One narrative present among climate change discussions is that reducing agricultural greenhouse gas, or GHG, emissions would compromise food security and the availability of food in the global south. The narrative on this trade-off is rooted in the fact that the large portions of greenhouse gas emissions — the main culprit for global warming — in these countries stem from agricultural production and land-use change for agriculture.
Looking to Brazil as a case study for both positive and negative governance examples offers an opportunity, as global leaders gather in Sharm el-Sheikh for the 27th United Nations Climate Change Conference, COP 27, to see how low-emission development is possible within the right enabling environment. Only this way can we get to net-zero and pursue hunger reduction efforts effectively.
We agree that reducing GHG emissions comes with trade-offs, but this does not mean we should abandon efforts toward climate change mitigation in agriculture and forestry, which the Paris Agreement champions.
The production of a range of key agricultural commodities, such as beef, oil palm, livestock or cocoa, causes much of the forest loss in the tropics and GHG emissions. Cutting trees not only releases carbon into the atmosphere but also reduces the ability of ecosystems to absorb carbon dioxide.
Currently, terrestrial ecosystems such as forests absorb around 25% of all carbon emissions, providing a natural buffer to the consequences of our economic activities. The Amazon forest is responsible for absorbing one-quarter of this total, and around 60% of the Amazon forest is within Brazil’s borders.
Brazil, despite recent setbacks, has shown that it is possible to reduce deforestation emissions through governance reform. What the Brazilian national government did was to reform the rural police so they were empowered to enforce logging bans, set up a real-time deforestation monitoring system that provided violation alerts to the rural police, and implemented a carrot-and-stick approach. This included improving the terms for rural credit, supporting sustainable supply chain development, setting up payment schemes for forest restoration and conservation, and the creation of protected areas.
The policy reforms and incentives that the Brazilian government implemented created an environment that enabled efforts to reduce emissions and promoted carbon sinks. These included the adoption of innovations from the scientific community like real-time deforestation monitoring and restoration interventions to reverse forest degradation.
Governance reform was key to Brazil’s past success — and on the flip side it also explains the recent reversals as the federal government has pursued a stronger development agenda focused on agriculture and forestry in the Amazon region. This has unsurprisingly led to a resurgence of deforestation in recent years.
Globally, dozens of countries have committed to achieving net-zero emissions in the next 10 to 30 years. This means they have pledged to bring GHG emissions as close to zero as possible. For these countries, it is paramount not only to deal with trade-offs in terms of food security but also to find solutions to deliver on their commitments.
We cannot get to net-zero without carbon sinks. These are often nature-based mechanisms that capture carbon from the atmosphere and lock it up in vegetation and soils.
Examples of carbon sinks include agroforestry, soil restoration, wetland restoration, land restoration, and forest restoration. To date, these nature-based solutions are the only proven, economically viable mechanisms for removing carbon dioxide from the atmosphere.
We also need carbon sinks to offset emissions that we cannot simply avoid. Although we can achieve some emissions reductions in agriculture, by and large, feeding a larger population is going to swamp those.
There is no way we can produce beef or rice without producing methane, for example. Even fully plant-based diets will result in some greenhouse gas emissions.
Creating and maintaining carbon sinks so that the global south can achieve both its commitments to get to net-zero emissions and zero hunger requires an approach toward engendering low-emission food systems and in turn low-emission development, a goal that requires not only science but also governance reform to facilitate the application of scientific findings on the ground.
As the past success and recent setbacks in Brazil show, we need both science and governance reform for carbon sinks to thrive. Having these nature-based solutions will help us to have low-emission food systems, which embody a pathway toward both net-zero emissions and zero hunger.
About the authors
Louis Verchot
Louis Verchot leads Mitigate+, a CGIAR initiative on low-emissions food systems. He engages in the U.N. climate change convention and national policy processes on forestry and rural development issues. Dr. Verchot is among the scientists recognized for contributing to the Nobel Peace Prize-winning work of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change.
Augusto Castro-Nuñez
Augusto Castro-Nunez oversees the low-emissions food system research theme of the Alliance of Bioversity-CIAT. He leads the Mitigate+ work package on scaling CGIAR innovations with high potential for low-emission development. He is a pioneer in developing approaches for delivering climate change mitigation and peace building.
