The recent report from the World Bank, “Recipe for a Livable Planet: Achieving Net Zero Emissions in the Agrifood System,” touts the possibility of making significant cuts to global agrifood emissions through a variety of prescriptive measures. The historical record of such centralized initiatives suggests a high probability of resulting in unintended and often detrimental consequences.
The report asserts:
“The global agrifood system presents a huge opportunity to cut almost a third of the world’s greenhouse gas emissions through affordable and readily available actions, while continuing to feed a growing population.”
https://www.worldbank.org/en/news/press-release/2024/05/07/recipe-for-livable-planet
This sweeping statement masks the complexity and potential dangers of radically altering food production and land use, particularly in the vulnerable regions of the world. The claim that such changes can be implemented without jeopardizing food security is optimistic at best and recklessly naive at worst.
Axel van Trotsenburg of the World Bank further champions these changes:
“While the food on your table may taste good, it is also a hefty slice of the climate change emissions pie. The good news is that the global food system can heal the planet – making soils, ecosystems, and people healthier, while keeping carbon in the ground. This is within reach in our lifetimes, but countries must act now: simply changing how middle-income countries use land, such as forests and ecosystems, for food production can cut agrifood emissions by a third by 2030.”
https://www.worldbank.org/en/news/press-release/2024/05/07/recipe-for-livable-planet
This narrative promotes a troubling confidence in the efficacy of sweeping regulatory changes, disregarding the diverse agricultural practices that have been honed by local farmers over centuries. The assumption that such top-down mandates can lead to positive outcomes without disruptive side effects reflects a misunderstanding of ecological, social, and economic interdependencies.
The World Bank’s plan includes a broad array of actions:
“Action should happen across all countries to get to net zero, through a comprehensive approach to reducing emissions in food systems, including in fertilizers and energy, crop and livestock production, and packaging and distribution across the value chain from farm to table.”
https://www.worldbank.org/en/news/press-release/2024/05/07/recipe-for-livable-planet
This proposal to standardize farming practices across vastly different regions and cultures not only smacks of overreach but also underestimates the complexity of local ecosystems and the adaptability required to manage them effectively.
The framework posits that high investment costs will yield significant returns:
“Annual investments will need to increase to $260 billion a year to cut in half agrifood emissions by 2030 and to reach net zero emissions by 2050. Making these investments would lead to more than $4 trillion in benefits, from improvements in human health, food and nutrition security, better quality jobs and profits for farmers, to more carbon retained in forests and soils.”
https://www.worldbank.org/en/news/press-release/2024/05/07/recipe-for-livable-planet
However, the focus on monetary investment and projected returns overlooks the real-world complexities of agricultural economics. Such massive redirection of funds risks creating new economic imbalances, potentially leading to increased food prices and decreased access to necessary resources for the world’s poorest populations.
Ultimately, the World Bank’s ambitious project to restructure global agriculture underestimates the risks of unintended consequences, including food shortages, economic disruption, and increased hardship for the most vulnerable. History teaches that centralized interventions in complex systems such as global agriculture often lead to outcomes opposite those intended, driven by a failure to account for the organic and evolved nature of these systems. The portrayal of these interventions as low-risk and high-return is not only misleading but potentially dangerous, paving the way for a future where the global food supply is less secure and more susceptible to the whims of bureaucratic mismanagement.
At the very least the pursuit of such grandiose plans should be viewed with skepticism and caution, as history has repeatedly shown that the road to disaster is often paved with well-intentioned global initiatives.
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Trofim Lysenko was of the same mind and how did that turn out?
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A Global Framework for Agri-Food Emissions isn’t well-intentioned.
Does the World Bank have an authority to issue legislations?
“Does the World Bank have an authority to issue legislations?”
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You can Google that.
I did. I got fifty answers.
A damning report in the Financial Times today shows bank action on Net Zero is totally ineffective:
The pandemic lockdowns did strange things to all of our brains. We lost track of time, we held Zoom parties, we made lots of buttery banana cake and kidded ourselves it was wholesome banana bread. We also allowed ourselves to believe that banks could become superhero agents for change and fix the global climate crisis.
In 2021, scores of them teamed up in the UN-led Net Zero Banking Alliance, pledging to “align . . . lending and investment portfolios with pathways to net zero by 2050 or sooner”. But while they may be trying their best, the impact is limited, a new paper suggests.
