Climate Smart Agriculture: Policy Trade-offs and Interactions

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1 Climate Smart Agriculture: Policy Trade-offs and Interactions Coherent Policies for Climate Smart Agriculture OECD Workshop June 17 th - June 18 th 2015 Jeju Island, Republic of Korea Dr. Anita Wreford Land Economy, Environment and Society Scotland s Rural College 1

2 Outline Background CSA concepts and challenges Production support policies Mitigation policies Adaptation Relationship between measures Conclusion 2

3 Introduction Current emission trends are at the high end of levels that had been projected growing on average at 2.2%/yr since 2000 [IPCC 2014] 3

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5 Introduction Current emission trends are at the high end of levels that had been projected growing on average at 2.2%/yr since 2000 [IPCC 2014] Business as usual will not achieve food security or environmental sustainability (Beddington et al. 2012) 5

6 Safe operating spaces (Beddington et al. 2012) 6

7 Introduction Current emission trends are at the high end of levels that had been projected growing on average at 2.2%/yr since 2000 [IPCC 2014] Business as usual will not achieve food security or environmental sustainability (Beddington et al. 2012) Agriculture is a globally significant source but still going under the regulatory radar Negotiations remain mired in blame-and-burdens mentality CSA appears to have emerged to target developing country interventions But developed countries are struggling to reduce their own emissions so CSA an important concept for developed countries as well 7

8 CSA concepts & challenges Definition: Agriculture that sustainably increases productivity, resilience (adaptation), reduces/removes GHGs (mitigation), and enhances achievement of national food security and development goals (FAO 2010) Different actors, incentives and interactions (Neufeldt et al. 2013) All three aims imply different measurement tools and institutional responsibility CSA is locally specific 8

9 Policy Need greater coherence, coordination and integration between climate change, agricultural development and food security policy processes (FAO 2010) 9

10 Irrigation/Water subsidies Used to support production e.g Spain, India In Green Box payments of WTO Cost of pumps and electricity also sometimes subsidised Implications: Mitigation: potential increased energy use Adaptation: groundwater depletion in areas already water scarce & becoming more so, potentially increasing future vulnerability Creating barrier to transformation Also pollution, salination, biodiversity impacts 10

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12 Fertiliser subsidies E.g. Indonesia (Osario et al. 2011) To increase agriculture productivity and preserve national food security and aims to enhance farmers ability to optimise the use of fertiliser. Also addressing wider objectives of farmers welfare, poverty alleviation or price stabilisation.using 40% of largest farmers receive 60% of the subsidy Optimum level of application beyond which adverse effects on output are seen Most farmers report using higher than recommended levels N 2 0 emissions Groundwater pollution Doesn t address inequality 12

13 Mitigation policy Difficult to measure, many uncertainties Agriculture remains voluntary few attempts to incorporate into emissions trading Most countries focus on efficiency gains fewer emissions per unit product Skirts around the issue of cutting emissions significantly And existence of targets means climate policy tends to focus on mitigation aims at the expense of adaptation leading to potential trade-offs and missed opportunities for synergy 13

14 e.g. Ireland Food Harvest 2020: Increasing the value of primary output in the agriculture, fisheries and forestry sector by 1.5 billion. This represents a 33% increase compared to the average Beef Technology Adoption Programme (BTAP) ( ) Received payment (up to 1000 euros/year) for meeting certain conditions (technology, environment) over 3 years Climate smart? Replaced by Beef Data and Genomics Programme ( 295m) 14

15 Eg. Animal Breeding Reducing emissions from livestock focuses on efficiency gains fewer emissions per unit product Larger animals May be more vulnerable to climate stresses Increasing resilience (adaptation) focuses on more hardy animals, often less efficient or productive 15

16 Adaptation policy Policy focuses on knowledge exchange, building capacity Adaptation has different characteristics to mitigation and productivity aims Can t be measured easily Not (only) discrete technical solutions Can require long term planning and lead times Uncertainty Incremental changes may not be sufficient may require transformative changes Does CSA facilitate transformation? 16

17 Adaptation & mitigation in agriculture Policies evolved separately But similarities between mitigative and adaptive capacity: economic wealth, technology, infrastructure, information, knowledge and skills, institutions etc. Decisions (and barriers) about adopting mitigation and adaptation strategies made at similar scale (often by individual farmer) 17 17

18 Trade-offs and synergies between adaptation and mitigation options on a Dutch dairy farm (Topp et al 2015 AnimalChange) 18

19 Developing country questions Include mitigation? Mitigation finance for agriculture: contingent on quantification CSA impossible without private finance? MRV if CSA is upscaled, who will do this? Danger that CSA will create burdens for those already vulnerable Is the promotion of CSA drawing attention away from developed country commitments? 19

20 When are trade-offs acceptable? Synergistic measures may not always be the most effective or efficient Every country will argue that they should focus on production 20

21 Conceptualisation 21

22 Conclusions CSA concepts arguably re-package existing neoclassical framing of issue Policy needs to inform and enable longer term planning Greater integration & dialogue across government levels, policies, between scientists, actors & policy Focus on mitigative and adaptive capacity first, and understanding adoption behaviours 22