Asianews

EDITORIAL – Dumping tomatoes, again

DUBAI, United Arab Emirates — UN climate negotiations dragged into the early hours of Tuesday after the Emirati host of COP28 drew fire from Western powers and environmentalists over a draft deal that stopped short of calling for a phase-out of fossil fuels.

With hours to go until the Dubai summit officially ends, US climate envoy John Kerry told ministers th at this was “the last COP that we’ll have a chance to be able to keep 1.5 degrees alive. This is it.”

The landmark 2015 Paris Agreement set the increasingly elusive target of limiting warming to 1.5 degrees Celsius (2.7 degrees Fahrenheit) from pre-industrial levels in order to avoid the worst ravages of climate change.

“I don’t think anybody here wants to be associated with the failure to live up to this responsibility. Not a lot of people in public life are asked to make life and death choices his torically,” Kerry said.

“This is a war for survival,” he said in a closed-door session which ended at around 2:30 am (2230 GMT)

To meet the target, scientists say governments must massively deploy renewable energy while winding down the use of oil, gas and coal—the fossil fuels responsible for the bulk of heat-trapping greenhouse gas emissions.

“Many of us have called for the world to largely phase out fossil fuels,” Kerry said.

“I think most of you here refuse to be part of a charade,” said the US envoy, who was confronted by activists voicing their concerns about the text as he left the room.

Small island states which fear that climate change threatens their very existence accused the Emiratis of ignoring their interests.

“The republic of the Marshall Islands did not come here to sign our death warrant,” said its negotiator John Silk, demanding an end to fossil fuels.

COP28 president Sultan Al Jaber released a text aimed at bringing consensus between nearly 200 countries, which include Saudi Arabia and other oil and gas producers seeking to p reserve their economic lifeblood.

After an earlier draft listed the landmark option of a “phase-out” of oil, gas and coal, the new version released Monday afternoon focused on “reducing” their production and consumption in order to achieve net-zero emissions by 2050.

Negotiators said a new draft was expected on Tuesday.

Jaber, whose role as president of the UAE national oil company has drawn criticism from environmentalists, called his proposal a step forward and said he still sought “high ambition” on the fossil-fuel language.

A person familiar with the COP28 presidency’s thinking called the text “an opening gambit” that could be built upon.

If the text aimed to win over the Saudis, it disappointed Western powers, which said they would seek stronger language.

European ministers said they were disappointed with the text and warned they were ready for prolonged negotiations, which Jaber had hoped to close by 11:00 am (0700 GMT) on Tuesday.

“This text is insufficient. There are elements that are not acceptable as they are,” French negotiator Agnes Pannier-Runacher said.

The 21-page text does not go so far as to demand action on fossil fuels, only presenting measures that nations “could” take.

Canadian climate minister Steven Guilbeault took issue with the conditional verb.

If the text aimed to win over the Saudis, it disappointed Western powers, which said they would seek stronger language.

European ministers said they were disappointed with the text and warned they were ready for prolonged negotiations, which Jaber had hoped to close by 11:00 am (0700 GMT) on Tuesday.

“This text is insufficient. There are elements that are not acceptable as they are,” French negotiator Agnes Pannier-Runacher said.

The 21-page text does not go so far as to demand action on fossil fuels, only presenting measures that nations “could” take.

Canadian climate minister Steven Guilbeault took issue with the conditional verb.

The COP28 text calls for accelerating the deployment of zero- and low-emission technologies, including renewables, nuclear power and CCS, “so as to enhance efforts towards substitution of unabated fossil fuels in energy systems”.

“COP28 is now on the verge of complete failure,” former US vice president Al Gore, who won a Nobel peace prize for his work on climate change, said on X (formerly Twitter).

He said the draft “reads as if OPEC dictated it word for word”.

If the government wants to entice people to engage in agriculture, it will have to show that it is a viable livelihood. What the nation is seeing instead are farmers lamenting their losses and tons of produce going to waste because of oversupply.

During harvest time in the past years, the nation has seen farmers dump their tomato produce as farmgate prices plummet. In April this year, the farmgate price of tomatoes dropped to P3 to P5 per kilo amid an oversupply, with farmers in Cagayan Valley and Central Luzon among the hardest hit, according to a Department of Agriculture official.

This has happened again in recent days as prices fell to as low as P5 per kilo, forcing farmers in the Cordillera Administrative Region and Nueva Vizcaya to dump their tomatoes. A report said even if the tomatoes are not yet overripe, market storage space is limited so the older stocks have to make way for fresher harvests, which middlemen naturally prefer.

The proposals of farmers’ groups to deal with such problems are not new. Apart from the obvious need for more cold storage facilities nationwide, they have been pushing for an accurate inventory of agricultural production for a wide range of crops. This shouldn’t prove to be mission impossible; affordable technology is now widely available for this. In countries such as Israel, drones have been used for years for farm production inventories.

Agriculture officials have also been talking for a long time about cutting the number of middlemen for speedier farm-to-market access and possibly greater earnings for producers. The dumping of tomatoes, however, indicates slow progress in this area. The government cannot even identify where overpricing is most likely happening along the value chain. Producers of sugarcane and upland vegetables, for example, have complained recently about low farmgate prices even as retail prices for refined sugar and vegetables such as cabbage have refused to go down.

Apart from improved access to markets, the government can assist marginal farmers in ensuring buyers for their crops. Tomatoes can be processed into a wide range of products starting with sauce and ketchup. Small-scale farmers can be assisted in growing the right varieties under specific environments that processed food manufacturers require for their product quality control.

Local government officials, who are supposed to know more about the economic activities and the needs of farmers in their areas, can take the lead in boosting small-scale agricultural production. Local government units can also help ensure a measure of accuracy in agricultural inventories, and assist the national government in promoting crop rotation. Better agricultural management will not only raise farmers’ income but also stabilize food supply and prices.

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