5 June 2008: Deputy Executive Secretary Grégoire de Kalbermatten
addressed the Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) High-Level Conference on
Food Security on 5 June 2008, and emphasized actions to enhance carbon
sequestration in soil. He suggested that the climate change negotiations should
give increased attention to land and soil, including by expanding the Clean
Development Mechanism’s (CDM) coverage of agricultural land use, particularly
projects focusing on carbon sequestration in soil.

He called on the host country of the next UNFCCC COP
(Poland) and like-minded countries to facilitate an initiative that will put
land and soil on the mitigation and adaptation agendas. The Deputy Executive
Secretary welcomed FAO’s and IFAD’s roles in joining UNEP and the UNCCD “in
supporting the efforts of the Environmental Management Group to launch an
interagency cooperation network on land in which FAO should pay a key role.” He
also highlighted the merits of enhanced cooperation with FAO and concerned
institutions in providing an “assessment of the extent to which measures taken
under the agriculture sectoral programmes of multilateral financing
institutions have taken into account” combating desertification, land
degradation and drought and, as appropriate, “to actualize an estimate of the
cost of non-action.” [Statement]