Climate Smart Agricultural Landscapes
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Sara Scherr presents a Food Tank webinar that explains what "climate-smart agriculture" really means, why we need it, and how to do it right. Critically, she notes, we need to look beyond the farm to the whole landscape in order to take advantage of the synergies and co-benefits of climate-smart practices.
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Climate Smart Agricultural Landscapes
- 1. CLIMATE SMART AGRICULTURAL LANDSCAPES Sara J. Scherr President, EcoAgriculture Partners Food Tank Webinar April 30, 2015
- 2. Climate Smart Agricultural Landscapes 2 CREATING AND SUSTAINING WHOLE LANDSCAPES AROUND THE WORLD
- 3. OUTLINE Why we need climate- smart agriculture What it is Synergies & co-benefits Making it happen Climate Smart Agricultural Landscapes 3
- 4. Climate Smart Agricultural Landscapes 4
- 5. Climate Smart Agricultural Landscapes 5
- 6. Climate Smart Agricultural Landscapes 6 Across Sectors Outside the UNFCCC Easy to love
- 7. AGRICULTURE & CLIMATE CHANGE Landscape approaches to achieve the SDGs, sustainably 7 Photo by Neil Palmer/CIAT Agriculture, Forestry and Other Land Use Buildings Industry Energy Transport 7Climate Smart Agricultural Landscapes % of total global emissions, by sector from 2014 IPCC report Mitigation
- 8. CLIMATE CHANGE & AGRICULTURE 8Climate Smart Agricultural Landscapes Adaptation
- 9. ON THE FARM & BEYOND THE FARM Climate-Smart Landscapes employ a variety of land uses 9Climate Smart Agricultural Landscapes
- 10. 10 AGROFORESTRY, OR TREES ON FARMS 10Climate Smart Agricultural Landscapes
- 11. FARM WITH PERENNIALS Climate Smart Agricultural Landscapes "4 Seasons Roots" by Dehaan - Jerry Glover. 11
- 12. HAPPY COWS = BETTER CLIMATE 12Climate Smart Agricultural Landscapes
- 13. CARBON BENEATH YOUR FEET 13Climate Smart Agricultural Landscapes
- 14. EMISSIONS INTO ENERGY Climate Smart Agricultural Landscapes 14
- 15. RESTORE DEGRADED LAND 15Climate Smart Agricultural Landscapes
- 16. WILD AREAS PROVIDE MANY BENEFITS 16Climate Smart Agricultural Landscapes
- 17. Spatial planning for SYNERGY 17Climate Smart Agricultural Landscapes
- 18. CLIMATE SMART LANDSCAPES Integrated Landscape Management Multi-objective, multi-stakeholder resource governance Climate Smart Agricultural Landscapes 18
- 19. Looking closer at climate smart in action Kericho, Kenya Climate Smart Agricultural Landscapes 19
- 20. TRANSFORM MARKETS & FINANCE 20Climate Smart Agricultural Landscapes
- 21. Climate Smart Agricultural Landscapes 21 Full range
- 22. "Coal power plant Datteln 2 Crop1" by Image by Arnold Paul cropped by Gralo Climate Smart Agricultural Landscapes 22 Finance incentives for climate action
- 23. "Old chain" by Mark Schellhase - Own work. Licensed under CC BY-SA Climate Smart Agricultural Landscapes 23 Link to food, community, & environment
- 24. Climate Smart Agricultural Landscapes 24 #ThinkLandscape
- 25. Climate Smart Agricultural Landscapes 25 Creative Money
- 26. Climate Smart Agricultural Landscapes 26 A Rebel Alliance Photo art by Mark A. Scott, DeviantArt
- 27. Landscape approaches to achieve the SDGs, sustainably 27 Will you join us? EcoAgriculture.org PeopleFoodandNature.org
Editor's Notes
- Hello everybody. Thanks to Danielle (and Sarah) at Food Tank for that lovely introduction and for inviting me to present, and to all of you for joining us. The topic today is critically important, and there is a lot of misunderstanding about the term “climate-smart” especially as it applies to our food system, that hopefully I can help clear up today.
- I founded EcoAgriculture Partners in 2002 as a coalition housed within the organization Forest Trends, for whom I then worked, because we looked at the places where deforestation and biodiversity loss were happening fastest, and looked at the places where people were most reliant on agriculture for their incomes, and were most struggling to make ends meet, and saw that these places were the same places. We can’t address biodiversity loss, or ecosystem degradation, or environmental collapse, or whatever you want to call it, without addressing how we do agriculture and rural development. So for more than a decade now, EcoAgriculture Partners has focused on helping local communities manage their own landscapes to accomplish both goals, writ large. Healthy environment and improved local livelihoods through agriculture. What we came to call Landscapes for People, Food and Nature.
