Presentation by Andrew Campbell, Chief Executive Officer at the Australian Centre for International Agricultural Research (ACIAR), at "Transforming global food systems under climate change: Achieving zero emissions" seminar and high-level panel in Copenhagen, Denmark, 25 February 2020. 

1. Challenges and opportunities
for reducing emissions in the food system
Andrew Campbell
CCAFS Copenhagen February 2020

2. Postcards from the future?
reflections on a shocking summer in a 1.5C warmer world
• 2019 in Australia 1.52C above long-term average, hottest and driest year on record
• December 2019 was 3.2C above the 1960-1990 average baseline
• >16 million hectares burnt, including forests never previously burned
• 32 lives lost (testament to greatly improved comms, community education etc)
• >58,000 buildings including houses, farm sheds, farm machinery, businesses, fencing
• Initial economic impact estimated $4-8 billion, 80% of Australians affected
• >>1 billion animals killed
• Many endangered species have lost >> half their remaining habitat
An excellent graphical timeline: https://www.abc.net.au/news/2020-02-19/australia-bushfires-how-heat-and-drought-
created-a-tinderbox/11976134

8. “It’s like licking an ashtray”
Graeme Shaw, Shaw Wines
The end of Australia as we know it…?
New York Times, 15 Feb 2020

9. Prof David Bowman, The Conversation, 5 January, 2020

10. The role of Agriculture
• Biggest employer of people
• Biggest water user (75% of diverted freshwater)
• 26% of global greenhouse emissions
- on track to be the largest emitting sector
• Causes 78% of eutrophication
• Uses 87% of ice-free, non-desert land
• The main driver of deforestation
AND
• The most effective way
to lift people from poverty
In the Anthropocene, agriculture is the
biggest lever humans can pull

11. • “Driving social change for more sustainable
decisions….”
• Sounds like extension to me!
• Vast literature, empirical base
• Private sector can sell products, but rarely set
up for cross-industry, regional scale or public
good extension (or newcomers to farming)
• Web 2.0 and 3.0 (+ Digital Ag) a major
opportunity complementing face to face
• Extension (non-coercive, information-based) is
rarely used in an integrated way with other
policy instruments (e.g. education, training,
incentives, planning, regulation, pricing, taxing,
welfare, credit, insurance, property rights)
Reinventing Extension

14. Kibera,
Nairobi
• INSFEED
• ACIAR/IDRC
• ICIPE/Sanergy
• Food
• Water
• Energy
• Sanitation