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Adapting to a Changing Climate
In a world of increasing climate variability, greater pressure on resources, and questions about how these changes will affect food production, interest is growing in "adaptation."
A changing climate can manifest itself in many ways, and differently across regions. In the Prairies, for instance, extreme weather events and increasing variability mean that a changing climate could increase drought and create a greater need for heat resistant crops. As the growing season gets longer, this region could also see new opportunities for certain crops. For some crops, the changing conditions could present wide swings in growing conditions — favourable and unfavourable — within the same season. The situation is unpredictable.
How do farmers, and others in the agri-food sector, adapt to these changing conditions? What are the policies needed to support them? Given the considerable timeline required to develop new technological and plant breeding solutions, what has to be done now to position the sector for such change?
Farmers are proud of their ability to adapt to changing conditions. Researchers and innovators introduce scientific approaches and technological solutions that help farmers adopt new methods and cope with change. Governments, meanwhile, support initiatives that foster best management practices that help the sector to adapt.
Environmental Goods and Services
Policy-makers are increasingly confronted with the difficult public policy challenge of fostering climate change adaptation in the agricultural sector. The first challenge is to identify economically viable Beneficial (or Best) Management Practices (BMPs) that provide Ecological Goods and Services (EG&S) that foster adaptation to climate change. The second challenge is to determine optimal financing arrangements for the implementation of these BMPs (i.e., “who pays, how much, to whom, and for what?”).
Developing clarity for policy-makers on “who should pay, how much, to whom and for what” is essential for EG&S produced through agricultural BMPs programming to:
- Ensure agriculture adapts successfully to a changing climate; and therefore;
- Ensure long-term food sustainability;
- Meet society’s environmental objectives; and
- Position Canadian producers
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