Transcript Climate Change PowerPoint presentation

Adapting landscapes and farming
to a changing climate
Jim Smyllie
Executive Director, Regional Delivery
A ‘perfect storm’ of challenges in coming
decades
• Climate change
• Population growth
• Growing pressure on food, energy and water supplies
• Farmers, foresters, land managers will be directly
affected
• And have a central role to play
Consequences of climate change for
farming
Consequences of:
– warmer conditions
– longer growing seasons...
– drought...
– extreme hot weather...
– storms and heavy rainfall...
will bring both threats and
opportunities
• Effects will vary from area to area
and from year to year.
Photo courtesy of Farming Futures
• This has significant implications for food production
• AND for all the other benefits that agricultural land
provides to society
The Cotswolds clearly demonstrates the
wider benefits of farmland
• Biodiversity:
limestone grasslands, ancient woodlands,
farmland birds, wildflowers, rare species
Recreation, public health and tourism
• Over 3,000 miles of public footpaths; 38 million day
visitors each year
• Major tourist
industry
Local communities and livelihoods
(built up over centuries of human habitation)
Sheepscombe Village
Environmental ‘regulating services’
• e.g. water cycling and
purification;
• carbon storage
Landscape change
• The Cotswolds landscape has changed in the past:
– Natural processes
– Quarrying and building of towns
– Grazing, cropping, forestry
• And will continue to change as the climate changes:
– Ecosystems
– Farming systems and location of production
– Overall landscape changes
Climate change is already having an effect
• Adonis Blue butterfly is back in the Cotswolds after 40
years of absence
• Milder winters and hot summer weather probably a
significant factor
Managing change
• Need to accept and manage future change, but not all
changes need be bad
• Opportunities as well as threats
• Accept that change will happen, but to try to maintain the
benefits the area provides
We need an integrated approach
Local
communities
& livelihoods
Wider
social
benefits
Agricultural
production
Healthy natural environment
Farmers as providers of vital ‘green
infrastructure’
• Farmers have an important role to help society adapt.
E.g.:
– Management of surface water: sustainable drainage
systems, ponds, wetlands, water meadows, river
flood plains
– Planting and maintaining trees
• Effective, sustainable and cost effective
• Increasingly important as climate change continues
Adaptation action
• Joint project between Defra, NE, EA and FC has
identified wide range of actions farmers are likely to need
to carry out
– Planning and risk assessment
– Changing and diversifying crops
– Land management (e.g. trees and sustainable
drainage)
– Technology and infrastructure
– Management of crops, livestock, chemical inputs and
water
• Many actions have multiple benefits for agricultural
production, natural ecosystems and reducing
greenhouse gases
• Many of these correspond to current
good practice
Photo courtesy of Farming Futures
Photo courtesy of Farming Futures
• ‘Adaptive management’ approach
• No single solution and no ‘one size fits all’ response.
Adaptation must address local issues and aspirations
• Placed-based visions important (‘What are we adapting
for?’)
The role of agri-environment schemes
• Provide an important income stream to encourage
provision of a wider range of benefits from agricultural
land
• Across England we now have over 58 000 agreements,
bringing almost 67% of agricultural land under some
form of environmental management
Agri-environment schemes and mitigation
• Increase carbon storage in soils and vegetation
• Reduce inputs of fuel, fertiliser and pesticides
• ES sequesters ~ 1.6m tonnes C yr-1 in soils across the country
(equivalent to approx. 5% of all emissions from English agriculture)
• E.g.: Restoration of peatlands
Before
After
unfertilised buffer strips
•
•
•
•
Restore and create habitats
Buffer habitats
Protect soils and water
Can help provide the sorts of
‘green infrastructure’
discussed earlier
WTBCNP
Agri-environment schemes and adaptation
• Through HLS alone we have spent around £90m in the
last three years on measures that contribute to mitigation
or adaptation or both
Agri-environment schemes in the Cotswolds
• Agri-environment agreements cover the majority of the
Cotswold Hills
• Priority target area for HLS
• More than 700 Environmental Stewardship agreements
• Covering an area of over 73,000ha
• Value of over £42m
• Plus several hundred existing ESA and CSS agreements
Farmland birds (and much more)
• The Cotswolds has nationally important populations of
farmland birds
• One of four projects in the wider South West Farmland
Bird initiative,
• Targeted advice to ask farmers to deliver package of
important habitat options
• Working with CCB
• Huge response from Cotswolds farming community:
65 out of 69 farms that we approached have signed up
• 26 agreements now live or have been offered
• Great results already both for birds and for wider
environmental objectives
• SW farmland bird approach has now been adopted
nationwide
Advice on soil and water management
• Good soil and water management will be a foundation of
sustainable adaptation
• Natural England’s SW region has recently launched the
Soils 4 Profit scheme
• Joint project between RDA, EA and NE
• £3.4 m of funding up to 2013
• Provides advice to landowners on nutrient use
Landscape connectivity
• Protected landscapes need to be connected and work
properly from both an ecological and cultural perspective
• Working with CCB to connect fragmented Cotswolds
habitats through Environmental Stewardship
• Focusing on limestone grasslands in the west Cotswolds
Making our schemes even better
• Climate training for NE land management advisers
• ELS advice messages on adaptation and mitigation to be
incorporated into our farm advice programmes
• Looking at reviewing some ES options
• Improving HLS targeting (following our climate
vulnerability studies across a range of English
landscapes)
• Working with Defra on the development of the Low
Carbon Advisory Service
Conclusion
• Protecting landscapes can bring both
– environmental and social benefits
– more resilient, adaptable, and profitable farms
• Requires an integrated approach and recognition of full
range of services from agricultural land
• Important role for AONBs
• Need to work together to prepare for future changes