Barış Karapınar

Barış Karapınar teaches graduate courses in the areas of climate change economics and international trade at Boğaziçi (Bosporus) University in Istanbul.  He also serves in the Civil Society Organizations Panel of the United Nations Convention to Combat Desertification (UNCCD). He was a lead author of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change's (IPCC) Fifth Assessment Report on climate change impacts, adaptation, and vulnerability. He is currently part of the IPCC's technical committee.

Karapınar has worked as the Managing Director of the TEMA Foundation. He was a leader of a research program on trade and climate change at the University of Bern in Switzerland. He has also worked for the Overseas Development Institute (ODI) in London. Karapınar holds a PhD in Development Studies from the London School of Economics and Political Science (LSE).  He pursued his undergraduate studies in Political Science and International Relations at Boğaziçi University. He is the lead editor of Food Crises and the WTO (Cambridge University Press, 2010) and Rethinking Structural Reform in Turkish Agriculture: Beyond the World Bank’s Strategy (Nova Science Publishers, 2010). He has engaged in policy consultancy for a number of international policy institutions, including the Swiss Agency for Development, the European Parliament, and the German Development Cooperation (GIZ).

Project: “Climate Change and Land: Leveraging the Synergies Between Adaptation and Mitigation through Sustainable Land Management in Turkey”

Land-related greenhouse gas emissions—from agriculture, forestry and other land use (AFOLU)—account for almost one-quarter of global total emissions. According to the IPCC, almost half of this amount is emitted from agricultural production while the rest come from land use and land-use change activities. Hence, limiting and reducing emissions in land sectors is critical in meeting global emission reduction targets in the context of the Paris Agreement. On the other hand, land and related livelihoods are increasingly exposed to the impacts of climate change, requiring substantial measures of adaptation too.

Land is a major natural sink of carbon, offering substantial capacity and potential for carbon sequestration. According to estimates, the total carbon in land systems amounts to 2500 GtC which is contained by vegetation and by soils in the form of carbon organic matter. The higher the organic matter of soil, often the higher its fertility. Hence, while soil offers ample capacity for carbon sequestration, and thus mitigation, higher soil organic matter improves vegetation productivity, which enhances the adaptation capacity of both ecosystems and societies that depend on land. In this context, this research study will assess the climate and land nexus in Turkey. It aims to identify areas of synergies between adaptation and mitigation, which could be unlocked through sustainable land management. It will review the scientific background of the composition of land-based GHG fluxes, it will estimate the carbon sequestration capacity of land and will assess how climate change affect both the natural and human systems that rely on land in Turkey. It will develop a set of policy recommendations.