Agricultural Policies

Paper

A Short Review of Global Scenarios for Food Systems Analysis

ESAC, FAO, Rome (2006)

While global environmental change (GEC) clearly affects agricultural production, it is likely that GEC will also increasingly affect other determinants of food security such as food accessibility, food utilization and the stability of food supply. The questions of what impact future possible GEC dynamics could have, as well as how current decisions about GEC mitigation options and food system adaptation strategies might affect future food security are therefore emerging as crucial for decision makers and scientists alike. Plausible futures/scenarios analysis has developed over the last decades as a tool for creatively and systematically thinking about the future of complex systems in order to inform decision making. A number of scenarios exercises carried out over the last decade have either addressed food security or GEC issues. This paper reviews six important global scenarios and projection exercises as to their coverage of food systems and food security related variables to help guide further research on the future of GEC-food security interactions. Results show that the coverage of food systems and food security variables varies greatly between the exercises, as only two of the exercises specifically focused on agriculture and food, while the others addressed more general development or GEC issues. Variables related to food production and food availability were covered most comprehensively. Food accessibility and utilization parameters as well as direct GEC-food systems links were addressed to a lesser extent. This shows the need for further scenarios analysis in the area, which could deepen the insights gained from existing exercises.

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