Recent analysis from IFPRI concludes that the expected gains from the December 2008 Doha proposal – while limited – are positive, and that concluding the Round in 2010 is important to secure trade and growth during the incoming global recovery period. However it can be improved by specific steps to address the needs of the world’s poorest and most vulnerable economies.

Stakeholders representing agricultural and forestry interests, including IFPRI, released a joint statement on December 14 at the UN climate change talks in Copenhagen. The statement emphasizes that forestry and agriculture are where poverty reduction, food security, and climate change come together and urges negotiators to address them in an integrated fashion to ensure that the livelihoods of poor farmers in developing countries are not devastated in the future.

Minimizing greenhouse gas emissions (GHGs) in the agricultural sector in Africa, while also helping smallholder farmers adapt to climate change as they increase their incomes, was the topic of IFPRI’s side event at the international climate change negotiations (COP-15) on Friday, December 11. IFPRI Senior Research Fellow Claudia Ringler gave an overview of climate change’s negative impacts on crop production, food prices, trade, and child malnutrition in Africa.

The significance of a side event held today at the United Nations Conference on Climate Change lay not just in what the high-level panelists said but in the fact that they had come together to deliver a single, coherent message about the vital relationship between food security and climate change. The meeting was organized by the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations with several partners.