ENVIRONMENT AND AGRICULTURE.pdf

COAG/2007/6
February 2007
E


COMMITTEE ON AGRICULTURE
Twentieth Session
Rome, 25 - 28 April 2007
ENVIRONMENT AND AGRICULTURE
Item 6 of the Provisional Agenda
Table of Contents
Pages
I. Introduction 1
II. Agriculture and the Environment 1
A. Agriculture as a natural resource-based industry 1
B. The environmental challenge of agriculture 1
C. The central role of agriculture in environmental governance 2
III. Biodiversity 3
A. Agriculture as the largest user of biodiversity 3
B. Agrobiodiversity underpins our life-support system 3
C. Biodiversity issues can only be resolved in agriculture 4
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ii COAG/2007/6
IV. Climate Change 4
A. Climate change concerns all economies 4
B. The agriculture-climate interdependency 5
C. Harnessing agriculture’s adaptive capacity 5
V. Bioenergy 6
A. Agriculture as a source of energy 6
B. The agriculture, bioenergy and climate link 7
C. petitive use of agricultural resources 7
VI. Conclusions 8
A. The urgency to address the agriculture nexus 8
B. Time to act globally 9
C. Agriculture as part of the solution 10
VII. FAO’s Mandate 10
VIII. mendations from COAG 11
COAG/2007/6 1

I. Introduction
1. This paper addresses global environmental questions from within the agricultural
constituency. It specifically describes three crucial factors that undercut food security:
biodiversity, climate change, bioenergy and their critical role in agricultural economies.
2. The use of an inherited capital such as biodiversity produces bioenergy and partly
mediates climate conditions. The use of biofuels in international carbon budgets to reach climate
m