The Agenda 2030 for Sustainable Development is shaping a framework for global governance that responds to a complex and interconnected global landscape. With the SDGs, the Agenda recognizes that trade is a key element in addressing fundamental issues such as food security, nutrition and the promotion of sustainable agriculture (SDG 2), healthy lives and wellbeing (SDG 3) economic growth (SDG 8), inequality (SDG 10), ocean, seas and marine resource (SDG 14), and global partnership for sustainable development (SDG 17).
Agricultural trade plays a major role in contributing to global food security, ensuring stable supplies and contributing to price stability. Moreover, agricultural trade is paramount in enabling conditions for facilitating structural transformation, promoting growth, mobilizing different sources of finance, and fostering job creation and social inclusion. Yet, while climate change is expected to have marked impacts on agricultural production and food security, may also lead to significant trade disruptions in the short run (as a consequence of extreme weather events) and to long-term changes in agricultural trade patterns. Climate change will therefore affect all aspects of food security: availability, access, stability and utilization, and will challenge our efforts to ensure enough safe, nutritious, and affordable food for all.
However, while climate change might lead to serious production losses in many parts of the world, trade can help countries adapting to disruptions in food supply triggered by climate change. In other words, trade may be a key adaptation measure for addressing the consequences of climate change. Trade can play a stabilizing role in compensating for changes in production across regions, and in reducing food price volatility. Therefore, policy makers need to consider how to formulate, coordinate and implement climate change, agriculture and trade policies to meet the sustainability objectives of the 2030 Agenda.
This panel will investigate the relation between agriculture, food security, trade and climate change. The discussion will focus on how policy makers should balance trade and domestic policy measures that can address the challenges posed by climate change, while supporting the achievement of the Sustainable Development Goals, and in particular food security, nutrition and promotion of sustainable agriculture.
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