The economic advantage: assessing the value of climate change actions in agriculture

Agriculture is a sector especially sensitive to climate change. It also accounts for significant emissions and is, therefore, a priority for both adaptation and mitigation plans and actions at global, national and local levels. The majority of NDCs, which are voluntary national submissions for post-2020 action under the Paris Agreement, express national-level intentions for action on adaptation and mitigation in agriculture. However, economic assessment and financial analysis of agriculture in NDCs (National Determined Contributions), and in related plans, like national adaptation plans (NAPs) are weakly developed to date. This brief summarizes the main findings of a new IFAD report "The Economic Advantage: assessing the value of climate-change actions in agriculture" which has been presented during a side event at the Marrakech Climate Change conference on the 9th November 2016. As summarized in the brief, the main messages coming out from the report are the following: 

- Globally there is a strong economic case to invest in agriculture for future food security and rural livelihoods under climate change. 

- Credible economic and financial proposals are needed to unleash large-scale public and private investment in agriculture under climate change.

- Priority sub-sectors highlighted in the NDCs include (in order of number of inclusions across mitigation and adaptation actions) soil and land, water crops, livestock, fisheries and trees. Positive economic returns can be demonstrated for multiple practices that build adaptive capacity and reduce emission intensity across each of these sectors.

- At the farm level, positive economic returns can be demonstrated for practices that build adaptive capacity and reduce emissions intensity across several of the priority sub-sectors highlighted in the NDCs.

- Policy development, capacity-building, institutional strengthening, services to provide finance, information, extension and research, and programme management are important investments that support climate actions in agriculture, but are difficult to quantify and value.

- The ingredients of a strong economic assessment for NDCs and other climate change plans for agriculture include: policy mainstreaming, iterative planning, a balance of project-level and farm-level assessment of costs and benefits, understanding of how costs and benefits are distributed, and appraisal of drivers of behavioural change, economic incentives and the enabling environment for farmers and other private-sector actors.

The full report is available at this page.

Key messages have been also summarized in a public power point presentation and in a video from IISD reporting services webpage.