Climate change. The challenges for agriculture

Climate change is now recognised as one of the most serious challenges facing the world - its people, the environment and its economies. There is now clear scientific evidence that the high concentration of greenhouse gases (GHGs) in the atmosphere is causing global warming. While the world has experienced climatic changes before, the issue we now face involves human influence. It is a challenge that must and can be dealt with.

Due to its wide range of effects climate change will, in the medium to long run, change the context of policy making profoundly. Climate change presents a double challenge today: how to cut the emissions of gases responsible for warming (known as mitigation); and how to adapt to current and future climate change in order to lessen the adverse impacts it will have on us – adaptation.

The changing climate is also a major challenge for agriculture and agricultural policy-making. This fact sheet explains how European Union (EU) agriculture is affected by, and influences, global warming and how the sector and EU agricultural policy can address the double challenge of reducing emissions while at the same time adapting to projected impacts of climate change.