Include Agriculture in Addressing Global Climate Change Challenges

The Agriculture, Landscapes and Livelihoods Day, which took place yesterday in Doha, Qatar, forms the latest round of the important event previously known as Agriculture & Rural Development Day, held each year in parallel with the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) to raise awareness of the direct connections and impacts between agriculture and climate change and the need for global action to address these.

 

Partnerships and actions on this vital agenda have been directly supported by GFAR and a consortium of other agencies since its inception, enabling a significant number of research and civil society participants to take part in shaping these processes over the years. GFAR was also very much involved in the Rio+20 process which has broadened the agenda to Agriculture, Landscapes and Livelihoods, as highlighted in the attached news item.  Following Rio, the GCARD 2012 brought together leading international, regional and national agencies that are concerned with the agricultural effects of climate change, to agree new concerted actions that link initiatives together more effectively, bringing greater understanding on the action partnerships needed, from local to regional and global levels, to tackle climate change adaptation and mitigation and achieve impacts at scale. This is now being taken forward in very practical ways, to co-generate knowledge and strengthen the national capacities required and through joint calls for action such as that made from the All-5 Day.

 

This year’s ALL-5 theme, of finding ‘Solutions for people living in drylands and beyond’, also relates strongly to a number of other initiatives which GFAR has also helped to support in recent years.  In particular, leaders of the agricultural research community of the Near-East and North Africa regions, as brought together in AARINENA, in partnership with the World Meteorological Organization (WMO) and the CGIAR, have developed a framework for regional action on climate change through the International Conference on Adaptation to Climate Change and Food Security in West Asia and North Africa in November 2011. The Conference agreed a framework for fostering agricultural adaptation to climate change in this dryland region, a process that has continued to develop further this year.

 

Similar support to the development of a regional framework for Asia –Pacific region, in a process led by APAARI and JIRCAS, led to the Tsukuba Declaration on Adapting Agriculture to Climate Change and more recently to a joint APAARI, CCAFS and WMO workshop on climate-smart agriculture, resulting in a plan to address gaps and link knowledge with policy actions at the local/national/regional level, to make agriculture climate smart. Most recently, GFAR support to CACAARI, together with that of WMO, has helped develop regional strategies for the Central Asia/Caucasus region, while similar discussions have taken place in Africa through FARA and Latin America via FORAGRO.