Abstract
Human activities and their relation with land, through agriculture and forestry, are significantly impacting Earth system functioning. Specifically, agriculture has increasingly become a key sector for adaptation and mitigation initiatives that address climate change and help ensure food security for a growing global population. Climate change and agricultural outcomes influence our ability to reach targets for at least seven of the 17 Sustainable Development Goals. By 2015, 103 nations had committed themselves to reduce greenhouse gas emissions from agriculture, while 102 countries had prioritized agriculture in their adaptation agenda. Adaptation and mitigation actions within agriculture still receive insufficient support across scales, from local to international level. This paper reviews a series of climate change adaptation and mitigation options that can support increased production, production efficiency and greater food security for 9 billion people by 2050. Climate-smart agriculture can help foster synergies between productivity, adaptation, and mitigation, although trade-offs may be equally apparent. This study highlights the importance of identifying and exploiting those synergies in the context of Nationally Determined Contributions. Finally, the paper points out that keeping global warming to 2 °C above pre-industrial levels by 2100 requires going beyond the agriculture sector and exploring possibilities with respect to reduced emissions from deforestation, food loss, and waste, as well as from rethinking human diets.
Highlights
During the 20th century, global populations rose from approximately 1.6 to 6.0 billion
As we shall discuss later, adoption rates of more intensive and higher yielding agricultural practices have been substantially greater in developed nations compared to developing ones, where a range of constraints still limit later, adoption rates of more intensive and higher yielding agricultural practices have been Ssuusbtasintaabniltiitayl2l0y19g,r1e1a, t1e3r72in developed nations compared to developing ones, where a range of constr2aoinf 2t6s still limit widespread uptake of such practices
The paper starts by describing the evolving importance of agriculture and climate change within the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) and discusses some of the concerns that still remain to be addressed with regard to adaptation and mitigation actions by small and family farms
Summary
During the 20th century, global populations rose from approximately 1.6 to 6.0 billion During this same period, substantial increases in crop yields were achieved in many countries by adopting improved crop cultivars. The paper starts by describing the evolving importance of agriculture and climate change within the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) and discusses some of the concerns that still remain to be addressed with regard to adaptation and mitigation actions by small and family farms. In the case of mitigation, we show that such actions will need to go beyond agriculture alone and must be addressed across the whole global food system if the near-term goal for 2030 of 1 GtCO2 e yr−1 emission reduction is to be achieved. We distil important adaptation and mitigation messages that have emerged from the literature
Sign-in/Register to view highlights & summary Sign-in/Register to access full text options 
Free) 
Talk to us
Join us for a 30 min session where you can share your feedback and ask us any queries you have
Schedule a call
