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Climate Change

 
Ploughing with cattle in Ethiopia.

Ploughing land in Ethiopia, where the Seeds for Needs Project is helping farmers prepare for climate change. Photo: T. Wolday/Bioversity.

Climate change will affect rainfall, salinity levels, temperature, sunshine hours and wind patterns. It will change soil composition and growing conditions worldwide.

Bioversity researchers studied the predicted impact of climate change on 23 different crops. By 2055 more than half will lose suitable land. This loss will fall disproportionately on sub-Saharan Africa and the Caribbean. Europe and North America will gain land suitable for many of the crops studied.

 

Farmers are already starting to feel the effects of seasonal shifts, soil degradation and greater desertification and are looking at ways to prepare for climate change.

Mixed Systems for Yield Stability
Adapting to Change
Bioversity and Preparing for Climate Change
The Global Crop Diversity  Trust

Mixed Systems for Yield Stability

Mixed systems provide the greatest opportunity for farmers to withstand and overcome the challenges presented by climate change, but also have certain disadvantages that need to be addressed. So what are the comparative advantages and disadvantages of monoculture and mixed farming?

  • Monoculture gives added specialization and greater expertise in growing methodologies, simplified harvesting and potentially a greater market advantage.  Disadvantages can include a loss of soil nutrients and an increase in the threat from pests and diseases, requiring energy-rich inputs.
  • Mixed farming can give a more stable total yield because if one crop or variety fails, another may compensate. It also reduces the need for some expensive inputs. Disadvantages can be that farmers need to be more knowledgeable and skillful.

Adapting to Change

Farmers are starting to adapt production methods to prepare for climate change. In Belize, for example, farmers are returning to traditional agricultural practices and moving to higher ground in an effort to adapt to climate change. The Baka in southeast Cameroon and the Bambendzele in central Africa have developed new fishing and hunting methods to cope with decreased rainfall and the growing incidence of forest fires caused by global warming.

These examples highlight the need for maintaining traditional knowledge together with biodiversity conservation. Bioversity hosts the Platform for Agrobiodiversity Research, one goal of which is to synthesise available information and identify research that will respond to the needs of farmers, communities and indigenous peoples. This information is gathered at a Climate Change & Agrobiodiversity website, which helps to promote awareness of the vital role of agrobiodiversity in adapting to climate change.

Preparing for Climate Change

Bioversity's research is helping farmers and their communities to prepare for climate change and recent projects highlight the ways in which the use of agricultural biodiversity can respond to climate change.

The Seeds for Needs project aims to match crop varieties to the future needs of farmers under changing climatic conditions. The project is working with local partners in two countries, Ethiopia and Papua New Guinea. This work is being funded by the World Bank, through the Development Marketplace Award 2009, and by an anonymous donor.

Climate change and conservation

Entrance to the Global Seed Vault, Svalbard.

Entrance to the Global Seed Vault, Svalbard. Photo Mari Tefre/Svalbard Global Seed Vault.

Agricultural biodiversity will be essential to respond to the challenges of climate change, but many of the genebanks that store agricultural biodiversity lack stable, long-term financial support to ensure the viability and availability of the material in their collections. Bioversity, together with FAO, and on behalf of the CGIAR centres, established the Global Crop Diversity Trust as an independent international funding mechanism for ensuring long-term conservation and availability of crop diversity.

One of the Trust's key activities, in partnership with the Norwegian government and the Nordic Gene Bank, has been to establish the Svalbard Global Seed Vault. The seed vault has been designed to secure the diversity essential to the future of agriculture in a setting that requires minimum maintenance. It acts as a safety backup for globally important collections of diversity that will ensure seeds remain available in case local or global catastrophes destroy the original collections.