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Bajaj, Kushank

University of British Columbia

The escalating frequency of global crises like extreme weather events, conflicts, pest outbreaks, and pandemics poses a significant challenge to food security. This challenge is exacerbated by the concentrated and interconnected nature of global food (supply) systems, an often overlooked factor in climate risk assessments focused primarily on domestic agricultural production. This PhD thesis aims to bridge this gap by employing both quantitative and descriptive analytical methods to examine the climate risks inherent in international food trade at both global and regional scales. After the initial chapter parlaying out the background, in Chapter 2, I focus on cereals, I first develop a simple, adaptable, and easily reproducible analytical approach to assess how climate impacts on the calorie supply of countries are attenuated or amplified by international food trade. I find a 3°C increase in global mean temperature over pre-industrial would lead to more attenuation of climate impacts in low-income countries than in high-income countries, primarily due to current food trade. The remainder of the thesis shifts focus to Canada, examining climate risks to essential but often overlooked food commodities like fruits and vegetables. First, I develop provincial-level food flows across Canada for 18 fruits and 16 vegetables from 2010 to 2022 using a mass balance approach. This includes mapping interprovincial flows within Canada, imports from the USA by state, and international flows. Using this novel data, along with food prices and climate, I then quantify the influence of weather shocks on fruit and vegetable prices, tracing how weather shocks across supplying regions impact wholesale prices in the Canadian cities. Employing Superposed Epoch Analysis, I find that the influence of weather shocks on prices varies by produce and weather shock type. Lastly, I examine the future extreme weather exposure of Canada’s fruit and vegetable supply using the latest climate simulations and food flow data. I identify the most vulnerable supplying regions for various produce and weather extremes, highlighting the significant transnational nature of these risks. In conclusion, this thesis emphasizes the importance of a systemic approach in formulating climate adaptation policies and programs to bolster food security.

Text

2024-05-27

Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International

http://hdl.handle.net/2429/88376

Resources, Environment and Sustainability

University of British Columbia

UBCV

http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/