GCAN Presentation at the International Conference on Agricultural GHG Emissions and Food Security

GCAN PRESENTATION AT THE INTERNATIONAL CONFERENCE ON AGRICULTURAL GHG EMISSIONS AND FOOD SECURITY

by IFPRI | October 31, 2018

In September, researchers, policymakers, farmers and industry representatives met in Berlin during a three-day conference (International Conference on Agricultural GHG Emissions and Food Security) to identify mitigation action and research opportunities at national, regional and international levels. The conference was timely: Recent developments in the UNFCCC negotiations (i.e. the Paris Agreement in 2015 with its agreement to limit global mean temperature rise below 2 °C above pre-industrial levels, and the Koronivia joint work on agriculture) have made explicit the role that the agriculture sector can play in reducing GHG emissions. Second, the UNFCCC negotiations around agriculture and now the IPCC special report Global Warming of 1.5 °C have reinvigorated calls for incentives to reduce GHG emissions, including the pricing of carbon and other GHG emissions in the form of a tax. This last point is particularly important because recent findings (Frank et al 2017, Hasegawa et al 2018) indicate that a carbon tax on all GHG emissions may lead to significant tradeoffs between the reduction of emissions from anthropic activities, including the agriculture sector, and food security, but modeling results are more favorable for food security when the focus is on taxing fossil fuels (for example, Ringler et al. 2016). All of this indicates how important it is to develop a deeper understanding of the potential, the costs, and the most efficient methods to reduce GHG emissions from agriculture and to assess impacts on food security and nutrition.

The many presentations given at the conference provided a clear view of the wealth of research activities undertaken around the issue of GHG mitigation. Progress has been made in measuring emissions at different scales, in developing mitigation options that farmers can adopt, and in systems thinking. Among the areas that still require a substantial amount of work are the economics of adoption of beneficial practices, the role of risks in decision making and of risk management, the tools to inform the implementation of countries’ NDC and that promote mitigation-driven policies in line with sustainable development, the role of gender and of consumption and diets. Several of these issues are the focus of the G-CAN project and demonstrate the important contribution of the project in this area. A selection from the volume of abstracts can be found here.

 

  1. Andy Reisinger (NZAGRC, GRA) – Agricultural GHGs: from a Global Research Alliance to shared policies and practices (keynote)
  2. Ana Maria Loboguerrero Rodriguez (CCAFS) – Cost and implementation of mitigation in agriculture (keynote)
  3. Stefan Frank (IIASA) – Reducing greenhouse gas emissions in agriculture without compromising food security?
  4. GCAN’s Alex De Pinto (IFPRI) – A reductive interpretation of Climate Smart Agriculture limits its positive effects
  5. Reiner Wassman (IRRI) – Mitigation in Rice Production Systems: Prioritization of Technologies and Practices based on Transformative Potentials
  6. Ole Sander (IRRI) – Bio-physical and Socio-economic Assessment for Scaling of Alternate Wetting and Drying in Vietnamese Rice Production)
  7. Todd Rosenstock (ICRAF) – Making trees count: MRV of agroforestry under the UNFCCC
  8. Tek Sapkota (CIMMYT) – Greenhouse gas emissions from Indian agriculture, mitigation options and associated costs
  9. Lutz Merbold (ILRI) – Improved greenhouse gas emission factors for smallholder livestock systems in East Africa
  10. Todd Crane (ILRI) – Analyzing the distributional effects of climate change mitigation in developing country livestock systems: Cross-scale political economy of low emission development in East African dairy sectors
  11. Tran Van The (IAE Vietnam) – Developing investment plan for low emission development interventions from rice production in Vietnam's Nationally Determined Contributions
  12. Jan Broeze (WUR) – Postharvest food waste reduction measures net effects on GHG emissions
  13. Lindsay Barbieri (UVM) – Agricultural adaptation and mitigation review: Evidence for synergies and tradeoffs
  14. Meryl Richards, Lini Wollenberg (CCAFS) – National contributions to climate change mitigation from agriculture: allocating a global target