According to the latest Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) report humans must urgently revolutionise what they eat, how they grow it and the way they use land if the world is to combat dangerous climate change, .
Transforming to clean energy, clean transport and industry alone will not cut global emissions enough to avoid dangerous warming beyond 1.5 degrees Celsius, the report authors warn.
The IPCC Special Report: Climate Change and Land builds on last year’s dire warning from the panel on the consequences of 1.5 degrees Celsius and 2.0°C warming, which the world is currently on track to reach by 2040 and the 2060s respectively.
“The stability of food supply is projected to decrease as the magnitude and frequency of extreme weather events that disrupt food chains increases,” the report authors state.
“At around 2.0°C of global warming the risk from permafrost degradation and food supply instabilities are projected to be very high.”
Improving land management, reforestation, and soil regeneration are essential steps in reducing emissions from the land sector, report co-author Professor Annette Cowie from the University of New England told ABC News.
“We really do need to take drastic action urgently to reduce greenhouse gas emissions,” Professor Cowie said.
“When we plant trees, when we do sustainable land management practices that build organic land and soil, we actually take carbon out of the atmosphere and we store it in the land.”
Emissions from the global food system, including peripheral activities like packaging and transport, are estimated to comprise between 21 per cent and 37 per cent of the world’s human-generated greenhouse gas emissions, according to the report.
“About a quarter of the Earth’s ice-free land area is subject to human-induced degradation,” the authors state.
And changing the way we farm could improve things for ourselves, as well as for the planet: “Balanced diets featuring plant-based foods such as those based on coarse grains, legumes, fruits and vegetable, nuts and seeds and animal-sourced food produced in resilient, sustainable and low-greenhouse-gas-emission systems present major opportunities for adaptation and mitigation while generating significant co-benefits in terms of human health.”
Reducing food waste is also identified as a key area to gain efficiency and reduce the environmental impact of agriculture.
Between 25 and 30 per cent of food is wasted worldwide, including crop waste, transport and store loss and personal waste.
“By 2050, reduced food loss and waste can free several million square kilometres of land,” the authors write.
The report confirms the world has a double-edged sword hanging over its head, according to IPCC vice-chair Professor Mark Howden.
“We ignore the interactions between climate change and the land at our peril.”
Systemic changes to agriculture to reverse soil erosion, rehabilitate degraded lands, minimise water and fertiliser use and increase carbon capture and storage are all identified as short- and long-term strategies for reducing greenhouse gases.
IPCC scientist Professor Peter Newman from Curtin University told ABC News that while the energy sector has surged ahead in forging a path to low-to-no emissions, the land sector is dragging behind globally.
“Land has been a laggard because across the world there has been continued deforestation, which is fundamental to keeping carbon in the landscape,” Professor Newman said.
One essential action that can immediately help reduce emissions, the report suggests, is protecting carbon-storing ecosystems such as forests, peatlands, rangelands and mangroves.
And rehabilitating these carbon-sink ecosystems can also achieve significant greenhouse-gas draw-down in the near future.
Recent research estimated that reforesting a billion hectares of degraded land globally could stall atmospheric carbon dioxide increase by around 20 years.
Alleviating poverty and empowering women in developing nations are two strategies that could improve land management and slow population growth, said ecologist Professor Hugh Possingham from the University of Queensland and the Nature Conservancy.
“If you improve women’s education and give them autonomy over reproduction and their lives, birth rates drop and infant mortality drops,” Professor Possingham told ABC News.
“Everything is win-win, you can’t complain about women’s education and you can’t complain about children not dying.”
Under future climate change scenarios, droughts are predicted to become more intense and more common.
While this is the first IPCC report to have been produced with a 53 per cent majority of authors from developing countries, it is developing nations that will likely feel the worst effects of food security, according to report co-author Professor Priyadarshi Shukla.
“We will see different effects in different countries, but there will be more drastic impacts on low-income countries in Africa, Asia, Latin America and the Caribbean,” he said.
Desertification in arid regions, including Australia, is expected to increase as tropical and subtropical climate zones expand poleward.
This is projected to put increasing pressure on already stretched agricultural sectors, driving up prices and threatening food security.
“Agricultural practices that include indigenous and local knowledge can contribute to overcoming the combined challenges of climate change, food security, biodiversity conservation, and combating desertification and land degradation,” the report states.
That position has the support of environment groups including the Nature Conservancy, according to country director Richard Gilmore.
“The Roman Empire was around 2000 years ago, Aboriginal people have been managing the land here for 2000 generations.”
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WE’RE BUILDING A PLATFORM WITH A CLEAR FOCUS ON THE ENVIRONMENT, CULTURAL AND SOCIAL GOOD. CONTRIBUTE AND TOGETHER WE CAN MAKE AN IMPACT.
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