Climate change and developing country agriculture: an overview of expected impacts, adaptation and mitigation challenges, and funding requirements

Issue brief no. 2:

This document assesses how producers may adapt to climate change, particularly in relation to new markets for agricultural products and services related to climate change mitigation efforts. It discusses the possibility of linking existing trade facilitation mechanisms and funding for adaptation or mitigation for climate change to the effects of climate change on agricultural production in developing countries.

The first section, ‘Scoping and Diagnostics’, reviews some of the most notable climate change scenarios. The second section reviews adaptation and mitigation options related to the agricultural sector. The fourth section reviews other sources of finance designed to facilitate trade and access to markets, such as Aid for Trade. The final section concludes with a summary of overall findings and an assessment of how ‘new’ sources of climate change finance and existing mechanisms and tools could, and should, work together to address the challenges of climate change in the agricultural sector for vulnerable producers and exporters.

This paper was presented at the Dialogue on “Climate Change and International Agricultural Trade Rules” organised by the ICTSD–IPC Platform on Climate Change, Agriculture and Trade on 1 October 2009 in Geneva, Switzerland.