Climate change is already having impacts on food systems in the tropics, and in the coming decades it will alter the regional distribution of hungry people.
A new working paper from the CGIAR Research Program on Climate Change, Agriculture and Food Security (CCAFS) distils what is known about the likely impacts of climate change on the commodities and natural resources that make up the mandate of CGIAR and the 15 members of the CGIAR Consortium.
The study, “Impacts of climate change on the agricultural and aquatic systems and natural resources within CGIAR’s mandate”, contains summaries for 22 mandate commodities and for agroforestry, forests, and water. These summaries, written by scientists at each member center of the CGIAR Consortium, outline the importance of each commodity for food and nutrition security, its biological vulnerability to climate change, and the likely socio-economic vulnerability of the people affected.
The study shows that there are some crucial gaps in our understanding of the likely impacts of climate change on many key food staples and natural resources in developing countries, and subsequently on household food security and livelihoods.
Read the full summary or download the report (PDF 10MB).