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Parviz Koohafkan, Director, Environment, Climate Change and Bioenergy Division, UN FAO

There is concern that climate change could increase food insecurity due to the myriad interactions between climate variability and food systems, of which little is known. It is therefore critical that implications of climate change for food security are explored and understood, in order to respond efficiently and effectively.

INTRODUCTION

According to estimates from the UN Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO), the number of undernourished people in the world in 2000–2002 was 852 million. Of this, 815 million came from the developing countries, 28 million in the countries in transition and nine million in the developed market economies. According to the State Of the World Food and Agriculture report (SOFA), today’s estimated 820 million undernourished people in developing countries represent a marginal reduction of three million as against the 1990-1992 baselines of 823 million used by the World Food Summit.

CLIMATE CHANGE ASSESSMENT REPORT

The Fourth Assessment Report of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) on Climate Change Impacts, Adaptation and Vulnerability highlights observed changes in the natural and human environment as a result of climate change. The changes show that natural systems have been affected by climate change and temperature increases in particular. Changes include those in hydrological, terrestrial, biological and marine and freshwater systems. These changes have also impacted human systems, although specific impacts are hard to discern due to adaptation and non-climatic drivers. Some of the impacts include changes in agricultural and forestry management, impacts on human health and the reduced ability to undertake certain activities. Other observations, that cannot be verified as trends yet, include increased flooding risk due to glacial lake outbursts, warmer and drier conditions in parts of Africa and sea level rise impacting coastal development.

The food, fibre and forest products section makes a number of important points. These are:

• Crop productivity is projected to increase slightly at mid to high latitudes for local mean temperature increases of up to 1-3°C depending on the crop, and then decrease beyond that in some regions.
• At lower latitudes, especially seasonally dry and tropical regions, crop productivity is projected to decrease for even small local temperature increases of 1-2°C, which would increase the risk of hunger.
• Globally, the potential for food production is projected to increase with increases in local average temperature over a range of 1-3°C, but above this it is projected to decrease.
• Adaptations, such as altered cultivars and planting times, allow low and mid to high latitude cereal yields to be maintained at, or above, baseline yields for modest warming.
• Increases in the frequency of droughts and floods are projected to affect local production negatively, especially in subsistence sectors at low latitudes.
• Globally, commercial timber productivity rises modestly with climate change in the short to medium term, with large regional variability from the global trend.
• Regional changes in the distribution and production of particular fish species are expected due to continued warming, with adverse effects projected for aquaculture and fisheries.

THE NEED FOR ADAPTATION

The continuing impact of climate on many aspects of food systems is expected to grow in the coming century. The outcome of climate change occurs at the regional, national and local scale and requires an integrated response. Natural systems can only react to climate change, while human systems can adapt before the change has negative consequences. Adaptation depends on the adaptive capacity of the individual, systems, institutions and governments but also global community. This adaptive capacity or ability to make changes can depend on many things including resources, knowledge about change and options for adapting, policies, norms and social capital among other things. In order to reduce the negative impacts of change on food security it is necessary to adapt, although the specific impact of climate change on regions and systems should first be established.

When assessing opportunities for adapting food systems to climate change, it is also critical to acknowledge
how food systems contribute to emissions and how elements of the food system could mitigate these emissions by changing agronomic, management and processing practices.

CLIMATE CHANGE IMPACTS ON FOOD AND AGRICULTURE

The social and economic costs of not responding to climate change are generally seen to be much higher than the costs of taking immediate corrective action. There is much better understanding today about the regional and continental impacts, although there remain uncertainties as to when, where and how climate change will affect specific countries. Changes in temperature and precipitation and an increase in extreme weather events are likely to change food production potential in many areas of the world, especially Africa and Asia.

There is the potential to disrupt food distribution systems and infrastructure and to change the purchasing power of, for example, the rural poor.

FAO, in collaboration with the International Institute of Applied Systems Analysis (IIASA), has developed the Agro-Ecological Zones (AEZ) methodology, a worldwide spatial soil and climate suitability database. The AEZ approach has been used by IIASA to quantify regional impacts and geographical shifts in agricultural land and productivity potentials and the implications for food security resulting from climate change and variability. The analysis indicates that, on average, industrialised countries could gain in production potential, while developing countries may lose. Findings show that the potential impact of a changing distribution of water availability for food and agricultural production and food security include:

• Global agricultural production potential is likely to rise with increases in global average temperature up to about 3°C, but above this it is very likely to decrease.
• Cold climates would benefit from higher temperatures and new agricultural land may become available at high latitudes and high elevations.
• There is significant potential for expansion of suitable land and increased production potential for cereals only when considering the use of ‘new land’ made available by the warming of these cold climates at high latitudes.
• At lower latitudes, especially the seasonally dry tropics, crop yield potential is likely to decrease for even small global temperature increases, which would increase risk of hunger.
• Increased frequency of droughts and floods would affect local production negatively, especially in subsistence sectors at low latitudes. This will have much more serious consequences for chronic and transitory food insecurity and for sustainable development than shifts in the patterns of average temperature and precipitation.

EMERGING CHALLENGES TO ADDRESS CLIMATE CHANGE IN AGRICULTURE

It is clear that the countries which are most vulnerable to climate change impacts also tend to be the poorest ones. In addition, they do not have the means, eg data, observations, methods, tools, technical and institutional infrastructure capacity building, to deal with this new situation.

Even with effective mitigation and reduction of greenhouse gases there will be a need to equally promote adaptation. Developed countries are aiming to reduce their greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions by five per cent below 1990 levels, but much higher reductions in emissions (60 per cent for carbon dioxide, 15-20 per cent for methane and 70-80 per cent for nitrous oxide) are needed to stabilise GHG concentrations at current levels. More efficient strategies for mitigation are a key challenge for developed countries in particular. Adaptation will be crucial in both developed as well as developing countries but will be a key challenge for the least developed countries.

