Addressing Climate Change Mitigation and Adaptation Together: A Global Assessment of Agriculture and Forestry Projects

Abstract

Adaptation and mitigation share the ultimate purpose of reducing climate change impacts. However, they tend to be considered separately in projects and policies because of their different objectives and scales. Agriculture and forestry are related to both adaptation and mitigation: they contribute to greenhouse gas emissions and removals, are vulnerable to climate variations, and form part of adaptive strategies for rural livelihoods. We assessed how climate change project design documents (PDDs) considered a joint contribution to adaptation and mitigation in forestry and agriculture in the tropics, by analyzing 201 PDDs from adaptation funds, mitigation instruments, and project standards [e.g., climate community and biodiversity (CCB)]. We analyzed whether PDDs established for one goal reported an explicit contribution to the other (i.e., whether mitigation PDDs contributed to adaptation and vice versa). We also examined whether the proposed activities or expected outcomes allowed for potential contributions to the two goals. Despite the separation between the two goals in international and national institutions, 37 % of the PDDs explicitly mentioned a contribution to the other objective, although only half of those substantiated it. In addition, most adaptation (90 %) and all mitigation PDDs could potentially report a contribution to at least partially to the other goal. Some adaptation project developers were interested in mitigation for the prospect of carbon funding, whereas mitigation project developers integrated adaptation to achieve greater longterm sustainability or to attain CCB certification. International and national institutions can provide incentives for projects to harness synergies and avoid trade-offs between adaptation and mitigation.

Modelling of Climate Conditions in Forest Vegetation Zones as a Support Tool for Forest Management Strategy in European Beech Dominated Forests

“…The development of the climate in Europe can lead to the largest shift in agro-climatic conditions since the onset of agricultural activity long before our historical experience [108]. The same consideration is undoubtedly also valid in forestry [109,110]. Therefore, in forestry, the predictions concerning climate conditions and the analyses of their impact on the forest ecosystem must be considered as crucial initial inputs into the formation of strategies in sustainable forest management [111,112].…”

Traditional agriculture: a climate-smart approach for sustainable food production

“…Climate change mitigation and adaptation are two foremost needs to reduce global warming impacts (Kongsager et al 2016;Song and Ye 2017). Achieving the goals of eradicating hunger and poverty by 2030 while addressing the climate change impacts need a climate-smart approach in agriculture.…”

Exploring Opportunities for Promoting Synergies between Climate Change Adaptation and Mitigation in Forest Carbon Initiatives

“…Despite the lack of clear institutional settings to incentivize mechanisms and standards to guide projects towards synergy, land use and forestry mitigation project developers are still making efforts to integrate adaptation goals in their projects. Ensuring the long-term sustainability of projects is a major motivation for project developers to proceed with the integration of adaptation in their activities [37].…”