Food is strategic and agricultural production is a vital sector of many national economies. Yet, discussions are shifting from how to adapt farming to climate change to how to make agriculture contribute to climate change mitigation.
In a recent interview with EurActiv, outgoing EU Agriculture Commissioner Mariann Fischer Boel even backed the possibility of an emissions trading scheme for agriculture. While the EU has reduced greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions from its farming sector by 21% compared to 1990, according to the European Commission, agricultural emissions from other parts of the world have soared by nearly 17%, mainly due to increases in developing countries.
Farmers in the developing world emit the most GHGs due to inefficient agricultural practices and poor natural resource management. Meanwhile, experts agree that climate change represents more of a challenge to food security in the developing world than elsewhere: a dilemma which underlines the need for urgent mitigation measures.
A recent FAO report on synergies between food security and agricultural mitigation in developing countries identifies improved management of cropland, water, pasture and grazing as well as restoration of degraded land as the main means of lowering emissions.
However, the main concern of the world's poorest and most chronically hungry is farming food in the first place, no matter how it is done and no matter what implications their pratices have for climate change.
Therefore, if the international community wants to curb the 14% of global GHG emissions that come from agriculture - 74% of which come from developing countries - it needs to help the world's poorest people.
Pledges made by world leaders at last week's world food security summit - and EU ministerial talks on linking development aid and the fight against climate change - offer the first signs of how the international community is planning to help developing countries to move towards sustainable agricultural development and food security.
Agriculture to drive economic development
Moreover, many see agricultural development as a driver of economic growth in poor countries.
"With an agriculture-led economy in Africa, where over 80% of the work force is anchored on agriculture, it is logical that agricultural development rightly deserves all the attention it is currently receiving as the engine of our industrial revolution and economic growth," said the permanent representative of the African Union in Brussels, Ambassador Mahamat Saleh Annadif.
Annadif stressed that the situation calls for greater investment in agriculture in Africa and placing the agricultural sector "at the centre of the region's development agenda" if the UN Millenium Development Goals of halving extreme poverty and hunger by 2015 are to be realised.
Financing green growth in the developing world
Last week's summit pledged to "enhance and develop financing mechanisms and other appropriate measures to support adaptation to, and mitigation of, climate change that are accessible to smallholder farmers, and are based on equitable, transparent and effective institutional arrangements."
The world leaders also said they would increase public investment and encourage private investment in "country developed plans for rural infrastructure and support services", including roads, storage, irrigation, communication infrastructure, education, technical support, health and research.
According to the FAO, several options for financing mitigation actions are currently under negotiation, including public, public-private, and private sources of finance as well as carbon market mechanisms. The UN agency stresses that new funding mechanisms should provide incentives for the adoption of sustainable farming practices and technologies and "compensate governments and farmers for their contributions" to emissions reductions.
This is exactly what is being planned in the EU with the reform of the Common Agricultural Policy (CAP). While part of the direct payments would be kept, part of the EU aid to farmers would be subject to the delivery of 'public goods' on climate change mitigation (EurActiv 27/10/09).
EU development aid
In a drive to make EU climate change and development policies more coherent, EU member states agreed last week that the EU Commission and member states should integrate climate change concerns into their development strategies and budgets.
EU ministers stressed that food security responses need to reflect long-term environmental sustainability through sustainable agriculture and "development assistance targeting adaptation efforts in the agriculture sector" will be decisive with this regard.
