Food Security in Africa
The Water Program is conducting a major research project aimed at quantifying the current agricultural yield gap on the African continent using the newest release (v. 4.0) of the Global Agro-Ecological Zones (GAEZ) model developed by IIASA and the Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) of the UN. It is also inking this study to the Shared Socioeconomic Pathways (SSPs), the socioeconomic scenarios developed at IIASA for the 5th Assessment Report of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) released in 2014.
The study will also include quantitative and qualitative evaluation of how land-, water-, and fertilization use influences food production in Africa and look at innovative ways of overcoming the various challenges involved in land use and land use change in Africa, such as water scarcity, deforestation, and greenhouse gas emissions from the overuse of nitrates.
Project partner
Key Laboratory of Earth Surface Processes and Resource Ecology, College of Global Change and Earth System Science State, Beijing Normal University, Beijing, China
