Panel 1: The Agroecological Movement

Food, Biodiversity, & Climate Justice

Catherine Badgley

Three crises confront global society today: the climate crisis, the biodiversity crisis, and a food-system crisis. These three crises are intimately inter-related in terms of ecological and political processes. Furthermore, all three crises arise from and contribute to social inequities that amount to environmental injustices within the United States and around the world. The global food system is critical for addressing causes and solutions to climate change and the loss of biodiversity.

The current food system, which is dominated by industrial production, processing, and sales of food, is a major factor in both climate change and biodiversity loss. The proximate cause of global climate change is a steady increase in greenhouse-gas emissions over the past 200 years. The food system generates 25-37% of these greenhouse gas emissions, primarily through synthetic nitrogen fixation, land clearing for agriculture, and fermentation by ruminant livestock.

The loss of biodiversity, with over 42,000 species currently threatened with extinction, is driven mainly by habitat transformation for agriculture and overharvesting of wild populations. Politically popular solutions to the climate and biodiversity crises tend to ignore the tremendous potential of a sustainable food system to reduce greenhouse gas emissions, sequester carbon, support native biodiversity, and provide sustainable livelihoods. Solutions in the food system include demonstrated agroecological production methods that sequester carbon in soils, provide habitats for native species, and utilize species interactions for biological control of pests and diseases. Economic policies that support small, diversified farms and food sovereignty would strengthen local food systems, improve diets of consumers, and offer sustainable livelihoods in landscapes that conserve biodiversity, reduce greenhouse-gas emissions, and sequester carbon.

Ivette Perfecto’s research, scholarship, and activism have contributed greatly to the paradigm shift toward agroecology and food sovereignty as governing principles in a sustainable global food system.