Journal Articles

× There is growing interest in Sub-Saharan Africa for substituting maize with climate-smart crops like sorghum and millets in local food processing. We conducted a survey to explore current variations in processing and consumption practices for Mahewu, a traditionally fermented cereal beverage from Zimbabwe. Processing involved cooking a cereal porridge, adding cereal flour or malt as a starter ingredient, and fermenting for 12–48 h. Ingredient availability was the main driver for porridge ingredient choice (42% of respondents) with the most preferred being maize (55% of respondents), pearl millet (22%) and sorghum (9%). Final product taste had the most influence on starter ingredient choice, with most respondents preferring pearl millet flour (23%), finger millet malt (22%), wheat flour (17%), and sorghum malt (13%). Our study proves that maize can be replaced with sorghum and millet in Mahewu processing, thus increasing the climate-resilience of future food systems, and demonstrates that traditional practices harbour clues for adapting current practices.

× Climate change, poverty, and low environmental education have contributed to increasing vulnerability of poor farmers in Mali. This study was done to determine the impact of low-cost adaptation strategies on resilience and welfare. We analyzed the impact of a World Vision project which promoted climate-smart agricultural (CSA) practices in Mali from 2016-2019. We identified the impact using a two-stage weighted regression (2SWR). Results show that the World Vision Project significantly increased the adoption of Farmer-Managed Natural Regeneration (FMNR) practice and eventually crop yield. These intermediate impacts were translated into a significant reduction in food and nutrition insecurity and an increase in household income. The impacts of the project on child health were especially greater for farmers who participated in the project for a longer time. However, the project did not have a significant impact on the adoption of a combination of CSA practices – which could have enhanced the effectiveness of the FMNR practice. The results suggest the need for future interventions to emphasize the promotion of complementary CSA practices, which significantly increases returns to farmer investments.

× Climate change affects every aspect of the food system, including all nodes along agri-food value chains from production to consumption, the food environments in which people live, and outcomes, such as diets and livelihoods. Men and women often have specific roles and responsibilities within food systems, yet structural inequalities (formal and informal) limit women's access to resources, services, and agency. These inequalities affect the ways in which men and women experience and are affected by climate change. In addition to gender, other social factors are at play, such as age, education, marital status, and health and economic conditions. To date, most climate change policies, investments, and interventions do not adequately integrate gender. If climate-smart and climate-resilient interventions do not adequately take gender differences into account, they might exacerbate gender inequalities in food systems by, for instance, increasing women's labor burden and time poverty, reducing their access to and control over income and assets, and reducing their decision-making power. At the same time, women's contributions are critical to make food systems more resilient to the negative impacts of climate change, given their specialized knowledge, skills and roles in agri-food systems, within the household, at work and in their communities. Increasing the resilience of food systems requires going beyond addressing gendered vulnerabilities to climate change to create an enabling environment that supports gender equality and women's empowerment, by removing structural barriers and rigid gender norms, and building equal power dynamics, as part of a process of gender transformative change. For this to happen, more research is needed to prioritize structural barriers that need to be removed and to identify effective gender transformative approaches.

× There is growing optimism about the potential of digital innovations to support climate action and transform agricultural markets. We review and characterize the landscape of digital innovations in the Central and West Asia and North Africa (CWANA) region. We highlight major success stories associated with the potential of digital innovations to facilitate rural market transformation and support climate action, including adaptation and mitigation. Our desk and landscape review identifies various digital innovations used in Egypt, Morocco, and Uzbekistan. We then create a typology of digital innovations based on seven broad service categorizations: weather and climate; agricultural finance; energy and early warning systems; data and crowdsourcing; market information and market place; extension and advisory information; and supply chain coordination. Three technical and validation workshops supplement this review. Our review shows that digital innovations have the potential to build resilience to climate change and increase market access, but their adoption remains low and varying across contexts. Significant heterogeneity and differences exist across these countries, possibly due to different institutional and regulatory frameworks that guide demand and capacity. We identify several supply and demand-side constraints facing the digital ecosystem in the region. There is the existence of a significant digital divide fueled by gender, literacy gaps, and related socioeconomic and psychosocial constraints. A seeming disconnect also exists between pilots and scale-ups, as most existing digital applications are unsuccessful in expanding beyond the pilot phase.

× A convergence of several risk drivers creates the compound crises we see across the globe today. At the same time, the global humanitarian community and national institutions in affected countries are increasingly resource constrained. In this context, existing financing mechanisms should be evaluated for their potential to create synergies between social protection, peace, and inclusion objectives on the one hand and climate resilience outcomes on the other. The existing international architecture of climate change mitigation and adaptation policy and financing holds, in principle, the potential to address not only its main purpose of climate action, but also to contribute to development outcomes and address multiple risk drivers. Examples of this exist, but for these mutual benefits to emerge, and for climate finance to contribute more significantly to crises prevention, the agendas must become more aligned. Aligning several factors may enable coherence: i) Timeframes, from short-term response to multi-year programming; ii) Planning and targeting, moving towards conflict-sensitive area-based approaches and universal access to services; iii) Institutional arrangements and partnerships, coordinated national planning and jointly implemented local action.

× This paper analyzes the effectiveness of agriculture-led versus non-agriculture-led development strategies under climate-induced economic uncertainty. Utilizing Malawi as a case study, we introduce the application of Stochastic Dominance (SD) analysis, a tool from decision analysis theory, and compare the two strategies in the context of weather/climate-associated economic uncertainty. Our findings suggest that an agriculture-led development strategy consistently surpasses its non-agriculture-led antagonist in poverty and undernourishment outcomes across almost all possible weather/climate scenarios. This underscores that, despite increasing exposure of the entire economy to weather/climate uncertainty, agriculture-led development remains the optimal strategy for Malawi to reduce poverty and undernourishment. The study also endorses the broader use of SD analysis in policy planning studies, promoting its potential to integrate risk and uncertainty into policymaking.

× The fertilizer response of yield has been one of the major indicators of agricultural productivity in both developed and developing countries. Filling the evidence gap remains vital regarding fertilizer response in Asia, particularly in South Asia, given the evolution and emergence of new challenges, including intensifying climate shocks. We aim to partly fill this knowledge gap by investigating the associations between climate shocks and fertilizer response in Bangladeshi rice production. Using three rounds of nationally representative farm household panel data with plot- level information, we assess fertilizer response functions regarding rice yield and how the shapes of these response functions are heterogeneous in relation to anomalies in temperatures, droughts, and rainfall. We find robust evidence that climate anomalies have adverse effects on fertilizer responses, including higher temperatures for the Boro and the Aman irrigated systems and higher temperatures and droughts for the Aman rainfed systems. These findings hold robustly under various fertilizer response function forms, i.e., polynomial function and stochastic Linear Response Plateau. Furthermore, results for stochastic Linear Response Plateau are also consistent for both switching regression type models and Bayesian regression models.

× The main objective of this study is to understand the interlinkages between different irrigation technologies and management systems and environmental outcomes. We use a unique and comprehensive household and plot-level dataset covering ten districts of Ethiopia complemented with remotely sensed data and qualitative information collected from the study sites. The econometric results show that compared to open-access plots equipped with pump irrigation, other irrigated configurations, and especially private groundwater-based systems, have higher vegetation cover and show less susceptibility to the most common environmental concerns mentioned in the survey regions: water logging, soil salinity, and erosion externalities.

× Extreme climate events in breadbasket regions have become more frequent due to climate change, exposing crops to a greater frequency and intensity of abiotic stress. But by using observed crop yield statistics and an ensemble of statistical models, we demonstrate that over the last six decades the frequency of crop yield shocks in breadbasket regions has been decreasing due to both climate and non-climate factors. Here non-climate factors refer to interannual variability unrelated to abiotic stress, such as biotic stress and management decisions. We find that although the risk posed by extreme heat to crop yields has been increasing, this risk has been offset by changes to precipitation, extremely cold days, and average growing season temperature in many breadbaskets. As a result, total climate-related crop yield shocks have been decreasing for soybeans and wheat, while they have remained roughly constant for maize. Meanwhile, non-climate risks to crop yields have decreased in nearly every breadbasket region across crops. Because non-climate risks have decreased faster than climate risks, we find that the climate accounts for a greater proportion of crop yield shocks in the recent period (1991–2020) compared to an earlier period (1961–90). Our results indicate that extreme climate events are more important than ever to the relative stability of the food production system, even as the overall frequency of multiple breadbasket yield shocks decreases.

× Agriculture sector is major sufferer of climate change both at a global level as well as at India level. Cereals account for about 92 % of India's total food grain output and climate change has a significant influence on the production of cereals. This study aimed to evaluate the long-term and short-term effects of climatic and non-climatic variables, specifically temperature, precipitation, cereal area, total cropped area, fertilizer consumption, and pesticide consumption, on cereal production in India. The study included annual time series data that covered the period from 1960 to 2018, covering a period of 58 years. Various econometric techniques were employed to examine these relationships. The validity of a long-term and short-term relationship among the relevant variables included in the study was validated by employing the Autoregressive Distributed Lag (ARDL) technique and the Johansen cointegration test. The ARDL model's estimation outcomes reveals that input factors such as cereal area became a key factor in rising cereal production, as evidenced by its positive coefficient. Similarly, fertilizer consumption and precipitation had positive effects on production in the long run whereas total cropped area and minimum temperature has little influence over the results of production both in short run as well as long run. Furthermore, the long-term findings were also supported using econometric tools like Canonical Cointegrating Regression (CCR) and Fully Modified Least Squares (FMOLS). These methods confirmed that variations in cereal production in India were significantly influenced by both climatic factors and agricultural inputs and factors. The study emphasizes the urgency for policymakers to prioritize proactive measures aimed at reducing the adverse impacts of climate change on cereal production in India. This necessitates a comprehensive strategy integrating sustainable practices, technological innovations, and robust policy frameworks to ensure resilient agricultural sectors and sustainable food production.

× We provide an application of machine learning to identify the distributional consequences of climate change in Malawi. We compare climate impact estimates based on drought indicators established objectively from the k-means algorithm to more traditional measures. Young women affected by drought were 5 percentage points more likely to be married by 18 than those living in nondrought areas. Our approach generates robust results when varying the number of clusters and definition of treatment status. In some cases, we find the design using k-means to define treatment is more likely to satisfy the assumptions underlying the difference-in-differences strategy than when using arbitrary thresholds. Projections from the estimates indicate future drought risk may lead to larger declines in labor productivity due to women's engagement in early age marriage than other factors affecting their participation rates. Under the extreme representative concentration pathway scenario, drought exposure encourages the exit of 3.3 million women workers by 2100.

× Context Semi-arid regions are one of the most vulnerable regions of climate change to agriculture. Karnataka, a semi-arid state of India has warmed by 0.4 °C with declining trends in average annual rainfall by 10 % over the last century, is highly vulnerable to climate change. To adapt with this climate change impact, Government of Karnataka along with CGIAR institutes and agriculture universities had initiated the Bhoo-Samrudhi program in 2013 to promote climate smart agriculture practices in the state. The primary aim of this program was to enhance crop productivity by 25 % and farmers income by 20 %.

× Livestock markets influence income generation for producers, but also accessibility and affordability of highly nutritious animal-sourced foods for consumers. Despite their importance, the functioning of livestock markets in lower-income countries is poorly understood and rarely studied compared to more developed countries. This study analyzes wholesale cattle markets in Ethiopia using a uniquely rich large-scale dataset covering both prices and cattle characteristics in 39 markets (in both highland and lowland areas) over a 10-year period, and hedonic regression models structured to understand both cattle price formation and seasonal and secular price dynamics. We show that cattle prices are influenced by a wide range of factors, including proxies for meat quality, religious fasting practices, climate-based seasonality but also climate shocks and availability of grazing land, competition from animal traction services, and rising consumer incomes. However, the implied effects of these factors are often significantly different in highland mixed crop-livestock areas compared to agro-pastoralist lowland areas, emphasizing the dualistic nature of cattle markets in Ethiopia. The analyses help inform the systemic challenges that Ethiopia will need to overcome to meet rising demand for beef products in the face of sustained income and population growth, as well as the adverse effects of climate change.

