Food security, people, climate. These three words are inextricably linked; changes to one will inevitably affect the others. As climate change threatens food-producing regions, what changes are needed to feed a growing population? How can we shift food systems to better adapt to the changing climate? More explicitly, how can policymakers help hundreds of millions of small-scale agricultural producers to enhance food security and improve livelihoods despite the challenges that climate change brings?

Food Systems at Risk: Transformative Adaptation for Long-Term Food Security addresses these questions. It offers policymakers, funders, and researchers bold recommendations to advance transformative approaches by leveraging new types of data and analytical tools and rethinking how we plan and invest. The report authors synthesized dozens of research studies on how climate change is affecting food systems. They also interviewed farmers, government officials, and decision-makers in financial institutions and agricultural support and research organizations.

The report highlights how climate change will negatively impact food systems, particularly in climate hotspots such as semi-arid and desert regions in India and sub-Saharan Africa, coastal rice paddy regions in Bangladesh and Vietnam, and glacier and snow-fed agricultural areas in Peru and the Himalayas. It finds that incremental adaptation, while important, will be insufficient to avert dramatic increases in hunger, poverty, and displacement over the next 30 years. Instead, greater commitments to plan, fund, and implement transformative adaptation measures will be essential to ensure food security.

As this report illustrates, transformative approaches to agricultural adaptation will mean continually shifting the locations of where specific types of crops and livestock are produced to areas with more suitable climatic conditions – for example, grain farmers in Ethiopia moving staple crops such as maize to higher elevations as temperatures rise. It will also require changing agricultural production systems to better fit changing landscapes and ecosystems, such as rice growers in Bangladesh shifting to aquaculture in response to increased salinity due to rising sea levels and reduced seasonal river flows. Innovative production methods and technologies, such as low-cost greenhouses that help Indian vegetable farmers to conserve water and protect their produce from storm damage, will also be needed to promote long-term resilience.

As policymakers, funders, and researchers address climate change challenges in local, national, and global food systems, it will be critical that smallholder farmers and their community leaders have a voice in identifying solutions through participatory and inclusive planning processes. This report offers examples and recommendations on how to implement a transparent and participatory process for transforming agriculture for climate resilience.

This new WRI report builds on the Global Commission on Adaptation’s flagship report, Adapt Now: A Global Call for Leadership on Climate Resilience. Together, these two reports offer a comprehensive, long-term perspective and recommendations for how to transform global agricultural systems to be more resilient, productive, and equitable in the face of growing climate challenges.

Manish Bapna

Acting President and CEO

World Resources Institute

Context

As climate change impacts intensify, hard-won development gains are already being undermined. After a decade of decline, global hunger is rising, with nearly 60 million more undernourished people than in 2014—an increase in the global prevalence of undernutrition from 8.6 to 8.9 percent of the world’s population—which is attributable in part to greater climate variability and more extreme weather events (FAO 2020a). In the coming decades, the impacts of climate change on the productivity of crops, livestock, fisheries, and forestry will become more severe (Gourdji et al. 2013; IPCC 2014), while the global human population is expected to expand to 9.7 billion by 2050 (UNESA 2019).

Currently, most agricultural adaptation focuses on scaling up incremental measures. The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) defines such measures as “actions where the central aim is to maintain the essence and integrity of the existing technological, institutional, governance, and value systems, such as through adjustments to cropping systems via new varieties, changing planting times, or using more efficient irrigation” (IPCC 2014, 839; emphasis added). While such measures are extremely important and valuable, evidence is mounting that incremental measures alone will not adequately protect farmers, fishers, herders, and other rural people from growing risks as climate change impacts intensify. Transformative adaptation, which the IPCC refers to as an approach that “seeks to change the fundamental attributes of systems in response to actual or expected climate change and its effects, often at a scale and ambition greater than incremental activities,” is an essential complement. The IPCC goes on to note that transformative adaptation includes measures “such as changing livelihoods from cropping to livestock or by migrating to take up a livelihood elsewhere, and also changes in our perceptions and paradigms about the nature of climate change, adaptation, and their relationship to other natural and human systems” (IPCC 2014, 836; emphasis added).

In some locations, the limits of incremental adaptation are already being tested, with permanent implications for the long-term viability of local food systems. Risks are especially high in sub-Saharan Africa, South Asia, and small island developing nations (SIDS), and for vulnerable groups such as women, youth, Indigenous peoples, and people living in poverty, among others.

Box ES1 offers a few examples of transformative adaptation from around the world.

New approaches to adaptation are needed where current systems will not be able to support existing agricultural livelihoods under future climate stresses. This report explores one of them—transformative adaptation—and concludes that it is critical to avert and minimize loss and damage while enhancing global food security; reducing escalating risks of displacement, conflict, and crisis; and avoiding maladaptation.

About This Report

The Transforming Agriculture for Climate Resilience (TACR) project, funded by the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, aims to increase investments in agricultural adaptation and strengthen our collective understanding of and support for transformative approaches to adaptation where and when they are needed. This report is based on three years of research to delineate the following: what transformative adaptation is and how it applies to agriculture; why it is needed and what benefits it can offer; and how it can be better integrated into research, policy, planning, and funding processes to build the long-term resilience of farmers, herders, and others involved in agricultural value chains.

The TACR project recognizes that risks are increasing for ecosystems and regions as described in the 2019 IPCC Global Warming of 1.5°C report (see Section 2.4 of this report; IPCC 2019). Such threats mean that some “natural, managed and human systems” around the world, including crop yields, will experience severe and widespread climate change impacts and risks as temperatures exceed 2°C—which more recent research (Sherwood et al. 2020) indicates is highly likely to occur. Other systems that humans depend on for food security, such as warm-water coral reefs and tropical freshwater fisheries, as well as coastal areas that are home to 10 percent of the world’s population, are already facing tipping points.

In these ecosystems and regions, severe, irreversible climate change impacts will increase as temperatures rise and the limitations of adaptation are reached (IPCC 2019). These tipping points are likely to drive some systems to the point that they cannot continue to exist in their current form—including the food systems of an increasing number of places. In these situations, fundamental, systemic transformation is needed. Anticipating, planning for, and financing these transformations will require answering an important set of questions:

• How can we better identify, anticipate, and address situations where climate change impacts have already or will soon exceed the resilience that incremental adaptation measures can provide?
• How can we build the understanding, capacity, and technical knowledge needed to recurrently match the right crops and livestock varieties and production methods with farmers who face continually evolving conditions, while also ensuring that other vital components of value chains—such as processing, marketing, and distribution—can keep pace with these changes and support such significant shifts?
• How can we design, establish, finance, and implement transformative pathways (i.e., coordinated sequences of short- and medium-term actions or projects intended to prepare food systems for unprecedented climate conditions) so that those most vulnerable to climate change are part of decision-making?

The TACR project set out to determine how fundamental, systemic transformation can be achieved. As described in greater detail in Section 1.2, the TACR project began with an extensive review of published academic literature on agricultural transformation and adaptation, as well as a review of publications from and consultations with representatives of the key audiences for this report: agriculture and adaptation researchers, governments, and adaptation funding entities. Examples of funding entities include multilateral institutions such as the Green Climate Fund, the Adaptation Fund, and the World Bank, as well as bilateral donors like the U.S. Agency for International Development, the German Federal Ministry for Economic Cooperation and Development, and the British Foreign, Commonwealth & Development Office. Based on this research, a framework that included a workable definition for transformative adaptation in agriculture was established (Carter et al. 2018). This framework was then applied in three working papers on key agricultural topics: crop research and development (Niles et al. 2020), livestock production (Salman et al. 2019), and climate services (Ashley et al. 2020). World Resources Institute (WRI) researchers also applied the TACR framework to coffee production in Costa Rica (Tye and Grinspan 2020) and tested it on locally led climate-driven transformations in Costa Rica, Bhutan, and Ethiopia (Ferdinand et al. 2020).

This synthesis report is based on the framework and working papers mentioned above. It also reflects an ongoing series of interviews and consultations with experts in agricultural adaptation from state and national government agencies and agricultural research organizations in Ethiopia and India. Input from adaptation funding entities was gathered on an ad hoc basis over the course of the research. Preliminary findings were discussed and enriched during panel discussions and workshops at United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) events and other relevant public fora.

The paper also includes updated analyses based on new research such as the IPCC Global Warming of 1.5°C report (IPCC 2019). It takes a deeper look at the need for agriculture to shift in alignment with climate-driven ecosystem changes, as well as new linkages to the UNFCCC discussion on loss and damage. It also includes an economic model constructed by WRI researchers to determine when transformation makes economic sense.

The framework, working papers, and this synthesis report largely focus on the need for “top-down” action by research organizations, governments, and adaptation funding entities to better support smallholder farmers, herders, and fishers and marginalized communities to engage in more widespread transformative adaptation. Examples are emerging of locally led, or autonomous, transformative adaptations to climate change, in which local residents respond to climate change impacts (often among other drivers) without external support or guidance. However, our research indicates that the number of “pioneer farmers” and communities with the ability to make transformative changes without external assistance is quite limited. They tend to be those with greater access to resources (e.g., land, credit, information, technical capacity) with which to manage increasing climate risks. Implementing the elements of transformative adaptation for agriculture—i.e., shifting the locations where specific types of crops and livestock are produced, aligning agricultural production with changing landscapes and ecosystems, and/or introducing innovative production methods and technologies suitable for significantly changed conditions—is difficult for most farmers and communities to do on their own. This is especially true for those that are most vulnerable to climate change impacts: people living in poverty and other often marginalized groups including women, youth, and Indigenous peoples. While large agribusinesses with ties to global supply chains may have the financial, technical, and other resources needed to effectively engage in transformative adaptation, these more vulnerable groups often require external support to do so, and are therefore the focus of this paper. While the private sector writ large will need to respond to climate change and can promote and incentivize building agricultural resilience, it is less often a source of assistance for these most vulnerable groups than are organizations with a public mandate to ensure that no one is left behind.

