Stockholm, Rio and beyond: Lessons from two decades of international environmental politics

Conclusion Studies that include moderate climate forecasts, farmer adaptation, carbon fertilization, and warm-loving crops tend to show that climate change will have only mild impacts on average global agricultural output and may even improve temperate agricultural production. On this point, recent studies yield strikingly consistent results. Of course, impact estimates still contain uncertainties. Key questions include how agriculture might change by 2060, how tropical and subtropical farming will be affected, and how effects will be distributed regionally. The most likely threat to agriculture from climate warming is regional damages in relatively poor areas that lack either the knowledge or the financial resources to adjust. Although it is not clear which regions will actually suffer, the ones that are most vulnerable lie predominantly in or near the tropics (IPCC, 1995). Nonetheless, on average, the factors discussed in this essay will help mitigate the impact of climate change on agriculture.The authors are grateful to the Electric Power Research Institute (EPRI) for financial support. We also wish to thank Richard Adams, Cynthia Rosenzweig, Kathleen Segerson, Joel Smith, Robert Unsworth and Thomas Wilson for their helpful comments. The authors alone are responsible for any remaining errors or omissions.     

Climate adaptation and development: Contradictions for human security in Gambella,Ethiopia

It is clear that we need a climate adaptation policy agenda that is sensitive to the special political, social, and ecological circumstances of highly vulnerable regions, most of which are located in the African Sahel. While the existing literature on climate variability and climate change makes important theoretical contributions on development, vulnerability, and adaptation more broadly, with few exceptions it has not acknowledged that contradictions arise in addressing insecurities via the implementation of development, vulnerability reduction, and adaptation programs. An empirical assessment of how such contradictions are both driven by and negotiated in such programs is particularly useful if we are to design a more robust and grounded adaptation agenda. In this article, we focus on the paradigmatic case of Gambella in Ethiopia, a region that lies near the bottom of many development indices, but has also been the site for recent efforts to reduce climate vulnerability through village and agricultural modernization programs. Drawing on recent research in the region and on these programs, we demonstrate how the politics of development and adaptation lead to differential and contradictory impacts on four arenas of human security (a) elements of water security, (b) temporal aspects of water security and livelihoods security, (c) personal, state and community security, and (d) differentiated geographies economic security which privilege the national and international scale. The result of this complex political economy is that responses have served to increase rather than decrease tensions in the region.     

Application of the Ricardian Technique to Estimate the Impact of Climate Change on Smallholder Farming in Sri Lanka

This study applies the Ricardian technique to estimate the effect of climate change on the smallholder agriculture sector in Sri Lanka. The main contribution of the paper is the use of household-level data to analyze long-term climate impacts on farm profitability. Household-level data allows us to control for a host of factors such as human and physical capital available to farmers as well as adaptation mechanisms at the farm level. We find that non-climate variables explain about half the variation in net revenues. However, our results suggest that climate change will have a significant impact on smallholder profitability. In particular, reductions in precipitation during key agricultural months can be devastating. At the national level, a change in net revenues of between −23% and +22% is likely depending on the climate change scenario simulated. These impacts will vary considerably across geographic areas from losses of 67% to gains that more than double current net revenues. The largest adverse impacts are anticipated in the dry zones of the North Central region and the dry zones of the South Eastern regions of Sri Lanka. On the other hand, the intermediate and wet zones are likely to benefit, mostly due to the predicted increase in rainfall.     

Farm programs and climate change

The view that the agricultural sector could largely offset any negative impacts of climate change by altering production practices assumes the government will not create disincentives for farmers to adapt. U.S. farm programs, however, often discourage such obvious adaptations as switching crops, investing in water conserving technologies, and entry or exit. We outline a simple portfolio model describing producer decision making: we then use this framework to assess how specific U.S. farm programs might affect adaption to climate change. Three future climate scenarios are considered and in each the present structure of U.S. farm programs discourages adaptation.     