× A tradeoff lies between inclusiveness and economic efficiency in meeting the Sustainable Development Goals such as poverty reduction, food security, and climate resilience. Vertical coordination between agribusinesses and farmers, in tandem with corporate social responsibility, has been perceived as an approach to surmount such tradeoff from a micro perspective. In a localized context of developing economies, the vertical coordination with farmers is reducible to a path for agribusinesses towards inclusive local value chain development (LVCD) at the grassroots level. However, few models are documented for agribusiness managers to refer to in practice. This study harnesses the Techlex Group and its pig business as a case, zooming in on the vertical coordination of agribusiness and vulnerable smallholders in lagging rural areas of China. Based on an overview of China’s pig industry and Techlex’s value chain, this study highlights three inclusive models and their alternatives for the LVCD. Though proffered in the Chinese context, those models can enrich the LVCD toolkit and be attuned to fit a different scenario.

× The nexus between trade, climate change, and nutrition is important in the conversation of sustainable diets. Understanding these interactions, as well as highlighting their synergies and limiting the trade-offs between them, will give some insights on how food systems can be transformed to provide affordable healthy diets to all in a sustainable way. In this context, policy incentives could play an important role in transforming existing systems. Trade in agricultural products is an important factor both in improving global food security and its impact on global dietary trends. Trade policies should accompany each country’s sustainable diet objectives by working within existing trade rules to create better outcomes for nutrition.

× Although scientific climate forecast (SF) distribution by national climate services has improved over time, farmers seem not to make good use of climate forecasts, a likely contributing factor to vulnerability to climate change. This study investigated factors associated with farmers’ use of SFs and indigenous forecasts (IFs) for agricultural use in the Rwenzori region, western Uganda. Household survey gathered data on demographic characteristics, climate information use and livelihood choices from 580 farmers. Data was analysed using the probit model. Results showed that significant factors associated with using both IFs and SFs were farm size, education, age, reception of scientific forecasts in local languages, agricultural extension access, short-mature crop access, farmer-to-farmer network and accessing forecasts through radio. This study shows that IFs were used complementarily with SFs. On the other hand, significant factors associated with using IFs only were livelihood choices such as tuber and goat production, access to government interventions on climate change adaptations, agro-ecological zone and social capital. Climate risks and climate risk perceptions negatively influenced the use of scientific forecasts. Co-production of climate information, capacity-building and active engagement of stakeholders in dissemination mechanisms can improve climate forecast use. Investments in more weather stations in various districts will therefore be a key factor in obtaining more accurate scientific forecasts and could lead to increased use of scientific climate forecasts. Governments in developing countries, the private sector, global and regional development partners should support investments in weather stations and capacity building of national meteorological systems.

× A critical global policy question is how the environmental management interventions could be repurposed to meet the sustainable development goals and their target for food security, climate protection, and environmental sustainability. A common challenge facing food systems in developing countries is to improve agricultural productivity to ensure food security for all without increasing the emission of greenhouse gases (GHGs) from agriculture. Climate-smart agriculture (CSA) approaches help to reduce GHG emissions from agriculture and address the challenges of climate change (CC) and food insecurity. Yet, CSA lack understanding of the institutional arrangements and policy processes. This paper examines 38 aspects to assess the institutional and policy status for CC mitigation and adaptation and CSA in Nagaland, India. Furthermore, we use these aspects to develop a scale to measure the policy and institutional environment for mitigation and adaptation of CC and implementation of CSA. Nagaland is relatively in a better position in nine aspects, although it can improve. Methodologically, the scale developed in this paper and the identified factors can help study the institutional and policy status of a country, state, or region. We identify several implications for understanding CC and CSA institutions and policies for informing policy research and practice.

× Food system transformation provides the opportunity to shift current trends in all forms of malnutrition, prioritizing the availability and affordability of nutritious food for all – from shifting priorities in agricultural production, to improved food systems that favor nutrition and sustainability. The task of Action Track 4 is to explore approaches to doing so that will advance equitable livelihoods for producers, businesses, workers across the food system and consumers, with a particular emphasis on addressing inequalities and power imbalances. As the Science Group for AT 4, we explore the nature of these issues, using the drivers of food systems as articulated by the High Level Panel of Experts of the UN Committee on World Food Security (HLPE 2020) as framing. Small and medium-sized producers and people who rely on food systems in rural and urban areas for livelihoods are disproportionately affected by all biophysical and environmental drivers, including soil and water resources and climate change. Unequal opportunity in access to all types of resources reduces overall production, resilience and rural transformation. Advances in innovation, technology and infrastructure have had important impacts on food production and sustainability, transportation and processing along food value chains, marketing, and, ultimately, diets, including the consumption of both nutritious and unhealthy foods. However, achievement of equitable livelihoods in food systems will require that issues of access to contextually suitable innovation and technology, inclusive of indigenous knowledge, be substantially enhanced. Many economic and political factors can be essential causes of inequality and power imbalances at the household, community, national and global levels, which may constrain the ability of food system transformation to deliver poverty reduction and sustainable, equitable livelihoods. Finally, vast evidence illustrates that several socio-cultural and demographic drivers underpin inequalities among and within societies and constrain the potential for some to benefit from actions to improve their livelihoods, particularly women, youths, the disabled, the elderly and indigenous peoples. These issues have been exacerbated by the COVID-19 pandemic. The pandemic is having a significant impact on global commodity markets and trading systems, economic growth, incomes, and poverty levels, with a likely disproportionate burden falling on vulnerable communities in both urban and rural areas. This is likely to worsen inequalities and set back progress against poverty and hunger goals. To address these issues, we must transform not only food systems, but the structures and systems that continue to enable and exacerbate inequities. Drivers of food system inequities are highly interconnected, and progress in addressing one will likely require change across several. For example, globalization and trade interact with other powerful drivers, especially technology resource mobilization and demographic trends, which shape food production, distribution, and consumption. Hence, in the final section, we reflect on several factors that should be part of effective solutions for combating inequalities in food systems, including rights-based approaches. We then share a series of recommendations aimed at enhancing inclusive decision-making, protecting the livelihoods of those living in situations of vulnerability while creating opportunities, adapting institutions and policies to favor equitable food system livelihoods, and increasing investment so as to realize the potential of improved institutional and policy actions. We invite governments, businesses, and organizations to hold themselves and others to account in advancing equitable livelihoods, and open avenues towards realizing the potential of science, innovation, technology, and evidence to favor equitable livelihoods.

× Access to sufficient and clean freshwater is essential for all life. Water is also essential for the functioning of food systems: as a key input into food production, but also in processing and preparation, and as a food itself. Water scarcity and pollution are growing, affecting poorer populations most, and particularly food producers. Malnutrition levels are also on the rise, and this is closely linked to water scarcity. The achievement of Sustainable Development Goals (SDG) 2 and 6 are co-dependent. Solutions for jointly improving food systems and water security outcomes include: (1) strengthening efforts to retain water-based ecosystems and their functions; (2) improving agricultural water management for better diets for all; (3) reducing water and food losses beyond the farmgate; (4) coordinating water with nutrition and health interventions; (5) increasing the environmental sustainability of food systems; (6) explicitly addressing social inequities in water-nutrition linkages; and (7) improving data quality and monitoring for water-food system linkages, drawing on innovations in information and communications technology (ICT). Climate change and other environmental and societal changes make the implementation and scaling of solutions more urgent than ever.

× Blue foods, sourced in aquatic environments, are important for the economies, livelihoods, nutritional security and cultures of people in many nations. They are often nutrient rich, generate lower emissions and impacts on land and water than many terrestrial meats, and contribute to the health, wellbeing and livelihoods of many rural communities. The Blue Food Assessment recently evaluated nutritional, environmental, economic and justice dimensions of blue foods globally. Here we integrate these fndings and translate them into four policy objectives to help realize the contributions that blue foods can make to national food systems around the world: ensuring supplies of critical nutrients, providing healthy alternatives to terrestrial meat, reducing dietary environmental footprints and safeguarding blue food contributions to nutrition, just economies and livelihoods under a changing climate. To account for how context-specifc environmental, socio-economic and cultural aspects afect this contribution, we assess the relevance of each policy objective for individual countries, and examine associated co-benefts and trade-ofs at national and international scales. We fnd that in many African and South American nations, facilitating consumption of culturally relevant blue food, especially among nutritionally vulnerable population segments, could address vitamin B12 and omega-3 defciencies. Meanwhile, in many global North nations, cardiovascular disease rates and large greenhouse gas footprints from ruminant meat intake could be lowered through moderate consumption of seafood with low environmental impact. The analytical framework we provide also identifes countries with high future risk, for whom climate adaptation of blue food systems will be particularly important. Overall the framework helps decision makers to assess the blue food policy objectives most relevant to their geographies, and to compare and contrast the benefts and trade-ofs associated with pursuing these objectives.

× This paper offers one of the first evidence in a developing country context that transitory exposure to high temperatures may disrupt low-stakes cognitive activities across a range of age cohorts. By matching eight years of repeated cognitive tests among all the participants in a nationally representative longitudinal survey in China with weather data according to the exact time and geographic location of their assessment, we show that exposure to a temperature above 32 °C on the test date, relative to a moderate day within 22–24 °C, leads to a sizable decline in their math scores by 0.066 standard deviations (equivalent to 0.23 years of education). Also, the effect on the math test scores becomes more pronounced as people age, especially for males and the less educated. However, the test takers living in hotter regions or those with air conditioning installed on site are less vulnerable to extreme high temperatures, indicating the role of adaptation.

× Soil carbon depletion is a major concern for food security in drylands. The objective of this study is to test tillage with residue management under sequential and intercropping systems for carbon sequestration in semi-arid tropical drylands of India. We report the findings from a long-term field experiment (9 years) used to simulate the effect of residue and tillage management in Maize-chickpea sequential and Maize-Pigeonpea intercropping systems for the four possible future climate projections using APSIM model. These findings demonstrate a sustainable route with inclusive growth, as pledged at the UN climate change summit. A comparison of results under SSP 2.6 and 4.5 Wm−2 with SSP 8.5 shows that demand pressure from competitive marketplaces inhibits the establishment of soil carbon sinks and significantly reduces crop yields, likely due to indiscriminate chemical fertilizer use. We observed that a better decision in selecting cropping system might improve soil organic carbon content (SOC). SOC content ranging from 0.9 to 1.2% in Maize-pigeonpea intercropping and 0.85–1.1% in maize-chickpea sequential cropping systems, demonstrate good potential in the climate change mitigation exertions. Early SOC saturation (20 years) led to a decreased carbon stock in topsoil without residue addition practises. The addition of crop residues significantly increased SOC levels under both conventional and minimum tillage and created additional income for farmers. Simulation analysis showed impact of SOC changes on crop yield which remained nearly stable for 85 years. Therefore, hardy straw biomass of crops covering a large tract in dryland tropics, can be a scalable and sustainable solution to yield losses, while mitigating climate change through carbon sequestration.

