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Check out our key concepts here, which will help you to apply a critical thinking lens to this topic, and articulate your ideas about it. These concepts are highlighted.

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An FT article, measuring the amount of water used by Microsoft, Google, and Meta. 

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An FT article, measuring the amount of water used by Microsoft, Google, and Meta. 

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We're proud to work in partnership with the FT, to promote their free FT for Schools programme. Follow this link to sign up your school, and access this and other articles.

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AI boom sparks concern over Big Tech's water consumption

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Microsoft, Google and Meta are using more water to cool down data centres that power artificial intelligence products

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An Observer opinion article, explaining how new data centres -particularly ones supporting AI - use vast amount of water, worsening the shortages that are facing the world. 

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An Observer opinion article, explaining how new data centres -particularly ones supporting AI - use vast amount of water, worsening the shortages that are facing the world. 

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AI’s craving for data is matched only by a runaway thirst for water and energy | John Naughton

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The computing power for AI models requires immense – and increasing – amounts of natural resources. Legislation is required to prevent environmental crisis

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A Forbes article, demonstrating how the labelling of a phenomenon (climate change) as an ‘emergency’ changes the way we perceive that phenomenon.

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A Forbes article, demonstrating how the labelling of a phenomenon (climate change) as an ‘emergency’ changes the way we perceive that phenomenon.

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UNPACKING THE SOURCE Whilst few experts doubt the link between human activity and climate change, persuading people who are not familiar with the scientific data (or are not persuaded by it) is another matter. How has language (specifically, the word ‘emergency’) helped to change perceptions of this issue? Thinking more widely, what is the role of language in helping to communicate scientific understanding? What are the pros and cons of using words and phrases that are emotive?

KEY TERMS Political language

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What do places like Shropshire (United Kingdom), Hawkes Bay (New Zealand), Sydney (Australia), New York (USA), and Krakow (Poland) have in common?

They are just some of the (and counting) cities, councils and jurisdictions worldwide to have declared a climate emergency. With record temperatures gripping Europe, widespread in South America, and ever-decreasing ice coverage in Greenland, the effects of climate change are being felt globally. As some nations drag their feet on enacting environmental policies or are slowed down by , some cities worldwide are taking matters in their own hands.
See also: One Small Step Renewable Energy Provides Growing Source Of Skilled Jobs For Africa And Asia
By declaring a climate emergency, cities are adopting more powers to help curb the effects of climate change . In New York, the city council has set new carbon reduction for its major buildings, Sydney have added climate considerations in any new policy or infrastructure decisions, while Shropshire Council, a rural district in the English Midlands, has to being carbon-neutral by 2030. In each case, these local governments have also used their declarations as a means to exert pressure on national decision-makers. There is no single definition of a climate emergency declaration, but many see it as a drive for carbon neutrality and a mandate for further political action.

France has declared #ClimateEmergency. This gained near zero attention..
Action surely matters more than words and so far the words have meant nothing. But how can we hold politicians accountable to this if no one even knows an emergency has been declared? https://t.co/YLEQmIv5zC

- Greta Thunberg (@GretaThunberg) July 3, 2019

See also: Mini-Grids Are Ready To Change The World (Again) Deal Or No Deal
Bristol councilor Carla Denyer, who helped her city pass one of the United Kingdom's first local climate emergency declarations in November 2018 : "We are acknowledging we are in an emergency situation. The national government needs to declare an emergency and put resources in place to enable councils to help reduce carbon emissions . It's the first step to radical action." Six months after Bristol made its initial declaration, the United Kingdom became the first country to a climate emergency and pledged to dedicate more resources towards mitigating climate change.
See also: New Zealand Ditches GDP For Happiness And Wellbeing
In many cases, smaller political structures and more power over local policy have enabled cities to make more ambitious goals for themselves than national governments. The town of Chico in California declared a climate emergency after witnessing the most destructive wildfire in state history. Chico has pledged to eliminate all greenhouse gas emissions by the year 2030 and intends to adopt many of the resolutions outlined in the Green New Deal. Rocked by a heatwave that sent temperatures soaring to 47 degrees, Paris is the major city to declare a climate emergency. With emission reduction projects already in place in the French capital, the city council has expanded its environmental plans by announcing it will open a " climate academy " geared to educating the public about the risks of climate change.
See also: 16-Year-Old Activist Demands EU Parliament Act On Climate Change As Quickly As Notre-Dame
Despite a vast array of pledges and policy changes, many declarations have been made in a more symbolic way. Pope Francis recently a worldwide climate emergency and urged nations to do more to tackle the issue head-on. Meanwhile, the declaration made in Krakow was led by local environmental groups with the support of councilor members and was made in a bid to apply on Poland's conservative government. Progressive lawmakers believe the government should increase budget allocations towards fighting climate change, while the ruling party advocate private businesses finding their own, for-profit solutions.

While hundreds of cities and regions are declaring climate emergencies and pledging various levels of commitments, who will be monitoring their progress? Answer: the citizens. With environmental watchdogs such as Greenpeace and the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change ( ) continually monitoring government policies, and demonstrations worldwide by movements such as Extinction Rebellion demanding more , the stage is set for more accountability from decision-makers.

A large proportion of declarations are made as a result of public pressure, with citizens intent of seeing action done to reduce carbon emissions and fight climate change. These declarations are part of a much larger movement that has been spurred by a younger generation that feels by the lack of action taken by governments worldwide. Climate change has been listed as one of the major by younger generations, and they are determined to ensure that their is not compromised by short-term decision-making. From 16-year-old Greta Thunberg's at the United Nations to mass mobilizations in capital cities around the globe, the threat of a climate crisis has pushed most governments towards making stronger environmental pledges.

The 822 jurisdictions who have declared a climate emergency thus far contain over 136 million people and those numbers are expected to rise as governments begin to recognize the real threat posed by climate change. An IPCC report dated from last year stressed that the world may only have until 2030 to climate change before it reaches a more dangerous level. With more opportunities behind a transition towards a low-carbon than ever before and time running out to implement it, cities declaring a climate emergency are helping to raise awareness and drive the changes needed to safeguard the planet. However, these declarations mean nothing without real, concrete action to support them.

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Climate Emergency Declarations: How Cities Are Leading The Charge

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What do places like Shropshire (United Kingdom), Hawkes Bay (New Zealand), Sydney (Australia), New York (USA), and Krakow (Poland) have in common? They are just some of the (and counting) cities, councils and jurisdictions worldwide to have declared a climate emergency.

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An Independent article, which asserts that a 20-50 question conversation with an AI chatbot uses 500 ml of water.

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An Independent article, which asserts that a 20-50 question conversation with an AI chatbot uses 500 ml of water.

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The water consumption of data centres used to run the artificial intelligence chatbot ChatGPT by billions of users worldwide is "extremely large", according to a new study.

OpenAI's AI chatbot ChatGPT gained prominence last year for its uncanny ability to respond to a range of user queries with human-like language.

It has demonstrated major feats in a short time span, including the ability to summarise research studies and answer logical questions. It has also cracked business school and medical exams meant for college students.

But these feats may have come at the cost of the chatbot consuming staggering amounts of water, experts said.