Regional modeling of climate change impacts on smallholder agriculture and ecosystems in Central America

Climate change will have serious repercussions for agriculture, ecosystems, and farmer livelihoods in Central America. Smallholder farmers are particularly vulnerable due to their reliance on agriculture and ecosystem services for their livelihoods. There is an urgent need to develop national and local adaptation responses to reduce these impacts, yet evidence from historical climate change is fragmentary. Modeling efforts help bridge this gap. Here, we review the past decade of research on agricultural and ecological climate change impact models for Central America. The results of this review provide insights into the expected impacts of climate change and suggest policy actions that can help minimize these impacts. Modeling indicates future climate-driven changes, often declines, in suitability for Central American crops. Declines in suitability for coffee, a central crop in the regional economy, are noteworthy. Ecosystem models suggest that climate-driven changes are likely at low- and high-elevation montane forest transitions. Modeling of vulnerability suggests that smallholders in many parts of the region have one or more vulnerability factors that put them at risk. Initial adaptation policies can be guided by these existing modeling results. At the same time, improved modeling is being developed that will allow policy action specifically targeted to vulnerable groups, crops, and locations. We suggest that more robust modeling of ecological responses to climate change, improved representation of the region in climate models, and simulation of climate influences on crop yields and diseases (especially coffee leaf rust) are key priorities for future research.     

Agricultural risk management policies under climate uncertainty

Climate change is forecasted to increase the variability of weather conditions and the frequency of extreme events. Due to potential adverse impacts on crop yields it will have implications for demand of agricultural risk management instruments and farmers’ adaptation strategies. Evidence on climate change impacts on crop yield variability and estimates of production risk from farm surveys in Australia, Canada and Spain, are used to analyse the policy choice between three different types of insurance (individual, area-yield and weather index) and ex post payments. The results are found to be subject to strong uncertainties and depend on the risk profile of different farmers and locations; the paper provides several insights on how to analyse these complexities. In general, area yield performs best more often across our countries and scenarios, in particular for the baseline and marginal climate change (without increases in extreme events). However, area yield can be very expensive if farmers have limited information on how climate change affects yields (misalignment in expectations), and particularly so under extreme climate change scenarios. In these more challenging cases, ex post payments perform well to increase low incomes when the risk is systemic like in Australia; Weather index performs well to reduce the welfare costs of risks when the correlation between yields and index is increased by the extreme events. The paper also analyses the robustness of different instruments in the face of limited knowledge of the probabilities of different climate change scenarios; highlighting that this added layer of uncertainty could be overcome to provide sound policy advice under uncertainties introduced by climate change. The role of providing information to farmers on impacts of climate change emerges as a crucial result of this paper as indicated by the significantly higher budgetary expenditures occurring across all instruments when farmers’ expectations are misaligned relative to actual impacts of climate change.     

An assessment of climate change impacts and adaptation for the Torres Strait Islands, Australia

Adaptive practices are taking place in a range of sectors and regions in Australia in response to existing climate impacts, and in anticipation of future unavoidable impacts. For a rich economy such as Australia’s, the majority of human systems have considerable adaptive capacity. However, the impacts on human systems at the intra-nation level are not homogenous due to their differing levels of exposure, sensitivity and capacity to adapt to climate change. Despite past resilience to changing climates, many Indigenous communities located in remote areas are currently identified as highly vulnerable to climate impacts due to their high level of exposure and sensitivity, but low capacity to adapt. In particular, communities located on low-lying islands have particular vulnerability to sea level rise and increasingly intense storm surges caused by more extreme weather. Several Torres Strait Island community leaders have been increasingly concerned about these issues, and the ongoing risks to these communities’ health and well-being posed by direct and indirect climate impacts. A government agency is beginning to develop short-term and long-term adaptation plans for the region. This work, however, is being developed without adequate scientific assessment of likely ‘climate changed futures.’ This is because the role that anthropogenic climate change has played, or will play, on extreme weather events for this region is not currently clear. This paper draws together regional climate data to enable a more accurate assessment of the islands’ exposure to climate impacts. Understanding the level of exposure and uncertainty around specific impacts is vital to gauge the nature of these islands’ vulnerability, in so doing, to inform decisions about how best to develop anticipatory adaptation strategies over various time horizons, and to address islanders’ concerns about the likely resilience and viability of their communities in the longer term.     

