporting our critical work.
