Over 350 national and international groups including ActionAid International, Friends of the Earth International (FoEI), Greenpeace, Third World Network, and World Rainforest Movement called for a rejection of Climate-Smart Agriculture (CSA) and the Global Alliance for Climate-Smart Agriculture (GACSA).
In an open letter, the signatories claimed that “Climate-Smart Agriculture” is a politically-motivated term, which lacks any defining criteria and should not be confused with agroecology. The signatories also claimed that as a result, agribusiness corporations promoting synthetic fertilizers, industrial meat production, and large-scale industrial agriculture can and do call themselves “Climate Smart”.
The letter claimed that only ten developing countries are amongst the GACSA’s 21-nation membership, along with three farmers´ organizations, yet it also includes a wide corporate membership. The groups noted that transnational corporations with “questionable social and environmental impacts” such as Monsanto, Walmart and McDonald’s have launched their own “climate-smart agriculture” programs.