(Photo: Alex Wynter/IFRC)
Climate change alters the conditions for food production worldwide. This is especially true in developing countries, where many small farmers and fishermen will be vulnerable. A new international research program, the Challenge Program on Climate Change, Agriculture and Food Security (CCAFS), aims to find new ways to adapt and mitigate global climate change and ensuring food supply.
The program is based on three regions: the Indo-Gangetic plains and Western and Eastern Africa. The three regions represent areas at high risk of being hit by radical change, for example floods and droughts, as a result of the increase in greenhouse gases.
- Most of the CO2 reduction potential lies in developing countries. E.g. is one sixth of the world’s reduction potential to accumulate organic matter in the top soil. Therefore it’s the behaviour of the individual farmer, which controls whether the developing countries’ agricultural production will be a part of the solution or the problem,” says International Director of DanChurchAid, Christian Friis Bach to the Danish magazine, FoodCulture.
Problem and Solution at the same time
He therefore sees research as an essential part of the solution to global climate problems.
- The world’s food problems only seem to get worse as time goes on. The program combines the issues – the food crisis and climate crisis – which is the core of some of the biggest challenges the world is facing, says Christian Friis Bach.
The University of Copenhagen is Host
The research program is administered by “Life”, the Faculty of Life Sciences at the University of Copenhagen. Life was chosen as the secretariat for the new program among six international candidates. Professor at the Department of Agriculture and Ecology at LIFE and member of the UN climate panel, John R. Porter, welcomes the ambitious research program:
– Danish agricultural research is definitely at the top, both in comparison with other research in Denmark and in an international context. With the launch of this research Danish research has the opportunity to contribute to one of the most important challenges in the future, namely the global climate change and the global food supply, he says.
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