 So facilitating change in relation to climate change and all about climate smart agriculture I'm going to cover four things the global challenges the rise of the climate smart agriculture Can we be optimistic to actually meet these global challenges and the last piece I was asked to talk a little bit about Ireland taking a leadership role in the CSA movement So the global challenges and you know all this stuff the first challenge and I think agriculture and food systems stand at the Nexus of three of the greatest challenges in the 21st century and the first one is the whole food supply issue food security challenges throughout sub-Saharan Africa South Asia and some parts of Latin America But it's not only about under supply. It's also about over consumption So 1.5 billion adults overweight more than they're under nutrition in the world and Ireland is in the top League in this regard Food waste another issue with related to supply. So we have a Almost a billion people going hungry and yet we waste a third of the food we produce So the first challenge is all around food supply The second challenge is the adaptation challenge This is a series of spots around the world where they've been able to do detailed modeling on wheat Production and looking at the change in yield and so that the dark blue is where yield is going to go down by significant amounts So the wheat shows that there's a six percent yield loss for each degree of Cobb Temperature rise equivalent to a quarter of the global trade in wheat This is a major in terms of the future Just let's look at one crop in in different parts of the world This is coffee crop and if you go to South America down in the corner The brown is where there's a negative change for the coffee Production from that part of the world and as you can see there's brown everywhere in terms of coffee So this means livelihoods producer associations are going to have to think about different crops Completely over the next decades Is it something that we can only model into the future I don't think so this is the IPCC Where there's now evidence that you can you can pick out the climate impacts on for example These two crops maize and wheat so a four percent decline There has been a four percent decline in maize yield over the last two decades. I think or 15 years When you factor out the other impacts on yield so they you're already picking up impacts of climate change So that was the second challenge the adaptation challenge the third one is the mission challenge which you mentioned at the start So can everybody from the agricultural sector argues that agriculture is the most important thing for food security and therefore we should be Not given the targets So we believe that you agriculture cannot be excused from their mission targets This is the total emission Emissions at the moment 48 gigatons The blue is from the non agricultural emissions the yellow is from agriculture and land cover chain forestry sector and This is 2010 if it's business as usual as we doing now This is what the picture will be in 2050 if we want to keep the world at a two degree warmer, this is what we have to achieve 21 gigatons if you excuse agriculture from emissions and Every other sector has to do it Agriculture will contribute 70% of emissions by 2050 For me, it's impossible. Why are other sectors going to allow agriculture to be let off the hook? So for us, we believe that emission reductions are crucial in the agricultural sector Often if you listen to some of the NGOs that we work with in the south They often talk about industrial agriculture as being the problem Well, we put it quite clearly that that's not the case that these are emission challenges in the south as well So this is the size of the circle is related to the emissions from different parts of the world and One of the big ones is this olive green. I think it's is indirect emissions from agriculture This is agriculture as a driver of deforestation So with major emissions from that in Southeast Asia and Central America and The rest the other colors are the different peace sub sectors of agriculture And there's particular challenges in different parts of the world. So rice methane production in Southeast Asia Burning in in Africa Different pieces in different places So the second part of the talk is now how do we? Achieve how do we rise to those three challenges? And this is the rise of the CSA movement and It's it's addressing the three challenges the productivity food security challenge the adaptation challenge and the mitigation challenge and in September last year the UN Secretary General launched the Global Alliance for Climate Smart Agriculture GACSA Consisting of different kinds of players so different about a hundred different Units have signed up to this be they governments farmers organizations scientific groups, etc. And they've organized around three different initiatives an action group a knowledge group Investment group. So this is bringing investment into the agricultural food system area and the policy enabling environment group we together with FAO lead the knowledge group the investment group is led by Tanzanian Ministry and Difford in the UK Enabling environment is led by USDA and one other country group. I forget at the moment and Around and the outcomes are aimed for productivity resilience emissions outcomes as An example this was the one that was announced in September This is the kind of target that has to be achieved in the next few decades or next 15 years 500 million people Farmers The resilience improved in in this is