Climate-smart agriculture and the World Trade Organization
气候智能型农业与世界贸易组织
- 关键词：
- 来源：
- 国际食品政策研究所IFPRI
- 类型：
- 行业报告
- 语种：
- 英语
- 原文发布日期：
- 2022-01-03
- 摘要：
- Climate change threatens our ability to ensure global food security, eradicate poverty, and achieve sustainable development. Greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions from human activity and livestock are a significant driver of climate change, trapping heat in the Earth’s atmosphere and triggering global warming. Climate change has both direct and indirect effects on agricultural productivity including changing rainfall patterns, drought, flooding, and the geographical redistribution of pests and diseases.Agricultural subsidies have exacerbated those effects by distorting crop and livestock production and contributing to indirect land-use change resulting in deforestation and pasture conversion.1 The Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) estimates that agricultural support among OECD countries and large emerging developing countries was USD 540 billion in 2020. Further, a recent study by three United Nations agencies projects that global support could exceed USD 730 billion by 2030.2 The study concludes that eliminating agricultural support could reduce GHG emissions by 80 million tons CO2eq by 2030, which represents less than 2 percent of the total emissions from agriculture.While eliminating agricultural support would likely have only modest climate change effects, many believe the agricultural sector could contribute to global climate goals by repurposing agricultural support toward adopting climate-smart agricultural (CSA) practices.3 The CSA approach has three main pillars: (1) sustainably increasing agricultural productivity and incomes, (2) adapting and building resilience to climate change, and (3) reducing or removing GHG emissions, where possible.4In September, US Department of Agriculture (USDA) Secretary Tom Vilsack announced a new initiative to finance climate-smart farming and forestry practices to aid in marketing CSA commodities. Under the initiative, the USDA would support a set of pilot projects that provides incentives to implement climate-smart conservation practices on working lands and quantify and monitor the carbon and GHG benefits associated with those practices. The pilots could rely on the Commodity Credit Corporation’s specific power to aid in expanding or developing new and additional markets. In addition, the House of Representative’s Build Back Better Act, currently before the Senate, would provide additional funding on climate-related research and development and provide over $28 billion to fund climate-smart conservation practices.5While government implementation of mitigation and adaptation policies may help address climate change, concerns arise if CSA policies run counter to international trade disciplines. In particular, CSA policies could directly conflict with World Trade Organization (WTO) trade rules if those policies distort production and trade.
- 所属专题：
- 66
