Agriculture and Climate Change: Issues for Barcelona

Platform Issue Paper 7 summarises key points relating to agriculture and climate change after the UNFCCC Bangkok meetings in September and October. It also revisits the wider reasons for including agriculture in post-2012 agreements, highlights recent research and indicates what further knowledge is needed if agriculture is to be part of these agreements.
English

Key points

• 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.

Key Developments

• There is now growing recognition in the negotiations that agriculture is important from both mitigation and adaptation perspectives.
• While reference to agriculture in LULUCF and adaptation section of the texts is limited, there has been discussion on whether a mix of explicit and implicit references is sufficient, especially if an introductory paragraph is included.
• 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.
• A Parties-only subgroup under the Mitigation Contact Group was established to develop text on Cooperative Sectoral Approaches in the mitigation section which is now contained in Non-Paper 17.
• A consensus is emerging on the need for an agricultural work programme. The main issues are what the scope of a work programme might be, and whether to propose a work programme in Copenhagen or at the next SBSTA session in June 2010. In any event, detailed content would be established after Copenhagen.

Remaining questions

The issue paper links agriculture, climate change and poverty and presents an analysis on agriculture in the negotiating text. It concludes that although progress is being made in the way agriculture is addressed in the negotiation texts, the remaining negotiations should address the following questions:

• Does agriculture have a unique role in adaptation because of its potential for mitigation? If so, does agriculture need to be included in sectoral references and given specific mention?

• Where agriculture is mentioned, what does this mean for developing countries and smallholder farmers? Does the pro-poor aspect need to be emphasised when mentioning the sector?

• Will activities under LULUCF in the second commitment period include agriculture-based activities, and will these be mandatory or voluntary?

• Should agriculture activities be in NAMAs, or the CDM, or both?

• What are the best mitigation financing mechanisms for agriculture to help reduce GHG emissions and generate co-benefits for resilience, poverty reduction and food security?

• Should agriculture be part of REDD-plus now, or brought in at a later stage after further research and analysis, or should a new mechanism be developed for agriculture?

• What are the technical issues (mitigation and adaptation) that an agriculture work programme should

Issue Paper 8 will address these issues and review progress made at the Barcelona meeting. The paper will be published ahead of the Copenhagen meeting in December.

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