Integrating climate change, food prices and population health

Food Policy ◽  
2013 ◽  
Vol 43 ◽  
pp. 56-66 ◽  
Author(s):  
Catherine Bradbear ◽  
Sharon Friel
2014 ◽  
Vol 2 (1) ◽  
pp. 86 ◽  
Author(s):  
Phindile Shongwe ◽  
Micah B. Masuku ◽  
Absalom M. Manyatsi

The increased involvement of food relief agencies nearly on an annual basis is a clear indication that agricultural production continues to decline as a result of climate change. In order to mitigate the negative effect of climate change, households engage on adaptation strategies. The extent to which these impacts are felt depends mostly on the level of adaptation in response to climate change. The main objectives of the study were to identify the adaptation strategies employed by households and to analyse factors influencing the choice of adaptation strategies by households using personal interviews. The study used data from a random sample of 350 households. Descriptive statistics and multinomial logistic regression model were used to analyse the data. The results showed that adaptation strategies employed were; drought tolerant varieties, switching crops, irrigation, crop rotation, mulching, minimum tillage, early planting, late planting and intercropping. The results showed that the choice of adaptation strategies by households was significantly (p <0.05) influenced by; age of household head, occupation of household head, being a member of a social group, land category, access to credit, access to extension services and training, high incidences of crop pest and disease, high input prices, high food prices, perceptions of households towards climate change. Moreover, the analysis showed that perceptions of households towards climate change significantly influence all adaptation strategies. However, sex and education level of the household head were insignificant in influencing household choice when adapting to climate change. It is recommended that there is need to educate households about the negative impact of climate change on cropping systems. The study also recommends that agriculture extension services should be strengthened, agriculture financial institutions should accommodate subsistence farmers on communal land and rural micro-finance institutions should be developed, in order to facilitate farmers to choose effective adaptation strategies. 


2018 ◽  
Vol 10 (10) ◽  
pp. 3673 ◽  
Author(s):  
Shinichiro Fujimori ◽  
Toshichika Iizumi ◽  
Tomoko Hasegawa ◽  
Jun’ya Takakura ◽  
Kiyoshi Takahashi ◽  
...  

Changes in agricultural yields due to climate change will affect land use, agricultural production volume, and food prices as well as macroeconomic indicators, such as GDP, which is important as it enables one to compare climate change impacts across multiple sectors. This study considered five key uncertainty factors and estimated macroeconomic impacts due to crop yield changes using a novel integrated assessment framework. The five factors are (1) land-use change (or yield aggregation method based on spatially explicit information), (2) the amplitude of the CO2 fertilization effect, (3) the use of different climate models, (4) socioeconomic assumptions and (5) the level of mitigation stringency. We found that their global impacts on the macroeconomic indicator value were 0.02–0.06% of GDP in 2100. However, the impacts on the agricultural sector varied greatly by socioeconomic assumption. The relative contributions of these factors to the total uncertainty in the projected macroeconomic indicator value were greater in a pessimistic world scenario characterized by a large population size, low income, and low yield development than in an optimistic scenario characterized by a small population size, high income, and high yield development (0.00%).


Author(s):  
Jürgen Scheffran ◽  
Peter Michael Link ◽  
Janpeter Schilling

Climate change was conceived as a “risk multiplier” that could exacerbate security risks and conflicts in fragile regions and hotspots where poverty, violence, injustice, and social insecurity are prevalent. The linkages have been most extensively studied for the African continent, which is affected by both climate change and violent conflict. Together with other drivers, climate change can undermine human security and livelihoods of vulnerable communities in Africa through different pathways. These include variability in temperature and precipitation; weather extremes and natural disasters, such as floods and droughts; resource problems through water scarcity, land degradation, and food insecurity; forced migration and farmer–herder conflict; and infrastructure for transport, water, and energy supply. Through these channels, climate change may contribute to humanitarian crises and conflict, subject to local conditions for the different regions of Africa. While a number of statistical studies find no significant link between reduced precipitation and violent conflict in Africa, several studies do detect such a link, mostly in interaction with other issues. The effects of climate change on resource conflicts are often indirect, complex, and linked to political, economic, and social conflict factors, including social inequalities, low economic development, and ineffective institutions. Regions dependent on rainfed agriculture are more sensitive to civil conflict following droughts. Rising food prices can contribute to food insecurity and violence. Water scarcity and competition in river basins are partly associated with low-level conflicts, depending on socioeconomic variables and management practices. Another conflict factor in sub-Saharan Africa are shifting migration routes of herders who need grazing land to avoid livestock losses, while farmers depend on land for growing their harvest. Empirical findings reach no consensus on how climate vulnerability and violence interact with environmental migration, which also could be seen as an adaptation measure strengthening community resilience. Countries with a low human development index (HDI) are particularly vulnerable to the double exposure to natural disasters and armed conflict. Road and water infrastructures influence the social and political consequences of climate stress. The high vulnerabilities and low adaptive capacities of many African countries may increase the probability of violent conflicts related to climate change impacts.


Climate ◽  
2020 ◽  
Vol 8 (2) ◽  
pp. 35 ◽  
Author(s):  
Jon Hellin ◽  
Jean Balié ◽  
Eleanor Fisher ◽  
Ajay Kohli ◽  
Melanie Connor ◽  
...  

Climate change will continue to have a largely detrimental impact on the agricultural sector worldwide because of predicted rising temperatures, variable rainfall, and an increase in extreme weather events. Reduced crop yields will lead to higher food prices and increased hardship for low income populations, especially in urban areas. Action on climate change is one of the Sustainable Development Goals (SDG 13) and is linked to the Paris Climate Agreement. The research challenge posed by climate change is so complex that a trans-disciplinary response is required, one that brings together researchers, practitioners, and policy-makers in networks where the lines between “research” and “development” become deliberately blurred. Fostering such networks will require researchers, throughout the world, not only to work across disciplines but also to pursue new South–North and South–South partnerships incorporating policy-makers and practitioners. We use our diverse research experiences to describe the emergence of such networks, such as the Direct Seeded Rice Consortium (DSRC) in South and Southeast Asia, and to identify lessons on how to facilitate and strengthen the development of trans-disciplinary responses to climate change.


2011 ◽  
Vol 60 (3) ◽  
Author(s):  
Gernot Klepper ◽  
Mareike Lange

AbstractClimate change is one of the grand challenges of this century, but so is the eradication of hunger which is still present for roughly one billion people mainly in tropical countries. Both climate change and climate mitigation have an impact on the availability of food, especially in those regions that are particularly poor. Climate change is expected to affect most strongly the tropical regions thus reducing further the availability of suitable production conditions for agriculture. Climate mitigation can reduce the climate induced risk to food security, at the same time it has also a negative impact on food prices. First of all, climate policies raise the cost of energy which is an important component of the cost of agriculture. More importantly, many countries join the EU in supporting bioenergy production which directly competes with food production thus raising food prices. The world’s poor are most affected by such price increases since they spend most of their income on food products. Thus, increasing food prices directly translate into increasing hunger for those people. The current EU bioenergy policies are not yet strong enough to have a large impact on world markets. However, in the future bioenergy may pose a threat to food security for the poor.


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