Dunno about you, but “climate-smart” agriculture sounds like something the Soviets would have dreamt up.
NewsEurope reports:
Ethiopia is on the path to sustainable land management, climate-smart agriculture and forest protection, thanks to two agreements signed by Norway and the World Bank.
The first agreement will pour more than $50m into a special trust fund to co-finance the Sustainable Land Management Programme (SLMP II), which is aimed at reducing land degradation and increasing land productivity of smallholder farmers.
Under the terms of the second agreement, Norway will invest $13m through the World Bank’s BioCarbon Fund (BioCF) to support Ethiopia’s Climate Resilient Green Economy Facility and promote climate-smart agriculture, forest protection and land rehabilitation. The United Kingdom has already pledged $5m.
According to Tove Stub, the charge d’affaires at the Norwegian embassy in Ethiopia, Norway is pleased to collaborate with the World Bank in supporting Ethiopia’s ambitious efforts to fight land degradation, deforestation and climate change while promoting sustainable development in the land use sector.
The aim of both agreements is to protect natural resource endowment and promote climate-smart land use to adapt and mitigate climate change and increase food security and resilience over a large area. Guang Zhe Chen, the World Bank’s country director for Ethiopia, said the agreements will strangthen the bank’s partnership for Ethiopia’s sustainable development.
It depends entirely on what they mean by sustainable. If they mean sustainable as in providing for irrigation even in wet areas and anti-erosion techniques, then it could save their hides the next major drought. If they mean eschewing all forms of automating in the name of maximizing manual labor, then it could seriously backfire.
Ethiopia’s big problem is bad governance; even desert countries develop when they are free, as in the American Southwest.
The programs described here may be cover for real agriculture with dog whistles about climate and sustainability. If so, they may help Ethiopia rather than getting in the way, but the terminology is suspicious.
Soviet agriculture was less efficient than it could easily have been, we know, but the Soviet Union’s big “agriculture” problem, like the South during the Civil War, had more to do with transportation problems than the production of farms. A curse of central planning.
Ethiopia needs irrigation, roads and transport to begin to feed itself. It also needs freedom. The World Bank is doing dang little about fostering freedom.