Food security and climate change in PNG

1. Food security and Climate Change in
Papua New Guinea
PACE-NET Workshop on “Innovation and
Agriculture: Focus on Papua New Guinea
Ramakrishna Akkinapally
Deputy Director General
PNG National Agricultural Research Institute (NARI)

2. • Population: 8.5 million
• Growth rate 2.7%
• Total land area: 465,000 km2
• Apart from New Guinea island,
the country has four large islands
(Manus, New Ireland, New Britain,
and Bougainville) and some 600
small islands lying between the
Coral Sea and the South Pacific
Ocean
• Climate : Tropical monsoon
• Rainfall: 2500-4000 mm
Geography and Socioeconomic Situation

3. Population below poverty line (%)
In 25 of the 36 SIDS for which we have poverty level data the rate is higher than 20%.
PNG one among them with a population of 28%.

4. Prevalence of undernourishment (%) in SIDS
18 out of the 29 SIDS for which we have the data do not meet the MDG goal of
eradicating hunger when based on the indicator of achieving a level of
undernourishment less than 5%. PNG failed to meet any of the MDG’s.

5. Food Import Dependence Ratio in SIDS in 1990-2011
SIDS have increasingly imported a greater proportion of their food consumption
and the fastest category of imported foods is processed foods. The move away
from local healthier foods has health and economic consequences.

10. Agriculture in PNG Development
• 23% GDP (of K13.5 billion)
is from agriculture
• 17% of GDP is from non-
export agriculture
• Less than 10% of non-
export commodities are
marketed

11. Agriculture in PNG Development
• Dependence of 87% of 8.5
million people
• Very diverse food and cash
crops
• 95% of the farmers are
smallholders
• Agriculture is the mainstay of
PNG economy

12. Key Agricultural Development Issues
• Resource rich but income poor
• Stagnant Agriculture sector
• Low and variable productivity,
cash income and gainful
employment
• Poor/weak infrastructure,
marketing and extension
system

13. 1. Threats of climate change to
agricultural production systems

14. Threats of climate change to production systems:
where are we heading?
/
• Temperatures will continue
to increase
• Changing rainfall patterns
• More extreme rainfall days
• Less frequent but more
intense tropical cyclones
• Sea level rise and Ocean
Acidification will continue

15. Average projected % change in suitability for 50 crops to 2055
Crop suitability is changing …
Lane & Jarvis, SAT eJournal, 2007

16. 2 . Responses to climate change

17. Smallholders’ response to climate change
Technologies and practices to increase resilience of
agricultural systems:
• Adoption to extreme events (drought, frost, excess moisture)
• Soil and nutrient management (e.g. composts, crop residues)
• Improving water harvesting and retention (e.g. dams, pits,
retaining ridges)
• Understanding and dealing with changes in distribution / intensity
of pests, diseases and weeds
• Diversity in cropping (different crops, breeds, wild relatives)
• Efficient harvesting, storage and transport to reduce
• Use of agroforestry species (soil benefits, income generation,
carbon sequestering, …)

18. Smallholders’ Acceptance to CC Technologies
“No regrets” technologies
Adapted from Howden et al. (2010)
Degree of Climate Change
“Complexity”ofresponding
COPING
• Planting dates
• Other varieties
• Water
management
ADAPTATION
• New crops
• New livestock
species
• Off-farm
diversification
TRANSFORMATION
• New production
system
• New livelihoods
• Move location
• Migration
Limits to “no regrets” at the farm level  Barriers : cost, need for collective
action and/or policy formulation (e.g. infrastructure development)

19. Enabling farmers to act on seasonal forecast
information
• An early warning system based on
seasonal climate forecasts and
building local capacity to use this
technology
• Workshops to train farmers,
identifying management
responses
• Testing combinations of advisories,
training, delivery medium
• Assessing impact on decisions,
livelihoods
Risk management

20. 3 Making transitions happen

21. Developing & promoting
agricultural technologies
 Urgency of developing/disseminating technologies
embodying adaptation/mitigation while supporting ag.
transitions for food security
 Greater emphasis on innovation an evolutionary-like
process driven by ‘learning selection’ analogous to ‘natural
selection’ (Douthwaite, 2002)
 Changes to how we assess best options

22. Building networks of innovation:
Disseminating & selecting seeds of crops & varieties
adapted to climate change
• Seed supply of adapted
crops/cultivars
• Farmer testing of sweetpotato and taro
varieties as part of Bioversity Seed4Needs
crowdsourcing crop improvement for
adaptation

23. Assessing best options for agricultural intensification:
adaptation is an essential element
adaptation benefits key to determining “best options”

24. Strengthening local institutions: e.g. how to
improve the enabling environment?
• Local institutions (formal & informal) are “enablers”
• Three main areas where CC affects what we need to see
from local institutions for enabling environments
• Information dissemination (CC destroys info)
• Risk management (CC increases risks)
• Collective action (CC changes scale; intensifies need)

25. Information dissemination: priority actions
• Seasonal forecasts: Extended coverage, better “translation,
and prompt linking of seasonal forecast info to key outlets
(youth, extension, women’s groups, etc.)
• Extension: More attention/financing/innovation in extension
role in information dissemination to support ag.technology and
use of ICT
• Crowd sourcing to improve data sources
(e.g. IIASA global cropland map)
• Enhancing farmer to farmer information
flows particularly in context of adaptation (e.g. varietal
adaptation; indigenous practices)

