The Peace Center of
Midcoast Meeting of Friends
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"Food and Climate Change:
Global warming poses enormous risks to global food security. Major effects of increased greenhouse gas emissions – droughts, floods, ocean acidification and rising sea levels – are already impacting farming and fishing in Maine and many regions of the globe. Estimates of 30 percent of total worldwide greenhouse gases are emitted from farm fertilizers, by energy used to produce and transport food and deforestation for grazing and farm lands. But agriculture also contributes to mitigating climate change by sequestering CO2 from the atmosphere, especially through organic farming methods. The seminar will first consider global farming and fishing efforts at mitigation and adaptation in climate change. It will then consider the relevance of these to farming and fishing in the United States and Maine. It will launch a program of community events leading up to the February 2014 Camden Conference on the global politics of food and water. Agenda
9:00:
Introductory remarks by symposium
moderator
9:15
Policies and practices of
agricultural adaptation to climate change Seth Shames is the Coordinator of Ecoagriculture Partners’ Payments for Ecosystem Services program that supports emerging markets for ecosystem services from carbon, watersheds and biodiversity in agricultural landscapes. He has worked on the integration of agricultural issues into the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change and the UN Convention on Biological Diversity. Seth organized Community Supported Agriculture groups in New York City. He holds a Masters of Environmental Science from the Yale School of Forestry and Environmental Studies and a BA from Columbia in Anthropology and Environmental Science.
10:00
Addressing agriculture and climate change under the UNFCCC Doreen Stabinsky focuses on the science-policy nexus of climate change, agriculture, and food security, mainly in the context of international climate negotiations under the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change. She currently advises both governments and NGOs on climate change and agriculture policy and is a senior fellow on climate and agriculture policy at the Institute for Governance and Sustainable Development. She has represented NGOs and the College at the UN Convention on Biological Diversity, the UNFCCC, the UN Food and Agriculture Organization, and the World Trade Organization. Her Ph.D. is in Genetics from the University of California at Davis. 10:45 Refreshments 2. Critical US challenges and responses
11:15
The United States Farm Bill: Implications for
global warming
Julia Olmstead works
collaboratively with Wisconsin farmers to build agriculture systems that
improve water quality and are more resilient to climate change as an
Outreach Specialist for University of Wisconsin Extension. She was
formerly a Senior Associate with the Institute for Agriculture and Trade
Policy's Rural Communities Program, where she focused on issues related
to agriculture and climate change, biofuels and federal agriculture
conservation policies. She served on the Organizational Council of the
National Sustainable Agriculture Coalition and was formerly a graduate
fellow with the Land Institute in Salina, KS. She holds a M.S. in plant
breeding and sustainable agriculture from Iowa State University, a M.J.
in journalism from the University of California-Berkeley and a B.A. in
botany and Spanish from the University of Wisconsin-Madison.
1:15: Ocean Acidification Jeffrey
Runge, Gulf of Maine Research Institute
Jeff came to GMRI in 2006 in joint appointment as
a faculty member in the University of Maines School of Marine Sciences
and Research Scientist at GMRI. For fifteen years he worked for
Fisheries and Oceans, Canada, at the Institut Maurice Lamontagne in
Mont-Joli, Quebec, where he headed a research section studying secondary
production and fisheries recruitment processes in coastal waters of
eastern Canada. Jeff is interested in the linkages between climate,
ocean ecosystem productivity and recruitment into the fisheries. He was
research professor in the Institute for the Study of Earth, Oceans and
Space at the University of New Hampshire before coming to GMRI and has
been involved in research associated with both the Canadian and U.S.
GLOBEC (Global Ocean Ecosystem Dynamics) programs. Currently, his
research focuses on the measurement and ecosystem role of variability in
production of zooplankton, including larvae of commercially harvested
fish and invertebrates, in the Gulf of St. Lawrence and in the Gulf of
Maine. 3. Maine challenges and responses: farming and fishing
2:00
farming
John Jemison is a water quality and soils specialist and a Professor in Plant, Soil, and Environmental Sciences at the University of Maine. In the Cooperative Extension Program he focuses on sustainable food and agricultural systems and works with growers on cropping systems that help growers become more resilient to climate change. He is chair of the Maine Board of Pesticides Control and teaches part of a pesticides and environment class at the university. He has his Ph.D. from Pennsylvania State University.
3:15
Fishing
Robin Alden was Maine Commissioner of Marine Resources from 1995 to
1997. For twenty years she was publisher and editor of Commercial
Fisheries News, a regional fishing trade newspaper that she founded in
1973. As Director of the Penobscot East Resource Center she is committed
to building marine stewardship at a local, community level. The Center
serves 50 fishing communities from the islands of Penobscot Bay to the
Canadian border, the most fishery-dependent counties on the U.S. East
Coast. Its mission is to secure a viable future for the fishing
communities of eastern Maine. Its role is to provide a long term
presence, contributing tools, skills and resources for fishermen and
fishing community members to do this. 4:00 Speakers’ panel 5:00 Adjournment |