- There are a lot of terms to keep track of in the ever more vociferous and contentious food and agriculture debate. It is a great thing that regular people, consumers, eaters, are demanding more from their food system besides ever-present cheap calories, and so are keeping a very watchful eye on the corporations who have profited most from a system designed to deliver those cheap calories at high environmental cost. Costs that have been largely born by the workers, the farm communities, and our fellow species, rather than by the corporations responsible. And so it is critical that new “industry buzzwords” be discussed openly and approached skeptically. Such has been the recent response to the widespread appearance of the term “Climate-Smart Agriculture,” bandied about recently by no less important personages than President Obama and World Bank President Jim Yong Kim. There is even a US-supported Global Climate-Smart Agriculture Alliance, for which I sit on the steering committee.
- Criticism of the concept as just another attempt for big corporations to “greenwash” the same failed technologies and agricultural methods with a new name is worth considering, and in some cases valid. So why are we, EcoAgriculture Partners, involved in the Alliance and using the term?
- A few reasons: Climate-smart agriculture is helping policy makers think about these issues the right way. There are a lot of problems facing farmers and eaters: Poverty, malnutrition (of all kinds), environmental degradation, and more. Climate-smart agriculture is an increasingly useful term to help typically single-issue-focused donors, organizations, and government ministries approach these problems holistically (or at least less sectorially). Agriculture has been almost entirely left out of the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change process, and so this is the primary means for organizing international action on agriculture and climate change. Climate-smart Agriculture as defined by the UN Food and Agriculture Organization is something everyone can get behind (and something that sounds just like everything we’ve been working to promote within the global food system for more than a decade): Climate-smart agriculture (CSA) is an integrative approach to address these interlinked challenges of food security and climate change, that explicitly aims for three objectives: (1) sustainably increasing agricultural productivity, to support equitable increases in farm incomes, food security and development; (2) adapting and building resilience of agricultural and food security systems to climate change at multiple levels; and (3) reducing greenhouse gas emissions from agriculture (including crops, livestock and sheries). CSA invites to consider these three objectives together at dierent scales - from farm to landscape – at dierent levels - from local to global - and over short and long time horizons, taking into account national and local specificities and priorities.
- Why do we need Climate Smart Agriculture? About 26% of the world’s Greenhouse Gas emissions come from what the IPCC calls “Agriculture, Forestry and Other Land Uses” that don’t include mining or energy extraction, which fall into other categories. About half of these emissions come from deforestation, which remains primarily driven by agricultural practices, primarily forest conversion for large scale agricultural development (32%) and conversion to small scale agriculture, (26%) (FAO 2001). “Thus, in most developing economies, the decline in forests and woodlands is mainly the result of land conversion, particularly in agricultural expansion for crop production (FAO 1997; FAO 2003).” (Barbier 2004) The other half comes from mainly from livestock and rice production, with smaller contributions from synthetic fertilizer and crop residue burning. We can, and should, address agriculture’s contribution to climate change in both these areas. But as the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change noted in its 2014 report, “A practice effective in reducing emissions at one site may be less effective or even counterproductive elsewhere. Consequently, there is no universally applicable list of mitigation practices; practices need to be evaluated for individual agricultural systems based on climate, edaphic, social setting, and historical patterns of land use and management (high agreement, much evidence).”
- The effects of climate change on agricultural yields, on average, is difficult to model, as there are many variables to consider and scientists differ in their estimation of each’s relative importance to yields. Of course, agriculture is a highly local endeavor, and impacts, both positive and negative, from a warming climate, increased atmospheric Carbon Dioxide levels, shifting weather patterns, severe weather events, and other climate change driven factors will not be evenly distributed. One recent study published in the journal Nature Climate Change found that: “Weather events at the equator will become more extreme with 2C of warming, meaning tropical countries already dealing with frail infrastructure and poverty will experience more than 50 times as many extremely hot days and 2.5 times as many rainy ones.” Preparing agriculture to deal with climate change, to take advantage of positive effects and survive the worst, is called adaptation. Of course, the lack of scientific consensus about the impacts of climate change on agriculture has hampered investment to prepare communities for potential impacts. Meanwhile, many agricultural areas are already being hit hard by climate change impacts; just look at the Drought in California, or the devastating storms and flooding in Bangladesh and Pakistan.
