1. Working Party on Climate Change (WPCC) September 28, 2023
Update on the OECD work on climate change adaptation in agriculture
Guillaume Gruère (guillaume.gruere@oecd.org)
Acting Head, Agriculture and Resource Policies Division,
OECD Trade and Agriculture Directorate
Agriculture is one of the most vulnerable sectors to climate change, through temperature and
precipitation changes, the acceleration of the water cycle, and associated extreme weather events. The
Committee for Agriculture has undertaken a series of analyses in the last ten years on climate change
adaptation and related policy issues, including water risks and agriculture risk management and
resilience, in part under the Joint Working Party on Agriculture and the Environment (JWPAE). I will
here focus on the latest work in this area, covering two papers and an upcoming major report on
agriculture and climate change adaptation.
• In June 2023, a modelling analysis1
was published on the effects of enhanced international
agricultural trade on the impact of extreme weather events.
o The analysis suggests that trade integration makes countries less vulnerable to negative
yield shocks by mitigating the risk of extreme food prices and by stabilising food
availability.
o Although no model can capture the complex process and consequences of opening this
sector to trade, the report confirms that trade integration needs to be part of a wider
coherent policy package to improve food security.
• In July 2023, a policy report2
was published analysing how climate change adaptation policies
in OECD countries foster agricultural resilience, defined by the capacity of farmers to absorb,
adapt, and transform their agriculture production in response to climate change. Through a
stocktaking analysing of agricultural climate change adaptation programmes in UNFCCC
reporting documents, the report found that:
o OECD countries have invested in decision support tools, soil and water management, and
cultivar selection and breeding to address key vulnerabilities from drought and flooding,
yield losses, and declining soil health.
o Adaptation programmes to date predominantly seek to enhance adaptive capacity by
supporting incremental adjustments to agricultural production systems in the medium run.
o Efforts to enhance transformative capacity in the long run lag behind medium run
measures but are beginning to emerge in the form of collaborative planning and
multidisciplinary research.
• In parallel to this work, the annual agricultural policy monitoring and evaluation exercise was
used to ask the 54 OECD countries and emerging economies covered to describe their main
climate change adaptation policies. The results are featured in a special chapter of the upcoming
OECD agricultural policy monitoring and evaluation report 2023, which will be examined today
and tomorrow for declassification under the Working Party on Agricultural Policies and Markets.
o While results still have to be released, the draft report3
finds that governments have
adopted close to 600 measures for climate change adaptation. That said many measures
1 Adenäuer, M., C. Frezal and T. Chatzopoulos (2023), "Mitigating the impact of extreme weather events on agricultural
markets through trade", OECD Food, Agriculture and Fisheries Papers, No. 198, OECD Publishing, Paris,
https://doi.org/10.1787/aa584482-en .
2
Cobourn, K. (2023), "Climate change adaptation policies to foster resilience in agriculture: Analysis and stocktake based
on UNFCCC reporting documents", OECD Food, Agriculture and Fisheries Papers, No. 202, OECD Publishing, Paris,
https://doi.org/10.1787/5fa2c770-en.
3
Available on ONE under the cote [TAD/CA/APM/WP(2023)11] for declassification on September 29 by the WPAPM.

2. Working Party on Climate Change (WPCC) September 28, 2023
are plans rather than implemented measures, and there is insufficient monitoring and
assessment.
o We also analysed the effects of government support to agriculture and climate change
adaptation. The findings suggest that a large part of this support is made via measures that
reinforce agricultural production systems, limiting their agility to adapt to climate change.
o The report, entitled “ OECD Agricultural Policy Monitoring and Evaluation 2023:
Adapting Agriculture to Climate Change” will be launched by the Secretary General on
October 30, 2023.
o The findings of the report will be highlighted in a session of the OECD COP 28 Virtual
Pavilion on climate change adaptation in agriculture.
• New work under the PWB 2023-24 focuses on monitoring progress in adaptation and
exploring transformation towards climate change adaptation. As noted in the scoping paper
[COM/TAD/CA/ENV/EPOC(2023)4] presented to the JWPAE in April 2023:
o The first paper, conducted in collaboration with the Environment Directorate, will support
the development of policy indicators to measure progress towards adaptation policy
objectives.
o The second paper will build an empirical evidence base on agricultural transformation to
identify the factors that hamper or encourage transformation and to develop
corresponding policy recommendations to support transformative capacity.