Dialogue on Climate Change, Agriculture and Trade: Promoting Policy Coherence

A dialogue of the ICTSD-IPC Initiative on Climate Change, Agriculture and Trade: Promoting Policy Coherence

5th April 2009 • Co-organised with the International Food and Agricultural Trade Policy Council (IPC)

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The International Centre for Trade and Sustainable Development (ICTSD) and the International Food and Agricultural Trade Policy Council (IPC) organised a Dialogue on “Climate Change, Agriculture and Trade: Promoting Policy Coherence” on 5 April from 9h15 to 18h30 in Bonn, Germany, alongside the United Nations Climate Change negotiations.

The global agricultural sector faces three major challenges in the 21st century:

• it must make good on its promise of poverty alleviation since some 70 percent of the world’s poorest people live in rural sectors and rely on agriculture;
• it must provide global food security in and sustainably meet increased demands from a growing population, changing dietary preferences and a growing reliance on agricultural feedstocks for energy production;
• it must adapt to climate change and, where possible, play a role in climate change mitigation.

There is a risk that these three challenges will be addressed separately, which would reduce their chances of success. Focusing on the climate change challenge alone, for example, could have negative impacts for food security and poverty alleviation, which in turn would weaken efforts to curb climate change. The world’s population will neither be able to contribute to or benefit from climate change mitigation unless it enjoys food security. Food security, particularly for the world’s poorest populations, and poverty alleviation requires greater investment in the agricultural sectors of developing countries. Such investment is hindered in part due to a distorted agricultural trade regime, which is still subject to high levels of subsidies, tariff and non-tariff barriers, and care must be taken not to create disproportionate or unjustified trade barriers under the guise of addressing climate change.

Recognizing the need to combat these major challenges in a coordinated manner, ICTSD and IPC propose to create an interdisciplinary platform of climate change, agricultural and trade experts to promote increased policy coherence, to ensure effective climate change mitigation and adaptation, food security and a more open and equitable global food system.

This 5 April dialogue in Bonn was part of this initiative. Its objective was to discuss issues at the interface of climate change, agricultural policy and trade to assist the UNFCCC negotiators understand the linkages to agriculture and trade, and likewise, inform agricultural policy, trade policy experts and stakeholders about the policy inter-linkages between these three fields. The dialogue also sought to outline priorities for research and analysis.