Climate Change, Trade, and Global Food Security: A Global Assessment of Transboundary Climate Risks in Agricultural Commodity Flows

Adams, Kevin MacG.; Benzie, Magnus; Croft, Simon; Sadowski, Sebastian

doi:10.51414/sei2021.009

Cited by 15 publications

(15 citation statements)

References 12 publications

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“…Ennustetut muutokset globaaleissa tuotantomäärissä seitsemän viljelykasvin osalta RCP8.5 -ilmastoskenaariossa. Taulukon tiedot pohjautuvat artikkeleihin Adams et al (2021) ja Zhang et al (2017), joista koostanut Lehtonen et al (2022). Sopeutumispotentiaali: Suomen elintarvikehuollon ennustetaan kärsivän ilmastonmuutoksen suorista vaikutuksista suhteellisen vähän moniin muihin maihin nähden.…”

Section: Elintarvikehuoltounclassified

Climate change impacts to the security of supply

Mäkelä¹,

Tourula²,

Tuomenvirta³

et al. 2023

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Serious disruptions and exceptional circumstances for society, that the society tries to prepare for and act in them are at the center of security of supply. Current examples are the COVID pandemic and the ongoing energy crisis for which Finland's security of supply has also been strongly highlighted. Disturbances can also be caused by weather phenomena: in Finland, such examples are windstorms, severe thunderstorms, floods, and droughts, which can, at least in principle, paralyze the society. It is possible to prepare for the impacts of weather phenomena, but the ongoing rapid climate change makes it more complicated. Some of the weather phenomena that cause impacts are fast and violent (e.g. intense thunderstorms) and some occur more slowly (e.g. long heat waves), and climate change affects the phenomena in different ways. In this work, the estimated impacts of climate change on Finland's security of supply were investigated. The starting point was to gain an understanding of which weather phenomena and weather situations are central to security of supply and which sectors of security of supply are the most vulnerable. The work constituted of workshops and expert interviews organized with the National Emergency Supply Agency. In addition to the interviews, the work covered past significant weather situations in Finland that are known to have had significant societal impacts. Information was also extracted from recent literature, especially regarding the vulnerabilities and adaptability of different sectors in Finland. Estimates of the climate change impacts on the identified phenomena were combined with the collected information, resulting in a first understanding of how climate change affects Finland's security of supply. Based on the results, it can be concluded that the impacts of climate change on security of supply are quite complex, especially due to the wide spectrum of weather phenomena and their different impact mechanisms. In addition, the matter becomes more complicated by the fact that there is no clear distinction of what weather phenomenon actually is critical to security of supply and what is not. For example, could the increasing adverse impacts on health care due to the increasingly common heat conditions reach a serious societal disturbance situation at some point, if it is not sufficiently prepared in advance? Another key result is that in terms of security of supply, the direct effects of climate change are very small in Finland compared to many other countries. Although the climate in Finland has already changed considerably and will continue to change in the future, the biggest impacts to security of supply seem to be reflected from elsewhere: the experts of the National Emergency Supply Agency consider the worst situation to be a lack of food, water and habitable living environment in the world, which would also be reflected to Finland. Among the sectors, food/water and energy supply and logistics are perceived as the most vulnerable. The work mainly focused on the direct effects of climate change, i.e. the effects of climate change on the occurrence of various weather phenomena. However, the work also considers to some extent indirect effects, i.e. those reflected from other parts of the world, and transitional effects that result from climate change mitigation measures, especially from the rapid energy transition.

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Section: Elintarvikehuoltounclassified

Climate change impacts to the security of supply

Mäkelä¹,

Tourula²,

Tuomenvirta³

et al. 2023

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“…We used crop production and detailed trade matrix data in tonnes for the most recently available data (2018) that were corrected for re-exports to represent point-of-origin-to-point-ofdestination trade movements (Kastner et al 2011, Croft et al 2018. While trade may fluctuate across years, recent research shows that there is a high degree of 'stickiness' that makes the trade system less volatile and more stable than often assumed (Reis et al 2020, Adams et al 2021). We use primary commodity data for wheat and maize, but since the raw form of rice (paddy) is mainly traded in processed forms, we used the milled equivalent of paddy rice (FAO 1972).…”

Section: Production and Trade Datamentioning

confidence: 99%

“…This impact constitutes a threat not only to individual producing countries but, because of an acceleration in countries' dependence on overseas trade for food supply, also to global food security (D'Odorico et al 2014, Janssens et al 2020. Disrupted production in one or a few countries can induce changes in the food trade network as a whole (Puma et al 2015), which is a primary example of cross-border impacts of climate change (Bren D'Amour et al 2016, Hedlund et al 2018, Adams et al 2021, Carter et al 2021, Lager and Benzie 2022. Such redistribution of global climate risk constitutes a significant challenge for climate adaptation with regards to international cooperation (Challinor et al 2017).…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Impacts of climate change on global food trade networks

Hedlund

Carlsen

Croft

et al. 2022

Environ. Res. Lett.

