The Paris agreement on climate change was “a game changer,” according to the FAO director general for giving priority to food security in its preamble. But, notes Think Progress, the text of the agreement does not mention food security or agriculture at all. “Despite claiming nearly half of the world’s land and accounting for one-third of the world’s greenhouse gas emissions, food and agriculture had always played a secondary role in international climate negotiations, pushed aside in favor of discussions about energy and transportation,” writes Natasha Geiling.
It’s a different story, however, in the plans submitted by nations on how they will mitigate or adapt to climate change. “Those individual plans – known as Intended Nationally Determined Contributions, or INDCs – tend to mention agriculture, especially in relationship to mitigation: More than 80 percent include strategies for mitigating the impact of agriculture on climate change, while 60 percent include strategies for adapting agriculture to climate change,” says Think Progress. The president of the Pan African Farmers Organization says growers are frustrated: “If we can make such a difference in emissions, why aren’t we mentioned more specifically?”
The omission of agriculture in the agreement “does raise the question of where the money for those strategies will come from,” says Think Progress. The 48 least-developed countries will need $5 billion a year for agricultural adaptation to climate change, which is far more money than is offered at this point. The idea of carbon sequestration – locking up greenhouse gas emissions in plants – received attention in Paris, yet “little is known about how to consistently increase the amount of carbon taken up by soil.” Farmers use a variety of practices but none of them works for everyone or with uniform results in all settings.