Abstract
In recent years it has become clear that climate change is an inevitable process. In Sub-Saharan Africa, the expectation is that climate change will have an especially negative impact, not only a result of projected warming and rainfall deficits, but also because of the vulnerability of the population. The impact upon food security will be of great significance, and may be defined as being composed of three components: availability, access, and utilization. To further investigate the link, a systematic literature review was done of the peer-reviewed literature related to climate change and food security, employing the realist review method. Analysis of the literature found consistent predictions of decreased crop productivity, land degradation, high market prices, negative impacts on livelihoods, and increased malnutrition. Adaptation strategies were heavily discussed as a means of mitigating a situation of severe food insecurity across the entire region. This is linked to issues of development, whereby adaptation is essential to counteract the negative impacts and improve the potential of the population to undergo development processes. Findings additionally revealed a gap in the literature about how nutrition will be affected, which is of importance given the links between poor nutrition and lack of productivity.
Highlights
Africa is commonly identified as a region highly vulnerable to climate change, south of the Sahara [1,2]
Availability was the primary focus of food security research, typically in relation to expectations of decreased crop productivity and land degradation [3,4,5,6,7,8,11,20,21,22,23,24,25]
Utilization received limited attention in the literature, and was only noted indirectly with respect to malnutrition [6,20,23]; this is consistent with climate change and food security research in other regions [12]
Summary
Africa is commonly identified as a region highly vulnerable to climate change, south of the Sahara [1,2]. This is based on the social, economic, and political constraints that determine the capacity of human systems to cope with external stressors such as climate change [3], and the existing burden of climate-related hazards, including high prevalence of food insecurity [4,5]. East Africa is likely to see an increase in annual mean rainfall, whereas projections are uncertain for the Sahel, Guinean Coast, and southern Sahara. Across Sub-Saharan Africa, it is expected that when rain does fall, it will occur increasingly in high intensity, sporadic rain events [2]
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