× The world is not on track to achieve the United Nations Sustainable Development Goals by 2030. The prevalence of hunger and poverty—the two core goals which are the litmus test for everything else—are on the rise. This is being made worse by the Russian invasion of Ukraine, skyrocketing food, fertilizer, and energy prices, COVID-19, and climate change. In Africa, the situation is exacerbated by internal conflicts, political unrest, economic recessions, and swarms of desert locusts. To get back on track, it is critical to pursue policy pathways that encourage synergies and limit the trade-offs between hunger, poverty, nutrition, and climate change. This report summarizes the evidence-based and costed country roadmaps for effective public interventions to transform agriculture and food systems in Ethiopia, Malawi, and Nigeria in a way that ends hunger, makes diets healthier and more affordable, improves the productivity and incomes of small-scale producers and their households, and mitigates and adapts to climate change.
The financing gap is immense. This report shows that while it is possible to achieve sustainable food system transformation in Ethiopia, Malawi, and Nigeria, in the next decade, it would require an average additional public investment of USD 10 billion per year from 2023 to 2030 and targeting spending on a more effective portfolio of interventions that achieve multiple sustainable development outcomes. Of the total USD 10 billion, the donor share averages USD 5.8 billion per year, and the country share averages USD 4.2 billion per year. Importantly, comparing the financing gap between the long-term investment needed to achieve Sustainable Development Goal 2 and the short-term investment needed for emergency food assistance shows that while emergency assistance has increased in recent years, there is significant underfunding of the longer-term investment needs. The shortfall in longer-term funding increases the vulnerability to shocks, pushing the number of people affected by hunger and poverty higher. Donors should therefore complement and better link the increased allocation of emergency food assistance with increased investments in longer term agricultural development priorities to prevent future crises when the next shock hits.

× The achievement of several sustainable development goals and the Paris Climate Agreement depends on rapid progress towards sustainable food and land systems in all countries. We have built a flexible, collaborative modeling framework to foster the development of national pathways by local research teams and their integration up to global scale. Local researchers independently customize national models to explore mid-century pathways of the food and land use system transformation in collaboration with stakeholders. An online platform connects the national models, iteratively balances global exports and imports, and aggregates results to the global level. Our results show that actions toward greater sustainability in countries could sum up to 1 Mha net forest gain per year, 950 Mha net gain in the land where natural processes predominate, and an increased CO2 sink of 3.7 GtCO2e yr−1 over the period 2020–2050 compared to current trends, while average food consumption per capita remains above the adequate food requirements in all countries. We show examples of how the global linkage impacts national results and how different assumptions in national pathways impact global results. This modeling setup acknowledges the broad heterogeneity of socio-ecological contexts and the fact that people who live in these different contexts should be empowered to design the future they want. But it also demonstrates to local decision-makers the interconnectedness of our food and land use system and the urgent need for more collaboration to converge local and global priorities.

× Research is essential for improvement of agricultural productivity, resource use and resilience, and for food systems transformation more broadly. This article analyzes the drivers of past agricultural productivity growth in low- and middle-income countries (LMICs) and argues that productivity is not growing fast enough to meet the needs of a global population of 10 billion by 2050. A sustainable transformation of agri-food systems in LMICs will need greater and faster technical change. Higher investment in agri-food R&D is therefore needed to accelerate productivity growth and address the social, economic, nutritional and environmental challenges facing LMICs. Greater and better-targeted investment in sustainable technologies and climate change mitigation and adaptation will be particularly important to reducing the climate change impacts on agriculture and food security in the coming decades. However, LMICs with small research systems and limited innovation capacity lack the scale and resources to effectively tackle the challenges ahead. Better coordination and a clear articulation of roles and responsibilities among national, subregional, regional and global R&D actors (both from the public and private sectors) are essential to ensuring that scarce financial, human, and infrastructure resources are optimized, duplications minimized, and synergies and complementarities enhanced.

× Mongolia is severely affected by adverse climate change impacts, including substantially higher temperatures that have contributed to increased evapotranspiration and the drying up of the country’s water resources. Moreover, the number and intensity of extreme events--especially droughts--is growing, with largest impacts on the poorer population employed in agriculture. At the same time, nutrition security remains out of reach with the co-existence of multiple forms of malnutrition, including obesity. The Mongolian pastoral culture is important to consider in balancing nutritional requirements, health risks, economics, sustainability of food production, including greenhouse gas emissions. While linkages between climate change and food security are increasingly understood, in particular the direct impacts of climate change on crop yields, associated higher food prices, and increased costs of healthy diets resulting in higher levels of malnutrition, other linkages between climate change and nutrition have been barely studied. Mongolia thus suffers from the syndemic of climate change, obesity and undernutrition, which are three co-occurring and interlinked epidemics.
A better and more comprehensive understanding of the linkages between climate change and nutrition is key to developing effective interventions to ensure that Mongolia’s population has access to sufficient, safe and nutritious food despite adverse climate outcomes. Importantly, climate change does not only affect food production but can exacerbate malnutrition by removing food and nutrients in all stages of the food value chain. Finally, given the important contribution of food systems to climate change, nutrition policy in Mongolia should more proactively consider environmental impacts.

× Food system resilience to climate change is uniquely imperative for bringing Sustainable Development Goals within reach and leaving no one behind. Food systems in East and Southeast Asia are interacting with planetary boundaries and are adversely affected by extreme weather-related events. A practical question for East and Southeast Asian stakeholders is how to foster climate-resilient food systems in the face of lingering food system vulnerabilities and policy gaps. This paper reviews food system vulnerabilities and policy responses to climate change. In the policy-based review, this paper compares the economy-wide and agriculture-specific targets of low-carbon development across East and Southeast Asia. With China and member states of the Association of Southeast Asia Nations as case studies, multilevel policies in building and financing climate-resilient food systems are further synthesized. The findings confirm significant differences in agriculture-specific emission goals and public financing supports across East and Southeast Asian nations. With an objective to break practical barriers and finance climate-resilient food systems for the future, this paper recommends defining agriculture-specific greenhouse gas emission goals, reorienting the public finance scheme and enhancing mechanisms for the synergy of public and private resources.

× Climate change affects every aspect of the food system, including all nodes along agrifood value chains from production to consumption, the food environments in which people live, and outcomes, such as diets and livelihoods. Women and men often have specific roles and responsibilities within food systems, yet structural inequalities (formal and informal) limit women’s access to resources, services and agency. These inequalities affect the ways in which women and men experience and are affected by climate change. In addition to gender, other social factors are at play, such as age, education, marital status, and health and economic conditions. To date, most climate change policies, investments, and interventions do not adequately integrate gender. If climate-smart and climate-resilient interventions do not adequately take gender differences into account, they might exacerbate gender inequalities in food systems by, for instance, increasing women’s labor burden and time poverty, reducing their access to and control over income and assets, and reducing their decision-making power. At the same time, women’s contributions are critical to make food systems more resilient to the negative impacts of climate change, given their specialized knowledge, skills and roles in agrifood systems, within the household, at work and at the community level. Increasing the resilience of food systems requires going beyond addressing gendered vulnerabilities to climate change to create an enabling environment that supports gender equality and women’s empowerment, by removing structural barriers and rigid gender norms, and building equal power dynamics, as part of a process of gender -transformative change.

× Farmers, entrepreneurs, and businesses are already leading the way by expanding irrigation in response to climate variability and the growing demand for vegetables and fruit through supplemental and dry-season irrigated production. Increasing commercialization creates market opportunities throughout irrigated value chains. The Feed the Future Innovation Lab for Small Scale Irrigation (ILSSI), has supported research and partnerships with companies and producer groups to innovate technologies, share information, and develop inclusive, market-based approaches that catalyze investment in irrigation.

× Individual farmer investments have the potential to fill the gap in public investments and be more cost-effective than large-scale irrigation. However, this development primarily occurs outside of formal systems. Water depletion and declining water quality in some areas of Africa and Southeast Asia suggest the need for careful planning and monitoring of small-scale irrigation to support resilience and avoid maladaptation. ILSSI research partners sought to support decision-makers to understand where and how water can be sustainably used by small-scale irrigators, employing and strengthening capacity for tools to manage competing demands and mitigate the risks to water security. Research partnerships also guided organizations and companies to deploy solar irrigation technologies based on biophysical and socio-economic suitability. Working with farmers, water users, and extension services, the project aimed to improve on-farming water management practices and engage communities to help safeguard water resources.

× Mongolia’s projected warming is far above the global average and could exceed 5 °C by the end of the century. The reliance on pastoral livestock and rainfed agriculture along with its fragile ecosystems put Mongolia’s economy at risk of adverse climate change impacts, particularly from climate extreme events. Eighty percent of Mongolia’s agricultural sector is concentrated in animal husbandry with around one third of the population relying on this livelihood. Beyond livestock, food production is concentrated in few crops: wheat; potatoes; and three vegetables (cabbage, carrot, and turnip). Climate change does not only affect food production but can exacerbate malnutrition by removing food and nutrients in all stages of the food value chain. To identify perceived effects of climate change and measures to reduce climate change impacts in Mongolia's’s key food value chains, we implemented focus group discussions with 214 livestock and vegetable producers, traders, and food consumers. We also conducted 30 key informant interviews at the soum, provincial, and national levels across four agroecosystems in three provinces. Based on this community engagement analysis, we identify interventions that the government and private sector, including herders and farmers, should undertake to increase the food security and nutrition of the country’s prioritized food value chains under climate change.

× Fragility, Conflict, and Migration addresses challenges to livelihood, food, and climate security faced by some of the most vulnerable populations worldwide. The Initiative focuses on building climate resilience, promoting gender equity, and fostering social inclusion. It forms part of CGIAR’s new Research Portfolio, delivering science and innovation to transform food, land, and water systems in a climate crisis.

× Climatic shocks are exerting pressure on livelihoods of Zimbabwe's smallholder farmer—who irrigate only 2% of their farms. The smallholder farmers in drought-prone areas are more exposed to drought because of their limited ability to cope with shocks and their greater concentration in less favorable climatic regions. This study was done to analyze shock-response approaches, which farmers use to cope with climatic shocks. Both quantitative and qualitative approaches were used to analyze impact of World Vision Zimbabwe (WVZ) and other actors' interventions on farmer resilience to climatic shocks. Results show that mixed cropping and diversification in general were among the major strategies that pastoralists and crop farmers used to cope with climatic shocks. Crop farmers diversified types of crops as well as raising livestock. Similarly, pastoralists started growing short-term crops. Other coping strategies included intercropping, selling livestock, moving livestock to other places that did not experience drought. Both crop producers and livestock keepers engaged in nonfarm activities. About 60% of WVZ households reported that World Vision and partners helped them respond to shock and build resilience against climate change. These coping strategies had favorable impacts on household welfare. Diversification increased dietary diversity index by more than two and the increase was much greater among female-headed households than male-headed households. The WVZ intervention also significantly reduced the odds of going to bed without eating food or sleeping hungry. Non-farm income and value of assets for WVZ beneficiaries increased by about 20% and by 22% among treated female-headed households. The results show that diversification and providing grass root training of smallholder farmers increases their resilience to climate shocks.

× The evidence on the potential for agricultural interventions to contribute to improved nutrition has grown considerably over the past decade. Numerous studies have explored both positive and negative effects of agriculture on nutrition and health. The Innovation Lab for Small Scale Irrigation has helped to fill the evidence gap on small-scale irrigation and nutrition linkages. The studies, implemented by the International Food Policy Research Institute and national partners, examine the potential of smallscale irrigation as a nutrition-sensitive investment. Through this work, more development partners are recognizing the interconnections and beginning to design irrigation investments to intentionally improve nutritional and health outcomes.

× A large proportion of farm households in developing countries face a host of market and production risks that undermine their food security, make their income volatile, and make them hesitant to adopt new technologies or undertake new investments that might increase their long-term productivity and household welfare. Climate-related risks such as floods and droughts remain some of the most pervasive forms of production challenges. Adapting to climate variability and change is essential in safeguarding food security, ensuring economic growth, and advancing climate resilience among smallholder farmers. Recent research has shown that transferring some of the climate-related risks to the insurance market in exchange for a payout can shield the welfare of smallholders from the adverse effects of extreme weather conditions, while agricultural financing can help farmers to acquire and adopt agricultural inputs such as improved seed varieties, fertilizer, pesticides, and herbicides. However, in many developing countries, formal financial markets remain inaccessible to smallholder farmers.