Parinitha Sastry at Columbia Business School, Emil Verner at MIT Sloan School of Management and David Marqués-Ibáñez at the European Central Bank first published “Business as Usual: Bank Net Zero Commitments, Lending, and Engagement” late last year, and updated it in April with additional data covering project financing.
It makes sobering reading, finding “no evidence” (net zero evidence, if you will) that signatory banks have stopped lending to un-green borrowers. “Net zero banks neither reduce credit supply to the sectors they target for decarbonisation nor do they increase financing for renewables projects,” the paper states in its rather bracing summary.
Not to worry, you may think. Surely “engagement”, to use the buzzword, with high-polluting borrowers, helps those companies to renounce their planet-destroying ways? Again, the paper suggests this is wishful thinking.
“We find no evidence of reduced financed emissions through engagement,” the paper states. “Borrowers of net zero banks are not more likely to set decarbonisation targets or reduce their verified emissions . . . We conclude that net zero commitments do not lead to meaningful changes in bank behaviour.”
It can do what it likes until something stops it.
NO,but you know how it works all those wonderful politicians with their funneled brains do walk behind the bank so not responsible for if any?????goes wrong. It was the bank not us see what’s happening in Ukraine and Gaza with those wonderful peaceful people who are living there.
So the World Bank won’t give loans to farmers in Africa to buy nitrogen fertilizer …
The world’s largest producer is Russia … who doesn’t care at all about the World Bank.
CO2 emissions from agriculture are not the business of the World Bank but, like all international bodies these days, they can’t resist getting in on the supposed Climate Crisis act.
Judging from what is being done in the EU, the apparatchiks are heavily into “organic” farming, an outgrowth of biodynamic agriculture. Heinrich Himmler was a particular advocate, even though it led to food shortages leading to famine.
Organic farming is fine for our private gardens where the economics is irrelevant.
From the above article:
“. . . through affordable and readily available actions . . .”
— WorldBank
Of course, these affordable and readily available actions are not to be specifically delineated—no, heaven forbid!—as that would elicit debate and require, gasp, numerical justification for the assertion of “affordable”.
Also, I caught this obvious typo in a further statement from the WorldBank in the above article, corrected here for the benefit of all WUWT readers:
“Annual
investmentstaxations will need to increase to $260 billion a year to cut in half agrifood emissions by 2030 and to reach net zero emissions by 2050.”Of course, even this corrected version is highly optimistic as to projected costs.
Disrupt agriculture and what is the result? War.
And vice versa. Witness Ukraine wheat.
They really do consider Sri Lanka to be a successful pilot study.
Anything to do with the green religion involves a variety of prescriptive measures. As far as they’re concerned, no pain no gain.
They really do consider Sri Lanka to be a successful pilot study.
“Let them eat cake” as famously said by some idiot actress at the Met Gala.
Water vapor. Per IPCC 36-70% of total greenhouse contributions. Just exactly how are they planning to force China to stop cultivating rice in flooded paddies? 29 million hectares.
36 to 70% is a very large range.
Firstly my understanding is that it will be closer to 90% and a range indicates a very large lack of understanding.
Both observations are correct. The range is so large as to call all greenhouse gas contributions into question. I understand the uncertainty. The known greenhouse gases have mutual overlaps vice spectral adsorption/reflectance. 36-70% water vapor alone should be enough to invalidate any assertions to regulate other gases.
Your 90% would likely apply to lab measurements. You might be able to do “nitrogen, oxygen, water vapor” and get close. In the real world “nitrogen, oxygen, water vapor, misc.” is another matter. I think 90% is too high because of the huge variations in regional humidity. Water vapor does not distribute evenly.
For air at 70 deg. F and 70% RH, the concentration of water vapor is 17,780 ppm. There is 14.3 grams water per cubic meter of air.
On June 5 at the MLO, the concentration of CO2 was 426 ppm. This is 0.833 grams of CO2 per cubic meter of air.
Thus, water is absorbing 97.7% of the outgoing IR from the earth’s surface. This is greenhouse effect.
About 40% of the light from the sun is IR light. It is the absorption of this IR in sunlight by water and CO2 that is responsible for the major heating of the air. The classical greenhouse effect causes a minor amount
FYI, the reason deserts are hot is due to a very low amount of water in the air. This allows IR light to hit the surface unimpeded. If there is water in the air at 70% RH for example, a large portion of the IR is absorbed by water before it can hit the surface.