While the TACR project was underway, the Global Commission on Adaptation was formed, with the aim of inspiring heads of state, government officials, community leaders, business executives, investors, and other international actors to prepare for and respond to the disruptive effects of climate change with urgency, determination, and foresight. The commission launched its flagship report Adapt Now: A Global Call for Leadership on Climate Resilience in September 2019 (Bapna et al. 2019), and engaged in 2020 in a Year of Action on eight action tracks, including one focused on agriculture and food security. This report refers often to Adapt Now to suggest ways that transformative approaches to agricultural adaptation can be carried forward.

This report’s recommendations are intended to encourage adaptation funding entities, governments, and research organizations to make long-term, systemic—i.e., transformative—approaches to resilience possible, especially for the poorest and most vulnerable farmers, by including such approaches in plans, projects, policies, and investment agendas. Promoting and supporting resilience will improve the odds of reducing risk and improving sustainability over the short term (less than 5 years), medium term (5 to 10 years), and long term (over 10 years).

Calls to Action

Based on the evidence it presents, this report calls for funding entities, governments, and research organizations to better understand, plan for, and finance transformative approaches to adaptation for food systems. The following three priorities expand on the “three revolutions” introduced by the Global Commission on Adaptation’s Adapt Now report (Bapna et al. 2019) to adequately factor climate change impacts and risks into key decisions through improved understanding, planning, and financing.¹

1. Understanding through expanded research and development

   Research and development must be expanded to make climate risks visible over multiple timescales and geographies and engage farmers, fishers, and herders in identifying transformative solutions for building long-term resilience.

   • Research efforts must focus squarely on the needs, experiences, and solutions of people living in poverty and others most vulnerable to climate change impacts—especially small-scale producers. This includes ensuring that these groups, and particularly Indigenous peoples, can contribute their knowledge and add to the evidence base regarding which adaptation measures will work best in their particular contexts, as well as facilitating their access to information. Poor and other vulnerable communities must have a voice in decision-making regarding systemic shifts at all links in value chains, so that their knowledge, expertise, needs, and preferences can shape actions, and so that no one is left behind. This will require strengthening their capacity to access and translate longer-term climate change projections so that they can better choose options that will serve them and their families over the coming decades—including whether and when to encourage the next generation to choose different livelihoods if climate projections indicate that agriculture will no longer be tenable in their area. Inputs required for transformative adaptation—e.g., new types of crops, fish, and livestock along with the information, skills, inputs, and financing required to successfully produce and market them—must be made accessible to these groups, particularly those living in poverty. Moreover, perceived risks of trying new crops and production methods must be tempered. Investments are needed to improve the resilience and productivity of traditional crops that may not appear in global supply chains but are essential to local food security and nutrition. Involving stakeholders and minimizing barriers to implementing resulting strategies will require greater collaboration with and participation from farmers, herders, fishers, and local communities who are the on-the-ground implementers of adaptation action (Ferdinand et al. 2020; Tye and Grinspan 2020).
   • The research agendas of global research systems, such as the Consultative Group on International Agricultural Research (CGIAR); National Agricultural Research Systems; and especially local research institutions and organizations that work closely with farmers should expand to promote transformative adaptation approaches across food, land, and water system shifts (Ashley et al. 2020), with support from governmental agricultural policy, planning, and extension offices. Local organizations in particular, including producers’ associations, need greater capacity to encourage farmers to experiment with new types of crops and livestock and other transformative elements. A greater share of funding must be channeled to them to support work to identify what will work in particular contexts. Current gaps for all types of research entities include speeding up the development-to-adoption timeframe of new crop and livestock varieties by improving infrastructure and technology exchanges; expanding pest and surveillance networks; improving access to meteorological and water supply and demand data, as well as data on soil health; and engaging in intersectoral and interregional coordination platforms (Salman et al. 2019; Niles et al. 2020). More attention should be given to improved breeding of livestock and orphan crops rather than continuing to invest mostly in research on global staple cereal crops like rice, wheat, and maize. Finally, capacity must be built to undertake a broader range of analyses including accounting for externalities (i.e., hidden costs, often to environmental sustainability), trade-offs, and co-benefits; social impacts; political economy; and foresight analysis. The last of which has been defined as “a systematic, participatory, future-intelligence-gathering and medium-to-long-term vision-building process aimed at enabling present-day decisions and mobilizing joint action” (UNDP 2014, 7).
   • Research organizations, with support from governments and funding entities, should enhance climate services and information platforms with new types of information to identify hotspots and aid decision-makers in designing transformative pathways. This necessitates providing easily understandable information with greater consideration for slow-onset events and decadal and longer-term data and projections (Ashley et al. 2020); more transparent data around intersectoral trade-offs on natural resource use, prices, and market models (Tye and Grinspan 2020); and other non-climate variables important for planning and prioritization (Ashley et al. 2020). Also needed are more robust baseline data collection and greater availability and accessibility of high-resolution, contextualized data on climate change impacts (Ashley et al. 2020). Improved climate-crop suitability models and analyses are a prerequisite to increasing understanding of which varieties and species will lose and gain suitability in different regions (Ashley et al. 2020; Niles et al. 2020). Information on broader production conditions, markets, and other types of risks to agriculture could be added in to enable a more holistic risk assessment.
2. Planning (and implementation) to improve policy and investment decisions

   Coordination must be improved among governments, adaptation funding entities, and research organizations to create and finance transformative pathways in a way that is coherent, inclusive, and participatory, and based on an understanding of existing political economies. This could be done by, for example, leveraging national development plans, United Nations Sustainable Development Goals, and readiness programs (Carter et al. 2018).

   • National and subnational governments should integrate an understanding of when, where, and how food systems will need to shift over the coming decades into their planning processes and use inclusive, participatory processes to design transformative pathways so that smallholder farmers, herders, and fishers and rural communities are not left behind. Addressing the need for long-term, systemic change may be politically risky and unattractive when attention is focused on the next election rather than decades in the future, but its potential for providing food security and improving livelihoods may reduce future conflicts and chaos, which makes it a worthwhile endeavor. If done well, such changes can also pave the way for investments in new job-generating businesses and improved incomes based on growing and processing novel agricultural products. Governments should phase in longer-term planning based on transparent information and in consultation with a range of stakeholders, rather than waiting for increasingly frequent crises to make further delays impossible. Effectively designing transformative pathways requires that government agencies integrate research and analysis into plans, policies, budgets, and funding proposals. Institutional arrangements must promote collaboration and reduce fragmentation among ministries and departments so that many systems—e.g., water, trade, employment, finance—can operate across boundaries, both geographical or political, as well as at different scales, from local to national and beyond.
   • Planning for transformative adaptation should center on inclusive, participatory processes that engage a diverse range of stakeholders, including smallholder farmers, fishers, and herders from groups that may often be marginalized in decision-making, such as women, youth, and Indigenous peoples. Transformative change will almost always be challenging because what farmers and herders produce is often central to their identity, sense of place, and pride. Even so, agroecological conditions will inevitably change around them. They should be the ones making the difficult decisions about how to manage such changes—and supported even when this means finding nonagricultural livelihoods. Participatory governance structures that facilitate effective two-way communication from the local to national level are needed, as well as sufficient financial and technical support for communities to enact food system shifts. Strengthening farmer-focused organizations like cooperatives, producer organizations, and community savings groups will be helpful in many situations. While there are cases of autonomous transformative adaptations already taking place, research indicates that it is often those with more land and better access to credit and information that are able to make such changes on their own. This points to the need to provide better support to people who are living in poverty or who are otherwise marginalized and improve their access to resources required for transformative adaptation (e.g., credit, information, inputs) so they can have a wider range of choices, better manage risk, and make decisions about their futures under new climatic conditions.
   • The UNFCCC, as well as international organizations like CGIAR and the Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) of the United Nations, can facilitate and catalyze the development, dissemination, and use of knowledge to advance transformative adaptation policies and practices. The imperative toward long-term, systemic shifts should be part of ongoing discussions focused on loss and damage,² the Nairobi Work Programme, the Koronivia Joint Work on Agriculture, nationally determined contributions, national adaptation plans, and long-term strategies. Little guidance and few examples are available to Parties on how to incorporate transformative approaches to adaptation in their plans, policies, and funding proposals. UNFCCC entities can play an important role in creating and disseminating this information and showcasing best practices. In addition, global agricultural organizations like CGIAR and FAO can contribute their agricultural and climate expertise to speed implementation.
3. Finance to mobilize resources to accelerate transformative adaptation

Given the challenges that the global food system faces, a massive increase in funding for agricultural adaptation is urgently needed, for both incremental and transformative approaches. While the costs of transformative adaptation have not yet been calculated, its potential for averting and minimizing losses and damages makes it likely to pay off over the longer term. More specific actions include the following:

• Adaptation funders, including bilateral and multilateral agencies, need to develop complementary understandings of transformation and shift their funding approaches to support projects and programs that prioritize building resilience in hotspots where systemic tipping points make fundamental changes urgent. Such an understanding can be achieved through deeper engagement with peer organizations, leveraging each entity’s comparative advantages, and broadening the focus from isolated projects to more comprehensive programs. Funding entities can incentivize governments to incorporate transformative adaptation into planning efforts by including it in their funding guidelines and potentially offering special funds to cover this.
• Governments and the private sector must refocus the use of incentives and disincentives to initiate and sustain adaptive shifts in food systems. Governments and the private sector, particularly banks and financiers, could create market incentives and disincentives such as taxes, fixed pricing, and other market mechanisms to provide opportunities (or remove barriers) for farmers to invest in unfamiliar and potentially risky transitions to other types of agricultural (or nonagricultural) livelihoods (Niles et al. 2020). Grants, loans, subsidies, taxes, pricing policies (such as minimum support pricing or energy and water pricing), and improved co-financing tools, among others, could be effective in changing farmer choices and providing farmers with opportunities to invest in such transformations (Bapna et al. 2019)—these tools could be made more effective by making them more accessible and tailoring them to support transformative adaptation. Improved access to insurance could make taking the risks of trying new types of crops and livestock or new production and processing methods more acceptable. Redesigning subsidy structures for new crops and their inputs, offering grants for de-risking experimentation with crops likely to prove more resilient, promoting marketing campaigns, and encouraging selective seed market intensification are additional options to encourage adaptive crop and livestock switches (Niles et al. 2020).

