Climate change and hunger: Estimating costs of adaptation in the agrifood system
Climate change and hunger: Estimating costs of adaptation in the agrifood system

Author: Sulser, Timothy

Publisher: Intl Food Policy Res Inst

Published: 2021-06-16

Total Pages: 62

ISBN-13:

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This report assesses the cost of adaptation to climate change across a range of future climate scenarios and investment options. We focus on offsetting climate change impacts on hunger through investment in agricultural research, water management, and rural infrastructure in developing countries. We link climate, crop, water, and economic models to (1) analyze scenarios of future change in the agriculture sector to 2050 and (2) assess trade-offs for these investments across key Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) for poverty, hunger, and water. Our reference projections show that climate change slows progress toward eliminating hunger, with an additional 78 million people facing chronic hunger in 2050 relative to a no-climate-change future, over half of them in Africa south of the Sahara. Increased investments can offset these impacts. Achieving this would require that annual investment in international agricultural research increase from US$1.62 billion to US$2.77 billion per year between 2015 and 2050. Additional water and infrastructure investments are estimated to be more expensive than agricultural R&D at about US$12.7 billion and US$10.8 billion per year, respectively, but these address key gaps to support transformation toward food system resiliency. Findings on ranges of costs and trade-offs and complementarities across SDGs will help policymakers make better-informed choices between alternative investment strategies.

State of Food and Agriculture
State of Food and Agriculture

Author: Food and Agriculture Organization

Publisher: Food & Agriculture Organization

Published: 2017-01-12

Total Pages: 196

ISBN-13: 9789251093740

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Unless action is taken now to make agriculture more sustainable, productive and resilient, climate change impacts will seriously compromise food production in countries and regions that are already highly food-insecure. The Paris Agreement, adopted in December 2015, represents a new beginning in the global effort to stabilize the climate before it is too late. It recognizes the importance of food security in the international response to climate change, as reflected by many countries prominent focus on the agriculture sector in their planned contributions to adaptation and mitigation. To help put those plans into action, this report identifies strategies, financing opportunities, and data and information needs. It also describes transformative policies and institutions that can overcome barriers to implementation. The State of Food and Agriculture is produced annually. Each edition contains an overview of the current global agricultural situation, as well as more in-depth coverage of a topical theme."

Climate Change and Food Security
Climate Change and Food Security

Author: David B. Lobell

Publisher: Springer Science & Business Media

Published: 2009-12-21

Total Pages: 400

ISBN-13: 9048129524

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Roughly a billion people around the world continue to live in state of chronic hunger and food insecurity. Unfortunately, efforts to improve their livelihoods must now unfold in the context of a rapidly changing climate, in which warming temperatures and changing rainfall regimes could threaten the basic productivity of the agricultural systems on which most of the world’s poor directly depend. But whether climate change represents a minor impediment or an existential threat to development is an area of substantial controversy, with different conclusions wrought from different methodologies and based on different data. This book aims to resolve some of the controversy by exploring and comparing the different methodologies and data that scientists use to understand climate’s effects on food security. In explains the nature of the climate threat, the ways in which crops and farmers might respond, and the potential role for public and private investment to help agriculture adapt to a warmer world. This broader understanding should prove useful to both scientists charged with quantifying climate threats, and policy-makers responsible for crucial decisions about how to respond. The book is especially suitable as a companion to an interdisciplinary undergraduate or graduate level class.

The State of Food Security and Nutrition in the World 2018
The State of Food Security and Nutrition in the World 2018

Author: Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations

Publisher: Food & Agriculture Org.

Published: 2018-09-14

Total Pages: 278

ISBN-13: 9251305722

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New evidence this year corroborates the rise in world hunger observed in this report last year, sending a warning that more action is needed if we aspire to end world hunger and malnutrition in all its forms by 2030. Updated estimates show the number of people who suffer from hunger has been growing over the past three years, returning to prevailing levels from almost a decade ago. Although progress continues to be made in reducing child stunting, over 22 percent of children under five years of age are still affected. Other forms of malnutrition are also growing: adult obesity continues to increase in countries irrespective of their income levels, and many countries are coping with multiple forms of malnutrition at the same time – overweight and obesity, as well as anaemia in women, and child stunting and wasting.

