consideration must be given to the potential benefits for food and nutrition security, and thereby for human health and well-being, on the one hand, and to the need to avoid risks to human health, social justice and the environment, on the other. Adequate safeguards must be put in place to ensure that all concerns are protected, including environmental concerns, while leaving options open for future generations.

Programs designed to bring the benefits of biotechnology to small-scale farmers in the CWANA region should be supported, while seeking to ensure that the aims and the effects of using such technologies serve to reduce hunger and malnutrition. Such programs may also be directed toward enhancing farmers’ varieties or landraces that are already well adapted to local growing conditions, thereby adding specific value of interest to farmers.

The most urgent ethical task is to assess activities relating to food and agriculture in the light of their actual and potential impact on reducing poverty, hunger and malnutrition. There is a clear need to balance benefit to human health and the environment with risk. The risks are often unclear, speculative and impossible to test. The benefits of these new crops have not yet been fully demonstrated. People need to feel safe and assured that as far as possible their safety, their health and their beliefs have been taken into account before new forms of food products are introduced.

Although it is undoubtedly a useful exercise to observe the arguments and discussions other countries are having or have had when implementing agricultural biotechnology, it is in the end up to each country, whether industrialized or developing, to assess the benefits and risks as they may affect their own culture and environment, when deciding the best way forward (Kinderlerer and Adcock, 2005). As the potential impact of GMOs to both the environment and health is not entirely understood, many CWANA countries will probably take the precautionary approach and adopt the use of GMOs in farmers’ fields only very cautiously. It is uncertain that biotechnology research, particularly related to GMOs, will gain ground in CWANA in the near future, because religious and other social factors may cause people in the region to be hesitant to accept GMO seeds and food crops. Since, however, the possibility exists that farmers start growing GMOs spontaneously, as observed in Pakistan, AKST systems and governments need to develop pertinent regulations and put them in place.

5.2.1.7 Adaptation to and mitigation of global climate change

Adaptation. Since the subregions in CWANA will be affected differently by global climate change, adaptation options will have to be site and situation specific. In many areas of CWANA water is projected to become even scarcer (IPCC, 2007a) and therefore improved water resource management and efficient water use will be crucially important. Particularly for rainfed agriculture, technologies such as water harvesting and supplemental irrigation will become particularly important (Pandey et al., 2003). Small-scale irrigation technologies (SIMINetwork, 2006) will gain importance, especially for poor farmers (e.g., for off-season production); access to functioning savings and credit systems will be a prerequisite for small-scale farmers to be able to make the necessary investments. Various water storage options (reservoirs of different sizes, groundwater storage and recharge)

will have to be envisaged, particularly in the many areas in CWANA where summer precipitation will decrease (IPCC, 2007a). Investment in hydraulic infrastructure (rehabilitation, maintenance and new establishment) will be required to increase the reliability of water supply under increased water scarcity. Nevertheless, more frequent extreme rainfall events with high intensity will require increased focus on floodwater management, such as the design of dams and other infrastructure for flood protection, and soil surface management to reduce runoff and soil erosion through increased infiltration.

Various options exist to face the increasing threat of land degradation and desertification due to reduced vegetative cover as a result of changing climate, increased erosion by heavy rainfall, and climate-induced changes in land use, which leaves soils more vulnerable to degradation. Promoting vegetative soil cover and reducing soil disturbance should be the principle objectives in this regard. Cover crops and green manures, improved fallows and agroforestry practices, conservation tillage and adequate crop residue management will play important roles in protecting land against degradation induced by climate change. Soil and water conservation technologies in general (see Liniger and Critchley, 2007) will certainly gain importance in coping with the adverse effects of climatic changes in CWANA. Conservation agriculture has shown strong resilience to climatic abnormities in Central American highlands according to recent studies (Cherrett, 1999; Holt-Gimenez, 2002). Saltwater intrusion and increased salinity threats may require changes in production systems in certain areas, such as for flooded rice or aquaculture, besides adaptations with regard to species and varieties cultivated. Adaptations in rangeland management will become even more important in view of the predicted climatic changes in CWANA.

Cropping systems management will have to be adapted to changed climatic conditions. Changes may entail introducing new crops and varieties adapted for duration, tolerance and water demand, in crop rotations. Diversifying production portfolios as a strategy to cope with risk might become an important option. Currently underutilized crop species could play an important role in adapting cropping systems and varieties to changed climatic conditions. Introducing new cropping patterns adapted to site-specific conditions will require increased use of modern technologies such as crop simulation modeling and GIS for long-term planning to assess and reduce risks related to changed practices.

Crop breeding will have to focus particularly on improving tolerance to abiotic stress. For rainfed conditions, drought tolerance, early growth vigor for rapid establishment and phonological adaptation to changed climatic conditions are of particular importance. Improving heat tolerance will be a challenge for many crops, such as wheat and rice, to avoid significant yield reductions due to temperatures that will be generally or periodically higher. Since salinity problems will increase with saltwater intrusion and higher evapotranspiration, efforts to increase salinity tolerance of crop species will receive still more attention. Genomic tools might speed up conventional breeding efforts to achieve important breeding objectives. Maintaining biodiversity to exploit genetic diversity in semiarid ecosystems will facilitate adaptation to climate change.