Climate Change, Agriculture and Food Security

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Climate Change, Agriculture and Food Security

• by
• Eberhard Weber
• UNESCO / APMRN / Development Studies / USP
• Workshop on
• Climate Change Related Migration
• 14-15 May, 2009
• Suva, FIJI.

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• A few words about impacts of climate change
• Paradigms in Food (In)Security research
• Vulnerabilities and Sustainable Livelihoods

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Source FAO, website)
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IPCC 2007
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After 1990 Niue was turned from a food exporting
country to a food dependent country after
Tropical Cyclone Ofa. The country needed two
years to recover from this food dependency.
Tropical Cyclone Heta (2004) had an even bigger
impact on agricultural production in Niue.
IPCC 2007
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IPCC 2007
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Paradigms in Food Security Research

• There are two major traditions explaining Food
  (In)security
• Food Availability Decline Paradigm
• Food Entitlement Decline Paradigm

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Food Availability Decline Paradigm

• Food (In)Security is mainly a function of the
  production of food.
• Food Insecurity either happens (following a
  (Neo-) Malthusian approach) because population is
  too fast increasing and food production can not
  keep pace.
• Or
• Food production is disturbed / interrupted by
  natural or other hazards.
• The result of both is that not enough food is
  available

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Food Entitlement Decline Paradigm

• Food (In)Security is mainly a function of the
  Entitlement people have over food.
• Food Insecurity happens (structuralist approach)
  because of a decline in the control people can
  exercise over food. Aspects of access,
  capabilities and the factors that contribute to
  both play a major role.
• People go hungry because they can not establish
  control over food that actually is available. It
  is a decline in entitlement that causes hunger.

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Strategies arising from the Paradigms

• Food Availability Decline
• To grow more food
• Green Revolution / Bio-Technology
• Food Entitlement Decline
• To strengthen peoples capabilities when
  accessing food.
• To reduce peoples vulnerabilities
• To make peoples livelihoods more secure and
  sustainable

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Food security
... exists when all people, at all times, have
physical and economic access to sufficient, safe,
and nutritious food to meet their dietary needs
and food preferences for an active and healthy
life. World Food Summit 1996)
. is much more than just food production.
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The structural dimension of vulnerability

• Vulnerability
• "Vulnerability has (thus) two sides an external
  side of risks, shocks and stress to which an
  individual or household is subject and an
  internal side which is defencelessness, meaning a
  lack of means to cope without damaging loss"
• Robert Chambers 1989

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Thank you very much
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• Thank you very much

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Components of Food Security Key Elements
FOOD UTILISATION
FOOD ACCESS

• Affordability
• Allocation
• Preference

• Nutritional Value
• Social Value
• Food Safety

FOOD AVAILABILITY

• Production
• Distribution
• Exchange

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• Food insecurity arises from overlapping and
  interacting stressors

Misselhorn 2005 Global Environmental Change
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