Open Access

Climate change because of greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions is a significant challenge facing humanity. Failure to take action to reduce GHG emissions would be catastrophic to life on earth, livelihood, and socioeconomic progress that humanities achieved so far. Agriculture is a victim as well as a perpetrator of climate change. The agricultural system depends on weather conditions; hence, agro-based livelihoods and food security are highly vulnerable to climate change. Agriculture, forestry, and other land use sectors contribute to about a quarter of GHG emissions, and Asia has the largest share of global agriculture, forestry, and other land use emissions. Therefore, agriculture and allied sectors should play an important role in the global efforts to achieve net zero carbon emissions. Numerous GHG mitigation strategies for the agricultural system are available, which include dietary changes, reducing food loss and waste, efficient use of resources (especially fertilizer), use of renewable energy in agriculture, soil carbon sequestration, reducing enteric fermentation, reducing methane emissions from rice cultivation, and managing manure to reduce GHG. However, the challenge is the investment that is required to scale up these strategies to more than 500 million smallholder farmers. Further, some of these strategies may adversely impact the yield, food security, livelihood loss, and foreign exchange export earnings of developing economies that are dependent on agriculture. Additionally, some government subsidies that are not climate-, environment-, and natural resources-friendly should be reallocated into sustainable and climate-smart agriculture. Therefore, the agriculture sector’s net zero carbon emission strategy in developing economies should be driven by technology and implemented gradually with financial and knowledge support from the government and international organizations.

Text in English

Rahut, D.B. : No CIMMYT Affiliation