Wageningen, The Netherlands
December 11, 2007
It is important to start taking a
more pro-active stance to assess what adaptation options are
available to agriculture to cope with climate change. This is
what international scientists of the IPCC, among whom Holger
Meinke of Wageningen University,
discuss in their article published today, 11 December 2007, in
the renowned scientific journal PNAS (Proceedings
of the National Academy of Sciences). It is crucial to
analyse costs and benefits of adaptation options in order to
adjust policy and investments aimed at effective long term
solutions.
The publication identifies several practical steps that can be
taken to adapt agriculture to climate change during the next
decade. The scientists state that although important, these
steps alone will not be enough. Long term food security, fibre
and biofuel production requires an array of sophisticated
management strategies and supportive policies.
For this, a joint effort of scientists, policymakers and
industry is needed, that will allow the world to cope with the
large-scale changes expected. Policy makers, farmers and
agribusinesses need to know what they should do differently.
Agriculture, with its crucial function in the production of
food, feed, fibre, livestock and bio fuel, is the most
climate-dependent of all human activities.. Climate adaptation
analyses can reward early adopters of climate information, help
maintain a focus on building the capacity for effective climate
risk management and inform medium to long-term infrastructure
investment decisions. Furthermore, these studies will inform the
international discussions on reducing greenhouse gas emissions
such as those happening in Bali this week.
Some climate change impacts are happening faster than previously
thought. Observed global temperature increases are following the
highest projections of the IPCC. Mitigation measures have so far
failed to arrest the increase in greenhouse gas emissions.
Practical adaptations such as changing timing of plantings, the
varieties or species of crops grown might avoid the damage
caused by 1- to 2-degree changes in temperature - those expected
over the next few decades. However, the effectiveness of such
adaptation strategies declines with increasing temperatures.
Consequently, the damage from climate change will increase
unless a whole new array of adaptation options are developed and
used.
These adaptations may need to include diversification of
production systems and livelihoods. Such changes would need
supporting policies and programs in addition to soundly based
research and development.
The scientific team from CSIRO in Australia, INRA in France,
Arizona State University, IIASA in Austria and Wageningen
University in the Netherlands, identifies six key elements
needed for putting in place effective adaptation responses:
- conviction that climate
changes are real and likely to continue,
- confidence that these
changes will significantly impact on society,
- technical and other
options to respond to the changes,
- support to make the
transitions to new conditions,
- new infrastructure,
policies and institutions to support the new management and
land use arrangements, and
- targeted monitoring of
adaptations to learn what works, what does not and why.
Increased adaptation action will
need integration of climate change-related issues with other
risk factors such as climate variability and market risk and
with other policy domains such as sustainable development. It
will also need adaptation assessment frameworks that are
relevant, robust and easily operated by farmers and other
industries, policymakers and scientists.
In companion papers in the same issue of PNAS, Dr Josef
Schmidhuber (FAO, Italy) and Francesco Tubiello (IIASA, Austria)
warn that climate change will negatively affect all four
dimensions of food security: food availability, access to food,
stability of food supplies and food utilisation. The impacts are
likely to grow more problematic with time and disproportionately
affect the world's poor. They conclude that it is quite possible
that future will show there has been an underestimation of the
negative effects of climate change once anticipated changes of
extreme climates and other factors such as the effects on pests
and diseases are included.
The leading author of the article, Dr Howden of CSIRO, is a
member and lead author of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate
Change which was recently awarded the Nobel Peace Prize, shared
with Al Gore.
Full article available to subscribers at:
http://www.pnas.org/cgi/reprint/0701890104v1
Other articles in same issue:
http://www.pnas.org/papbyrecent.shtml
The Plant Sciences Group of
Wageningen UR is a collaboration of:
- Plant Research International B.V.
- Applied Plant Research (Praktijkonderzoek Plant & Omgeving
B.V.)
- Wageningen University
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Article published
in Proceedings of
the National Academy of Sciences (PNAS) |
Adapting
agriculture to climate change
S. Mark Howden*,, Jean-François Soussana,
Francesco N. Tubiello,¶, Netra Chhetri||,
Michael Dunlop*, and Holger Meinke **
*Commonwealth Scientific and Industrial Research
Organization, Sustainable Ecosystems, GPO Box
284, Canberra ACT 2601, Australia; Institut
National de la Recherche Agronomique, UR874,
63100 Clermont-Ferrand, France; Goddard
Institute for Space Studies, Columbia
University, 2880 Broadway, New York, NY 10025;
¶International Institute for Applied Systems
Analysis, Schlossplatz 1, A-2361 Laxenburg,
Austria; ||Consortium for Science, Policy and
Outcomes, Arizona State University, P.O. Box
874401, Tempe, AZ 85287-4401; and **Department
of Plant Sciences, Wageningen University, P.O.
Box 430, NL 6700 AK, Wageningen, The Netherlands
Edited by William Easterling, Pennsylvania State
University, University Park, PA, and accepted by
the Editorial Board August 16, 2007 (received
for review March 1, 2007)
ABSTRACT
The strong trends in climate change already
evident, the likelihood of further changes
occurring, and the increasing scale of potential
climate impacts give urgency to addressing
agricultural adaptation more coherently. There
are many potential adaptation options available
for marginal change of existing agricultural
systems, often variations of existing climate
risk management. We show that implementation of
these options is likely to have substantial
benefits under moderate climate change for some
cropping systems. However, there are limits to
their effectiveness under more severe climate
changes. Hence, more systemic changes in
resource allocation need to be considered, such
as targeted diversification of production
systems and livelihoods. We argue that achieving
increased adaptation action will necessitate
integration of climate change-related issues
with other risk factors, such as climate
variability and market risk, and with other
policy domains, such as sustainable development.
Dealing with the many barriers to effective
adaptation will require a comprehensive and
dynamic policy approach covering a range of
scales and issues, for example, from the
understanding by farmers of change in risk
profiles to the establishment of efficient
markets that facilitate response strategies.
Science, too, has to adapt. Multidisciplinary
problems require multidisciplinary solutions,
i.e., a focus on integrated rather than
disciplinary science and a strengthening of the
interface with decision makers. A crucial
component of this approach is the implementation
of adaptation assessment frameworks that are
relevant, robust, and easily operated by all
stakeholders, practitioners, policymakers, and
scientists.
Full article
available to subscribers at:
http://www.pnas.org/cgi/reprint/0701890104v1 |
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