Natural Disasters And Extreme Events In Agriculture

Agricultural production is highly sensitive to weather and climate-related disasters such as drought, storm and flood. While it is not possible to prevent the occurrence of natural disasters, the resultant disastrous effects can be reduced mitigated through proper planning and effective preparation. This book, based on a gathering of experts in Beijing, discusses ways to reduce the vulnerability of agriculture to disaster and extreme events, both by accurate and timely warning, and by impact-reducing countermeasures.

On top of a decade of exacerbated disaster loss, exceptional global heat, retreating ice and rising sea levels, humanity and our food security face a range of new and unprecedented hazards, such as megafires, extreme weather events, desert locust swarms of magnitudes previously unseen, and the COVID-19 pandemic. Agriculture underpins the livelihoods of over 2.5 billion people – most of them in low-income developing countries – and remains a key driver of development. At no other point in history has agriculture been faced with such an array of familiar and unfamiliar risks, interacting in a hyperconnected world and a precipitously changing landscape. And agriculture continues to absorb a disproportionate share of the damage and loss wrought by disasters. Their growing frequency and intensity, along with the systemic nature of risk, are upending people’s lives, devastating livelihoods, and jeopardizing our entire food system. This report makes a powerful case for investing in resilience and disaster risk reduction – especially data gathering and analysis for evidence informed action – to ensure agriculture’s crucial role in achieving the future we want.

Natural hazard induced disasters (NHID), such as floods, droughts, severe storms, and animal pests and diseases have significant, widespread and long lasting impacts on agricultural sectors around the world. With climate change set to amplify many of these impacts, a “business as usual” approach to disaster risk management in agriculture cannot continue if we are to meet the challenges of agricultural productivity and sustainability growth, and sustainable development. Drawing from seven case studies – Chile, Italy, Japan, Namibia, New Zealand, Turkey and the United States – this joint OECD?FAO report argues for a new approach to building resilience to NHID in agriculture. It explores the policy measures, governance arrangements, on?farm strategies and other initiatives that countries are using to increase agricultural resilience to NHID, highlighting emerging good practices. It offers concrete recommendations on what more needs to be done to shift from coping with the impacts of disasters, to an ex ante approach that focuses on preventing and mitigating the impacts of disasters, helping the sector be better prepared to respond to disasters, and to adapt and transform in order to be better positioned for future disasters.

This book is related to disaster risk reduction in agriculture particularly under changing climate. Climate change refers to significant, long-term changes in the global climate. There is unequivocal evidence that Earth is warming at an unprecedented rate. Human activity is the principal cause. The planets average surface temperature has risen to about 1oC since the late 19th century and most of the warming occurred in the past 40 years. The years 2016 and 2020 are tied for the warmest year on the record. Similarly, other evidence of rapid climate change includes warming of oceans, shrinking of ice sheets, retreating glaciers, decreasing snow cover, rising of sea level, declining artic sea ice, increased frequency of extreme events, ocean acidification and loss of biodiversity. Hence, climate change impacts, both extreme weather and slow-onset events, have impacted several sectors of the national economies and activities, in particular agriculture and food production, augmented by other challenges be it geopolitical, cost of finance or supply chain related, and in a time of increased food insecurity. Without CO2 fertilization, effective adaptation, and genetic improvement, each degree-Celsius increase in global mean temperature would, on average, reduce global yields of wheat by 6.0%, rice by 3.2%, maize by 7.4%, and soybean by 3.1%. Hence this book is useful as a study material to teach in the field of agriculture and climate change. The book is useful for instructors and postgraduate as well as undergraduate students involved in the study of climate change. The book also provide guidance to multiple stakeholders to design mitigation and adaptation efforts to climate change and ensure food security in the developing world.

Despite the current technological advancement, agriculture is still a vital source of livelihood. It is essentially dependent on weather and climate, and adversely affected by extreme events in this respect. Over the past few decades, extreme events such as droughts, floods, storms, tropical cyclones and forest fires have destroyed economic and social infrastructure and at the same time endangered food security. The agricultural sector is affected through the impact on water resources, damage to crops, rangelands and forests, due to incidence of droughts, locust plagues and wildland fires. While natural hazards may not be avoided, the integration of risk assessment and early warnings, with prevention and mitigation measures, can prevent them from becoming disasters. Improved forecast accuracy and mroe focused information on the location, intensity and duration of climate extremes could underpin efforts to implement more effective risk management strategies. This book, based on state of the art knowledge on the science and application of agricultural meteorology needed to better cope with extreme climate events, should be of interest to all organizations and agencies engaged in planning disaster reduction strategies and mitigation of extreme events.

Agricultural production is highly sensitive to weather and climate-related disasters such as drought, storm and flood. While it is not possible to prevent the occurrence of natural disasters, the resultant disastrous effects can be reduced mitigated through proper planning and effective preparation. This book, based on a gathering of experts in Beijing, discusses ways to reduce the vulnerability of agriculture to disaster and extreme events, both by accurate and timely warning, and by impact-reducing countermeasures.

Climate change is expected to increase the frequency and magnitude of extreme weather events, notably of droughts and floods to which the agriculture sector is particularly exposed.