Baku, December 3 (AzerTAc). Floods and droughts in major grain producing countries this year have triggered a sharp increase in food prices, highlighting the vulnerability of the world`s food production systems and agricultural markets. Such developments are likely to reoccur more frequently and with greater intensity in the decades to come due to climate change.
Yet while there are many examples of how the agricultural sector can both become more resilient to climate change and reduce its own sizeable carbon emissions (as detailed here), mechanisms for funding such efforts are lacking.
"Available financing, both current and projected, are substantially insufficient to meet the climate change and food security challenges faced by the agriculture sector," said Peter Holmgren, Director of FAO`s Climate, Energy and Tenure Division.
This is one of the key messages that FAO is stressing during the annual meeting of the UN Climate Change Conference in Cancun, Mexico (29 Nov. - 10 Dec.)
Even without considering the additional resources that will be necessary to prepare agriculture for climate change, resources for agricultural development are at a near-historic low.
Government spending on agriculture in developing countries is similarly low, amounting in agriculture-based economies to just around four percent of agricultural GDP — even though agriculture accounts for 29 percent of their overall GDP.
The annual costs of climate change adaptation in developing world agriculture have been estimated by the World Bank at $2.5-2.6 billion per year between 2010 and 2050, while the UNFCCC projects that additional investment and financial flows needed in developing countries for mitigation in the agricultural sector will run $14 billion per year by 2030.
At last year`s COP meeting, in Copenhagen, developed countries committed, via a nonbinding accord, to provide $30 billion in "fast-start" financing to be divided between efforts aimed at helping the world cope with climate change`s impacts and efforts to reduce carbon emissions in all sectors. So far roughly $28 billion has been promised, around $2 billion has been deposited into dedicated climate funds, and $700 million actually has been disbursed.
While various mechanisms have been established to mobilize resources for climate change mitigation (reducing emissions) and adaptation (coping with negative impacts) they for the most part exclude agriculture.
Created under the Kyoto Protocol, the Clean Development Mechanism (CDM) allows developed countries to offset their carbon emissions by investing in renewable energy, energy efficiency, and fuel switching projects in developing countries.
However, projects that sequester carbon in the soils are not eligible for CDM support — and soil carbon sequestration represents 89% of agriculture`s mitigation potential.