Excellencies,
Distinguished Delegates,
Ladies and Gentlemen,
Combating Climate Change has a special significance for Agriculture. We
must adapt agricultural practises and technology to the changing
conditions, if we are to feed the World in the future. Let me recall
that more than 900 million people do not have adequate food and
nourishment today, as we speak. Let me also recall that we expect to
have to increase food production by 50% before year 2050.
Achieving Food Security in the
world is a monumental challenge in itself. Food security exists when all
people, at all times, have access to sufficient, safe and nutritious
food. It is important to note that food security is much more than the
availability of food.
Climate Change puts additional
burden on all aspects of Food Security. The most obvious burdens are
changing conditions for producing food from the land, changing
temperature, precipitation and extreme events. Let us not forget,
however, that with the new challenges in agricultural production follows
new challenges of poverty, livelihoods, malnutrition, potential
migration and environmental sustainability. What seems particularly
unfair is that vulnerable communities and regions, eg in the Sahel and
the floodplains of Bangladesh, will bear the brunt of climate change
challenges in agriculture; challenges caused by economic growth in other
regions.
At the same time, the past gives
some reason for optimism. Agriculture has been adapting practises and
technology to new challenges for millennia, and repeatedly surprised the
world through new achievements. Remember, for example, the Green
Revolution that lifted many millions out of hunger. Climate Change in
Agriculture is a formidable new challenge – it will require innovations
and fundamentally new approaches – and it is a long haul, we need to
have a time horizon of several decades. Existing and new ICTs will
certainly play a major role in this process, although it is practically
impossible to predict how ICTs opportunities will evolve over such a
long period of time. If we go back just 30 years, the fax machine was
just invented. It would have been rather difficult then to predict
today’s possibilities in global communication and information sharing.
Now we are looking another 30-40 years ahead in agriculture and
considering how ICTs can help improve Food Security and combat Climate
Change. This is not easy. However, in all modesty I will now highlight
two areas in agriculture where support from ICTs will be crucial.
1. Facilitating a landscape
carbon market to mitigate climate change.
Land provides us not only with
the capacity to grow food, but also to store carbon. There is twice as
much carbon in vegetation and soils than there is in the atmosphere. And
there is potential to store considerably more. This is recognized in the
climate change negotiations, and one ambition is to establish a carbon
market related to Reducing Deforestation and Forest Degradation (REDD).
This provides a remarkable market opportunity for developing countries,
and if the concept is widened to selling carbon credits from all parts
of the landscape, there is a potential to make a significant reduction
of atmospheric carbon, while at the same time stimulating rural
economies and investments in land use.
Achieving such a market,
however, requires that the credits can be traded. Buyers of carbon
credits will require assurances that the carbon storage is actually in
place. Financial transactions will require transparent and
cost-effective verifications. This is where ICTs come in as an effective
tool to combat climate change.
Thanks to the REDD preparations,
remote sensing technologies are being enhanced, hoping to deliver the
precise and timely information needed for the new market. While this is
commendable, I suggest that other ICTs have an even more important role
to play in the inventory and monitoring of terrestrial carbon. GPS
systems and mobile phones networks have brought a revolution to field
measurements. The old paradigm that field work is slow and unreliable
has changed and we are now in a position to measure and verify carbon in
a local context. This is essential, because it is the local
stakeholders, the smallholders, the individual farms that can deliver
climate change mitigation in the landscape. Only through inexpensive and
mainstream ICTs will be able to build this market.
FAO is actively engaged with
UNDP and UNEP in the UN-REDD Programme to help prepare for the potential
REDD market.
2. Improving adaptive capacity
of farmers and other stakeholders to climate variability and change
Agriculture has been
described as the most weather/climate dependent of all human activities.
Farmers are perhaps the segment of the population whose livelihoods are
most susceptible to the impacts of climate variability and change. Being
a farmer, living with climate change and increasing climate variability
means that it is essential to manage the risks and increase the
opportunities in farming. Farmers must therefore prepare for the range
of possibilities, and often need to employ risk management strategies
that reduce negative impacts of climate extremes.
Looking at the longer term
adaptation, we are facing a monumental learning process.
Successful measures for farm level adaptation are often knowledge
intensive and require novel communication methods and need to adequately
reach the farmers. The knowledge intensive adaptation practices in a
drought prone area such as: i) rainwater harvesting; ii) adjustment of
cropping patterns, selection of drought-tolerant crop varieties; iii)
adjusting livelihood diversification; iv) strengthening local
institutions; v) creating awareness and advocacy; and vi) providing
access to adequate knowledge and communication services require enabling
ICTs for all members of the community.
FAO has launched
the Communication for Sustainable Development Initiative (CSDI),
to support the application of communication strategies and approaches to
Climate Change Adaptation and Food Security. CSDI aims at strengthening
and up scaling rural communication services in selected countries, and
to make available suitable methods and tools at the international level
through knowledge networks and partnerships.
Turning to the shorter time
horizon of adaptation in agriculture, it is essential for farmers and
other stakeholders to receive accurate information about climate,
weather and extremes to make pro-active farm management decisions. This
can be, for example, seasonal climate forecasts to plan strategic
options and short to medium range forecasts for adjustment of
cultivation practices.
The effective use of
climate and weather information requires that the right audience receive
and correctly interprets the right information at the right time. The
ICTs can play significant role in communicating useful climate/weather
information to the vulnerable communities in advance to facilitate
pro-active decision process. However, given the hundreds of millions of
farmers, it is obvious that we have an information and communication
challenge.
There are several
weather/climate information products already exists, through the modern
monitoring, acquisition and analysis of weather data by national and
regional meteorological services. The additional challenge is to package
and bring this information to the local stakeholders, and to help them
make decisions for managing risks and opportunities.
FAO is preparing a project to
address these issues, specifically looking at:
- The user community being faced with making an absolute decision (yes or no)
- Forecasts are in the form of probabilities – how to understand uncertainty?
- Risk perception and decision profiles of the farmers varies greatly
- Role of media in policy advocacy, timely information to guide localized decisions,
- How to integrate indigenous knowledge into scientific information?
A common denominator between the longer term
adaptation learning and the shorter term management decisions by farmers
is the role of ICTs. A common conclusion is that existing and robust
technologies are best suited. FAO has worked for many years with Rural
Radio approaches, reaching a large number of stakeholders at low cost.
In recent years the spread and increase of internet use in many
developing countries now provides opportunities also for the rural
population – at least through community hubs, village knowledge centres,
community multimedia centres etc., Use of satellite remote sensing
techniques, weather/climate monitoring, geo-information networks, social
networks and community volunteerism in communicating early warning
messages has opened new avenues for achieving food security through
effective disaster preparedness, emergency response and natural resource
management.
We may expect a leapfrog development in that Web
2.0 user driven content may be quickly adopted for sharing information.
The other new ICT that already has a massive impact in rural areas of
developing countries is the mobile phone. Organized mass communication
through text messages may have a tremendous impact on Food Security and
rural livelihoods at very low cost.
Finally, let me recall the High Level Conference on
World Food Security held in Rome in June 2008 and attended by 181
countries. Among the medium and long-term measures, the conference
highlighted the need to increase resilience of food production systems
to challenges posed by climate change. Specifically, it was urged that
as financial mechanisms are created to meet these challenges,
smallholder farmers and fishers, including indigenous people, can
participate in these investment flows. I believe ICTs will be
particularly important for supporting the smallholders. It is the low-cost
mainstream applications of the internet and mobile phone networks that
can make a significant difference to those that need it most.
Thank you.
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