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.
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