Food security impacts and risks from atmospheric greenhouse gas pollution at today's committed global warming and climate change.
Reponse to Political Outcome Document of ICN2
Personal information
Name: Dr. Peter Carter
Organization: Climate Emergency Institute
Location: Canada
Date: May 28, 2014
Email: petercarter46ATshaw.ca
N.B. I include below a key paragraph from the IPCC AR5 (2014) on food and one from the USDA assessment (2013).
It is good to see that the draft recognizes that global climate change is a major threat to nutrition and food security (item 8), but global climate change is not included anywhere else in the draft. It can only be assumed for planning that from now on, global climate climate is going to reduce food production, which will become the defining factor for food security and nutrition by mid century.
From now on increasing extreme weather events driven by global climate change will be the leading factor in an ongoing deepening food security crisis.
Most importantly projected volatility of US food production over the next few decades means volatile and incrasing world food prices.
I ask that the draft include a statement that emissions must immediately plateau and decline by 2020 in accordance with the RCP2.6 of the IPCC AR5 (the only scenario that limits warming to 2ºC), in order to minimize food production loss affecting the world and all regions. RCP2.6 stabilizes at just below 2ºC, at which temperature increase severe crop yield losses are projected. The US 2014 federal Climate Change Assessment projects that from mid century, US food production will decline. Crop declines are projected for most regions above 1.0ºC and all regions by 2ºC. The world’s best food producing regions in the northern hemisphere are now projected to be vulnerable to already committed global change. Please include that the IPCC AR5 assessment projections make climate change mitigation with adaptation essential to minimize damaging, disastrous to catastrophic food production impacts over the short, medium and long terms.
Impacts over the next three decades cannot be prevented as we are locked into this period by climate system inertia, and so the worst ever and increasing food security disasters must be prepared for. Without effective mitigation (emissions reductions) starting by 2020 we will be committing outrselves to future world food calamity of pregressive declines affecting all regions which will threaten the sustainability of civilization .
While starting adapation now is essential, it is unlikely to help in any sustained way without ongoing effective mitigation.
I include a key paragraph from the IPCC AR5 on food and one from the USDA assessment. Please note that the IPCC does not decide what is dangerous climate change or dangerous levels of atmospheric greenhouse gases and does not make recommendations. This is left up to other organizations to do.
IPCC WG2 TS P. 223. 3. Food production systems and food security
Without adaptation, local temperature increases of 1oC or more above preindustrial levels are projected to negatively impact yields for the major crops (wheat, rice, and maize) in tropical and temperate regions, although individual locations may benefit. With or without adaptation, climate change will reduce median yields by 0 to 2% per decade for the rest of the century, as compared to a baseline without climate change. These projected impacts will occur in the context of rising crop demand, projected to increase by about 14% per decade until 2050. Risks are greatest for tropical countries, given projected impacts that exceed adaptive capacity and higher poverty rates compared with temperate regions. Climate change will progressively increase inter-annual variability of crop yields in many regions.
p. 2 Key messages Climate Change and US Agriculture Assessment USDA September 2013 Projections for crops and livestock production systems reveal that climate change effects over the next 25 years will be mixed. Beyond mid century however changes in climate are expected to have overall detrimental effects on most crops and livestock.
Please note that the above is derived from climate crop model projections that do not capture many large adverse impacts, including increased weeds and pests, extreme weather events, and increased tropospheric ozone. They do not capture combinations of adverse impacts. Possible benefits of CO2 fertilization for temperate regions are projected to be modest and short lived, after which yields decline progressively with increased temperatures. CO2 benefit for nutrition is offset by reduction of crop nutrients. Potential yield benefit will be offset if not cancelled out by rising ground level ozone.
Respectfully submitted,
Peter Carter
For the future of food security and nutrition, global climate change from now on
is everything for everybody
For the science referred to below, please see www.climatechange-foodsecurity.org
The 11,000 year period of relative climate stability in which agriculture developed is over
— Lester R. Brown, Full Planet, Empty Plates: The New Geopolitics of Food Scarcity, September 2012
1. If you were designing an agricultural investment programme, what are the top 5 things you would do to maximize its impact on nutrition?
Invest in an emergency increase of world grain stocks to ~110 days of consumption to create a buffer against extreme weather. Establish UN controlled 110-day grain stocks in all regions.
Invest in economic instruments to phase out the production of biofuels, that exacerbate the reductions of crop yields from drought and emit carbon.
Invest in the development of small holder mixed farming that recent research indicates is more resilient to climate change.
