Global Change Biology

This paper had been presented for promotion at the university of Khartoum. To get the full text please contact the other at Elnour_elsiddig@yahoo.comFeeding nine to ten billion people by 2050 and preventing dangerous climate change are two of the greatest challenges facing humanity. Both challenges must be met whilst reducing the impact of land management on ecosystem services that deliver vital goods and services, and support human health and well being. Few studies to date have considered the interactions between these challenges. In this study, we briefly outline the challenges, review the production- and demand-side climate mitigation potential available in the Agriculture, Forestry and Other Land Use (AFLOU) sector, and options for delivering food security. We briefly outline some of the synergies and trade-offs afforded by mitigation practices, before presenting an assessment of the mitigation potential possible in the AFOLU sector under possible future food security scenarios. We conclude that whilst production-side mitigation measures might either enhance or negatively impact food security, demand-side mitigation measures should benefit both food security and greenhouse gas (GHG) mitigation. Our analysis provides support for the hypothesis that consumption-based measures offer a greater potential in meeting both challenges than do production-side measures, but given the size of the challenges, all options need to be considered. Production-side measures should be implemented immediately, focussing on those that improve agricultural efficiency and allow the production of more agricultural product per unit of input, so that both GHG mitgation and food security benefit from the change in practice. For demand-side measures, given the difficulties in their implementation and the time taken for behaviour change to occur, policy should be introduced quickly, and should aim to co-deliver to other policy agendas, such as imroving environmental quality, or improving dietary health. It is clear that the problems facin