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Considering agriculture in IPCC assessments

Nature Climate Change volume 7, pages 680–683 (2017)Cite this article

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The treatment of agriculture has evolved over the lifetime of the IPCC, as tracked by the assessment reports. Efforts to quantify crop yield impacts and mitigation potentials have increased significantly, as has adaptation research. However, there remains a dearth of experimental and observational studies.

The First IPCC Assessment Report (FAR), published in 1990, pre-dated the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC). On its initiation four years later the UNFCCC stated1 that greenhouse gas concentrations should be stabilized so “such a level should be achieved within a time-frame sufficient to allow ecosystems to adapt naturally to climate change, to ensure that food production is not threatened, and to enable economic development to proceed in a sustainable manner.” Thus, food security was specifically identified as a key element to be protected from climate change. The focus on food security was also strongly reflected in the Paris Agreement of 2015, the result of the twenty-first Conference of the Parties (COP21) to the UNFCCC, both in relation to mitigation and adaptation2.

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Figure 1: Schematics of the amount of coverage devoted to topics in each of the five IPCC assessment reports.
Figure 2: Estimates of total global mitigation potential in agriculture in each AR.

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Acknowledgements

We acknowledge the help of A. Challinor and J. Watson in accessing relevant data.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Montpellier SupAgro, Montpellier, 34060, Cedex 02, France

    John R. Porter

  2. Department of Plant and Environmental Sciences, University of Copenhagen, Taastrup, 2630, Denmark

    John R. Porter

  3. Climate Change Institute, The Australian National University, Canberra, 2601, Australian Capital Territory, Australia

    Mark Howden

  4. Institute of Biological and Environmental Sciences, University of Aberdeen, Aberdeen, AB24 3UU, UK

    Pete Smith

Authors
  1. John R. Porter
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Correspondence to John R. Porter.

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Porter, J., Howden, M. & Smith, P. Considering agriculture in IPCC assessments. Nature Clim Change 7, 680–683 (2017). https://doi.org/10.1038/nclimate3404

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