× This paper combines panel data from nationally representative household-level surveys in Nigeria with long-term satellite-based spatial data on temperature and precipitation using geo-referenced information related to households. It aims to quantify the impacts of climate change on agricultural productivity, income shares, crop mix, and input use decisions. We measure climate change in harmful degree days, growing degree days, and changes in precipitation using long-term (30 year) changes in temperature and precipitation anomalies during the crop calendars. We find that, controlling for other factors, a 15% (one standard deviation) increase in change in harmful degree days leads to a decrease in agricultural productivity of 5.22% on average. Similarly, precipitation change has resulted in a significant and negative impact on agricultural productivity. Our results further show that the change in harmful degree days decreases the income share from crops and nonfarm self-employment, while it increases the income share from livestock and wage employment. Examining possible transmission channels for this effect, we find that farmers change their crop mix and input use to respond to climate changes, for instance reducing fertilizer use and seed purchases as a response to increases in extreme heat. Based on our findings, we suggest policy interventions that incentivize adoption of climate-resilient agriculture, such as small-scale irrigation and livelihood diversification. We also propose targeted pro-poor interventions, such as low-cost financing options for improving smallholders' access to climate-proof agricultural inputs and technologies, and policy measures to reduce the inequality of access to livelihood capital such as land and other productive assets.

× In the face of climate change and extreme weather events which continue to have significant impacts on agricultural production, climate-smart agriculture (CSA) has emerged as one important entry point in reducing the emission of greenhouse gases and building climate resilience while ensuring increases in agricultural productivity with ensuing implications on food and nutrition security. We examine the relationship between CSA, land productivity (yields), and food security using a survey of farm households in Ghana, Mali, and Nigeria. To understand the correlates of the adoption of these CSA practices as well as the association between CSA, yields, and food security, we use switching regressions that account for multiple endogenous treatments. We find a positive association between the adoption of CSA practices and yields. This increase in yields translate to food security as we observe a positive association between CSA and food consumption scores. Although we show modest associations between the independent use of CSA practices such as adopting climate-smart groundnut varieties, cereal-groundnut intercropping, and the use of organic fertilizers, we find that bundling these practices may lead to greater yield and food security gains. Under the different combinations, the use of climate-smart groundnut varieties exhibit the strongest association with yields and food security. We also estimate actual-counterfactual relationships where we show that the adoption of CSA practices is not only beneficial to CSA adopters but could potentially be beneficial to non-CSA adopters should they adopt. These results have implications for reaching some of the sustainable development targets, especially the twin goals of increasing agricultural productivity and maintaining environmental sustainability.

× Freshwater resources (FWRs) are under enormous stress due to human activities and climate change. Given the centrality of local communities in managing natural resources, community-based conservation (CBC) for FWRs (fCBC) offers a mechanism for addressing these challenges. A framework informing fCBC that incorporates unique features of FWRs (such as being fugitive resources, having increased risk of negative externalities, and sheer spatial coverage) is needed to unlock CBC’s potential in achieving environmental and developmental impacts in freshwater contexts. We critically review and synthesize existing research adapting The Nature Conservancy’s Voice, Choice and Action framework, organized around four pillars (Secure rights and fair externality consideration; Strong community capacity; Effective multi-stakeholder platforms; Sustainable livelihood and development opportunities) and two cross-cutting elements (Cultural connections; Equity and power balancing), and provide recommendations on ways to strengthen facilitation and support community empowerment in fCBC. We report on how applying the framework during a conservation planning process for fCBC projects in four geographies provides important insights for developing robust CBC programs.

× Communication theory suggests that interactive dialog rather than information transmission is necessary for climate change action, especially for complex systems like agriculture. Climate analogs—locations whose current climate is similar to a target location’s future climate—have garnered recent interest as transmitting more relatable information; however, they have unexplored potential in facilitating meaningful dialogs, and whether the way the analogs are developed could make a difference. We developed climate context-specific analogs based on agriculturally-relevant climate metrics for US specialty crop production, and explored their potential for facilitating dialogs on climate adaptation options. Over 80% of US specialty crop counties had acceptable US analogs for the mid-twenty-first century, especially in the West and Northeast which had greater similarities in the crops produced across target-analog pairs. Western counties generally had analogs to the south, and those in other regions had them to the west. A pilot dialog of target-analog pairs showed promise in eliciting actionable adaptation insights, indicating potential value in incorporating analog-driven dialogs more broadly in climate change communication.

× Climate change affects men and women differently, and pre-existing gender disparities may worsen. We use a gendered computable general equilibrium model linked with microsimulations to assess the distributive effects of climate change in Bolivia. Two scenarios are evaluated. The first scenario addresses capital and land damages, while the second analyses the decrease in agricultural production yields. We find that both scenarios have negative impacts on the Bolivian economy. The scenarios drive down employment and increase the burden of domestic work, especially for women. Furthermore, both simulations reveal negative impacts on poverty, with women in rural areas being the most affected.

× The geographic distribution of natural ecosystems is afected by both climate and cropland. Discussions of future land use/land cover usually focus on how cropland expands and displaces natural vegetation especially as climate change impacts become stronger. Less commonly considered is the direct infuence of climate change on natural ecosystems simultaneously with cropland incursion. We combine a natural vegetation model responsive to climate with a cropland allocation algorithm to assess the relative importance of climate change compared to cropland incursion. Globally, the model indicates that climate change drives larger gains and losses than cropland incursion. For example, in the Amazonian rainforests, more than one sixth of the forest area could be lost due to climate change with cropland playing virtually no role. Our fndings suggest that policies to protect specifc ecosystems may be undercut by climate change and that localized analyses that fully account for the impacts of a changing climate on natural vegetation and agriculture are necessary to formulate policies that preserve natural ecosystems over the long term.

× We present results from large ensembles of projected 21st century changes in seasonal precipitation and near-surface air temperature over Africa and selected sub-continental regions. These ensembles are a result of combining Monte Carlo projections from a human-Earth system model of intermediate complexity with pattern-scaled responses from climate models of the Coupled Model Intercomparison Project Phase 6. These future ensemble scenarios consider a range of global actions to abate emissions through the 21st century. We evaluate distributions of surface-air temperature and precipitation change. In all regions, we find that without any emissions or climate targets in place, there is a greater than 50% likelihood that mid-century temperatures will increase threefold over the current climate’s two-standard deviation range of variability. However, scenarios that consider more aggressive climate targets all but eliminate the risk of these salient temperature increases. A preponderance of risk toward decreased precipitation exists for much of the southern Africa region considered, and this is also compounded by enhanced warming (relative to the global trajectory). Over eastern and western Africa, the preponderance of risk in increased precipitation change is seen. Strong climate targets abate evolving regional hydroclimatic risks. Under a target to limit global climate warming to 1.5˚C by 2100, the risk of precipitation changes within Africa toward the end of this century (2065-2074) is commensurate to the risk during the 2030s without any global climate target. Thus, these regional hydroclimate risks over much Africa could be delayed by 30 years, and in doing so, provide invaluable lead-time for national efforts to prepare, fortify, and/or adapt.

× Africa, a continent of immense potential, stands at a crucial juncture. Home to some of the world’s most fertile lands, abundant resources, and a burgeoning young population, it remains paradoxically ensnared in the grip of food insecurity, malnutrition, and challenges such as climate change, post-harvest losses, and inefficient supply chains. The urgency to empower and transform African food systems is not merely an agricultural or economic imperative but a moral, social, and ecological one.
The 2023 report, “Empowering Africa Food Systems for the Future,” highlights the ways in which Africa is uniquely positioned to redefine its future and pave a sustainable and resilient path for generations to come.
In delving into the assessment of food systems failures, the report confronts some harsh truths. Despite being home to nearly 60 percent of the world’s uncultivated arable land, Africa remains a net food importer spending billions annually to meet its food demands. A large fraction of its population still grapples with chronic hunger and malnutrition. Yet, it does not stop at just assessing failures; it moves forward to take stock of the robust and diverse food systems that form the lifeblood of the continent.

× CONTEXT: India's agricultural systems are increasingly affected by climate change's adverse effects. The Government of India has an impressive set of programs to address this issue, but they have substantial shortcomings, especially in reaching women farmers.
OBJECTIVE: We aim to understand policy and implementation gaps in reaching women farmers with climate-smart agriculture (CSA) practices and study how women and men farmer's different roles in agriculture shape their needs and access to complementary services needed to adapt to climate change.
METHODS: An extensive review of India's agriculture and climate policies and program and a series of focus group discussions with farmers in Gujarat, India to discuss constraints and potential entry points for better reaching women farmers with CSA practices.
RESULTS AND CONCLUSION: Women's increased vulnerability to climate change and reduced access to CSA practices can be attributed to limited land ownership, poor access to credit, reduced access to information and formal extension, and multiple pressures on their time. Village cooperatives and self-help groups can be leveraged to support women's access to agricultural information and adoption of CSA practices.
SIGNIFICANCE: This paper highlights constraints to information and extension access by Indian women farmers that could impede the widespread adoption of CSA practices. It fills an important knowledge gap in designing gender-responsive policies and inclusive agricultural extension systems to promote adoption of CSA practices among smallholder farmers.

× This study investigates regional development and internal migration dynamics within the context of modern structural transformation in Sub-Saharan Africa. We develop a regionalized Computable General Equilibrium model that incorporates regionalized production, endogenous interregional migration, and distinct migrant households. Using this model, we simulate the structural transformation of Senegal as a case study. Our findings demonstrate that agricultural stagnation, exacerbated by global climate change, underlies the economic underperformance of rural regions and amplifies regional income disparities. Furthermore, our analysis shows that outmigration from stagnating rural provinces to a more developed capital region positively influences overall economic growth and mitigates regional income inequality. Nevertheless, these effects are limited, and a proactive approach to addressing income inequality across the nation's regions would require supporting agriculture, as it represents a more equitable policy than promoting nonagricultural sectors in both rural and capital regions.

× Climate change poses a greater threat for more exposed and vulnerable countries, communities and social groups. People whose livelihood depends on the agriculture and food sector, especially in low-and middle-income countries (LMICs), face significant risk. In contexts with gendered roles in agri-food systems or where structural constraints to gender equality underlie unequal access to resources and services and constrain women's agency, local climate hazards and stressors, such as droughts, floods, or shortened crop-growing seasons, tend to negatively affect women more than men and women's adaptive capacities tend to be more restrained than men's . Transformation towards just and sustainable agri-food systems in the face of climate change will not only depend on reducing but also on averting aggravated gender inequality in agri-food systems. In this paper, we developed and applied an accessible and versatile methodology to identify and map localities where climate change poses high risk especially for women in agri-food systems because of gendered exposure and vulnerability. We label these localities climate-agriculture-gender inequality hotspots. Applying our methodology to LMICs reveals that the countries at highest risk are majorly situated in Africa and Asia. Applying our methodology for agricultural activity-specific hotspot subnational areas to four focus countries, Mali, Zambia, Pakistan and Bangladesh, for instance, identifies a cluster of districts in Dhaka and Mymensingh divisions in Bangladesh as a hotspot for rice. The relevance and urgency of identifying localities where climate change hits agri-food systems hardest and is likely to negatively affect population groups or sectors that are particularly vulnerable is increasingly acknowledged in the literature and, in the spirit of leaving no one behind, in climate and development policy arenas. Hotspot maps can guide the allocation of scarce resources to most at-risk populations. The climate-agriculture-gender inequality hotspot maps show where women involved in agri-food systems are at high climate risk while signaling that reducing this risk requires addressing the structural barriers to gender equality.