in relation to the adaptation challenge So this is a huge target in terms of the kinds of things that have to happen What about mitigation? So we have a group of 30 of the top scientists at the moment working on a mitigation target and This is not published yet. They believe that the agricultural sector has to decrease emissions by one gigaton Conducts I'd be here to help war limit the warming to two degrees and they believe that that's feasible with With a food security goal as well. So not compromising food security But that number is not published yet. It's it's so I shouldn't you shouldn't take it away too much It has to Next few months So what is climates mod agriculture and I want to take an example of alternate wetting and drying and rice It's an amazing technology You flood the rice for the first 15 days and then you only irrigate it when it needs the water So you dry it out essentially and You can reduce the water by 30 percent You can reduce greenhouse gases by up to 50 percent without compromising the yield So it's getting at these different Climate-smart agriculture Outcomes this is some actual data from a particular area in a particular season the blue is the conventional agriculture and the green is the AWD alternate wetting and drying and you can get a 42 percent decline in greenhouse gases. So it looks good but the point that we also Like-making is that you shouldn't label anything climates more agriculture because the context is so important and Here's the example Do the same thing in different places and you get different results and so therefore even a fantastic technology like AWD Cannot be labeled as climates more agriculture because it doesn't work in some places This makes life very difficult, of course we would love to say this is Climate-smart agriculture. This is not climate-smart agriculture But in fact the context and it's not only the biophysical context It's farmers context their labor resources their assets also determines what is possible and what is not possible So many practices can be CSA somewhere, but none are likely to be CSA everywhere This makes it very difficult for development agencies for farmers organizations to promote something because it really has to be Promoted on a case-by-case basis So the third section is can we be optimistic about rising to those challenges and by the way beans are the first Things that are likely to disappear from Africa in terms of the temperature limitation on on growing beans So some people really believe that the world is going to be in a different place in a couple of decades And these are Kings from Uganda presidents of South Africa president of IFAD International Fund for Agricultural Development essentially saying Africa can be the next breadbasket of the world Is that I mean I think this optimistic vision is great. Is it really feasible? So this is on the food security side now. Let's look at the adaptation challenge If the world goes to a four-degree warmer world This is Africa Using 14 climate models the dark gray is a greater than 20% loss in Growing season. So my country Zimbabwe is Pure gray in other words the agricultural sector that we know today is wiped out This is 2090. It's a long way in the distance But nonetheless the extreme events that are going to happen as part of this Shift to a different climate are going to be there much earlier than 2090 So the adaptation challenge in Africa is particularly pronounced What about the mitigation and let's look at Africa again central Africa I Predict it's the next frontier of deforestation. So we've seen Indonesia go. We've seen Brazil Go to a significant amount the prediction would be is that Central America is next on the cards With major greenhouse gas emission The place where people are actually looking for this breadbasket are the wet savannas where people say they are there's lots of unused land we can move in with high-tech soybean high-tech Maze production It's a hundred and forty million hectares Except it's really carbon rich So it could be a 30 million tons of carbon dioxide emitted from this kind of area in addition to other issues of land grabs and social Disrupting social systems So The African situation While some people see a vision for bread baskets has to be put against well What are the adaptation challenges and can we do it in a climate friendly way or not? So now I'm going to get positive. I hope yeah So let's take an optimistic view. I mean if you keep on Africa in the early 2000s it was all about the hopeless continent Africa's woes and in the recent years There's some there's a very different narrative about Africa about Africa rising Let's look at some of the trends. So this is the predicted food demand in Africa going from 2015 Forward all these graphs are put on the same Access so you can see all you need to look at is the angle of the graph This is grain yield per hectare now That's not very promising because it's at a lower slope than the food demand GDP is really going and And this is a very promising aspect of Africa's development, but look at the next one This is cell phone penetration into rural areas or in Africa Major changes so our prediction would be that in a decade every farmer in Africa has access to a cell phone smartphone and So I now want to just give five examples of Positive aspects so that one can see that there is a vision for optimism So this is a climate information services Using working with farmers for two seasons looking at indigenous methods of predicting the season That's coming looking at scientific ways working with male and