Page 64 - FAO-IPCC Expert meeting on climate change

Appendix 01: Speakers’ summary notes
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Climate change impacts on livestock and implications for adaptation: A summary brief
AN NOTENBAERT, JUAN ANDRES CARDOSO, JACOBO ARANGO, NGONIDZASHE CHIRINDA, MICHAEL PETERS, ANNE MOTTET
PLENARY SESSION 1:
CLIMATE IMPACTS ON LAND USE, FOOD PRODUCTION AND PRODUCTIVITY (DIRECT IMPACTS)
Introduction
This paper aims to provide an overview of the impacts of climate change on livestock and the implications for adaptation. It starts by highlighting the importance of the livestock sector to people’s livelihoods and the natural resource base these livelihoods depend upon. It then proceeds by giving an overview of the different direct and indirect impacts of climate change on livestock production and the implications for adaptation to climate stresses.
The last section provides some more detail about using feeds and forages as a promising entry point for climate change adaptation and mitigation. The paper concludes with a few take-home messages.
Livestock and development trends
The livestock sector is very important for people and planet alike and can play an important role in achieving the SDGs. Including both ruminants and monogastrics, it has an estimated value of more than 1.4 trillion USD, supports about 1.3 billion producers, processors, retailers, indirect jobs and their dependants, and contributes 43% of agricultural GDP at global level. Livestock products provide 14% of the calories and 33% of the proteins consumed globally. Animal-source foods are important to nutrition and health and provide essential micronutrients, such as vitamin A, B-12, riboflavin, calcium, iron and zinc. In addition, livestock have high cultural and social value. The sector uses about a quarter of the terrestrial land area for grazing while one-third of global cropland area is devoted to producing animal feed. This makes it the biggest land user on earth. It further emits an estimated 14.5%
of human-induced GHG emissions and uses 32% of globally available freshwater. Livestock can, however, also contribute positively to the natural resource base by providing several ecosystem services ,e.g. manure provision, soil carbon sequestration, erosion control (and soil health in general), biodiversity protection, draught power and energy production from livestock waste.
The livestock sector is very dynamic. The demand for livestock products has more than doubled in the past 40 years and is projected to continue to grow about 2.5% annually. Most of the growth is projected to occur in the developing world, where livestock production is taking place in a large variety of livestock production systems and agro-ecologies. Systems range from landless production over mixed crop-livestock production to rangeland-based systems and show a wide adaptability to heterogeneous climatic, ecological and socio-economic contexts.
Impact of CC on livestock
Climate change – with its projections of rising temperatures and CO2 levels, changing rainfall patterns and the likely increase in climate variability and occurrence of extreme events - causes major impacts on livestock and on the ecosystems goods and services on which they depend.
Heat stress can have direct impact through behavioural and metabolic changes in the animals, such as reduced feed intake, increased energy requirement, decreased conception rates. While indirect impacts are felt through e.g. (i) a mismatch between increasing water demand and decreasing water supply, (ii) increased pest and disease pressure
as a response to changes in pathogen development, vector distribution and disease transmission rates , oftentimes
in combination with reduced disease resistance, (iii) biodiversity losses, both in terms of loss of habitats, plants and animals and in terms of a reduced gene pool for future adaptation, (iv) changes in quantity, quality and composition of feed resources and (v) changes in overall system productivity and livelihood patterns.
Arguably the most important climate change impacts are those mediated through the climate’s impact on what the animals eat. Few global or regional assessments, however, consolidate information on expected climate change impact on feed resources. These are indeed complicated as a wide variety of feed baskets exist, consisting of different combinations of crop residues, planted forages, native grasses, grains and additives. Typically, feedlot-based ruminant and monogastric production depends thereby on a higher share of feed in the form of grains edible by humans
or produced on land suitable for human food production, while extensive grazing systems often already show low efficiencies due to low primary production in addition to low nutritional density of the feed. Climate change impacts
FAO-IPCC Expert meeting on climate change, land use and food security