Sustainable Agriculture Deserves Center Stage in Marrakech
Author: José Graziano da Silva | Published: November 8, 2016
Agriculture, including forestry and fisheries, is the sector most threatened by climate change. At the same time, the agricultural sectors produce a fifth of the world’s greenhouse gas emissions.
The transformation of the agricultural sectors to address climate change for adaptation and mitigation is essential to tackling hunger and poverty, and offers considerable benefits and opportunities for preserving natural resources.
At the COP21 summit in Paris, countries made unprecedented commitments to adapt to and mitigate climate change. The agreement recognizes “the “fundamental priority of safeguarding food security and ending hunger, and the particular vulnerabilities of food production systems to the adverse impacts of climate change”. This is echoed in country commitments where the agricultural sectors stand out as a priority.
Now, at COP22 in Morocco, we have the opportunity to make significant progress, by making agriculture a major part of the solution.