Assuring Food Security in Developing Countries under the - Unctad

Assuring Food security in developing countries
under the chAllenges oF climAte chAnge:
Key trAde And development issues oF A
FundAmentAl trAnsFormAtion oF Agriculture
Ulrich Hoffmann
United Nations Conference on Trade and Development (UNCTAD)
Abstract
For a large number of developing countries, agriculture remains the single most important sector.
Climate change has the potential to damage irreversibly the natural resource base on which agriculture
depends, with grave consequences for food security. However, agriculture is the sector that has the
potential to transcend from being a problem to becoming an essential part of the solution to climate
change provided there is a more holistic vision of food security, agricultural mitigation, climate-change
adaptation and agriculture’s pro-poor development contribution. What is required is a rapid and
significant shift from conventional, industrial, monoculture-based and high-external-input dependent
production towards mosaics of sustainable production systems that also considerably improve the
productivity of small-scale farmers. The required transformation is much more profound than simply
tweaking the existing industrial agricultural systems. However, the sheer scale at which modified
production methods would have to be adopted, the significant governance and market-structure
challenges at national and international level and the considerable difficulties involved in measuring,
reporting and verifying reductions in GHG emissions pose considerable challenges.
i. introduction
Global warming has the potential to damage irreversibly the natural resource base on which agriculture
depends, with grave consequences for food security. Climate change could also significantly constrain
economic development in those developing countries that largely rely on agriculture. 1 Therefore, meeting
the dual challenge of achieving food security and other developmental co-benefits, on the one hand,
and mitigating and adapting to climate change, on the other hand, requires political commitment at the
highest level. What is more, time is becoming the most important scarcity factor in dealing with climate
change. 2
According to FAO (2009f), despite increased world food production in the last few decades, the global
effort to meet the Millennium Development Goal of reducing hunger by half by 2015 now appears beyond
reach. As a matter of fact, the number of people suffering from chronic hunger has increased from under
800 million in 1996 to over one billion recently.
1 For more information, see Lim Li Ching (2010a).
2 If current global GHG emission trends remain unchanged, global emission levels will have to be reduced by at least
75 per cent by 2050 to keep temperature rise within a 2.5 degree limit.