As countries and stakeholders in Asia-Pacific prepare to join a global alliance promoting agricultural processes that are ‘climate smart’, they must act decisively and urgently, taking into account the needs of food producers and end users, a senior FAO Official told a regional consultation today.

The Asia-Pacific Regional Consultation meeting on Climate Smart Agriculture, 19-20 June 2014, in Hanoi is co-organized by FAO, GIFAR, the Governments of The Netherlands and Viet Nam, ADB and CCAFS. More than 100 participants are attending the regional event, including some from Africa. The regional Consultation is part of the formal preparatory work for launching the Alliance for Climate-Smart Agriculture (CSA) at the United Nations Climate Summit in September 2014.

"Climate change is no longer an issue for the next generation to tackle. It is already happening – it’s here now," said Hiroyuki Konuma, FAO Assistant Director-General and Regional Representative for Asia and the Pacific. "We need to act proactively and aggressively to meet the challenge, without waiting quietly for the negative impacts of climate change."

Konuma made the remarks during a keynote speech alongside other key speakers including Dr. Cao Duc Phat, Viet Nam’s Agriculture and Rural Development Minister and Mr. Hans Hoogeveen, Vice Minister for Agriculture, from the Netherlands who also stressed the importance to act now.

“We need a change in our mind set, our approach and act now – that is what ‘climate smart agriculture’ is all about,” Konuma said.

“All (stakeholders) need to ensure that a global alliance is created in line with their food security and climate change needs,” said Konuma. “In short, the alliance needs to be owned by all but support the needs of the individual stakeholder.”

Since FAO’s launching of Climate Smart Agriculture approaches four years ago, the theme “has become viral, indicating the real need and desire to address these challenges in a coherent and systematic way,” Konuma said.

“Let’s make it clear we face some enormous challenges ahead and we can only address them by uniting forces,” Konuma added, pointing out the region is already facing the impact of climate change. Extreme events, drought and food shortages have been identified with high confidence as key risks for the Asian region, he told the gathering.

The agriculture, forestry and fisheries sectors need to become more resilient to the new challenges of climate change. But that will be a challenge.

Unsustainable land use practices have already resulted in the degradation of natural resources, loss of biodiversity and erosion of ecosystem services. An estimated 25% of the world’s land is, or is in the process of, becoming highly degraded; 13 million hectares of forests are lost each year; and an estimated 30% of fish stocks are over-exploited, depleted or recovering. These issues are converging at a time when the world must increase its food supply by 60 percent by 2050 to meet the dietary requirements of an estimated population of nine billion.

“In short, we need to strengthen the ecosystems and natural resource base on which we depend so that they are more robust, healthy and resilient to climate change,” said Konuma. “Our production systems will need to sustainably produce more with less.”