Adaptation, Spatial Heterogeneity, and the Vulnerability of Agricultural Systems to Climate Change and CO2 Fertilization: An Integrated Assessment Approach

In this paper we develop economic measures of vulnerability to climate change with and without adaptation in agricultural production systems. We implement these measures using coupled, site-specific ecosystem and economic simulation models. This modeling approach has two key features needed to study the response of agricultural production systems to climate change: it represents adaptation as an endogenous, non-marginal economic response to climate change; and it provides the capability to represent the spatial variability in bio-physical and economic conditions that interact with adaptive responses. We apply this approach to the dryland grain production systems of the Northern Plains region of the United States. The results support the hypothesis that the most adverse impacts on net returns distributions tend to occur in the areas with the poorest resource endowments and when mitigating effects of CO₂ fertilization and adaptation are absent. We find that relative and absolute measures of vulnerability depend on complex interactions between climate change, CO₂ level, adaptation, and economic conditions such as relativeoutput prices. The relationship between relative vulnerability and resource endowments varies with assumptions about climate change, adaptation, and economic conditions. Vulnerability measured with respect to an absolute threshold is inversely related to resource endowments in all cases investigated.     

East African food security as influenced by future climate change and land use change at local to regional scales

Climate change impacts food production systems, particularly in locations with large, vulnerable populations. Elevated greenhouse gases (GHG), as well as land cover/land use change (LCLUC), can influence regional climate dynamics. Biophysical factors such as topography, soil type, and seasonal rainfall can strongly affect crop yields. We used a regional climate model derived from the Regional Atmospheric Modeling System (RAMS) to compare the effects of projected future GHG and future LCLUC on spatial variability of crop yields in East Africa. Crop yields were estimated with a process-based simulation model. The results suggest that: (1) GHG-influenced and LCLUC-influenced yield changes are highly heterogeneous across this region; (2) LCLUC effects are significant drivers of yield change; and (3) high spatial variability in yield is indicated for several key agricultural sub-regions of East Africa. Food production risk when considered at the household scale is largely dependent on the occurrence of extremes, so mean yield in some cases may be an incomplete predictor of risk. The broad range of projected crop yields reflects enormous variability in key parameters that underlie regional food security; hence, donor institutions’ strategies and investments might benefit from considering the spatial distribution around mean impacts for a given region. Ultimately, global assessments of food security risk would benefit from including regional and local assessments of climate impacts on food production. This may be less of a consideration in other regions. This study supports the concept that LCLUC is a first-order factor in assessing food production risk.     

Values,climate change,and implications for adaptation: Evidence from two communities in Labrador,Canada

Local material and symbolic values have to date remained underrepresented in climate change research and policy and this gap is particularly salient in places that have been identified as at significant risk from climate change. In such places, the dominant approach to understanding the effects of climate change has been centred on vulnerability; it has highlighted the social determinants of vulnerability and the differential and uneven distribution of effects. This approach cannot, however, illuminate the diverse and nuanced meanings people attach to specific aspects of their way of life, how the changing climate might affect these, and what this implies for adaptation. To address this gap, this empirical study uses the concept of values, defined as trans-situational conceptions of the desirable that give meaning to behaviour and events, and influence perception and interpretation of situations and events. We develop a set of values from 53 qualitative interviews in two remote communities in subarctic easternmost Canada. It draws on these values to frame how effects of climate change, specifically intangible and subjective effects, are felt, and how responses to them are imagined by those affected. The article argues that values are crucial in shaping perception of climate impacts and adaptation to them. Distinct values, such as tradition, freedom, harmony, safety, and unity shape different interpretations and meaning of impacts, and lead to distinct views on how to adapt to these. Conflicting and competing values can act as barriers to adaptation. The findings imply that adaptation research and policy need to address values explicitly if efforts for planned adaptation are to be perceived as legitimate and effective by those affected by the changing climate.     

