Free The Politics of Climate Change by Anthony Giddens

against a backdrop of the mixture of drought and greater rainfall, together with more extreme weather generally. Moreover, the demand of feeding a growing population must be achieved while simultaneously producing a steep decline in carbon emissions. The chance of coping with these exigencies through bringing new land into cultivation is minimal – unless there are dramatic advances of some kind that would allow cultivation on previously barren or inhospitable land. Under existing conditions, far from bringing new land under agricultural production, the main task is actually the reverse. Deforestation is one of the main sources of increased greenhouse gas emissions. The urgency of the need to protect the tropical rainforests is often stressed, but the same also applies to forests in more temperate parts of the world, including Europe. From a climate change point of view, reforestation should quite often take precedence over opening up more land to agriculture.
    So far, so green, but when we confront the urgency of intensifying production from a finite landspace – while simultaneously reducing emissions – it is impossible to see how such an end could be achieved without encouraging advancesin biotechnology, including the use of GM crops. The issue is not simply one of radically improved productivity, but of keeping abreast of evolving threats, including the emergence of new pests and the spread of plant diseases to areas where they were not previously known. New varieties of crops will be needed that are resistant to flooding, drought and the increased salt content of water as climate change advances. Much the same goes for waste reduction. The amount of waste involved in the global food chain is gigantic. A good deal can be coped with – in principle – by orthodox recycling; but disposal of some kinds of waste could be facilitated by the introduction of novel forms of chemical or biological agent that could break down that waste.
    No strategy of any kind is risk-free, as I have stressed earlier, but there are fewer risks at this point involved in GM crops than there are in seeking to rely only on pre-established agricultural processes. Moreover, those risks to a large degree can be monitored through scientific scrutiny under controlled conditions. It would be quite wrong to treat GM crops as a magic bullet – they form one part of a wider front of advance in biotechnology. Market regulation is clearly called for, and should converge with other forms of regulation of monopoly in the wake of the financial crisis. A relatively small number of corporations tend to dominate the world food chain. Governance of the food system should for many reasons seek to ensure diversity. 26
    Reconciling expansion of the world food supply with diminishing emissions is even more difficult than may appear at first sight. Agriculture and the rearing of livestock release a high proportion of methane – a greenhouse gas more lethal in climate change terms than CO 2 . The overall impact of food production, even where it is largely concentrated within the developed countries, is high. It has been calculated that over 30 per cent of the greenhouse gas emissions of the EU are directly the outcome of food production. Production and application of nitrogen fertilizers contribute most; in second place are the production of livestock and their digestive processes.
    Using quite conventional agriculture, emissions can be reduced to some degree without loss of productivity – for example, through improvements in the use of water andfertilizers. However, further advances in agricultural technology will be needed if increased efficiency is to be reconciled with a substantial and progressive decline in emissions. As with all areas of innovation, how far such advances can be achieved is an open question. Areas to concentrate on include genetic modification of plants that can reduce the need for fertilizers, improve nitrogen use and