coping with the impacts of climate change and efforts to promote sustainable development share some important common goals and determinants such as access to resources, equity in the distribution of resources, and abilities of de­cision-support mechanisms to cope with risks. Sustainable development can result in improved adaptation to climate change and enhance adaptive capacity (IPCC, 2007b; Ver-hagen et al., 2007). Climate change adds an extra challenge or constraint to existing obstacles to achieving the various social, ecological and economic objectives defining sustain­able development. For agrosystems, any changes in technol­ogies and institutional arrangements that increase flexibility and resilience regarding the different sustainability dimen­sions, will, in turn, increase their adaptive capacity/capabil­ity to cope with climate change.
     Impact of climatic change (a function of exposure and sensitivity of a system) and adaptive capacity determine the vulnerability of socioecological systems to climate change (Yohe and Tol, 2001).
     For Europe, the ATEAM (Advanced Terrestrial Ecosys­tem Analysis and Modeling) project constructed scenarios for a range of possible changes in socioeconomic conditions, land use patterns and climate to assess the vulnerability of the human-environment system to global change (Ewert et al., 2005; Schröter et al., 2005). Results from that assess­ment show that global change will have a large influence on ecosystem service provision in Europe. There is, however, a large heterogeneity in the projected vulnerability between regions. The Mediterranean region is projected to be most vulnerable, while northwestern European countries face the lowest impacts and show the greatest adaptive capacity (Metzger et al., 2006).
     For the United States, US agriculture on the whole can adapt (with either some net gains or some costs) if warming occurs at the lower end of the projected scale of magnitude (i.e., 2 to 3° C by the end of the century) and the variabil­ity level stays constant (Easterling et al., 2004). However, with a much larger magnitude of warming, even under op­timistic assumptions about adaptation capabilities, many sectors would experience higher losses and costs (Easterling et al., 2004). Canada will likely experience similar effects (Lemmen and Warren, 2004). In this context, another fea­ture that clearly distinguishes NAE agriculture from other regions is the significant high level of its current adaptive capacity. This is mainly due to the region's access to im­portant economic, technological and other resources which is better than that of other regions (Adger et al., 2005). It is also co-determined by the fact that relatively large areas have a relatively low exposure to climate change, compared to other regions.

5.4.6.3 Consequences forAKST
Options for dealing with the threats of climate change re­quire examination at regional and local scales. Questions include: how can emissions from agriculture and forestry be effectively reduced, how can agriculture and forestry best adapt under given local conditions, what role can biofuels play and, finally, what are the implications for AKST?
     There will be different requirements for AKST, depend­ing on future policy and societal choices, such as the de­gree of emission reduction, energy price increases, reduced

consumption, proactive adaptation and enhanced adaptive capacity.
     Some of the obvious consequences for AKST are given below. Furthermore, some suggestions are given on the ef­ficacy of different measures in reducing the vulnerability of agriculture and rural areas to climate change:
1.    AKST needs to generate the information required to im­prove climate modeling and scenario development. This includes developing improved methods for determining GHG emissions from agricultural activities and improv­ing our understanding of the carbon cycle.
2.    Another area that requires attention is the effectiveness of adaptation to today's climate variability (Adger et al., 2005); such lessons are important for better under­standing of vulnerabilities and measures needed for dif­ferent climatic risks.
3.    Improvement is also required in the area of climate change impact assessment methodologies—this refers to the modeling of multiple stresses as well as to the quantification of climate change scenarios on the whole range of ecosystems goods and services (Carter, 2007) and the effects of climate change on the quality of crop and animal production.
4.    More effort is required to develop knowledge and tools needed to support the design and evaluation of mitiga­tion and adaptation options for agriculture; this also includes more comprehensive cost-benefit analysis than now available (Stern et al., 2006; Carter, 2007). Com­prehensive energy-efficient agricultural systems need to receive particular attention.
5.    Likewise, more consideration needs to be given to the establishment of AKST multistakeholder approaches for designing and implementing feasible strategies at the farm and subnational scale. All actors need to be involved in a participatory planning process.
6.    There needs to be more focus on regional studies of impacts and mitigation/adaptation of climate change in agriculture, including assessments of the consequences on current efforts in agricultural policies for sustainable agriculture that also preserve environmental and social values in rural communities.
7.    The development of strategies to enhance the adaptive capacity of agroecosystems is a related issue that dwells on the generation of interdisciplinary knowledge and a willingness to better integrate different AKST activities across sectors and among stakeholders so that they be­come less vulnerable and risks are better managed.
8.    Finally, research should focus on creating productive and multifunctional land use systems in rural areas that aim to provide sustainable ecosystem services and employment. This should include, where necessary, res­toration of degraded lands and the integrated manage­ment of natural resources.

Where governments and citizens assume more responsibility for the environment and are proactive in terms of alleviating the threats of climate change, AKST activities will be more far-reaching and will require the provision of better infor­mation, appropriate technologies and multifunctional agri­cultural landscapes. However, where decisions on natural resources and the environment (including climate system)