Tackling Climate Change Through Livestock
Tackling Climate Change Through Livestock

Author: Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations

Publisher: Food & Agriculture Org.

Published: 2013

Total Pages: 139

ISBN-13: 925107920X

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Greenhouse gas emissions by the livestock sector could be cut by as much as 30 percent through the wider use of existing best practices and technologies. FAO conducted a detailed analysis of GHG emissions at multiple stages of various livestock supply chains, including the production and transport of animal feed, on-farm energy use, emissions from animal digestion and manure decay, as well as the post-slaughter transport, refrigeration and packaging of animal products. This report represents the most comprehensive estimate made to-date of livestocks contribution to global warming as well as the sectors potential to help tackle the problem. This publication is aimed at professionals in food and agriculture as well as policy makers.

The impact of disasters and crises on agriculture and food security: 2021
The impact of disasters and crises on agriculture and food security: 2021

Author: Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations

Publisher: Food & Agriculture Org.

Published: 2021-03-17

Total Pages: 245

ISBN-13: 9251340714

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On top of a decade of exacerbated disaster loss, exceptional global heat, retreating ice and rising sea levels, humanity and our food security face a range of new and unprecedented hazards, such as megafires, extreme weather events, desert locust swarms of magnitudes previously unseen, and the COVID-19 pandemic. Agriculture underpins the livelihoods of over 2.5 billion people – most of them in low-income developing countries – and remains a key driver of development. At no other point in history has agriculture been faced with such an array of familiar and unfamiliar risks, interacting in a hyperconnected world and a precipitously changing landscape. And agriculture continues to absorb a disproportionate share of the damage and loss wrought by disasters. Their growing frequency and intensity, along with the systemic nature of risk, are upending people’s lives, devastating livelihoods, and jeopardizing our entire food system. This report makes a powerful case for investing in resilience and disaster risk reduction – especially data gathering and analysis for evidence informed action – to ensure agriculture’s crucial role in achieving the future we want.

Food Security, Food Prices and Climate Variability
Food Security, Food Prices and Climate Variability

Author: Molly E. Brown

Publisher: Routledge

Published: 2014-06-05

Total Pages: 282

ISBN-13: 1135096333

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The agriculture system is under pressure to increase production every year as global population expands and more people move from a diet mostly made up of grains, to one with more meat, dairy and processed foods. This book uses a decade of primary research to examine how weather and climate, as measured by variations in the growing season using satellite remote sensing, has affected agricultural production, food prices and access to food in food-insecure regions of the world. The author reviews environmental, economics and multidisciplinary research to describe the connection between global environmental change, changing weather conditions and local staple food price variability. The context of the analysis is the humanitarian aid community, using the guidance of the USAID Famine Early Warning Systems Network and the United Nation’s World Food Program in their response to food security crises. These organizations have worked over the past three decades to provide baseline information on food production through satellite remote sensing data and agricultural yield models, as well as assessments of food access through a food price database. These datasets are used to describe the connection, and to demonstrate the importance of these metrics in overall outcomes in food-insecure communities.

Climate change: Unpacking the burden on food safety
Climate change: Unpacking the burden on food safety

Author: Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations

Publisher: Food & Agriculture Org.

Published: 2020-03-01

Total Pages: 176

ISBN-13: 9251322937

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Climate change is causing unprecedented damage to our ecosystem. Increasing temperatures, ocean warming and acidification, severe droughts, wildfires, altered precipitation patterns, melting glaciers, rising sea levels and amplification of extreme weather events have direct implications for our food systems. While the impacts of such environmental factors on food security are well known, the effects on food safety receive less attention. The purpose of Climate change: Unpacking the burden on food safety is to identify and attempt to quantify some current and anticipated food safety issues that are associated with climate change. The food safety hazards considered in the publication are foodborne pathogens and parasites, harmful algal blooms, pesticides, mycotoxins and heavy metals with emphasis on methylmercury. There is also, a dedicated section on the benefits of forward-looking approaches such as horizon scanning and foresight, which will not only aid in anticipating future challenges in a shifting global food safety landscape, but also help build resilient food systems that can be continually updated as more knowledge is assimilated. By building a more widespread and better understanding of the consequences climate change has on food safety, it is hoped that this document will aid in fostering stronger international cooperation in making our food safer by reducing the global burden of these concerns.