Reconciling approaches to climate change adaptation for Colombian agriculture

The projected impact of climate change on agro-ecological systems is considered widespread and significant, particularly across the global tropics. As in many other countries, adaptation to climate change is likely to be an important challenge for Colombian agricultural systems. In a recent study, a national-level assessment of the likely future impacts of climate change on agriculture was performed (Ramirez-Villegas et al. Clim Chang 115:611–628, 2012, RV2012). The study diagnosed key challenges directly affecting major crops and regions within the Colombian agricultural system and suggested a number of actions thought to facilitate adaptation, while refraining from proposing specific strategies at local scales. Further insights on the study were published by Feola (2013) (F2013), who stressed the need for transformative adaptation processes to reduce vulnerability particularly of resource-limited farmers, and the benefits of a predominantly stakeholder-led approach to adaptation. We clarify that the recommendations outlined in RV2012 were not intended as a recipe for multi-scale adaptation, but rather a set of actions that are required to diagnose and develop adaptation actions particularly at governmental levels in coordination with national and international adaptation initiatives. Such adaptation actions ought to be, ideally, a product of inclusive sub-sectorial assessments, which can take different forms. We argue that Colombian agriculture as a whole would benefit from a better outlining of adaptation needs across temporal scales in sub-sectorial assessments that take into account both RV2012 and F2013 orientations to adaptation. We conclude with two case studies of research on climate change impacts and adaptation developed in Colombia that serve as examples of realistic, productive sectorial and sub-national assessments.     

Vulnerable or Resilient? A Multi-Scale Assessment of Climate Impacts and Vulnerability in Norway

This paper explores the issue of climate vulnerability in Norway, an affluent country that is generally considered to be resilient to the impacts of climate change. In presenting a multi-scale assessment of climate change impacts and vulnerability in Norway, we show that the concept of vulnerability depends on the scale of analysis. Both exposure and the distribution of climate sensitive sectors vary greatly across scale. So do the underlying social and economic conditions that influence adaptive capacity. These findings question the common notion that climate change may be beneficial for Norway, and that the country can readily adapt to climate change. As scale differences are brought into consideration, vulnerability emerges within some regions, localities, and social groups. To cope with actual and potential changes in climate and climate variability, it will be necessary to acknowledge climate vulnerabilities at the regional and local levels, and to address them accordingly. This multi-scale assessment of impacts and vulnerability in Norway reinforces the importance of scale in global change research.     

Climatic impacts on crop yield and its variability in Nepal: do they vary across seasons and altitudes?

A rapid change in climate patterns potentially driven by global warming is considered to be greatest threats to agriculture. However, little is known about how the change in climate concretely affects agricultural production especially in Nepal with respect to seasons and regions of different altitudes. To examine this issue, we seek to empirically identify the impact of climatic variation on agricultural yield and its variability by utilizing the data of rice, wheat and climate variables in the central region of Nepal. The main focus is on whether the impacts vary across seasons, altitudes and the types of crops. For this purpose, we employ a stochastic production function approach by controlling a novel set of season-wise climatic and geographical variables. The result shows that an increase in the variance of both temperature and rainfall has adverse effects on crop productions in general. On the other hand, a change in the mean levels of the temperature and rainfall induces heterogeneous impacts, which can be considered beneficial, harmful or negligible, depending on the altitudes and the kinds of crops. These results imply that adaptation strategies must be tailor-made in Nepalese agriculture, considering growing seasons, altitudes and the types of crops.     

