The rationale behind my background

I didn't get a chance/forgot to explain how the background of my blog relates to the topic.

The painting is by Cy Twombly named 'Could Stream' 1966. The scribbling symbolizes disorder and at the same time it is arranged in specific way. This encompasses the idea that disorder is created by human (in this case Towmbly himself) and at the same time it can be managed and be stabilized. It is highlighted in the blog exploring potential areas of disorder, but at the same time exploring the solutions to stabilizing and preventing them from occurring. However, similar to the painting the world today looks ever more disorderly and unstable.

Summary

Coming into this topic few months back I was determined that the future looked bleak because of the lack of progress with the reduction in CO2, the unrest in Middle East and the world's general progress on climate change. I have say that looking through the different factors I explored in the blog it confirms my initial thoughts. A comprehensive review has been given to examine these factors. This blog has given summary of the different factors, which in most cases tends to be evidence for greater future societal disorder. At the same time, drawing from historical examples we get to see how our ancestor coped with the problems they faced.

The Mayans was an example of civilization thinking they had the technologies to cope with climate changes but in the end failed to do so and payed for their exploitation of nature. This is a lesson for the world and that we shouldn't overly relay on technologies as a method of mitigation. Climate related problems should be tackled at the onset. Indeed there are global targets that are in place to prevent climate change by curbing the levels of emissions, but the world is way too inefficient at working together and a new framework is needed.

However, there are many different ways to reduce the likeness of societal disorder. For example water and food insecurity could be tackled in many ways, but it mainly depends on the effectiveness of local institutions. Weak and corrupt institutions especially in the developed world reduces level of mitigation and increases vulnerability, as in the case of most African countries.

One thing to mention is that societal disorder doesn't mean societal collapse. Societal  disorder refers to factors that hinder the progress of societies. This blog has given physical and human factors that leads to that. The future looks bleak and given the lack of progress with climate related international/regional/national policy, coupled with ineffective government in developing countries, people are looking more vulnerable to climate induced disorder that ever before!

Migration and Climate Change

"Resilient people migrate to capture adaptation opportunity. Vulnerable people migrate to avoid climate crisis," wrote Koko Warner, head of the environmental migration section at the United Nations University Institute for Environment and Human Security (UNU-EHS). 

The above perfectly captures the problems that might arise in the future and it is important to understand the mechanism behind the theory of climate change led migration. The discourse are usually in two extremes; the alarmist and the skeptics. The wider media usually take the view of the alarmist since it makes a better story. 

Alarmist

The alarmist believes that the observed increased number of environmental hazard (few of the examples displayed in previous entries) have believed to have led to mass displacement (Hunter 2005) and these will be region concern. Myers (2002) had predicted that by the end of the century there will be 200 million environmental refugees. They believed that that "migration is not only a consequence of environmental degradation but represents a catastrophe in itself (Piguet 2013). It is likely that extreme events (as i have talked about like the hurricane examples) and mean temperature, rainfall, sea level changes will all contribute to increases in mobility for reasons I have explored previously. 

One reason that this has became a pressing issue is because of the prospect of million of climate refugees moves from the poor to rich nations. Could this happen?  A rather alarmist paper by Reuveny (2007) shows a list of 38 cases of environmental migration as evidence that support the alarmist argument. (please refer to page 664 for details). The analysis backs up the claims by the alarmist that LDCs are more vulnerable, and several environmental factors like land degradation, drought, deforestation, water scarcity, floods, storms and famines are all present in these cases with large degradation representing the largest share of incidences. More importantly, 19/38 showed intrastate migrations, 6 involved interstate migration and 13 cases involved both. Reuveny (2007)  presented a strong case and has given evidence that climate change induced migration will led to migration between international borders and in some instances contributes (not a singular cause) to conflicts.

Skeptics 

The skeptic believed that these alarmist are under-looking the role of governments. Firstly, the view that alarmist undermines Western Governments hostile attitude towards migrates. Secondly, skeptics are denying that the western countries would assist the victims of climate change. In essence, they believe the skeptics are focused on the mechanical flow between environmental risk and equating that to population risk and displacement, without taking into consideration of the societal factors like past experiences, local governmental and culture. In turn, simplifying the model of climate-migration and underscoring the complexity of socio-environmental factor.

