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How Agriculture Can Be Used to Combat Climate Change in Developing Countries

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How Agriculture Can Be Used to Combat Climate Change in Developing Countries
GLOBAL ENVIRONMENTAL ISSUES

ESSAY ON THE ROLE OF AGRICULTURE IN COMBATING CLIMATE CHANGE IN DEVELOPING COUNTRIES

PRESENTED BY; MWAURA PHILIP W
DATE; 25TH MARCH 2013

INTRODUCTION
Climate change is now recognised as one of the most serious challenges facing the world – its people, the environment and its economies. There is now clear scientific evidence that the high concentration of greenhouse gases (GHGs) in the atmosphere is causing global warming. While the world has experienced climatic changes before, the issue we now face involves human influence. It is a challenge that must and can be dealt with because its impacts will have very dire consequences on us and the generations to come. Greenhouse emmissions results from various sources in our societies. We have emmissions from industries and other human activities such as agricultural practises.It is believed that most global warming we can now observe is attributable to emissions of GHGs that result from human activities, in particular land use changes such as deforestation, and the burning of fossil fuels (coal, oil and gas). All these activities are human influenced and thus something needs to be done at the local, regional and globals levels. This essay highlights the role of agriculture in tackling climate change and some of the mitigation and adaptation measures.
CLIMATE CHANGE AND AGRICULTURE
The Inter-governmental Panel on Climate Change(IPCC) define climate change as the term generally used to describe human influences on the climate. The most significant threat is the emission of greenhouse gases (GHGs), which contribute to the ‘greenhouse effect’. The greenhouse effect is a natural mechanism essential to life on Earth, but human activity has altered the balance in the mechanism. Radiant energy emitted by the sun comes through the Earth’s atmosphere and warms its surface. This heat then radiates back into the atmosphere, but some of the sun‘s heat is absorbed in the atmosphere by gases.



References: 1) Clean Development Mechanism (CDM) (2008) [Available online at http://cdm.unfccc.int/index.html] DATE accessed 20th November 2012. 2) IPCC (2007) Summary for policy makers. Climate Change 2007: Synthesis Report. Fourth Assessment Report of the Intergovernmental Panel for Climate Change. [Available online at http://www.ipcc.ch/pdf/assessment-report/ar4/syr/ar4_syr_spm.pdf ]. Date accessed 19th November 2012. 3) FAO, 2008. “Climate Change Adaptation and Mitigation: Challenges and Opportunities for Food Security.” Paper presented at the High Level Conference on World Food Security 4) Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO). (2008). Financial mechanism for adaptation to and mitigation of climate change in the food and agriculture sectors. Paper presented at the High Level Conference on World Food Security 5) Smith, P., Martino, D., Cai, Z., Gwary, D., Janzen, H., Kumar, P., McCarl, B., Ogle, S., O’Mara, F., Rice, C., Scholes, B., & Sirotenko, O. (2007). Agriculture. In B. Metz, O. R. Davidson, P. R. Bosch, R. Dave & L. A. Meyer (Eds.), Climate Change 2007: Mitigation. Contribution of Working Group III to the Fourth Assessment Report of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press. 6) Smith, P., D. Martino, Z. Cai, D. Gwary, H. Janzen, P. Kumar, B. McCarl, S. Ogle, F. O’Mara, C. Rice, B. Scholes, O. Sirotenko, M. Howden, T. McAllister, G. Pan, V. Romanenkov, U. Schneider, S. Towprayoon, M. Wattenbach and J. Smith, 2008. “Greenhouse gas mitigation in agriculture.” pp. 789-813. 7) United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC). (2009). Copenhagen Accord. Conference of the Parties.Accessed at http://unfccc.int/resource/docs/2009/cop15/eng/l07.pdf. 8) UNFCCC, 2008. Challenges and Opportunities for Mitigation in the Agricultural Sector. Technical Paper. FCCC/TP/2008/8. http://www.unfccc.int/resource/docs/2008/tp/08.pdf. Date accessed 20th November 2012. 9) World Bank. (2008). World Development Report 2008: Agriculture for Development. Washington, D.C.: World Bank.

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