Analysing Physical and Socio-economic Risk in the Adaption of Agriculture to Climate Change (ARI)

Adapting agriculture to climate change requires an understanding of both natural impacts and the underlying vulnerability of socio-economic systems.

Food production systems, essential to socio-economic activity throughout the world, are beginning to face the challenge of anthropogenic climate change in addition to the challenge of population growth and changing consumer patterns. Uncertainty surrounding climate change impacts, however, poses a serious challenge to agricultural adaptation. Additionally, since the effects of climate change will vary globally, changes in crop productivity will also differ from region to region. Thus, regional adaptive capacity must be considered locally in order to capture underlying socio-economic vulnerability. Our combined analysis of changes in crop productivity and adaptive capacity specifically highlights the seriousness of climate-change-related risks in Africa and South-East Asia. Conversely it is noted that some regions stand to make gains from the anticipated changes in climate.