Food Security and Global Environmental Change

Global environmental change represents an immediate and unprecedented threat to the food security of hundreds of millions of people, especially those who depend on small-scale agriculture for their livelihoods. As this book shows, at the same time, agriculture and related activities also contribute to climate change, by intensifying greenhouse gas emissions and altering the land surface. Responses aimed at adapting to climate change may have negative consequences for food security, just as measures taken to increase food security may exacerbate climate or other environmental change. The authors show that this complex and dynamic relationship between climate change, agriculture and food security is also influenced by additional factors. Agriculture and food systems are heavily influenced by socioeconomic conditions, which in turn are affected by multiple processes such as macro-level economic policies, political conflicts and the spread of infectious diseases.This book provides a major, accessible synthesis of the current state of knowledge and thinking on the relationships between global environmental change and food security. Most other books addressing the subject concentrate on the links between climate change and agricultural production, and not extend to an analysis of the wider food system which underpins food security; this book addresses the broader issues, based on a novel food system concept and stressing the need for actions at a regional, rather than just an international or local, level. It reviews new thinking which has emerged over the last decade, and looks forward towards adaptation and mitigation strategies for the next decade.

John Ingram is Executive Officer at the Global Environmental Change and Food Systems (GECAFS) International Project Office, Environmental Change Institute (ECI), University of Oxford, UK. Polly Ericksen is at the International Livestock Research Institute (ILRI), Nairobi, Kenya. Diana Liverman is Chair of the GECAFS Scientific Advisory Committee, Co-director of the Institute of the Environment at the University of Arizona and a Visiting Professor in Environmental Policy and Development in the School of Geography and the Environment at the University of Oxford.