Ludmila Dulskaya
In August 2021, the first part of the most anticipated climate document, the Sixth Assessment Report of the UN Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC/IPCC), was published. The authors reported on the irreversibility of global warming. The second part of the report, published on February 28, 2022, was no less pessimistic: one of the main conclusions is that human adaptation has not yet kept pace with climate change. Overcoming the threshold of 1,5 degrees Celsius in relation to the pre-industrial period threatens with irreversible transformations of terrestrial ecosystems.
We will discuss the likely economic consequences of global warming with Evgenia Viktorovna Serova, the country's leading agricultural economist, director of agricultural policy at the Institute of Agricultural Research at the National Research University Higher School of Economics.
- Climate change is taking place all over the world, affecting Russia most directly. The agro-industrial complex of the country will inevitably face a number of serious challenges. According to an analysis of temperature change data collected for all countries of the world over the past 50 years (from 1961 to 2021) and presented in a report by the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations (FAO), the largest increase in temperature was recorded in Russia. In second and third place are Belarus and the Baltic states.
In the next 10 years, precipitation is expected to increase in Russia - rains will come more often and become more intense, which will lead to floods and waterlogging of the soil. For agriculture, these factors are sad.
We are waiting for a rise in the level of the world ocean, salinization and flooding of coastal lands - where agriculture could be done before, it will be impossible to do it. Extreme natural disasters, droughts and hurricanes are also predicted to increase. All this will also affect agriculture not in the best way.
In Russia, this may lead to a shift in agricultural production to the north-east of the country. In many regions where previously the growing season was too short, it will become possible to produce agricultural products. On the other hand, in the traditional agricultural regions (Kuban, Volga region), the climatic conditions for production will worsen. Droughts have already become more frequent here.
Consequences of agro-climatic shift
The summer of 2021 was sultry in many regions of Russia. Siberia, the Urals, and the Volga region suffered from the drought. At the same time, in the traditionally hot regions (Stavropol Territory, Crimea), on the contrary, there were prolonged rains. Weather cataclysms had a negative impact on crop volumes. Against this background, many industry experts note that the change in the margins of the agro-industrial complex in key regions of Russia, which was expected in three to five years, is already happening.
They suggest that due to the agro-climatic shift, the best climatic conditions will develop in Western Siberia (in this case, the south of the Tyumen region may become the most promising region for agriculture) and in the south of the Far East.
What will this lead to in the future?
- In the traditional regions of agricultural production, a production infrastructure has been created, there are personnel, sales markets are nearby, continues Evgenia Viktorovna. - In the northeast, infrastructure will have to be recreated, it is more difficult to find a workforce there, and besides, the distances to markets, both domestic and export, are much longer. In fact, the combination of these factors will contribute, ceteris paribus, to an increase in the cost of both production and the final product. In addition, longer haul distances will mean more greenhouse gas emissions per unit of output, which in turn will lead to further climate change.
So far, there are no clear facts indicating a significant impact of climate change on traditional potato regions. But even if this happens, the situation is not hopeless. Already today there are technologies that allow sustainable production: land reclamation, selection, precision farming. Such technologies require high one-time investments, but ultimately reduce unit costs.
Under the current conditions, the successful promotion of such technologies may be hindered by sanctions.
Is there a way out of the situation?
“No sanctions are usually imposed on food chains,” comments Yevgenia Serova, “but individual companies can make such decisions based on their own considerations. In this case, we may lose the supply of high-quality seed material for potato production and protection. It will take time and personnel to launch our own production.
My opinion is that all the problems associated with global warming are solvable. The man knows how to solve such problems. In the approaching conditions, the science intensity of agriculture is increasing many times over. The country needs new technologies, development of agro-science, international relations. And the main problem now is not so much the climate as the isolation of the country. High technologies, precision farming must be applied now by everyone who wants to survive in agriculture. Technology gives agricultural producers significant independence from climate and weather changes. There are no other options.
The final or synthesis report of the IPCC Sixth Assessment Cycle, which will bring together inputs from the three Working Groups, as well as special reports from the 1,5°C Global Warming, Climate Change and Land, Ocean and Cryosphere under climate change” will be published on September 1, 2022. About what conclusions climatologists will come to at this point, we will tell further.
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