Guaranteeing food security in a changing global Climate

PIP would like to draw your attention to a new UNCTAD Discussion Paper (No. 201) by Ulrich HOFFMANN entitled: Assuring Food Security in Developing Countries under the Challenges of Climate Change: Key Trade and Development Issues of a Fundamental Transformation of Agriculture.

For a large number of developing countries, agriculture remains the single most important sector, but climate change has the potential to damage irreversibly the natural resource base on which agriculture depends. Agriculture (and related land-use change) is the most important emitter of global greenhouse gases but, at the same time, agriculture is also the sector that also has the potential to transcend from being a problem to becoming an essential part of the solution.

This paper outlines the need to shift from conventional, industrial, monoculture-based and high-external-input dependent production towards more sustainable systems, which also considerably improve the productivity of small-scale farmers. The paper also discusses the challenges that are faced in achieving this, at national and international level.

The full paper is available at: www.unctad.org/en/docs/osgdp20111_en.pdf