Farming and climate change intersect at a critical juncture, demanding our urgent attention and concerted action. As global food demand escalates to meet the needs – of a burgeoning population projected to reach 9.7 billion by 2050, according to World Bank Reports – the spectre of climate change looms large, posing profound challenges to food security and nutrition worldwide.
At the heart of international discourse on agriculture and climate change lies two pivotal concepts – climate-resilient farming and climate-smart agriculture (CSA). These paradigms emphasise not only the imperative to adapt agricultural practices to withstand the impacts of a changing climate, but to also mitigate greenhouse gas emissions by ensuring a sustainable agrifood system for generations to come. The World Bank, cognisant of the pressing need to addressing these challenges, has significantly amplified its commitment to CSA. Through its Climate Change Action Plan (2021-2025), the World Bank underscores agriculture, food, water, and land as indispensable pillars in the collective endeavour to realise the goals of the Paris Climate Change Agreement.
The Paris Climate Agreement (Paris Agreement), an international treaty to address climate change, represents the 2016 agreement of 195 parties at the United Nations Climate Change Conference (COP21) in Paris, France, to take action to limit global temperature increase to below 1.5-2 degrees Celsius above pre-industrial levels. Although the text of the Paris Agreement does not mention agriculture per se, it does highlight the role of food security, hunger, and the vulnerability of the food production system in the face of climate change. With a marked increase in financing for CSA, the World Bank is spearheading efforts to align its operations with objectives of the Paris Agreement by fostering resilience, reducing emissions, and advancing sustainable development in client countries.
To change these narratives, governments at all levels must go beyond rhetoric and adopt multiple strategies to address food insecurity. These strategies include enacting realistic and achievable public policy that would prioritise agricultural development, and avoid paying lip service to this critical sector. Since hunger cannot be tackled amid insecurity, it is important for the government to quell terrorism, herders-farmers clash that had driven farmers off their farmlands. It is when these strategies are put in place alongside properly-monitored distribution of palliatives to those in dire need, not middlemen.
Food security is a national security priority, hence the declaration of a state of emergency by the Federal Government on this sector. To move forward, legal backing and legislative frameworks that would make farmers to get subsidies and cheap credits from banks to acquire modern agricultural equipment, should be accessible. FarmingFarmersFarms urges the government to put conducive environment in place that would encourage more investments in the sector. It is truly hoped that when these policies are implemented with the support of other stakeholders that the growing culture of relying on palliatives would give way to real empowerment by fighting hunger and agriculture would take its pride of place in Nigeria.
