Building resilient food systems, adaptation to climate change

The Fish Site: Ecosystem-based adaptation approaches should be mainstreamed and up-scaled to build resilient food systems and adapt to climate change in Africa. This was the declaration made by participants to the first Africa Food Security and Adaptation Conference held on 20-21 August 2013 in the UN offices in Nairobi, Kenya.

Agriculture, including livestock, forestry and fisheries, is by far the sector most affected by climate change. Climate change will impact food security, both directly causing less food availability and indirectly, leading to loss of jobs and livelihoods which in turn would affect the purchasing power of farmers and consumers living in Africa and globally at large.

Climate change adds a new challenge and uncertainties to agricultural and rural development. Many countries in Africa are amongst the most vulnerable in ensuring food security and adapting to ongoing effects and risks of climate changes. For example, 95 per cent of the food in Sub-Saharan Africa is grown under rain fed agriculture, and thus vulnerable to adverse weather conditions.

Speaking for FAO, Modibo Traore, sub-regional coordinator for Eastern Africa (SFE) emphasized the importance of focusing on ecosystem based approaches for food security and adaptation to climate change. "This topic enables us to address the critical nexus between agriculture, food security and climate change in a systemic way."...

Nation House in Nairobi, shot by Rotsee2, Wikimedia Commons, under the Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 3.0 Unported license