Combating food insecurity in a rapidly changing mountain climate environment: insights from Lesotho
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Combating food insecurity in a rapidly changing mountain climate environment: insights from Lesotho G. Mukwada 1,2,3
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& S. J. Taylor & D. Manatsa
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& P. Mahasa & G. Robinson
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Received: 23 November 2019 / Accepted: 29 October 2020 / Published online: 20 November 2020 # Springer Nature B.V. 2020
Abstract
This paper assesses the options that developing countries have in ensuring food security in an environment where key climate parameters are changing rapidly. Based on a case study of Lesotho, the paper utilizes the Global Climate Model ensemble to determine future precipitation and temperature projections using data from Climate Explorer. The results indicate that in Lesotho, maximum temperature is likely to continue to increase. Coupled with a significant increase in precipitation under both Representative Concentration Pathway (RCP) 4.5 (p = 0.0008) and RCP 8.5 (p = 0.0001) scenarios and a significant increase of evaporation under the two scenarios for RCP 4.5 (p = 0.0008) and RCP 8.5 (p = 0.0103), the country’s preparedness for hazards arising from climate change is rendered uncertain. Despite this reality, we suggest that uncertainty could be reduced by reinforcing existing innovative measures that could improve the productive capacity of subsistence farmers, so that they meet their own food requirements, while preventing further environmental deterioration. While some measures will be based on the intensification of government-led social support mechanisms, others will depend on the support rendered to “tried and tested” traditional practices such as machobane and fato-fato, which have a long tradition in the country. However, on their own, these measures are insufficient to cope with rapidly changing climatic conditions, unless they are coupled with national research development initiatives, improved early warning systems, and enhancement of environmental monitoring capabilities, the implementation of which requires careful land use planning. Keywords Climate change . Early warning systems . Fato-fato . Food security . Land use planning . Lesotho . Machobane . Social capital
* G. Mukwada [email protected] S. J. Taylor [email protected]; http://mri.scnatweb.ch/mri–africa Extended author information available on the last page of the article
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Climatic Change (2020) 163:989–1006
1 Introduction In 2015, three important international agreements were signed, namely the Paris Agreement on Climate Change, the Sendai Framework for Disaster Risk Reduction, and the United Nations Sustainable Development Goals (UNGA), 2015; UNFCCC, 2015; UNISDR, 2018) to pave the way for global action plans for climate change mitigation, sustainable development, and disaster risk reduction, respectively. These agreements were forged in the wake of several international summits on sustainable development, including the Rio Summit (1992), Johannesburg (Earth) Summit (2002) and Rio + 20 Summit (2012). Despite the noble efforts and the signing of the Paris Agreement at the Conference of Parties (COP) 21, whose principal
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