Agriculture and Climate Changes: how to Reduce human Effects and Threats (ACCRETe)

Climate change will have dramatic effects on agriculture and the economy in Europe. New attitudes that go along with the introduction and dissemination of sustainable resource managing systems are necessary to reduce climate risks and to mitigate the human-induced impact on climate change. Agriculture in particular has an effect on and is affected by global climate change. For example, a huge share of the greenhouse gases such as methane and nitrogen originates from agriculture while agriculture is also the sector of the economy most severely hit by the effects of climate change. Becoming aware of the “agriculture - climate change” interdependency is the point of departure for the ACCRETe project. In ACCRETe ten partners work together to develop tools to raise awareness and to inform about the link between agriculture and climate change. The project partners from Italy, Greece, Germany, the Czech Republic, Slovenia and Romania are representative of the different environments and regional climates of CADSES. So far, many districts lack a monitoring system for risk prevention regarding climate change. Local residents and institutions often ignore the impact of climate change. The aim of the project is to make private and public actors in the agriculture sector sensitive to the possible consequences of climate change on production figures of agriculture. Beneficiaries and target groups of the project are actors from local and regional politics (environment and agriculture), the scientific sector and people involved in agriculture, such as farmers. Results and Effects The ACCRETe project targets the following results: - Establishment of a transnational network to examine how agriculture interferes with climate change in the partner regions, publication of the collected data, - Informing, promoting and disseminating through three thematic work groups to change attitudes and raise awareness of the link between climate change and agriculture, also involving local actors, - Code of Attitude for farmers (on DVD). This presentation summarises risks for agriculture which are due to climate change. It will also promote attitudes which should help reduce human-induced impact on the climate, - A Transregional Declaration of Intent: “Transregional Understanding ACCRETe”. All partners will sign the declaration and show that they are firmly willing to follow up with research, co-operation, support of sustainable agriculture and activities related to the issues, - An awareness-raising campaign to inform citizens about risks which are due to climate change. Repercussions in agriculture will be stressed in particular.