2019-04-24
Agriculture and climate change
In 2015, the international community set two reframing agendas for the sustainable future of our planet. During the United Nations (UN) Summit on Sustainable Development, countries adopted 17 Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) to jointly embark on a resilient and sustainable path that leaves no one behind. With the historic adoption of the Paris Agreement under the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC), countries pledged to take important steps in reducing their Greenhouse Gas (GHG) emissions and strengthen countries’ resilience and ability to adapt to climate change, joining the cause to take common climate actions.
Both transformational agendas acknowledge the critical importance of agriculture in dealing with the large climatic changes currently faced, the severity of which is likely to increase in the future. Furthermore, both the Paris Agreement and the SDGs stress the importance of safeguarding food security and ending hunger in the face of climate change. The role of agriculture is not only crucial in mitigating, but also in adapting to climate change. According to the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), approximately a quarter of all anthropogenic GHG emissions worldwide are caused by agriculture, forestry and land use changes. At the same time, by causing extreme weather, drought, flooding and other disasters, climate change is depriving the livelihoods of millions of people around the world. Particularly affected are the nearly 80 percent of the world’s poor that live in rural areas and typically rely on agriculture, forestry and fisheries for their survival.
