How might adaptation to climate change by smallholder farming communities contribute to climate change mitigation outcomes? A case study from Timor-Leste,Southeast Asia

The agriculture industry is significantly exposed to the impacts of climate change, and is also responsible for contributing extensive greenhouse gas emissions. As a way of responding to both adaptation and mitigation challenges within the industry, this article examines how community-based climate change adaptation initiatives might provide mitigation outcomes in the agriculture sector in Timor-Leste. Beginning with an exploration of nation-wide institutional responses to climate change, the study utilises interviews, field observations and document analysis to examine an extensive community-based adaptation program in two districts in Timor-Leste focused on increasing the resilience of the agriculture sector and the livelihoods of poor rural farmers. Analysis of this program reveals a largely synergistic relationship between adaptation measures focused on land and water management and agriculture and their corresponding greenhouse gas mitigation potential, including co-benefits such as soil/atmospheric carbon sequestration, reduced emissions, soil nitrification and reduced use of inorganic fertilisers. Community-based adaptation programs in the agriculture sector have a significant influence on mitigation outcomes, which is often overlooked in community-based programs. The adaptation program in Timor-Leste has provided useful insights into the inter-relationships between adaptation and mitigation at the community level, which could be further supported and scaled-up in other Southeast Asia countries and elsewhere.     

气候变化对江苏省经济的影响研究

利用经济学上的“投入－产出”分析方法,结合气候变化对农业产量影响的计算机模拟系统,研究了当气候变化影响农业生产和产量时,江苏省农业产值的变化及与农业部门相联系的国民经济各个部门产出量的变化。考虑江苏省的经济发展速度和产业结构,预测了未来不同的气候变化情景下,为使经济发展达到预期目标,社会需对各经济部门追加的资金投入量及各经济部门之间相互投入量的变化,提出了适应气候变化的相应对策。研究结果反映了国民经济各部门之间及部门与整体的相互联系,从而对制定区域经济平衡发展规划提供了理论依据和建议。     

Looking beyond the average agricultural impacts in defining adaptation needs in Europe

The effects of climate change on agriculture are often characterised by changes in the average productivity of crops; however, these indicators provide limited information regarding the risks associated with fluctuations in productivity resulting from future changes in climate variability that may also affect agriculture. In this context, this study evaluates the combined effects of the risks associated with anomalies reflected by changes in the mean crop yield and the variability of productivity in European agro-climatic regions under future climate change scenarios. The objective of this study is to evaluate adaptation needs and to identify regional effects that should be addressed with greater urgency in the light of the risks and opportunities that are identified. The results show differential effects on regional agriculture and highlight the importance of considering both regional average impacts and the variability in crop productivity in setting priorities for the adaptation and maintenance of rural incomes and agricultural insurance programmes.     

Climate change and variability in Sub-Saharan Africa: a review of current and future trends and impacts on agriculture and food security

Sub-Saharan Africa has been portrayed as the most vulnerable region to the impacts of global climate change because of its reliance on agriculture which is highly sensitive to weather and climate variables such as temperature, precipitation, and light and extreme events and low capacity for adaptation. This article reviews evidence on the scope and nature of the climate change challenge; and assesses the impact of climate change on agriculture and food security in Sub-Saharan Africa. From the review, it is apparent that the climate in Africa is already exhibiting significant changes, evident by changes in average temperature, change in amount of rainfall and patterns and the prevalence of frequency and intensity of weather extremes. The review also revealed that although uncertainties exist with regards to the magnitude of impacts, climate will negatively affect agricultural production in Sub-Saharan Africa. Specifically, as result of current and expected climate change, the area suitable for agriculture, the length of growing seasons and yield potential, particularly along the margins of semi-arid and arid areas, are expected to decrease. These impacts will affect all components of food security: food availability, food accessibility, food utilisation and food stability and hence increase the risk of hunger in the region. The review thus confirms the general consensus that Sub-Saharan Africa is the most vulnerable region to climate change. It suggests that, policymakers and development agencies should focus on formulating and implementing policies and programmes that promote farm level adaptation strategies currently being practiced by farmers across the region.     

