Climate variability and the Millennium Development Goal hunger target

Climate variability contributes significantly to poverty and food insecurity. Proactive approaches to managing climate variability within vulnerable rural communities and among institutions operating at community, sub-national, and national levels is a crucial step toward achieving the Millennium Development Goal of eradicating extreme poverty and hunger. The impacts of climate variability are both ex post (losses that follow a climate shock) and ex ante (opportunity costs of conservative risk management responses to climatic uncertainty).

This report summarises the scientific basis, current methodology, and prospects for improving climate prediction at a seasonal time scale. Current forecast methods give modest to moderately high prediction skill in “hunger hotspots” in East, West and Southern Africa, and other regions in the tropics and subtropics.

The report then describes in detail three key elements of a comprehensive climate risk management strategy to combat hunger:

• enhancing the use of seasonal climate prediction in early warning systems to guide interventions to avert food crises
• fostering appropriate use of climate information to manage risk in agricultural systems within vulnerable rural communities and among a range of institutions. This includes smallholder farmers who comprise the largest group of poor and food-insecure; intermediary institutions that interface with farmers, and can provide the information, technical guidance and production inputs required for effective climate risk management; and institutions that make climate-sensitive decisions at a broader scale that influence food security
• strengthening institutional capacity and coordination to improve generation, communication and application of appropriate climate information to improve management of climate variability. This has appealing synergies with other interventions that target hunger, including soil fertility management, small-scale water management, markets, and extension and communication systems