Editing IPCC:AR6/SRCCL/Chapter-5 (section)

=== 5.7.1 Enabling policy environments ===

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The scope for responses to make sustainable land use inclusive of climate change mitigation and adaptation, and the policies to implement them, are covered in detail in Chapters 6 and 7. Here we highlight some of the major policy areas that have shaped the food system, and might be able to shape responses in future. Although two families of policy – agriculture and trade – have been instrumental in shaping the food system in the past (and potentially have led to conditions that increase climate vulnerability) (Benton and Bailey 2019), a much wider family of policy instruments can be deployed to reconfigure the food system to deliver healthy diets in a sustainable way.

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==== 5.7.1.1 Agriculture and trade policy ====

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'''Agriculture.''' The thrust of agricultural policies over the last 50 years has been to increase productivity, even if at the expense of environmental sustainability (Benton and Bailey 2019 <sup>[[#fn:r1230|1230]]</sup> ). For example, in 2007–2009, 46% of OECD support for agriculture was based on measures of output (price support or payments based on yields), 37% of support was based on the current or historical area planted, herd size (or correlated measures of the notional costs of farming), and 13% was payments linked to input prices. In a similar vein, non-OECD countries have promoted productivity growth for their agricultural sectors.

'''Trade.''' Along with agricultural policy to grow productivity, the development of frameworks to liberalise trade (such as the General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade – GATT – Uruguay Round, now incorporated into the World Trade Organization) have been essential in stimulating the growth of a globalised food system. Almost every country has a reliance on trade to fulfil some or all of its local food needs, and trade networks have grown to be highly complex (Puma et al. 2015 <sup>[[#fn:r1231|1231]]</sup> ; MacDonald et al. 2015 <sup>[[#fn:r1232|1232]]</sup> ; Fader et al. 2013 <sup>[[#fn:r1233|1233]]</sup> and Ercsey-Ravasz et al. 2012 <sup>[[#fn:r1467|1467]]</sup> ). This is because many countries lack the capacity to produce sufficient food due to climatic conditions, soil quality, water constraints, and availability of farmland (FAO 2015b <sup>[[#fn:r1234|1234]]</sup> ). In a world of liberalised trade, using comparative advantage to maximise production in high-yielding commodities, exporting excess production, and importing supplies of other goods supports economic growth.

City states as well as many small island states, do not have adequate farmland to feed their populations, while Sub-Saharan African countries are projected to experience high population growth as well as to be negatively impacted by climate change, and thus will likely find it difficult to produce all of their own food supplies (Agarwal et al. 2002 <sup>[[#fn:r1235|1235]]</sup> ). One study estimates that some 66 countries are currently incapable of being self-sufficient in food (Pradhan et al. 2014 <sup>[[#fn:r1236|1236]]</sup> ). Estimates of the proportion of people relying on trade for basic food security vary from about 16% to about 22% (Fader et al. 2013 <sup>[[#fn:r1237|1237]]</sup> ; Pradhan et al. 2014 <sup>[[#fn:r1238|1238]]</sup> ), with this figure rising to between 1.5 and 6 billion people by 2050, depending on dietary shifts, agricultural gains, and climate impacts (Pradhan et al. 2014 <sup>[[#fn:r1239|1239]]</sup> ).

Global trade is therefore essential for achieving food and nutrition security under climate change because it provides a mechanism for enhancing the efficiency of supply chains, reducing the vulnerability of food availability to changes in local weather, and moving production from areas of surplus to areas of deficit (FAO 2018d <sup>[[#fn:r1240|1240]]</sup> ). However, the benefits of trade will only be realised if trade is managed in ways that maximise broadened access to new markets while minimising the risks of increased exposure to international competition and market volatility (Challinor et al. 2018 <sup>[[#fn:r1241|1241]]</sup> ; Brown et al. 2017b <sup>[[#fn:r1242|1242]]</sup> ).

As described in Section 5.8.1, trade acts to buffer exposure to climate risks when the market works well. Under certain conditions – such as shocks, or the perception of a shock, coupled with a lack of food stocks or lack of transparency about stocks (Challinor et al. 2018 <sup>[[#fn:r1243|1243]]</sup> ; Marchand et al. 2016 <sup>[[#fn:r1244|1244]]</sup> ) – the market can fail and trade can expose countries to food price shocks.

