THIRD WORLD NETWORK INFORMATION SERVICE ON SUSTAINABLE AGRICULTURE


Dear friends and colleagues,

Re: Biodiversity key to climate change adaptation in agriculture

We would like to draw your attention to the following Greenpeace publication entitled “Food Security and Climate Change: The answer is biodiversity. A review of scientific publications on climate change adaptation in agriculture”, which outlines the role biodiversity can play as a solution to climate change and decreasing food security.

Climate change will profoundly affect agriculture worldwide. Food security in many countries is under threat from unpredictable changes in rainfall and more frequent extreme weather. Farmers in poorer countries with harsh climate conditions will likely be most affected.

This report is a review of recent scientific literature, and underlines that the most effective strategy to adapt agriculture to climate change is to increase biodiversity. A mix of different crops and varieties in one field is a proven and highly reliable farming method to increase resilience to erratic weather changes.

The report finds that the best ways to increase stress tolerance in single varieties are modern breeding technologies that do not entail genetic engineering, such as Marker Assisted Selection. In contrast, there is no evidence that genetically engineered (GE) plants can play a role to increase food security in a changing climate.

The full publication can be downloaded at http://www.greenpeace.org/raw/content/international/press/reports/food-security-and-climate-change.pdf

With best wishes,

Lim Li Ching
Third World Network
131 Jalan Macalister
10400 Penang
Malaysia
Email: twnet@po.jaring.my
Websites: www.twnside.org.sg, www.biosafety-info.net