Invest in global climate change impacts food security education for the public of all regions, for agricultural institutions, policy makers, and government staff.
Lester Brown's Earth Policy Institute provides the best readily available education materials for this. The Climate Emergency Institute (www.climateemergencyinstitute.org) has a full list of similar resources.
In particular, the most climate change vulnerable regions and populations have a clear right to know the terrible food losses they are committed to.
In the case of global climate change, if we don't have the accurate science and currently committed global warming as our basis for planning, with the best will in the world we will end up largely wasting our efforts and resources.
Central to this education is the long known fundamental relationship between an impact and the "realized" (or transient) along with the "committed" warming, which is due to several factors. For example, because of the ocean heat lag alone, the realized/transient warming is only about half the full committed equilibrium warming – and global warming lasts for thousands of years. To illustrate this, a 2.0°C warming (the policy target) is devastating for the most climate change vulnerable populations, but people have not been informed that to avoid this we have to limit warming this century to 1.0°C. Global warming is effectively irreversible and so we have to allow no margin of error for tipping crops into decline – based on committed warming.
Tragically, none of this is being applied, hence the urgent need, above anything else, for education on the science.
Regarding education priority, the impression that developed nations are not vulnerable to crop and food losses must be corrected. We are all now committed to suffer serious food production losses because we are committed to far above a 2.0°C warming. Policy commitment is a literal end of the world for food production 4.4C by 2100 (Climate Interactive)
For C3 crops (rice, wheat, soybeans, fine grains, legumes) in temperate regions, … models show decline at +1.25-2°C in global average temperature.
For C4 crops (maize, sugar cane, millet, sorghum), even modest amounts of warming are detrimental in major growing regions given the small response to CO2.
—NRC Climate Stabilization Targets, 2010, Impact Food
Save the Children Fund UK: "Identify and address the threats to nutrition from climate change and non-food land use: The global community, including the G8, the G20 and international nutrition governance structures, must identify and address the potential impact of climate change and increasing non-food land use on hunger and malnutrition."
2. To support the design and implementation of this programme, where would you like to see more research done, and why?
Research is needed on adaptation in general and regionally. People and policy makers should be informed that we have no research demonstrating if and how agriculture can be adapted to the multiple adverse impacts of global warming and climate change.
The new buzzword, "climate smart agriculture," is giving the impression that we know agriculture can be successfully adapted to climate change. It is not responsible language.
Research is needed for regional crop reduction risk assessment under global warming and climate change, as there is no such resource.
A study of risk should be based on:
• the total minimum unavoidable global warming from all sources of warming
• the warming that the world is committed to by the combined national policy pledges filed with the UN
• decline in yields from the model results, which should be taken from the time crops tip into decline in addition to the decline below baseline
• the worst case range from the climate crop model results (not the mean) should be taken, to partially compensate for the large number of large impacts not captured by the models
3. What can our institutions do to help country governments commit to action around your recommendations, and to help ensure implementation will be effective?
Develop and take part in the rapid education program described above, on an emergency priority basis.
Thank you for the background in the document which is an interesting read.
I thoroughly agree with you final definition copied below.
“Food and nutrition security exists when all people at all times have physical, social and economic access to food, which is safe and consumed in sufficient quantity and quality to meet their dietary needs and food preferences, and is supported by an environment of adequate sanitation, health services and care, allowing for a healthy and active life.”
It is how ever vital to consider it in terms of the new world food nutrition security context- that we all now face today due to immediate impacts on Northern hemisphere food security due to committed rapidly increasing climate change impacts.
Food and nutrition insecurity from now on is not limited to the Global South.
Global drought has been increasing for 30 years and NH drought over ten years.
The Northern hemisphere warming is continuing to increase faster than the global average, with the Arctic now warming several times faster.
Increased warming increases heat waves and drought.
Arctic snow and summer sea ice albedo cooling is the air conditioner of the NH summer.
As the NH albedo air conditioner is rapidly being lost NH drought, heat waves, and climate variability increase.
Only an emergency transformation in the world food economy and world energy economy can prevent the collapse the great NH agricultural regions and the world food economy. With that of course civilization will descend into chaos and collapse.
Peter Carter
Peter Carter
Climate Change, Food Security and Nutrition FAO April 2015
Dr Peter Carter BC Canada
Dear facilitator and FAO , please accept this submission with respect climate change food security and nutrition. There is nothing more important for all the world as this particular issue.
I include some content from my recent presentation for the Seventh International Conference on Climate Change Impacts and Responses Conference 10 April 2015.
