Global Environmental Change
Changes in the biophysical environment caused or strongly influenced by human activities
Land cover & soils
Atmospheric composition
Climate variability & means
Water availability & quality
For example changes in:
Nitrogen availability & cycling
Biodiversity
Sea currents & salinity
Sea level
GECAFS Scientific Sponsoring Programmes
How they work:
• scientific research
• research capacity-building
• integration and synthesis
• international scientific networks
IGBP IHDPWCRP
Carbon Food Water
GECAFS interactions with Sponsoring Programmes
GECAFS
To determine strategies to cope with the impacts of
Global Environmental Change on food provision systems
and to analyse the environmental and socioeconomic
consequences of adaptation.
GECAFS Goal
Food Provision
Provision = f (production, availability, access)
Production = f (yield, area)
Availability = f (production, distribution, storage)
Access = f (availability, socioeconomic potential [e.g. affordability], & physiological potential [e.g. nutritional quality])
a means of considering, in an holistic manner, the links between a number of factors “from plough to plate”.
A Food System approach principally includes consideration of:
• production• harvesting• storage• processing• distribution• consumption
Food Systems
Fundamental Questions
1 Given changing demands for food, how will GEC additionally affect food provision and vulnerability in different regions and among different social groups?
2 How might different societies and different categories of producers adapt their food systems to cope with GEC against the background of changing demand?
3 What would be the socioeconomic and environmental consequences of such adaptations?
Global Environmental Change (GEC)and Food Systems
GECAFS Science Themes
Theme 1 Vulnerability and Impacts: Effects of GEC on Food Provision
Theme 2 Adaptations: GEC and Options for Enhancing Food Provision
Theme 3 Feedbacks: Environmental and Socioeconomic Consequences of Adapting Food Systems to GEC
Overarching questions
In which regions and to what extent are food production and provision potentially sensitive to GEC, and why? How will anticipated changes in food production due to GEC influence the availability and accessibility of food? To what extent might anticipated changes in socioeconomic conditions influence the impacts of GEC on food production potential?
Theme 1 Vulnerability and Impacts
Overarching questions
How have food production systems coped with or adapted to environmental variability and change in the past?
What types of GEC will exceed the thresholds and speed of adaptive responses of current food production systems?
Are existing institutions capable of providing effective adaptation options?
What are the future costs to food provision of delaying the implementation of response strategies to GEC?
Theme 2 Adaptations
Overarching questions
How and to what extent will the environment be affected by adapting food systems in response to both changing demands and GEC? What are the socio-economic consequences of these adaptations? To what extent are management responses effective in mitigating GEC and consistent with socioeconomic capacities?
Theme 3 Feedbacks
Global Environmental
Change
Food Provision
Theme 1Vulnerability and
Impacts
Theme 2Adaptations
AdaptedFood Provision
Theme 3Environmental
Feedbacks
Socioeconomic Change
Theme 3Socioeconomic
Feedbacks
GECAFS Science Themes
REGIONAL RESEARCH PROJECTS
• Indo-Gangetic Plain food system
• Caribbean food system
• Eastern Pacific coastal fisheries
• Southern Africa food system
CROSS-CUTTING PROJECTS
• Vulnerability science
• Scenario development
Initial GECAFS Projects
GECAFS Regional Research
Ensures a GEC science agenda that:
interacts effectively with the regional policy making process and thereby encourages more support for the regional science communities
attracts donor support from outside the “traditional” GEC funding community
Research needs to:
(i) relate to regional development needs
(ii) have relevance to current and near-term issues, as well as longer-term
GLOBAL ENVIRONMENTAL CHANGE (GEC)
Change in type, frequency & magnitude of
environmental threats
Exposureto GEC
FOOD SYSTEMVULNERABILIT
Y
“Traditional”approach to vulnerability
studies
GLOBAL ENVIRONMENTAL CHANGE (GEC)
Change in type, frequency & magnitude of
environmental threats
FOOD SYSTEMVULNERABILIT
Y
SOCIETAL CHANGE
Change in institutions, resource accessibility,
economic conditions, etc.
Capacity to Cope
&/or Recover from GEC
Exposureto GEC
GECAFSapproach to vulnerability
studies
GECAFS Scenarios Minimum set of variables
Food system SocioeconomicProduction PopulationConsumption Economic performanceDistribution Technology
Institutions and policies
Biophysical/environmentalResources (land, climate, water availability)Ecological performance/condition
Strategic research alliances
Need to be established from an early stage with:
National and international research bodies, e.g. national academies and research centres; and the CGIAR and science bodies within ICSU
Assessment agencies and groups, e.g. WRI, MA International agencies, e.g. FAO, WMO, World Bank
National and international donor agencies and other potential investors
GECAFS
NARS &CGIAR
GECAFS Example Collaborations
FAO IIASA
MAWMO
Indices of human vulnerability based on a combined socioeconomic-biophysical approach.
Comprehensive scenarios of future socioeconomic and environmental conditions.
Region-specific recommendations on the institutional and technological factors that can reduce societal vulnerability to GEC.
Quantitative methods for assessing the environmental and socioeconomic tradeoffs of scenario-based adaptations to food systems.
Example GECAFS Research Products
A robust framework for novel, interdisciplinary approaches to GEC research that examines vulnerability to impacts, adaptations and feedbacks.
A problem-oriented, policy-relevant approach which can bring together the GEC and Development agendas, and their donor communities.
A design for analyses at regional and sub-regional levels which will help develop effective policy to protect vulnerable sections of society.
A methodology which allows an analysis of trade-offs between managing resources for both food provision and environment.
GECAFS “Distinguishing Features”