False Solutions

False Solutions 1:

Global Redesign Initiative

The Global Redesign Initiative (GRI), spearheaded by the World Economic Forum, is a system of multi-stakeholder governance (MSG) as a partial replacement for intergovernmental decision-making (La Via Campesina, 2016) which encourages the privatization of the governance of people’s food systems and nutrition. Other similar “no-go” solutions that follow the GRI logic are the Scaling-Up Nutrition (SUN), Coastal Fisheries Initiative (CFI) or the G8 New Alliance for Food Security and Nutrition for Africa (La Via Campesina, 2016).

False Solution 2:

Agricultural Biotechnology

As the global population grows, agricultural biotechnology, agritech or biotech is frequently seen as a solution to increase global food supply. Global food insecurity is due to lack of proper distribution rather than supply. We currently produce more than enough food to feed the world’s growing population. Biotechnology presents many problems including further corporate control of our food system, negative effects on ecosystems, land degradation, use of chemical inputs, idk if this makes sense my brain is fried genetically modifying crops, contamination of non-GM crops by GM crops, corporate ownership of land for biotech experimentation, and the patenting of seeds and knowledge. While debates exist in the realm of GM foods, the side effects of GMO are still up for debate.

False Solution 3:

Biofuel

Biofuel is fuel created by biomass, plant material, and is seen as an energy solution to climate change creating ethanol or biodiesel. To create biofuel, huge swaths of land are used to grow monoculture crops, meaning this land is not being used to grow food for local communities. The U.S. spends billions of dollars subsidizing biofuels and pouring money into companies such as Monsanto, Shell, Exxon, and Syngenta. Biofuels perpetuate global poverty and exacerbate food insecurity, food price increases, and climate change (Gonzalez, 2016). The EROEI, energy return on energy invested is far too low with biofuel, meaning that it almost takes as much energy to create the fuel that it then creates, making biofuel production an inefficient use of land and a
false climate solution.

(For more inforamtion on Biofuels please refer to the Energy + Minerals section)

False Solution 4:

Climate-smart agriculture

The Global Alliance of Climate Smart Agriculture, launched at the UN in 2014, as a way to continue increasing “farming productivity, build resilience to climate change, and reduce/ remove greenhouse gas emissions.” Disturbingly, out of the 29 forming members of the Alliance, three were fertilizer lobby groups and two were the world’s largest fertilizer companies - groups whose goal is to advance the interest of the agribusiness sector and maintain goal profit-based extractivist food production. Thus, their corporate agenda is now deeply entrenched in Climate Smart Agriculture, making it another false solution bound to create further harms instead of repairing them. CSA is a clear continuation of colonial imperialism and does not offer any real system changes to the food system required in the age of the climate emergency.

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