While previous research shed light on the carbon footprint of such AI models, water consumption to run them on a large scale has "remained under the radar", according to scientists, including those from the University of California Riverside in the US.

The new, yet-to-be peer-reviewed research, posted as a pre-print in arXiv, estimates that a conversation of about 20-50 questions with the AI chatbot in a single system may "drink" a "500ml bottle of water".

A framework to estimate the amount of clean freshwater consumed for generating electricity to power data centre servers and for cooling servers to run AI models was developed for the research.

Citing an example, scientists said that in training GPT-3 alone, Microsoft may have consumed a stunning 700,000 litres (185,000 gallons) of water - enough to produce 370 BMW cars.

The tech giant has partnered with ChatGPT creator OpenAI and invested $10bn in the company.

Other AI models like Google's LaMDA can consume a "stunning" amount of water in the order of millions of litres, scientists noted.

In response to global water shortages, the researchers urged companies running AI models to "take social responsibility" and address their own water footprint.

"AI models can, and also should, take social responsibility and lead by example in the collective efforts to combat the global water scarcity challenge by cutting their own water footprint," scientists wrote in the study.

"While a 500ml bottle of water might not seem too much, the total combined water footprint for inference is still extremely large, considering ChatGPT's billions of users," they said.

Researchers said these numbers may increase by "multiple times" for the newly-launched GPT-4 AI system which has a larger model size.

They, however, pointed out that there is hardly any public data available to reasonably estimate the water footprint for GPT-4.

Scientists call for increasing transparency of the water footprint of AI models, including better disclosure of information about operational data and the effectiveness of water consumption during the runtime of such systems.

"AI models' water footprint can no longer stay under the radar - water footprint must be addressed as a priority as part of the collective efforts to combat global water challenges," researchers concluded.

OpenAI did not immediately respond to The Independent 's request for comment.

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ChatGPT data centres may be consuming a staggering amount of water

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Conversation of 20-50 questions with AI chatbot may 'drink' 500ml of water, scientists say

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A National Geographic article, looking at the development of agriculture from 12,000 years ago onwards.

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A National Geographic article, looking at the development of agriculture from 12,000 years ago onwards.

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The development of agricultural about 12,000 years ago changed the way humans lived. They switched from nomadic hunter-gatherer lifestyles to permanent settlements and farming.

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A World Economic Forum article, looking at how satellite data can help to change the way agriculture works. 

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A World Economic Forum article, looking at how satellite data can help to change the way agriculture works. 

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Space technology is rapidly transforming how we do things on Earth, but satellite-enabled applications could particularly benefit agriculture.

Using satellite technology could identify the threat of pests earlier, reduce the need for inputs such as fertilizer and boost overall crop yield.

Everyone in agriculture stands to gain, but co-ordinated efforts will be needed from all shareholders, especially in areas such as data sharing.

Space technology is transforming how we do things on Earth these days. But it is perhaps in agriculture that the impact is being felt particularly strongly and has the potential to transform how the sector operates by 2030.

Free or affordable space images traditionally have not been good enough to be meaningful on the ground and the ones with higher resolution have just been too expensive.

But that is changing now and over the next few years, both the cost and quality of imagery could be at a point where using it consistently could help deliver significant savings for farmers as well as help provide better planning for those working across the rest of the sector - everyone from logistics providers to insurance, governments and traders.

How space applications can benefit agriculture

A few significant numbers in the report jump out. For example, identification of early-stage pests by hyperspectral and optical satellite imagery, if applied at scale, could help salvage up to 0.8 billion tonnes of crops annually.

Similarly, helping reduce inputs - such as pesticides and fertilizer - could save up to 50 million tonnes of carbon dioxide emissionsper year, while water usage could be reduced by 5-10% - that's up to 2.8 billion litres of fresh-water - from satellite-informed irrigation improvement.

Considering that the agricultural sector is a key global emitter of greenhouse gases and consumes close to two-thirds of global freshwater withdrawals, these numbers are important.

These societal benefits deliver economic returns as well. Food waste reduction could contribute an additional $150-175 billion in economic value for producers, according to analysis of data from the UN Food and Agriculture Organization, and a 5% cost reduction represents $7-8 billion for growers from input savings alone.

Space applications' potential to address challenges in agriculture Image: McKinsey

So how does this all work in practice? Space-based remote sensors collect and facilitate the exchange of a multitude of data, including weather information and imagery from optical, hyperspectral and multi-spectral domains, which can drive advanced analytics methods to provide insights in the field and across seasons.

We see these improving technologies, coupled with growing supply, bringing increased adoption over the next decade across five use cases:

Yield estimation: usingsatellite data and analytics to generate accurate and regionally specific estimates of expected crop production, by crop type, to quantify and act on food demand gaps, predict crop prices, or align logistics to harvest areas.

Yield optimization: using satellite data to power advanced analytics that identify intra-field crop defects, informing actions and operations to maximize production per acre by using resources more efficiently.

Bolstering sustainable practices: applying satellite insights to help reduce emissions, use less water, and encourage regenerative practices.

P redicting, verifying and mitigating damage from natural disasters with satellites' unique ability to remotely monitor conditions before and after droughts, fires and floods.

Enabling autonomy and continuous monitoring via satellite-based connectivityin remote areas with poor mobile broadband coverage.

How satellites could be used in agriculture

For many of these use cases, satellites compete with unmanned aircraft vehicles, commonly known as UAVs or drones; fixed wing aircraft or high-altitude platforms such as balloons. However, satellites offer advantages at scale and eliminate the need for large, ground-based operations.

In some specific cases where extremely high resolution (3cm by 3cm) is needed or when there is persistent cloud cover, drones may still have a role in the future. But as satellite resolution improves and costs come down, these space-based tools could become an integral part of the sector.

Another likely scenario could see a hybrid model emerge, where a joint use of the different platforms can appear, with drones being used to verify data coming from satellites or providing sets of data which would be extrapolated to entire areas through satellite data with the help of artificial intelligence.

Importantly, we estimate the blended cost of high and very-high-resolution satellite imagery to decline 25% to 50% by 2030, bringing satellite imagery costs to a competitive level with that of equivalent-quality fixed wing and unmanned aerial vehicles, as their costs are likely to remain stable.

New customer groups, including carbon traders and insurers, are also likely to be attracted by what satellite data can provide, due to improved costs and operating models. In combination with expanding its reach to existing customers such as governments and the agriculture industry, we project adoption to grow the market ~10% annually and reach up to $1 billion by 2030.

In McKinsey & Company's 2022 digital farmer adoption survey, 29% of row crop farmers and 45% of specialty crop farmers in the US said they currently employ remote sensing, or plan to, in the next two years and numbers are even higher in South America and Europe. With younger operators increasingly aging into management roles, adoption will increase - already 60% of users are under 44 years of age.

Co-ordinated efforts needed to increase uptake

Yet it will take coordinated efforts among disparate stakeholders to make greater adoption a reality. Greater confidence can be achieved by involving users in the technology development roadmaps, ensuring a tight linkage between user needs and insights.

Providing transparency into how insights are derived, highlighting where they are most accurate or fall short, is also critical for building trust. Ultimately, testimonials and proven value creation will be the true test.