female farmers different kinds of farmers How do you like to get climate information? and doing Quite complicated things with farmers group probabilistic seasonal forecasts Done in the context of multiple partners So this is a local working group for early warning system different sub sectors of the agricultural sector the Met department seed growers etc etc and getting how do you get the messages to people through different formats at the bottom and then in the third season working with the Union of rural radio to actually put the forecast in place and this this last year They reached just over three million farmers with seasonal forecasts allowing Farmers to have some information if they trusted of course about what they can do in the coming season So this is a kind of positive Developments that are happening in Africa Kenya Getting the message out So this is amazing TV program in Kenya. It's a reality TV You know the ones about makeover your house and make over your body and all those sorts of things This is make over your farm and it's the one of the most popular TV programs They're reaching 13 million people in East Africa 60% in rural areas and each week they make over a different person's farm and What we do is a scientific organization is we provide some of the science for the kinds of things they're dealing with University of Reading has just done a study to look at what the impact of their TV program is so for nearly 450,000 farmers have made changes in their maize or dairy practices This they're just looking at these two sex sub sectors or a 24 million net economic impact in 25 counties in Kenya So this is a another example of the vision for change in Africa with new technologies reaching into rural areas Nigeria it can be very difficult working in Nigeria, but there's been a visionary ministry of agriculture I just show the minister of agriculture just shows what can happen with visionary ministers in they They've they set up a mobile platform This is on cell phones for the delivery of fertilizers subsidies in one of the in the very first few seasons They reached 4.3 million small holders were being served by this cell phone Platform the subsidy or cost was reduced by 80 percent. They've now reached They've now reaches the 10 million farmers just two weeks ago We were working with Swiss Ray to design an index-based insurance. So the next The next part is to bring insurance to the farmers where they buy insurance on their phone as they buy their inputs and When the the rainfall goes below a certain amount They get paid out immediately and they get paid back into their cell phones So with new technologies, you can get away from the problem of for example of that extension services are so difficult And the next vision for the same ministry in Nigeria is advisories arriving by cell phone to farmers The fourth example and now we go from two different continents. So this is the gene bank in Peru for sweet potatoes and potatoes and And Essentially these are treasure troves for the next decades They now screening the sweet potato for heat tolerance doing trials in in Peru and This is some of the early results So on the right-hand side is when you don't stress the plant the amount of yield The left-hand side is when you heat stress the plant so you can get four times lower yields when it's heat stressed as in the future, but The tails of the graph of all those little dots indicates how variable The yield is depending on which particular variety they're dealing with So the next step is to use some of those varieties that show heat tolerance and to to breed them up in terms of seed systems So since 2012 the potato the center of international International Potato Center and its partners have delivered the orange fresh sweet potato To 1.2 million households in eastern southern Africa, and this is a vitamin red vitamin a rich sweet potato Their target is 15 million by 2023 Now what they have to overlay on that vitamin rich one is heat tolerance for the next decades And these kinds of programs take a long time What we do as a program we have things called climate smart villages throughout the globe Where essentially you work with farmers local service providers farmers organizations on what technologies do they want? They could be technologies that could be climate information services in terms of forecasts village development plans so adaptation plans working on based on local knowledge and institutions as well and In these kinds of places we may take the technology of the potato Center or the livestock Center And we offer them to farmers mix them with the indigenous and and get upscaling This is now taken off in India where some of the state governments are now incentivizing for example a thousand villages in Haryana state The last Example I wanted to give was of the major initiatives that are happening and one of them is the Alliance for Climates model agriculture in Africa Which has got a target a specific target and it's made up of six of the major NGOs FAO ourselves and and some of the big African Development agencies so for example cat up the comprehensive Africa agricultural development program So I think this is part of the the success of the CSA movement is getting people together to tackle these problems Another another thing that's happened in the last few months is the green climate fund has Has had a paper before it of the potential investment areas and one of them is climate smart agriculture I think it's a major coup for agriculture in terms of having agriculture on the agenda for the green climate