- As the IPCC report says: “Agricultural mitigation measures often have synergy with sustainable development policies, and many explicitly influence social, economic, and environmental aspects of sustainability. Many options also have co-benefits (improved efficiency, reduced cost, environmental co-benefits) as well as trade-offs (e.g., increasing other forms of pollution), and balancing these effects will be necessary for successful implementation (high agreement, much evidence).” There are interactions between mitigation and adaptation in the agricultural sector, which may occur simultaneously, but differ in their spatial and geographic characteristics. The main climate change benefits of mitigation actions will emerge over decades, but there may also be short-term benefits for other policy objectives. Conversely, actions to enhance adaptation to climate change impacts will have consequences in the short and long term. In the example you can see depicted here, we are highlighting efforts near Turrialba, Costa Rica, where activities on the farm and in the surrounding landscape are designed primarily to meet short-term policy objectives like increasing tourism revenue, raising local incomes, saving biodiversity, and increasing agricultural productivity. Yet virtually all of these activities have very direct climate change mitigation benefits. In the next few slides we’ll explore some of these activities in more detail. Additionally, and importantly, involving local people in natural resource management has the power to build stable, resilient and inclusive local institutions that are equipped to handle social or economic changes and natural disasters that may come.
- Agroforestry is one example of a climate-smart farming practice. These mango trees planted in rice paddies in Nepal provide many benefits to local farmers and the planet. [Click to fade photo in] They provide food security and additional income, helping to build household resilience in case of shocks. The trees and their fruit are more valuable than the paddy rice. They also have the excellent benefit of offsetting much of the greenhouse gas emissions from rice cultivation. Flooded rice fields release methane, as microbes decompose organic matter under anaerobic soil conditions - See more at: http://ciatblogs.cgiar.org/agbio/global-action-to-reduce-greenhouse-gas-emissions-in-rice-production/#sthash.NtcA3CCt.dpuf
- Farming with perennials. All of that root matter equates directly to stored carbon. In addition to storing carbon, these roots secure soil to prevent erosion, increase soils water retention and filtration abilities, decreasing the need for irrigation, increasing drought tolerance, and reducing agricultural runoff, which pollutes waterways and leads to marine dead zones in river deltas like the one in the Gulf of Mexico.
- Livestock production accounts for half of all emissions from agriculture. Half. Indeed, a single cow/calf pair on a beef or dairy farm in the Eastern US is responsible for more greenhouse gas emissions in a year than a person driving nearly 13000 kilometers in a midsize car. Reducing the amount of meat we eat, and demanding that it come from climate-smart, sustainable producers, will go a long way toward shifting agriculture toward zero net emissions. Meanwhile, a variety of solutions are at hand to reduce current livestock-related emissions. Innovative rotational grazing systems can both increase yields per hectare of pasture (reducing the need to clear land), while increasing the variety and hardiness of perennial grasses, which as we’ve seen, are great at storing carbon in the soil. A major USDA study showed that perennial grass-based systems have significantly lower net carbon emissions than confined operations. Manure management is another important part of better livestock management
- Improving soil carbon management: We pour more than 100 million tons of chemical (inorganic) fertilizers on our croplands every year. Soils with nitrogen fertilizer release large amounts of Nitrous Oxide, which is 300 times more potent as a greenhouse gas than carbon dioxide. Fertilized soils release more than 2 billion tons of CO2 equivalent greenhouse gases every year. There are numerous ways to replace or reduce the need for inorganic fertilizers: composting, green manures, nitrogen-fixing cover crops like velvetbean, intercropping, and the use of livestock manure. In one example of organic farming, a 23 year trial by the Rodale Institute found that if the 65 million hectares of corn and soybeans grown in the US were switched to organic farming, the equivalent of 4 percent of annual US emissions would be stored in the soil. No-till and conservation tillage approaches also have soil carbon benefits, along with many other compelling reasons to put them into practice. In Parana, Brazil, for example, farmers have developed organic no-till systems for wheat and soybean production that increased yields by a third and reduced soil erosion by up to 90%, all while reducing labor and fossil fuel use and enhancing soil biodiversity. Biochar – burnt biomass (forest and milling residues, rice husks, groundnut shells, etc.) in a low oxygen environment, added to soil provide a “slow release” fertilizer that locks a lot of carbon in the ground. If biochar were applied on just 10 percent of the world’s croplands, the method could store 29 billion tons of CO2 equivalent, offsetting nearly all emissions from fossil fuel burning.
