Agroecology and Climate Change: Adaptation or Transformation?

Abstract

Despite the fact that there is general alarm about the planetary emergency represented by climate change, and no effective solutions seem to be on sight, part of the problem is that it requires revolutionary changes that run against economic growth and the hegemony that benefits from the capitalist system. Industrial agriculture, which is part of this hegemonic system, pretends to reproduce itself by making minor changes through strategies of Climate Smart Agriculture (CSA), without challenging the structure of monoculture or the relations of power that maintain it. On the contrary, agroecology is a science and movement that confronts the root causes of hunger and environmental degradation led by social rural movements that value the legacy of traditional agriculture, which through the skills of thousands of peasants and indigenous people has developed systems that stood the test of time constituying a patrimony for humankind on how to design a new resiliente agriculture able to confront climate change.