Climate change exacerbates the environmental impacts of agriculture
Climate change amplifies agriculture’s environmental impacts by lowering productivity, and increasing erosion, pests, and emissions. A shift to sustainable, resilient systems is urgently needed, with investments in proven and innovative solutions to meet climate and food security goals.
Subject Tags
- Climate impacts
- Agriculture
Abstract
Agriculture’s global environmental impacts are widely expected to continue expanding, driven by population and economic growth and dietary changes. This Review highlights climate change as an additional amplifier of agriculture’s environmental impacts, by reducing agricultural productivity, reducing the efficacy of agrochemicals, increasing soil erosion, accelerating the growth and expanding the range of crop diseases and pests, and increasing land clearing. We identify multiple pathways through which climate change intensifies agricultural greenhouse gas emissions, creating a potentially powerful climate change–reinforcing feedback loop. The challenges raised by climate change underscore the urgent need to transition to sustainable, climate-resilient agricultural systems. This requires investments that both accelerate adoption of proven solutions that provide multiple benefits, and that discover and scale new beneficial processes and food products.
Citation
Yang, Y., Tilman, D., Jin, Z., Smith, P., Barrett, C.B., Zhu, Y.G., Burney, J., D’Odorico, P., Fantke, P., Fargione, J. and Finlay, J.C., 2024. Climate change exacerbates the environmental impacts of agriculture. Science, 385(6713), p.eadn3747.
Media Contacts
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Joseph E. Fargione
The Nature Conservancy
Email: jfargione@TNC.ORG