Getting model accuracy to reliable levels requires a high investment of manpower, while data gathered on the ground is required to train analytics models and validate what the images predict. Such data is costly and will require substantial cross-industry collaboration.

Archival imagery and real time imagery will be required by satellite companies to help insight developers train their algorithms, while growers should ensure ground-truth data availability byleveraging cooperatives, commodity boards, and other networks.

Governments, non-governmental organizations and analytics companies can make data-sharing easy, anonymous and beneficial for growth to growers who participate.

Commercial satellite applications have therefore an opportunity to become a much bigger part of the agriculture sector over the coming years, and everybody stands to gain.

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Here's how #space technology can improve #agriculture

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Satellite-based applications could revolutionize agriculture from space by earlier identifying pests, cutting need for fertilizers and boosting crop yield.

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 A BBC article, looking at how US farms are using AI to raise production levels - and how this could help feed the world. 

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 A BBC article, looking at how US farms are using AI to raise production levels - and how this could help feed the world. 

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US farms are making an urgent push into AI. It could help feed the world

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American farmers are rapidly ploughing ahead with adopting artificial intelligence. The technology is as sophisticated as it is essential.

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A Le Monde article, assessing the dangers of water wars worldwide, and how we can avoid them.

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A Le Monde article, assessing the dangers of water wars worldwide, and how we can avoid them.

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Subscribers // by Akram Belkaïd (Le Monde diplomatique - English edition, July 2023)

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A Guardian article, looking at how a Colombian restaurant specializing in indigenous food helps us to appreciate traditional knowledge. 

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A Guardian article, looking at how a Colombian restaurant specializing in indigenous food helps us to appreciate traditional knowledge. 

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UNPACKING THE SOURCE What type of food does Mauricio Velasco specialize in? What does he mean when he says, ““I want people not to just fall in love through the stomach, but to understand.” How can the work he does help to promote and protect indigenous communities and their traditions? To wrap up: “Food is as much the means to convey knowledge and heritage as it is the way to satisfy an appetite.” Do you agree? How can this way of thinking be used to safeguard indigenous societies around the world?

KEY TERMS Understand, Different cultures, Traditions, Awareness, Explaining

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Many of the dishes that emerge from Mauricio Velasco's kitchen are unrecognisable to most visitors.

Some, like the mojojoy - fat white palm weevil grubs served in a fish broth with lemon ants and sweet cassava flatbreads - can even repulse diners.

This means that Velasco spends a significant amount of his time away from the stove explaining to guests exactly what they are about to put into their mouths.

But that's precisely the point, the 27-year-old says with a broad grin.

"I want people not to just fall in love through the stomach, but to understand."

Velasco's restaurant, Amazónico, is in Mocoa, the capital of Colombia 's Putumayo region. Surrounded on all sides by forested mountains, the town's hilly streets remind visitors they are at an ecological frontier where the Andes mountain range ends and 7m sq km of Amazon rainforest begins.

map locating Mocoa in Colombia and showing adjacent areas of South America

Eighteen of Colombia's 102 Indigenous groups live in the region - each with their own unique gastronomic traditions developed over thousands of years.

"All these different cultures are what makes Putumayo amazing. For a chef, it's everything you could ever need to make wonderful food," says Velasco, who grew up in the town.

Yet Mocoa has little gastronomic connection with the wider region: a hungry diner is far more likely to find a hotdog than fresh fish or Amazon fruits.

"People here do not really value what is theirs, so my idea was to make a space where people can come to taste and feel the different flavours, trying food that transports them to the communities they otherwise cannot reach," Velasco says.

Velasco started Amazónico in 2019, and spent two years studying the diverse culinary cultures of the region's Indigenous communities.

Velasco helps prepare cassava at a local community. Photograph: Amazonico Restaurante

From the Siona people in the humid rainforests of the Amazon to the Kamëntsá communities in the Portachuelo mountains, the groups share a common threat: their heritage is fading.

Indigenous traditions - normally passed by mouth from generation to generation - are easily lost as communities leave Colombia's forests for its cities.

Indigenous communities are particularly vulnerable in Putumayo, which has long been a conflict zone thanks to the drugs trade and the presence of armed groups. For decades Indigenous families have been forced to abandon their territory before their children can be taught to hunt or pick the fruits of the rainforest.

By documenting the traditions of Putumayo's Indigenous peoples and bringing them to the town Velasco hopes to generate pride in Indigenous cuisine and help protect them from extinction.

"We want these people to continue passing the knowledge they learnt from their fathers to their children, not for them to feel ashamed and leave it behind," he says.

Amazónico's menu is created from seasonal ingredients purchased directly from Indigenous communities, and the reliable income stream helps them maintain their traditions, Velsasco says.

At the heart of the menu is the monstrous pirarucu - a prehistoric fish native to the Amazon and the largest in the world.

Different cuts of the pirarucu are grilled and served as steaks alongside various creamy and sweet sides but the most popular dish is probably the pirarucu croquettes. Fried in a crunchy cassava flour coating, balls of the 200kg fish are served with a black chilli sauce made with ants.

Chef Mauricio Velasco at work. Photograph: Amazonico Restaurante

"Pirarucu used to only be available in Puerto Leguízamo, which is nine hours away and the only way to transport it was dried. It was overly salty and it stank, so everyone thought it was horrific. They didn't realise that fresh pirarucu is delicious and you can use nearly the entire fish, from the tail to the belly and the ribs."

Alongside exotic fish and insects the restaurant offers a wide selection of cocktails using the fruits of the Amazon.

Amazónico is the latest edition to the "rainforest to table movement" sweeping Latin America and the wider world.

By transporting the foods of the rainforest, ambitious chefs are educating people on the wonders of the Amazon through food.

The movement is helping raise awareness of the need to protect the rainforest from soaring deforestation, says Mark Plotkin, an ethnobotanist who has spent decades studying the healing properties of the Amazon's roughly 80,000 plant species.

"New restaurants like this are blazing a new culinary trail into the rainforest, sharing these tasty and nutritional delights with the world at large," Plotkin says.

Bistro-style restaurants serving foods from far-flung corners of Colombia have become in vogue in the past 10 years in Bogotá and are at the forefront of the capital's innovative food scene.

Away from Bogotá's hipster bubbles, the task is more challenging.

A tortilla with fish broth, containing ingredients harvested locally. Photograph: Amazónico Restaurante

Local people are reluctant to dine at one of Mocoa's most expensive restaurants when they recognise little on the menu. Most customers at Amazónico are visitors to Putumayo from Bogotá or abroad.

"I'm often asked, 'where is the salmon, the steak or the risotto?'" Velasco says.

Offering a few familiar options on the menu and carefully explaining Amazónico's concept to new guests is helping secure more local reservations, however. Earlier this year the restaurant inaugurated a second floor to accommodate the growing number of customers.

The restaurant is already making a change to the communities that Amazónico works with, Velasco says. Seeing their traditional foods served up under Amazónico's wicker lamps fills them with pride over their rich gastronomic heritage.

The biggest change, however, has probably been visited on the chef himself.

Velasco had planned to learn his trade in the Michelin-starred kitchens of Europe, but Amazónico was conceived out of necessity when a landslide flattened Mocoa in 2017, destroying his parents' bakery - and with it hopes of studying abroad.

