Climate Change Adaptation and Food Security in China

Following a conference on 12 September 2012 hosted by the National Natural Science Foundation of China (NSFC) to celebrate China’s ten-year anniversary of IIASA membership, collaborating scientists from China and IIASA met in Shanghai on 16-18 September to discuss results and policy conclusions of a three-year NSFC - IIASA Joint Major Research Project on “Assessing the Impacts of Climate Change and Intensive Human Activities on China’s Agro-Ecosystems and its Supply Potentials”. The project adopted a multi-disciplinary and multi-scale research approach to (i) characterize the interactions between climate change, agro-ecology and socio-economic driving forces in shaping future development challenges and opportunities of China’s agriculture; and (ii) develop and assess adaptation policy options under climate change for agro-resources management and human resource development in rural China. Outputs from the project include 19 publications in peer-reviewed academic journals and 7 policy briefs, which were well received by Chinese institutions including the State Council, the Shanghai Municipal Government and the China Meteorological Administration.    

Major scientific achievements of the collaborative research so far include:    

• Cross-scale model coupling between the farm level process-based Decision Support System for Agro-technology Transfer (DSSAT)and the regional level agro-ecosystem AEZ model for China has been developed and successfully implemented including the cross-scale validation of the two model systems by coupling and exchanging common parameters. Examples include (i) additional rice cultivars and agronomic information generated by DSSAT simulations being introduced into AEZ modeling for refining AEZ suitability and potential yield calculations, and (ii) applying optimal crop calendars generated by AEZ simulations to DSSAT modeling for enhancing the spatial up-scaling performance of DSSAT.
• An analysis of the emerging multi-cropping opportunities under climate change. The existing literature, dealing with single crops only, suggests that without the mechanism of CO₂fertilization climate-induced yield reductions for China are 4-14% for rice, 2-20% for wheat and 0-23% for maize by the 2050s, indicating adverse implications for China’s food security. However, these assessments neglect the emerging multi-cropping opportunities in north China induced by global warming. The NSFC – IIASA collaboration project uses computer simulations to reveal the geographic shifts of China’s agro-climatic resource potential and demonstrates that a significant northward extension of double- and triple-cropping areas will provide great opportunities for crop rotation based adaptation and will likely increase future food production potentials.
• For realizing the benefits of improved multi-cropping conditions the irrigation water use will have to increase as well. The study assesses changes in irrigation water requirements and supply under climate change for 9 major river basins of China and shows that the total irrigation water demand will increase from the baseline climate conditions of 1961-1990 to the projected conditions in the 2020s and 2050s, depending on climate change scenario, by 5-15% and 10-30%, respectively. Targets set for south-north water diversion and irrigation water-use efficiency improvements will be sufficient to meet projected irrigation water demand in the water-scarce Huai River and Yellow River Basins, while coping with irrigation water shortage in the Hai River Basin will call for additional measures and innovative solutions.

Last edited: 07 November 2012