Download A policy study of climate change vulnerability and adaptation on the

Prairie Climate Resilience
A policy study of climate change vulnerability and adaptation on the
Canadian prairies
Henry David Venema, Director
Sustainable Natural Resources Management, IISD
Winnipeg, Manitoba, Canada
with
Harvey Hill, PFRA-AAFC
Fikret Berkes, University of Manitoba
Darren Swanson, IISD
With funding from NRCan’s Climate Change Action Fund
“Outstanding” Global Environmental Problem
Millennium Ecosystem Assessment (2005)
“The intense
vulnerability of the 2
billion people living
in
dryland agricultural
regions to the loss
of ecosystem
services, including
water supply; and
the growing threat
to ecosystems from
climate change and
nutrient pollution.”
Nitrogen Flows
Global Temperature
past/projected
Hypothesis and Agenda
Review climatologic, hydrologic and socio-economic stresses
afflicting Prairie agriculture in Canada, and observe:
Prairie agriculture is not sustainable or resilient and is in need
of the major policy innovations similar to those implemented
during depression /dust-bowl in 1930s.
 Prairie Farm Rehabilitation Administration and Canadian
Wheat Board
Our objectives are to propose these policy innovations based
on a current study - some details of which I’ll share.
Conclude with some comments on food security
internationally and locally and important policy innovations.
International Perceptions of Canada’s
Agricultural Vulnerabilities
The Canadian Prairies: At the Edge
“The Breadbasket of the World”
20% of the international wheat trade
Sources:
•Millennium Ecosystem Assessment, 2005
•IWMI, 2004
Climate Change:
Moisture Deficit
MoistureProjected
Deficit 1961-1990
2050 (CGCM1)
Are the Canadian Prairies Resilient?
Drought: A long history of bad experience
–1906;
–1936-38 (quarter million
people displaced);
–1961;
–1976-77;
–1980;
–1984-85;
–1988;
–2001-2003 (“the worst ever?”
$3.6 B Ag /$5.8 B GDP/ 41 000
jobs lost
Are the Canadian Prairies Resilient?
2005 Flooding “unprecedented”
–Alberta and Manitoba
primarily affected
–Final impacts on 2005 harvest
not known
–Preliminary estimates for
Manitoba:
– $700 M Ag loss/ > $ 1B GDP
loss projected.
Are the Canadian Prairies Resilient?
Nutrients and Aquatic Ecosystems
Are the Canadian Prairies Resilient?
Farm Income
“an indisputable fact is that at the
national level, farm incomes have
been decreasing in real terms,
whether measured since 1970, 1960,
or 1950, and whether measured as net
cash income, or as net realized
income after accounting for
depreciation of assets.”
(Canadian Agri-food Policy Institute, 2005)
•Transportation subsidy lost (Crow rate)
•Commodity/input prices
•Floods/drought
•BSE
A Resilience Theory Framework [Berkes et al,2003]
Change/Stress/Shock
Innovation,
learning
Social-ecological
system
Capacity to
adapt to change
This is what we
(think we can)
measure
Memory,
institutions
These are the policy dynamics
we’re trying to understand and
influence
Sustainability
“Resilience”
Climate Variability
(a surrogate for “Change/Stress/Shock”)
Growing Season Precipitation Coefficient of
Variation
Estimating Adaptive Capacity
(after Smit et al, 2001)
Determinants
Economic
resources
Technology
Information and
skills
Infrastructure
Institutions
Equity
Site Selection for Resilience Analysis
Climate Exposure
Adaptive Capacity
‘hotspot’ regions
for Resilience Analysis based on narratives from
farmers and agricultural organizations
Initial Findings
Early validation of the research framework;
differentiation of coping strategies evident as a
function of relative exposure to climate variability
Major structural issues with the existing agricultural
support programs that deter adaptation
Comments on Food Security:
Poor and erratic yields on the prairies in recent
years from climate stresses have had no discernible
influence on commodity prices - remain low.
Can we infer that the climate vulnerability of “the
breadbasket of the world” will not impact global food
security - commits the error of equating low
commodity prices with absence of hunger.
A more proximate form of food insecurity:
 “Agricultural operations in the prairies are in crisis
mode… a combination of disasters including but
not limited to dropping commodity prices,
increasing input prices, misaligned crop
insurance policies, and extreme climate events
has decreased household income to $6700/year
(2002-04)” source: KAP/APAS/WRAP
Voices from the farm: Manitoba 2005
"They say I've expanded, I've diversified, I've done everything I
possibly can -- and I still can't make it,"
"All through my youth we had our bad years and the good years but
there was always a light at the end of the tunnel -- things will get
better. I don't see that light anymore,"
 "I don't know of any products that we can raise in Western Canada
that they can't raise just as well somewhere else in the world," he
said. "We've got to be producing what is wanted by the world
because it doesn't want our current production,"
there's little argument that farming has been in a perpetual state
of crisis for decades because of one reason or another.
Apparently, the type of farming we do here has a weak immune
system; it catches a cold every time the environment changes.
Some have suggested farmers have more value to society as
park wardens or environmental stewards than food producers.
. …sees high oil prices and Kyoto accord as potential allies, "If I
can grow nothing but energy on my farm, I will be very happy indeed.
If we reforest Western Canada, you won't see me crying, you'll see
me learning about lumber."
Towards Prairie Resilience: Learning from
the Millenium Ecosystem Assessment
Agricultural Watershed Governance
 Decades long, expensive and decentralized process
(analogs: Rural Electrification, Rural Telecoms) - needs
stable funding through inter, and intra-sectoral transfers
 Require much research on economic instruments and
federal co-funding thereof / federal leadership on
interprovincial watersheds
Ecological Goods and Services
(focus: Kyoto/bioenergy/Organics/SWC/ )
 Organic Transition Programs
-
Supports higher farm income;
lower input costs (energy!); SWC, carbon sequestration
(Mitigation / Adaptation Nexus of Climate Policy)
greater flexibility and support from the CWB/MCIC positive
 Kyoto Compliance
- Canada has a large liability, design of our domestic offset
program is still incomplete; big unrealized potential for
riparian/green cover EGS