William C. Clark, Patti Kristjanson, Bruce Campbell, Calestous Juma, Noel M. Holbrook, Gerald Nelson, and Nancy Dickson (2010). Harvard University Center for International Development Working Paper No. 198. Proceeds from the Executive Session on Grand Challenges of the Sustainability Transition, San Servolo Island, Venice, June 6-9.

This report discusses the findings of a recent conference on strategies to improve food security in an era of climate change.

The spectre of climate change casts a shadow over already pressing food sustainability issues.  This report documents major themes to emerge in discussions on strategic approaches to food security and climate change at the recent Harvard-organized session in Venice bringing together over 25 experts on the issue.

While the session did not conclude with a consensus statement, four common themes were articulated.  First, participants argued for the need for an integrated systems perspective.  Climate change and agriculture are interdependent.  However, “The simple concepts such as yield maximization that have dominated the agricultural world for decades are not adequate to deal with these complex interconnections.  New thinking and new, integrative models are needed to define a more sustainable path forward.  For both research and policy, the crucial need is to move beyond conventionally siloed perspectives on climate, agriculture and food security and instead to address them and their interactions from an integrated systems perspective” (7).

The second theme to emerge was the importance of creating useful knowledge.  While “Some of the needed advances in knowledge are obvious and currently being pursued” such as drought tolerant varieties, better soil and water management, nitrogen and soil conserving cultivation, and land management strategies designed to sequester carbon.  However, “the range of needs unaddressed by current systems is alarming.”  In particular, conference attendees argued that “There is a need, for example, for deeper, context-sensitive understanding of which set of rights, held at which levels of control and management (e.g., the state or the farmer), provide the best combinations of incentives consistent with ‘commons’ character of many aspects of agricultural and environmental systems.  System-level analysis that incorporates cultural components is needed to underpin consideration of farmers’ technology choices or their potential for livelihood diversification.  There is also a growing demand for systems that would link farmers to data about weather and climate, thus enabling them to make tactical decisions related to climactic variability, but the available climate information is too coarse in terms of spatial scale to be useful at the community or individual-farmer level.  A next generation of flexible, user-friendly spatial analysis tools is long overdue” (7).  Participants identified four areas in need of more R&D: better modelling of various scenarios of agricultural production and climate change, deeper consideration of the temporal dimensions of climate-related changes as they work through the paths of chronic stresses and acute shocks, the development of strategic options to reduce agricultural carbon emissions without harming food security, and more effective measuring, monitoring, verification, and reporting (MMVR) systems.

The third theme to emerge was the imperative of linking knowledge with action.  Trustworthy knowledge is technically credible, practically relevant, and politically unbiased.  Research and monitoring programs should be developed in collaboration with committed stakeholders such as farming communities, the private sector, governments, NGOs, and international negotiators.  Decision support systems such as the Sustainability Agriculture Initiative, Regional Integrated Sciences and Assessments, or Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change are helpful in linking new knowledge with action. 

The final theme to emerge was the importance of who does what.  Generally, there are three roles to be played in addressing agricultural and climate change: information gathering and analysis, advocacy, and implementation.  Regarding information gathering and analysis, better time series data should be collected to determine long term trends in climate change and agriculture, and this data should be shared.  Regarding advocacy, various groups should interact more, and universities should play more of a role here.  Regarding implementation, mobilization should focus on long term rather than short term efforts.