This is the VOA Special English Agriculture Report, from
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This June in
Brazil, delegates will mark the twentieth anniversary of what is commonly known
as the Earth Summit. The United Nations Conference on Environment and
Development took place in Rio de Janeiro in nineteen ninety-two. One of the
issues that the delegates plan to discuss in June at Rio+20 is the role of
agriculture in climate change. A recent article written by a team of scientists
says agriculture should be a top priority in climate change negotiations. It
says there was some progress in this area, but not much, at the United Nations
climate conference in December in Durban, South Africa. The article "What Next
for Agriculture After Durban?" appeared in the journal Science. Britain's chief
scientific adviser, Sir John Beddington, led the international team that wrote
it to try to influence policy makers.Molly Jahn from the University of
Wisconsin-Madison was one of those authors. She says efforts to guarantee food
security are falling short "in significant ways that have come to our attention,
especially recently with the significant price shocks." Prices on the world
market have remained high since the food crisis of two thousand seven and two
thousand eight. Professor Jahn says agriculture is a major producer of
greenhouse gases blamed for trapping heat in the atmosphere. But agriculture
also offers ways to lessen their effects with known and proven farming
practices. She says agriculture is "threatened by climate change, especially in
vulnerable parts of the world." But agriculture also represents "an opportunity
to better manage meeting our needs, while we reduce the emissions of various
greenhouse gases that are accumulating in the atmosphere."Professor Jahn says
moving toward "climate-smart agriculture" should be at the center of policy
considerations. The scientists call for reducing the huge amount of food that
gets wasted or goes bad before it can be eaten. Another recommendation is to
plant more crops that put less pressure on the environment. The article says the
"integration of agriculture in the climate change negotiating process" has been
moving slowly. At the same time climate change and population growth have been
moving much faster. The article calls on scientists to play a bigger part in the
issue by making sure climate change negotiators have clear data available. Such
information, they say, could help increase investment in agriculture. For VOA
Special English, I'm Carolyn Presutti.
(Adapted from a radio program
broadcast 21Feb2012)
원문출처 : http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RtTa7khE48Q&feature=youtube_gdata
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