TAC remarks on Global Climate Change
Presented by Donald Winkelmann, TAC Chairman, at MTM98, Brasilia, on 26 May 1998

I appreciate the opportunity to comment on the two challenging presentations on global climate change. I will comment briefly on aspects of the Watson and Fresco papers, note the CGIAR’s role in mitigating and adapting to global climate change, and offer a few examples of each.

The presentations of Watson and Fresco graphically depicted the apparent importance for all of human kind of the accumulating greenhouse gases and reminded us of agriculture’s role in those accumulations. In particular we see that, overall, agriculture accounts for some 20% of the annual accumulation, largely through emissions of carbon dioxide, methane, and nitrous oxide. They noted the additional changes in greenhouse gases brought on by disturbing current vegetation and pointed out that most of the CO2 is attributed to deforestation and associated land use practices. And, the two presentations affirm the impact of greenhouse gases and the ensuing climate change on agriculture. While there is apparently not universal agreement, much of the literature suggests that the impacts will be most strongly felt in the tropics and sub-tropics, with especially damaging consequences for sub-Saharan Africa because of its large arid and semi-arid areas, its dependence upon agriculture, its poor infrastructure, and its low levels of income, the causal agents seemingly more related to current circumstance than to climate change itself.

Those dealing with global climate change see their efforts taking two major forms: the one rests on strategies to mitigate the accumulation of greenhouse gases and the second to develop strategies which adapt to its consequences. The principal contribution which tropical agriculture can make to mitigation appears to be an indirect one. It runs, as Mr. Watson told us, via the prevention or delay of deforestation. The CGIAR figures hugely in this effort through its work on improved technologies which reduce the pressure on forests as well as on wetlands and on disturbing the soils on more marginal lands. This effect results from lower prices for commodities because of great productivity. Think of this in the context of the Indian experience, where improved technologies so raised yields that, had the 1995 crop been grown with the 1970 yields, perhaps as much as 100m additional has of land would have been pressed into cultivation. Meanwhile, productivity had increased by so much that the real prices fell notably, further deterring those who, in the absence of the price decline, might have been disposed to convert forest hillsides and wetlands to farm land. As well, CG research offers the possibility of direct consequences for mitigation and I will turn to those in a minute.

On the side of adaptation virtually everything that the CGIAR does to make more efficient plants or animals or woody species or their husbandry improves developing country agriculture’s capacity to adapt to global climate change.

Let me turn now to some examples of work now underway in selected centers that exemplifies the CGIAR’s direct contributions to mitigating the accumulation of greenhouse gases or to making agriculture better able to adapt to the consequences of global climate change. Again, given the CGIAR’s dedication to its overarching goals, most of what relates to global climate change is a spillover from the pursuit of its principal goals of poverty alleviation and protecting natural resources. I owe the examples I will quote to the assistance of Dr. Alison Withey, now working with USAID and charged with assessing the CGIAR’s influence on greenhouse gas issues. Dr. Withey has reviewed virtually all CG projects, has visited roughly a dozen centers with directly relevant work, and will table a report with TAC in time for its September 98 meeting-- presumably, for wider distribution later.

I have already observed that the major impact of CG research on mitigation is indirect, through productivity increasing technologies which reduce prices of foodstuffs and stifle the disposition to convert forests to tillable land, to farm hillsides, or to drain wetlands. Among the efforts with direct consequences for mitigation, four stand out: the first is work funded by GEF aimed at developing production practices for rice that limit the emission of methane; the second is work on strategic supplements for poor quality forage for livestock that both reduce feed costs and, through more efficient digestion, reduce methane emissions, by an estimated 25-75 percent; a third is production practices in cereals that reduce the nitrous oxide emissions emerging from wheat production; and the fourth, largely funded by GEF, aims at reducing carbon dioxide emissions through promoting alternatives to slash and burn agriculture . In each of these cases, researchers hope to bring forth technologies which add to the farmer’s bottom line and, at the same time, limit emissions of greenhouse gases.

As for making agriculture better able to adapt to global climate change much of what the CGIAR is doing in research has that consequence. Certainly that would include work on germplasm improvement aimed at improving drought and heat tolerance and that on improving water conservation and delivery systems.

In brief, then, in pursuing its efforts to improve productivity so as to alleviate poverty and conserve biodiversity, land, and water the CGIAR is contributing to the mitigation of climate change and contributing notably to the capacity of producers to adapt to such change as it occurs. In many cases this seems to be in defiance of the adage that there are no free lunches. And what about CG policy and priorities with respect to global warming? Whether the System should reorient its investments to more actively promote the mitigation of climate change is a question that the Group has not tackled explicitly. Members might decide to look into this project. Certainly an assessment of such a strategy would have to include an answer to the question of how much the poor of today should have to give up in order to protect the far less poor of 2050. Certainly yes to what some call win-win situations. These should be exploited! Meanwhile, and once more for emphasis, the current poor people-focused strategy leads, through spillover and its indirect effects, to notable contributions to mitigation of global climate change and notable contribution to the global capacity to adapt to its effects.