Can agriculture support climate change adaptation, greenhouse gas mitigation and rural livelihoods? insights from Kenya

Changes in the agriculture sector are essential to mitigate and adapt to climate change, meet growing food demands, and improve the livelihoods of poor smallholder producers. What agricultural strategies are needed to meet these challenges? To what extent are there synergies among these strategies? This paper examines these issues for smallholder producers in Kenya across several agroecological zones. Several practices emerge as triple wins, supporting climate adaptation, greenhouse gas mitigation, and profitability goals. In particular, integrated soil fertility management and improved livestock feeding are shown to provide multiple benefits across all agroecological zones examined. Triple wins of other agricultural practices are limited to specific agroecological zones. Irrigation and soil and water conservation, for example, are essential for adaptation, mitigation, and profitability in arid areas. The results suggest that agricultural investments targeted toward these triple-win strategies will have the greatest payoff in terms of increased resilience of farm and pastoralist households and global climate change mitigation. To reap the benefits of triple-win strategies will require that policymakers, researchers, and practitioners move away from isolated approaches focused on either adaptation or mitigation or rural income generation toward a more holistic assessment of joint strategies as well as their tradeoffs and synergies.     

Turning climate change information into economic and health impacts

The PRUDENCE project has generated a set of spatially and temporally high-resolution climate data, which provides new opportunities for assessing the impacts of climate variability and change on economic and human systems in Europe. In this context, we initiated the development of new approaches for linking climate change information and economic studies. We have considered a number of case studies that illustrate how linkages can be established between geographically detailed climate data and economic information. The case studies included wheat production in agriculture, where regional climate data has been linked to farm enterprise data in an integrated model of physical conditions, production inputs and outputs, and farm management practices. Similarly, temperature data were used to assess consequences of extreme heat and excess mortality in urban areas. We give an introduction of an analytical approach for assessing economic impacts of climate change and discuss how economic concepts and valuation paradigms can be applied to climate change impact evaluation. A number of methodological difficulties encountered in economic assessments of climate change impacts are described and a number of issues related to social and private aspects of costs are highlighted. It is argued that, in particular, detailed climate information matters in relation to understanding how private agents react to observed climate data.     

From climate change impacts to the development of adaptation strategies: Challenges for agriculture in Europe

This study links climate change impacts to the development of adaptation strategies for agriculture in Europe. Climate change is expected to intensify the existing risks, particularly in southern regions, and create new opportunities in some northern areas. These risks and opportunities are characterised and interpreted across European regions by analysing over 300 highly relevant publications that appeared in the last decade. The result is a synthesis of the reasons for concern for European agricultural regions. The need to respond to these risks and opportunities is addressed by evaluating the costs and benefits of a number of technical and policy actions. The results highlight the importance of enhanced water use efficiency as a critical response to climate risks and the need for a more effective extension service. These results aim to assist stakeholders as they take up the adaptation challenge and develop measures to reduce the vulnerability of the sector to climate change.     

Achieving Adequate Adaptation in Agriculture

This paper reviews the prospects for adaptation in world agriculture in the face of climate change. The record of experience from previous decades demonstrates a considerable capacity to adapt and there is general optimism that successful adaptation will be maintained. There are some grounds for concern because of the uncertainty surrounding global climate projections and the probability of considerable regional variation in impacts. While world production may not be adversely affected, the prospects are not so encouraging for low latitude agricultural regions, in part because of lower capacity to adapt. Attention has focused on the farming community itself as the place where adaptation takes place, but now the processes of globalization are placing adaptation more in the hands of agri-business, national policy makers, and the international political economy. The continued success of adaptation rests more heavily on actions at the national level in the context of changing technology and world trade liberalization. An adaptation policy framework is suggested as a vehicle to help understand and facilitate adaptation in this changing context.     

