Livestock sector, mitigation and adaptation to climate change: state of knowledge and research issues

Climate change is a global process, of recent origin in its current form, and largely manmade. In the near future, the dynamic of which it is a part, is set to cause long?lasting changes in global agriculture. At the same time, agriculture is recognized to be one of the main manmade causes of the process. The expected exhaustion of fossil fuel resources, population growth, and the rapid development of emerging countries in which demand for energy and for improved food is high (China, Brazil, India, etc) have triggered behaviour that has only made matters worse. The emergence of bioenergies as a major new agricultural outlet and the land grabbing phenomenon are both signs of and exacerbating factors in the shortages affecting food security and the environment; affecting the very stability of societies and the major global equilibria. Climate change calls for unprecedented efforts on the part of the international scientific community. Inside the global stakes, the main challenge is ensuring the food security of the world's poorest people. However, it is important not to restrict the debate to the issues traditionally addressed by research for development, or to be content with merely proposing more efficient production technologies, such as those of the green revolution, or the doubly green one, in order to ensure ecological intensification. Classical technology transfers and economic support from "North" to "South" will be not only inadequate, but largely irrelevant. In effect, the expected changes will be truly global, radical and structural, and will force a fundamental rethinking of the paradigms that guide research for development. The current challenge in livestock systems is to increase productions while drastically changing the ways actual systems impair global and local future development. This new paradigm result of some strategy errors of animal production sub?sectors related to the globalization of economy, the increasing demand in animal products, the new geopolitics of food, the weak knowledge of ecosystem resilience, the societal awareness for environmental issues. The publication of "Livestock Long Shadow" (FAO, 2006) brought a major step in the long history of animal production. It concluded a 3?4 decades period marked by significant scandals at global scale, such as BSE, growth hormones, dioxin, pollution of groundwater, lakes and rivers related to local livestock pressure , and others. In livestock production as well as in science "business as usual" attitude has no real future anymore. Driven by diversified stakeholders initiatives, policymakers raise new norms and rules in food safety and environmental impacts of animal productions. Animal production will still have to develop in order to satisfy the growing demand from consumers in the South. On a global scale, mitigating the impact of animal production on resources and the climate is a major challenge for animal scientists. With regard to climate change, according to the FAO (2006), the global animal production sector directly or indirectly accounts for 18% of global greenhouse gas emissions. Animal production systems worldwide vary significantly, and ensure a range of functions and services (food, capital, cash flow, labour force, fertilization, religion, donations, etc). These represent a major contribution to livelihoods in poor economies. With a view to sustainable development of livestock farming, boosting animal productions will merely mean adapting systems on a territorial scale while preserving or improving the multiple functions animals contribute. The tendency to intensify and concentrate industrial animal productions in periurban areas has led to surpluses and latent pollution. Conversely, in cropping systems, carbon and soil fertility losses, fragility of the systems and the demand for organic inputs remain still a major problem. Increased fertilizer costs, greenhouse gas emissions for production and transport, and the increasing scarcity of r