"Amazónico has changed my life entirely," he says. "I now realise that I wanted to travel before ever really understanding or valuing my own home. In exploring my region and meeting all these people, every day I understand, fall in love with, and appreciate Putumayo more. My dream today is not to travel but to keep working with them because I can see the change it's bringing."

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Weevils and lemon ants: a chef in the Amazon keeps rainforest dishes alive

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Colombian Mauricio Velasco dreamed of working in the Michelin-starred kitchens of Europe but now his Amazónico eatery celebrates local, Indigenous gastronomic traditions

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A BBC article, investigating a Dutch tech approach to promote sustainable farming. 

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A BBC article, investigating a Dutch tech approach to promote sustainable farming. 

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I'm at the Wageningen University's Farm of the Future, where I had been expecting to see robots and perhaps, drones flying overhead.

But on a bright blue day project manager Wijnand Sukkel stands in the expansive fields across from the university building with bare trees and of course, windmills in the background, and points at the strips of crops in the fields.

He says usually in the Netherlands these would just be filled by a monocrop such as maize or wheat.

Here in Lelystad, however, they're experimenting with different agricultural methods including crop diversity, with eight different crops sown here at any one time including wheat, onions, potatoes, and broad beans.

"We know that crop diversity works," says Mr Sukkel, who adds that they also use cover crops to help improve the soil and biodiversity. "It's a more efficient use of water, it has lower risk of pest disease, it has a higher biodiversity, it's better for the soil, and it gives higher yields."

The world population is expected to reach nearly 10 billion people in 2050, according to the UN. Mr Sukkel and his colleagues are developing sustainable farming systems to ensure there's enough food for a growing global population, while also working to reduce carbon emissions.

The university started Farm of the Future four years ago after seeing biodiversity decline due to climate change. "We wondered if it was possible to design a high food production farm system with zero fossil fuel energy use, with no damage from pesticides and [that] was resilient to heavy rainfall or very long dry periods."

The Netherlands is the second biggest exporter of agricultural goods worldwide.

Including animal products, those exports are estimated to have increased by 9.4% to a record €104.7bn (£90bn; $114bn) in 2021, according to Wageningen Economic Research (WUR) and Statistics Netherlands (CBS).

However, producing for such a large export market puts a lot of pressure on the nation's environment.

So Mr Sukkel and his team are focused on sustainable production. "We need to regenerate soils and regenerate biodiversity. Right now all over the world is large-scale and uniform agricultural production which is very intensive and is killing the soil."

One of their solutions to combat dry weather has been to create a drainage system which gathers excess water and pumps it underground. "In the winter we have too much water. Now all the water drips into the soil and is caught in the drainage system. We have a big water bubble underground."

At the Farm of the Future there are perennial flower strips to ensure there's food and shelter for insects. "If you harvest everything at the same time or plant everything at the same time, it's an ecological death. They cannot survive."

The Farm of the Future, which showcases its research and learnings to companies and organisations worldwide, has invested in technology to help its production to be stronger and more sustainable. This includes tech which recognises weeds.

"Instead of spraying everything with the same doses, the machine recognises the weeds from the culture plant and sprays a little [germicide] on it," says Mr Sukkel.

However, he does say it can be challenging for farmers to invest in technology due to high costs. "For example, one of the bigger potato harvesting machines costs €500,000 (£430,000) and it is only used for four weeks a year."

The Dutch government has also revealed radical action to tackle environmental damage, outlining ambitions to halve its nitrogen emissions by 2030. One way is through it pushing for livestock numbers to fall by a third, sparking nationwide protests from farmers.

In the southwest of the Netherlands, Jacob van den Borne is a third-generation farmer producing mainly potatoes but also sugar beet, wheat and barley, as well as small crops like parsnips and sweet potatoes across 900 hectares of land. As well as selling at home, he also exports to countries such as England, Germany, Belgium and France.

Mr van den Borne started investing in a wider variety of crops when he noticed the soil quality was deteriorating. An advocate of precision farming, he turned to GPS technology to measure, analyse and research his crops as efficiently as possible in order to achieve a higher yield.

He has invested in soil scanning technology which allows him to map and document every square metre of soil. "It gives me the ability to improve the soil potential and predict which are the good spots and fix the others."

He is also tapping into sensors and data infrastructure.

"I have spent about €1m on such investment, but I have a rule - don't invest in new toys before the old ones are paid off."

He says a key focus for the next year is variable rate irrigation, which provides pre-planned levels of water at controlled times. "This is irrigation on demand. We cannot control the weather but one thing that is really measurable is the weather. If there's no rain we can add water."

New Tech Economy is a series exploring how technological innovation is set to shape the new emerging economic landscape.

Mr van den Borne has also invested heavily in disease management. "We have multiple weather stations looking at weather conditions and that can calculate when the crop could be attacked. We then protect just before that moment. It's like when wearing sun lotion, you don't put it on much earlier as you will still burn."

He says he is investing in AI to help provide the answers in the future. "For example, asking questions like if there's an issue in the field, we can try and figure it out with AI."

"For me, the farm of the future is all about data, artificial intelligence and learning."

Meino Smit, who runs an organic farm and wrote his PhD thesis on the sustainability of Dutch agriculture from 1950 to 2015, is concerned that "Dutch agriculture is not currently sustainable".

"Technology has a negative impact on the environment; the more tech you use, the more it creates a negative impact in the environment," he says.

"Big machines are very bad for the soil and they use a lot of energy. Tech is not a solution. We need reduced energy use combined with tech and labour."

Looking ahead to the future, farmers are understanding they need to be more adaptive due to climate change, says Mr van den Borne. "We are producing more efficiently with a lower ecological footprint; it's not only quantity but also quality."

Like many farmers, he's feeling the pressure. "It's pretty scary but less than 1% of the global population is feeding the rest. It's quite an important job."

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New tech boosts Dutch drive for sustainable farming

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In the Netherlands, experiments are underway to ensure future food supply and cut carbon emissions.

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A Forbes article, investigating the water-use of AI tech giants contributes to shortages.

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A Forbes article, investigating the water-use of AI tech giants contributes to shortages.

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About two-thirds of the world's population experiences severe water shortages for at least one month each year. By 2030, the situation is expected to worsen, with almost half of the world's population facing severe water stress.

This prediction was made in a report published a few years ago by the United Nations Environment Programme. To avoid this fate, the report said, water use must be "decoupled" from economic growth by developing policies and technologies to reduce or maintain consumption without compromising performance.

The authors mentioned a few water-intensive sectors, such as agriculture. What they did not imagine, in 2016, is they should have added another source of consumption: artificial intelligence.

So far, researchers and developers have mainly focused on reducing the carbon footprint of AI models. However, a crucial aspect that has often been overlooked is their water footprint. In " Making AI Less "Thirsty": Uncovering and Addressing the Secret Water Footprint of AI Models," a new paper that has yet to be peer-reviewed, researchers from the University of Colorado Riverside and the University of Texas Arlington fill this gap by shedding light on the significant water consumption associated with training and deploying AI models in data centers.

Using public data sources, they estimate that "training GPT-3 in Microsoft's state-of-the-art US data centers can directly consume 700,000 liters of clean freshwater", which they calculate could be used to produce 370 BMW cars or 320 Tesla electric vehicles.

