Amidst evident climate impacts on the Korean peninsula, the Korean government targets carbon neutrality by 2050, extending this commitment to agriculture, aiming to mitigate climate-related impacts and damages. As agriculture's role evolves from emissions source to carbon sink, its responsible role gains importance. Developing low-carbon agricultural methods and technologies becomes crucial. The Korean government backs these efforts through programs for greenhouse gas reduction facilities, energy-saving technologies, and renewable energy installations. Programs incentivizing low-carbon farming practices are also in place. Using a case study method, this paper examines government and agriculture sector efforts toward carbon neutrality, stressing ongoing technique advancements for climate mitigation. A case study on farmers engaged in greenhouse gas reduction initiatives reveals government-backed programs' pivotal role in guiding farmers towards low-carbon practices. Farmers' voluntary participation, incentivized by government policies, coupled with emission-reducing facilities and compensation, yields economic, environmental, and social benefits. Nonetheless, further efforts are needed to address policy barriers, lower technology adoption thresholds, and tailor target strategies for effective participation. Strengthening incentives throughout the agri-food value chain is also crucial. This paper emphasizes continuous policy enhancement and technology promotion for a successful shift to low-carbon agriculture and meeting national climate goals. Keywords: carbon neutrality, low-carbon agriculture, carbon reduction technology, energy-saving technology
Accepted Manuscripts
A Case Study of Korean Farmer’s Voluntary Participation in Greenhouse Gas Reduction Programs: Based on In-depth Interview
Research Initiatives towards Implementation of Climate Smart Agriculture (CSA) Practices for Rice and Other Crops in Malaysia
Climate change continues to be a major focus area for researchers and policy makers. Its impacts could threaten national food security by potentially reducing crop yield in both commodity and non-commodity subsectors. Within the non-commodity agrofood industry in Malaysia, which includes rice production, the impacts of climate variability through events like droughts and floods will have long-term implications for its productivity. Additionally, these effects can be observed in other agrofood subsectors including fruits, vegetables, and livestock. Therefore, several adaptation and mitigation strategies using Climate Smart Agriculture (CSA) practices have been developed to effectively manage the potential climate risks while simultaneously aiming to optimize crop production. These strategies mainly focus on overcoming the impacts of the potentially higher local temperatures and prolonged dry spells associated with more extreme conditions. Research specializing in the rice subsector was previously and is still undertaken and it prioritizes approaches such as improving water management practices, identifying local accessions tolerant to drought, and the development of new varieties through marker-assisted breeding. Meanwhile, new strategies aimed at overcoming climatic issues in the fruits, vegetables, and livestock subsectors have included studies on potential alternative pollinators, overcoming pest and disease migration in highland vegetable production, developing new approaches to address fruit-setting failures related to elevated temperatures, and mitigating greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions. The next five years are crucial because more outputs from these studies might successfully address important domestic issues. The recently launched National Agriculture Policy 2.0 will spearhead the implementation of climate-resilient strategies, with the aim of creating a paradigm shift in the agricultural sector to ensure better adaptation to climate change and better performance to achieve sustainable agricultural production.
Keywords: Climate change, adaptation, mitigation, food security
Climate Information Services in Southeast Asia: A Systematic Review
Over the years, climate change has unraveled more issues that have affected the agricultural sector, most especially the already vulnerable smallholder farmers who have borne the burden of intensifying climate impacts. Given this urgent matter, the need to prioritize climate services for science-based decision-making and strategic planning has been more pertinent than ever. This paper scrutinizes the type of climate services available to Southeast Asian smallholder farmers and the role these play in climate change adaptation. Guided by the PICoST (Population, Interest, Context, Scope, and Time) approach, only 22 materials published from 2015 to 2022 were identified from a systematic review of Google Scholar, ScienceDirect, and Web of Science (WoS) literature, reflecting a poverty of literature in Southeast Asia despite the region’s high exposure to climatic hazards. From the review, disaster risk management was found to be the recurring theme in the collated literature. Further analysis revealed that smallholder farmers rely on both climate-related information (i.e., rainfall, temperature, wind, etc.) and advisories (i.e., forecasts on thunderstorms, droughts, tropical cyclones, etc.) to guide their farming activities. Findings of this review underscore the relevance of climate services as well as its localization and suggest the inclusion of traditional indicators in climate forecasting.
Keywords: climate services, disaster risk management, informed decision-making, adaptation strategies, meteorological information
A Review of the Impact of Climate Change on Food Security and Co-Benefits of Adaptation and Mitigation Options in Thailand
This paper aims to review previous studies exploring the impact of climate change on Thailand’s food security and measure the co-benefits of climate change adaptation and mitigation options. For the impact of climate change, most of the studies focused on crop production. They are mainly important cash crops such as paddy rice, cassava, and maize. Overall, climate change is projected to have a negative impact on the production of these crops. As a result, Thailand’s food security will not only be negatively affected by climate change, but global food security will also be sensitive to reductions in Thai crop production because Thailand is the world’s major exporter of these food crops. To reduce the impact of climate change, there are limited past studies that assessed cost of production and benefits of adaptation and mitigation options. Some options require temporary government support to encourage farmers to change their practices because it provides enormous co-benefit to society and environment. Several policies have been proposed to reduce the impact of climate change and promote adaptation and mitigation options across the country.
Keywords: Climate change, Food security, Co-benefit, Impact, Adaptation, Mitigation