× Jonathan Mockshell and Danielle Resnick, authors of a new Political Economy and Policy Analysis (PEPA) sourcebook, set out how governments can make use of a step-by-step guide to account for power dynamics, conflicting interests, coalitions and networks when developing agrifood policies. The book draws upon dozens of frameworks and tools to support policy development that addresses the dual challenges of food security and climate change.

× Key messages
Innovation platforms (IPs) can provide a multidisciplinary research environment to test outcome-oriented research/scientific ideas, technologies, and innovations. These are particularly effective when agrifood challenges require cross-sectoral solutions and joint efforts of stakeholders who have a stake in both the problem and solution. IPs allow stakeholders to experiment together and share knowledge, resources, benefits, and risks for issues they cannot solve on their own, and benefit from the synergistic effects of working together.
IP functions include innovations relating to technology, capacity development, organization, policy, institutional governance, and the integration of these dimensions. Contemporary tools of monitoring, evaluation, and learning (MEL) can be used to assess the IPs’ contribution to these dimensions and generate lessons for future scaling.
Three aspects of the IPs can be monitored and evaluated. These are activities, process changes, and results generated by the IP for beneficiary groups. The member stakeholders or a designated sub-team should define the indicators and rubric thresholds to measure these changes.
The International Centre for Agricultural Research in the Dry Areas (ICARDA) can upgrade its research stations into National Innovation Platforms (NIPs) by engaging diverse partners and stakeholders to jointly identify their challenges and test their innovations to address those challenges. For example, improved varieties of cereals and forages could be entry points to set up NIPs in these research stations.
ICARDA’s country offices may be able to characterize the research stations and take the initiative to set up a NIP. The characterization and assessment of the research stations can proceed with the involvement of key stakeholders, including policymakers and the private sector.

× We cannot overcome the multiple crises facing our world, including the climate crisis, the lingering impacts of the COVID-19 pandemic, and the ongoing food and energy price crisis linked to the war on Ukraine, without integrating a gender perspective into resilience interventions, particularly in the agri-food sector where women have particular roles.

However, to date, most climate change policies, investments, and interventions remain gender-blind. As a result, they might exacerbate gender inequalities in food systems by, for instance, increasing women’s labor burden and time poverty, reducing their access to and control over income and assets, and reducing their decision-making power.

× This study investigated the trait preferences for cassava in the context of climate change and conflict stressors among value-chain actors in Nigeria to strengthen social inclusion and the community-resilience outcomes from breeding programs. Multi-stage sampling procedures were used to select and interview male and female value-chain participants in the Osun, Benue and Abia States. The results indicated that farmers preferred cassava traits such as drought tolerance, early bulking, multiple-product use and in-ground storability to strengthen resilience. Climate change and challenges related to social change shaped the response strategies from both genders, and influenced trait preferences, including the early re-emergence of cassava leaves, stems that had ratooning potential, and especially the root milking that was important among female respondents. The major response strategies employed by men included frequent farm visits to prevent theft and engaging in non-agricultural livelihoods. Those employed by women included backyard farming, early harvesting, having preferences for food with fewer processing steps, and depending on remittances. The resilience capacity was higher for men than for women due to their better access to assets, as well as their abilities to relocate their farms and out-migrate in search of other livelihoods. Considering gendered cassava traits, and enhancing their resilience and response strategies, can complement efforts to make breeding more socially inclusive, resilient, and anticipatory to future challenges created by climate and related social changes.

× Key messages
▶ For the five years following the Paris Agreement’s entry into force (2017–2021), finance for adaptation from international public sources to developing countries remained at or below US$25 billion per year, or approximately US$3 per person per year. In 2021, there was a 15 per cent decrease from 2020 levels, down to US$21 billion.
▶ In the same five-year period, the disbursement ratio for adaptation finance (at 66 per cent) was lower than for development finance overall (at 98 per cent): this indicates specific barriers to adaptation that hinder the implementation of projects in developing countries.
● These barriers include low grant-to-loan ratios, failure to consider local issues when planning and designing projects, limited technical capacity among decision makers, and misalignment between the duration of the approval and disbursement process and the shorter-term mandates of national and local governments.
▶ In the 2017–2021 period, less than 17 per cent of commitments were dedicated to projects with a specific focus on local communities. While this is an increase from previous levels, these low levels exist despite increasing understanding of the importance of local communities’ agency and involvement in adaptation projects.
▶ In the same period, the share of grants as a proportion of the total finance for adaptation for least developed countries (LDCs) (at 52 per cent) was substantially higher than that of non-LDCs (26 per cent). Small island developing States (SIDS) have an even higher share of grants in their total commitments (67 per cent).
● This demonstrates that financial institutions are placing a higher emphasis on providing grant-based funding to LDCs and SIDS. This reflects concerns that traditional debt instruments (loans) are a less equitable option for adaptation finance in the most vulnerable countries, due to current debt vulnerabilities and limited fiscal capacity.
▶ Approximately a quarter of the finance simultaneously addressing both adaptation and mitigation (cross-cutting finance) was committed for general environment protection, indicating the potentially synergetic role of nature-based solutions for both adaptation and mitigation.
▶ Domestic expenditure and private finance are identified as vitally important sources of adaptation finance, but quantitative estimates continue to be unavailable. However, neither domestic expenditures nor private finance flows are likely to bridge the adaptation finance gap alone, especially in low-income countries (including the LDCs and SIDS), and there are important equity issues in using domestic budgets to address the finance gap in these countries.

× Key messages ▶ The Adaptation Finance Gap (AFG) Update 2023 has undertaken an updated modelling assessment of the cost of adaptation for developing countries. This analysis has used a suite of global sector assessment models, complemented by new analysis in additional sectors. ▶ The update analysis estimates the plausible central costs of adaptation at approximately US$240 billion per year this decade (up to 2030), with a range of US$130–415 billion per year. The central estimate is equivalent to 0.56 per cent of the gross domestic product (GDP) (2021) for all developing countries (or approximately US$33 per capita/per year). ▶ The highest adaptation costs are for river flood protection, infrastructure and coastal protection, and for the regions of East Asia and the Pacific and Latin America and the Caribbean. ▶ The highest absolute costs are for the upper- and lower-middle-income countries. However, when expressed as a percentage of GDP, adaptation costs are much higher for low-income countries (3.5 per cent) than for lower-middle-income (0.7 per cent) and upper-middle-income (0.5 per cent) countries. ▶ The costs for lower-income and lower-middle-income countries are estimated at US$76 billion per year this decade: the costs for small island developing States (SIDS) alone are estimated at US$4.7 billion per year (0.7 per cent of their GDP) and for least developed countries (LDCs) at US$25 billion per year (2 per cent of their GDP). ▶ The modelled costs of adaptation are estimated to increase significantly by 2050, especially for high-warming scenarios. ▶ These updated costs show a significant increase compared to previous similar studies. This not only reflects the more negative impacts of climate change reported in the literature (for the sectors previously modelled), but also a wider range of risks and sectors.

× Farmers usually do not know the precise output that is affected by climatic factors such as temperature and rainfall and are characterized by inter-annual variability, part of which is caused by global climate change. No study covers the influences of climate factors on yield and yield risk in the context of chickpea farming in Andhra Pradesh, India. In this context, this study aimed to investigate the trends in climate change variables during Rabi season (October to January, 1996-2020) and evaluated their variability on chickpea yields across different agro-climatic zones in Andhra Pradesh by employing Just and Pope production function. Four non-parametric methods-Alexandersson’s Standard Normal Homogeneity Test, Buishand’s Range Test, Pettitt’s Test and Von Neumann’s Ratio Test are applied to detect homogeneity in the data. Mann–Kendall (MK) test and Sen’s slope (SS) method were employed to analyze monthly rainfall trends and minimum and maximum temperature trends. Results of Just and Pope (panel data) quadratic and Cobb-Douglas methods revealed that monthly minimum temperature positively influenced the mean yield of chickpea (0.22% and 0.16%, respectively). However, rainfall (-0.41% and -0.31%) and maximum temperature (-0.08% and -0.04%) negatively influenced the mean yield of chickpea under quadratic and Cobb-Douglas models, respectively. Accordingly, rainfall (0.08% and 0.06%) and maximum temperature (0.83% and 0.72%) positively influenced the yield variability and minimum temperature (-0.77% and -0.67%) reduced yield variability of chickpea under quadratic and Cobb-Douglas models respectively. In view of these findings, it is imperative to advocate the farmers about the importance of cultivating drought-tolerant chickpea varieties, drought-proofing and mitigation strategies, micro-irrigation practices and improving their access to agro-meteorological information towards sustainable chickpea cultivation in Andhra Pradesh.

× That climate variability and change can potentially force multiple simultaneous breadbasket crop yield shocks has been established. But research quantifying the mechanisms behind such simultaneous shocks has been constrained by short records of crop yields. Here we compile a dataset of subnational crop yields in 25 countries dating back to 1900 to study the frequency and trends in multiple breadbasket yield shocks and how large-scale climate anomalies on interannual timescales have affected multiple breadbasket yield shocks over the last century. We find that major simultaneous breadbasket yield shocks have occurred in at least three, four, or five of nine breadbaskets 10.3%, 2.3% and 1.1% of the time for maize and 18.4%, 4.6% and 2.3% of the time for wheat. Furthermore, we find that multiple breadbasket yield shocks decreased in frequency even as those breadbaskets experience increasingly frequent climate-related shocks. For both maize and wheat breadbaskets, there were fewer simultaneous yield shocks during the 1975–2017 time period as compared to 1931–1975. Finally, we find that interannual modes of climate variability - such as the El Niño Southern Oscillation (ENSO), the Indian Ocean Dipole (IOD), and the North Atlantic Oscillation (NAO) - have all affected the relative probability of simultaneous yield shocks in pairs of breadbaskets by up to 20–40% in both maize and wheat breadbaskets. While past literature has focused on the effects of ENSO, we find that at the global scale the NAO affects the overall number of wheat yield shocks most strongly despite only affecting northern hemisphere breadbaskets.

× The growing threat that climate shocks pose to food, water and nutrition security makes understanding the linkages between climate and nutrition increasingly urgent. The article demonstrates an empirical connection between rising temperatures, cereal yields, and poorer growth outcomes for children—the first time such a link has been established between climate shocks, agricultural productivity, and health.
The authors find that extreme temperature shocks can severely reduce maize yields, and that lower yields in the season prior to birth are a strong predictor of reduced height in later years, especially among boys. They also show that lower maize yields are predictive of lower body mass among women but not predictive of diarrhea or fever incidence in children. Taken together, these results suggest that maternal malnutrition during pregnancy is a key pathway linking heat shocks and agricultural production to subsequent child health.
The findings have important implications for policymakers responding to climate impacts, who must weigh whether to focus more on agricultural interventions and social protection or on public health interventions. Our research suggests the first approach could be particularly important in rural Africa.

× Key Points
Climate change threatens global food security and sustainable development, while many agricultural subsidies exacerbate environmental impact and agriculture’s carbon footprint around the world.
Climate-smart agriculture (CSA) may provide frameworks for policy-based incentives to reduce agriculture’s greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions.
Conceptually, CSA practices could be important tools to address the impact of a growing human population on the global environment, but providing large subsidies for selected production practices that have little impact on GHG emissions could conflict with international trade laws.
Agricultural trade liberalization should be integral to any CSA approach because, globally, resources are likely to be used more efficiently.

× This year’s Budget had four broad themes — (i) PM Gati Shakti, (ii) Inclusive Development, (iii) Productivity Enhancement & Investment, Sunrise Opportunities, Energy Transition, and Climate Action and (iv) Financing of Investments.