气候变化对江苏省经济的影响研究

利用经济学上的“投入—产出”分析方法 ,结合气候变化对农业产量影响的计算机模拟系统 ,研究了当气候变化影响农业生产和产量时 ,江苏省农业产值的变化及与农业部门相联系的国民经济各个部门产出量的变化。考虑江苏省的经济发展速度和产业结构 ,预测了未来不同气候变化情景下 ,为使经济发展达到预期目标 ,社会需对各经济部门追加的资金投入量及各经济部门之间相互投入量的变化 ,提出了适应气候变化的相应对策。研究结果反映了国民经济各部门之间及部门与整体的相互联系 ,从而对制定区域经济平衡发展规划提供了理论依据和建议。     

Towards adaptation of agriculture to climate change in the Mediterranean

This study links climate change impacts to the development of adaptation strategies for agriculture on the Mediterranean region. Climate change is expected to intensify the existing risks, particularly in regions with current water scarcity, and create new opportunities for improving land and water management. These risks and opportunities are characterised and interpreted across Mediterranean areas by analysing water scarcity pressures and potential impacts on crop productivity over the next decades. The need to respond to these risks and opportunities is addressed by evaluating an adaptive capacity index that represents the ability of Mediterranean agriculture to respond to climate change. We propose an adaptive capacity index with three major components that characterise the economic capacity, human and civic resources, and agricultural innovation. 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.     

Climate change and food security: a Sri Lankan perspective

There is growing concern in Sri Lanka over the impact of climate change, variability and extreme weather events on food production, food security and livelihoods. The link between climate change and food security has been mostly explored in relation to impacts on crop production or food availability aspects of food security, with little focus on other key dimensions, namely food access and food utilization. This review, based on available literature, adopted a food system approach to gain a wider perspective on food security issues in Sri Lanka. It points to several climate-induced issues posing challenges for food security. These issues include declining agriculture productivity, food loss along supply chains, low livelihood resilience of the rural poor and prevalence of high levels of undernourishment and child malnutrition. Our review suggests that achieving food security necessitates action beyond building climate resilient food production systems to a holistic approach that is able to ensure climate resilience of the entire food system while addressing nutritional concerns arising from impacts of climate change. Therefore, there is a pressing need to work towards a climate-smart agriculture system that will address all dimensions of food security. With the exception of productivity of a few crop species, our review demonstrates the dearth of research into climate change impacts on Sri Lanka’s food system. Further research is required to understand how changes in climate may affect other components of the food system including productivity of a wider range of food crops, livestock and fisheries, and shed light on the causal pathways of climate-induced nutritional insecurity.     

Australian agriculture: coping with dangerous climate change

Australian agriculture has operated successfully in one of the world’s most hostile environments for two centuries. However, climate change is posing serious challenges to its ongoing success. Determining what might constitute dangerous climate change for Australian agriculture is not an easy task, as most climate-related risks are associated with changes in the highly uncertain hydrological cycle rather than directly to more predictable changes in temperature. In addition, the adaptive capacity of Australian producers is generally high, as they have had to cope with a highly variable climate in which periodic, severe droughts are the norm. As the underlying global trends in climate interact with the continent’s patterns of natural variability, producers can generally deal with gradual changes in climate but are most concerned about high rates of change in regional and local climates and with abrupt, unexpected shifts in climate patterns. Perhaps the best indicator of dangerous climate change for Australian agriculture is the persistence, or not, of the drying trends in many of the Country’s most productive regions and the strength of the linkage between these trends and global climate change.     

Sustainable agriculture in Canada and Cuba: a comparison

Agriculture-related discussions in climate change research have been largely focused on the effects of a changing environment on agriculture and the possible consequences for global and regional food security. However, from a policy standpoint, it is also essential to address the impact of agriculture and related activities on environmental change. Over the last 50 years, most of the world’s agriculture has transitioned into industrial agriculture that requires greater inputs of fossil-fuel energy, water, synthetic pesticides and fertilizers, which have created substantial harmful effects on air, soil, water and biodiversity. Sustainable farming that uses less chemicals and fossil-fuel energy and emphasizes localized production and consumption has come to be viewed as an eco-friendly alternative to modern agriculture. This paper will examine the concept of sustainable agriculture and compare and contrast its practice in Canada and Cuba. The paper will conclude with lessons that the two countries can learn from each other.     

Climate Services and Communication for Development: The Role of Early Career Researchers in Advancing the Debate

Climate services entail providing timely and tailored climate information to end-users in order to facilitate and improve decision-making processes. Climate services are instrumental in socio-economic development and benefit substantially from interdisciplinary collaborations, particularly when including Early Career Researchers (ECRs). This commentary critically discusses deliberations from an interdisciplinary workshop involving ECRs from the United Kingdom and South Africa in 2017, to discuss issues in climate adaptation and climate services development in water resources, food security and agriculture. Outcomes from the discussions revolved around key issues somewhat marginalized within the broader climate service discourse. This commentary discusses what constitutes “effective” communication, framings (user framings, mental models, narratives, co-production) and ethical dimensions in developing climate services that can best serve end-users. It also reflects on how ECRs can help tackle these important thematic areas and advance the discourse on climate services.     

