Overview: Agriculture and the climate change challenge
Agriculture plays a central role in providing global food security and ensuring rural livelihoods for two-thirds of the developing world and 40 percent of the world’s population; it is undoubtedly a unique sector. Linkages between agriculture and climate change are complex, and international rules that address climate and agriculture will impact food security and sovereignty at the global, regional, national and local levels. Yet, climate change is already having devastating and costly impacts on the global food and agriculture system and national budgets that support agriculture. These impacts are set to intensify in the coming years, both through extreme climatic events such as droughts, floods, fires, tornadoes and hurricanes, but also the slow-onset effects of global temperature rise, rainfall variability and changes in soil moisture.
The financial and political burden of these climatic changes will fall most heavily on developing countries, many of which have limited budgets and large rural populations that depend largely on rain-fed agriculture. These climatic changes are already beginning to force governments to prepare for and avert food crises and ensure national stability in a world where global food trade will continue to become more unreliable as price and supply volatility increases in the context of climate change. The principle of Common but Differentiated Responsibility (CBDR) and equity are therefore not only inherent and central to the convention itself, but essential tools in assessing the nature of the impacts and costs involved for the sector as a whole.
The cost of non-action on emissions reductions threatens global food security worldwide for every country—severely impairing agriculture’s ability to adapt and dramatically increasing the costs for meeting adaptation needs each year that we delay. The recent U.S. agriculture and climate adaptation report warns of “unprecedented challenges to U.S. agriculture” in the face of climate change. It states that “the continued degree of change in the climate by midcentury and beyond is expected to have overall detrimental effects on most crops and livestock” in the United States, and that production results over the next 25 years “will be mixed.”2These changes to U.S. agriculture will in turn impact food prices and global food trade worldwide. The challenges of adaptation—both agronomic and economic—for developing countries will be all the greater, hence the need for CBDR, equity and approaches to address loss and damage, to guide UNFCCC Parties in their deliberations and decisions.
Much more needs to be understood about the impacts of climate change on agriculture and food systems, and the effectiveness of various agriculture practices (region by region) to cope with climate change. However, assessing and addressing agriculture adaptation needs and costs without setting clear and ambitious targets for emissions reductions overall and in other sectors is equivalent to filling the only remaining water we have in a large bucket with a hole at the bottom. Direct, clear and immediate action must be taken to raise mitigation ambition from 2013 to 2020, particularly in reducing emissions from fossil fuels through the energy, transport and industrial sectors.
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