Climate change impacts on

agriculture and food security from a

global economic perspective

Keith WiebeSenior Research Fellow, IFPRI

Co-leader, AgMIP Global Economics Team

IFPRI Policy SeminarWashington DC, 11 April 2016

Partners in global modeling

• The AgMIP Global Economics team• IFPRI, PIK, GTAP, Wageningen,

EC/JRC, USDA/ERS, IIASA, FAO, OECD, UFL, NIES, …

• Global Futures & Strategic Foresight – 15 CGIAR centers• AfricaRice, Bioversity, CIAT, CIFOR,

CIMMYT, CIP, ICARDA, ICRAF, ICRISAT, IFPRI, IITA, ILRI, IRRI, IWMI, WorldFish

Modeling climate impacts on agriculture:biophysical and economic effects

General circulation

models (GCMs)

Global gridded crop

models (GGCMs)

Global economic

models

Δ TempΔ Precip

…

Δ Yield(biophys)

Δ AreaΔ YieldΔ Cons.Δ Trade

Climate Biophysical Economic

Adapted from Nelson et al., Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (2014)

RCPs SSPs Food security, etc

Maximum temperature (°C) Annual precipitation (mm)

Climate change impacts in 2050The case of maize yields using HadGEM (RCP8.5), DSSAT, and IMPACT (SSP2)

Change in rainfed maize yields before economic adjustments

Change in rainfed maize yields after economic adjustments

Source: IFPRI, IMPACT version 3.2, November 2015

Climate change impacts in 2050Average of 5 global economic models for coarse grains, rice, wheat, oilseeds & sugar

-10

-5

0

5

10

15

20

Yields Area Production Prices Trade

Perc

ent

chan

ge in

20

50

SSP1-RCP4.5 SSP2-RCP6.0 SSP3-RCP8.5

Source: Wiebe et al., Environmental Research Letters (2015)

Population at risk of hunger (SSP2, RCP8.5)

Source: IFPRI, IMPACT version 3.2, November 2015

EAP = East Asia and Pacific; EUR = Europe; FSU = Former Soviet Union; LAC = Latin America and Caribbean; MEN = Middle East and North Africa; NAM = North America; SAS = South Asia; SSA = Sub-Saharan Africa

Climate-related deaths in 2050 (SSP2, RCP8.5)

Source: Springmann et al., The Lancet (2016)

Links to regional modeling

• Regional results as inputs to global modeling• E.g. complementing pixel-level crop model results as

part of scenario definition

• Global results as inputs to regional modeling• E.g. world prices under different socioeconomic and

climate scenarios

• Goal is not a single mega-model, but a set of complementary tools for different scales

Thank you

k.wiebe@cgiar.org