fund They've got ten billion in the bank at the moment and these are five investment areas the intention is to go to a hundred Billion dollars of investment So can I island play a leadership role? So I was asked to talk about this and then I should preface by saying that I am the least qualified To speak about Ireland or any developed country in the world because my all my experiences in developing countries But we do commission global analyses so that we understand where the developing country is sitting within the global situation So the first thing I would say is that Ireland has to be really bold and transformative And so the next statement. I'm likely to do is going to irritate some people in the audience So you have your origin green? Ireland and I would say that we'd only take you seriously if you also put on the table tackling food waste tackling overconsumption Rebalancing the livestock component of future diets. These are issues Which global players believe have to be part of the solution? And so if you want to be a leader in this in this area Going green or origin green has to tackle these difficult issues You have to have debates about them have to think about them in terms of where they sit in the solution space I've been extremely impressed with the US in terms of climate-smart agriculture where they take a whole of government approach Senator Kerry was solving ISIS problems in the morning and launching the climate-smart agriculture in the afternoon The State Department the US DA the USA ID are totally interlinked in terms of how they're dealing with climate-smart agriculture and Working with farmers organizations and civil society So I think that's a crucial piece of getting multiple stakeholders on to the issue Ireland has to be at a cutting edge of greenhouse gas emissions per unit output and And I think you know, although you can you can state about your greenhouse gases and how important it is for agriculture You should know that you're not alone in this mitigation challenge Agriculture contributes 50% or more of greenhouse gas emissions in 43 countries So that's more greenhouse gas emissions than in in Ireland Most countries we would say they they're doing modest aims Based on what is possible rather than really what is needed You would have to be the leader in research and development on greenhouse gas emissions from agriculture or perhaps from the livestock sector Advanced labs Working with developing countries that have a big livestock sector I think you also have to be at the advanced edge of incentive schemes for farmers Experimenting with carbon markets. So Australia for example has a really innovative scheme Related to I think it's called the carbon farming initiative And it's a related to incentives for farmers to do agriculture in a different way And I think you need to be leading coalitions of Like-minded players so for example the obvious one for you is New Zealand which faces the same kind of challenges I would say Australia which is shown innovation But I think you also need to pick developing countries as well. And so for one for me would be Vietnam They've set a mission target for their country It's mostly related to the rice sector, but it's a country that's wanting to move forward and do things differently in Africa Kenya wants to be the first African country to put a climate policy in place They're not they they they they willing to talk about mitigation as well So it would be another country which could be part of a coalition. What about in developing countries? I Mean the one the one issue is Ireland is a is a relatively small country in the global scene CSA covers numerous aspects. So what is the focus area for your developing country initiatives? I think you need to pick a focus area or to pick certain countries where it's a whole of government type approach from farmer level Farmer organizations national policymaking I Think one of the crucial things for moving forward is connectedness and I gave these examples of radio TV mobile technology To me that's the whole area of where change is going to be possible So you can do as much R&D as you like, but if you don't have a good R&D system linked to the farmers, it's pretty pathetic So this whole issue of how do you get farmers connected to each other and to the the research and development space and This includes strengthening farmer organizations, which in in many countries are not very strong The last piece would be results base So we're really strong believers in results-based management Pick countries where things are going to happen and it's going to work Be willing to move out when they're not working We we're a program that runs across 15 centers And we do results-based management and those examples that I showed you about delivering to 3 million farmers in Senegal on climate Wouldn't have been possible. I don't think a few years ago, but now we've put as targets and Indicators in place and if if organizations fail to meet them we tend to want to reduce budgets and Budgets to other place. So I think you should be very results-based But not forgetting some things Like what drives equitable outcomes. So for example often results base may come down to technologies We must also think about gender dimensions the whole institutional arrangements. So one has to work with that stuff and One was has to think about the longer term. So for example developing these heat resistant varieties or varieties that are going to Deal with rising sea levels and saline soils takes time. So one also needs to work on those kinds of things