26. Collective action
Collective action underpins:
• Information dissemination
• Risk management
• Managing pooled resources (agro-forestry, changes in landscape level
work)
• Spreading innovations (social capital important determinant of
production and marketing decisions)
• Accessing financing (high transactions costs barrier to entry)
Priority actions:
 Identifying how cc changes type and scale collective actions needed
 Broader understanding of multiple roles (risk mgmt, info sharing,
access to resources) local institutions currently play
 Explicit integration of collective action needs in agricultural transition
planning

27. Coordinated and informed policies
• Policies that integrate CC and Ag for FS needed to achieve
coordinated & effective actions
• Contradictions between policy “silos” a problem
• Promoting dialogue and national integrated strategies between
CC, Ag and FS policy-makers needed
• Tools for integrated planning useful to underpin needed
dialogues (e.g. integrated land use planning, landscape)
• Clarity/direction from policy-makers on key directions for change
also needed (e.g. food self-sufficiency vs. trade, future of
smallholders, rate/nature of urbanization/commercialization)

28. Participatory scenario building: a means of
facilitating dialogue between policy and research
Scenarios: what can happen Visioning: what should happen
Uncertain
future
Create
shared
vision for
regional
Future (3)
Different
perspectives:
different types of
knowledge,
experience
Scenarios
capture
alternative
Futures (1)
Improve
scenarios’
usefulness
through
Different
perspectives:
different
needs,
aspirations
Use
scenarios to
explore
pathways to
Feasible
vision,
robust
policies and
quantification
and media (2)
Improve scenarios
based on use (5)
vision under strategies (4)
uncertainty
(4)
Dissemination of
scenarios, visions,
strategies to key users
(6)
Figure 2. CCAFS scenarios strategy.

29. National Scenarios
Provincial Scenarios
Farmer/village
perspectives
Action research
Participatory
scenario building
National visioning
activities
National impacts
modelling
Provincial
impacts modelling
Household &
community
impacts modelling
Assessing different options at different levels
Robustness, iteration

30. Increased access to financing
• Overall investment resources for agriculture insufficient
• Need for not just more, but better targeting and delivery
mechanisms are needed
• CC increases imperative of increased short run financing to
achieve long term savings
• Access to emerging sources of CC finance clearly important
part of the solution
• Need for responses to best link to agricultural transitions for
food security

31. 4 How to monitor and evaluate?

32. Increasing the outcome orientation of research …
NARI Strategic Objective
Enhanced productivity, efficiency,
stability and sustainability of the
smallholder agricultural sector
Outcomes from NARI projects
• Contribute to the eradication of hunger,
food insecurity and malnutrition
• Increase and improve provision of goods
and services from agriculture, forestry and
fisheries in a sustainable manner
• Reduce rural poverty
• Enable more inclusive and efficient
agricultural and food systems at local,
national and regional levels
• Increase the resilience of livelihoods to
threats and crises
PNG Vision 2050
System-Level Outcomes
• Reduce rural poverty
• Increase food security
• Improve nutrition and
health
• Ensure more sustainable
management of natural
resources

33. Outcome indicators: how does CC coping strategies
are benefitting (what we’d like to see?)
Changes in short-term food insecurity in the wake of climate shocks
 Do we have robust and efficient ways of identifying food-insecure people and
their targetable characteristics, particularly in the light of increased variability?
FAO (2012)
Food security relative to the poverty threshold

34. 5 Conclusions: Priority areas

35. How can CTA & NARI effectively contribute to the
agenda?
1 Enhanced understanding of how climate change may affect
agriculture (Key input to nat./reg./global climate/food security models)
• Impacts on key staples and other crops and natural resources
• Interactions of changes in temperature, rainfall, atmospheric CO2 , SOC
• Changes in incidence, intensity, spatial distribution of weeds, pests,
diseases
• Impacts on households of climate variability changes vis-à-vis changes in
long-term means
• Impact on agricultural technology/intensification patterns
 Links to Global Change Community: climate, sustainability sciences

36. 2 Evaluating options
• Understanding the role of assets (physical, human, social) and
collective action in managing climate risks, adaptation and mitigation
• Assessing mitigation practices in different situations and impacts on
resource use and commodity supply
• Standardizing/simplifying Measuring/Reporting/Verification (MRV)
and carbon foot printing methodologies for mitigation projects
• Tools/frameworks/data that allow evaluation with respect to multiple
objectives, multiple temporal and spatial scales
How can NARI and CTA effectively contribute to the
agenda?

37. 3 Promoting innovation and linking knowledge with action
• Tools/analysis to identify, foster and effectively scale up successful
innovation: social, institutional, technological
• Extend social learning approaches critically relevant to achieving
development goals: building on existing efforts and assessing results to
build a commonly accessible evidence base
• Develop capacity and use of multi-stakeholder scenario processes
• explore key socio-economic uncertainties
• develop storylines of plausible futures
• quantitatively model these alternative development pathways
 a linked science-policy interface
 inputs to global climate/food security models.
How can NARI and CTA effectively contribute to the
agenda?

39. Work together to combat food insecurity and
malnutrition
Thank You