A new report released by the United Nations agriculture agency has said emissions can be reduced by adopting climate-smart practices and increasing the capacity of soils and forests to sequester carbon.
The report provides evidence that adoption of climate-smart practices, such as the use of nitrogen-efficient and heat-tolerant crop varieties, zero-tillage and integrated soil fertility management would boost productivity and farmers’ incomes.
Widespread adoption of nitrogen-efficient practices alone would reduce the number of people at risk of undernourishment by more than 100 million, the report estimates.
“There is no doubt climate change affects food security,” said the Director-General of the Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO), José Graziano da Silva, as he presented The State of Food and Agriculture 2016 report at the agency’s headquarters in Rome.
“What climate change does is to bring back uncertainties from the time we were all hunter gatherers. We cannot assure any more that we will have the harvest we have planted,” he added.
That uncertainty also translates into volatile food prices, the Director-General noted, indicating that “everybody is paying for that, not only those suffering from droughts.”
FAO warns that a ‘business as usual’ approach could put millions more people at risk of hunger, than in a future without climate change.
Most affected would be populations in poor areas in sub-Saharan Africa and South and Southeast Asia, especially those who rely on agriculture for their livelihoods.
Future food security in many countries will worsen if no action is taken today, warned the UN official, emphasizing that “the benefits of adaptation outweigh the costs of inaction by very wide margins.”
Agriculture, including forestry, fisheries and livestock production, is contributing to a warmer world by generating around a fifth of the world’s greenhouse gas emissions.
Therefore, agriculture must both contribute more to combating climate change while bracing to overcome its impacts, the report says.
Developing countries are home to around half a billion small farm families who produce food and other agricultural products in greatly varying agro-ecological and socio-economic conditions.
Solutions have to be tailored to those conditions; there is no one-size-fits-all fix.
Helping smallholders adapt to climate change risks is critical for global poverty reduction and food security.
Close attention should be paid to removing obstacles they may face and fostering an enabling environment for individual, joint and collective action, according to the report.
FAO urges policy makers to identify and remove such barriers.
These obstacles can include input subsidies that promote unsustainable farming practices, poorly aligned incentives and inadequate access to markets, credit, extension services and social protection programs.
The report stresses that more climate finance is needed to fund developing countries’ actions on climate change.
[www.ena.gov.et/]
