*The Climate Change-Agriculture Nexus in Drylands of Ethiopia DOI: http://dx.doi.org/10.5772/intechopen.103905*

#### **Table 1.**

*The characteristics of drylands in Ethiopia.*

radiation back to the surface of the earth and by doing so they have caused global warming and climate change [4, 5].

The emission of GHGs from anthropogenic activities such as industrial processes, land use change and agriculture are the main causes of climate change. As indicated in **Figure 1**, agriculture's contribution to GHGs emissions is huge. It takes 14% of CO2, 47% of CH4 and 84% of N2O to make up the global share of GHGs emissions [2, 14, 16–19]. These gases are the most persuasive GHGs that are emitted from unsustainable agricultural practices [20–22]. In Ethiopia, agriculture contributed 80% of total country's GHGs emission. Of this, CH4, N2O and CO2 contributed 72%, 15% and 14% to aggregated emission respectively [23]. Agriculture includes cropland management; grazing land management/pasture improvement; management from agricultural

**Figure 1.** *Percentage global contribution of GHGs to climate change (Source: [14, 15]).*

organic soils; restoration of degraded lands; livestock management; manure/bio-solid management; and bioenergy production [2, 4, 19]. These practices can result in GHGs emissions such as CH4 from enteric fermentation and rice production, N2O emissions from soils, N2O and CH4 from manure management and biomass burning, and CO2 emissions and removals in agricultural soils. This in turn impacts agricultural developments by contributing to climate change.

To soothe the impacts of climate change, countries should act now, act together and act differently to stabilize the fractions of greenhouse gases in the atmosphere at a level that would also stabilize the climate system. This will give sufficient time to allow ecosystems to adapt naturally to climate change, to ensure that food production is not threatened and to enable economic development to proceed in a sustainable manner [24]. As was dealt in Kyoto Protocol, in order to promote sustainable agricultural development, countries should promote sustainable forms of agriculture in light of climate change [25]. Based on the results of the International Food Policy Research Institute [26], climate change was supposed to have reduced net crop revenue by −28% to −79% in Central Africa, by −7% to −32% in West Africa, by −12% to −17% in Southern Africa, by −11% to −12% in East Africa and by −4% to −7% in North Africa. In Ethiopia, the study by Deressa [26] showed that a unit increase in temperature during summer and winter would reduce net revenue by \$177.62 ha−1 and \$464.71 ha−1, respectively. On the other hand, the marginal impact of increasing precipitation during spring would increase net revenue by \$225.09 ha−1. How can agricultural GHGs emissions (**Table 2**) be reduced or sequestration enhanced while maintaining and even increasing food supply, particularly in dryland agriculture? As shown in **Figure 2**, this can be answered by adopting climate-compatible agricultural development strategies [29, 30].

*The Climate Change-Agriculture Nexus in Drylands of Ethiopia DOI: http://dx.doi.org/10.5772/intechopen.103905*


#### **Table 2.**

*Emission drivers in Ethiopia's agricultural sector.*

**Figure 2.** *Options of strategies and key issues in climate change-agricultural development nexus (Source: [29, 30]).*