× This open access book brings together varying perspectives for transformational change needed in India’s agriculture and allied sectors. Stressing the need of thinking for a post-Green Revolution future, the book promotes approaching this change through eight broad areas, indicating the policy shifts needed to meet the challenges for the coming decade (2021-2030).
The book comprises of ten contributions. Apart from the overview chapter on transformational change and the concluding chapter on pathways for 2030, there are eight thematic chapters on topics such as transforming Indian agriculture, dietary diversity for nutritive and safe food; climate crisis and risk management; water in agriculture; pests, pandemics, preparedness and biosecurity natural farming; agroecology and biodiverse futures; science, technology and innovation in agriculture; and structural reforms and governance. The writing style of these papers written by technical experts is forward-looking—not merely an analysis of what has been and why it was so, but what ought to be.
This is an essential reading for those interested in agriculture, food and nutrition sectors of India, and more so their interconnectedness.

× The brief focuses on the achievements of the following three global biodiversity targets from the CBD post-2020 framework (CBD/WG2020/3/3), by 2030 and 2050:
1. Enhance the integrity of all ecosystems, “with an increase of at least 15% in the area, connectivity, and integrity of natural ecosystems, supporting healthy and resilient populations of all species” by 2050
2. Achieve a “net gain in the area, connectivity, and integrity of natural systems of at least 5%” by 2030
3. Retain “existing intact and wilderness areas”, halting losses by 2030 or before
The study develops the modelling of two possible future scenarios for the 20 FABLE countries: Argentina, Australia, Brazil, Canada, China, Colombia, Ethiopia, Germany, Finland, India, Indonesia, Malaysia, Mexico, Norway, Russia, Rwanda, South Africa, Sweden, the United Kingdom and the United States.

× Irrigation has significant potential to enhance productivity, resilience to climatic risks and nutrition security in Sub-Saharan Africa. While the focus has historically been on large-scale dam-based schemes, farmer-managed small-scale irrigation (SSI) has gained increased attention in recent years. Using data from Ethiopia, Tanzania and Ghana, we first examine patterns of adoption of different SSI technologies. Next, we employ hierarchical modelling to examine which variables are associated with observed adoption patterns and cluster effects that explain variation in irrigation adoption. We document significant cross-country variation in adoption patterns and find a positive association between plot-level use of SSI and the intensity of agricultural labor and inorganic fertilizers applied on the plot. Community-level intra-cluster correlation (ICC) is the highest in Tanzania, where gravity-fed irrigation is most common while farm-level ICC is the highest in Ethiopia where motorized technologies are more common. These results suggest the need for localized investments to ease locale-specific potential constraints. For example, easing possible liquidity constraints to acquiring motorized technologies can be more effective in Ethiopia while the construction of dams and improved conveyance systems, as well as the strengthening of community-based irrigation management (e.g., through Water User Associations (WUAs)) can be more effective in Tanzania. Further research is needed to understand pathways for selected plot-level characteristics that affect use of SSI including status of plot ownership and the gender of the plot manager.

× Pakistan is mainly an agricultural economy. According to the Economic Survey of Pakistan 2020-21, agriculture accounts for a share of 19.2 percent in GDP and constitutes a significant portion of exports at 60 percent. The agriculture sector is a major employer in the country with a bulk of 45 percent in the labour force and a source of livelihood for about 68 percent of the rural population.

× The program NEXUS Gains addresses key challenges of transforming water, energy, food and ecosystem (WEFE) systems in transboundary bread-basket basins in East and Southern Africa (Blue Nile and Limpopo basins), Central (Aral Sea basin) and South Asia (Ganges and Indus basin) in a changing world. The program particularly explores water resource management options to understand WEFE system interdependencies, trade-offs and synergies and develop more sustainable development pathways for all members society.
The presentation will discuss alternative interventions to increase water productivity different sectors (irrigation, forestry, industries) across scales ranging from farm to watershed to river basin scales. Therefore, particular attention will be given to integrated water storage management in human built and natural infrastructure in South Asia and East Africa. The implications for hydrological process and water resources dynamics and wider environmental, social and economic systems are analyzed and related policy implications are discussed considering also climate change.

× This paper uses 7,200 smoothed climate change projections for each of the four emissions scenarios, together with inter-annual variation provided by detrended historical climate data to investigate changes in growing season (wettest 3 months) weather patterns from the 2020s to the 2060s for ten countries of Southern Africa. The analysis is done in 8,888 quarter-degree pixels by month. Temperature unequivocally rises in the region, but it rises relatively less along the coasts, particularly on the eastern side of the region. Precipitation has trended downward for much of the region since 1975, but relatively little change in precipitation is projected between the 2020s and the 2060s. Under the higher emissions “Paris Forever” scenario, we found that by the 2060s, the 1-in-20-year low-rainfall events will occur twice as frequently in most of the region, though it will occur less frequently in northwestern Angola. The 1-in-20-year high-rainfall events will occur 3 to 4 times as often in northeastern South Africa and twice as often in most of Angola.

× Many studies have estimated the effect of climate change on crop productivity, often reflecting uncertainty about future climates by using more than one emissions pathway or multiple climate models, usually fewer than 30, and generally much fewer, with focus on the mean changes. Here we examine four emissions scenarios with 720,000 future climates per scenario over a 50-year period. We focus on the effect of low-frequency, high-impact weather events on crop yields in 10 countries of Southern Africa, aggregating from nearly 9,000 25-kilometer-square locations. In the highest emissions scenario, median maize yield is projected to fall by 9.2% for the region while the 5th percentile is projected to fall by 15.6% between the 2020s and 2060s. Furthermore, the frequency of a low frequency, 1-in-20-year low-yield event for rainfed maize is likely to occur every 3.5 years by the 2060s under the high emissions scenario. We also examine the impact of climate change on three other crops of considerable importance to the region: drybeans, groundnuts, and soybeans. Projected yield decline for each of these crops is less than for maize, but the impact varies from country to country and within each country. In many cases, the median losses are modest, but the losses in the bad weather years are generally much higher than under current climate, pointing to more frequent bouts with food insecurity for the region, unless investments are made to compensate for those production shocks.

× More than one billion people worldwide receive cash or in-kind transfers from social protection programs. In low-income countries, these transfers are often conditioned on participation in labor-intensive public works to rehabilitate local infrastructure or natural resources. Despite their popularity, the environmental impacts of public works programs remain largely undocumented. We quantify the impact on tree cover of Ethiopia’s Productive Safety Net Program (PSNP), one of the world’s largest and longest-running public works programs, using satellite-based data of tree cover combined with difference-in-differences and inverse probability treatment weighting methodologies. We find that the PSNP increased tree cover by 3.8% between 2005 and 2019, with larger increases in less densely populated areas and on steep-sloped terrain. As increasing tree cover is considered an important strategy to mitigate global warming, our results suggest a win–win potential for social safety net programs with an environmental component.

× The food and land use sector is a major contributor to India's total greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions. On one hand, India is committed to sustainability targets in the Agriculture, Forestry and Other Land Use (AFOLU) sectors, on the other, there is little clarity whether these objectives can align with national developmental priorities of food security and environmental protection. This study fills the gap by reviewing multiple corridors to sustain the AFOLU systems through an integrated assessment framework using partial equilibrium modeling. We create three pathways that combine the shared socio-economic pathways with alternative assumptions on diets and mitigation strategies. We analyze our results of the pathways on key indicators of land-use change, GHG emissions, food security, water withdrawals in agriculture, agricultural trade and production diversity. Our findings indicate that dietary shift, improved efficiency in livestock production systems, lower fertilizer use, and higher yield through sustainable intensification can reduce GHG emissions from the AFOLU sectors up to 80% by 2050. Dietary shifts could help meet EAT-Lancet recommended minimum calorie requirements alongside meeting mitigation ambitions. Further, water withdrawals in agriculture would reduce by half by 2050 in the presence of environmental flow protection and mitigation strategies. We conclude by pointing towards specific cstrategic policy design changes that would be essential to embark on such a sustainable pathway.

× The debate concerning the need for significant transformations towards more nutrition oriented, environmentally sustainable and inclusive food systems has generated increased attention towards agroecology in recent years. Literature on this subject has already demonstrated that transitions to agroecology will be context specific, as countries and regions have distinctive visions for the future of agriculture and food systems, unique starting points, and will therefore define their own transition pathways. This paper assesses how different policies (consumer oriented; producer oriented; market and food environment oriented; macro and trade oriented; and cross-cutting policies) can affect incentives for agroecology. It provides examples of policies and related actions taken by national, regional and city governments that intend to promote one or more agroecological principles. The assessment reveals that, until now, few countries have embarked on a broad set of reforms with sustained commitments. Many of these policies are new, weakly institutionalized and supported by limited budgets, making it difficult to analyze their actual effects. Because of this, there is very little research on how effective they have been in promoting agroecological transitions or the objectives that agroecology aims to achieve. Consequently, the paper’s main recommendation is for research to fill this gap so that future policy formulation and implementation can be better informed by experiences from different countries.

× Agriculture sector in India is a primary source of livelihood for a majority of the population. Low and stagnant income in the sector remains a focal point of policy debate in India. The most prominent pathways to enhance farmers’ income is the adoption of improved agricultural technologies. This study documents the current state of agriculture technologies in India. The main objectives are: (a) What are the adoption levels of improved technologies and their impact on farmers’ income, agricultural production, natural resources and environment? (b) What are the constraints in up-scaling improved technologies and the conditions for success of their adoption? (c) What are the rate of return on agriculture research and extension system? and (d) What can be learnt from the global perspective on agriculture research and extension services?

× Extreme events, such as those caused by climate change, economic or geopolitical shocks, and pest or disease epidemics, threaten global food security. The complexity of causation, as well as the myriad ways that an event, or a sequence of events, creates cascading and systemic impacts, poses significant challenges to food systems research and policy alike. To identify priority food security risks and research opportunities, we asked experts from a range of fields and geographies to describe key threats to global food security over the next two decades and to suggest key research questions and gaps on this topic. Here, we present a prioritization of threats to global food security from extreme events, as well as emerging research questions that highlight the conceptual and practical challenges that exist in designing, adopting, and governing resilient food systems. We hope that these findings help in directing research funding and resources toward food system transformations needed to help society tackle major food system risks and food insecurity under extreme events.

× Central banks play a critical role in the economy, with policy levers that influence and are influenced by climate change. An important part of central bank interventions is conducting climate-related stress tests and scenario analysis to increase awareness in the financial sector of the effects of climate change, improve the integration of climate-related risks into financial companies’ decisions, identify important data gaps, and start building capacity to develop more advanced and accurate climate scenarios. These exercises, however, are a challenge to central banks and financial companies because of their complexity and the new data and tools required for scenario development and analysis. The development of scenarios for climate-related stress testing requires the integration of different model frameworks to assess the impacts of climate change, translate these impacts into macroeconomic scenarios, and evaluate the subsequent financial sector outcomes. This integration requires multidisciplinary skills such as the joint work of energy system modellers, climate scientists and macroprudential experts. This paper provides an overview of the modelling frameworks available for assessing climate change impacts in South Africa, covering both local and global models. This should assist financial institutions and regulators with developing partnerships to build scenarios and assess the impact of climate-related risks. Gaps in current models and modelling for financial stress testing are also identified as considerations for future research.

× The 2030 Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) aim at jointly improving economic, social, and environmental outcomes for human prosperity and planetary health. However, designing national economic policies that support advancement across multiple Sustainable Development Goals is hindered by the complexities of multi-sector economies and often conflicting policies. To address this, we introduce a national-scale design framework that can enable policymakers to sift through complex, non-linear, multi-sector policy spaces to identify efficient policy portfolios that balance economic, social, and environmental goals. The framework combines economy-wide sustainability simulation and artificial intelligence-driven multiobjective, multi-SDG policy search and machine learning. The framework can support multi-sector, multi-actor policy deliberation to screen efficient policy portfolios. We demonstrate the utility of the framework for a case study of Egypt by identifying policy portfolios that achieve efficient mixes of poverty and inequality reduction, economic growth, and climate change mitigation. The results show that integrated policy strategies can help achieve sustainable development while balancing adverse economic, social, and political impacts of reforms.

