Summary Sheet

Co-supported by China Farmers’ Seed Network and UNEP-IEMP projects, these farmer communities have been working with nature to adapt to climate change. Working closely with scientists and drawing on traditional knowledge, farmers collectively conserve and breed crop varieties that are better adapted to climate risks like drought. They revive traditional farming techniques for pest control, such as combining organic rice with duck and fish production. They practice and promote traditional intercropping to increase biodiversity on farm and better manage soil and water.

As COVID-19 continues to disrupt transportation and travel, those farmers found that working with nature has made their farming communities more resilient not only to climate change but also to COVID-19 impacts. They have secure access to seeds as they conserve and breed seeds themselves locally. They grow a diversity of food on their farms so access to nutritious and affordable food has not been disrupted. Diversity of produce also has reduced the risks of cash flow disruption as many produces still are sold well locally. In some villages, COVID-19 meant some community members can no longer go to cities to find jobs- but the farming activities provided them with alternative incomes. Many farmers are happy and healthy prepping their land, sowing seeds, caring for their produce, consuming the diversity of food produced locally and continuing breeding experiments for even more diverse and resilient future farms!

While global negotiations on Climate Change and Biodiversity are delayed, those communities in China have not stopped working with nature to address climate change challenges and their efforts have also made them more resilient in the COVID-19 crisis. The stories from those communities’ echoes strongly with UNEP-IEMP research which shows working with nature to adapt to climate change (also known as Ecosystem-based Adaptation) are cost-effective and can bring a wide range of social, economic and environmental benefits to local communities. As governments consider how to protect food security during COVID-19 and how to build more resilient food system post COVID-19, they must ensure that recovery policies and investments support integrated solutions for people, nature and the climate and those local actors who are leading the way in implementing them.

Farmers’ Seed Network (FSN) is a pioneering organization in applying participatory action research on agrobiodiversity and natural resource management in the past 2 decades in China. As a non-profit social organization, FSN has worked in over 30 rural communities in 10 provinces across the country to support community-based seed conservation and sustainable utilization,  and facilitate collaborations between farmers and plant scientists for strengthening farmers’ seed systems, improving farmers’ livelihoods, enhancing farmers’ dignity, and promoting national seed and food security.

UNEP-IEMP and FSN carry out comprehensive, multi-level long-term cooperation in action and policy policing especially at the community level. The Farmers Seed Network and UNEP-IEMP summarize a series of tweets based on community responses and adaptation to the COVID-19 and climate change, to show how working with nature can help people cope better with and recover better from the crisis and changes.