When considering parameters of adaptation interventions, multilateral and bilateral adaptation funding entities need to expand their financing modalities to encourage and support comprehensive, long-term adaptation programs that recognize the interconnectedness of food systems with other systems, and governments need to include this approach in their budgets and proposals. For example, longer-term funding (e.g., 10 years instead of 5) would cover the sequential but continuous changes required to implement transformative pathways. Financing packages could include the private sector and be scaled at the right geographical level (e.g., farming system); acknowledge ecological considerations (e.g., humid tropical regions becoming semi-arid); and incorporate existing institutions and socioeconomic factors (e.g., civil society, research and development networks, markets, cultural considerations).

The urgency of ramping up adaptation action for agriculture was highlighted in the Global Commission on Adaptation’s 2019 report Adapt Now: A Global Call for Leadership on Climate Change Adaptation, which urged “a large-scale, international mobilization over the coming decade to deliver improved incomes, ecologically sustainable food systems, and resilience for 300 million small-scale food producers” (Bapna et al. 2019, 60).

The challenge before the global community to build resilience and improve food security is profound. Even without accounting for climate change impacts on agriculture, the global “food gap,” i.e., the difference between the amount of food produced and the amount necessary to meet likely demand by 2050, has been estimated at 56 percent more than what was produced in 2010 (Searchinger et al. 2018). At the same time, unanticipated crises like the COVID-19 pandemic can further undermine food security.

Climate change is further exacerbating the food security gap: Globally, the agricultural sector already accounts for an average of 26 percent of the total damage and losses from climate-related disasters (FAO 2017). This does not include slow-onset events, which the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) describes as including sea level rise, increasing temperatures, ocean acidification, glacial retreat and related impacts, salinization, land and forest degradation, loss of biodiversity, and desertification (UNFCCC 2019).

Beyond 2030, the negative impacts of climate change on the productivity of crops, livestock, fisheries, and forestry will become increasingly severe in all regions of the world (Gourdji et al. 2013; IPCC 2014). Global agricultural yields may decline by up to 30 percent by 2050 in the absence of ambitious climate action (Porter et al. 2014). The world also faces an increasing “potential risk of multi-breadbasket failure” (Wallace-Wells 2019; Gaupp et al. 2019), undermining our ability to cover regional food deficits through shifting global markets.

In part due to greater climate variability and more extreme weather events, global hunger is rising again after a decade of decline, with nearly 60 million more undernourished people than in 2014—an increase in the global prevalence of undernutrition from 8.6 to 8.9 percent of the world’s population (FAO 2020a). Hunger and malnutrition are projected to increase further, by up to 20 percent by 2050, even if warming is kept to 1.5 degrees Celsius (°C) (IPCC 2014). Farmers, pastoralists, and other rural people make up a large proportion of the 120 million people that climate change puts at risk of falling below the poverty line by 2030 (Alston 2019).

In addition to climate change’s direct impacts on agricultural production, it is linked with conflict, another key threat to food security for people living in poverty. For example, Hsiang and Cane (2011) demonstrated that the probability of new civil conflicts arising throughout the tropics doubles during El Niño years relative to La Niña years, while Hendrix and Salehyan (2012) analyzed over 6,000 instances of social conflict in Africa over 20 years to determine that rainfall variability has a marked effect on both large-scale and smaller-scale instances of political conflict. Impacts on food supplies are often the trigger; Iceland (2017) and Gleick and Iceland (2018) found that climate change impacts on water in relation to agriculture are often at the heart of such conflicts. The 2015 U.S. National Security Strategy notes that climate change is an urgent and growing threat, contributing to increased natural disasters, refugee flows, and conflicts over basic resources such as food and water.

Migration and internal displacement are outcomes of food insecurity, which is becoming more prevalent as climate change impacts intensify and is likely to increase in low-income countries that depend heavily on agriculture (FAO 2017). While the decision to migrate (and when) should be an adaptive choice for rural households, it is already a necessity in some areas where climate change impacts have made maintaining any type of agricultural production nearly impossible; small producers may have little choice but to forfeit their land and migrate to other areas (typically cities). These same conditions affect many other people whose livelihoods depend on agricultural value chains; for example, harvesting often relies on landless migrant laborers, and women frequently form the majority of workers in packaging and processing plants. Indian farmers from Uttarakhand and Maharashtra have migrated to regional cities due in part to devastating floods and chronic droughts, respectively, which have made their existing agricultural livelihoods impossible (Lal 2016). Similarly, increased numbers of Central American farmers attempting to cross the Mexican–U.S. border illustrate the beginning stages of the World Bank’s estimate of around 2 million people being displaced from Central America by the year 2050 due to factors related to climate change (World Bank 2018).

Transformative adaptation for agriculture—which the authors define as promoting long-term resilience by continually shifting the geographical locations where specific types of crops and livestock are produced, aligning agricultural production with changing landscapes and ecosystems, and/or introducing resilience-building production methods and technologies across value chains—can provide the opportunity to improve livelihoods and create jobs. For example, some high-elevation areas may experience higher productivity or become warm enough to shift to higher-value crops. This is the case with coffee production in areas where it can be shifted up mountainsides (Moat et al. 2017). However, seizing such opportunities requires recognizing in advance how climate change will affect crop and livestock suitability and ensuring that farmers can access the knowledge, technologies, and inputs, as well as credit and markets, required to produce new types of agricultural products. However, shifting suitability can also raise the temptation for farmers and herders to encroach into areas like forested mountaintops that are rich in biodiversity, essential for maintaining vibrant watersheds and other ecosystem services, and vital for carbon sequestration. Such emerging threats must also be better anticipated and integrated into transformative adaptation plans and policies.

The world is beginning to respond to the dire projections of how climate change stands to undermine global food security. Dozens of countries are developing national adaptation plans (NAPs), which generally reflect the countries’ largest economic sectors and highest priorities. Agriculture is often central in these plans. Additionally, more than 90 percent of current nationally determined contributions (NDCs) mention agriculture in some way (such as needs for support, inclusion in an economy-wide target, or specific policies and actions that address agriculture mitigation and/or adaptation). The existing NDCs of 131 countries (out of 189 total) include agricultural adaptation policies and measures—the vast majority of which emphasize crops and livestock, including water management and irrigation (Ross et al. 2019). And countries are increasingly recognizing that the planned 2020 NDC updates offer an opportunity to be more explicit about the transformations they intend to achieve, what it will take to get there equitably and sustainably, and what assistance will be needed (Ross et al. 2019). Research organizations are also stepping up their efforts to expand understanding of where agricultural adaptation measures are most needed and which are proving most effective in various contexts (see, for example, Thornton et al. 2019 and De Pinto et al. 2019).

Despite progress on the policy and planning fronts, adaptation funding amounts to only 5 percent of tracked climate finance data (Buchner et al. 2019) and continues to fall short of the $1.8 trillion projected annual cost from 2020 to 2030 (UNEP 2018). An estimated $7.8 billion out of $30 billion in adaptation finance was allocated to the agriculture, forestry, land use, and natural resource management sector (Buchner et al. 2019). The water and wastewater management sector alone received more funding ($9.9 billion). Given the magnitude of the agricultural adaptation challenge, the amount allocated to this sector needs to increase. The agriculture sector forms the economic backbone of many developing countries; safeguarding it from climate change impacts is essential to reducing poverty and ultimately driving wider economic growth. This section explores how expanding adaptation action to include transformative approaches could build momentum for additional investments.

Evidence is emerging from the literature discussed below that even full implementation of common approaches to agricultural adaptation, such as breeding more resilient varieties of crops and livestock, improving seasonal forecasts and early warning systems, and expanding insurance for farmers and herders, may prove insufficient to address the challenges that lie ahead. New approaches to agricultural adaptation—such as transformative adaptation—are needed to complement the scaling of more conventional incremental measures. Transformative adaptation helps to avert and minimize loss and damage while enhancing global food security; reducing escalating risks of displacement, conflict, and crisis; and avoiding maladaptation. To enact transformative approaches to building climate resilience, adaptation policymakers, funders, and practitioners will need to shift their fundamental understanding of adaptation, and how it can transition systems and the societies they operate in (Pelling 2011; Pelling et al. 2014).

1.1 Attributes of Transformative Adaptation

Research organizations and adaptation funding entities have divergent perspectives on what transformative adaptation entails; this ambiguity has hindered progress toward identifying common goals and best practices. Therefore, the initial Transforming Agriculture for Climate Resilience (TACR) framework (Carter et al. 2018) offered an actionable definition (now refined) of what transformative adaptation for food systems entails, which, if widely adopted, could remove some of the lack of clarity that may be limiting progress:

Intentional alterations intended to build resilience in response to or anticipation of climate change impacts that are at such scale and significance and over a long enough time span that they change fundamental aspects of food systems.

