David Lobell
Assistant Professor at Stanford University in Environmental Earth System Science, and a Center Fellow in Stanford's Program on Food Security and the Environment. His research focuses on identifying opportunities to raise crop yields in major agricultural regions, with a particular emphasis on adaptation to climate change. Bio
Revamping the global energy system and adapting to climate change will be huge tasks involving trillions of dollars. It should be no surprise, therefore, that millions of businesses, NGO’s, and others will be clamoring for a piece of the mitigation and adaptation pies. Like most people who have chosen a career focused on agriculture and food security, I am inclined to think that agriculture should feature prominently in both mitigation and adaptation efforts. But looking at the science, it is clear that we could do a much better job defining the potential benefits and costs of investing in agriculture, and pinpointing the particular investments that are most worthwhile.
At the time of this writing, it is still too early to know how the final agreements in Copenhagen will shape up. But even a windfall for agriculture – for instance billions of dollars dedicated to adaptation and a large role in carbon offset markets – would leave many problems unsolved. For example, how do we verify emissions reductions for individual farms in an accurate and cost-effective way? How do we ensure that adaptation funds are used for activities that truly help people and their food systems cope with climate change?
There are two main risks in pushing an agricultural agenda without knowing the answers to these questions. First and foremost, we risk pouring scarce resources into things that don’t work, or at least don’t work well enough to justify their costs. If society is counting on a large sink from soil carbon sequestration, and agriculture doesn’t deliver, emissions could be slowed less than if mitigation efforts and policies had been focused elsewhere. If adaptation money is funneled to systems that face relatively small risks, or to solutions that don’t work, then millions more people could suffer. Second, we risk our credibility in the policy arena, so that future willingness to invest in agriculture could suffer in the many rounds of negotiation that are sure to follow.
Of course, there are also risks to not pushing an agenda when the opportunity arises, and many other options for mitigation and adaptation have similar and often larger uncertainties associated with the underlying science. But as a scientific community, we should be our own toughest critics. In practice, this means we should design implementation of pilot projects to track their success against a benchmark or control group, we should put a non-trivial amount of effort into collecting quality data on current mitigation and adaptation, we should continue to test models that are used in projections, and we should clearly articulate what emerge as robust findings.
It is very tempting to be opportunistic, and to promise too much from agriculture. In reality, it is likely that agriculture can offer some truly remarkable investment opportunities for both mitigation and adaptation. For example, there is little hope of curbing deforestation without successful adaptation of agriculture to climate change. It is also likely that other options in agriculture will be relative wastes of time and money. The better job we do at distinguishing the two, the better our science - and society - will be in the end.
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