30 November 2012
No. 1547
Director General William Dar addressing participants of the International Conference on “Climate Change Impacts and Adaptation for Food and Environmental Security” held at SEARCA, UPLB, Philippines.
On building a climate-resilient agriculture
Use science-based solutions and pro-poor approaches to surmount climate change “The power of science must be harnessed to address the problems spawned by climate change. We need to generate and share science-based information and technology to build a climate-resilient agriculture, particularly for the resource-poor and vulnerable people of the drylands.” “Scientific interventions can be used in such areas as adaptation to progressive climate change, managing climate risk, pro-poor climate change mitigation, and integration for decision-making.” These views were shared by Director General William Dar at the recent “International Conference on Climate Change Impacts and Adaptation for Food and Environmental Security”. The event was attended by about 150 researchers, academicians, policymakers, and development workers representing 21 countries across the globe.
In the coming decades, climate change could create real yield reductions of up to 30 per cent in Asia and up to 50 per cent in many African countries. “Tremendous pressure is upon agriculture to produce more food by as much as 70 per cent by 2050,” Dr Dar stressed. The impact of climate change will be most disastrous in the semi-arid tropics, home to 2 billion people and most of the world’s poor. “Models indicate that there will be a 10 per cent increase of dryland areas of the world with climate to page 2 ...4