I have posted my full response with images and figures at the following site.
http://climatechange-foodsecurity.org/about.html
Conclusion
We are in an already committed global climate change world food security emergency situation.
This is clear when we connect the science of already committed global climate change and the science of impacts of global climate change on crop yields, and this requires immediate measures for climate change mitigation and adaptation.
Please note that the IPCC does not make conclusions on dangerous interference with the climate system.
Recommendation
I strongly recommend that the FAO issue a statement in support of the IPCC AR5 best case emissions scenario RCP 2.6 with respect to world food security , and that the FAO conduct an environmental health risk assessment of the up-to-date research on committed global climate change and world food security.
Please note that the IPCC does not make recommendations, and while it provides information on risk and a great deal of information for the performance of a risk assessment, the IPCC assessment is not itself a risk assessment.
This world food security emergency is clear when we connect the science of already committed global climate change and the science of impacts of global climate change on crop yields, requiring immediate measures for climate change mitigation and adaptation.
Climate change commitment
This emergency food security situation is made necessarily far worse by the grossly inadequate response of climate change policy- which is the greatest ever policy failure. This policy failure commitment presently endangers billions of people alive today and all future generations.
Policy commitment
The most up-to-date calculation of the combined national United Nations pledges on emissions is from Climate Action Tracker (approved by climate change experts).
‘Limiting warming to the globally agreed goal of holding warming below a 2°C increase above pre-industrial in the 21st century means that the emissions of greenhouse gases need to be reduced rapidly in the coming years and decades. The unconditional pledges or promises that governments have made, as of early 2015, would limit warming to 2.9 to 3.1°C above pre-industrial levels’. (Climate Action Tracker 2014)
This policy commitment, however, is considerably higher than 3°C because this is only a realized warming by 2100. The full committed equilibrium warming long after 2100 will be another 75% (IPCC AR5 “For the RCP4.5 and RCP6.0 extension scenarios with early stabilization, it is about 75% at the time of forcing stabilization” (IPCC 2013, WG1, Ch 12 , p. 1103), making the full equilibrium commitment 5°C or more.
There is not the slightest indication that the December 2015 United Nations Paris Conference of the Parties (COP21) will change this situation.
Climate system science commitment
Today’s global surface temperature increase of 0.8°C is already absolutely committed (or locked in) to increase to 1.5°C by 2030-2040, according to the IPCC AR5, “The era of committed global climate change 1.5°C 2030 to 2040,” (IPCC 2014, WG2 Figure 11.6). Most significantly this particular IPCC AR5 reference is linked to a great resulting increase in under-nutrition.
Certainly without a rapid emergency world emissions response, our longer term commitment due to the present extremely high concentrations of atmospheric greenhouse gases, according to the IPCC AR5, is 2° C. (IPCC, AR5, WG 1, 12. 5. 2 ).
Extreme weather events
The most damaging single category of climate change impacts to both human population health and crops is Extreme weather events. In most of the world where food production is labour intensive, human health impacts of climate change and the crop yield impacts combine to reduce crop productivity even more.
Today
We are already experiencing climate change on food security, including some episodic regional disastrous impacts on food productivity -and we are committed to a much higher degree of global climate change than we already have today causing these impacts. Such disastrous climate change-driven impacts, such as extreme weather events, which are already occurring on all continents, are committed to greatly increase.
‘Impacts from recent climate-related extremes, such as heat waves, droughts, floods, cyclones, and wildfires, reveal significant vulnerability and exposure of some ecosystems and many human systems to current climate variability (very high confidence). Impacts of such climate-related extremes include, …disruption of food production and water supply …’ (The Fifth Assessment Report of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, 2014, , Climate Synthesis Report , Longer report, p. 16)
IPCC AR5
The IPCC (2013-2014) AR5 changed everything that has been reported before on food security. While it has for long been known that the tropical regions would be the most vulnerable to the impacts of climate change on their crop yields (with very small degrees of climate change causing declining crop yields), previous assessments assumed that the temperate northern hemisphere, at least by 2100, was not vulnerable and might even gain by some crop yield increase. Recent research has found that this is not, and is not going to be, the case. Climate change is already having negative effects on most, if not all. major food-producing regions.
