Agriculture contributes 20% greenhouse gas emissions

NaijaAgroNet:

Agriculture has been identified to contribute to close to 20 per cent of greenhouse gas emissions, according to the Food and Agriculture Organisation (FAO), reports NaijaAgroNet.

Disclosing this, FAO said, it has become a fundamental part of the solution to boost resilience and combat climate change impacts, especially in developing countries where agriculture is often the backbone of the economy.

Boosting agriculture, FAO said, could reduce malnutrition and poverty, create economic opportunities, and generate faster, fairer growth especially for young people.

FAO Director-General José Graziano da Silva pointed out that sustainable agriculture also improves the management of natural resources such as water; conserves biodiversity and ecosystem services; and increases carbon sequestration while easing the pressures that drive deforestation.

"We have to transform agriculture to make it more productive and more resilient at the same time. This transformation will help to address, at the same time, the triple threat of hunger, poverty and climate change," he said. 

Countries, NaijaAgroNet gathered, are recognizing this potential with unprecedented commitments, hence, FAO harped on scaling up international flows of climate finance and unlocking additional investment in adaptation in agricultural sectors is needed to give traction to the action.

Isaac Oyimah/GEE

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Greenhouse emissions out of sight revealed

NaijaAgroNet

Researchers in Sweden at the University of Gothenburg, have shown in a recent study that restitution of wetlands could reduce greenhouse gas emissions, reports NaijaAgroNet.

Information gathered by NaijaAgroNet showed that greenhouse gas is any gaseous compound in the atmosphere that is able to absorb infrared radiation, thereby trapping and holding heat in the atmosphere and by increasing the heat in the atmosphere, greenhouse gases are accountable for the greenhouse effect, which ultimately leads to global warming.

Previous wetlands NaijaAgroNet reports have been drained and are at present used for forestry and agriculture give off 11.4 million tonnes of carbon dioxide equivalents that could be compared with Sweden's total emissions of 57.6 million tonnes.

Since peatlands should be restored into wetlands so as to reduce greenhouse gas emissions, a researcher at the Department of Earth Sciences, University of Gothenburg also one among the authors of the report which was published this year, Åsa Kasimir, said that in the report pointed out some percentage of land in Sweden that should be restored.

"The report states that some three percent of Sweden's land area is drained peatland and it discusses which of these areas should be rectified in the first instance," says Åsa Kasimir.

Chidozie Anibueze/GEE

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