*CA-CoP* *CONSERVATION AGRICULTURE COMMUNITY OF PRACTICE*
*for sustainable production intensification*
Dear Subscribers,
Please find herebelow the Green Carbon Conference Newsletter 1.
The Conference is jointly organized by the European Conservation
Agriculture Federation (ECAF) and the French Institute for Sustainable
Development (IAD), and promoted by the Life+ AGRICARBON Project.
The Conference will be held from 1-3 April 2014 in Brussels.
*Amir Kassam *
*Moderator*
Plant Production and Protection Division
Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations
Viale delle Terme di Caracalla
00153 Rome
Italy
e-mail: [log in to unmask]
URL: www.fao.org/ag/ca
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From: Green Carbon Conference <[log in to unmask]>
Date: Mon, Dec 2, 2013 at 4:58 AM
Subject: The Green Carbon Conference Newsletter - 1
To: Amir <[log in to unmask]>
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*THE
GREEN CARBON CONFERENCE NEWSLETTER* *2nd December, 2013*
*“The rise of Climate Smart Agriculture - a solution to Carbon
Sequestration in Agricultural Soils” * Since the middle of the
20thcentury, global agricultural output has kept pace with a rapidly
growing
population. The current human population of 7 billion will increase to more
than 9 billion by 2050, creating a demand for a more diverse diet that
requires additional resources to produce it. Ensuring food security in a
context of growing population and changing climate is arguably the
principal challenge of our time. This adds to the challenge of maintaining
and preserving the resilience of both natural and agricultural ecosystems
(World Bank, 2010).
The responsibilities of this challenge fall on agriculture, which is the
sector of the global economy that is highly vulnerable to climate change
conditions and needs to adapt to the effects of global warming. Overall,
warming and drying may reduce crop yields by 10–20% to 2050, but there are
places where losses are likely to be much more severe. Increasing
frequencies of heat stress, drought and flooding events will result in yet
further deleterious effects on crop and livestock productivity (Jones and
Thronton, 2008). At the same time, agriculture and the changes in land-use
that are associated with it, are one of the principal contributors to
climate change. They are rightly recognized as source of considerable
emissions, accounting for one-third of global greenhouse gas (GHG)
emissions, with associated opportunities for mitigation. Future
agricultural productivity is critical, as it will shape emissions from
conversion of native landscapes to food and biofuel crops. Further yield
improvements should therefore be prominent among efforts to reduce future
GHG emissions (Burney et al., 2010).
As efforts to mitigate climate change increase while enhancing food
security and preserving the natural resource base and vital ecosystem
services, there is a need to identify cost- effective ways to avoid
emissions of GHGs. The triple imperatives of increasing productivity,
reducing emissions, and enhancing resilience to climate change call for
alternative approaches to practicing agriculture.
Food security and climate change can be addressed together by Climate-
Smart Agriculture (CSA). CSA seeks to increase productivity in an
environmentally and socially sustainable way, strengthen farmers’
resilience to climate change, and reduce agriculture’s contribution to
climate change by reducing GHG emissions and increasing soil carbon storage
(World Bank, 2010). The CSA approach is designed to identify
and operationalize sustainable agricultural development within the explicit
parameters of climate change. CSA brings together practices, policies and
institutions that are not necessarily new but are used in the context of
climatic changes, which are unfamiliar to farmers, herders and fishers.
What is also new is the fact that the multiple challenges faced by
agriculture and food systems are addressed simultaneously, which helps
avoid counterproductive policies, legislation or financing (FAO, 2013). One
of the key elements of CSA is sustainable land management (SLM) involving
the implementation of land-use systems and management practices that enable
humans to maximize the economic and social benefits from land while
maintaining or enhancing the ecosystem services from land resources. SLM
practices provides carbon benefits through three key processes: carbon
conservation, reduced emissions, and carbon sequestration. Increasing soil
organic carbon stand central to most SLM techniques as it can reverse soil
fertility deterioration, the fundamental cause of declining crop
productivity (World Bank, 2010). Sustainable land management
delivers carbon benefits in three important ways.
1. Carbon conservation, in which the large volumes of carbon stored in
natural forests, grasslands, and wetlands remain stored as carbon stocks.
Conserving this terrestrial carbon represents a “least-cost opportunity” in
terms of climate change adaptation and mitigation and is essential to
increasing the resilience of agricultural ecosystems.
2. Carbon sequestration, in which the growth of agricultural and natural
biomass actively removes carbon from the atmosphere and stores it in soil.
3. Reduce the emissions of GHGs that emanate from agricultural
production, including those emissions that result from land-use change in
which carbon stocks become carbon sources as agricultural production
expands into natural ecosystems.
Even though, there has been a rapid uptake of the term CSA,
implementing this approach is still challenging. Climate-smart
interventions, such as SLM practices, are highly location-specific and
knowledge-intensive. Considerable efforts are required to develop the
knowledge and capacities to make CSA a reality. In large part, these are
the same efforts required for achieving sustainable agricultural
development which have been advocated over past decades, yet still
insufficiently realized on the ground. CSA offers an opportunity to
revitalize these efforts, overcome adoption barriers, while also adjusting
them to the new realities of climate change. By adopting improved land
management practices to increase soil carbon, farmers can increase crop
yields, reduce rural poverty, limit GHG concentrations in the atmosphere,
and reduce the impact of climate change on agricultural ecosystems (FAO,
2013).
*By Marie-Laure Dewit*
*REFERENCES: THE WORLD BANK, 2012. Economic and Sector Work- Carbon
Sequestration in Agricultural Soils. International Bank for Reconstruction
and Development/International Development Association or The World Bank.
BURNEY, J.A., DAVIS, S.J., LOBELL, D.B., 2010. Greenhouse Gas Mitigation by
Agricultural Intensification. PNAS, 107 (26), pp. 12052-12057. JONES P.G.
THORNTON P.K. 2008. Croppers to livestock keepers: Livelihood transitions
to 2050 in Africa due tu Climate Change. Environmental Science and Policy,
12 (4), pp. 427-437. FAO, 2013. Climate- Smart Agriculture for development.
FAO [online]. 4 June. Available from
http://www.fao.org/climatechange/climatesmart/en/
<http://www.fao.org/climatechange/climatesmart/en/> [Accessed 12 November
2013].* Don't forget to register for our Green Carbon
Conference online at
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