Mapping global patterns of drought risk: An empirical framework based on sub-national estimates of hazard,exposure and vulnerability

A global map of drought risk has been elaborated at the sub-national administrative level. The motivation for this study is the observation that little research and no concerted efforts have been made at the global level to provide a consistent and equitable drought risk management framework for multiple regions, population groups and economic sectors. Drought risk is assessed for the period 2000–2014 and is based on the product of three independent determinants: hazard, exposure and vulnerability. Drought hazard is derived from a non-parametric analysis of historical precipitation deficits at the 0.5°; drought exposure is based on a non-parametric aggregation of gridded indicators of population and livestock densities, crop cover and water stress; and drought vulnerability is computed as the arithmetic composite of high level factors of social, economic and infrastructural indicators, collected at both the national and sub-national levels. The performance evaluation of the proposed models underlines their statistical robustness and emphasizes an empirical resemblance between the geographic patterns of potential drought impacts and previous results presented in the literature. Our findings support the idea that drought risk is driven by an exponential growth of regional exposure, while hazard and vulnerability exhibit a weaker relationship with the geographic distribution of risk values. Drought risk is lower for remote regions, such as tundras and tropical forests, and higher for populated areas and regions extensively exploited for crop production and livestock farming, such as South-Central Asia, Southeast of South America, Central Europe and Southeast of the United States. As climate change projections foresee an increase of drought frequency and intensity for these regions, then there is an aggravated risk for global food security and potential for civil conflict in the medium- to long-term. Since most agricultural regions show high infrastructural vulnerability to drought, then regional adaptation to climate change may begin through implementing and fostering the widespread use of irrigation and rainwater harvesting systems. In this context, reduction in drought risk may also benefit from diversifying regional economies on different sectors of activity and reducing the dependence of their GDP on agriculture.     

IPCC 第五次评估报告关于适应气候变化与可持续发展的新认知

IPCC发布的《气候变化2014：影响、适应和脆弱性》进一步提升了国际社会对于适应气候变化和可持续发展的认识水平,主要表现在：适应气候变化的研究视角从自然生态脆弱性转向更为广泛的社会经济脆弱性及人类的响应能力;阐明了气候风险与社会发展的关系,明确了适应在气候灾害风险管理中的积极作用;提出了减少脆弱性和暴露度及增加气候恢复能力的有效适应原则;提出了适应极限的概念,指出这一概念对于适应气候变化的政策含义;提出了保障社会可持续发展的气候恢复能力路径;强调要注重适应与减缓的协同作用和综合效应,指出转型适应是应对气候变化影响的必要选择。报告认为,气候变化、影响、适应及社会经济过程不再是一个简单的单向线性关系,需要纳入统一的系统框架下予以认识和理解。     

Impacts of Present and Future Climate Variability on Agriculture and Forestry in the Temperate Regions: Europe

Agriculture and forestry will be particularly sensitive to changes in mean climate and climate variability in the northern and southern regions of Europe. Agriculture may be positively affected by climate change in the northern areas through the introduction of new crop species and varieties, higher crop production and expansion of suitable areas for crop cultivation. The disadvantages may be determined by an increase in need for plant protection, risk of nutrient leaching and accelerated breakdown of soil organic matter. In the southern areas the benefits of the projected climate change will be limited, while the disadvantages will be predominant. The increased water use efficiency caused by increasing CO₂ will compensate for some of the negative effects of increasing water limitation and extreme weather events, but lower harvestable yields, higher yield variability and reduction in suitable areas of traditional crops are expected for these areas. Forestry in the Mediterranean region may be mainly affected by increases in drought and forest fires. In northern Europe, the increased precipitation is expected to be large enough to compensate for the increased evapotranspiration. On the other hand, however, increased precipitation, cloudiness and rain days and the reduced duration of snow cover and soil frost may negatively affect forest work and timber logging determining lower profitability of forest production and a decrease in recreational possibilities. Adaptation management strategies should be introduced, as effective tools, to reduce the negative impacts of climate change on agricultural and forestry sectors.