Furthermore, ChatGPT 'drinks' the equivalent of a 500ml bottle of water for a simple conversation of 20-50 questions and answers. Which may not seem like much... until you consider that the chatbot has more than 100 million active users, each of whom engages in multiple conversations.

And it's not just Microsoft: when it comes to water consumption, Google is second to none. In 2021, its data centers in the US alone will consume 12.7 billion liters of freshwater for on-site cooling, about 90% of which will be potable water.

Overall, the combined water footprint of US data centers operations was estimated at 626 billion liters in 2014. To give credit where credit is due, it's not as if the big tech companies are doing nothing to tackle the problem. Many of them, such as Amazon, Meta, Google and Microsoft, have pledged to become " water positive" by 2030 - meaning they will refill more water than they consume.

Unfortunately, as the study's authors point out, there's often a trade-off between carbon efficiency and water efficiency.

This is due to the fact that current approaches to achieving sustainable AI predominantly center on engineering solutions, such as enhancing the efficiency of data center cooling towers. While these supply-side solutions conserve water, they fail to address the demand-side management aspects tied to the timing and location of AI model training and use.

"For example, AI model developers may want to train their models during the noon time when solar energy is more abundant, but this is also the hottest time of the day that leads to the worst water efficiency," researchers write, using LaMDA 's training in sun-drenched Nevada as an example.

In other words, using renewable energy can sometimes get in the way of saving water.

The challenge, then, is to find a way to balance carbon and water efficiency, which will require new and holistic approaches to sustainable AI.

One potential solution lies in exploiting what researchers call the 'spatio-temporal diversity' of water use efficiency. In short, by scheduling AI model training and inference in different places and at different times, developers can reduce the water footprint of their AI models.

As the paper has yet to be peer-reviewed, it's possible that some of its arguments and conclusions may need to be re-evaluated. Still, the researchers' findings are impressive, and it's hard not to agree with their final assessment: "AI models' water footprint can no longer stay under the radar - water footprint must be addressed as a priority as part of the collective efforts to combat global water challenges."

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AI'S Unsustainable Water Use: How Tech Giants Contribute To Global Water Shortages

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Did you know? ChatGPT 'drinks' the equivalent of a 500ml bottle of water for a simple conversation of 20-50 questions and answers. Which may not seem like much... until you consider that it has more than 100 million active users.

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A Guardian article, looking at how an oil boom in Iraq is worsening the water crisis in the south of the country. 

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A Guardian article, looking at how an oil boom in Iraq is worsening the water crisis in the south of the country. 

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Western oil companies are exacerbating water shortages and causing pollution in Iraq as they race to profit from rising oil prices after Russia's invasion of Ukraine.

Water scarcity has already displaced thousands and increased instability, according to international experts, while Iraq is now considered the fifth most vulnerable country to the climate crisis by the UN. In the oil-rich but extremely dry south, wetlands that used to feed entire communities are now muddy canals.

Mahdi Mutir, 57, worked as a fisher his entire life. For years, Mutir and his wife woke at dusk, sailing along a thick network of canals in Al Khora, a few kilometres north of Basra. The harvest was meagre but enough to provide food for the family of seven.

That changed last year. Now, at the height of the rainy season, Mutir's boat lies stranded in the mud.

"It is the water station the Italian company built: they need water for their oilfields," Mutir said, pointing at the black smoke rising from the Zubayr oilfield on the horizon.

To help extract oil, companies pump large quantities of water into the ground. For each barrel of oil, many of which are later exported to Europe, up to three barrels of water are pumped into the ground. And as Iraq's oil exports rise, its water has dramatically fallen.

The Italian company Mutir is referring to is the oil and gas multinational Eni, which has been working in Iraq since 2009. Analysis of satellite images shows how over the past year a small dam, built by Eni to divert water from the Basra canal to its water treatment plant is preventing the seasonal flooding of the area where Mutir once used to fish.

Another nearby plant used by oil companies including BP and ExxonMobil accounts for 25% of the daily water consumption in a region of almost 5 million people.

Water buffaloes swim near the Nihran Bin Omar oilfield north of Basra. Photograph: Nabil al-Jurani/AP

The Qarmat Ali plant, five miles south of the Eni plant, is operated by the Rumaila Operating Organisation (ROO), comprised of BP, PetroChina and the South Oil Company of Iraq. Water at the plant comes directly from the Abd Abdullah canal, which redirects freshwater from a river before it reaches the Shatt al-Arab, the river formed by the confluence of the Euphrates and Tigris rivers, and Basra's main water source.

In a statement Eni said no fresh water was used by the company as the water from the canals is salty and polluted, and therefore it is not in competition with other uses. But the Guardian has seen on the ground and in satellite images how the water from the canals feeding Qarmat Ali and Eni's under-construction Al Khora plant merges a few kilometres south of the two plants into a public water treatment plant that provides 35% of the water used by households in Basra.

Iraq's impending water crisis has been well documented. In 2012, the US Energy Information Administration (EIA) reported that the country's water needs for oil would increase tenfold. Without alternatives, it said, "water would have to come from local aquifers, which would compete directly with the needs for agriculture and consumption".

Despite the warnings, little has been done. In 2018, an acute water crisis in the city resulted in 118,000 people being taken to hospital and led to violent protests. Demonstrators threw petrol bombs at government buildings and the security forces allegedly responded with live ammunition, leaving at least five people dead.

"Overall the volume of water injections required is not huge, but in water-stressed areas this can cause serious problems," said Robert Mills, the chief executive of Qamar Energy, an independent consultancy, and author of a 2018 report on Iraq's water injection needs. "In Basra, which has terrible water problems, in principle oil companies should find alternatives to fresh water" he said.

Alternatives exist. In Saudi Arabia, Iraq's neighbour with comparable water problems and the world's third largest oil reserve, water for injection is taken from the sea. In Iraq, discussions over the construction of a project to supply seawater have been taking place for more than a decade, but nothing has been done yet: "The ministry of oil does not have enough budget, and oil companies do not want to pay for it," Mills said.

Iraq more than doubled its crude production in the decade leading up to 2019, and its output has only grown since Russia's invasion of Ukraine in 2022. That year, exports of Iraqi oil to Europe rose by nearly 40%.

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Last year, oil and gas companies recorded unprecedented profits. Eni doubled its 2021 results, netting £17.9bn, while BP, Exxon and TotalEnergies also recorded their most profitable years in recent history.

Iraq, however, has not seen a similar growth. "Iraq's development indices resemble that of low-income countries," the World Bank said in a 2022 report.

"Contrary to other countries they operate in, in Iraq most foreign oil companies do nothing to limit their environmental impact: for them it is just cheaper to keep polluting the environment," said Walid al-Hamid, head of southern Iraq's environmental agency. The department oversees inspections of oilfields and imposes sanctions for environmental damage.

In a document seen by the Guardian, Eni and BP are among the companies listed as having been fined. But many of the fines, according to Hamid, have never been paid.

Gas flaring - the burning of natural gas associated with oil extraction - is also a serious concern. In 2018, the gas flared within a 70km radius of Basra exceeded the total flaring volume of Saudi Arabia, China, Canada, and India combined.

