Food security in the times of climate change

At the end of 202, the Kyoto protocol was due to expire, leaving the world unprotected in the face of the continuing increase of carbon dioxide emissions and a temperature change that will not be constrained by the famous 2°C target, now rapidly becoming obsolete. In a dramatic push beyond the scheduled end of the meeting, the recent climate conference at Doha managed to scramble up an extension of the Kyoto agreement for another eight years. The idea is to buy time to make a new, improved international agreement that covers the developing world as well. Experience with the recent rounds of climate talks shows, however, that a binding, global agreement will be phenomenally hard to achieve. Considering the current priorities set in politics, where the financial crisis has all but pushed environmental concerns off the agenda, a climate agreement may fail to materialise in time to limit temperature rises to levels that could reasonably be described as safe. Climate change is in part caused by agriculture, both directly through unsustainable farming activities and indirectly via land-use change. In turn, it affects yields and crucial parameters, such as water availability. It may force farmers to change their methods, which may produce a vicious circle and more unsustainable practices. A recent report commissioned by the UN has predicted that by 2050 the global yields of wheat and rice could fall by 3 and 5 percent, respectively. By the same year, world population will have grown to nine to ten billion, so there is a real threat of global food shortage. Locally, however, extreme weather events linked to climate change are already threatening food security in the poorest parts of the developing world. Detailed scientific analysis and fresh ideas are needed to solve both the acute, localised food security crisis right now, and the chronic, global one that we are drifting towards. Vulnerability of smallholder farmers Across much of sub-Saharan Africa, large parts of the population are smallholder farmers whose livelihoods depend directly on their own agricultural production, both as a source of food for household consumption and for household income. As Celia Harvey from Conservation International in Washington, D.C., US, explained at a recent discussion meeting at the Royal Society in London, these farmers and their families are extremely vulnerable to the consequences of climate change. Harvey and colleagues conducted a survey of smallholder farmers in Madagascar, where 75% of the …