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Countries’ reliance on global food trade networks implies that regionally different climate change impacts on crop yields will be transmitted across borders. This redistribution constitutes a significant challenge for climate adaptation planning and may affect how countries engage in geopolitical and cooperative action. This paper investigates the long-term (2070-2099) potential impacts of climate change on global food trade networks of three key crops: wheat, rice and maize. We propose a simple network model to project how climate change impacts on crop yields may be translated into changes in trade. Combining trade and climate impact data, our analysis proceeds in three steps. First, we use network community detection to analyse how the concentration of global production in present-day trade communities may become disrupted with climate change impacts. Second, we study how countries may change their network position following climate change impacts. Third, we study the total climate-induced change in production plus import within trade communities. Results indicate that the stability of food trade network structures compared to today differs between crops, and that countries’ maize trade is least stable under climate change impacts. Results also project that threats to global food security may depend on production change in a few major global producers, and whether trade communities can balance production and import loss in some vulnerable countries. Overall, our model contributes a baseline analysis of cross-border climate impacts on food trade networks.

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“…The increasingly high likelihood of adverse and severe climate change impacts on agriculture will reduce the ability for actors to diversify income, substitute crops and hedge trade risks. For most agricultural products, and coffee particularly, the strategy to replace high-risk suppliers with more resilient ones will not be plausible, as the risks to agricultural production far outpace the opportunities to increase production elsewhere (Adams et al, 2021).…”

Section: Direct and Transboundary Climate Risk In The Coffee Supply C...mentioning

confidence: 99%

The coffee supply chain illustrates transboundary climate risks: Insights on governance pathways

Dzebo¹,

Adams²

2022

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The interconnections between countries in a globalizing world continue to deepen and are central to the modern international economy. Yet, governance efforts to build resilience to the adverse risks and impacts of climate change are highly fragmented and have not sufficiently focused on these international dimensions. Relationships between people, ecosystems and economies across borders change the scope and nature of the climate adaptation challenge and generate climate risks that are transboundary (Challinor et al., 2017). Climate impacts in one country can create risks and opportunities – and therefore may require adaptation – in other countries, due to cross-border connectivity within regions and globally (Hedlund et al., 2018). These Transboundary Climate Risks (TCRs) may develop in one location remote from the location of their origin. This dynamic necessitates examining the governance structures for managing climate change adaptation. For example, with regard to trade and international supply chains, climate change impacts in one location can disrupt local economies and vulnerable people’s livelihoods, while also affecting the price, quality and availability of goods and services on international markets (Benzie et al., 2018). Coffee is one of the most traded commodities in the world with an immensely globalized supply chain. The global coffee sector involves more than 100 million people in over 80 countries. Coffee production and the livelihoods of smallholder coffee farmers around the world are at risk due to climate change, threatening to disrupt one of the world’s largest agricultural supply chains. The coffee supply chain represents an important arena for public and private actors to negotiate how resource flows should be governed and climate risks should be managed. Currently, neither governments nor private sector actors are sufficiently addressing TCRs (Benzie & Harris, 2020) and no clear mandates exist for actors to take ownership of this issue. Furthermore, the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC), the main body for climate change policy and governance, does not provide any coherent recommendations on how to manage TCRs. This governance gap raises questions about what methods are likely to effectively reduce climate risk and be taken seriously by coffee market stakeholders. This policy brief explores different ways to govern TCRs, and how public and private actors view their effectiveness and legitimacy. Focusing on the Brazilian-German coffee supply chain, the brief presents a deductive framework of five governance pathways through which TCRs could be managed. It is based on 41 semi-structured interviews with 65 Brazilian and German public and private experts, including roasters, traders, cooperatives, associations and certification schemes, as well as government ministries, international development agencies, international organizations and civil society representatives.

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Climate Change, Trade, and Global Food Security: A Global Assessment of Transboundary Climate Risks in Agricultural Commodity Flows

Cited by 15 publications

References 12 publications

Climate change impacts to the security of supply

Climate change impacts to the security of supply

Impacts of climate change on global food trade networks

The coffee supply chain illustrates transboundary climate risks: Insights on governance pathways

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