In Zubair alone last year 2.5bn cubic metres of gas were burned, World Bank data shows, despite Eni's claim in its 2021 annual report that the company was responsible for less than half that figure worldwide.

Eni said in a statement that although it leads the consortium of companies that operates the Zubair field, it is not the operator and does "not have control of the strategy for the field, or the responsibility for flaring ... all of which sit with the Basra Oil Company [the national Iraqi company responsible for the oil in the south of the country]." Eni also said that it is not responsible for the fines levied by the environment agency, and that they should be paid by the Basra Oil Company, which operates the field in question.

The terms of the contract, the company added, "explicitly removes any responsibility for flaring, flaring reduction projects or community compensation".

BP said it was also not responsible for the fines listed in the documents, and that the field in question was operated by the Rumaila Operating Organisation, a company it founded and in which it holds a 47.6% share.

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Iraq's oil boom blamed for worsening water crisis in drought-hit south

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Pollution from gas flaring - the burning of natural gas associated with oil extraction - is also a major concern in the oil-rich but extremely dry south

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An FT article, which questions whether adding carbon food labels would change the way people shop.

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An FT article, which questions whether adding carbon food labels would change the way people shop.

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UNPACKING THE SOURCE What is ‘transparent labelling’ on food, and what impact is this designed to have? From the information in the article, do their food habits have a negative impact on the environment? How important is it to base transparent labelling on reliable data - and how easy is it to gather this? Overall, how prepared do they think people will be to change their behaviour when presented with evidence that it is damaging the environment?

Key terms Transparent labelling, Reliable data

We're proud to work in partnership with the FT, to promote their free FT for Schools programme. Follow this link to sign up your school, and access this and other articles.

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A Politico article, looking at the dangers of water conflict in the EU.

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A Politico article, looking at the dangers of water conflict in the EU.

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Brussels warns of water conflict danger in EU

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A document obtained by POLITICO shows the European Union will urge capitals to accelerate their preparations for a warming world.

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A Guardian article, looking at how water is being used as a weapon of war - and why that means cooperation is more important than ever.

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A Guardian article, looking at how water is being used as a weapon of war - and why that means cooperation is more important than ever.

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As water becomes a weapon of war, we must focus on cooperation and peace | Peter Gleick

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Record increase in water-related violence shows how urgently we need to reduce these tensions between countries

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A Grist article, arguing that the best forest managers are indigenous people

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A Grist article, arguing that the best forest managers are indigenous people

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UNPACKING THE SOURCE How important is immediacy when it comes to the management of the environment?

KEY TERMS Locally focused, Rights-based, Transfer of power, Restoration

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New research from the Swedish University of Agricultural Sciences has identified a key to successful forest restoration: long-term, local governance by Indigenous peoples or local communities. The more formalized the land tenure rights, the better the outcomes. Research shows that Indigenous and rural communities are the best stewards of the forests they live in, but the study's novel finding is that community-managed forests yield better, more positive results for both environmental and social outcomes.

"Where people depend upon forest resources for a range of livelihood benefits, like firewood, timber, food, various things, they often have an incentive to take care of those forests. It's really quite simple," said lead author Harry Fischer. "When you give communities the opportunity to manage in those ways, you will often see better outcomes."

Forest restoration is a critical tool for global climate change mitigation, and is particularly important to the 1.8 billion people living in, and relying on, forests for their livelihoods. Restoration projects have historically prioritized environmental outcomes like planting trees to improve biodiversity, or monetizing carbon sequestration through carbon credit schemes. But typically, those interests take precedence over the interests of local communities. The authors argue that a locally focused, rights-based approach means that those interests don't have to be mutually exclusive.

The study analyzed data collected by the International Forestry Resources and Institutions over three decades, from 314 community-managed forests, across 15 nations in Asia, Africa, and Latin America. Researchers wanted to understand what the best forests had in common in order to better inform future restoration efforts. The study focused on tropical ecosystems because of the high prevalence of forest restoration efforts in these regions, like the Trillion Trees project and other tree-planting initiatives. Common measures of successful forest restoration include healthy biodiversity, like planting trees or stopping deforestation, climate change mitigation services, like carbon sequestration and carbon credits, and improved livelihoods for local communities in the form of access to forests for food and housing. But the forests with the best results across all three measures were the ones where local communities determined the rules for forest management.

Fischer and the other researchers' critique of those efforts is that they are target-based. Forest projects focused on planting trees or selling carbon credits saw benefits concentrated in those areas, but poor performance in other areas, particularly when it comes to improving the livelihoods of local peoples. That means that while those projects may be good on paper for international conservation groups or investors, they don't provide positive spillover effects to the people that live there.

"What we're saying in our study is, 'OK, planting trees is not bad,'" Fischer said. "Giving power to local people is going to be more effective over the long term. If they have power, the interventions are going to be more legitimate. They're going to have more local buy-in for that."

But that transfer of power isn't being applied. Additional reports show that the world remains off track from reversing forest degradation and meeting decarbonization goals - in part due to a failure to work with Indigenous peoples or local communities, or recognize their rights. A study earlier this month from the Forest Declaration Assessment, a nonprofit that tracks forest conservation efforts, analyzed the National Biodiversity Strategies and Action Plans of 27 countries with substantial forest ecosystems and Indigenous populations. According to the study, those plans to establish national conservation efforts had gaps where Indigenous peoples were performatively included or completely left out. Less than a third of those countries engaged Indigenous peoples when developing their plans.

Levi Sucre Romero, coordinator of the Mesoamerican Alliance of Peoples and Forests and co-chair to the Global Alliance of Territorial Communities, says this low rate of inclusion is one of the critical issues on the table at COP28 in Dubai.

"This implies that decisions are still being made from desks, from cities, for an issue as crucial as forests and those of us who are living and protecting those forests are not taken into account," Romero said. "The world's rulers must hear that they can no longer continue making promises about the problem of climate change if they are not going to fulfill them."

Fischer says that a forest restoration approach that prioritizes local livelihoods instead of making them a secondary benefit will take time - but on average will generate the best results for both environmental and social concerns.

"If we're going to have participation, let's do it in a way that really sort of redistributes power over a long, long period," Fischer said. "[Then], people are able to really manage and get practice, and these practices get institutionalized over time."

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The best forest managers? Indigenous peoples, study says.

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Scientists suggest that long term, local governance is the best way to save forests.

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A CNN article, looking at how Whanganui River in New Zealand is now legally regarded as a person. 

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A CNN article, looking at how Whanganui River in New Zealand is now legally regarded as a person. 

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UNPACKING THE SOURCE Begin by asking students why they think a community would want to change the status of a natural feature into a ‘legal person’. Then get them to read the article. How does our perception of the natural world change when we view it as an individual (for help with this, see the quote "When we see rivers as living beings that are part of our community then that does actually profoundly change the way we speak about them")? Can - and should - we apply this to other aspects of the natural world?

KEY TERMS Legal personhood, Mauri, Single holistic entity

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how new zealand's whanganui river is legally a person - cnn

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This river in New Zealand is legally a person. Here's how it happened

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After a 150-year fight, Whanganui River has legal personhood. What happens next?

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A Foreign Policy article, investigating the risk of conflict in Central Asia over water scarcity.

