The IPCC's special report on climate change and land was presented in Geneva. Acting on energy and industry is not enough — intervention on agriculture and food production is also needed.
The goal of keeping the rise in global temperature well below 2 degrees Celsius can only be achieved by reducing greenhouse gas emissions across all sectors, including agriculture and food: this is what the special report on climate change and land of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (Ipcc) climate change presented today in Geneva argues.
The document analyses the issues of desertification, land degradation, sustainable land management, food security and greenhouse gas fluxes in terrestrial ecosystems. It is one of three special reports that the Ipcc is preparing on the path towards the sixth assessment report.
The report highlights how sustainable land management can help address climate change. With a changing climate, land already in use today could feed the world and provide biomass for renewable energy production, but timely and far-reaching action on proper land management is needed across a range of areas, including with a view to conserving and restoring ecosystems and biodiversity.
The land itself holds great potential for tackling the climate crisis, but only through more sustainable land use, the reduction of excessive consumption and food waste, the elimination of deforestation and forest burning, as well as preventing excessive harvesting of firewood.
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23 per cent of human-caused greenhouse gas emissions come from agriculture, forestry and other land uses. Emissions are mainly due to deforestation, partially offset by afforestation and reforestation and other land uses.
Agriculture is responsible for around half of human-induced methane emissions. At the same time, the terrestrial biosphere absorbs nearly one third of carbon dioxide emissions from fossil fuels and industry through natural processes. This is an activity, however, that is highly vulnerable to the impacts of climate change and anthropogenic pressure.
"Land plays an important role in the climate system. The world is best placed to address climate change when attention is focused on sustainability," said Jim Skea, co-chair of IPCC Working Group III.
When land is degraded it becomes less productive, limiting what can be grown and reducing the soil's capacity to absorb carbon, thereby negatively affecting the climate crisis. Equally, climate change increases the rate and extent of land degradation through the increased frequency, intensity and volume of heavy precipitation, rising heat stress and drought, and sea level rise.
Around 500 million people today live in areas affected by desertification. Drylands and areas undergoing desertification are also more vulnerable to climate change and extreme events including droughts, heatwaves and dust storms, with a growing global population adding further pressure.
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The global food system, which includes all emissions generated along the entire supply chain from production to consumption, contributes around 25–30 per cent of anthropogenic greenhouse gas emissions. The use of chemical fertilisers has increased ninefold and water consumption for irrigation accounts for 70 per cent of total human freshwater consumption. At the same time, per capita food waste has increased by 40 per cent and currently corresponds to 25–30 per cent of food produced.
The report underlines that climate change is affecting all four pillars of food security: availability (yield and production), access (prices and the ability to obtain food), utilisation (diet and cooking) and stability (disruptions to supply). Coordinated action to address climate change can simultaneously improve land, food security, nutrition and help put an end to hunger.
"Food security will be increasingly affected by future climate change through declining yields — especially in the tropics — rising prices, reduced nutrient quality and supply chain disruptions. We will see different effects in different countries, but there will be more drastic impacts on low-income countries in Africa, Asia, Latin America and the Caribbean," explained Priyadarshi Shukla, co-chair of IPCC Working Group III.
The report notes that around one third of food produced is lost or wasted; reducing this loss and waste would lower greenhouse gas emissions and improve food security.
The report represents a key scientific contribution to upcoming climate and environmental negotiations, such as the 14th Conference of the Parties to the United Nations Convention to Combat Desertification, to be held in September in New Delhi, India, and the United Nations Conference on the Climate Change Convention (Cop 25) in Santiago, Chile, in December.
"Governments mandated the Ipcc to provide the first comprehensive analysis of the land-climate system. We have done so through numerous contributions from experts and governments around the world. This is the first time in the history of Ipcc reports that the majority of authors — 53 per cent — come from developing countries," stated Hoesung Lee, Chair of the Ipcc.
"The report sends a clear message: the way we are using land today is contributing to climate change, undermining its capacity to support people and nature. An urgent transformation in our land use is needed. The shift to sustainable land management must be accompanied by the necessary rapid and deep cuts to fossil fuel emissions. Acting on just one aspect is not enough," commented Stephen Cornelius, chief advisor on climate change and IPCC lead for WWF International.
According to Pauline Verrière, food security lead at Action Against Hunger, an international humanitarian organisation that combats the causes and consequences of hunger, "peasant agroecology, family farming and small-scale farmers must be placed at the centre of agricultural systems, unlike industrial agriculture, which not only fails to provide the possibility of feeding people in a healthy and nutritious way, but also aggravates climate change." Northern countries must reconsider their consumption patterns in order to drastically limit their impact on global warming, which particularly affects countries in the south. It is the entire food production chain that must be affected by such changes: in particular deforestation, chemical additives, agriculture and food waste.