By Rachel Kyte, Vice President and Special Envoy, Climate Change Group, World Bank, originally published at World Bank
The latest report from the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) tells us that to rein in climate change and keep global warming under 2°C, we will have to start reducing emissions now and get to near net zero emissions within this century.
That won’t happen without healthy forests and soil storing carbon, and it won’t happen without climate-smart land-use practices that can keep carbon in the ground.
Together, agriculture, forestry and other land use changes account for about a quarter of anthropogenic greenhouse gas emissions. The sector can be a powerful source of emissions, but it is also a powerful carbon sink that can absorb carbon dioxide, providing a pathway to negative emissions. The IPCC authors estimate that with both supply-side and demand-side mitigation efforts – including reducing deforestation, protecting natural forests, restoring and planting forests, improving rice-growing techniques and other climate-smart agriculture methods, changing diets, and reducing the immense amount of global food waste – we can effectively reduce a large percentage of emissions from the sector and increase carbon storage to move the needle toward net zero.
This weekend at the UN climate talks in Lima, experts in agriculture, forests, and land-use planning are meeting to discuss climate-smart solutions across the landscapes.
It’s the second year of the Landscapes Forum, combining what were once separate agriculture and forest days at the climate talks. We are making progress, but the wider climate negotiations are still falling short on the overall landscapes agenda. The climate talks need to fully recognize the strong potential contributions to mitigation and adaptation of landscape-based approaches, including climate-smart agriculture and forest practices.
Sustainable forests and sustainable land management have so far been dealt with in a fragmented way, rarely coming together for a complete picture. The approach is inefficient when the pace of climate change demands fast, concerted action.
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