Food Security and Climate Justice at the Paris Climate Change Conference

Food Security and Climate Justice at the Paris Climate Change Conference

Hilal Elver (UCSB Orfalea Center)
November 23, 2015 1:00 PM
McCune Conference Room

Climate change poses a distinct threat to all aspects of food security, threatening livelihood of already vulnerable people, while current fossil fuel based agricultural practices are responsible for accelerating climate change. Moreover, some mitigation and adaptation policies of the UNFCCC violate human rights of people while claiming to enact policies that reduce GHG emissions. There are two dominant recommendations to the governments of the world taking part in the Paris Conference: First, explain and promote agroecology as the indispensable foundation of food security, and second, integrate a commitment to climate justice and human rights with whatever climate change regime is established to reduce global warming, and do so in a manner that acknowledges a dependence on civil society activism, support, and participation.

Hilal Elver is the United Nations Special Rapporteur on Right to Food since June 2014. She is an international law professor and Global Distinguished Fellow at the UCLA Law School Resnick Food Law and Policy Center, a Research Professor at UC Santa Barbara, and co-director of the Climate Change, Human Security and Democracy Project at the Orfalea Center. Her publications include Reimagining Climate Change (2016, co-edited with Paul Wapner), Headscarf Controversy: Secularism and Freedom of Religion (2012), and Peaceful Uses of International Rivers: Euphrates and Tigris Rivers (2002).

Website: http://ehc.english.ucsb.edu/?ajde_events=climate-futures-event-3

Sponsored by Critical Issues in America, the Environmental Humanities Initiative, the Interdisciplinary Humanities Center, and College of Letters and Science.