Tacoli (2009) acknowledge that migration would happen but would not be in the hundreds of millions, implicated by alarmist. Tacoli (2009) also argues that traditionalist view of migration from poor to rich (trans-boundary migration) and rural to urban (within countries) have to be changed. He argues a better understanding of these socio-economic effect would help analysis how other elements would affect migration. In turn a more complex view is given and more research is needed.

Conclusion 

So after all the background view, what would happen in the future? would migration lead to the mass displacement has the alarmist had suggest? or would the skeptic be right? I have given a balance view and in turn you can decide which spectrum you believe it to be, but I believe that more research are needed within this sector because insufficient data means modelling would be less accurate. At the same time, both skeptics and alarmist noticed that migration will occur due to climate change. But the dispute comes within the numbers of migration, the scale and lastly the ability for governments to reduce vulnerability climate change and thus amount of migration  

Diseases and Climate change; who will be at risk

I came over this article  talking about how climate change would lead to Malaria becoming more common. Climate change will lead to warmer climate and since mosquito thrives better in those climate the are more likely to increase. This got be thinking about other diseases such as the Avian Influenza and Plague.Avian influenza was especially deadly in 2003 (H5N1) were it spread quickly throughout Asia which reached Europe in 2005. In January 2012 the second death due to H5N1 was recorded in China. Death was also confirmed in Canada.

Wu et al (2011) used econometric models to explore the impact of H5N1 due to future climate change. There result found that outbreak coincided with temperature, precipitation, and regional characteristics. Probability of of outbreak is also found to be higher when there was has been previous events. As in the case of Hong Kong which experience outbreak in 1998 and 2003. Elvander (2006) found that there close occurrence of these two events has might that the H5N1 virus was still circulating within the poultry population. Wu et al (2011) also looking backwards, the changes in rainfall and temperature in the past 20 years is the causes of increase outbreak in ALL countries. An estimation between 8% to 1160%. The form of disorder is not so much as mass infection and the associated economic damage! US is one of the largest producer and exporter of meat. An outbreak would lead to $29 million of economic losses. China also had multiple break since 2003 and this could lead to $106-$146 million because of climate change.

The other threat is the reemergence of Plague, and Ari et al (2011) looked at how the transmitting mechanism is affected by climate change in order to fully understand the future probability of outbreak. Research in Africa have shown that plague were less frequent where the weather was hot (greater 27 degree) and cold (less than 15 degree). The overall transmitting mechanism for a vector-borne diseases is complex to analyse. But climate change  will effect the dynamics of flea vectors and rodent host (fig 2). Rodents are affected by temperature, rainfall, humidity which largely determines flea survival. Moisture which is key for determining the number of fleas. If these changes, the number of diseases spreading vehicle will be affected, hence infection rate as well. Currently, modeling of plague have been done in individual places, but they all confirm that climate changes are associated with the occurrences of plague both in the local and regional scale. For example Stenseth et al (2006) showed that one degree rises in temperature in Kazakhstan would increase plague prevalence among gerbils. The research did not say how this would affect humans. But is important to know that human impact in the environment would Is important to note that component of all the plague cycles (host, vector and pathogen) are affected in different ways and the interaction between hose and vectors also contributes largely to the spread of the disease.

fig 2
Source Ari et al (2011)

A paper by Redshaw et al (2014) looks at the relationship between disease patterns and pharmaceutical uses in response to climate change. This paper looks at the emerging threat of new diseases in the Northern Hemisphere. Climate change is likely to lead to an increase in diseases like mental illness and cardiovascular disease. These are through emotional distresses from natural disasters of severe environmental degradation. They have also shown that climate change will lead to respiratory diseases like asthma and allergies becoming more server and in turn, leading to a increase the use of drugs. Growth in human and animal diarrhea disease will become more common. This will be transmitted through water-faecal contamination which will also lead to the use of antibiotics. Other diseases will become more promoent, like the liver and lung helminths. And to treat these it requires medications for parasitic diseases and will experience an increase in these types of medicine too.