People living in the least developing countries (LDC) where economic reliance on natural resources and rain-fed agriculture is high, in low altitude small island developing states (SIDS) or in marginal areas such as drylands or mountains, face additional challenges through climate change due to limited access to management options which could reduce impacts. In addition, they will be affected indirectly through prices, food availability on markets and job opportunities. Climate adaptation strategies must reflect such circumstances in terms of the speed of the response and the choice of options.

In the context of adaptation, assistance should be focused on helping poor and vulnerable people and their countries in particular, to strengthen their livelihoods and improve their capacity to adapt. Climate change adaptation should be a specific area within development policy/assistance and within poverty alleviation strategies in particular, with its own criterion of adaptive capacity to measure success among vulnerable groups.

In terms of agricultural production there will be winners and losers. The losers will most likely be those who are least responsible for greenhouse gas emissions. The geographical areas of anticipated losses are notably located in the tropics and in developing countries where the adaptation potential is limited. There is a strong demand to establish a global responsibility system, functioning mechanisms for compensation, including Clean Development Mechanism (CDM) and fair trade agreements which consider the impacts of climate change and production patterns and payment for environmental services.

A framework for climate change adaptation

Key pillars for a framework to address climate change adaptation in agriculture in LDCs and SIDs countries need to be defined. Such a framework needs to be directed simultaneously along several interrelated lines:

• Legal and institutional elements – decision making, institutional mechanisms, legislation, tenure and ownership, regulatory tools, legal principles, governance and coordination arrangements, resource allocation, networking civil society; strengthening local institutions and demand led rural service provision.
• Policy and planning elements – risk assessment and monitoring, analysis, strategy formulation, sectoral measures; involving poor people in natural resource governance, planning and policy.
• Livelihood elements – food security, hunger, poverty, promotion of indigenous good practices for risk management and development; strengthening through livelihood diversification social resilience, access to productive assets; offering exit strategies, where needed, from agriculture sectors.
• Cropping livestock, forestry, fisheries and integrated farming system elements – food crops, cash crops, growing season, crop suitability, livestock fodder and grazing, non-timber forest products, aquaculture, water management, land use planning, soil fertility, soil organisms; new technologies in the agriculture forestry and fisheries sectors and natural resource use under variable rainfall regimes.
• Tailored strategies and decision support tools for risk aware management (including small scale assets) in agriculture, livestock, fisheries and agroforestry.
• Ecosystem elements – species composition, biodiversity, resilience, ecosystem goods and services.
• Linking climate change adaptation processes and technologies for promoting carbon sequestration, substitution of fossil fields and use of bioenergy.

Ways of working may need to change. Since it is likely that agro-ecological zones and farming systems may slowly change, there is a need to promote more holistic approaches and systems thinking when addressing climate change. Partnerships building, at and between all levels, on research, development and policy are crucial. Systems approaches would need to address a variety of factors in an integrated way and with more political commitment, such as:

• Combining risk reduction with productivity and natural resource management objectives.
• Democratic accountability, governance and planning.
• Better linking the local, where much of the adaptation and research is conducted, to the global, where policy debates are and instruments, such as conventions, are formed.

A wide range of basic tools and methods to interact and communicate with local people and decision makers have been developed and used successfully in the context of our ongoing development work. These will be as suitable in the context of a more systems-oriented way of approaching climate change issues. There is no need to reinvent the wheel but rather to build on what we have.

New research strategies

New research strategies may be needed to provide focused and demand responsive scientific and external support. The capabilities of poor people, rather than their vulnerability per se, provide a starting point for demand led research for development that can moderate the negative effects of climate change and empower people to take hold of opportunities. Research strategies should evolve beyond ‘more of the same’ to respond flexibly to new challenges. In line with production and sustainability oriented research portfolios, they need to also focus on the emerging knowledge gaps such as:

• How to address longer term ecosystem change.
• The risk of changing disease and pest patterns.
• Better understanding of related institutional issues; who to do what, incentive systems, and how to reinforce adaptation.
• Better understanding of location and time specific dimensions of the political–economic contexts of existing development and expected change.
• Better understanding of how poor people can optimise new knowledge in a context of competing demands; what encourages the uptake of innovations more effectively.
• Incorporating economic drivers better in modeling work related to climate change.
• How to better link livelihood diversification strategies with agriculture, natural resource management and environmental services.

Author

Dr Parviz Koohafkan is Director of the Environment, Climate Change and Bioenergy Division (NRC) in the Natural Resources Management and Environment Department (NRD) of the UN Food and Agriculture Organization. Dr Koohafkan worked as Assistant Professor in Ecole Nationale des Genies Rurales des Eaux et Forêts (ENGREF), Montpellier, France, from 1982 to 1985 and joined FAO in 1985 as team leader in the natural resources management programme. He joined FAO Headquarters in 1991 as Senior Officer in sustainable development and was appointed as Service Chief in the Land and Water Development Division of FAO in 1996. From 2005-2006, he was Director of the Rural Development Division in the Sustainable Development Department.

Organisation

The Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations leads international efforts to defeat hunger. Serving both developed and developing countries, FAO acts as a neutral forum where all nations meet as equals to negotiate agreements and debate policy. FAO is also a source of knowledge and information. We help developing countries and countries in transition modernise and improve agriculture, forestry and fisheries practices and ensure good nutrition for all.

Enquiries

FAO Headquarters
Viale delle Terme di Caracalla
00153 Rome, Italy
Tel: +39 06 57051
Fax: +39 06 570 53152
E-mail:

Picture credits: Dr Parviz Koohafkan