Prioritizing Climate Change Adaptation Needs for Food Security in 2030
BACKGROUND
Adaptation has shown to be one of the solutions to coping with the severe effects of climate change. Investments are being made to improve agricultural production in food insecure regions, in the face of climate change. Adaptation mechanisms to be used include the use of more costly measures and identifying climate risk hotspots.
RESEARCH GOALS AND METHODS
Using a time scale, to examine which impacts are most relevant to investment decisions, the study focuses on food security impacts by 2030 of twelve most insecure regions. Two factors are considered, the importance of a crop to a region (Hunger Importance), and the median projected impact of climate change on a crop’s production by 2030. Different models of climate change and crop response are used.
CONCLUSIONS AND TAKEAWAYS
According to the authors, some regions have insufficient adaptation measures and are prone to negative impacts on several crops. The impacts will likely vary substantially within individual regions according to differences in biophysical resources, management, and other factors. However, there is need for further studies at finer spatial scales to resolve local hot spots within regions.
Reference:
. Prioritizing Climate Change Adaptation Needs for Food Security in 2030. Science. 2008;319:607–610. doi:10.1126/science.1152339.
Affiliation:
- Food Security and Environment Program, Woods Institute for the Environment and the Freeman Spogli Institute for International Studies, Stanford University, Stanford, CA, USA
- Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory (LLNL), Livermore, CA, USA.
- National Center for Atmospheric Research, Boulder, CO, USA.