Posted on April, 11, 2022 at 08:15 am
With the war in Ukraine raising concerns over global food shortages, there has been much talk about emergency measures in Europe’s agricultural policy.
“We must act with these measures, in the short term, to address food security and affordability concerns now,” EU agriculture Commissioner Janusz Wojciechowski said in a recent address to lawmakers.
Measures proposed by the EU executive in its recently published communication on food security include relaxing some environmental requirements, such as permitting farmers to plant crops on land that was previously set aside for biodiversity.
The underlying argument seems to be that to deal with short-term, urgent problems, it makes sense to temporarily suspend or weaken environmental efforts, which serve long-term goals like climate and biodiversity protection.
But from the perspective of the IPCC, an international panel of climate scientists that issued its latest assessment report on how to mitigate climate change on Monday (4 April), this logic has it all upside down.
Or, in the iconic words of the king of Rock and Roll: Tomorrow will be too late.
The scientists found that to limit global warming, the next few years are critical, so, rather than being a long-term project, steps to fight climate change need to be taken immediately, the report concludes – climate measures are emergency measures.
“It’s now or never if we want to limit global warming to 1.5 °C,” Jim Skea, co-chair of the IPCC working group responsible for the report, told journalists. “Without immediate and deep emissions reductions across all sectors, it will be impossible,” he added.
According to the scenarios that the report assessed, if we want to stop global warming from going beyond 1.5 °C, greenhouse gas emissions will have to peak before 2025 at the latest and be reduced by 43% by 2030.
And the stakes for the agriculture and food sector are high. According to a previously published chapter of the IPCC report, global warming could majorly strain food systems and make millions worldwide subject to food insecurity.
The researchers found that even a small increase in global temperatures will mean farmers have to grapple with more frequent and more severe weather events.
While, according to the IPCC, climate change is already affecting food security in vulnerable regions like Africa and Asia, a new study by the think tank Institute for European Environmental Policy (IEEP) projects that global warming by 2 °C would reduce wheat yields by 12% even in the southern regions of Europe.
But while global warming could leave agriculture, all shook up, the hopeful message of the most recent report is that the sector could make significant contributions towards limiting climate change – if we act fast.
Agriculture and forestry can “provide large-scale emissions reductions and also remove and store carbon dioxide at scale” the report states. However, it cautions that the land-use sector alone cannot compensate for delayed emissions reductions in other sectors.
Moreover, the researchers found that improving the climate footprint of agricultural products could help reduce emissions along the value chain. This will happen if downstream sectors use agricultural products that are sustainably sourced. They note that climate measures in farming can often bring “co-benefits” such as biodiversity conservation or ecosystem services.
Despite all this, the report also finds that up to now, policies specifically targeting emissions from agriculture and the production of feed and other inputs are rare.
This is an area where the EU could step up – after all, it has plenty of regulations, directives, frameworks and revamps in the works set to make farming and food more sustainable, all (or most) under the overarching framework of the flagship Farm to Fork strategy.
The question is now: When will we see these proposals implemented, and how ambitious will the final product be?
The recipe for success might just lie in the wisdom of the king of rock and roll again: a little less conversation – a little more action.
Source: EURACTIV