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Climate Change and Global Food Security

A special issue of Sustainability (ISSN 2071-1050). This special issue belongs to the section "Sustainability in Geographic Science".

Deadline for manuscript submissions: closed (30 November 2020) | Viewed by 18540

Special Issue Editor


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Guest Editor
School of Social Sciences and the Asian School of the Environment, Nanyang Technological University, Singapore 639798, Singapore
Interests: environmental sociology; international development; food and global aquaculture
Special Issues, Collections and Topics in MDPI journals

Special Issue Information

Dear Colleagues,

This Special Issue invites papers that evaluate the complex nexus between climate change and food security in Asia and beyond. Feeding the planet puts a lot of stress on the environment. Farming already takes more than 40% of the dryland and half the world’s available freshwater. We may need to raise productivity by 70% by 2050. The simplest way to grow more food is to use more land, but it would come with a major environmental cost. Climate change, on the other hand, is putting a lot of strain on food productivity. Thus, the fundamental challenges we are facing today include how to grow more from less in a sustainable manner and how to optimize the entire food value chain from field to fork to reduce the carbon footprint, protect the environment, and support biological diversity, cause less water pollution and soil erosion, raise levels of nutrition, improve agricultural productivity, better the lives of rural populations, and contribute to the growth of the world economy. The global food system, on the other hand, also exacerbates the issue of climate change.

We are inviting theoretical, empirical, and review papers focusing on any region/country of the world that examine, among other things, the diverse initiatives on, the current state of, future prospects for, and mitigations and resilience with regard to climate change and food security. Topics include:

  • Complex nexus between food security and climate change;
  • Urban food security in the age of environmental vulnerability;
  • Impacts of climate change on agri/aquaculture;
  • Global food system and its impacts on climate change;
  • Food production and carbon footprints;
  • Commodity chain analysis on food and climate change;
  • Towards a carbon-neutral food system.

Dr. Md Saidul Islam
Guest Editor

Manuscript Submission Information

Manuscripts should be submitted online at www.mdpi.com by registering and logging in to this website. Once you are registered, click here to go to the submission form. Manuscripts can be submitted until the deadline. All submissions that pass pre-check are peer-reviewed. Accepted papers will be published continuously in the journal (as soon as accepted) and will be listed together on the special issue website. Research articles, review articles as well as short communications are invited. For planned papers, a title and short abstract (about 100 words) can be sent to the Editorial Office for announcement on this website.

Submitted manuscripts should not have been published previously, nor be under consideration for publication elsewhere (except conference proceedings papers). All manuscripts are thoroughly refereed through a single-blind peer-review process. A guide for authors and other relevant information for submission of manuscripts is available on the Instructions for Authors page. Sustainability is an international peer-reviewed open access semimonthly journal published by MDPI.

Please visit the Instructions for Authors page before submitting a manuscript. The Article Processing Charge (APC) for publication in this open access journal is 2400 CHF (Swiss Francs). Submitted papers should be well formatted and use good English. Authors may use MDPI's English editing service prior to publication or during author revisions.

Keywords

  • Food security
  • Climate change
  • Carbon footprint
  • Global agrifood system
  • Industrial aquaculture
  • Urban food security
  • Global food commodity chain

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Published Papers (3 papers)