The TACR framework first established three key attributes, which have evolved slightly from the original (Carter et al. 2018), that the authors hypothesize will often be included in agricultural adaptation plans, policies, funding proposals, and projects with high potential to be truly transformative:

• Shifting the geographical locations where specific types of crops and livestock are produced, processed, and marketed (growing more resilient varieties of the same types of crops and livestock would not require fundamental, systemic change, and is thus not considered transformative)
• Aligning agricultural production with changing ecosystems and available water and arable land resources—for example, shifting from irrigated crops to grazing when humid tropics transition to semi-arid grasslands after wildfires; or shifting from cropping to aquaculture in anticipation of or response to sea level rise
• Applying new methodologies and technologies that substantially change the types of agricultural products, or the way existing ones are produced and processed, within a particular region or production system; for example, producing cheese instead of fresh milk to reduce the risk of spoilage in warmer conditions

An example of each of these attributes is illustrated in Figure 1.

Figure 1 | Examples of Attributes of Transformative Adaptation in Ethiopia, Bangladesh, and India (from left to right)

Source: Authors.

After describing why transformative adaptation in food systems is needed, this report delves into the benefits that this approach can provide. It details how fundamental changes to food systems can be incorporated into research agendas, long-term planning, financing, and implementation of adaptation measures. It calls for researchers and decision-makers to explicitly consider gender and social equity issues so that solutions serve the needs of those most vulnerable to climate changes—those who often have the least capacity to adapt and are most at risk from further consolidation of wealth and power. It concludes with calls to action to adaptation funding entities, governments, and research organizations to take up the charge of incorporating transformative approaches into their efforts to assist farmers and other rural people to build sustainable, equitable, inclusive climate resilience.

1.2 Methodology

The TACR project began with an extensive review of published academic literature on agricultural transformation and adaptation using keyword searches that focused on adaptation, resilience, transformation, system shifts, and/or long-term planning. Analyses were completed to determine the following: how academics and other agricultural researchers are addressing agricultural transformation and adaptation via literature review and expert consultations; whether and how the 21 most significant bilateral and multilateral adaptation funding entities are approaching transformative adaptation via review of their strategy documents and websites; and whether and how countries are addressing long-term, systemic adaptation in agriculture in their NAPs, NDCs, and submissions to the UNFCCC Koronivia Joint Work on Agriculture using Climate Watch and NAP Central.

Expert consultations with the working paper’s primary audiences (adaptation funding entities, planners and policymakers, researchers, and implementing agencies) and with government officials and technical experts in Ethiopia and India helped in identifying case studies of existing systemic shifts in food systems to build long-term resilience. Interviews and meetings were convened with experts in agricultural adaptation from state and national government agencies in Ethiopia and India and agricultural research organizations in both locations. These included both countries’ national research institutes and those affiliated with the Consultative Group on International Agricultural Research (CGIAR), including the International Livestock Research Institute, International Water Management Institute, and International Food Policy Research Institute (IFPRI). Group discussions took place in Ethiopia with staff from the local branches of organizations including the World Food Programme, the Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) of the United Nations, and the Ethiopian Agricultural Transformation Agency. In India, the authors conducted a workshop, organized by the state Environmental Planning and Coordination Organization, with agricultural stakeholders in Madhya Pradesh. The research was also enriched through the authors’ participation in panel discussions and workshops at UNFCCC events such as the 22nd and 23rd annual Conferences of the Parties (COPs), Intersessional meetings, and NAP Expos; the FAO’s World Summit on Food Security; the CGIAR’s 5th Global Science Conference on Climate-Smart Agriculture; the 2018 Adaptation Futures conference; and others. Input from adaptation funding entities was gathered on an ad hoc basis over the course of the research and through a roundtable discussion the authors convened during the 2019 UNFCCC Intersessional. Please note that consultations with the organizations mentioned above do not constitute their endorsement of the research and ideas contained in this report, which are those of the authors alone.

This preliminary research led to publication of a framework—Transforming Agriculture for Climate Resilience: A Framework for Systemic Change (Carter et al. 2018)—which established a workable definition for transformative adaptation in agriculture based on the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) definition mentioned in the Executive Summary.

This framework was then applied in three working papers on key agricultural topics: crop research and development (Niles et al. 2020), livestock production (Salman et al. 2018), and climate services (Ashley et al. 2020). Each of these papers started with its own detailed and technical review of relevant literature on each topic. Researchers also analyzed whether and how these topics were mentioned in NDCs or NAPs, and whether the relevant text included the elements of transformative adaptation established in the framework paper (Carter et al. 2018). Based on an assessment of the state of adaptation action in each topical area, researchers then identified gaps and challenges that hindered progress on transformative adaptation. Each of the papers recommended actions that the three key audience groups (researchers, governments, and adaptation funding entities) could take to encourage more widespread application of transformative approaches to adaptation.

World Resources Institute (WRI) researchers have also applied the TACR framework to coffee production in Costa Rica (Tye and Grinspan 2020) and tested against locally led climate-driven transformations (Ferdinand et al. 2020). With each application of the framework to these various topics and case studies, the researchers’ thinking evolved regarding what constituted transformative adaptation and how it could be enhanced and more widely applied to build the long-term resilience of locations nearing tipping points for diminishing productivity of key agricultural products.

This final synthesis report both summarizes previous research and includes additional analysis of the limitations of incremental adaptation measures to global staple crops and the need to continually align crop and livestock production with changing ecological conditions. It assesses the potential for this approach to provide a broader range of benefits, including averting and minimizing economic and non-economic losses and damages as defined by the UNFCCC. It also includes an economic model that WRI researchers constructed and applied to a hypothetical shift from coffee to vanilla production in the highlands of Ethiopia to determine when transformative approaches make more economic sense than employing only incremental changes. The methodology used is detailed in Appendix A.

2.1 Shortfalls in Staple Crops Projected

Recent analyses expose both the value of incremental adaptation measures in protecting the global food supply from climate change impacts, and also worrisome gaps between their likely effectiveness and the projected impacts of climate change on yields of staple crops. Figure 2 illustrates this point for the key global staple crops of wheat, rice, and maize. Based on a meta-analysis model of ~27,000 data points from studies published over the last four decades, Aggarwal et al. (2019) calculated variance around an ensemble mean of multiple studies of each particular crop, country, and time slice to illustrate projected percent changes in yield relative to a baseline of 1960–90 for 2020, 2050, and 2080. The orange and blue bands indicate a 95 percent confidence interval based on a thousand replications of the model. The orange bands illustrate the reference case of average modeled climate change impacts on these crops globally without adaptation. The blue bands represent average modeled impacts of climate change globally on these three crops over the coming decade with incremental adaptation measures. Each blue dot represents the blue band disaggregated to show individual countries.

Although the blue bands in the 2020 graphs are near the 1960–90 baseline for wheat and slightly under for rice and maize, the model predicts that yields of rice and maize could fall over 30 percent over the coming decades without adaptation (orange bands), and by a global average of up to 10 percent with adaptation (blue bands). However, while overall global declines are expected to be fairly minor with adaptation, some individual countries (depicted by the blue dots) fall well below the baseline and can expect to experience significantly declining yields of these staples even as their populations expand. These are countries where transformative adaptation is likely to be needed, while incremental adaptation may be sufficient in those with less dramatic declines. The graphs include latitude along the x-axis, making it clear that wealthy countries further from the equator will fare better than developing countries in the tropics, which are more likely to reach the limits of incremental adaptation sooner.

Figure 2 | Average Impacts of Climate Change on Crop Yields, with and without Incremental Adaptation Measures, 2020, 2050, and 2080

Note: Based on a meta-analysis model of ~27,000 data points from studies published over the last four decades, Aggarwal et al. (2019) calculated variance around an ensemble mean of multiple studies of each particular crop, country, and time slice to illustrate projected percent changes in yield relative to a baseline of 1960–90 for 2020, 2050, and 2080. The orange and blue bands indicate a 95 percent confidence interval based on a thousand replications of the model. The orange bands illustrate the reference case of average modeled climate change impacts on these crops globally without adaptation. The blue bands represent average modeled impacts of climate change globally on these three crops over the coming decade with incremental adaptation measures. Each blue dot represents the blue band disaggregated to show individual countries.

Source: Reprinted from Aggarwal et al. (2019).

Despite this and other emerging evidence regarding the limitations of incremental adaptation measures, the vast majority of agricultural adaptation—including climate-smart agriculture (CSA) as it is commonly practiced—focuses on such measures. The intention of such efforts is to preserve existing food systems by building resilience to climate change impacts, rather than recognizing that more fundamental changes to what can be produced, where, and how will increasingly be needed. CSA projects rarely explore what will happen when incremental measures become insufficient to fully manage increasing climate risks. There is relatively little research available on how to respond when crops and livestock reach their physiological limits of how much additional heat or drought they can tolerate, sources of irrigation water are reduced by permanent drying trends or salinization from sea level rise, or marine species cannot be bred to handle dramatically increased ocean acidity. This is despite a growing body of research that indicates such limits are already being reached in some locations and contexts.

The evolving field of agroecology “seeks to optimize the interactions between plants, animals, humans and the environment while taking into consideration the social aspects that need to be addressed for a sustainable and fair food system” (FAO n.d.). Agroecology and other types of nature-based solutions show great promise for advancing adaptation while reducing further losses in biodiversity and the unsustainable use of natural resources. However, relying exclusively on such approaches will grow increasingly risky as climate change impacts intensify. Projected shifts in global ecosystems will undermine a key assumption of agroecology: that ecosystems are stationary and stable and can thus be counted on to continue providing the same range of ecosystem services. When, for example, rainforests shift to grasslands, and grasslands shift to deserts, the amount of watershed regulation they provide will change, as will the interactions between wild pollinators and cultivated crops—both of which could undermine agricultural production. In addition, as Searchinger et al. (2018) suggest, there may be limited environmental contexts in which agroecology can contribute efficiently to meeting the concurrent goals of limiting global temperature increases and feeding a growing global population.

