The best-laid plans : Climate change and food security

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The best-laid plans1: Climate change and food security BEVERLY MCINTYRE1,*, YOON KIM2, JEAN FRUCI2 and ERIKA ROSENTHAL3 1

Helen Keller International, 2033K Street NW (6th floor, IFPRI), Washington, DC 20006, USA

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Independent Scholar

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Downloaded by [USAID Library] at 07:34 04 November 2013

Earthjustice, 1625 Massachusetts Avenue, NW, Washington, DC 20036, USA

The importance of climate-resilient food systems cannot be overstated – many of the countries with the greatest number of poor and hungry people are also those most vulnerable to climate change and variability (Ahmed et al., 2009). Yet the best-laid plans can go awry. Initiatives can inadvertently increase rather than decrease the vulnerability of poor people to climate change and variability (Scheraga and Grambsch, 1998; Adger et al., 2005; Barnett and O’Neill, 2010). Through this lens, we look at troubling aspects of some current African food security initiatives.

1. Reason to act Africa has historically been subject to high air temperatures, droughts, floods and environmental degradation (Washington et al., 2006). These realities have fuelled civil unrest and political conflict over natural resources, further undermining nutritional well-being and food security. Against this already precarious situation, anthropogenic climate change threatens the lives and livelihoods of millions, if not billions, of people throughout the world (Stern, 2010) and makes the challenge of food security in Africa more difficult and urgent. In cropping areas critical to national and regional food security where farmers are already struggling under current climate change and variability, future hydrological conditions are likely to be more extreme than those in the

past, and mean temperatures are projected to exceed historical observations in the next 10 – 15 years (Battisti and Naylor, 2009). A recent report by the Consultative Group on International Agricultural Research’s research programme on Climate Change, Agriculture and Food Security (CCAFS) projects that, by 2050, air temperatures above 308C will be common in East and Southern Africa and that shorter growing seasons in East and West Africa may make cropping an even more risky enterprise (Ericksen et al., 2011). Burke et al. (2009) suggest that by 2025 – 14 years’ time – in 4 years out of 10, the mean growing season temperature will be warmer than any experienced in the past for most areas planted to maize in Africa. Hence, rural livelihoods strategies may have to shift to increased dependence on livestock, or to increased off-farm income, or to leaving agriculture altogether (Jones and Thornton, 2009; Thornton et al., 2009). These impacts of climate change and variability will take a visible toll on the most vulnerable; by 2050, as calorie availability declines, child malnutrition is projected to increase by 20 per cent over a no-climate-change world (Nelson et al., 2009).

2. Existing food security initiatives Almost 2 years after nations signed the L’Aquila Statement committing funds to reduce hunger and pledging to couple food security actions

B *Corresponding author: E-mail: [email protected] CLIMATE AND DEVELOPMENT 3 (2011) 281–284 http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/17565529.2011.617564 # 2011 Taylor & Francis ISSN: 1756-5529 (print), 1756-5537 (online) www.tandfonline.com/tcld


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with climate change adaptation, initiatives abound, although many are far from fully funded. The US government launched the Feed the Future initiative; the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation expanded its Agricultural Development Program; the World Bank is managing the Global Agriculture and Food Security Program, a multi-donor trust fund; and the European Union is pursuing a Joint Programming Initiative on Agriculture, Food Security and Climate Change. Moreover, a wealth of strategies and information for incorporating climate change considerations into food security initiatives has been put forward. For example, in 2010, Global Environmental Change and Food Systems (GECAFS) included an assessment of adaptive responses in its report on 10 years of research (Ingram et al., 2010). One of the key messages from GECAFS is that achieving food security in a time of climate change will require understanding the impact on multiple sectors (agriculture, environment, trade, health, etc.). For example, in addition to evaluating how the crops and the ecosystems that underpin agriculture will respond, project designers should ask inter alia how labour availability will change where health may be compromised or where migration is prevalent, how livestock will fare given changes in water and fodder, how access to local, regional and international markets will change, and how changes in cropping system strategies will affect childhood nutrition. This kind of integrated thinking is essential to help ensure that initiatives ‘do no harm’. But there seems to be a disconnect between the guidance from the scientific community and implementation in the field. The recognition of complexity that GECAFS calls for to avoid negative social and environmental outcomes is not always evident. For example, throughout Africa, donors are focusing on a very limited number of value chain crops. This productivity framing gives short shrift to climate change considerations. Donors that have pledged to adhere to the Paris Declaration principle of country ownership and to respond to host country priorities

