Making agriculture more resilient to climate change and contributing to mitigation efforts requires some specific elements are present within a landscape, as we outlined on the Blog last Tuesday. Incorporating climate-smart agricultural practices, a diversity of land uses across a landscape, and the management of interactions between those land uses is critical to achieving adaptation and mitigation goals. However, in order to move from plan to action, policies, institutions, and financing mechanisms need to align. As the UNFCCC COP18 rapidly approaches, the Landscapes Blog will devote this week to exploring the mechanisms needed to operationalize climate-smart agricultural landscapes.
While taking an integrated landscape approach to climate-smart agriculture can yield both positive outcomes for adaptation and mitigation, the two sides of the coin are still addressed separately in policy discussions. Adaptation has traditionally been the entry-point for farming in developing countries, which are likely to experience serious impacts from climate change. The formation of National Adaptation Programmes of Action (NAPAs) is one manifestation of this focus. On the other hand, mitigation in the agricultural sector has only recently entered discussions within the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change process. The potential establishment of a program of work on agriculture at this year’s Conference of the Parties raises the question of whether mitigation and, specifically, integrating agriculture into carbon markets will be afforded more attention in discussions.
A new briefing paper by the German Development Institute explores what a decision on a UNFCCC work program on agriculture could mean, and puts forward recommendations for the future role of agriculture within the UNFCCC. These recommendations emphasize the need to consider the multi-functionality of agriculture, as well as the linkages with other sectors (e.g. forestry). The brief also gives weight to the number of integrated approaches that can achieve these multiple benefits in agriculture.
According to the brief, mitigation strategies need to account for food security, economic and social development, and ecosystem services beyond simple carbon emissions metrics. Property rights and tenure, responsible investments (see FAO’s guidelines under development), and existing scientific knowledge and lessons from experiences in Reducing Emissions from Deforestation and Degradation (REDD), should also be included in the negotiations. Of greatest import is improving the methodologies for measuring emission reductions from agricultural activities, to remove uncertainties and enable more countries to actually implement such projects.
Ultimately, the brief suggests establishing a bifocal work program – one for adaptation and one for mitigation – with the end goal of promoting integrated approaches that yield positive effects on both fronts.
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