‘Assessment of many studies covering a wide range of regions and crops shows that negative impacts of climate change on crop yields have been more common than positive impacts (high confidence). The smaller number of studies showing positive impacts relate mainly to high-latitude regions, though it is not yet clear whether the balance of impacts has been negative or positive in these regions.’ (The Fifth Assessment Report of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, 2014, Working Group 2, Impacts Adaptation and Vulnerability, Chapter 11, Figure 11.6)
It is therefore not surprising that the IPCC Working Group 2 scientists projected that all major crops in all major food-producing regions would be affected negatively above a local and global (they are the same at 1.0°C from 1850) temperature increase of 1°C. ‘Without adaptation, local temperature increases in excess of about 1oC above pre-industrial is projected tohave negative effects on yields for the major crops (wheat, rice and maize) in both tropical and temperate regions With or without adaptation, negative impacts on average yields become likely from the 2030s with median yield impacts of 0 to -2% per decade projected for the rest of the century , and after 2050 the risk of more severe impacts increases. These impacts will occur in the context of rising crop demand, which is projected to increase by about 14% per decade until 2050. (IPCC, AR5, Working Group 2, Final draft, p. 3).
This is shown in the IPCC WG2 2014 graphs of crop projections, in which the assumed benefits (with one adverse exception) of climate change adaptation should be ignored.
For food security and environmental health risk from climate change taking the mean of the wide range of results (as AR5) of the crop model projections is not valid- worst-case scenarios must be used. Assuming adaptation benefit (As AR5 does) is invalid, especially in this case when the world climate is now in an unprecedented no-analog state, and the crop models do not capture a number of very adverse effects.
For food security and risk it is essential to bear in mind that the IPCC AR5 crop models still do capture a number of large adverse effects. These projections will certainly not be over-estimates with regard to crop yield declines. It would be assumed for risk, that they will increasingly be under-estimates, as global warming, climate change, tropospheric ozone concentration and extreme weather events increase.
‘More difficult to quantify with models is the impact of very extreme events on cropping systems, since by definition these occur very rarely and models cannot be adequately calibrated and tested’ (IPCC AR5 WG2 TS 7.2.1.1. p. 6). ‘The robustness of crop model results depends on data quality, model skill prediction and model complexity. Modelling and experiments are each subject to their own uncertainties. Measurement uncertainty is a feature of field and controlled environment experiments. For example, interactions between CO2 fertilisation, temperature, soil nutrients, ozone, pests and weeds is not well understood and therefore most crop models do not include all these effects’ (IPCC AR5 WG2 TS p.11). ‘The rarity of long-term studies of plant diseases and pests is a problem for the evaluation of climate change effects’. (IPCC AR5 WG2 TS p.15).
It is therefore vital that important international agencies like the FAO urgently review plans and policies with respect to climate change and food security.
The fact is our only option to avoid committing (condemning) the future to a world food security catastrophe is a rapid reduction of emissions for mitigation. The 2007 IPCC AR4 made it clear that to avoid a warming of 2 to 2.4° C, emissions ‘must have reversed by 2015 at the latest’. The only emissions scenario of the IPCC AR5 that does not lead to a surface warming above 2° C by 2100 is the best case emissions scenario RCP 2.6. This scenario requires emissions to stop increasing right away and to be in decline from 2020. It is still just possible to achieve this. But this scenario is not on the agenda or any documents of the UNFCCC for the 2015 Paris climate conference negotiations.
‘RCP2.6 is a scenario that aims to keep global warming below 2°C above pre-industrial temperatures’ (IPCC 2014, WG3, SPM. 2.1).
The world is in a desperate emergency situation with respect to climate change and food security. In this unprecedented situation, threatening billions of people today and the future of humanity, the relevant and involved United Nations Departments are obligated to explain the emergency and certainly to simply (while most significantly) recommend the IPCC AR5 best case emissions scenario RCP 2.6.
In conclusion I appeal to the FAO to at least publish a statement in support of the IPCC AR5 best case emissions scenario RCP 2.6.
Sincerely,
Peter Carter BC Canada
Peter Carter
Please find the attached from my recent paper.
The evidence is now clear- all countries are in a state of committed global climate change food security and emergency.
UN departments must please make recommendations on this issue- to implement IPCC AR5 best case scenario RCP2.6 right away.
Above 1.0C all crops in all practically regions will be in decline, especially considering the several large adverse impacts which are not captured by the crop models.
Only by implementing RCP 2.6 which calls for missions to stop increasing right away and to find from 2020 quite rapidly, can we possibly avoid a global warming above the catastrophic 2.0° C policy,target.
Adaptation measures should be being implemented now, though it is unacceptable in every way to assume benefits in policy making. The best result in the best situations possible is a delay of committed crop declines for less than a decade. With the projected increase in extreme weather events and climate variation we certainly cannot expect adaptation to be successful.
Best regards
Peter Carter