The interplay between incremental,transitional, and transformational adaptation: a case study of Canadian agriculture

Regional Environmental Change - We develop and apply a synthetic framework for understanding potential adaptations to climate change in the Canadian agriculture sector through a case study of...     

Assessing the implications of a 1.5 °C temperature limit for the Jamaican agriculture sector

Despite recent calls to limit future increases in the global average temperature to well below 2 °C, little is known about how different climatic thresholds will impact human society. Future warming trends have significant global food security implications, particularly for small island developing states (SIDS) that are recognized as being among the most vulnerable to global climate change. In the case of the Caribbean, any significant change in the region’s climate is likely to have significant adverse effects on the agriculture sector. This paper explores the potential biophysical impacts of a +?1.5 °C warming scenario on several economically important crops grown in the Caribbean island of Jamaica. Also, it explores differences to a >?2.0 °C warming scenario, which is more likely, if the current policy agreements cannot be complied with by the international community. We use the ECOCROP niche model to estimate how predicted changes in future climate could affect the growing conditions of several commonly cultivated crops from both future scenarios. We then discuss some key policy considerations for Jamaica’s agriculture sector, specifically related to the challenges posed to future adaptation pathways amidst growing climate uncertainty and complexity. Our model results show that even an increase less than +?1.5 °C is expected to have an overall negative impact on crop suitability and a general reduction in the range of crops available to Jamaican farmers. This observation is instructive as increases above the +?1.5 °C threshold would likely lead to even more irreversible and potentially catastrophic changes to the sustainability of Jamaica’s agriculture sector. The paper concludes by outlining some key considerations for future action, paying keen attention to the policy relevance of a +?1.5 °C temperature limit. Given little room for optimism with respect to the imminent changes that SIDS will need to confront in the near future, broad-based policy engagement by stakeholders in these geographies is paramount, irrespective of the climate warming scenario.     

Future land use and land cover in Southern Amazonia and resulting greenhouse gas emissions from agricultural soils

Regional Environmental Change - The calculation of robust estimates of future greenhouse gas emissions due to agriculture is essential to support the framing of the Brazilian climate change...     

Climate change and village adaptation impact on reliability of irrigation wells in China

This paper builds a water supply reliability econometric model to analyze climate changes and adaptation impact factors on water supply reliability of irrigation wells by using 100 villages’ three-year (2010–2012) field survey data of five middle and eastern provinces of China. The results show that long-run climate change factors, adaptation measures, village-level organizations of irrigation management, as well as extreme climate factors affect the water supply reliability of irrigation wells significantly. Meanwhile, there are significant differences impacting different crops and provinces. This paper suggests that agriculture meteorological disaster monitoring and warning systems should be strengthened by increasing irrigation facilities construction and maintenance, promoting reform of agricultural irrigation water management system, and developing various forms of peasant cooperation organization in order to improve agricultural production capacity to adapt to climate change.     

Developing sustainable practices to adapt to the impacts of climate change: a case study of agricultural systems in eastern England (UK)

The weight of scientific evidence suggests that human activities are noticeably influencing the world's climate. However, the effects of global climate change will be unevenly spread, due to local variations in vulnerability and adaptive capacity. Using downscaled projections of future UK climates over the next 50 years, this paper investigates the impacts of, and possible responses to, climate change in one small area in eastern England, selected as a test-bed for sustainable agriculture. It shows that local agricultural systems are vulnerable to changes in the climate. At present, however, these considerations have a limited effect on agricultural operations, which are mainly driven by short-term events and 'non-climate' policies, such as agricultural price support. The capacity of agricultural systems to adapt successfully to climate change will be determined by the ability of producers to integrate climate change into their planning strategies with a view to ultimately ensuring sustainable agricultural practices in the long term. Electronic Publication     

Climate change in Nepal and its impact on Himalayan glaciers

Climate change can be particularly hard-hitting for small underdeveloped countries, relying heavily on natural resources for the economy and livelihoods. Nepal is one among these countries, being landlocked, with diverse physiographical characteristics within a relatively small territory and with rugged terrain. Poverty is widespread and the capacity of people and the country to cope with climate change impact is low. The country is dominated by the Asian monsoon system. The main occupation is agriculture, largely based on rain-fed farming practices. Tourism based on high altitude adventures is one of the major sources of income for the country. Nepal has a large hydropower potential. While only 0.75% of the theoretical hydropower potential has been tapped, Nepal can greatly benefit from this natural resource in the future. Climate change can adversely impact upon water resources and other sectors of Nepal. The source of water is mainly summer monsoon precipitation and the melting of the large reserve of snow and glaciers in the Himalayan highlands. Observations show clear evidences of significant warming. The average trend in the country is 0.06°C per year. The warming rates are progressively higher for high elevation locations. The warming climate has resulted in rapid shrinking of majority of glaciers in Nepal. This paper presents state-of-knowledge on the glacial dynamics in the country based on studies conducted in the past in Shorong, Khumbu, Langtang, Dhaulagiri and Kanchenjunga regions of Nepal. We present recent trends in river flow and an overview of studies on expected changes in the hydrological regime due to climate change. Formation, growth and likely outburst of glacial lake are phenomena directly related to climate change and deglaciation. This paper provides a synopsis of past glacial lake outburst floods impacting Nepal. Further, likely impacts of climate change on other sectors such as agriculture, biodiversity, human health and livelihoods are discussed.     