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A Foreign Policy article, investigating the risk of conflict in Central Asia over water scarcity.

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In Turkmenistan, household faucets are running dry and locusts are devouring crops. In Kazakhstan, a state of emergency has been , a thirsty crop that's drained the Aral Sea. The Taliban are digging a canal to divert water from the Amu Darya, the river border of five parched Central Asian states. Afghanistan and Iran have traded deadly fire over cross-border water sharing. Some experts declared as the Caspian Sea shrinks to a puddle. In Uzbekistan, the end of an international slave-labor boycott has boosted demand for that the first shots of long-predicted "water wars" may already have been fired.

Almost 2 billion people rely on rivers that arise in the Tibetan Plateau and the Hindu Kush, among them the former Soviet republics of Central Asia. Long-term neglect, mismanagement, and overuse of water resources, coupled with a yearslong drought that's baked the steppe hard, have rattled governments finally coming to terms with the reality of climate change. The presidents of Uzbekistan, Tajikistan, and Turkmenistan will meet in Ashgabat, Turkmenistan, in August for their annual get-together, with water high on the agenda. In a region where political power is often tied to control of resources, there's one resource that is in increasingly high demand.

One of the few things water experts can agree on is that the threat is existential and the solution must be collective. Optimists point to 30-plus years of peace among the states that gained independence with the end of the Soviet Union as evidence that Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Tajikistan, Turkmenistan, and Uzbekistan can work together. Others, like Omair Ahmad, managing editor of the Third Pole, a platform for information on the Himalayan watershed, described the water worries as a "diplomatic minefield."

If only China could offer some leadership, he suggested, the Shanghai Cooperation Organization (SCO) could offer the most fruitful forum. But China, the SCO's driving force, has its own water-management issues, and doesn't put a lot of stock in green projects when it comes to its big Belt and Road infrastructure initiative in Central Asia. "There is no domestic appetite [in China] for anything but a big win," he said.

Central Asia's water woes offer anything but a big win. For the Aral Sea, once the world's biggest inland sea shared by Uzbekistan and Kazakhstan, there's no hope of revival, said Akram Umarov, an associate professor at the University of World Economy and Diplomacy in the Uzbek capital, Tashkent. "The Aral Sea is dead-we cannot save it," he said.

Waters from the Syr Darya in the north and the Amu Darya in the south are drawn to irrigate agricultural production, mainly cotton, before reaching the Aral. No place in the region has introduced water-efficient technologies, there is limited coordination of management systems, and no systemic approach to overall water networks including smaller rivers and lakes has been implemented. "Water inefficiency is dramatic, and water waste is huge in the region," Umarov said. "There are lots of talks but there is no implementation."

None of this is entirely new, though the severity of the region's water stress is. Central Asia's history of water mismanagement "goes back to [Joseph] Stalin," Ahmad said. "Soviet modernization was on steroids, and they didn't take into account the traditional manner of water management," instead opting for massive projects that showcased "the power of politics over nature." After independence, the Central Asian states were largely taken over by kleptocrats who, like those in Russia, seized control of resources. "Those things have an impact because you're not really looking at the land in terms of good water management, rather than for extracting goods for personal wealth and political power," Ahmad said.

The Soviet Union wasn't the only country using development to demonstrate human dominance of nature: Dams were de rigueur in the mid-20th century rush to economic transformation in the United States and elsewhere. More recently, China's damming of rivers flowing from the Tibetan Plateau in the decades since its development began in earnest has exacerbated tensions with downstream neighbors now dealing with the consequences of deforestation, silting, floods, salinization, and drought.

"It's a problem that will continue to get bigger and bigger because of climate change, because of the mode of development and governance," Ahmad said.

Part of the problem is that countries in water-stressed areas of the world continue to place their economic bets in the worst places. Hyper-thirsty alfalfa is widely grown in the drought-wracked U.S. Southwest, often at the behest of Saudi investors. Egypt built its modern economy on water-intensive cotton production, making its fight with upstream Ethiopia over the fate of the Grand Ethiopian Renaissance Dam even more consequential. Uzbekistan, too, has for decades opted for cotton, specializing in the crop during the Soviet years, when it was harvested by citizens in what Human Rights Watch "one of the world's largest, most exploitable state-run forced labor programs." The practice continued into independence and led to an 11-year boycott by more than 330 companies in the United States and elsewhere. The end of the boycott last year led to new investment meant to boost yields, to the U.S. Department of Agriculture. But growing more cotton almost certainly means more water stress.

There are transboundary agreements and cooperation agreements dating back decades that were largely moribund but are now being revived, Umarov said. These include the International Fund for Saving the Aral Sea and the Interstate Commission for Water Coordination Commission of Central Asia. There will probably be new ones.

"An understanding of the problem (means) water is now always on the agenda of all negotiations between the states," Umarov added. But there's a delinquent in the mix: The Taliban now control Afghanistan, which shares the Amu Darya border with Turkmenistan, Uzbekistan, and Tajikistan. The extremists are proving just as intransigent on water as they are on women's rights, having recognized it as a major issue for drought-stricken Afghanistan's mostly rural population.

Regime-controlled media outlets regularly report on the c onstruction of dams and " water supply projects." Firefights over the western border with Iran erupted in May, with deaths on both sides, over sharing the Helmand River, a source of bilateral strife for at least 150 years, which rises in the Hindu Kush to Kabul's east, waters southern Afghanistan's farms, and is vital to farmers in Iran's southeast. Iranian Foreign Ministry spokesperson Nasser Kanaani said on Monday that bilateral talks were making some progress.

But the Taliban are doing more. Central Asian neighbors are grappling with the Taliban's decision to build a massive canal, without consultation with other riparian states, that could reduce the flow of the Amu Darya by half. The Taliban want to turn northern desert into farmland with the Qosh Tepa canal, which Uzbekistan fears will cut into its own resources for agriculture. But a dearth of engineering expertise after 50 years of brain drain means that workers are effectively digging a big hole to run water from the river to farmland, said Iskandar Abdullaev, a professor of environmental science at the Centre for International Development and Environmental Research at Justus Liebig University in Giessen, Germany.

"There's no proper planning, no engineering, no regulation, no measures to protect seepage, so more or less half of the water will be productively delivered, and half will go to the desert," he said. "There are a lot of concerns. I don't see how this canal is going to be operated or efficiently used."

The Taliban's intransigence, he said, could force Central Asia's arid states to take action to save the water they do have. "There's no way to ask them [the Taliban] to stop-they will not. It's their territory. The Amu Darya flows into Afghanistan and out."

That's going to force a day of reckoning between neighbors already leery of each other.

" It's not easy to deal with the Taliban, but it's not too late," he said. "This is just the start of the serious interaction between Central Asia and Afghanistan on water issues."

Correction, Aug. 2, 2023: A previous version of this article misidentified the country with which Egypt is in a dispute regarding the Grand Ethiopian Renaissance Dam. It has been fixed.

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The Water Wars Are Coming to Central Asia

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Things have been bad for decades, but the Taliban threaten to make them worse.

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A Conversation article, focusing on the struggle of native Americans for control over their sacred land. 

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A Conversation article, focusing on the struggle of native Americans for control over their sacred land. 