For similar reasons, although critically important, it should not be assumed that local knowledge and traditional solutions alone will be adequate to manage increasing climate-related agricultural risks. Such place-based expertise often evolved within fairly stable ranges of climate variability over generations. When those ranges shift beyond what traditional coping strategies can handle to unprecedented flooding or heatwaves, entirely new pests and diseases, or other novel challenges, traditional knowledge alone may not always suffice. Archaeological evidence suggests that climatic shifts contributed to the downfalls of the Maya civilization and those of the U.S. Southwest, to name just a few. Adaptation measures based on traditional knowledge should be recognized, valued, and considered along with less context-specific solutions—but not treated as silver bullets that can solve all climate-related challenges.

Local economies and markets will also have to respond to unprecedented circumstances. And while farmers are indeed often the best agents of change to influence other farmers—for example, the pioneer farmers referred to below when discussing autonomous transformations—they will need enhanced access to new types of crops and livestock and guidance on how to raise and market them.

As Figure 2 indicates, the limits to adaptation for agricultural crops will not be uniform across the globe. Looking more closely at maize, the third most important crop on the basis of harvested area, Ramirez-Cabral et al. (2017) found that under an A2 emissions scenario (i.e., at the higher end of emissions scenarios defined by the IPCC, but not the highest; see Nakicenovic and Swart 2000) for 2050 and 2100, tropical areas will experience the highest loss of climatic suitability, while regions closer to the poles will become more suitable. South America will have the greatest loss of climatic suitability, followed by Africa and Oceania, with large areas that are currently suitable for maize becoming limited by heat and dryness. On the other hand, Asia, Europe, and North America will become more suitable.

Figure 3 maps out hotspots where strong impacts of climate change are projected to lead to large gaps in wheat, maize, and rice production. The projections are based on assessments of impacts with adaptation on crop yield at the country scale for the 2050s and the food production gap (the difference between 2050 food demand and current food supply). Countries with high food gaps and high impacts of climate change are most vulnerable.

Figure 3 | Climate Change Hotspots

Source: Reprinted from Aggarwal et al. (2019).

A potential upside of this analysis may be that even countries projected to experience severe deficits in one or two of these staple crops—such as India, where both wheat and maize productivity are expected to decline—will often be able to continue producing similar amounts of other crops. For example, climate change impacts on rice in India are projected to be low, and it may be possible to grow more rice per hectare with improved varieties, inputs, and cultivation techniques, though this will be true only in locations where water supplies are adequate.

But a range of factors will impede farmers’ ability to switch between crops. Some of these—e.g., soil type, seasonal microclimatic conditions, absence or presence of pests and pollinators—will be difficult to overcome. Others—such as access to information on how to grow new varieties; required inputs such as seeds, credit, processing facilities, and markets; and sociocultural factors such as consumer willingness to consume less traditional foods—become more possible to develop when the need for them is recognized in advance so they can be planned for, financed, and implemented; that is, where transformative approaches to adaptation can be applied.

2.2 Traditional and Cash Crop Yields Vital to Food Security Expected to Decline

In addition to these impacts on staple crops, those that are less important in global markets but are essential to food security are also likely to be severely affected; for example, a 43 percent decline in plantain yields in Central Africa is expected over the next 20 years (Fuller et al. 2018), while bananas and beans are also in jeopardy (Rippke et al. 2016). Traditional and wild crops hold potential for filling food security gaps, although they have been largely overlooked in climate change research (Niles et al. 2020). Wild crops include any seeds, roots, or leaves that can contribute to people’s diets and are collected from uncultivated areas. Such crops are a significant portion of production in many low-income countries compared with the world’s major staples. For example, in Niger, traditional crops (e.g., millet, cow pea, sorghum) are produced at a ratio of 46 to 1 (production, tonnes) compared with major world crops (e.g., maize, wheat, rice) (FAO 2020b; Varshney et al. 2012). These crops (e.g., bambara) are particularly important to women, who grow the majority of them, and smallholder farmers, who rely on them for food security (Oyugi et al. 2015). Other examples of traditional crops include amaranth, jute mallow, desert date, and Shona cabbage.

Furthermore, cash crops such as coffee are also at risk; declines in the production of cash crops will weaken the ability of those who depend on them to purchase food and thereby further undermine food security. More than 120 million smallholders rely on coffee for their livelihoods, but by 2050 climate change will threaten 50 percent of the area currently suitable for its production (Climate Institute 2016), meaning that the livelihoods of coffee farmers are in jeopardy. Although incremental adaptation measures such as improved varieties and better water and shade management can help, the crop is likely to meet the physiological limits of its heat tolerance as temperatures rise (Kath et al. 2020). Without transformative action to adapt in areas where the crop is losing viability, such as by moving coffee production upslope to cooler areas and substituting crops that can thrive in warmer conditions, as explored in Section 3 of this report, the ramifications will be enormous.

2.3 Livestock Systems Are Also at Risk

As noted in the TACR paper on transformative adaptation for livestock production (Salman et al. 2019), climate change is also affecting the rapidly expanding livestock production sector, upon which an estimated one billion people living in poverty depend for food and income. An estimated 180 million people in developing countries depend on livestock grazing on drylands for their livelihoods (Thornton et al. 2008; Salman et al. 2019). Livestock production is particularly important in the semi-arid agroecological zones most at risk from climate change, some of which are growing too hot for current livestock breeds and facing desertification, which means that they will no longer be able to support current levels of grazing even if incremental solutions such as additional watering holes and improved forage are provided. As some of these hotspot areas lose viability for livestock production, herders’ livelihoods will be threatened. The IPCC has linked climate change to lower animal growth rates in Africa (IPCC 2019), while the FAO projects global demand for livestock products to increase by 70 percent to feed a population estimated to reach 9.7 billion by 2050 (FAO 2019).

Livestock production systems around the world are already changing in response to demographics, markets, and economic development—but these transitions rarely consider long-term climate risks. Without the proper information and resources, livestock systems may not withstand intensifying direct and indirect climate impacts such as changing disease dynamics. Technical and financial support are needed to avoid excluding or disadvantaging those living in poverty and other vulnerable groups (Salman et al. 2019).

2.4 Some Regions, Landscapes, and Human Systems Are at Risk of Nearing Tipping Points

In a growing number of locations, current agricultural livelihoods may soon no longer be possible. These include the Mekong Delta, where salinization due to sea level rise threatens rice production; chronic drought in California, which threatens fruit and vegetable cultivation; and the creation of a dustbowl in East Anglia, England, due to drought and land degradation, which threatens homegrown vegetable production (Benton et al. 2017).

Particular regions and types of landscapes are likely to reach their adaptive limits sooner than others, especially over longer timeframes as the effects of slow-onset climate change impacts emerge. Figure 4 identifies types of ecosystems that are most vulnerable to water stress and other slow-onset events based on a review of available literature.

Figure 4 | Ecosystems Most Vulnerable to Water Stress and Other Slow-Onset Climate Change Impacts

Source: Authors.

National-level data can mask important limitations, such as the difficulty of shifting between crops in places with unsuitable precipitation patterns, inadequate water supplies, or inappropriate soil—not to mention the cultural and behavioral challenges of producing food that satisfies global markets or meets local preferences. The most damaging impacts of warming on rainfed maize, wheat, and rice have already been substantially moderated by shifting the locations where they are cultivated over time, along with expanding irrigation (Sloat et al. 2020). However, continued crop migration will be limited by socioeconomic and political factors, as well as land suitability and water resources, and care must be taken to prevent substantial environmental costs by pushing agriculture into uncultivated areas. Food production must be increased through sustainable intensification (i.e., higher yields per unit of land) rather than expanding crop or grazing land and converting forests, savannas, and peatlands to farmland. This will often require stronger legal protection for natural areas (Searchinger et al. 2018).

Such broad-scale projections may also gloss over the true impacts on social groups expected to be hardest hit, such as female-headed households, the poorest farmers, landless tenant farmers, and day laborers (Niles and Brown 2017; Niles and Salerno 2018). 

According to the IPCC Global Warming of 1.5°C special report, in a growing number of places in the world, climate change is pushing systems—including ecological, but also agricultural, hydrological, economic, and others—toward severe and widespread risks (IPCC 2019). Figure 5, derived from that report, depicts the risks to natural, managed, and human systems around the world as temperatures rise.

As shown in Figure 5, crop yields, a central focus of this paper, are expected to experience moderate to high climate change impacts. Other primary systems required to maintain global agricultural productivity that are at risk as temperatures rise include terrestrial ecosystems and coastal and fluvial flooding; climate change impacts are projected to range from moderate to very high in these systems. The graphic also includes moderate to high impacts of rising temperatures on heat-related morbidity and mortality, which is critical to agricultural productivity; farmers will not be able to maintain productivity when more days become simply too hot for them to work in their fields or herd their animals. Note, however, that Figure 5 includes temperature increases only up to 2.5°C. A more recent review of all available evidence (Sherwood et al. 2020) finds that the odds of a temperature shift below 2 degrees is less than 5 percent under a high-emissions scenario (the world’s current trajectory), while there is a 6 to 18 percent chance that temperatures will shift more than 4.5°C, or 8.1 degrees Fahrenheit. This estimate closely matches cumulative emissions over the past 15 years (Berwyn 2020). This would push critical systems toward tipping points beyond which changes would be irreversible and the limits of adaptation would be reached.

