The Toxic Tie Between Agriculture and Climate Change

The Copenhagen Climate Conference is now in full swing, and so far a major point of contention is deciding how developed nations should help less-developed countries adjust to climate change. The United Nations (UN) reported in September that poorer countries would require $500–600 billion per year for the next ten years to combat climate change while maintaining their economic growth. Responding to this need, this week EU leaders pledged $22 billion per year to assist developing countries.

Developing nations also want stricter international commitments to reduce greenhouse gases (GHGs). More than 100 of the 192 nations at the conference, including African nations and small island nations that could literally disappear due to rising sea levels, want an agreement that limits global temperature to 1.5 degrees Celsius above pre-industry levels. This means developed nations must reduce their carbon emissions by 45 percent below 1990 levels by 2020. However, developed nations seem reluctant to accept such binding targets; although the EU is encouraging developed nations to pledge a 25–40 percent reduction of GHG emissions below 1990 levels by 2020, the US indicated it would only cut emissions by 17-20 percent below 2005 levels.

As the largest contributors of global GHGs, developed nations are responsible for the consequences of climate change that affect the rest of the world. Developing nations emit the least GHGs, but stand to lose the most from global warming. Africa contributes just four percent of the world’s total GHG emissions, but climate change is already affecting the region, especially its agriculture. Developing nations rely on agriculture for their livelihood, and this industry is sensitive to even small temperature changes. East Africa is currently facing one of its worst droughts in decades, which has significantly reduced crops, threatening 23 million people with starvation. A study from the University of California, Berkeley, goes as far to suggest global warming will increase the risk of civil war in Africa, because higher temperatures reduce food yields, which increases poverty and civil unrest.

Earlier this year, the Food and Agriculture Organization of the UN (FAO) released a report urging nations at the Copenhagen Climate Conference to include agriculture in its negotiations, because agriculture—including subsidiary effects like deforestation—accounts for more than one third of global GHG emissions. Agricultural emissions in developing nations are increasing, but these countries also have the most potential to limit farming emissions by switching to sustainable practices. The FAO concludes that international emissions targets will only be reached once the world reduces farming emissions without harming food security or economic development.

In 2006, the FAO reported that 18 percent of the world’s human-induced GHG emissions came from animal agriculture. According to former Vice President Al Gore, “The growing meat intensity of diets around the world is one of the issues connected to this global crisis—not only because of the CO2 involved, but also because of the water consumed in the process.” The Humane Society of the United States released a report recently highlighting how animal agriculture is also an inefficient use of land. If humans ate the grain used to feed the livestock that is raised for meat, more people could be fed by using the same amount of land. Less land use means less deforestation and less carbon released into the atmosphere. It follows that reducing meat production, and therefore livestock production, would address climate change and the world food shortage in one fell swoop, and allow developing nations to maintain economic growth while reducing GHG emissions.