11.9.1.4 Industry

Synergies and conflicts between mitigation and adaptation in the industry sector are highly site-specific (see 7.8). It is assumed that large firms would not be as vulnerable to flood risks or weather extremes since they have access to more financial and technical resources. There appears to be no literature indicating explicitly how industry could design its manufacturing and operating processes in such a way that, by adapting to possible climate change events, it can also help to reduce GHG emissions associated with their operations. It is obvious, however, that reducing energy demand would be a good adaptive and mitigative strategy if power supply (from hydro power, for example) were at risk from climate change (Subak et al., 2000). Reducing dependence on cooling water may also be a good adaptive strategy in some locations, but the impact on emissions is not clear.

11.9.1.5 Agriculture and forestry

Most of the literature relating to mitigation-adaptation linkages concerns the agriculture and forestry sectors. In particular, there is a growing awareness of the unique contribution that such synergies could provide for the rural poor, particularly in the least developed countries: many measures focusing on sustainable natural resource management policies could provide both significant adaptation and mitigation benefits, mostly in the form of sequestration activities (Gundimeda, 2004; Morlot and Agrawala, 2004; Murdiyarso et al., 2004). Agriculture is, of course, extremely vulnerable to the impact of climate change, that affects all aspects related to crop land management, and particularly areas related to water management (see Sections 8.5 and 8.8). Low-tillage practices are an example of a win-win technology that reduces erosion and the use of fossil fuels. As discussed in the energy section, bioenergy can of course play a significant role in mitigating global GHG emissions, although the full lifecycle implications of bioenergy options, including effects on deforestation and agriculture, need to be taken into account.

In the forestry sector, policies and measures often take neither adaptation nor mitigation into account (Huq and Grubb, 2004). There is increasing recognition that forestry mitigation projects can often have significant adaptation benefits, particularly in the areas of forest conservation, afforestation and reforestation, biomass energy plantations, agro-forestry, and urban forestry. These projects provide shading, and reduce water evaporation and vulnerability to heat stress. And many adaptation projects in the forestry sector can involve mitigation benefits, including soil and water conservation, agroforestry and biodiversity conservation.

With regard to the increase of biomass energy plantations as a mitigation measure (see Section 11.3.1.4), there may be increased competition for land in many regions, with two crucial effects. First, increased pressure to cultivate what are currently non-agricultural areas may reduce the area available to natural ecosystems, increase fragmentation and restrain the natural adaptive capacity. Secondly, increasing land rents might make agronomically viable adaptation options unprofitable. An alternative view is that there is no shortage of land (Bot et al., 2000; Moreira, 2006), but of investment in land. In this view, the remedy consists of revenues derived from the energy sector (through the CDM, for example), both to raise land productivity through carbon-sequestering soil improvement and to co-produce food or fibre with biomass residuals for conversion to bioenergy products (Greene et al., 2004; Read, 2005; Faaij, 2006; Lehmann et al., 2006; Verchot et al., 2005). Recent studies suggest that technological progress in agriculture will outstrip population growth under a variety of SRES scenarios, leaving enough land for bioenergy cropping, in the most optimistic scenario, to meet all forecast demands for primary energy (Hoogwijk et al., 2005).

Mitigation may have a positive effect on adaptation in agriculture, depending on the circumstances. Additional employment in rural areas will raise incomes and reduce migration. Well-designed CDM projects can reduce the use of traditional biomass as fuel (Gundimeda, 2004) and replace it with marketable renewable fuels, providing a double benefit. There may be also benefits from some mitigation measures for human health, increasing the overall adaptive capacity of the population and making it less vulnerable to specific climate impacts (Tol and Dowlatabadi, 2001).