Climate Change & Food Security [ PDF ]

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A Message from the President: Fishes, Loaves and Foresight

John Topping, President and CEO, Climate Institute

In November 2006 a paper by a team of scientists led by Boris Worm of Dalhousie University projected a collapse of global seafood stocks by 2050, largely from overharvesting. This analysis does not even factor in possible adverse effects on deep water fisheries of growing acidification of oceans or of disruptions of the marine food chain that may ensue from rapid climate warming in polar regions. Regrettably this decimation of fisheries that produce a significant amount of the protein for humanity is occurring as other stresses to food supply are mounting. This Special Issue of Climate Alert on Climate Change and Food Security seeks to explore what may be the most severe climate related challenge over the next generation. Climate change is not the only threat to world food supplies - likely growth in total human population of another two to three billion, overgrazing of pastoral lands, soil erosion, and nutrient depletion of existing farmlands all imperil food security. Climate change, particularly if, as seems likely, it is often accompanied by greater swings in the hydrological cycle (more intense rainfall that exacerbates soil erosion and water shortages in places such as the Andes and South Asia due to glacial melt) may be the metaphorical straw that broke the camel’s back.

As this Special Issue suggests, agriculture is both affected by climate change and a contributor to it. Development of effective strategies will require not only a grasp of likely climate futures and how they may play out at the regional level, an understanding of how best to maintain genetic diversity in the face of a likely perceived need to use biotechnology
to avert famine, and an understanding of how public policies in seemingly unrelated areas can affect food supplies. Over the past couple of years the push in the US and the EU for biofuels for vehicles to limit dependence on petroleum imports has contributed to a run up
in prices of corn and related products.

In the face of sizable and perhaps growing uncertainty about year to year weather patterns in a particular region a key element in an agricultural and general climate response strategy will be to enhance resilience. Over the years humans have often been ingenious in coping with changing food supplies, migrating as game became scarce in a particular locale and as societies moved to an agricultural base finding various ways to irrigate crops, improve tilling practices and breed plants or livestock. Existing with little margin for error, indigenous societies have had to develop such coping skills to survive. The Seventh Tribal College Forum held August 12-14 at Haskell Indian Nations University in Lawrence, Kansas discussed at some length how Indigenous Ways of Knowing, i.e. environmental knowledge gathered by keen observation and experience and sometimes passed down over generations, often in oral form, can be combined with climate impacts tools and geographic information systems data to develop climate adaptation strategies for indigenous communities. From this Tribal College Forum a collaboration has arisen that involves Tribal Colleges and Universities such as Haskell with superior access to such indigenous knowledge and experience in environmental planning with partner institutions such as Dartmouth College, the Climate Institute and the National Center for Atmospheric Research with background in climate research and policy. Already Dartmouth’s Arctic Studies Institute is partnering under an National Science Foundation grant with the Inuit Circumpolar Conference, Greenland to ensure that scientific researchers doing climate work in Greenland gather data that can be useful to the Inuit Nation in developing a climate response strategy. About a decade ago the Inter-American Institute for Global Change Research began some remarkable collaboration involving Western Hemisphere meteorological agencies and agricultural agencies to enable farmers to use El Niño-Southern Oscillation (ENSO) forecasts to adjust crop planning. Similarly knowledge of how food producers and gatherers in both indigenous and modern societies respond to weather related stress is vital for effective adaptation planning.

Success in implementing climate response strategies in areas as pervasive and diffused as the food producing sector may entail both a holistic approach involving meteorology, water resource planning, social science and agricultural or fisheries know how and a breakthrough in capturing the public imagination. Such a transformation may be underway in Mexico where construction is beginning this summer on the Sir Crispin Tickell Climate Centre, soon to be the world’s highest climate observatory. National pride and excitement over this has inspired the State of Puebla, where the Observatory will be located, to create an Observatory Education and Outreach Centre in Flor del Bosque Park in Puebla, and three museums, one in Cancun and two in Mexico City, to begin to create climate awareness centers, all with interactive displays. Several of these will enable museum visitors to assess potential links between climate, energy, food production, and the economy. These displays may move other institutions toward the holistic approaches needed to ensure Mexico’s resilience in grappling with challenges to food security posed by climate change and set a marker for other vulnerable nations.

Summer 2008 Climate Alert

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