How does Climate Change alter Agricultural Strategies to Support Food Security?

CGIAR

Download

Abstract: In this paper we focus on the issue of how climate change affects the way that agricultural systems and the people that manage and govern them need to change in the next 20 years in order to achieve food security, and how FAO and CGIAR can support that change. We build on a huge body of literature on sustainable agricultural development and intensification, as well as work on nutrition security and resource use efficiency, much of which is articulated in other papers in this conference. As the results presented in the paper by Nelson and van der Mensbrugghe on Public Sector Agricultural Research Priorities for Sustainable Food Security for this conference indicate, the most significant impacts of climate change are expected to occur after 2050. In the intervening years, however, increased frequency and intensity of climate shocks such as drought, flooding and extreme temperatures are expected and already occurring (IPCC, 2012). Summarizing the effects of these major trends we find that essentially we are facing a global window of 15-20 years in which we need to increase the returns to agriculture amongst a growing population of poor and food insecure rural people in order to achieve food security and reduce poverty ? which are in and of themselves key to reducing vulnerability to climate change. Between 2020 and 2025 total rural population in developing countries will peak and then start to decline (IFAD, 2011). Some 70% of the food insecure people in the world are rural, directly or indirectly dependent on agriculture for income as well as food (IFAD, 2011). Rural poverty and hunger are concentrated in two locations: South Asia, with the greatest number of poor rural people, and sub-Saharan Africa, with the highest incidence of rural poverty. These two areas are also where the bulk of expected future population growth is 2 expected to occur, with some countries, mostly in sub-Saharan Africa, that could see population increases of 200 percent or more to the middle of this century. There is also some overlap between areas of food insecurity and climate change hotspots (Ericksen et. al. 2011) We know that GDP growth originating in agriculture has been found to be almost three times more effective in reducing poverty than growth in other sectors of the economy due not only to the direct poverty reduction effect but also from its potentially strong growth linkage effects on the rest of the economy (De Janvry and Sadoulet, 2010). Thus, the next 20 years are a critical window of time for accelerating the rate of agricultural growth in least developed countries to achieve food security and development for agriculturally-dependent populations. Reducing poverty and food insecurity over this period is in fact, an essential element of adapting to climate change, since it is the key means of reducing vulnerability and increasing the resilience of people to withstand and respond to climate change. However the agricultural growth for poverty reduction and food security needed for the next two decades requires departing from past models of development ? due to the exigencies of adapting to, and mitigating climate change. Much of what is called for in strategies for sustainable agricultural development and intensification are highly relevant in the context of agricultural growth for food security under climate change. In this paper we focus on the specifics of how climate change affects this broader agenda of action for change.