Prairie Climate ResilienceA policy study of climate change vulnerability and adaptation on the

Canadian prairies

Henry David Venema, Director

Sustainable Natural Resources Management, IISD

Winnipeg, Manitoba, Canada

with

Harvey Hill, PFRA-AAFC

Fikret Berkes, University of Manitoba

Darren Swanson, IISD

With funding from NRCan’s Climate Change Action Fund

“Outstanding” Global Environmental Problem

Millennium Ecosystem Assessment (2005)

“The intense vulnerability of the 2 billion people living in dryland agricultural regions to the loss of ecosystem services, including water supply; and the growing threatto ecosystems from climate change and nutrient pollution.”

Nitrogen Flows

Global Temperature past/projected

Hypothesis and Agenda

Review climatologic, hydrologic and socio-economic stresses afflicting Prairie agriculture in Canada, and observe:

Prairie agriculture is not sustainable or resilient and is in need of the major policy innovations similar to those implemented during depression /dust-bowl in 1930s.

Prairie Farm Rehabilitation Administration and Canadian Wheat Board

Our objectives are to propose these policy innovations based on a current study - some details of which I’ll share.

Conclude with some comments on food security internationally and locally and important policy innovations.

International Perceptions of Canada’s Agricultural

Vulnerabilities

The Canadian Prairies: At the Edge

“The Breadbasket of the World”

20% of the international wheat trade

Sources:

•Millennium Ecosystem Assessment, 2005

•IWMI, 2004

Climate Change: Projected Moisture Deficit 2050 (CGCM1)

Moisture Deficit 1961-1990

Are the Canadian Prairies Resilient?

Drought: A long history of bad experience

–1906; –1936-38 (quarter million people displaced); –1961; –1976-77; –1980; –1984-85; –1988; –2001-2003 (“the worst ever?” $3.6 B Ag /$5.8 B GDP/ 41 000 jobs lost

Are the Canadian Prairies Resilient?

2005 Flooding “unprecedented”

–Alberta and Manitoba primarily affected–Final impacts on 2005 harvest not known–Preliminary estimates for Manitoba: – $700 M Ag loss/ > $ 1B GDP loss projected.

Are the Canadian Prairies Resilient?

Nutrients and Aquatic Ecosystems

Are the Canadian Prairies Resilient? Farm Income

“an indisputable fact is that at the national level, farm incomes have been decreasing in real terms, whether measured since 1970, 1960, or 1950, and whether measured as net cash income, or as net realized income after accounting for depreciation of assets.”

(Canadian Agri-food Policy Institute, 2005)

•Transportation subsidy lost (Crow rate)

•Commodity/input prices

•Floods/drought

•BSE

Capacity to adapt to change

Social-ecologicalsystem

Change/Stress/Shock

Sustainability“Resilience”

Memory, institutions

Innovation,learning

This is what we (think we can) measure

These are the policy dynamics

we’re trying to understand and

influence

A Resilience Theory Framework [Berkes et al,2003]

Climate Variability (a surrogate for

“Change/Stress/Shock”)Growing Season Precipitation Coefficient of Variation

Estimating Adaptive Capacity (after Smit et al, 2001)

DeterminantsEconomic resources

Technology

Information and skills

Infrastructure

Institutions

Equity

Adaptive Capacity

Climate Exposure

‘hotspot’ regionsfor Resilience Analysis based on narratives from

farmers and agricultural organizations

Site Selection for Resilience Analysis

Initial Findings

Early validation of the research framework; differentiation of coping strategies evident as a function of relative exposure to climate variabilityMajor structural issues with the existing agricultural support programs that deter adaptation

Comments on Food Security:

Poor and erratic yields on the prairies in recent years from climate stresses have had no discernible influence on commodity prices - remain low. Can we infer that the climate vulnerability of “the breadbasket of the world” will not impact global food security - commits the error of equating low commodity prices with absence of hunger.A more proximate form of food insecurity: “Agricultural operations in the prairies are in crisis mode… a combination of disasters including but not limited to dropping commodity prices, increasing input prices, misaligned crop insurance policies, and extreme climate events has decreased household income to $6700/year (2002-04)” source: KAP/APAS/WRAP

Voices from the farm: Manitoba 2005

"They say I've expanded, I've diversified, I've done everything I possibly can -- and I still can't make it," "All through my youth we had our bad years and the good years but there was always a light at the end of the tunnel -- things will get better. I don't see that light anymore," "I don't know of any products that we can raise in Western Canada that they can't raise just as well somewhere else in the world," he said. "We've got to be producing what is wanted by the world because it doesn't want our current production," there's little argument that farming has been in a perpetual state of crisis for decades because of one reason or another. Apparently, the type of farming we do here has a weak immune system; it catches a cold every time the environment changes.Some have suggested farmers have more value to society as park wardens or environmental stewards than food producers. . …sees high oil prices and Kyoto accord as potential allies, "If I can grow nothing but energy on my farm, I will be very happy indeed. If we reforest Western Canada, you won't see me crying, you'll see me learning about lumber."

Towards Prairie Resilience: Learning from the Millenium

Ecosystem AssessmentAgricultural Watershed Governance Decades long, expensive and decentralized process (analogs: Rural Electrification, Rural Telecoms) - needs stable funding through inter, and intra-sectoral transfers

Require much research on economic instruments and federal co-funding thereof / federal leadership on interprovincial watersheds

Ecological Goods and Services (focus: Kyoto/bioenergy/Organics/SWC/ ) Organic Transition Programs

- Supports higher farm income; - lower input costs (energy!); SWC, carbon sequestration- (Mitigation / Adaptation Nexus of Climate Policy)- greater flexibility and support from the CWB/MCIC positive

Kyoto Compliance- Canada has a large liability, design of our domestic offset program is still incomplete; big unrealized potential for riparian/green cover EGS

- federal leadership on bioenergy procurement.