× The severity of the climate challenge requires a change in the climate response, from an incremental to a more far-reaching and radical transformative one. There is also a need to avoid maladaptation whereby responses to climate risk inadvertently reinforce vulnerability, exposure and risk for some sections of society. Innovative technological interventions are critical but enabling social, institutional and governance factors are the actual drivers of the transformative process. Bringing about this transformation requires inter- and transdisciplinary approaches, and the embracing of social equity. In this Perspective, we unpack what this means for agricultural research and, based on our collective experience, we map out a research agenda that weaves different research components into a holistic and transformative one. We do not offer best practice, but rather reflections on how agricultural research can more readily contribute to transformative adaptation, along with the personal and practical challenges of designing and implementing such an agenda.

× The challenges faced by the global agri-food system are very complex. It must not only provide a sufficient nutritious food supply to meet growing demand, but it also requires managing environmental issues such as the impact of climate change, the pressure on natural resources, and the ecological sustainability of agricultural practices.

× The transformation of food systems is crucial for achieving multiple global objectives, including the 2030 Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) and the climate change mitigation, adaptation and resilience goals established in the 2015 Paris Agreement. The Paris Agreement calls for “making finance flows consistent with a pathway towards low greenhouse gas emissions and climate-resilient development.” To meet national and global SDG-related and climate goals, existing flows of funds must be reoriented, and support mobilised for a broad range of investments and interventions, including mitigation and adaptation activities, by all food system actors. The brief proposes seven recommendations for the Group of 20 (G20) to act upon: (1) establish effective incentive frameworks to attract food-system finance; (2) improve regulatory frameworks to steer food consumption and production decisions towards sustainability and healthy diets; (3) encourage more strategic use of international development funds; (4) repurposing of existing agricultural support for the transformation of food systems; (5) promote climate-positive investment with funding from the commercial banking system and capital markets; (6) promote access of SMEs and smallholders to finance from commercial banking system and capital markets and (7) provide support to countries in aligning with the United Nations Forum on Sustainability Standards (UNFSS) National Pathways with the Nationally Determined Contributions (NDCs) and National Adaptation Plans (NAPs) of the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC)

× The Vietnamese fisheries sector, including both marine fisheries and aquaculture, has made spectacular progress in recent years, becoming one of the top seafood producing and exporting countries in the world. Looking forward, development goals of this sector must address challenges associated with climate change, including changing distribution of commercially important marine species such as tuna and disruptions to land-based aquaculture production systems. This study investigates the prospective climate change impacts on Vietnam's fisheries sector, focusing on four key commodities including capture fisheries (tuna), freshwater aquaculture (pangasius catfish and tilapia), and brackish water aquaculture (shrimp). The extent of impact varies, but climate change represents a potentially significant threat to sustainable production in each production system. Producers, policy makers, and other stakeholders need to plan for and adapt to climate change to ensure the sustainable development of Vietnam's fisheries sector.

× India will need to produce 30% more wheat by 2050, and these gains must principally come from intensification in eastern India where low productivity is common. Through a dense network of on-farm surveys for the rice–wheat system in this region, we show that contemporary wheat sowing dates have a central influence on achieved and attainable yields, superseding all other crop management, soil and varietal factors. We estimate that untapped wheat production potential will increase by 69% with achievable adjustments to wheat sowing dates without incurring undesirable trade-offs with rice productivity, irrigation requirements or profitability. Our findings also indicate that transformative gains in wheat yields are only possible in eastern India if rice and wheat are managed as a coupled system. Steps taken to ‘keep time’ through better management of the annual cropping calendar will pay dividends for food security, profitability and climate resilience now and as a foundation for adaptation to progressive climate change.

× Recent analyses suggest that global fruit and vegetable (F&V) production will need to increase by 50–150% by 2050 to achieve sustainable and healthy diets for all 10 billion people expected to inhabit the world (Stratton et al. 2021). Meeting this increased demand will be very difficult due to numerous factors, including the scarcity of labor, dwindling water supplies for irrigation, and climate change. We have just completed a 5-year project (Agriculture and Food Systems Institute 2022) that began to tackle this daunting challenge: fruit and vegetable supply chains: climate adaptation and mitigation opportunities. We identified and tested climate adaptation and mitigation strategies in these supply chains through the development and application of a novel integrated methodology that included climate, crop, economic, and life cycle assessment (LCA) models, following protocols developed by the Agricultural Model Intercomparison and Improvement Project (AgMIP) (https://agmip.org/). Consistent with AgMIP standards, our modeling tools are for open use and are broadly applicable to other crops and regions, subject to normal input data requirements.

× This paper provides estimates of the global investment gap in agricultural research and development (R&D) and innovation. The investment gap is defined as the additional annual investments required to end hunger in 2030 (Sustainable Development Goal SDG2) and to put agriculture on the pathway to the Paris Agreement target for 1.5◦C increase over pre-industrial temperature levels. The investment gap is projected relative to a reference scenario with projections to 2030 using an integrated economic-biophysical model of the global agri-food system. In addition to showing the impacts on hunger, the modeling results are used to simulate the effect of the gap-closing investments on greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions from agriculture. In addition to projecting the impacts of overall investment in agricultural R&D on productivity and environmental outcomes, the analysis assesses the contributions of different types of innovative technologies and farming systems to the environmental outcomes, especially technologies that contribute to sustainability outcomes. Sustainability-oriented technologies and management practices examined include conservation tillage, nitrogen-use efficiency, improved livestock management, and other climate-smart technologies. The projected results show that additional agricultural R&D investments of USD 4 billion per year above baseline investments together with USD 6.5 billion per year invested in technical climate-smart options, can reduce hunger to 5% globally and achieve 2030 GHG emission reductions consistent with the Paris Agreement 2◦C and 1.5◦C pathways to 2030.

× Over the past several years many global reports and scientific articles have offered guidance to policy makers on how climate change is likely to affect global food security. But these publications paint an incomplete, and likely overly optimistic, picture of the threat that anthropogenic environmental change poses to food production, nutrition, and health. Projected effects of climate change on food security are often based on crop models that incorporate only a few dimensions of climate related biophysical change—usually characterized by changes in temperature and precipitation. Omitted from these mathematical models are other biophysical changes related to a disrupted climate system and, importantly, other anthropogenic biophysical changes that are also likely to affect the quality or quantity of food the world can produce.

× As the 2022 Global Hunger Index (GHI) shows, the global hunger situation is undeniably grim. The overlapping crises facing the world are exposing the weaknesses of food systems, from global to local, and highlighting the vulnerability of populations around the world to hunger.
Global Progress against Hunger Is at a Near Standstill
Global progress against hunger has largely stagnated in recent years. The 2022 GHI score for the world is considered moderate, but at 18.2, it shows only a slight decline from the 2014 score of 19.1. Indeed, one indicator used in the GHI, the prevalence of undernourishment, shows that the share of people who lack regular access to sufficient calories is increasing. As many as 828 million people were under nourished in 2021, representing a reversal of more than a decade of progress against hunger. Without a major shift, neither the world as a whole nor approximately 46 countries are projected to achieve even low hunger as measured by the GHI by 2030.
A Barrage of Crises Is Undermining the Fight against Hunger
The situation is likely to worsen in the face of the current barrage of overlapping global crises—conflict, climate change, and the economic fallout of the COVID-19 pandemic—all of which are powerful drivers of hunger. The war in Ukraine has further increased global food, fuel, and fertilizer prices and has the potential to significantly worsen hunger in 2023 and beyond. These crises come on top of underlying factors such as poverty, inequality, inadequate governance, poor infrastructure, and low agricultural productivity that contribute to chronic hunger and vulnerability. Globally and in many countries and regions, current food systems are inadequate to the task of addressing these challenges and ending hunger.

× EVs aren’t as green as made out to be, and raw materials for making batteries are likely to run out.

× Ensuring resilient food systems and sustainable healthy diets for all requires much higher water use, however, water resources are finite, geographically dispersed, volatile under climate change, and required for other vital functions including ecosystems and the services they provide. Good governance for resilient water resources is a necessary precursor to deciding on solutions, sourcing finance, and delivering infrastructure. Six attributes that together provide a foundation for good governance to reduce future water risks to food systems are proposed. These attributes dovetail in their dual focus on incorporating adaptive learning and new knowledge, and adopting the types of governance systems required for water resilient food systems. The attributes are also founded in the need to greater recognise the role natural, healthy ecosystems play in food systems. The attributes are listed below and are grounded in scientific evidence and the diverse collective experience and expertise of stakeholders working across the science-policy interface: Adopting interconnected systems thinking that embraces the complexity of how we produce, distribute, and add value to food including harnessing the experience and expertise of stakeholders s; adopting multi-level inclusive governance and supporting inclusive participation; enabling continual innovation, new knowledge and learning, and information dissemination; incorporating diversity and redundancy for resilience to shocks; ensuring system preparedness to shocks; and planning for the long term. This will require food and water systems to pro-actively work together toward a socially and environmentally just space that considers the water and food needs of people, the ecosystems that underpin our food systems, and broader energy and equity concerns.

× Animal pollination supports agricultural production for many healthy foods, such as fruits, vegetables, nuts, and legumes, which provide key nutrients and protect against non-communicable diseases. Today, most crops receive suboptimal pollination because of reduced abundance and diversity of pollinating insects. We modelled the effects on current global human health from insufficient pollination by quantifying the pollinator-related crop yield gap and lost consumption of pollination-dependent foods by country and region, after accounting for global trade, economic behaviours, and food waste. We also estimated the lost economic value of crop production for the following three diverse case-study countries: Honduras, Nepal, and Nigeria.

× Excess agricultural nitrogen, mainly from manure and chemical fertilizers, is a primary source of nutrient pollution and presents serious environmental threats to natural ecosystems and human health. Improvements in nitrogen-use efficiency in crop production are critical for addressing the triple challenge of food insecurity, environmental degradation, and climate change. Approaches such as sustainable intensification that stress technological innovations have received the most attention. But science-based cropland use planning, a promising complementary approach, has so far been largely overlooked. Here we develop a spatially integrated economic-ecological modeling method to assess this previously unexplored potential for improving the economic-environmental performance of crop production by examining the seasonal and spatial implications of cropland and fertilizer use in Bangladesh. In doing so, we aim to make the modeling method accessible to researchers and practitioners interested in achieving the dual goal of food production and environmental sustainability for countries that are characterized by seasonal and spatial variations in crop mix and cropping practices.

× Agrifood systems are both a contributor to greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions and an important sector for achieving China’s 2060 carbon neutrality goal and mitigating climate change. Rising global temperatures and frequent extreme weather have greatly weakened agricultural production capacity (IPCC, 2021). The need to mitigate climate change by reducing GHG emissions has global consensus. In 2020, the Chinese government made an important commitment toward peaking its carbon dioxide emissions by 2030 and achieving carbon neutrality by 2060. Under China’s 2060 carbon neutrality goal, the contribution of agrifood systems to GHG emissions reduction cannot be ignored. According to estimates by the Academy of Global Food Economics and Policy (AGFEP) at China Agricultural University (AGFEP, 2021), GHG emissions from agrifood systems reached 1.09 billion metric tons (t) of CO2eq in 2018, accounting for 8.2 percent of total national GHG emissions. While ensuring food security as the top national priority, the combined measures can reduce GHG emissions by 47 percent by 2060, compared to 2020 levels; these measures include improving agricultural technologies, reducing food loss and waste, and shifting dietary patterns. When coupled with the carbon sequestration of land use, land-use change and forestry (LULUCF), agrifood systems can contribute significantly to achieving carbon neutrality (AGFEP, 2021).