Climatic changes and their impact on socio-economic sectors in the Bhutan Himalayas: an implementation strategy

This paper contributes to an enhanced understanding of present climatic conditions, observed climate trends and regional climate vulnerability of the Bhutan Himalayas. Bhutan’s complex, often high-altitude terrain and the severe impact of the Indian summer monsoon leads to a strong exposure of the countries’ key economic sectors (agriculture, forestry, hydropower generation and tourism) to climatic changes. Climate change also threatens Bhutan’s vast biodiversity and increases the likelihood of natural hazards (e.g. glacier lake outburst floods, flash floods, droughts and forest fires). A better understanding of Bhutan’s climate and its variability, as well as observed and possible climate impacts, will help in improving the handling of regional social, economic and ecologic challenges not limited to the Himalayas. Only a few climatological studies exist for the eastern Himalayas. They mainly focus on adaptation to immediate threats by glacier lake outbursts. In contrast, this paper (1) investigates the average spatial and inner-annual diversity of the air temperature regime of Bhutan, based on local meteorological observations, (2) discusses past temperature variability, based on global datasets, and (3) relates effects of observed warming to water availability, hydropower development, natural hazards, forests, biodiversity, agriculture, human health and tourism in the Bhutan Himalayas. Results indicate a large spatial and temporal temperature variability within Bhutan and considerably increasing temperatures especially over recent decades. Implications of regional climatic changes on various socio-economic sectors and possible adaptation efforts are discussed.     

Potential influences of global warming on future climate and extreme events in Nigeria

This study investigates future impacts of global warming on climate and extreme climate events in Nigeria, the most populous African country that depends on rain-fed agriculture. Past and future climate simulations from 9 GCMs were downscaled (using a statistical model) and analyzed for the study. The study considers the impacts of two emission scenarios (B1 and A2) on the future climates (2046–2065 and 2081–2100) over ecological zones in Nigeria. The model evaluation shows that the downscaling adds values to the GCMs simulation, and the results capture all the important climatic features over the country. The model projections show that both B1 and A2 scenarios change the future climate over Nigeria. They significantly increase the temperature over all the ecological zones, with greatest warming (between 1 and 4 °C) over the Sudan (short grass) Savanna in March. The warming, which increases the occurrence of extreme temperature and heat wave events over the entire country, enhances the frequency of the extreme rainfall events in the south and southeast and reduces the annual rainfall over the northeast. Since heavy rains and floods are major problems in the south and southeast, and drought is major problem in the northeast, the global warming may further aggravate these environmental problems in future. These could have negative impacts on agriculture and further threaten livelihood and food security in the rapidly growing country. Hence, there is need for further studies on adaptation and mitigation strategies to address the impacts of global warming in Nigeria.     

Climate change, drought risk and land capability for agriculture: implications for land use in Scotland

Land capability classification systems define and communicate biophysical limitations on land use, including climate, soils and topography. They can therefore provide an accessible format for both scientists and decision-makers to share knowledge on climate change impacts and adaptation. Underlying such classifications are complex interactions that require dynamic spatial analysis, particularly between soil and climate. These relationships are investigated using a case study on drought risk for agriculture in Scotland, which is currently considered less significant than wetness-related issues. The impact of drought risk is assessed using an established empirical system for land capability linking indicator crops with water availability. This procedure is facilitated by spatial interpolation of climate and soil profile data to provide soil moisture deficits and plant available water on a regular 1-km grid. To evaluate potential impacts of future climate change, land capability classes are estimated using both large-scale ensemble (multi-simulation) data from the HadRM3 regional climate model and local-scale weather generator data (UKCP09) derived from multiple climate models. Results for the case study suggest that drought risk is likely to have a much more significant influence on land use in the future. This could potentially act to restrict the range of crops grown and hence reduce land capability in some areas unless strategic-level adaptation measures are developed that also integrate land use systems and water resources with the wider environment.