ALBERT

Description: Climate change is projected to detrimentally affect African countries’ economic development, while income inequalities across economies is among the highest on the planet. However, it is projected that income levels would converge on the continent. Hitherto there is limited evidence on how climate change could affect projected income convergence, accelerating, slowing down, or even reversing this process. Here, we analyze convergence considering climate-change damages, by employing an economic model embedding the three dimensions of risks at the country-level: exposure, vulnerability and hazards. The results show (1) with historical mean climate-induced losses between 10 and 15 percent of GDP per capita growth, the majority of African economies are poorly adapted to their current climatic conditions, (2) Western and Eastern African countries are projected to be the most affected countries on the continent and (3) As a consequence of these heightened impacts on a number of countries, inequalities between countries are projected to widen in the high warming scenario compared to inequalities in the low and without warming scenarios. To mitigate the impacts of economic development and inequalities across countries, we stress (1) the importance of mitigation ambition and Africa’s leadership in keeping global mean temperature increase below 1.5 °C, (2) the need to address the current adaptation deficit as soon as possible, (3) the necessity to integrate quantitatively climate risks in economic and development planning and finally (4) we advocate for the generalization of a special treatment for the most vulnerable countries to access climate-related finance. The analysis raises issues on the ability of African countries to reach their SDGs targets and the potential increasing risk of instability, migration across African countries, of decreased trade and economic cooperation opportunities as a consequence of climate change – exacerbating its negative consequences.

Description: Climate change affects the functioning of all the components of food systems, often in ways that exacerbate existing predicaments and inequalities between regions of the world and groups in society. At the same time, food systems are a major cause for climate change, accounting for a third of all greenhouse gas emissions. Therefore, food systems can and should play a much bigger role in climate policies. This policy brief highlights nine actions points for climate change adaptation and mitigation in the food systems. The policy brief shows that numerous practices, technologies, knowledge and social capital already exist for climate action in the food systems, with multiple synergies with other important goals such as the conservation of biodiversity, safeguarding of ecosystem services, sustainable land management and reducing social and gender inequalities. Many of these solutions are presently being applied at local scales around the world, even if not at sufficient levels. Hence, the major effort for unleashing their potential would involve overcoming various technical, political- economic and structural barriers for their much wider application. Some other solutions require research and development investments now but focus on helping us meet the longer-term challenges of climate change on food systems in the second half of this century when most existing food production practices will face unprecedented challenges. In the short term, these pro- poor policy changes and support systems can create a range of positive changes well beyond food systems without delay. In the long-term, investments in research will help ensure food security and ecosystem integrity for coming generations.

Description: Understanding the adaptive capacity (AC) of farmers is crucial to planning effective adaptation. Action to promote farmers’ AC is required because climate change (CC) is resulting in unpredictable alterations in weather patterns. Based on the sustainable livelihoods framework (SLF), this study explored how access to natural, physical, financial, social and human capitals enhances the AC. Quantitative data from 269 African indigenous vegetable (AIV) farmers in three selected agro-climatic zones in Kenya were analysed. Four indicators in each capital were selected based on previous studies and judgments collected from an expert online ranking survey (n = 35). The Kruskal-Wallis H test and an independent sample t-test were used to test the independence of AC scores and access to the different resources. The findings showed that the majority of farmers (53%) had a moderate AC, while fewer (32%) and (15%) had low or high AC levels respectively. Disparities in adaptive capacity scores were recorded between respondents in terms of their age, marital status and location. Farmers had high access to social capital but low access to financial, natural and human capitals. Female farmers showed lower capacities in the areas of financial, human and natural resources, while their male counterparts had low access to some human and social capitals. Resilient interventions that target individuals with low adaptive capacities are required.

Description: The transformation toward a healthy, just, and environmentally friendly food system needs to be reinforced—and not abandoned—in the face of the Russia-Ukraine war. We need comprehensive solutions that bring short-term relief and also avert the existential threat our food system poses to the health of people and the planet.

Description: Productivity growth is essential to meet the increasing global agricultural demand in the future, driven by the growing world population and income. This study develops a hybrid approach to assess future global crop productivity in a holistic way using different productivity measures and improves the understanding of productivity implications of socioeconomic factors by contrasting different shared socioeconomic pathway assumptions. The results show that the global productivity is likely to continue to grow, whereas the productivity growth varies pronouncedly among different future socioeconomic conditions. The fast growth of total factor and partial factor productivity can be reached when slow population growth and high economic growth entail moderate food demand and low investment risks. In contrast, high population growth and low economic growth could lead to relatively high land-use intensity due to the extreme pressure on agricultural production, however, associated with low total factor productivity growth. The model results indicate that the ratio of the total factor productivity growth to cropland expansion has significant impacts on food prices, with increasing prices when cropland increases faster than productivity, and vice versa. Investing in productivity improvement appears to be an effective means of ensuring food availability and sparing cropland, which can contribute to the achievement of sustainable development goals.

Description: Historical increases in agricultural production were achieved predominantly by large increases in agricultural productivity. Intensification of crop and livestock production also plays a key role in future projections of agricultural land use. Here, we assess and discuss projections of crop yields by global agricultural land-use and integrated assessment models. To evaluate these crop yield projections, we compare them to empirical data on attainable yields by employing a linear and plateauing continuation of observed attainable yield trends. While keeping in mind the uncertainties of attainable yields projections and not considering future climate change impacts, we find that, on average for all cereals on the global level, global projected yields by 2050 remain below the attainable yields. This is also true for future pathways with high technological progress and mitigation efforts, indicating that projected yield increases are not overly optimistic, even under systemic transformations. On a regional scale, we find that for developing regions, specifically for sub-Saharan Africa, projected yields stay well below attainable yields, indicating that the large yield gaps which could be closed through improved crop management, may also persist in the future. In OECD countries, in contrast, current yields are already close to attainable yields, and the projections approach or, for some models, even exceed attainable yields by 2050. This observation parallels research suggesting that future progress in attainable yields in developed regions will mainly have to be achieved through new crop varieties or genetic improvements. The models included in this study vary widely in their implementation of yield progress, which are often split into endogenous (crop management) improvements and exogenous (technological) trends. More detail and transparency are needed in these important elements of global yields and land use projections, and this paper discusses possibilities of better aligning agronomic understanding of yield gaps and yield potentials with modelling approaches.