Combating Climate Change has a special significance for Agriculture. We must adapt agricultural practises and technology to the changing conditions, if we are to feed the World in the future. Let me recall that more than 900 million people do not have adequate food and nourishment today, as we speak. Let me also recall that we expect to have to increase food production by 50% before year 2050.

Achieving Food Security in the world is a monumental challenge in itself. Food security exists when all people, at all times, have access to sufficient, safe and nutritious food. It is important to note that food security is much more than the availability of food.

Climate Change puts additional burden on all aspects of Food Security. The most obvious burdens are changing conditions for producing food from the land, changing temperature, precipitation and extreme events. Let us not forget, however, that with the new challenges in agricultural production follows new challenges of poverty, livelihoods, malnutrition, potential migration and environmental sustainability. What seems particularly unfair is that vulnerable communities and regions, eg in the Sahel and the floodplains of Bangladesh, will bear the brunt of climate change challenges in agriculture; challenges caused by economic growth in other regions.

At the same time, the past gives some reason for optimism. Agriculture has been adapting practises and technology to new challenges for millennia, and repeatedly surprised the world through new achievements. Remember, for example, the Green Revolution that lifted many millions out of hunger. Climate Change in Agriculture is a formidable new challenge – it will require innovations and fundamentally new approaches – and it is a long haul, we need to have a time horizon of several decades. Existing and new ICTs will certainly play a major role in this process, although it is practically impossible to predict how ICTs opportunities will evolve over such a long period of time. If we go back just 30 years, the fax machine was just invented. It would have been rather difficult then to predict today’s possibilities in global communication and information sharing. Now we are looking another 30-40 years ahead in agriculture and considering how ICTs can help improve Food Security and combat Climate Change. This is not easy. However, in all modesty I will now highlight two areas in agriculture where support from ICTs will be crucial.

1. Facilitating a landscape carbon market to mitigate climate change.

Land provides us not only with the capacity to grow food, but also to store carbon. There is twice as much carbon in vegetation and soils than there is in the atmosphere. And there is potential to store considerably more. This is recognized in the climate change negotiations, and one ambition is to establish a carbon market related to Reducing Deforestation and Forest Degradation (REDD). This provides a remarkable market opportunity for developing countries, and if the concept is widened to selling carbon credits from all parts of the landscape, there is a potential to make a significant reduction of atmospheric carbon, while at the same time stimulating rural economies and investments in land use.

Achieving such a market, however, requires that the credits can be traded. Buyers of carbon credits will require assurances that the carbon storage is actually in place. Financial transactions will require transparent and cost-effective verifications. This is where ICTs come in as an effective tool to combat climate change.

Thanks to the REDD preparations, remote sensing technologies are being enhanced, hoping to deliver the precise and timely information needed for the new market. While this is commendable, I suggest that other ICTs have an even more important role to play in the inventory and monitoring of terrestrial carbon. GPS systems and mobile phones networks have brought a revolution to field measurements. The old paradigm that field work is slow and unreliable has changed and we are now in a position to measure and verify carbon in a local context. This is essential, because it is the local stakeholders, the smallholders, the individual farms that can deliver climate change mitigation in the landscape. Only through inexpensive and mainstream ICTs will be able to build this market.

FAO is actively engaged with UNDP and UNEP in the UN-REDD Programme to help prepare for the potential REDD market.

2. Improving adaptive capacity of farmers and other stakeholders to climate variability and change

Agriculture has been described as the most weather/climate dependent of all human activities. Farmers are perhaps the segment of the population whose livelihoods are most susceptible to the impacts of climate variability and change. Being a farmer, living with climate change and increasing climate variability means that it is essential to manage the risks and increase the opportunities in farming. Farmers must therefore prepare for the range of possibilities, and often need to employ risk management strategies that reduce negative impacts of climate extremes.

Looking at the longer term adaptation, we are facing a monumental learning process. Successful measures for farm level adaptation are often knowledge intensive and require novel communication methods and need to adequately reach the farmers. The knowledge intensive adaptation practices in a drought prone area such as: i) rainwater harvesting; ii) adjustment of cropping patterns, selection of drought-tolerant crop varieties; iii) adjusting livelihood diversification; iv) strengthening local institutions; v) creating awareness and advocacy; and vi) providing access to adequate knowledge and communication services require enabling ICTs for all members of the community.

FAO has launched the Communication for Sustainable Development Initiative (CSDI), to support the application of communication strategies and approaches to Climate Change Adaptation and Food Security. CSDI aims at strengthening and up scaling rural communication services in selected countries, and to make available suitable methods and tools at the international level through knowledge networks and partnerships.

Turning to the shorter time horizon of adaptation in agriculture, it is essential for farmers and other stakeholders to receive accurate information about climate, weather and extremes to make pro-active farm management decisions. This can be, for example, seasonal climate forecasts to plan strategic options and short to medium range forecasts for adjustment of cultivation practices.

The effective use of climate and weather information requires that the right audience receive and correctly interprets the right information at the right time. The ICTs can play significant role in communicating useful climate/weather information to the vulnerable communities in advance to facilitate pro-active decision process. However, given the hundreds of millions of farmers, it is obvious that we have an information and communication challenge.

There are several weather/climate information products already exists, through the modern monitoring, acquisition and analysis of weather data by national and regional meteorological services. The additional challenge is to package and bring this information to the local stakeholders, and to help them make decisions for managing risks and opportunities.

FAO is preparing a project to address these issues, specifically looking at:

• The user community being faced with making an absolute decision (yes or no)
• Forecasts are in the form of probabilities – how to understand uncertainty?
• Risk perception and decision profiles of the farmers varies greatly
• Role of media in policy advocacy, timely information to guide localized decisions,
• How to integrate indigenous knowledge into scientific information?

A common denominator between the longer term adaptation learning and the shorter term management decisions by farmers is the role of ICTs. A common conclusion is that existing and robust technologies are best suited. FAO has worked for many years with Rural Radio approaches, reaching a large number of stakeholders at low cost. In recent years the spread and increase of internet use in many developing countries now provides opportunities also for the rural population – at least through community hubs, village knowledge centres, community multimedia centres etc., Use of satellite remote sensing techniques, weather/climate monitoring, geo-information networks, social networks and community volunteerism in communicating early warning messages has opened new avenues for achieving food security through effective disaster preparedness, emergency response and natural resource management.

We may expect a leapfrog development in that Web 2.0 user driven content may be quickly adopted for sharing information. The other new ICT that already has a massive impact in rural areas of developing countries is the mobile phone. Organized mass communication through text messages may have a tremendous impact on Food Security and rural livelihoods at very low cost.

Finally, let me recall the High Level Conference on World Food Security held in Rome in June 2008 and attended by 181 countries. Among the medium and long-term measures, the conference highlighted the need to increase resilience of food production systems to challenges posed by climate change. Specifically, it was urged that as financial mechanisms are created to meet these challenges, smallholder farmers and fishers, including indigenous people, can participate in these investment flows. I believe ICTs will be particularly important for supporting the smallholders. It is the low-cost mainstream applications of the internet and mobile phone networks that can make a significant difference to those that need it most.

Thank you.