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should not be complicit in promoting crops that may not be viable under future climates. For example, in Senegal, donors are currently supporting the rehabilitation of irrigation infrastructure and rainfed rice paddies with the objective of decreasing the reliance of Sahelian populations on imported rice. The sensitivity of rice growth and development to high (.238C) minimum nighttime air temperatures (Peng et al., 2004; Nagarajan et al., 2010) calls into question the sustainability and effectiveness of such strategies. In Feed the Future countries, the number of funded agricultural systems is being explicitly limited with the goal of transforming selected value chains. For example, in Senegal, a 17-crop focus was reduced to three with a primary focus on rice and a secondary focus on maize and millet (www.feedthefuture.gov). This diminution of cropping system diversity increases farmer vulnerability to climate, market and other perturbations and increases the likelihood of poor nutritional outcomes for households. Hence a programme focused on increased production and incomes may actually increase the vulnerability of small-scale farmers, with potentially profound impacts. Trends in agricultural development that for some time have been driving farmers to focus on a limited number of internationally traded crops and to adopt more uniform crops, livestock and agricultural practices may also be contributing to genetic erosion through the loss of locally adapted crops. As we lose agricultural genetic diversity, it is likely that we are losing genes resilient to warmer temperature regimes and are thereby limiting an important tool for farmer adaptation as well as potentially increasing the vulnerability of global food systems (Burke et al., 2009; Thornton et al., 2010).

3. A way forward Successful outcomes for food security require factoring into programme design the implications of climate change for other key sectors influencing food security, such as water resources;


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access to health services; the availability of inputs (e.g. labour, seed and credit); social conditions (e.g. gender norms, labour availability and cultural traditions); and market access. And past experiences – both local and external – should be considered in assessing the impacts of climate change on vulnerable populations. Local and traditional knowledge can often be leveraged and shared to improve climate resilience (Mortimore and Adams, 2001; Kandji et al., 2006; Mortimore, 2010). In some cases, traditional crops may be more resilient to a changing climate than newer cultivars; similarly, practices developed by farmers for crops sensitive to climate variability may improve success in new systems. Integrating such measures into food security programmes will help to reduce risk and promote resilient food systems. At its core, ‘food security is sustainability’ (Lang, 2010, p.95), and that sustainability will likely best be gained through diverse, integrated approaches that explicitly factor in climate considerations with particular attention to reducing vulnerability. What is needed is a longer-term vision, such that agricultural systems, and practices promoted under ‘today’s’ food security programmes, do not increase long-term vulnerability (Christoplos, 2010). Due to short project time frames and a single-minded focus on increasing the productivity of a limited number of staple crops, there has been little opportunity or incentive to consider the implications and impacts that near-term activities will yield a decade or more into the future. This lack of integrated analysis and overriding focus on quick returns can inadvertently increase the vulnerability of the target populations of development initiatives. Even if individual projects continue to operate on short time frames, they must address longer-term consequences. This will require overcoming current thinking, particularly in the US, that fails to acknowledge the urgency of addressing climate change and continues to prioritize value chains that can make agricultural systems more vulnerable and less adaptive over the long term.

Note 1. Robert Burns. 1785. To A Mouse on Turning up her Nest, With a Plough. ‘The best-laid plans o’ mice an’ men Gang aft a-gley, An’ lea’e us nought but grief an’ pain For promised joy.’

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