61 research outputs found
Africa
No full textAfrica is one of the lowest contributors to greenhouse gas
emissions causing climate change, yet key development sectors have already experienced widespread losses and damages attributable to human-induced climate change, including biodiversity loss, water shortages, reduced food production, loss of lives and reduced economic growth (high confidence1).//
Between 1.5°C and 2°C global warming—assuming localised
and incremental adaptation—negative impacts are projected
to become widespread and severe with reduced food
production, reduced economic growth, increased inequality
and poverty, biodiversity loss, increased human morbidity
and mortality (high confidence). Limiting global warming
to 1.5°C is expected to substantially reduce damages to
African economies, agriculture, human health, and ecosystems
compared to higher levels of global warming (high confidence).//
Exposure and vulnerability to climate change in Africa
are multi-dimensional with socioeconomic, political and
environmental factors intersecting (very high confidence).
Africans are disproportionately employed in climate-exposed sectors: 55–62% of the sub-Saharan workforce is employed in agriculture and 95% of cropland is rainfed. In rural Africa, poor and female-headed households face greater livelihood risks from climate hazards. In urban areas, growing informal settlements without basic services increase
the vulnerability of large populations to climate hazards, especially women, children and the elderly. //
Adaptation in Africa has multiple benefits, and most assessed adaptation options have medium effectiveness at reducing risks for present-day global warming, but their efficacy at future warming levels is largely unknown (high confidence)./
Improving adaptation assessment in the IPCC
No full textAbstract Assessing adaptation is one of the critical roles of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC). In this Perspective, we focus on the what and the how that can guide this assessment for AR7: what knowledge is and should be assessed and how it is assessed. We then propose several opportunities for improvement, including accelerating adaptation assessment method innovation, increasing linkages between IPCC efforts and UNFCCC dialogues, and how author and data diversity can support a more decision- and policy-relevant assessment
Invited Review: IPCC, Agriculture and Food - A Case of Shifting Cultivation and History.
No full textSince 1990 the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) has produced five Assessment Reports (ARs), in which agriculture as the production of food for humans via crops and livestock have featured in one form or another. A constructed data base of the ca. 2,100 cited experiments and simulations in the five ARs were analysed with respect to impacts on yields via crop type, region and whether or not adaptation was included. Quantitative data on impacts and adaptation in livestock farming have been extremely scarce in the ARs. The main conclusions from impact and adaptation are that crop yields will decline but that responses have large statistical variation. Mitigation assessments in the ARs have used both bottom-up and top-down methods but need better to link emissions and their mitigation with food production and security. Relevant policy options have become broader in later ARs and included more of the social and non-production aspects of food security. Our overall conclusion is that agriculture and food security, which are two of the most central, critical and imminent issues in climate change, have been dealt with in an unfocussed and inconsistent manner between the IPCC five ARs. This is partly a result of agriculture spanning two IPCC working groups but also the very strong focus on projections from computer crop simulation modelling. For the future, we suggest a need to examine interactions between themes such as crop resource use efficiencies and to include all production and non-production aspects of food security in future roles for integrated assessment models
Climate adaptation of food value chains: the implications of varying consumer acceptance
No full textDespite there being considerable research and knowledge surrounding the risks of climate change on agricultural productivity, fewer studies have examined risks from a whole-of-chain perspective (i.e. from producer to consumer) and the perceptions of consumers about the climate adaptation strategies of food businesses. This paper presents the findings of a survey of 1532 Australian consumers and how they might respond to a food company’s climate adaptation strategy. Three respondent archetypes, ‘Eco-warriors’ (n\ua0=\ua0557), ‘Undecideds’ (n\ua0=\ua0600) and ‘Abdicators’ (n\ua0=\ua0375), were identified based on their perceptions of risks associated with climate change and their attitudes towards climate adaptation. Further analysis was carried out to understand how each group of respondents would respond to adaptation strategies employed by food companies. Based on the findings of this study, two main challenges are presented for food value chains: (1) translating consumer needs and preferences to niche opportunities arising from adaptation and (2) understanding how best to communicate adaptation benefits based on varying attitudes and information needs. By addressing these challenges, synergies between adaptation goals and competitive strategies in food value chains may be achieved
'We are heartbroken and furious!' Engaging with violence in the (anti-) globalisation movement(s)
No full textThis piece is intended as an exploratory comment on the militancy emerging in (anti-)globalisation political practice and in the policing of such practice, rather than as a definitive analysis. As someone who attempts to pursue a tradition of the ‘organic intellectual’ – engaging in the practice of activism as well as the theorising of activist practice – the paper has emerged from my own process of sense-making regarding violence in the ‘(anti-)globalisation movement(s)’. It flows from experience of irruptive situations, my perceptions of the contextual causes of violence in these situations, and my thinking around the subversive and transformative potential, or otherwise, of violence in engendering radical post-capitalist social relations. I take as a starting point the recent protests against the EU summit meeting in Thessaloniki, June 2003, which culminated in substantial violence against property and towards police by antiauthoritarian protesters, and was met by the police with violent attack and the brutalisation of those arrested. I do not assume a moral standpoint regarding the value or otherwise of violence to ‘the movements’. Instead I try to consider why violence is increasing as a bio-political tactic in these contexts, ‘upfronting’ both the normalisation of psychological and physical violence in the everyday circumstances of late-capitalism, and the depression and anger this engenders. In the interests of strategic debate regarding the usefulness of violence in potentiating post-capitalist social relations, however, I attempt to disentangle the relative (f)utility of acting out, acting upon and denying the experience of anger. My personal stance is to celebrate the transformative potential and energy of the correct attribution of the contextual sources of anger – particularly in shifting between the microcosm of individual circumstances and the macrocosm of structural societal violence within which these arise – whilst upholding a view that violence as a simple reaction to alienating circumstances is likely to maintain rather than shift their brutalising tendencies. My conclusion is both gloomy and hopeful. On the one hand, given that violence to life is both so systemic to late capitalist modernity and that ‘we’ tend to be in such denial regarding its dehumanising psychosocietal effects, I am clear that it is likely that the incidence of violence in protest politics as elsewhere will increase in reaction to this. On the other hand, I celebrate the creative energy present in global anti-capitalist actions and practice, the emergence of a global peace movement as a political force, and the current radicalisation of people otherwise deemed by some to be politically apathetic
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