- Anaerobic biogas digesters can help farmers profit from their farm waste while helping the climate. Biogas digesters are simple to construct, as they can be made of any airtight vessel. We’ve worked with pastoralist communities who invested in a large concrete communal biodigester that provided natural gas for clean cook stoves. This solution took a community problem (stinky animal waste contributing tons of methane to the atmosphere) and turned it into a triple-win solution: solved a chronic public-health problem from cooking over wood fires indoors, reduced pressure on woodlands and the time women had to spend gathering wood for fires, and provided a low-odor, nutrient-rich fertilizer as a byproduct.
- Wild areas, especially wooded wild areas, between and around fields provide obvious mitigation benefits, with trees, shrubs and soil capturing and storing carbon. They have many adaptation benefits as well: providing year round habitat for pollinators that are only able to feed, and pollinate, for a short period on the cropland. They keep riparian or coastal areas cool and full of food for fish, which provide food locally and through marine fisheries. They stabilize slopes and stream banks, limiting erosion and protecting fields from landslides and floods. They provide wild foods and, when managed properly, a sustainable supply of timber, fiber, medicines, or other products. They even filter water and air, and large areas have impacts on the local microclimate, improving rainfall regularity and moderating temperature swings.
- We need coordination between these practices to ensure that a land area is storing the most carbon by the most efficient means, and to ensure that co-benefits from climate change mitigation and adaptation are realized. In climate-smart agriculture, upstream farmers planting cover crops and building water catchments may impact downstream users by reducing water available for irrigation—or by reducing flooding. In a climate-smart landscape, stakeholders work together to coordinate adaptation and mitigation without negatively affecting each other. Coordinated planning also allows for critical finance and policy mechanisms to support climate-smart practices, by encouraging those who benefit from ecosystem services provided by farmers and landowners to compensate farmers for their efforts. To go beyond climate-smart at the farm level to climate smart agricultural landscapes requires what we call an Integrated Landscape Management approach.
- At its core, ILM is about multi-stakeholder, multi-objective resource governance. About who makes decisions about how natural resources are used, and with what in mind. There are Five Key Elements of Integrated Landscape Management: Shared or agreed management objectives encompass multiple benefits Natural resources management practices are designed to contribute to multiple objectives Ecological, social, and economic interactions are managed to realize synergies Collaborative, community-engaged processes for management are used Markets and public policies are actively shaped to achieve and support the above Perhaps this sounds too abstract to be of value. But I assure you, this model for action is working in the real world. At EcoAgriculture Partners, we’ve spent the last decade documenting and supporting these efforts around the world.
- We worked with Rainforest Alliance and the local community to deploy a participatory tool that we developed for assessing the status, needs and gaps for CLIMATE smart agricultural landscape implementation. Six domains were considered: On-farm management practices Landscape planning and coordination Energy systems Training and technical assistance Policy support Technology and information The study participants and Rainforest Alliance discovered key sets of investments that could quickly scale up on farm climate smart practices to the landscape level, to maximize their benefits for local farmers, tea companies, and the climate. They included, improved extension and training on climate-smart techniques, optimizing fuelwood and eucalyptus management across the landscape, building a community of practice to facilitate knowledge exchange between multinational tea companies and local smallholder tea farmers, and building local economic resilience through diversification.
- To build and maintain climate smart landscapes around the world, however, will take reshaping public policy and international finance to support climate-smart agriculture. Six Principles for tapping the Full Potential of Land Use Mitigation
- 1. Include the full range of terrestrial emission reduction, storage and sequestration options in climate policy and investment.
- 2. Incorporate farming and land use investments into cap-and-trade systems *(California) and incorporate agricultural carbon into voluntary offset markets *(Vi Agroforestry/World Bank).
- 3. Link climate action to food, community, environment priorities. Link terrestrial climate mitigation with adaptation, rural development and conservation strategies
- 4. Encourage large, area-based programs designed to include all stakeholders using a rights-based approach.
- 5. Find creative ways to fund climate-smart activities and landscape projects: Use co-benefits as sources of finance. Create new funds and investment vehicles that channel funds towards projects with climate co-benefits. Pressure major financial institutions to apply climate-smart investment screening to their land use and agriculture investments (as well as their energy, industry and service sector investments!)
- 6. Support and contribute to a worldwide, networked movement pressuring companies, governments and consumers to change purchasing patterns, shifting government policies at the local, state and national levels, and supporting innovations that directly help farmers and landowners. Overthrow conventional ag and replace it with Climate-Smart.
- We need collaboration among the champions and implementers of the integrated landscape approach –join the Landscapes for People, Food and Nature Initiative working to articulate SDGs.