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Browsing Public Policy by Subject "Climate change"

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    Have crops already reached peak suitability : assessing global climatic suitability decreases for crop cultivation
    (IOP Publishing, 2025-01-22) Mombo, Vhiny-Guilley; Duvallet, Mathilde; Schaeffer, Michiel; Baarsch, Florent
    Crop yield and the availability of arable land are impacted by climate change, leading to effects on global patterns of production and trading. To gain more precise insights in how future climate change might lead to redistributing productive crop areas, we developed a new method to assess climatic crop suitability, which combines temperature and precipitation suitability through water balance calculations. We applied the method to evaluate the effects of climate change under two climatic scenarios (SSP2-4.5 and SSP5-8.5), using an ensemble of five GCMs, for nine crops (Arabica coffee, cassava, common beans, common wheat, maize, plantain, rice, sorghum and sugarcane) for four periods of time: past (1995-2014), present day (2015-2034), medium term (2040-2059), long term (2080-2099. We observed that the fraction of area with optimal suitability might be on a downward trajectory for coffee, cassava, beans, wheat and plantain, and could be halved by the end of the century. The tropics and sub-tropics are negatively affected for all crops, while mid-latitudes see large decreases in suitability for beans, wheat and maize. Global patterns show that suitability decreases at local levels (in about 30% of the global area for bean and wheat) are not compensated by increases in suitability elsewhere (in about 19% of the area for bean and wheat). As relocation and expansion of production areas are constrained by available arable land, other strategies might be considered to improve suitability, such as irrigation, which would increase the area of optimal suitability from 5-25% to 40-50% of total arable land for the nine crops. Drainage could improve the optimal suitability area fivefold for maize and sorghum, while shading increases suitability for coffee (by up to 20% in both cases). The increased risk of food supply shortages led by climatic suitability loss may trigger increased deforestation if adaptation measures are not implemented.
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    ItemOpen Access
    Sustaining wheat in a changing climate : policy recommendations for Egypt's agricultural sector
    (ZAIN Publications, 2024-09) Karem Rouby Islam; Rokaya Ragab Abdalla Ragab
    This paper discussed the challenges facing the agricultural sector and food security in Egypt due to climate change, which are: desertification, sea level rise, and water resources, such as the resources of the Nile River, groundwater in the Nile Delta, groundwater reservoirs, in addition to rainfall. The researchers discussed the impact of all these factors on the wheat crop's agricultural area. The wheat crop is especially important to Egyptians, as they rely on bread, which is the main derivative of wheat. This paper also developed four solutions to confront the effects of climate change on wheat in Egypt, and the solutions represented in (1) Development of new wheat varieties that are more resistant to heat and drought, (2) Disseminate and improve sustainable wheat farming practices, (3) Generalizing the cultivation of the most productive wheat varieties, such as Misr 1 and 2 varieties, Sids12, and Giza 171, (4) Reducing the loss of the wheat crop in its various stages, starting from the harvest stage, through the transportation and storage stage, during the milling operations, and ending with distributing the final product to the consumer. The researchers evaluated the advantages and disadvantages of these solutions and chose the most appropriate and easiest to implement among them. The recommendations in this paper are designed to serve as a policy reference for agricultural sector decision-makers focused on climate change and sustainable food security.