Abstract

Climate-induced food production shocks, like droughts, can cause food shortages and price spikes, leading to food insecurity. In 2007, a synchronous crop failure in Lesotho and South Africa—Lesotho’s sole trading partner—led to a period of severe food insecurity in Lesotho. Here, we use extreme event attribution to assess the role of climate change in exacerbating this drought, going on to evaluate sensitivity of synchronous crop failures to climate change and its implications for food security in Lesotho. Climate change was found to be a critical driver that led to the 2007 crisis in Lesotho, aggravating an ongoing decline in food production in the country. We show how a fragile agricultural system in combination with a large trade-dependency on a climatically connected trading partner can lead to a nonlinear response to climate change, which is essential information for building a climate-resilient food-supply system now and in the future.

Details

Title
Climate change as a driver of food insecurity in the 2007 Lesotho-South Africa drought
Author
Verschuur Jasper 1 ; Li Sihan 2 ; Wolski Piotr 3 ; Otto Friederike E L 1 

 University of Oxford, Environmental Change Institute, Oxford, UK (GRID:grid.4991.5) (ISNI:0000 0004 1936 8948) 
 University of Oxford, Environmental Change Institute, Oxford, UK (GRID:grid.4991.5) (ISNI:0000 0004 1936 8948); University of Oxford, Oxford E-Research Centre, Department of Engineering Science, Oxford, UK (GRID:grid.4991.5) (ISNI:0000 0004 1936 8948) 
 University of Cape Town, Climate System Analysis Group, Cape Town, South Africa (GRID:grid.7836.a) (ISNI:0000 0004 1937 1151) 
Publication year
2021
Publication date
2021
Publisher
Nature Publishing Group
e-ISSN
20452322
Source type
Scholarly Journal
Language of publication
English
ProQuest document ID
2489905712
Copyright
© The Author(s) 2021. This work is published under http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/ (the “License”). Notwithstanding the ProQuest Terms and Conditions, you may use this content in accordance with the terms of the License.