Other systems that humans depend on for food security, such as warm-water coral reefs and tropical freshwater fisheries, as well as coastal areas that are home to 10 percent of the world’s population, are also subject to tipping points where severe, irreversible climate change impacts occur as temperatures rise and the limitations of adaptation are reached (IPCC 2019). Beyond these tipping points, these systems will no longer exist in the form they do today—including the food systems of an increasing number of places. This signals that fundamental, systemic transformations are needed.

Figure 5 | Impacts and Risks for Selected Natural, Managed, and Human Systems

Note: Crop yields, a central focus of this paper, are expected to experience moderate to high climate change impacts. Other primary systems required to maintain global agricultural productivity that are at risk as temperatures rise include terrestrial ecosystems and coastal and fluvial flooding; climate change impacts are projected to range from moderate to very high in these systems.

Source: Reprinted from IPCC (2019).

2.5 Entire Ecosystems Are Shifting; Food Systems Must Shift Along with Them

The projected impacts of climate change will lead to dramatic, ongoing changes in the plants and animals found in a particular area, comprising shifts of entire ecozones. For example, some recent climate change–linked fires in the Amazon rainforest are expected to result in permanent conversion to grasslands (Cooper et al. 2020), semi-arid areas are becoming deserts in regions like the Sahel (Huang et al. 2016), sea level rise is eating away at coastlines in West Africa (Croitoru et al. 2019), and groundwater aquifers are becoming too salty to be used for irrigation or drinking water in the Nile Delta (Abd-Elhamid et al. 2016).

Figure 6 depicts the magnitude to which global terrestrial ecosystems are expected to change as planetary warming continues. It illustrates that, while severe ecosystem changes (in red) are largely limited to Arctic areas with 2°C warming, they will become far more widespread and affect more populous areas with 3.5°C warming. Most of the planet’s ecosystems will be severely affected and no longer function as they currently do if 5°C of warming is reached.

Figure 6 | Likelihood of a Severe Change in Ecosystems

Notes: Abbreviation: °C: degrees Celsius. While severe ecosystem changes (shown in red) are largely limited to Arctic areas with 2°C warming, they will become far more widespread and affect more populous areas with 3.5°C warming. Most of the planet’s ecosystems will be severely affected and no longer function as they currently do if 5°C of warming is reached.

Source: Reprinted from Gerten et al. (2013).

Recent analysis (IE&P 2020) finds that approximately one billion people live in countries that lack the resilience to manage the ecological changes they are expected to face between now and 2050. Of the 157 countries covered by this analysis’s Ecological Threat Register, 22 percent will face catastrophic food insecurity—that is, they are likely to experience a substantial increase in undernourishment—by 2050. Without swift and substantial action, this could also result in unprecedented displacement of people.

Regions that experience a mean annual temperature of over 29°C are projected to expand from 0.8 percent of the world’s surface to 19 percent. Such areas are currently largely concentrated in the Sahara and affect relatively small numbers of people, but are expected to grow to encompass areas inhabited by one-third of the global population. This is in contrast to a projected shrinking of zones with mean annual temperatures of approximately 11–15°C, where most current production of crops and livestock largely takes place (Xu et al. 2020) and could therefore be considered the most suitable temperature range. Under a business-as-usual climate change scenario, the geographical position of this temperature niche is projected to shift more over the coming 50 years than it has since 6000 BP (before present). The regions that will be most affected are among the poorest in the world—and thus our efforts at finding and applying new approaches to adaptation will be most needed in these areas.

As climate change risks affect many types of ecosystems simultaneously, essential connections between agricultural production and natural systems will be impacted in ways that are likely to undermine the ecosystem services farmers depend on, such as regulating water supplies or supporting pollinators. For example, pollinators such as birds, bees, and butterflies are essential for the production of 35 percent of the world’s crops (Abrol 2012). Yet the variety of wild pollinators essential to crop production is falling due to climate change impacts (Giannini et al. 2017). New pests and diseases are already spreading into areas unaccustomed to coping with them. This may overwhelm local knowledge and capacity to deal with outbreaks by using traditional, non-chemical measures, as was the case with the recent locust plague in East Africa. Such changes may also affect rural households by jeopardizing the forest products they depend on, and increase the risks of wildfires, landslides, and other impacts.

Food system transformations should occur in alignment with ecosystem shifts to improve resilience and make more possible the sustainable use of water, land, and energy. While it may be possible, for example, to grow lettuce in the desert Southwest of the United States and tomatoes in greenhouses in arid northern Mexico, this can be accomplished only with depletion of scarce ground water for irrigation and heavy infusions of energy to cool greenhouses. This is an example of an unintended consequence of increasing the risk of maladaptation, which is addressed in greater detail in Section 4.2.

A review of the agricultural adaptation components of available NAPs, NDCs, and Koronivia Joint Work on Agriculture documents revealed that most agricultural adaptation plans thus far have emphasized the rapid scaling of measures intended to preserve existing systems by building resilience over the short term; few include language indicating that they are planning for systemic shifts in anticipation of intensifying climate change impacts (see Figure 7).

Figure 7 | Key Areas of Agriculture in Nationally Determined Contributions that Reflect Transformative Adaptation

Sources: Livestock management (Salman et al. 2019); crop research and development (Niles et al. 2020); climate services (Ashley et al. 2020); water management (Authors).

Exceptions include Bolivia’s prioritization in its NDC of a “transition to semi-intensive systems of livestock management and integrated management of agroforestry and silviculture techniques,” (PSB 2016) and Burkina Faso’s mention in its NAP of “abandoning certain crops in favor of those which are more resistant to climate shocks” (MEFR 2015). In addition, Costa Rica’s NAP recommends using a long-term perspective in planning and implementing interventions, and appears to be unique in that it defines transformative adaptation as follows:

"Transformation implies a structural change in the institutional, cultural, technological, economic and ecological dimensions of a system to establish new development pathways. It must take shape through changes in productive systems, public investments, urban and territorial planning, to positively impact underlying risk factors and avoid eventual climate damages and losses (GCR 2018)."

3.1 Lack of Clarity and Cohesion on What Transformation Entails

One reason for the dearth of language (and, consequently, action) regarding longer-term, systemic change may be a lack of common understanding about what transformation entails. The term “transformation” and its variants are currently being widely applied to adaptation with a range of meanings—often to indicate the need for “bigger, better adaptation,” or more durable and equitable adaptation, but referencing only scaling up current adaptation practices rather than acknowledging that fundamental changes will be needed. A review of strategic documents from 21 of the largest adaptation funding entities, including multilateral and bilateral banks and donor agencies, finds that ambiguity around the meaning of “transformation” extends to their interpretations of transformative adaptation and its role in their portfolios of projects and programs varies considerably.

Another source of confusion about transformative adaptation is conflating it with agricultural transformation, which has been defined as a process that leads to higher productivity on farms, commercially orients farming, and strengthens the link between farming and other sectors of the economy (Boateng 2017). This form of transformation typically aligns with development goals but is not initiated with the intention of explicitly delivering climate resilience outcomes and may or may not achieve that goal.

3.2 Autonomous Transformative Adaptations Are Limited

The handful of autonomous transformative adaptations that have taken place in response to climate change impacts without external planning or support are instructive in understanding what motivates and enables fundamental, systemic changes to food systems. Examples include the following:  

• Borana herders in northern Kenya are shifting from cattle to camels in response to increasing heat and aridity (Salman et al. 2018; Kagunyu and Wanjohi 2014).
• Bangladeshi farmers in Bagerhat District have shifted from rice production to aquaculture in response to increased salinity due to saltwater inundation from the sea and reduced seasonal river flows (Faruque et al. 2016). 
• In Costa Rica, some coffee farmers in areas that have grown too warm to continue producing coffee are switching to citrus (Ferdinand et al. 2020).
• In southeast Kazakhstan, increasingly scarce water supplies have been reallocated to less water intensive crops in response to reductions in snow cover and water supply with the intention of shifting the mix of crops grown in the region (Barrett et al. 2017).
• In Uttarakhand, India, mountain farming villages affected by increased rainfall variability are being abandoned and reverted to forest or pastureland while more people engage in intensive agriculture in river valleys or shift to nonagricultural livelihoods (IMI 2019).
• In Northeast India, dragon fruit has been successfully cultivated for the first time due to hotter and drier climate conditions (Thokchom et al. 2019).

Figure 8 illustrates additional examples from India of changes initiated by farmers that were not part of a specific national or subnational policy, program, or project. Box 1 provides a more detailed explanation of the process and outcomes for the switch in Himachal Pradesh.

Figure 8 | Examples of Autonomous Transformative Adaptation in India

Source: Authors.

These types of transformations often take place gradually over years or even decades. They usually involve sequences of incremental actions of various types that together result in significantly different growing locations or methods of production for crops and livestock, or even landscape-scale changes in the type of food system. Such transformations may have increased resilience to climate change as either the primary goal or as a side benefit; alternatively, they may in fact have increased vulnerability (i.e., maladaptation). Box 1 provides an example of a transformation that inadvertently—but fortunately—increased resilience in India.

While these examples provide evidence that transformative adaptation is possible, simply waiting for such significant changes to take place organically is unlikely to enable those living in poverty and the most vulnerable farmers, including women and youth, to keep up with intensifying climate change impacts. Few individual farmers are able to identify and embrace such changes on their own, and many lack the resources needed to enact them. As noted in Ferdinand et al. (2020) and Tye and Grinspan (2020), research indicates that farmers who are able to make such changes without external assistance tend to be those with greater access to resources (e.g., land, credit, information, technical capacity), those with ways of reducing risk, and/or those who have a higher tolerance for risk.

In addition, systemic shifts require not only changing what farmers and herders themselves do, but also addressing other links in value chains, such as processing, marketing, and distribution, plus the availability of adequate inputs, labor, and credit, which are largely beyond the control of individuals. However, engaging pioneer farmers and herders and building on their experiences is essential to enabling more widespread, long-term, and systemic change to occur.

