Report of IFPRI researchers

Hohoe, Dec. 2, GNA - Addressing poverty is the single best way to help poor people in developing countries to achieve food security and adapt to climate change measures.

This is contained in a report by researchers at the International Food Policy Research Institute (IFPRI), co-authored by Professor Gerald Nelson, Senior Research Fellow of Institute, made available to GNA. It said when families have high income, they are better able to cope with drought, floods, and other climatic shocks.

The report said: "Once the most serious effects of climate change kick in, it would already be too late to respond effectively." It said food price spikes of 2008 and 2010 had important weather components, and during each of these periods, trade offset some of the potentially severe local effects.

The report said: "Restrictions on international trade could jeopardize prospects for regional food security. This is yet another reason to complete the Doha Round of world trade negotiations". It indicated that this year's severe drought in Russia and devastating floods in Pakistan offered a glimpse of a future negatively affected by severe weather.

The report said: "using sophisticated computer modeling, the study assesses the harmful impact of climate change on food security through 2050. "It presents 15 different future scenarios based on various combinations of potential income growth, population growth, and possible climate situations that range from slightly substantially wetter and hotter."

The report said that between now and 2050 staple-food prices could rise by 42 to 131 per cent for maize, 11 to 78 per cent for rice, and 17 to 67 per cent for wheat, depending on the state of the world's climate, economy, and population.

The report said climate change would cause lower rice yields all over the world in 2050, compared to a future without climate change. It said: "One of the climate change scenarios results in substantial declines in maize exports in developed countries, but small increases in yields in developing nations. Wheat yields would fall in all regions, with the largest losses in developing countries.

The report highlights poverty for three reasons: Firstly, because the bigger consumers' incomes, the greater their ability to afford higher food prices caused in part by climate change.

Secondly, better-off families cope more easily with uncertainty and thirdly, farming families with higher incomes are better positioned to invest in new technologies that might be costly at the outset but improve productivity and resilience in the long run.

The report said that improving crop productivity could counteract the negative effects of climate change on food production, prices, and access. The report indicated that Prof. Mark Rosegrant, Director of IFPRI's Environment, Production, and Technology Division and co-author, said that "Investment in agriculture deserve high priority because without improved farm productivity, it would be impossible to meet the increasing demand for food from rising incomes and a growing world population.

"Greater productivity also means that more of this growing demand could be satisfied from existing land, limiting the environmental damage that results from plowing new fields from forests and savannahs. And productivity growth leads to the rural income growth needed to improve food security."

The report said climate change would affect the world's regions differently and international trade was essential in offsetting changes in the production and prices of key food commodities. It said that strengthening agricultural trade would help countries cope with crop losses and deal with the uncertainty and variability that climate change would bring.

The report that aimed at enhancing decision makers' ability to explore the range of food security, said that after 2050, global average temperatures may rise by 2 to 4 degrees centigrade, and the effects of climate change on yields would likely be much more dramatic. It said reducing emissions growth today was essential to avoid a calamitous second half of the 21st Century. Prof Sir John Beddington, Chief Scientific Advisor to the UK Government and Head of the Foresight Project on Global Food and Farming Futures, provided major funding for the study.

He noted that the findings would be indispensable for policymakers and scientists seeking to draw out the added challenges to agriculture and human welfare from climate change.

Prof. Beddington said: "The results of this scientific research will inform our own efforts to secure a sustainable future for food and farming by anticipating the potential challenges of climate change and other global phenomena 20 to 80 years in advance."