Zenebe Mekonnen

By Zenebe Mekonnen

The objective of this chapter is to review, from several literatures, the contribution of agriculture to climate change and the reciprocal effects of climate change on agriculture and the general consequent implications on human livelihoods and ecosystems. Human activities have already had a discernible impact on the earth’s climate leading to growing evidence of observable impacts of climate change on physical and biological systems. In no doubt, agriculture provides the world population of 7 billion with the food that we all eat every day. In addition, 1.4 billion people work in agriculture and more than 2.5 billion people sustain their livelihood on agriculture. But agriculture is one of the contributors of greenhouse gases to climate change and climate change affects agriculture in return. When the global mean temperature change increases beyond 3.5°C, most of the species will have very few suitable areas for their survival and will become extinct. Several hundred million people are seriously affected by climate change today, with several hundred thousand annual deaths. Human impacts of climate change include scarcity of freshwater resources, weather-related disasters, food insecurity due to agricultural loss, migration, and displacement due to loss of settlements. These recalled nations to limit their GHG emission, ensure sustainable ecosystem, food production, and economic development so as to calm down the impacts of climate change.

Part of the book: Climate Change and Global Warming

By Zenebe Mekonnen

The objective of this chapter is to review the impacts of climate change on dryland agriculture and its possible solutions. Climate change poses significant challenges on dryland agriculture in Ethiopia. In turn, agriculture (malpractice) has contributed to climate change by emitting GHGs such as CO2, CH4 and N2O. Globally, agriculture’s contribution takes 14% of CO2, 47% of CH4 and 84% of N2O. Agriculture contributes to 80% of total Ethiopia’s GHGs emission: CH4, N2O and CO2, respectively, contributed to 72, 15 and 14% to aggregated emission. To soothe the impacts of climate change, countries should act now differently together to stabilize the fractions of GHGs in the atmosphere at a level that would also stabilize the climate system. Adopting climate-compatible agricultural development strategies can enable to reduce agricultural GHGs emissions or sequestration enhanced while maintaining and even increasing food supply. It is understood that combating desertification, land degradation and mitigating the effects of drought are the basis for accelerated sustainable development, poverty reduction and ensuring food security in Ethiopia. Climate-smart dryland agriculture can maintain livestock and crop productivity, reduces GHGs emission, lessens the impact of climate change and reduces the trade-offs among agricultural development to fulfill food security, climate change and ecosystem degradation.

Part of the book: Vegetation Dynamics, Changing Ecosystems and Human Responsibility