× Remarkable achievements in global food security have been made in the past several decades. Food production has grown significantly and outpaced the population growth. Household food consumption has increased, and undernourishment has declined dramatically. However, due to multiple risks and threats such as climate change, COVID-19, environmental degradation, trade frictions, and regional conflicts, global food security and nutrition face unprecedented challenges. In fact, the number of hungry people in the world has been increasing since 2015, with more than 800 million people now suffering from hunger. After decades of development, China has ended hunger. In the new development stage, the Chinese government has proposed even higher development goals; these include Healthy China 2030, Rural Revitalization, Ecological Civilization, Common Prosperity and Carbon Neutrality.

× Calls for increased attention to natural resource management (NRM) in African agriculture have been around for many decades. They became more vocal around the turn of the century following decades of poor yield growth and emerging data showing concerns about land quality and productivity. In recent years, these intensified further with the specter of climate change and continuing rural population growth challenging agricultural systems on the continent. Researchers have responded to these challenges, advancing research frameworks and hypotheses, deploying more research tools, and conducting more studies. However, it is unclear that all this response has significantly advanced our state of knowledge on the extent and nature of land degradation in agricultural land, the particular practices that work in different socioeconomic contexts, and how best to induce their uptake by households facing different priorities and constraints. This chapter will motivate this conclusion and offer options for moving forward in some of these topical areas.

× Vulnerabilities of men and women to adverse health effects due to weather variability and climate change are not equal. Uganda was among the countries in the world most affected by extreme weather events during the last decade. However, there is still limited gendered empirical evidence on the links between weather variability and health and the possible pathways through which these health effects occur. Therefore, this study analyses the effect of weather variability on illness, and the extent to which water collection ‘time burden’ mediates the relationship between weather anomalies and illness among men and women of working age in Uganda. The study also quantifies the health inequalities to be eliminated if resources are equalized.

× This brief shows how innovative financing can help cut agricultural pollution in the People's Republic of China’s Xin'an River Basin by plugging funding gaps for nature-based solutions that also mitigate against climate change. It highlights the importance of the basin that supplies drinking water to 10 million people and explains how insufficient financing is limiting the effectiveness of existing ecological compensation schemes. Offering policy recommendations to incentivize environmental protections, the brief details how two ADB-backed funds can be scaled up to support efforts by farmers and small businesses to make the watershed green, sustainable, and inclusive.

× Key Points
 Countries around the world provide billions of dollars every year for agricultural support, with most of the benefits accruing to middle- and high-income farmers.
 Critics of agricultural subsidies may prefer a total global rollback, but this is widely believed to be politically untenable. In response, many have proposed repurposing subsidies to serve climate and nutrition goals.
 Repurposing subsidies to focus on either nutrition or climate change may positively affect one orboth objectives, but the overall effects are surprisingly small and can involve outcomes that benefit one objective at the expense of the other.

× Food systems are major contributors to climate change and other environmental problems, such as land-use change and biodiversity loss, depletion of freshwater resources, and pollution of aquatic and terrestrial ecosystems through nitrogen and phosphorus run-off from fertilizer and manure application (Cordell and White 2014; Crippa et al. 2021; Diaz and Rosenberg 2008; Foley et al. 2005; Newbold et al. 2015; Robertson and Vitousek 2009; Shiklomanov and Rodda 2004; Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change [IPCC] 2019; Wada et al. 2010; Willett et al. 2019).

× This collection of essays provides a wealth of information and analysis about the Philippine economy and the role of agriculture and economic policy in it. The Philippine experience has been quite different from the highly successful Asian economies, with a long period of low growth until the turn of the century and only then greater success. The authors cover not only the Philippine experience but also place it in its Asian context and that of developing countries more generally. They report on the lessons learned, both positive and negative, from the various economic policies that have been adopted, with regard to both agriculture and to economic inequality. Those interested in Philippine economic development, and Asian development more broadly, will find this an important reference work

× Background: Animal pollination supports agricultural production for many healthy foods, such as fruits, vegetables, nuts, and legumes, that provide key nutrients and protect against noncommunicable disease. Today, most crops receive suboptimal pollination because of limited abundance and diversity of pollinating insects. Animal pollinators are currently suffering owing to a host of direct and indirect anthropogenic pressures: land-use change, intensive farming techniques, harmful pesticides, nutritional stress, and climate change, among others. Objectives: We aimed to model the impacts on current global human health from insufficient pollination via diet.

× Excessive anthropogenic nitrogen (N) inputs to the biosphere have disrupted the global nitrogen cycle. To better quantify the spatial and temporal patterns of anthropogenic N inputs, assess their impacts on the biogeochemical cycles of the planet and the living organisms, and improve nitrogen use efficiency (NUE) for sustainable development, we have developed a comprehensive and synthetic dataset for reconstructing the History of anthropogenic Nitrogen inputs (HaNi) to the terrestrial biosphere. The HaNi dataset takes advantage of different data sources in a spatiotemporally consistent way to generate a set of high-resolution gridded N input products from the preindustrial period to the present (1860–2019). The HaNi dataset includes annual rates of synthetic N fertilizer, manure application/deposition, and atmospheric N deposition on cropland, pasture, and rangeland at a spatial resolution of 5 arcmin × 5 arcmin. Specifically, the N inputs are categorized, according to the N forms and land uses, into 10 types: (1) -N fertilizer applied to cropland, (2) NO-N fertilizer applied to cropland, (3) -N fertilizer applied to pasture, (4) NO-N fertilizer applied to pasture, (5) manure N application on cropland, (6) manure N application on pasture, (7) manure N deposition on pasture, (8) manure N deposition on rangeland, (9) NHx-N deposition, and (10) NOy-N deposition. The total anthropogenic N (TN) inputs to global terrestrial ecosystems increased from 29.05 Tg N yr−1 in the 1860s to 267.23 Tg N yr−1 in the 2010s, with the dominant N source changing from atmospheric N deposition (before the 1900s) to manure N (in the 1910s–2000s) and then to synthetic fertilizer in the 2010s. The proportion of synthetic -N in fertilizer input increased from 64 % in the 1960s to 90 % in the 2010s, while synthetic NO-N fertilizer decreased from 36 % in the 1960s to 10 % in the 2010s. Hotspots of TN inputs shifted from Europe and North America to East and South Asia during the 1960s–2010s. Such spatial and temporal dynamics captured by the HaNi dataset are expected to facilitate a comprehensive assessment of the coupled human–Earth system and address a variety of social welfare issues, such as the climate–biosphere feedback, air pollution, water quality, and biodiversity. The data are available at https://doi.org/10.1594/PANGAEA.942069 (Tian et al., 2022).

× Farming Systems Analysis (FSA) is commonly used in CGIAR to assess ‘what works where, and for who?’. The findings are used to prioritize tailored/context-specific interventions and target investments for greater impact. An assessment of seven new CGIAR initiatives showed us that FSA is employed in a similar way across these initiatives, open ing up avenues for strong collaboration and sharing of data, methods and results to achieve better synergies than we have done in the past.

× Border Carbon Adjustment (BCAs) may play an important role in lowering the economic costs of greenhouse gas mitigation and in overcoming political-economy constraints on use of carbon taxes or equivalent measures. A carbon tax plus a full BCA (CTBA) could deal with the competitiveness challenges arising from carbon taxes by using the WTO’s National Treatment principle to apply equal levies on domestic production and on imports, and by symmetrically rebating the carbon tax on exports in the manner of a VAT export rebate. This approach would shift the base for carbon taxation from output to consumption and intermediate input use and potentially lower the cost of achieving reductions in emissions. It would avoid the massive measurement and compliance problems associated with BCAs based on foreign emission intensities. By contrast, proposals for import-only BCAs would distort prices of importables relative to exportables, create competitiveness concerns in export industries, generate economic waste and likely create highly divisive trade conflicts and deterioration in the terms of trade for developing countries.

× Introduction: The impact of climate change on agriculture and food security has been examined quite thoroughly by researchers globally as well as in India. While existing studies provide evidence on how climate variability affects the food security and nutrition, research examining the extent of effect vulnerability of agriculture to climate change can have on nutrition in India are scarce. This study examined a) the association between the degree of vulnerability in agriculture to climate change and child nutrition at the micro-level b) spatial effect of climate vulnerability on child nutrition, and c) the geographical hotspots of both vulnerability in agriculture to climate change and child malnutrition.
Methods: The study used an index on vulnerability of agriculture to climate change and linked it to child malnutrition indicators (stunting, wasting, underweight and anaemia) from the National Family Health Survey 4 (2015–16). Mixed-effect and spatial autoregressive models were fitted to assess the direction and strength of the relationship between vulnerability and child malnutrition at macro and micro level. Spatial analyses examined the within-district and across-district spill-over effects of climate change vulnerability on child malnutrition.
Results: Both mixed-effect and spatial autoregressive models found that the degree of vulnerability was positively associated with malnutrition among children. Children residing in districts with a very high degree of vulnerability were more like to have malnutrition than those residing in districts with very low vulnerability. The analyses found that the odds of a child suffering from stunting increased by 32%, wasting by 42%, underweight by 45%, and anaemia by 63% if the child belonged to a district categorised as very highly vulnerable when compared to those categorised as very low. The spatial analysis also suggested a high level of clustering in the spatial distribution of vulnerability and malnutrition. Hotspots of child malnutrition and degree of vulnerability were mostly found to be clustered around western-central part of India.
Conclusion: Study highlights the consequences that vulnerability of agriculture to climate change can have on child nutrition. Strategies should be developed to mitigate the effect of climate change on areas where there is a clustering of vulnerability and child malnutrition.

× CGIAR’s digital extension services bridge the gap between the development and the adoption of new climate change adaptation strategies. These services include new ways to disperse information on rainfed systems of agriculture, nutrition, pest control, new crop varieties, crop management practices, and more.

× The exposure of populations to sea-level rise (SLR) is a leading indicator assessing the impact of future climate change on coastal regions. SLR exposes coastal populations to a spectrum of impacts with broad spatial and temporal heterogeneity, but exposure assessments often narrowly define the spatial zone of flooding. Here we show how choice of zone results in differential exposure estimates across space and time. Further, we apply a spatio-temporal flood-modeling approach that integrates across these spatial zones to assess the annual probability of population exposure. We apply our model to the coastal United States to demonstrate a more robust assessment of population exposure to flooding from SLR in any given year. Our results suggest that more explicit decisions regarding spatial zone (and associated temporal implication) will improve adaptation planning and policies by indicating the relative chance and magnitude of coastal populations to be affected by future SLR.

× Impact evaluations and cost-benefit analyses often guide investments in agricultural development but determining whether an investment is cost effective in empowering women is a major challenge. The multidimensional, dynamic nature of women’s empowerment does not lend itself easily to quantitative measurement and poses challenges for aggregation across different dimensions, and for analyzing trade-offs in development.

× With adverse impacts of climate change growing in number and intensity, there is an urgent need to reduce emissions from food systems to net zero. This can only be achieved if rural areas in low- and middle-income countries gain access to clean energy. A review of the research and capacity building contributions of the CGIAR Research Program on Water, Land and Ecosystems (WLE) over the last 10 years suggests important contributions in the areas of energy policy and energy investment planning, cost and feasibility frameworks, and business models for clean energy technology uptake. WLE has also conducted successful pilot projects on solar irrigation to provide an evidence base for scaling up innovative energy initiatives. Finally, the program also considered non-agricultural uses of energy where relevant to food systems, and implemented capacity building activities. Going forward, CGIAR has a key role to play in providing information, supporting access and piloting innovative, scalable clean energy interventions to support the achievement of multiple impacts for the poorest and most food-insecure women and men farmers and entrepreneurs.