In addition to helping to avoid the negative impacts described in Section 3, transformative approaches to adaptation can help address these challenges, and have the potential to provide a range of adaptation benefits including reducing the risk of maladaptation, averting and minimizing loss and damage, and providing economic, social, and environmental co-benefits.

4.1 Reducing the Risk of Maladaptation

Although increased funding and political will are ramping up the speed and scale of adaptation to climate change, greater foresight is required to ensure that today’s adaptation investments will stand the test of time. Transformative approaches to agricultural adaptation can help avoid short-sighted investments that will lead to maladaptation; that is, actions that may lead to increased risk of adverse climate-related outcomes (IPCC 2019). The IPCC (2014) and Ericksen et al. (2021) note that maladaptation can arise from decisions that emphasize (or consider only) short-term outcomes, while a longer-term or more systemic perspective would reveal that the proposed intervention is in fact increasing climate risk, rather than lowering it. The risk of unintended negative consequences from technological adaptation interventions merits particular attention.

In fact, agricultural transformation has sometimes led to maladaptation, as a case study from Peru demonstrates (see Box 2). In this case, better understanding of climate change impacts on the water supply and, thus, the long-term viability of the irrigation system would have been helpful when decisions regarding initial investments were made. Funding might have instead been channeled to expand production of varieties of crops that were more suitable for the arid landscape or to support nonagricultural economic activities.

4.2 Averting and Minimizing Loss and Damage

In addition to reducing maladaptation, transformative approaches to adaptation offer great potential for shaping a comprehensive, inclusive, and strategic approach for averting and minimizing loss and damage; that is, impacts of climate change that have not been or cannot be avoided through mitigation and adaptation efforts (Van der Geest and Warner 2015). Examples could include sea level rise that is too severe to be stopped by sea walls, mangroves, or other solutions, or permanent desertification of savannah areas. The Warsaw International Mechanism for Loss & Damage associated with Climate Change Impacts (WIM), which was created by the UNFCCC at COP16, has engaged Parties to the Paris Agreement in exploring responses to extreme and slow-onset events, and includes transformative adaptation (UNFCCC 2011) in the WIM Executive Committee’s work plan.

Transformative approaches to adaptation can minimize or avert loss and damage by improving economic outcomes over other adaptation approaches, as the case study in Box 3 illustrates. It models a case study on the potential economic benefits of three possible approaches to managing risk and mitigating loss and damage due to the decreasing productivity of arabica coffee in regions of Ethiopia that are growing too warm for it. Three scenarios are tested, one of which results in significant losses to livelihoods; a second in which such damages are minimized; and a third in which losses are averted by taking a transformative approach to planning for future coffee production.

4.3 Improving Investment Strategies

Scaling up incremental agricultural adaptation interventions, such as mulching, small-scale irrigation, and water harvesting, may seem both more affordable and manageable for individual farmers, and appear to make the most economic sense. However, in circumstances where climate change impacts will be so severe that such measures will eventually prove insufficient, continual investment with short-term planning horizons may in fact cost more over time and do little to avert or minimize permanent losses and damages.

Box 3 shares the results of an economic analysis undertaken for this project. It compares the economic outcomes of three adaptation scenarios: no action, incremental, and transformative.

4.4 Reducing Risks of Crisis, Conflict, and Displacement

The losses and damages generated by climate change impacts can also be social in nature and escalate into social unrest, crisis, and conflict. In some situations, transformative approaches can help guide food systems to more sustainable futures, thus averting or minimizing losses and damages instead of allowing responses to occur haphazardly and devolve into crisis. This requires recognizing the need for widespread changes to what can be grown or raised where, to potentially ease current or future tensions, particularly around resource use. Such forward-looking action may increase the odds that alternative (in some cases, nonagricultural) livelihoods will be possible when needed if transformative pathways are started sooner rather than later. Brück and d’Errico (2019) summarize the linkages by noting that “resilience protects whatever development progress has been achieved so far and contributes to preventing conflict and humanitarian emergencies.” For example, some farmers in Costa Rica are shifting from coffee production to citrus in response to increased heat and other climate change impacts, as well as volatile global coffee prices. These farmers can continue working in agriculture while reducing their risks and increasing household incomes (Carter and Tye 2018; Ferdinand et al. 2020).

The example in Box 4 highlights a transformation in livestock feed and related markets that has successfully avoided crisis and reduced the odds of conflict over watering points and grazing lands by mitigating the impacts of drought on herders in Ethiopia, thus averting socioeconomic losses and damages. In addition to the increased resilience that the example focuses on, this transformative approach to adaptation will also reduce overgrazing of already stressed rangeland, enabling forage plants—and the herders whose livestock depend on them—to bounce back more quickly once the rains come.

Since then, there has been a notable increase in the global commitment to scale up climate change adaptation action, including through the Global Commission on Adaptation—fueled, in part, by increasingly dire climate projections brought to light in the IPCC Global Warming of 1.5°C report (IPCC 2019) and other analyses, as well as the real devastation being wrought by climate change–induced wildfires, floods, storms, and droughts.

Our understanding of how climate change will push human and natural systems across thresholds, including those that determine the viability of current food systems, has improved markedly. However, the vast majority of adaptation funding is currently allocated to incremental interventions likely to fall short of their goal of preserving key systems despite climate change impacts.

While still not complete, we do have sufficient understanding to begin taking specific steps to fill in knowledge and funding gaps and get on with building the long-term resilience of smallholder farmers and their communities through transformative approaches to adaptation. These include:

1. expanding research and development to make climate risks visible and engaging farmers, herders, and fishers in identifying transformative solutions for building long-term resilience;
2. integrating transformative approaches to adaptation into planning processes; and/or
3. enhancing finance to mobilize funds and resources to accelerate transformative adaptation.

This report has suggested ways in which research organizations, governments, and funding entities can each play a crucial part in building long-term resilience by fostering systemic change where and when it will be needed. Additional research on related topics is needed, which could include the following:

• Further exploration and more detailed mapping of how the private sector can invest in transformative adaptation and harness various types of financial tools and investments (e.g., impact investing) to transform food systems for long-term resilience
• Context-specific assessments of how to plan and implement transformative adaptation solutions and pathways
• Greater understanding of climate change impacts on aquaculture and fisheries and whether, where, and how transformative adaptation might be applied to them
• How consumer tastes and preferences can be tapped into and shifted to make transformative adaptation more economically attractive
• Deeper analysis of how planning for and implementing transformative adaptation approaches can be made more participatory and inclusive to better incorporate the perspectives and address the needs of women, youth, people living in poverty, and other marginalized groups
• Ways global climate and economic scenario planning can be used to map out transformative pathways, including how to build the capacity of national agricultural research systems to engage in long-term planning
• The extent to which transformative approaches to adaptation are mentioned in enhanced NDCs and NAPs, to include case studies of best practices for both

A1 Data and Assumptions

This section presents data details and key assumptions that were used to conduct the cost-benefit analysis presented in Box 3.

A1.1 Climate Change Impacts on Coffee Production

Ethiopian coffee is produced within specific agroecological zones over numerous political divisions. There are four typical coffee production systems: forest, semi-forest, garden, and plantation coffees.

• Forest coffee refers to coffee that grows naturally in primary forests that have not been disturbed or damaged by human interference. Coffee cherries are handpicked, making the productivity of forest coffee the lowest among the four production systems.
• Semi-forest coffee grows in forests that are semi-managed by humans (e.g., opening up canopies, clearing weeds) but maintain a minimum of 50 percent canopy cover (Partnerships for Forests n.d.). Unlike for forest coffee, farmers use pruning techniques to increase coffee productivity.
• Garden coffee refers to coffee plants that are transplanted to gardens around farmers’ homes. These plants might come from nearby forests and are typically interplanted with other crops and fruit trees. Garden coffee is found most frequently in southern Ethiopia, including Sidamo and Harerge/Harrar (Craves 2011).
• Plantation coffee is the most intense method of coffee cultivation, where land is cleared and planted with coffee and managed for yield. Farming practices such as pruning, weeding, applying fertilizer, and providing irrigation management are used to improve productivity.

All are mostly found in the tropical rainforest regions of southern and southwestern Ethiopia between altitudes of 1,000 and 2,400 meters above sea level (see Figure A1). These areas currently have the optimum temperature range for growing arabica coffee, between 15 and 24°C.

Figure A1 | Major Arabica Coffee–Growing Areas of Ethiopia

Source: EIAR 2017.

Coffee production in Ethiopia occurs predominantly within traditional farm management systems, with limited use of fertilizers and pesticides. Coffee cultivation and drying are largely unmechanized. Coffee productivity varies greatly across the four production systems. Table A1 summarizes the coffee production areas under the four growing systems as well as the corresponding productivity levels.

The Adaptation Fund (2017) estimated that the mean temperature in Ethiopia will rise between 1.5 and 3°C by the 2050s, taking into account uncertainties in climate modeling. Global warming, along with intensified droughts and uncertain patterns of rainfall, is projected to have two major impacts on coffee production in Ethiopia: 39–59 percent of productive coffee farms in Ethiopia will be lost by 2050 (Moat et al. 2017); and per-hectare productivity of existing coffee systems will decline due to the rising temperature (USGS and USAID 2012). Craparo et al. (2015) estimated that every 1°C in temperature rise will be associated with a reduction of 137 ± 16.87 kilograms (kg) of coffee production per hectare of land. Hence, the magnitude of per-hectare coffee productivity reduction will depend on how much temperature will actually rise in the future. In other words, the negative impacts of a 1.5°C temperature rise by 2050 on coffee productivity will be lower than those of a 3°C temperature rise. In this study, a 3°C scenario represents a future world with the worst climate impacts on coffee production, whereas a 1.5°C scenario represents a future world with the lowest climate impacts on coffee production. Using this range of temperature projection and assuming a linear rise in annual temperature between 2015 and 2050, we estimated minimum and maximum coffee productivity reductions under 1.5°C and 3°C climate scenarios by 2050, respectively.

