October 13, 2016

Climate Smart solutions for Agriculture and Forestry: a way to cope with climate change

Conveners:
Costantino Sirca/Valentina Mereu  Università di Sassari and CMCC and Antonio Bombelli, CMCC

Agriculture and forestry can contribute to mitigate climate change, both reducing emissions and increasing sequestration of carbon. They also offer major opportunities in adapting to climate change, including increasing resilience of livelihoods, improving nutrition and providing vital ecosystem services.

In this context, climate-smart solutions for agriculture and forestry sectors aim to guide actions to support the sustainable development of agricultural and forestry strategies under modifications of climate and its variability, through the achievement of three main objectives: sustainably increasing agricultural and forestry productivity and incomes; adapting and increasing resilience to climate change; and reducing and removing greenhouse gas emissions.

As farms, pasturelands and forests are often interlinked in a complex mosaic of territories, it is more appropriate managing them in an integrated manner, known as “landscape approach”.

Such a comprehensive view can help multi-sectoral stakeholders from local to national and international levels (farmers, forestland owners, policy makers) to identify the agricultural and forestry strategies, also considering interrelated soil and water services, most suitable to each scale of analysis, and able to make agriculture and forestry sectors more productive and more sustainable, both in the short and long term future.

 

The aim of this session is to provide an opportunity to discuss innovative applications and methodologies focused on climate smart agriculture and forestry approaches as a response to climate change.