With the release of the second special report from the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change studying climate change and the repercussions on our land, the evidence continues to mount further that we are living in extraordinary times and our efforts to do better by our planet remain underwhelming. So far most climate mitigation strategies have prioritised transitioning to renewable power and sustainable transport, but we continue to forget about agriculture and land use which accounts for nearly a quarter of global emissions—we can’t have the comprehensive response to climate change that need until we rethink our relationship with the land.
Since the release of the 5th Assessment Report in 2014, a regular report card on the performance of our changing climate, the IPCC has been charged with writing three special reports that further help governments, policymakers, and us understand how we’ve changed the climate, how much risk we’re imposing on ourselves and the environment by sticking with business-as-usual, and what efforts we need to undertake to avert the so-far projected impacts.
In October last year, the ‘Special Report on Global Warming of 1.5ºC’ brought reality crashing down as the world faced the fact that humanity might not be able to get its act together in time to limit warming to an extent which doesn’t pose an existential threat. The report stated that humanity must undertake “rapid and far-reaching transitions in energy, land, urban and infrastructure (including transport and buildings), and industrial system”—this statement has laid the foundation for calls for ambitious policy approaches from government, the most prominent being the Green New Deal in its various forms; and the basis for declaring a climate emergency within city council chambers, state and national legislatures around the world. The report has acted as a catalyst to once again thrust climate change at the forefront of our collective political and economic discourses.
The second report, ‘Special Report on Climate Change and Land’ was released just before this past weekend and it pushed things up a notch. It said that the basic foundation of our society, our relationship with the land—born out of the agricultural revolution 12,000 years ago and which kickstarted the creation of the social, economic, and political fabrics we see today, is vulnerable in the face of climate change.
Our modern agricultural practices, land use, and our diets contribute significantly to global emissions—nearly 25% of total global emissions come just from humans working the land. The report also found that a quarter of the worlds ice-free land has experienced degradation at the hands of human activity, through unsustainable and damaging land use practices that have been employed for centuries—soil is being eroded faster than it can regenerate which may pose issues for key arable land that have traditionally been seen as breadbaskets. This process is being exacerbated by climate change which induces desertification of vulnerable regions, especially low-lying coastal areas, river deltas and drylands. In the last 30 years, desertification has adversely affected the most vulnerable people in our global community, in particular, those in South and East Asia, North Africa, and the Middle East.
However, it is not just the production side of agriculture that is contributing to the degradation of the environment and the climate, the report found that 25-30% of all food produced in the world is “lost or wasted”, and the decomposition of food waste adds considerably to total global emissions through the release of potent methane emissions. Even with all this food wasted, our society continues to increase demand for food every year which in turn forces increased productivity even if it is at the expense of our landscape. It is a vicious circle which most of us either neglect or not know enough about.
However, not only is our land use contributing to climate change, climate change itself will actually damage our land. Extreme weather events have been projected for a long time and this report piles on further evidence: droughts and extreme rainfall will intensify and grow more frequent, and climate zones will shift. Unprecedented climate conditions will begin becoming the new norm, they will induce ”soil erosion, vegetation loss, wildfire damage, permafrost thawing, coastal degradation and [crop yield declines]” in various regions.
On our current emissions pathway, the report states that there is a high risk of our food system becoming increasingly unstable, from lowered nutritional quality crops, disruptions in the food distribution system, food shortages and increases in food prices—all in all, there will be more food insecurity and malnutrition. Extreme weather and food shortages may provoke migration within countries and across borders. We have seen the unpreparedness of countries when more than one million Syrians were displaced due to the civil war, a conflict which itself was accelerated by climate change; now imagine multiple hotspots around the world which could be prone to the environmental circumstances leading to mass displacement and migration. Livelihoods may be threatened, and as the report succinctly puts it: “the most vulnerable people will be the most severely affected”.
So how do we stay clear of all that? We all know about what we have to do about energy production and transport—we transition to renewable power and to electric modes of transport, be they electric cars and trucks or mass public transport—but how do we account for the nearly 25% of global emissions produced by working the land?
The report calls for a plethora of response, responses that can immediately produce results such as preventing soil degradation through ecosystem conservation and then there are those that will take a while until we start noticing their benefits such as reforestation. Other responses are much more complex, such as making our entire food production, distribution, and consumption sustainable. This constitutes sustainable agricultural practices and an agricultural model which refocuses on environmental and socioeconomic outcomes rather than purely economic productivity; reducing or recovering food waste; and of course a diet that is composed of a higher proportion of plant-based foods (perhaps, we can all start meatless-Mondays?). The effectiveness of the solutions we can enact today will continue to weaken the further we delay any action—if we are able to devise and implement the suite of responses called for, we won’t have to face the more costly and more damaging consequences of inaction.
The report ties all of this in with the UN Sustainable Development Goals. It calls for governments to seize the challenges we face as an opportunity to lift everyone and make our society sustainable and prosperous—climate mitigation solutions can co-benefit and have the potential to not only improve our environment but also alleviate those in poverty and built resilience in vulnerable communities.
We can either come together, appreciate the uphill voyage ahead of us, and take the bold action we need to take starting today so that we may collectively travel the path that leads to a sustainable global community which has averted the climate crisis; or we can continue to defer and delay any action for the sake of short-term profits and instead inflict irreversible damage to our ecosystems, our biodiversity, our land, and our own society.
