Greening the economy with Climate-smart Agriculture

Agriculture has to address simultaneously three intertwined challenges: ensuring food security through increased productivity and income, adapting to climate change and contributing to climate change mitigation. To accomplish this, food systems have to become, at the same time, more efficient and resilient, at every scale from the farm level to the global level. Radical changes are needed in agricultural and food systems. These changes can play an essential role in greening the economy and contributing to sustainable development.

This paper - a Background Paper for the Second Global Conference on Agriculture, Food Security and Climate Change, 2012 - considers the intertwined challenges of food security and climate change, potential impacts of climate change on agriculture, and the impact of agriculture on climate. It further develops and illustrates with concrete examples the concepts of increasing resource efficiency and building resilience as guiding principles to address these challenges. It shows how changing practices in the field can drive sustainable economic development.