72 CONVENIENT SOLUTIONS TO AN INCONVENIENT TRUTH
many crops are at the limit of their heat tolerance. For temperature increases above 3° C, yield losses are expected to occur everywhere and to be particularly severe in tropical regions (World Bank 2008b). Areas most vulnerable to climate change— centered in South Asia and Sub-Saharan Africa—also have the largest number of rural poor and rural populations dependent on agriculture. Global warming, and less predictable rainfall patterns, will have a notable impact on arid and semiarid lands, many of which are already marginal for agriculture. Climate change will lead to water scarcity, increased risk of crop failure, pest infestation, overstocking, permanent degradation of grazing lands, and livestock deaths. Such impacts are already imposing severe economic and social costs and undermining food security, and they are likely to get more severe as global warming continues. This makes climate change a core development problem and ecosystem-based approaches a critical part of the solution (see box 4.2). The Bank’s response to the threats to agriculture that are presented by climate change focus on both mitigation and adaptation and can be divided into four strategic objectives: ■ Monitoring impacts of climate change on crops, forests, livestock, and fisheries (adaptation) ■ Providing risk management strategies for farmers and lenders against the impacts of climate change (adaptation) ■ Preventing crop and livestock losses due to changing climatic factors and increased pressure from pests through improved management techniques and tolerant crop varieties and livestock breeds (adaptation) ■ Improving land and resource management to maintain sustainable production (mitigation). The Bank has a large and expanding portfolio of agriculture projects. Few projects explicitly target biodiversity conservation or ecosystem services, although many promote more sustainable agricultural practices, such as rotational cropping, reduced tillage, and soil conservation measures, which are more ecologically friendly and designed to boost yields. During the last decade, the Bank has been developing a suite of pilot conservation projects that target agriculture in, and around, protected areas or in larger landscapes of conservation interest. Such projects usually try to change production practices to provide greater biodiversity benefits (such as promotion of shade coffee) or attempt to substitute other incomeearning opportunities for harmful agricultural practices. Some promote more ecosystem-friendly policies in the agriculture sector, such as integrated pest management in Indonesia to reduce dependence on high levels of pesticides. In response to climate change, the Bank is encouraging more sustainable agriculture to avoid overgrazing and land degradation and is promoting new agroforestry systems and multispecies cropping. Increased attention is also being paid to conserving agrobiodiversity in crop gene banks and traditional agricultural practices, which maintain diversity of varieties and crops for food security (see box 4.3).