Mitigation and Adaptation

Reducing Carbon Emissions
One of the ways to prevent the effects of global warming is to decrease the amount of carbon dioxide and other greenhouse gases into the atmosphere.? The Kyoto Protocol is a document that came out of the U.N. sponsored Earth Summit in Rio de Janeiro in 1992. This agreement, which has been ratified by over 100 countries, seeks to limit the amount of CO2 emitted into the atmosphere to 1990 levels.? However, the United States, which emits 25% of all global greenhouse gases, has not yet ratified the Kyoto Protocol.

Adaptation to Global Warming
Even if all CO2 emissions stopped at this moment, the amount of CO2 already emitted into the atmosphere will result in an enhanced greenhouse effect for the next 50 years.? Thus, people will need to adapt to the effects of climate change.

Adaptation can be defined as "any action that seeks to reduce the negative effects, or to capitalize on the positive effects, of climate change" (Riebsame et al. 1995).? Adaptive actions may be either anticipatory or reactive in nature.? An example of an anticipatory adjustment is the development of heat- and drought-tolerant crop varieties.?

The levels of adaptation undertaken by a region may have significant effects on how climate change will affect agriculture in that area.? In Rosenzweig and Parry (1994) levels of adaptation were grouped into two levels.?

Level 1 adaptations include:

shifts in planting date (?1 month) that do not imply major changes in crop calendar,

additional application of irrigation water to crops already under irrigation,

changes in crop variety to currently available varieties more adapted to the altered climate.?

Level 2 adaptations imply more substantial change to agricultural systems, possibly requiring resources beyond the farmers' means, including:

investment in regional and national agricultural infrastructure

policy changes at the regional and national level

Level 2 represents a fairly optimistic assessment of world agriculture's response to changed climate conditions.

Adaptation, especially Level 2 adaptation, may significantly reduce the effect of climate change on agriculture and the number of people at risk of hunger (Figure 5).? However, adaptation in developing countries, although it does reduce the negative effect of global warming, does not completely eliminate the potential increase in hunger

Source : http://www.climate.org/topics/agricul/index.shtml