Desert usually have few clouds to reflect and absorbed sunlight.
Soon, they’ll want to invest trillions in machines to suck water out of the air and bury it geologically. 🙂
Dehumidify the atmosphere to save the planet!
Like the large range for ECS.
“Annual investments will need to increase to $260 billion a year to cut in half agrifood emissions by 2030 and to reach net zero emissions by 2050. Making these investments would lead to more than $4 trillion in benefits, from improvements in human health, food and nutrition security, better quality jobs and profits for farmers, to more carbon retained in forests and soils.”
Both sides of this equation are made up. Fiction bordering on lies.
Translation: Hey farmers, we know better than you how to run your farms!
Mission creep. I just checked the formal world bank charter. Two main goals: eliminate extreme poverty and support economic growth, both via targeted loans, loan guarantees, and such.
Reducing agricultural emissions isn’t part of it. Won’t end well.
Explanatory help: World Bank headquarters is Washington DC, the US is the largest shareholder, and the largest provider of ‘money’. Biden’s fingerprints are all over this.
“a high probability of resulting in unintended and often detrimental consequences”
The consequences will most certainly be detrimental. Unintended – no, I beg to differ.
A fall in production will allow farmers to lift prices very significantly.
The home grown thing will become very popular not to mention hunting.
The home grown thing will become very popular
Until government starts regulating even that. (I’ve already been hearing stories)
The harmful effects of “greenhouse gas emissions” are not proven scientific fact. The whole thing is a scam to gain control over finances worldwide and needs to be called out for what it truly is…another grift by the elite and marxists to be in absolute control of all.
That the world bank even proposes measures like these says it all. No basis in facts to back it up.
So tired of it all.
“Recipe for a Livable Planet: Achieving Net Zero Emissions in the Agrifood System,”
Uhh … if the Planet wasn’t already livable, why aren’t we all dead?
Is this the same World Bank accused of constantly putting politics ahead of helping countries in need of economic help and supporting countries that march to their tune?
You don’t have to know anything more than that this information came from the World Bank. The World Bank can go to hell. All US dollars going to the World Bank from any government agency must be withdrawn immediately. They are just one more instrument used to take control of us, the regular guy. We don’t need anyone to control us except our constitution.
We now literally have people who couldn’t manage so much as a lemonade stand trying to reorder the entire global economy. What could possibly go wrong?
You’re too kind. They’re anti-human and plot to cut the world’s population in half.
The answer is in here and no nitrogen fertilizer is not a problem for the climate
https://www.climatebell.org/
At 150 ppm of CO2, the photosynthesis of most land plants stops and they die taking most land animals with them.
CO2 dropped to 180 ppm in the last Glacial Period, only 30 ppm above that level.
https://pioga.org/just-the-facts-more-co2-is-good-less-is-bad
The next glacial period may start at any time and the Grand Solar Minimum which has just started with its increased snowfall and higher reflectivity, might be the trigger.
“countries must act now”
My bet: The agrifood system will be mostly unchanged 6 years from now in the USA. The entire industry is geared toward incremental improvements, not gargantuan changes.
Further the $4 trillion in benefits are no better than fairy dust.
This is madness. Authoritarian Ignorance on the march is a scary thing indeed.
“This narrative promotes a troubling confidence in the efficacy of sweeping regulatory changes, disregarding the diverse agricultural practices that have been honed by local farmers over centuries.”
The narrative is similar to what they want for forestry. Use much smaller machines which of course should be electric. Cut less often and lighter- while locking up most forest land. But, it just doesn’t work that way. Under the best of circumstances, forestry is a marginal enterprise. When I tell them that- they just vanish as they can’t discuss the topic since they know nothing about it. But here in Wokeachusetts, that’s what they want. Though I’m retired, I love great forestry work and I’ll fight to the end against these idiots. It’s true that much forestry in the past was poorly done. The solution to poor forestry is not to stop forestry but to do it right.
Just how prevalent is methane in our solar system?
Earth …….. 0.0002 ppm
Jupiter ….. 3,000 ppm
Saturn ..… 4,000 ppm
Uranus … 23,000 ppm
Neptune .. 15,000 ppm
Saturn’s moon, Titan, hosts gigantic lakes brimming with liquid methane, constantly replenished by methane rain. Methane is not a ‘fossil fuel’ and is not biogenic in origin. What’s the point of the NASA space program if its results are simply ignored?