Furthermore, Clapp (2016) showed that trade, often supported by high levels of subsidy support to agriculture in some countries, can depress world prices and reduce incomes for other agricultural exporters. Lower food prices that result from subsidy support may benefit urban consumers in importing countries, but at the same time they may hurt farmers’ incomes in those same countries. The outmigration of smallholder farmers from the agriculture sector across the Global South is significantly attributed to these trade patterns of cheap food imports (Wittman 2011 <sup>[[#fn:r1245|1245]]</sup> ; McMichael 2014 <sup>[[#fn:r1246|1246]]</sup> ; Akram-Lodhi et al. 2013 <sup>[[#fn:r1247|1247]]</sup> ). Food production and trade cartels, as well as financial speculation on food futures markets, affect low-income market-dependent populations.

Food sovereignty is a framing developed to conceptualise these issues (Reuter 2015 <sup>[[#fn:r1248|1248]]</sup> ). They directly relate to the ability of local communities and nations to build their food systems, based, among other aspects, on diversified crops and ILK. If a country enters international markets by growing more commodity crops and reducing local crop varieties, it may get economic benefits, but may also expose itself to climate risks and food insecurity by increasing reliance on trade, which may be increasingly disrupted by climate risks. These include a local lack of resilience from reduced diversity of products, but also exposure to food price spikes, which can become amplified by market mechanisms such as speculation.

In summary, countries must determine the balance between locally produced versus imported food (and feed) such that it both minimises climate risks and ensures sustainable food security. There is ''medium evidence'' that trade has positive benefits but also creates exposure to risks (Section 5.3).

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==== 5.7.1.2 Scope for expanded policies ====

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There are a range of ways that policy can intervene to stimulate change in the food system – through agriculture, research and development, food standards, manufacture and storage, changing the food environment and access to food, changing practices to encourage or discourage trade (Table 5.6). Novel incentives can stimulate the market, for example, through reduction in waste or changes in diets to gain benefits from a health or sustainability direction. Different contexts with different needs will require different set of policies at local, regional and national levels. See Supplementary Material Section SM5.7 for further discussion on expanded policies.

In summary, although agriculture is often thought to be shaped predominantly by agriculture and trade policies, there are over twenty families of policy areas that can shape agricultural production directly or indirectly (through environmental regulations or through markets, including by shaping consumer behaviour). Thus, delivering outcomes promoting climate change adaptation and mitigation can arise from policies across many departments, if suitably designed and aligned.

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'''Table 5.6'''

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'''Potential policy ‘families’ for food-related adaptation and mitigation of climate change. The column ‘scale’ refers to scale of implementation: International (I), national (N), sub-national-regional (R), and local (L).'''
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==== 5.7.1.3 Health-related policies and cost savings ====

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The co-benefits arising from mitigating climate change through changing dietary patterns, and thus demand, have potentially important economic impacts ( ''high confidence'' ). The gross value added from agriculture to the global economy (GVA) was 1.9 trillion USD2013 (FAO 2015c <sup>[[#fn:r1249|1249]]</sup> ), from a global agriculture economy (GDP) of 2.7 trillion USD2016. In 2013, the FAO estimated an annual cost of 3.5 trillion USD for malnutrition (FAO 2013a <sup>[[#fn:r1250|1250]]</sup> ).

However, this is likely to be an underestimate of the economic health costs of current food systems for several reasons: (i) lack of data – for example there is little robust data in the UK on the prevalence of malnutrition in the general population (beyond estimates of obesity and surveys of malnourishment of patients in hospital and care homes, from which estimates over 3 million people in the UK are undernourished (BAPEN 2012); (ii) lack of robust methodology to determine, for example, the exact relationship between over-consumption of poor diets, obesity and non-communicable diseases like diabetes, cardiovascular disease, a range of cancers or Alzheimer’s disease (Pedditizi et al. 2016 <sup>[[#fn:r1251|1251]]</sup> ), and (iii) unequal healthcare spending around the world.

