Guest lecture
Climate change and agriculture: adaptation and mitigation
Tim Benton
In this illustrated guest lecture, especially made for the Food Systems Academy, Professor Tim Benton looks at the food system and what climate change means for agriculture, how it will affect farming, the impact agriculture has on climate change, the contentious issues of meat and livestock production, the fragility of the food system in the face of climate change and some possible futures of food.
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The running order for the video is as follows:
Introduction: 0 – 4min 38sec
Climate change: what does it mean: 4min 38sec – 11min 48sec
Climate change affects agriculture: 11min 48sec – 25min 29sec
Agriculture’s impact on climate change: 25min 29sec – 29min 00sec
Meat and livestock: a contentious issue: 29min 00 sec – 35min 32 sec
The food system affects climate, is fragile to climate change,
and doesn’t provide enough nutrients: 35min 32sec - 39min 55sec
The Futures of food: 39min 55sec – 55min 27sec (ends)
(Published 2019)
Further reading
UN Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, Special Report on Food, Land and Climate (2019). You can dowload all or part of the report here
UN Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, Climate Change 2021: the Physical Science Basis, Summary for Policymakers (2021). You can dowload the summary report and find details of forthcoming reports here
Professor Tim Benton is director of the Energy, Environment and Resources Department at Chatham House and is an author of the IPCC’s Special Report on Food, Land and Climate (2019), and the UK’s Climate Change Risk Assessment. He was also dean of strategic research initiatives at the University of Leeds and from 2011-2016 he was the “champion” of the UK’s Global Food Security programme.
In a rapidly changing world that puts pressures on existing ecosystems, he focuses on how will we be able to live equitably and sustainably in a world of finite resources, when our demands for exploiting resources - specifically for food, but generally for economic growth - are growing. He is interested in how ecological systems underpin the services on which we rely, and how they respond to change. Ultimately, the goal is to ensure that ecosystem services are preserved in the face of change - in particular how we can do this most "sustainably" by building food systems that are resilient, that do not undermine the world's natural capital, that leave space for nature, and supply a sufficient amount of nutritious food to underpin global public health.
Follow-up
If you want to contact him click here.
Go to keynote talk
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