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COMCEC Agriculture Outlook 2019
Rising food demand, limited arable land and water resources, and changing climatic patterns
lead to rising import dependence for basic food commodities globally. In this respect many OIC
member countries spend a large share of their income on food imports; resulting with a trade
deficit in agriculturewith exports meeting only two thirds of the imports 18 . In order to achieve
the goal of world without hunger by 2030 and “leave no one behind”, efforts should be focused
on building disaster risk reduction related to climate change and be integrated into short -,
medium- and long-term policies, programs and practices mainly analyzing the vulnerabilities
in this area.
Although there are many challenges to overcoming threats to food security and sustainability
in theworld, climate change can be counted as the most uncontrollable and threatening one in
the long term19 . It is imperative that the actions should be scaled up to foster adaptive capacity
of food production systems from farm to fork in response to climate extremes20 .
These extremes also have direct implications on food security due to crop and an imal losses
and increase in the food prices especially in areas already facing undernourishment and food
inadequacy having a direct effect on the other drivers i.e. economic instabilities, conflicts and
even diseases 21 . Climate change has implications for food security and food safety. It is widely
understood that the risks of global climate change occurring as a consequence of human
behavior are inequitably distributed, since most of the actions causing climate change
originate from the developed world, but the less developed world is likely to bear the public
health burden; where most OIC members are severely affected. Today, food security and
safety, agricultural insurance, less fuel consumption in food logistics, and local food
procurement are the -more old or novel- concepts concerning the unknown impacts of the
relationship between agricultural production and climate change19.
Failure to address and analyze the impacts of Climate Extremes correctly would in turn
hamper food production in the coming decades in a variety of ways. Land degradation affects
approximately 20% of the world’s cultivated areas according to various estimates using
limited data and different methods. Forest loss is likely to lead to regional drying and warming,
causing additional stress on agriculture. Rising sea levels from climate change will also reduce
cropland productivity and viable cropland area in some coastal regions. Water stress on
cropping is likely to increase due to both the growing water demand and climate change.
Remembering that OIC countries own over quarter of world’s agricultural area and produce
20% of world’s agricultural value added products, it would not be wrong to say that they will
be one’s mostly effected19.
In light of the above remarks, an explorative Vulnerability Analysis (VA) of the countries to
Climate extremes on a global scale including the OIC member states is the basis for assessing
the negative effects of climate extremes against food security. In this respect, Vulnerability
Index (VI) may serve as a measurable basis composed of the weighted average of three
different indicators namely; Exposure Index (EI), Sensitivity Index (SI) and Adaptive Capacity
Index (ACI) enabling comparison among theMembers Countries globally. A brief methodology
is as follows, firstly, components of the vulnerability analysis, namely exposure, sensitivity,
1
19 Kıymaz and Alpas, 2018
20 WRI, 2013.
21 IPCC, 2014