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”