Let's bury false solutions at COP28

Looking back at the 1^st Africa Climate Summit held in Nairobi, Kenya in September 2023, we could be tempted to have high hopes, given the extraordinary turnout of African social movements and peasant farmers.

Moreover, peasant farmers, from La Via Campesina in Kenya in particular, clearly expressed their refusal to accept false solutions to the climate crisis that the climate capitalist system is constantly imposing on us.

Solutions that, as we head into the second week of climate negotiations at COP 28 in Dubai, which is supposed to focus on the “Global Stocktake of the Paris Agreement”, remain firmly on the climate agenda, with no intention of being swept aside. Although they are increasingly presented as being “Nature-based Solutions” by major polluters and “the Exxons of agriculture”, they are simply a “con” and continue the destruction of our ecosystems. Nothing more needs to be said about the fact that these "solutions" will not be able to radically reduce emissions.

Everyone is now saying that Africa is the place where climate crisis solutions can be found. Forests, land, landscapes and other resources are therefore targeted by multiple “grabbers” working in the interests of profit and the convenience of capitalism. However, these capitalist solutions are false solutions to the climate crisis. Let’s take a look together at the Top 5 “solutions”:

1. Debt-for-nature swap: A debt-for-nature swap is a financial transaction where some of a developing country’s external debt is exchanged for local investment in environmental protection measures.

In Gabon, the population still does not understand the deal that was agreed to allow access to their forests and other natural resources, in such a vague concept, encouraged by some international financial institutions such as the African Development Bank (AfDB). The debt-for-nature deal that has been concluded, which will place Gabon's biodiversity in uncertain and complex financial mechanisms, continues to spark outrage among civil society and forest-dependent communities.

2. Carbon farming: This solution, promoted as a way of "keeping carbon in the soil" so that it does not end up in the atmosphere, is a firm favourite with agricultural companies such as Bayer, Syngenta and Yara. In Niger, for example, this is promoted by the multinational African Agriculture Inc, a company based in the United States that previously acquired farmland in Senegal under the name “Les Fermes de la Teranga”. In Niger, 2,000,000 hectares, in Senegal around 20,000 hectares and in Mauritania 400,000 hectares will be set aside for the production of carbon credits.

3. Green hydrogen: Yet another new development in recent months, coined as a “silver bullet” that is supposed to solve all our climate problems. Billed as a new opportunity or alternative, green hydrogen is believed to be the technology that will reduce our dependence on fossil fuels. This so-called green alternative is the latest attraction setting off a new energy race – without addressing the issue of “dependence”, its impact on human health or how it will be controlled by industry.

4. Smart farming: Smart farming, which those pushing false solutions want to pass off as agroecology, is quite simply a scam. It is encouraged by agribusiness so that they can keep on claiming huge market shares by selling “precision” and “smart” chemical fertilisers and other products of the so-called green “revolution” advocated by AGRA and others like Monsanto. This solution, which is neither smart nor “green”, but rather controlled by major food manufacturers, needs to be scrapped as a matter of urgency so that small peasant farmers can apply their knowledge, which is already making a huge contribution to protecting the climate and biodiversity.

5. Net zero emissions: The concept of "net zero emissions", which is still proving difficult to explain even for its greatest supporters in the climate arena, continues to raise questions not only about its credibility but also about its effectiveness. Given the various calculations involved in making the scheme truly "net", and the fact that its main target for "absorbing" emissions is our trees and forests, it is contributing significantly to undermining the credibility of the carbon market, which has been increasingly controversial since it was first set up.

Organising a lucrative business around the worst climate crisis of our time has proven to be the most grievous “betrayal” of Mother Earth.

As far as we are concerned, pursuing and achieving food sovereignty is the only way to combat the capitalist solutions proposed by the carbon market and the only way to stop the climate crisis in its tracks. This courageous commitment to food sovereignty is made by choosing to give power back to peasant farmers who practise farming that promotes their autonomy in their territories and guarantees the robust health of plants and animals, as well as that of humans. This sovereignty avoids the trap of technologies with unknown outcomes, which is at risk of becoming even worse with the emergence of artificial intelligence.