HLPE Comments from the Institute for Agriculture and Trade Policy

Please find the following input regarding the scope of the Climate and Food Security Study:

Broadly, we agree that the scope of the study is appropriate. We welcome the focus on food security, which will be an important complement to existing studies on agriculture and climate change. However it is critical that the study also examine the existing social, economic and political reasons for chronic hunger, access and availability of food and assess how climate change is likely to impact the existing drivers of food insecurity and how best these issues can be tackled. Specifically, we suggest that the following elements be addressed in the study:

• The Right to Food framework should be incorporated and utilized as a key tool of assessment throughout the report. Thus, not only is it important to assess climate change’s direct and indirect impacts on most vulnerable populations, but also the impact of proposed policies and measures related to adaptation and mitigation. This should include an assessment of how adaptation responses by the public sector, the private sector and public-private initiatives are likely to impact food security and the right to food and identification of the key limitations and barriers therein. Currently, the outline emphasizes the role of the private sector.
• In the section on “Climate Change Mitigation”, the impact on small producers and vulnerable populations should be assessed with regards to the various mitigation approaches reviewed, including in the sub-heading “cost-effectiveness” of mitigation measures. Because abatement cost-curves emphasize economic opportunity costs, they tend to put the mitigation burden on small producers and local populations as opposed to larger industrial processes. This, however, is a limited framework that excludes food security and equity concerns, as well as assessment of the main drivers of climate change that are not limited to agriculture alone. The report should go beyond collecting and summarizing mitigation measures and reviewing assessments of land use management options. The paper should assess food security and equity impacts of existing proposals for agriculture mitigation and highlight the existing data gaps and uncertainty associated with various options. The focus should remain on impacts on vulnerable regions and populations.
• The outline divides adaptation responses and mitigation responses. However, it is critical to assess whether mitigation and adaptation responses can be one and the same in addressing food security and climate change, as well as the resources that both responses require. Therefore, a key section of the paper should include a cross-cutting analysis about the tradeoffs and synergies involved in adaptation and mitigation measures. This should include an assessment of the financial, institutional and human resources required for both approaches in developing countries and analyze the impact of these approaches on the most vulnerable populations, including small producers and their right to food.
• While the paper addresses “the role of public and private sectors in adaptation”, the paper omits “the role of small producers” in adaptation. An assessment of the role of small producers in both adaptation and mitigation is key, since the impacts of climate change will most acutely be felt by them and they are the primary agents of adaptation on the ground.