In the USA, the economic cost of diabetes, a disease strongly associated with obesity and affecting about 23 million Americans, is estimated at 327 billion USD2017 (American Diabetes Association 2018 <sup>[[#fn:r1252|1252]]</sup> ), with direct healthcare costs of 9600 USD per person. By 2025, it is estimated that, globally, there will be over 700 million people with diabetes (NCD-RisC 2016b <sup>[[#fn:r1253|1253]]</sup> ), over 30 times the number in the USA. Even if a global average cost of diabetes per capita were a quarter of that in the USA, the total economic cost of diabetes would be approximately the same as global agricultural GDP. Finally, (iv) the role of agriculture in causing ill-health beyond dietary health, such as through degrading air quality (e.g., Paulot and Jacob 2014 <sup>[[#fn:r1254|1254]]</sup> ).

Whilst data of the healthcare costs associated with the food system and diets are scattered and the proportion of costs directly attributable to diets and food consumption is uncertain, there is potential for more preventative healthcare systems to save significant costs that could incentivise agricultural business models to change what is grown, and how. The potential of moving towards more preventative healthcare is widely discussed in health economics literature, particularly in order to reduce the life-style-related (including dietary-related) disease component in aging populations (e.g., Bloom et al. 2015 <sup>[[#fn:r1255|1255]]</sup> ).

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==== 5.7.1.4 Multiple policy pathways ====

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As discussed in more detail in Chapters 6 and 7, there is a wide potential suite of interventions and policies that can potentially enhance the adaptation of food systems to climate change, as well as enhance the mitigation potential of food systems on climate change. There is an increasing number of studies that argue that the key to sustainable land management is not in land management practices but in the factors that determine the demand for products from land (such as food). Public health policy, therefore, has the potential to affect dietary choice and thus the demand for different amounts of, and types of, food.

Obersteiner et al. (2016) <sup>[[#fn:r1256|1256]]</sup> show that increasing the average price of food is an important policy lever that, by reducing demand, reduces food waste, pressure on land and water, impacts on biodiversity and through reducing emissions, mitigates climate change and potentially helps to achieve multiple SDGs. Whilst such policy responses – such as a carbon tax applied to goods including food – has the potential to be regressive, affecting the poor differentially (Frank et al. 2017 <sup>[[#fn:r1257|1257]]</sup> ; Hasegawa et al. 2018 <sup>[[#fn:r1258|1258]]</sup> and Kehlbacher et al. 2016 <sup>[[#fn:r1259|1259]]</sup> ), and increasing food insecurity – further development of social safety nets can help to avoid the regressive nature (Hasegawa et al. 2018 <sup>[[#fn:r1260|1260]]</sup> ). Hasegawa et al. (2018) <sup>[[#fn:r1261|1261]]</sup> point out that such safety nets for vulnerable populations could be funded from the revenues arising from a carbon tax.

The evidence suggests, as with SR15 (IPCC 2018a <sup>[[#fn:r1262|1262]]</sup> ) and its multiple pathways to climate change solutions, that there is no single solution that will address the problems of food and climate change, but instead there is a need to deploy many solutions, simultaneously adapted to the needs and options available in a given context. For example, Springmann et al. (2018a) indicate that maintaining the food system within planetary boundaries at mid-century, including equitable climate, requires increasing the production (and resilience) of agricultural outputs (i.e., closing yield gaps), reducing waste, and changes in diets towards ones often described as flexitarian (low-meat dietary patterns that are in line with available evidence on healthy eating). Such changes can have significant co-benefits for public health, as well as facing significant challenges to ensure equity (in terms of affordability for those in poverty).

Significant changes in the food system require them to be acceptable to the public (‘public license’), or they will be rejected. Focus groups with members of the public around the world, on the issue of changing diets, have shown that there is a general belief that the government plays a key role in leading efforts for change in consumption patterns (Wellesley et al. 2015 <sup>[[#fn:r1263|1263]]</sup> ). If governments are not leading on an issue, or indicating the need for it through leading public dialogue, it signals to their citizens that the issue is unimportant or undeserving of concern.

In summary, there is significant potential ( ''high confidence'' ) that, through aligning multiple policy goals, multiple benefits can be realised that positively impact public health, mitigation and adaptation (e.g., adoption of healthier diets, reduction in waste, reduction in environmental impact). These benefits may not occur without the alignment across multiple policy areas ( ''high confidence'' ).

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