Friday, December 3, 2010

Funding gaps for climate change adaptation a threat to food supplies

Food and Agriculture Organization Media Centre: Floods and droughts in major grain producing countries this year have triggered a sharp increase in food prices, highlighting the vulnerability of the world's food production systems and agricultural markets. Such developments are likely to reoccur more frequently and with greater intensity in the decades to come due to climate change.

Yet while there are many examples of how the agricultural sector can both become more resilient to climate change and reduce its own sizeable carbon emissions (as detailed here), mechanisms for funding such efforts are lacking.

"Available financing, both current and projected, are substantially insufficient to meet the climate change and food security challenges faced by the agriculture sector," said Peter Holmgren, Director of FAO's Climate, Energy and Tenure Division.

This is one of the key messages that FAO is stressing during the annual meeting of the UN Climate Change Conference in Cancun, Mexico (29 Nov. - 10 Dec.)…

Image by Olivier Thullier from the FAO website

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