Addressing Adaptation to Support Disaster Risk Reduction: A Framework for Supply Chain Inclusive Adaptation to Climate Change

Abstract

Global climate change (GCC) presents serious challenges to agricultural systems as they strive to meet increasing demand over the coming decades. Within these systems, food value chains are increasingly recognised as being vital for development, yet relatively little is known about the vulnerability of such chains to GCC, or their capacity to adapt. This paper provides a framework to examine how food value chains are affected by the uncertain impacts posed by GCC and what this implies for adaptation. While intervention models mostly deal with measures for producers, the authors hypothesise that adaptation strategies must include the entire chain to achieve the scale needed to tackle GCC. The authors propose that comprehensive situation assessment is necessary to examine both behaviour and assets—two key attributes for adaptive capacities. This framework examines three sets of attributes: (1) The general setup and nature of the supply chain; (2) rural livelihoods’ and food supply systems’ vulnerability to GCC, including downscaled crop suitability modelling to assess precise impacts of GCC, and (3) the behaviour of people and entities involved in value creation and the institutions mediating them. The framework provides decision-makers with a scale, crop and site independent road map to design and evaluate adaptation strategies to changing climate conditions. The authors test the framework in three case studies with differing supply chain characteristics and geographical contexts.