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UNPACKING THE SOURCE What is the policy of ‘co-management’, and why are some states introducing it? How do indigenous beliefs determine the relationship indigenous peoples have with the natural world? Why is this at odds with the way the US government views both ‘sacred land’ and indigenous religion? Overall, why is it important to build in multiple outlooks and perspectives when we try to understand and manage the environment?

KEY TERMS Origin narrative, Truly religious, Culturally important

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Native Americans’ decadeslong struggle for control over sacred lands is making progress

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Native Hawaiians see Mauna Kea mountain as sacred. Scientists use its summit for research. A new policy called co-management may help resolve this land conflict and similar ones across the US.

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A Guardian article, looking at how Cop28 addressed the issue of global agriculture.

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A Guardian article, looking at how Cop28 addressed the issue of global agriculture.

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Food systems - what we eat; how we grow, ship and cook it; and how we dispose of (and sometimes waste) it - are responsible for roughly a third of global greenhouse gas emissions. But for the better part of three decades, the final agreements that emerge from the UN's yearly climate summits have left out the impact food systems have on our climate.

That changed this year in Dubai. The conference opened with a declaration on sustainable agriculture signed by more than 130 countries. For the first time ever, it featured a whole day devoted to food and agriculture and saw a food systems road map laid out by the UN's Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO). Perhaps most strikingly, the final agreement document that was revealed at the end of the conference acknowledged sustainable agriculture as a part of responding appropriately to climate change.

The increased focus on food didn't just draw experts - it also drew big ag lobbyists eager to shape outcomes, and the final language didn't go as far as many sustainability advocates would have liked. But food was undeniably given a more prominent spot at the summit than it has been in years prior.

"It's really exciting that food is finally on the table. Now we have this ability to talk about food systems as a solution to the climate crisis in a way that we haven't ever had the chance to before," said Danielle Nierenberg, president of Food Tank, a non-profit thinktank.

The food system conversations at the climate summit started with a bang as the Cop28 presidency announced the Cop28 UAE Declaration on Sustainable Agriculture, Resilient Food Systems, and Climate Action, or the declaration for short. Though the declaration is not legally binding, the more than 150 countries that signed on by the end of the conference are essentially announcing their intentions to integrate food and agriculture into their climate plans.

"Countries must put food systems and agriculture at the heart of their climate ambitions, addressing both global emissions and protecting the lives and livelihoods of farmers living on the frontline of climate change," said Mariam bint Mohammed Almheiri, the UAE minister of climate change and environment and the Cop28 food systems lead.

Next, the FAO unveiled its new road map meant to outline the pathway required to bring the world's food production in line with global climate goals, in something of a parallel to the road map the International Energy Agency laid out for the energy transition in 2021. The FAO pathway emphasizes cutting methane emissions from livestock by 25% and halving food waste emissions by 2030, and recommends growing a more biodiverse range of crops than the world currently relies on.

Beyond the big announcements, the sense on the ground was that food was a bigger deal than ever. As a regular Cop attendee since Cop16 in Cancún, Mexico, in 2010, Nierenberg said she had seen the conversation around food shift significantly. She was particularly encouraged this year to feel like there was more interest in food from those working outside the sector. "I think we broke down some silos. We weren't just preaching to the choir," she said.

Nierenberg said she walked away "encouraged" by the growing attention to food systems at the conference, and she appreciated that food systems were mentioned in the final agreement hammered out at the conference. But she also wished that the language in the final document had gone further.

Yvette Cabrera, a food waste expert at the Natural Resources Defense Council, did too. "One thing that a lot of food systems advocates and many of the countries that were behind the declaration wanted to see was some of the text and commitments in the declaration lifted into the final global stocktake language," she said.

Activists protest for equitable global food production on day 11 of Cop28, on 11 December 2023 in Dubai, United Arab Emirates. Photograph: Sean Gallup/Getty Images

That didn't happen. Instead, the final agreement sprinkled small mentions of food systems throughout, and largely couched conversations about food systems in the section focused on adaptation, rather than mitigation. While adaptation is "very important, because we absolutely need to figure out what our future food system looks like, and be ready for that", Cabrera said: "We also need to take steps to mitigate the emissions that are happening now as well."

Others put it more harshly. "The glaring omission of food system transformation and agriculture emissions in the final text is a stark betrayal of urgency ... We cannot afford another lost year for food and climate action," said Emile Frison, an expert speaking on behalf of the International Panel of Experts on Sustainable Food Systems (IPES-Food).

The difference in attendees' summaries highlights the particular tightrope that always seems to accompany discussions of Cop - the line between trying to acknowledge progress that has been made, while also being realistic about how far there still is to go.

One barrier to meaningful progress that caused a buzz this year was the overrepresentation of corporate interests at the conference. Much like the fossil fuel lobbyists who argue that the world can't afford to do away with oil and gas if we want energy security, big ag lobbyists defend a current status quo that's actively heating up the planet in the name of food security.

Lobbyists were in full force at the summit in Dubai. Big meat and dairy lobbyists showed up in record numbers, with three times more agribusiness representatives present this year than last. Among their ranks were representatives from the meat supplier JBS, which has been linked to deforestation in the Amazon; the pesticide company Bayer, against the backdrop of lawsuits claiming that its weedkiller Roundup causes cancer; and the fertilizer giant Nutrien, which makes synthetic fertilizers from fossil fuels.

Amid a range of events on financing the regenerative agriculture transition and food waste reduction, there were also gatherings sponsored by the International Dairy Federation and the North American Meat Institute with titles such as How Animal Source Food Nourishes the World in Times of Climate Change.

"They're trying to convince people that, whether it's fertilizer or livestock, they're providing more solutions than they are failures or obstacles," said Nierenberg of agribusiness lobbyists. "That's what the meat institute was doing in a big way - trying to change the narrative that livestock are a big contributor to climate change, even though they are responsible for at least 14% of emissions."

While sustainable food system experts argue that there's an "urgent need for reforms that limit corporate influence at UN climate meetings", many still came away encouraged about the direction Cop is heading when it comes to conversations around food.

Nierenberg noted that the FAO already announced plans to build on its road map over the next two years, culminating at Cop30 in Brazil, which she said "people are looking at as the place where we will make significant headway on how food and agriculture systems are talked about, and what ends up in the final global stocktake document".

Cabrera hopes that the FAO road map, while not binding, might give countries a sense of how to move forward in integrating food systems into their climate goals in the meantime. She also hopes it might unlock more funding for food sector-based solutions, which currently receive only 3% of public climate finance.

For all the progress that still needs to be made, "Frankly, I think it was a success," said Cabrera. "I'm walking away feeling motivated about the final text, and also just the pure energy around food systems at Cop this year."

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'Food is finally on the table': Cop28 addressed agriculture in a real way

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Roughly a third of global greenhouse gas emissions are due to food systems, but Cop had avoided agreements until now

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A Guardian article by food writer Jay Rayner, discussing how allotments are not the answer to feed the world. 

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A Guardian article by food writer Jay Rayner, discussing how allotments are not the answer to feed the world. 

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We’ve just grown our own pumpkin. That’s why I know allotments won’t feed the world | Jay Rayner

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The best way to remind yourself why we need mass agriculture is to try it on a very small scale yourself