The Global Donor Platform for Rural Development has published its seventh issues paper on agriculture and its role in any post-Copenhagen agreement or follow up actions.
This latest one summarises some of the key issues and developments to emerge from the Bangkok talks in September and October 2009. For example:
- Agriculture, food security and poverty are inextricably linked; 75% of the developing world’s poor and most of the hungry live in rural areas where the impacts of climate change on agriculture will be the greatest.
- Recent research indicates that, without adaptation, the impacts of climate change on agriculture and food security will be high. For example, in South Asia, decreased yields could threaten the food security of 1.6 billion people and, in Africa, the number of malnourished children could increase by an extra 10 million to a total of 52 million by 2050.
- Agriculture is part of the challenge and part of the solution. Agriculture is a major emitter of greenhouse gases (about 14% of global emissions) but also has a high potential to mitigate emissions and sequester carbon.
- Investment in land-based agricultural mitigation options can provide the win–win–win of decreasing poverty and food insecurity, increasing resilience to climate change and promoting wider environmental benefits, while reducing emissions and storing carbon in agricultural soils.
- There is now growing recognition in the negotiations that agriculture is important from both mitigation and adaptation perspectives.
- The Informal Agriculture Dialogue (IAD) group met twice in Bangkok to discuss the references to agriculture in the negotiating texts and a possible agriculture work programme.
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