Climate change risks and adaptation: new indicators for Mediterranean viticulture

Abstract

The Mediterranean region, expanding across Southern Europe and North Africa, has developed agricultural systems over thousands of years and today is a major agricultural trade actor in the global market. At the same time, environmental and social equity differences in the region are pronounced, and this inequality is reflected in the production of traditional Mediterranean crops, such as grapevine (Vitis vinifera L.), a permanent wood crop, well adapted to the lack of water and recurrent drought in the region, and that has a role in the mitigation role of agriculture in arid environments. Increasing the ability to adapt to adverse impacts of climate change is an important task for Mediterranean agriculture. The indicators selected are widely used by practitioners in this grapevine production sector, linking science to the tools used by stakeholders and therefore encouraging action and innovation among all stakeholders. The novelty of the study is: the definition of adaptation needs based on a combination of indicators of production quantity and quality with a consistent set of climate scenarios; the evaluation of probabilistic changes with special emphasis on drought in a region that has very large climate variability; the definition of adaptation needs based on a consistent set of scenarios in an over 2 million km2; and the evaluation of potential adaptation choices that may contribute to real-time policy analysis and development as national and international policies and agreements in the grapevine production sector. The climate changes scenarios are derived from global datasets. Adaptation efforts are estimated proportionally to the change of the climatic indices and are categorized into low, medium, or high, as a function of the excepted changes in climatic indices. The study emphasizes that non-informed adaptation limits future choices in areas severely impacted.