Welcome to the European Parliamentary Research Service podcast on agriculture and climate change.

Declining yields due to warmer temperatures and less rain. Biodiversity loss, increased risk of floods.

The impacts of climate change on European agriculture are irrefutable.

But what impact does agriculture have on climate change and what role can it play in helping

address this challenge? Stay with us.

In December 2019, the European Parliament declared a climate and environmental emergency in Europe and across the globe and called on the European Commission all member states and the major global institutions to take urgent and concrete action to limit global warming and biodiversity laws.

The Parliament also urged the new Commission to address the inconsistencies of EU policy

on the climate and environmental emergency through far-reaching reforms of EU policies,

including agricultural policy.

This appeal came just before the announcement of the European Green Deal,

an ambitious strategy that aims to make Europe the world's first climate-neutral continent by 2050.

And one can't talk climate change without talking agriculture, so let's have a look at that.

Data analysis and predictions suggest that climate change will have a different impact on the different regions,

with countries

in southern Europe suffering greater impact from global warming than those in Northern Europe.

So the Mediterranean region is likely to face declining yields due to more heat and less rain, which

also increases the risk of droughts, wildfires and biodiversity loss. In contrast to this, in the Atlantic and Boreal regions,

climate change will lead to more and stronger precipitation,

more damaging winter storms and increased risk of flooding,

and continental Europe is likely to become the New South.

But the agricultural sector is not only affected by climate change.

It also contributes significantly to it,

...