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Research

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21 pages, 844 KiB  
Article
Resilience to Climate Change in Industrial Shrimping in Bangladesh: Assessing the Comparative Role of the Stakeholders
by Shaikh Mohammad Kais and Md Saidul Islam
Sustainability 2021, 13(1), 307; https://doi.org/10.3390/su13010307 - 31 Dec 2020
Cited by 8 | Viewed by 3418
Abstract
Over the last few decades, the global shrimp aquaculture industry has grown considerably and experienced important transformations in coastal regions in the Global South. However, despite being a major contributor to GDP and export earnings of the country, the shrimp industry in Bangladesh [...] Read more.
Over the last few decades, the global shrimp aquaculture industry has grown considerably and experienced important transformations in coastal regions in the Global South. However, despite being a major contributor to GDP and export earnings of the country, the shrimp industry in Bangladesh is not yet fully developed. This important sector is often plagued by numerous environmental challenges including frequent climate disasters. To address local climate perturbations, the shrimping industry undertakes a wide range of individual, communal, and institutional level resilience activities. Drawing on primary data collected through ethnography and qualitative interviews in three shrimping communities, this paper examines the nature, effects, and efficacy of resilience strategies adopted by various stakeholders in the shrimp industry in coastal Bangladesh. This research demonstrates that there is a clearly visible resilience gradient in the shrimp aquaculture industry in Bangladesh: individual shrimp farmers and households play a pivotal role in resilience enhancement, while other stakeholders including community, state, and civil society organizations have moderate-to-little involvement in aiding resilience in the sector. The study offers a series of recommendations for resilience to climate change. Full article
(This article belongs to the Special Issue Climate Change and Global Food Security)
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18 pages, 4020 KiB  
Article
The Global Potential Distribution of Invasive Plants: Anredera cordifolia under Climate Change and Human Activity Based on Random Forest Models
by Xuhui Zhang, Haiyan Wei, Zefang Zhao, Jing Liu, Quanzhong Zhang, Xiaoyan Zhang and Wei Gu
Sustainability 2020, 12(4), 1491; https://doi.org/10.3390/su12041491 - 17 Feb 2020
Cited by 28 | Viewed by 4050
Abstract
The potential distribution of the invasive plant Anredera cordifolia (Tenore) Steenis was predicted by Random Forest models under current and future climate-change pathways (i.e., RCP4.5 and RCP8.5 of 2050s and the 2070s). Pearson correlations were used to select variables; the prediction accuracy of [...] Read more.
The potential distribution of the invasive plant Anredera cordifolia (Tenore) Steenis was predicted by Random Forest models under current and future climate-change pathways (i.e., RCP4.5 and RCP8.5 of 2050s and the 2070s). Pearson correlations were used to select variables; the prediction accuracy of the models was evaluated by using AUC, Kappa, and TSS. The results show that suitable future distribution areas are mainly in Southeast Asia, Eastern Oceania, a few parts of Eastern Africa, Southern North America, and Eastern South America. Temperature is the key climatic factor affecting the distribution of A. cordifolia. Important metrics include mean temperature of the coldest quarter (0.3 °C ≤ Bio11 ≤ 22.9 °C), max temperature of the warmest month (17.1 °C ≤ Bio5 ≤ 35.5 °C), temperature annual range (10.7 °C ≤ Bio7 ≤ 33 °C), annual mean air temperature (6.8 °C ≤ Bio1 ≤ 24.4 °C), and min temperature of coldest month (−2.8 °C ≤ Bio6 ≤ 17.2 °C). Only one precipitation index (Bio19) was important, precipitation of coldest quarter (7 mm ≤ Bio19 ≤ 631 mm). In addition, areas with strong human activities are most prone to invasion. This species is native to Brazil, but has been introduced in Asia, where it is widely planted and has escaped from cultivation. Under the future climate scenarios, suitable habitat areas of A. cordifolia will expand to higher latitudes. This study can provide a reference for the rational management and control of A. cordifolia. Full article
(This article belongs to the Special Issue Climate Change and Global Food Security)
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Review

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21 pages, 1511 KiB  
Review
Tackling Regional Climate Change Impacts and Food Security Issues: A Critical Analysis across ASEAN, PIF, and SAARC
by Md Saidul Islam and Edson Kieu
Sustainability 2020, 12(3), 883; https://doi.org/10.3390/su12030883 - 24 Jan 2020
Cited by 45 | Viewed by 9333
Abstract
Climate change and food security issues are multi-faceted and transcend across national boundaries. Therefore, this paper begins with the premise that regional organizations are optimally positioned to address climate change and food security issues while actively engaging global partners to slow down or [...] Read more.
Climate change and food security issues are multi-faceted and transcend across national boundaries. Therefore, this paper begins with the premise that regional organizations are optimally positioned to address climate change and food security issues while actively engaging global partners to slow down or reverse current trajectories. However, the potential of regional organizations to play a central role in mitigating these vital concerns has not been realized. In this paper, we focus on three regional organizations—the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN), the Pacific Islands Forum (PIF), and the South Asian Association for Regional Cooperation (SAARC) and set out to investigate the multifaceted obstacles that impede regional organizations’ ability to effectively cope with these problems. We qualitatively review the efficacy of policies and examine the connections between politico-economic processes that affect the development, cooperation, and execution of regional policies. In doing so, we review regional policies using five key criteria: (i) planning, (ii) implementation, (iii) cooperation, (iv) legal obligation and (v) international contribution. Our findings suggest that regional organizations face fundamental problems in the implementation of extensive policies due to the lack of cooperation and legal obligation between member nation-states that stems from fundamental prioritization of national development agendas over regional cooperation. Full article
(This article belongs to the Special Issue Climate Change and Global Food Security)
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