Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC)

I have been attending a meeting of around forty Archbishops and Bishops from all over Asia for several days now at Assumption University on the outskirts of Bangkok, Thailand surrounded by flood waters approaching the country’s low-lying capital city.

These were Ban Ki-moon’s words at the opening of the annual meeting of the UN Permanent Forum on Indigenous Issues (UNPFII) in New York, 16th May 2011. He gave the example of indigenous peoples in Peru who are responding to climate change by reintroducing native potato varieties and so are “helping to conserve the earth’s biodiversity”. “Indigenous peoples have been living a ‘green economy’ for centuries,” he added — economists should look to old practices in indigenous communities for new ways to achieve sustainable development.

I recently met with a Member of the Bangladesh Parliament to discuss the potential for mitigation in the agricultural sector under IIED’s work on the economics of climate change in the agricultural sector. Agriculture produces 10–12 per cent of total global emissions but also has considerable mitigation potential — 70 per cent of which is in developing countries — and I expected the Honourable Member, a well known climate change champion, to back the cause. But he did not seem entirely convinced. Why should decision makers listen? What’s in it for them?