Bali, Indonesia
December 6, 2007
Significant new investments and
new knowledge needed in agriculture-related climate change
research to tackle climate vulnerability of world’s poor,
according to experts
With a raft of studies warning that climate change now poses a
major threat to food production in developing countries, the
world’s largest alliance of agricultural research centers called
on the international community to step up its investment in
global climate change research on food crops for poor countries.
At a meeting just concluded this week in Beijing, leaders of the
15 centers of the Consultative
Group for International Agriculture Research (CGIAR) that
span the globe have set forth a policy to seek funding to double
its current investment in “climate-ready crops” and better land
management. The research agenda will also assess climate change
impacts on poor nations’ agriculture and natural resources.
Absent commitments like this, the group said farmers in poor
nations could face a global disaster of unprecedented
proportions.
“We are increasingly alarmed that if we don’t move quickly to
give farmers in the developing world the tools they need to deal
with climate change, we could see food production in places like
sub-Saharan Africa and South Asia collapse before the end of the
century,” said Katherine Sierra, World Bank Vice President for
Sustainable Development and the CGIAR Chair. “I urge donors and
research centers around the world to join us in investing in
solutions to climate change.”
Sierra’s call for ramping up research that would help developing
countries adapt to and mitigate the effects of climate change
was made in Bali, Indonesia where world leaders have gathered
for the 13th UN Climate Change Conference.
Recent research efforts, many of them conducted by CGIAR
scientists, have made it clear that the widely anticipated
increase in extreme weather events—more drought in some areas,
more flooding in others, higher temperatures all around—and a
likely increase in plant pests and diseases ushered in by these
changes, are going to hit poor countries particularly hard.
CGIAR’s research figured prominently in a report earlier this
year from the United Nation’s Nobel-prize winning
Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), which
concluded that rising temperatures and changing rainfall
patterns could cause agriculture production to drop by as much
as 50 percent in many African countries and by 30 percent in
Central and South Asia. For example, the IPCC predicted that
unless scientists come up with hardier varieties, wheat
production could disappear entirely from Africa by 2080 and
maize production could drop precipitously.
The CGIAR global network contributes the lion’s share of the
world’s research on critical crops such as rice, wheat and
maize, in addition to challenges related to forestry,
agroforestry, livestock, fish production, biodiversity, water
management, and growing conditions in arid, semi-arid and
tropical countries.
“We plan to take advantage of the strong cadre of experts at our
research centers who are poised to rapidly intensify research
efforts that already are coming up with many practical
solutions--like drought-tolerant wheat, flood-tolerant rice and
new approaches to crop and soil management,” said Sierra. “These
research advances will allow global food production to keep pace
with population growth.
“This is an auspicious moment in the history of agriculture
research because farmers already are under considerable pressure
to increase production just to meet the food demands of a
growing population,” continued Sierra. “If there ever was a time
for scientists to step up and innovate, it is now.”
Throughout 2008, the CGIAR will work with scientists and other
partners to highlight new areas of research and share new
knowledge from the scientific research community. In particular,
the CGIAR is looking forward to working closely with the UN Food
and Agriculture Organization (FAO) and other partners on a
conference on food security, climate change, and the challenges
of bio-energy, which is scheduled for early June in Rome.
Climate Change Agenda
CGIAR is rising to the challenge by crafting a climate change
agenda rooted in its decades of scientific investigations and
international partnerships, all of them focused on pursuing
cutting edge agriculture research and translating it into
applications that help poor farmers achieve sustainable
livelihoods in challenging conditions.
CGIAR’s climate change work is focused on practical endeavors
like breeding crops for stress tolerance; developing better
practices for crop and natural resource management; helping
farmers choose and breed livestock suitable for particular
climate conditions; assessing how climate change will affect
specific regions, production systems, and the wild plant and
animal relatives of domesticated varieties; and providing
decision-makers with a wealth of objective assessments so that
they can implement policies specifically designed to help
farmers deal with climate change.
For example, to maintain production in the face of increasingly
harsh conditions, CGIAR scientists have conducted extensive
research into the molecular biology of particular plant traits,
particularly those related to fitness. It is now linking this
work with large-scale conventional plant breeding programs to
develop more resilient varieties of major staple
crops—principally maize, rice and wheat.
Today, CGIAR scientists are collaborating with partners in
sub-Saharan Africa to test new varieties of drought-tolerant
maize that can help farmers avoid the 20 million tons of maize
lost each year to excessively dry conditions. In Southeast Asia,
CGIAR researchers have identified a naturally occurring rice
gene that could help farmers avoid the $1 billion in annual
losses caused by flooding, a problem that is likely to get worse
in the wake of global warming. The trait, which breeders have
transferred to a popular rice variety in Bangladesh, allows rice
plants to stay submerged for up to two weeks without dying.
CGIAR scientists, who have at their disposal a wealth of genetic
resources from the 11 CGIAR-support crop gene banks, want to
build on these successes by identifying genetic mechanisms that
account for the inherent stress tolerance of naturally hardy
food crops like barley, cassava, pearl millet, and sorghum.
“To be effective, stress-tolerant varieties must be developed
hand-in-hand with improved crop management systems,” said
Sierra. “We plan to greatly expand ongoing research focused on
specific practices that can allow farmers to deal with problems
related to poor soil quality and water scarcity that are likely
to exacerbated by climate change.”
For example, CGIAR centers and their partners have worked with
farmers to adapt trees that naturally fertilize depleted soils
and develop water technologies that can help both irrigated and
rain fed systems withstand climate-changed induced pressure on
water resources.
In addition to helping developing countries survive the affects
of climate change, CGIAR research will seek to find ways to get
farmers in poor countries more involved in the worldwide effort
to reduce greenhouse gas emissions. For example, CGIAR research
is producing more accurate assessments of greenhouses gases
produced by deforestation and developing new technologies for
measuring carbon captured in the trees and soils of relatively
small land-holdings. These efforts are focused on helping
farmers in poor countries participate in a global carbon trading
market that is now valued at more than $30 billion but, under
its current structure, has largely excluded the rural poor.
CGIAR centers seek to provide the research required to
accelerate policy reforms farmers need to adapt to new
conditions caused by climate change. For example, CGIAR research
on water management can drive better national and regional
polices that allow for a more prudent distribution of water
resources to support rural livelihoods. CGIAR scientists will
also be generating an array of data that helps policy makers at
all levels to understand how particular decisions and tradeoffs
regarding conservation and development affect food security and
agricultural systems.
The Consultative Group on International Agricultural Research
(CGIAR), established in 1971, is a strategic partnership of
countries, international and regional organizations and private
foundations supporting the work of 15 international agricultural
research Centers. In collaboration with national agricultural
research systems, civil society and the private sector, the
CGIAR fosters sustainable agricultural growth through
high-quality science aimed at benefiting the poor through
stronger food security, better human nutrition and health,
higher incomes and improved management of natural resources.
www.cgiar.org |
|
