Climate-smart agriculture and the World Trade Organization

Key Points

• Climate change threatens global food security and sustainable development, while many agricultural subsidies exacerbate environmental impact and agriculture’s carbon footprint around the world.
• Climate-smart agriculture (CSA) may provide frameworks for policy-based incentives to reduce agriculture’s greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions.
• Conceptually, CSA practices could be important tools to address the impact of a growing human population on the global environment, but providing large subsidies for selected production practices that have little impact on GHG emissions could conflict with international trade laws.
• Agricultural trade liberalization should be integral to any CSA approach because, globally, resources are likely to be used more efficiently.