Nthambeleni Gabara in AllAfrica.com via BuaNews (Tshwane, South Africa): The food security threat posed by climate change is one of the greatest challenges facing the African continent, says Agriculture, Forestry and Fisheries Minister Tina Joemat-Pettersson. "Africa has the responsibility to feed the world as well as its own African people, but we are faced with enormous climate change constraints such as severe drought, floods dreadful diseases.
"Climate change is a serious threat to the agricultural field in the African continent," Joemat-Pettersson told BuaNews at a breakfast briefing today with African ambassadors to solicit support for the planned meeting on climate-smart agriculture. The objective of the African Ministerial Conference on Climate-smart Agriculture is to share perspective amongst the leadership, explore challenges and grasp new opportunities for agriculture in Africa.
Themed "Climate-Smart Agriculture Africa: A call to Action", the conference is part of the build up to the upcoming 17th Conference of the Parties (COP 17) of the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC), scheduled for November and December in Durban.
"As African ministers responsible for agriculture, we want to go to the COP 17 conference with one idea of pushing for climate-smart agriculture. Speaking in one voice on agriculture as African ministers, food security, adaptation and mitigation will be our key focus of the new concept 'climate-smart agriculture' at the COP 17 conference," she said....
A vineyard next to the Orange River in South Africa, shot by Jcwf, Wikimedia Commons, under the Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 3.0 Unported license
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