A1.2 Coffee Prices

In Ethiopia, local arabica coffee consumption increased, on average, by 11.5 percent between 2011 and 2015, amounting to 56.5 percent of the annual average production for those years, resulting in higher local prices than export prices (EIAR 2017). However, due to a lack of access to local market information, we rely on export data (i.e., total export value and total export volumes) to estimate coffee prices. Statistics between 2005 and 2015 indicate an uptrend in export prices of arabica coffee over time. Coffee prices peaked between 2010 and 2011, following the serious disruptions in coffee production in 2009, which was the second-driest year in Ethiopia since 1971 (Viste et al. 2013). Coffee production stabilized from 2010 onward; however, average arabica coffee prices remained double those prior to the drought year in 2009. Hence, we used the average price of arabica coffee ($3.32/kg) between 2011 and 2015 as a proxy for estimating the total revenues that could be generated from arabica coffee exports in future scenarios. In addition, due to a lack of domestic market information, we assumed that all coffee production in Ethiopia will be used for export to estimate the minimum level of total revenues generated from the coffee sector.

As robusta coffee is not currently grown in Ethiopia, there is no relevant market information available. Therefore, we used the world average price of robusta ($1.96/kg) from Ycharts (2021) to estimate the revenue that could be generated from growing robusta coffee. For the same reason, we assumed an average robusta coffee productivity of 850 kilograms per hectare (kg/ha) in Ethiopia, based on robusta coffee productivity reported in India, approximately 877 kg/ha (Atlas Big n.d.).

A1.3 Coffee Production Costs

Farmers usually need to wait for three to four years from the moment new coffee trees are planted for them to become mature enough to bear fruit. As a perennial crop, a coffee tree will normally produce for approximately 20 to 25 years (Gmünder et al. n.d.). During the full lifecycle of a coffee tree, three categories of costs are incurred by farmers at different stages: establishment costs, maintenance costs before the trees begin producing beans, and maintenance costs once the trees are productive.

Establishment costs refer to the upfront investment costs of planting coffee trees; farmers incur them only in the initial year of establishing a new coffee production system. Maintenance costs before the trees produce beans are incurred in the initial four years of a coffee system establishment when no harvests are reaped. Maintenance costs during the productive period refer to the costs incurred by farmers to maintain production and harvest from the fifth year of new system establishment until the end of the trees’ lifecycle.

Due to severe data constraints in Ethiopia regarding coffee production costs, our cost assessment was based on the coffee costs data reported by Thanuja and Singh (2017) for India. Their study provided detailed cost data for both large and small coffee production systems, including itemized costs incurred from establishing new coffee production systems to maintaining the production during the bearing period. We assumed that coffee production in Ethiopia will follow the same cost structure. Based on this cost structure, we then replaced Indian labor costs with local Ethiopian labor cost data published by ILO (2013) to estimate per-hectare fixed costs and material costs associated with establishing new robusta coffee farms in Ethiopia.

On existing arabica coffee farms (i.e., coffee farms with declining coffee production), we assumed that the costs should be similar to those of robusta coffee. More specifically, we assumed that the cost structure of large Indian coffee farms is similar to those of the intensive plantation coffee farming system in Ethiopia; that costs on small Indian coffee farms are similar to those of garden coffee and semi-forest coffee systems in Ethiopia; and that the Ethiopian forest coffee system has a similar cost structure to the small Indian coffee farming system, except that no fertilizer or shade tree costs are applied to the system. In this study, only maintenance costs during the bearing period were considered for different arabica coffee production systems (see Table A2).

A1.4 Vanilla Yields and Costs

Due to a lack of local data, vanilla yields and costs were estimated based on data published by the Indian government (see Table A3).

A1.5 Institutional Climate Adaptation Costs

Institutional adaptation costs incurred to adaptation scenarios are costs arising from developing climate adaptation strategies, increasing the awareness of adaptation risks at the local level, and investing in projects to improve capacity, monitoring, evaluation, and local learning, among others. In principle, adaptation may be autonomous or strategy-specific and will depend on a range of factors, including the level of greenhouse gas emissions anticipated (UNEP 1998). In practice, however, it is often difficult to anticipate what level of adaptation will be needed and effective at the local level when climate change impacts are uncertain.

No information was available on costs related to adaptation projects in Ethiopia specifically targeted to reducing climate change impacts on coffee farms. As an alternative, we reviewed climate-smart integrated rural development projects on the Adaptation Fund’s website (https://www.adaptation-fund.org/projects-programmes/) and assumed that adaptation costs associated with climate-smart agriculture in Ethiopia can be used as a proxy for estimating the lower-bound adaptation costs for coffee production. In 2017, the government of Ethiopia requested a total amount of just under $10 million in financing support from the Adaptation Fund for an agricultural adaptation project for a period of 3.5 years (Adaptation Fund 2017). The project targets highly vulnerable smallholder farmers in 14 kebeles (smallest administrative unit of Ethiopia similar to a ward or a neighborhood) and aims to increase ecosystem resilience to climate change and reduce climate risks like drought in Ethiopia. It covers six districts: Oromia; Tigray; Amhara; Harari; Southern Nations, Nationalities and Peoples Regional State; and Dire Dawa. The total area of these districts was then used to calculate the average annual per-hectare costs for each adaptation activity; itemized adaptation costs can be found in Table A4.

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1. 1. Note that many of the citations included in this section refer to the TACR topical papers on crop research and development (Niles et al. 2020), climate services (Ashley et al. 2020), livestock production (Salman et al. 2019), and water management (Sixt et al. 2021, forthcoming), as well as applications of the TACR framework in Tye and Grinspan (2020) and Ferdinand et al. (2020).
2. 2. Loss and damage is the term used to describe impacts of climate change that have not been or cannot be avoided through mitigation and adaptation efforts (Van der Geest and Warner 2015).
3. 3. Since Ethiopia intends to increase coffee production and remain a key coffee exporting country in the future (NPC 2016), the analysis also estimated the potential economic gains of introducing garden coffee in the higher-altitude regions, where climate conditions will become suitable for coffee as temperatures rise. In these areas, introducing home garden coffee (see Appendix A, Section A1.1) will not only help restore the degraded agricultural land by increasing tree shade, but also provide additional cash income, playing an important role during times of food shortage (Linger 2014). These estimates were excluded from the cost-benefit analysis to ensure a fair comparison of the costs and benefits of the three adaptation scenarios.
4. 4. Additionally, if arabica garden coffee were introduced and intercropped with the existing crops located in higher-altitude regions that become suitable for coffee due to temperature rise in the future, this will not only directly contribute to cash incomes of farmers in highland areas, but also serve as an agroforestry practice to diversify and sustain production for increased social, economic, and ecological benefits. The desire for more shade trees could also add value to and thereby incentivize restoration efforts. Assuming that an area of arabica garden coffee equivalent to the size of an unsuitable coffee production area will be intercropped in higher altitudes, this will generate at least another $1.2 billion over the next 35 years on top of the incomes that have been generated from the existing crop systems.
5. 5. Khan, M. Correspondence between the author Tyler Ferdinand, research associate, and Mustafa Ali Khan, team leader SCA-Himalayas, Swiss Agency for Development, New Delhi, India. June 11, 2019.
6. 6. Meaza, H. Correspondence between the author Tyler Ferdinand, research associate, and Hailemariam Meaza, assistant professor, Mekelle University, Tigray, Ethiopia. October 1, 2019.

Rebecca Carter is the Deputy Director of the Climate Resilience Practice at WRI. In addition to her longstanding interest in food systems change, she focuses on governance issues related to climate resilience, including the transparency, equity, and inclusivity of adaptation planning and implementation processes.
Contact: rebecca.carter@wri.org

Richard Choularton is the Director of Agriculture and Economic Growth at Tetra Tech, leading their international work on agriculture, including smart climate agriculture, agricultural technology and advanced analytics, and climate risk management.
Contact: richard.choularton@tetratech.com

Tyler Ferdinand is a Research Associate with the Climate Resilience Practice at WRI. His work focuses on adaptation limits, resilience transition pathways, and equitable socioeconomic shifts.
Contact: tyler.ferdinand@wri.org

Dr. Helen Ding is a Senior Environmental Economist at WRI, where she serves as a lead expert in the economics and finance of forest and landscape restoration and natural capital valuation.
Contact: helen.ding@wri.org

Namrata Ginoya is a manager of resilience and energy access with WRI India’s Energy Team. She works on mainstreaming adaptation into development with a focus on energy access.
Contact: nginoya@wri.org

Parvathi Preethan is a Project Associate with WRI India's Climate Resilience Practice. Her work includes policy research on mainstreaming resilience into development and enhancing readiness to access to climate finance in India.
Contact: parvathi.preethan@wri.org

We are pleased to acknowledge our institutional strategic partners, who provide core funding to WRI: Netherlands Ministry of Foreign Affairs, Royal Danish Ministry of Foreign Affairs, and Swedish International Development Cooperation Agency.

We are also pleased to acknowledge the support of the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation on this report and the broader Transforming Agriculture for Climate Resilience project.

We would like to express our gratitude to the individuals who participated in consultations in Addis Ababa, New Delhi, and Bhopal. In addition, we would like to acknowledge the many experts with whom we have had formal and informal conversations with regarding transformative adaptation and who helped to provide key insights in this emerging space. Finally, we would like to thank Yuhan Shang for her research support for the economic analysis.