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Add to Preferred SourcesCrop and livestock production is projected to decrease and may even have to be abandoned in parts of Europe’s southern and Mediterranean regions due to the increased negative impacts of climate change, according to a European Environment Agency (EEA) report.
The study says that adapting to climate change must be made a top priority for the European Union’s agriculture sector if it is to improve resilience to extreme events like droughts, heatwaves and floods.
Adverse impacts of climate change are already being felt across Europe. Extreme weather, including recent heatwaves in many parts of the EU are already causing economic losses for farmers and for the EU’s agriculture sector. Future climate change might also have some positive effects due to longer growing seasons and more suitable crop conditions, but these effects will be outweighed by the increase in extreme events negatively affecting the sector.
The report looks at the key climate change problems facing agriculture in the EU and the outlook for the years ahead. It also gives an overview of how EU policies and programmes address climate change adaptation and includes examples of feasible and successful adaptation actions.
“New records are being set around the world due to climate change, and the adverse effects of this change are already affecting agricultural production in Europe, especially in the south. Despite some progress, much more must be done to adapt by the sector itself, and especially at farm-level, and future EU policies need to be designed in a way to facilitate and accelerate transition in this sector,” said Hans Bruyninckx, EEA Executive Director.
Most of the EEA member countries have national adaptation strategies in place. While all of these strategies include agriculture as a priority sector, only a limited number of countries included adaptation measures specific to the agriculture sector. The report also suggests that EU Member States should better prioritise adaptation in the agricultural sector, for example by increasing the financing of adaptation measures through the implementation of the CAP.
Read and download the European Environment Agency (EEA) report.
Original source: EEA
Published on 04 September 2019