Cordovez et al (2014) explored the impact of climate change and its effect in the risk of Chagas disease transmission in Colombia. They uses basic reproduction numbers in their modeling to explore these changes induced by climate change. They result is interesting and different from the above two for two reasons. Firstly, they found increases in temperature due to climate would decrease the reproduction rate and thus, lowering the chances of mass outbreak. The eastern part of Colombia will see a reduce in R. At the same time, they highlighted the significance of movement of urban settlements. They explored that changes in human settlement is a better method of tracking the geographic location of infection risk. Since these urban centers have the environmental characteristics that sustain higher chance of reproduction. For example, one way of being infected is through insects (who carries the diseases) invade houses to feed on human. This example shows that climate changes doesnt necessarily work in favor of higher infection rates and thus societal disorder through economic and social burden for governments and individuals.

I have shown how increase in certain types of disease will become more common. The emergence of plague and the spreading of Avian influenza (eg H5N1) are looking to affect both humans, but more importantly the economic effect would be large as well. Climate change will also lead to a higher burden in Norther Hemisphere's government since common illnesses will become more server and the emergence of other diseases will also have an affect on society. This is an area where societal disorder will be largely causes by the related economic losses and burden. Unlike the bubonic plague in the 1300s, medical advances are likely to prevent large numbers of death.

General vulnerability of Africa

In 2010 Niger experienced a coup where they displaced the government, largely in the support of its people (Guardian 2010, Aljazeera 2010). At the same time, this military government had to tackle problems extending from floods and terrorist activities in their uranium mining region (BBC 2010, Guardian 2010). Additionally, South Sudan is currently in dangers of civil war breakout. According to AFP news (Youtube link 1) and CNN news (Youtube link 2) it has been linked to poor governance. I will use Busby et al (2013) research to extend my discussion on food security and go more in-depth into the general vulnerability of African nations to climate change.  

Component of their model

Source Busby et al (2013)

Busby et al (2013) research looks exactly at this interaction between governance, household resilience, climatic vulnerability, population density and their interaction with vulnerability (fig 1). It is measured in terms of relativity to other African nations. That means nations that are shown as not vulnerable in fig 2, could still be vulnerable compared to other nations outside of the continent   

Last entry, I emphasised one of the ‘threat multiplier’ that is food insecurity. Busby et al (2013)research looks into a range of these threat multiplier caused by climate change-drought, floods, storms-such as dislocation, migration, and competition over scarce resources. In turn these act as threat multiplier that could lead to interstate or/and civil war (CAN 2007). However, their method only uses historic data for all the factors seen in fig 1 and doesn’t take into account future projections.  

source Busby et al (2013)

Results

A number of interesting patterns were from fig 2. Areas that have the highest composite vulnerability appears in DRC, Guinea, Sierra Leone, Somalia and South Sudan. More interestingly, Busby et al (2013) used their method to find the causes of vulnerability for the above countries.

·        Common to DRC and Somalia is the fact that vulnerability largely driven by low household resilience and poor governance. Additionally, DRC is also exposed to droughts in the north and wide fire in the South. 

·        In West African countries, Guinea and Sierra Leone, their vulnerability is large driven by climatic security concerns. More than 6% of Guinea’s area is located in the most vulnerable score, while more than 10% of Sierra Leone’s population live in extreme vulnerability. The cause of vulnerability was found to be high population density and low household resilience.

·        In Somalia, although climatic vulnerability is moderate, vulnerability is found to be exasperated by low household resilience and “terrible governance”, which represented 30% of the overall vulnerability score.

·        For South Sudan, their result showed that governance and physical exposure is the main driver of Sudan’s vulnerability. 

Figure 3 is a composite of 4 different maps that has the weighting of the 4 variable discussed changed (from equal weighting to 40% and 20% for the other three variables).  It shows although the weighting was changed, the above listed countries are still deemed the most vulnerable in Africa and with a few others like Ethiopia and Niger etc.

source Busby et al (2013)

More importantly, this piece of research gives a lot of insight into how policy maker could target specific areas of needs so that it could be targeted to reduce vulnerability in the future. This research represents a worrying future. Those who are exposed most to the climate changes in North Africa are less vulnerable when governance and resilience is taken into account. On the other hand, the above four countries although have less physical exposure have higher vulnerabilities when governance and resilience is taken into account.

 

Source Transparency international 

Since future projections isn’t taken into account we should also ask ourselves what kind of other factors could lead to the worsening of governance and household resilience in the future. In turn, how it would lead to greater/lesser vulnerability in the future. As mention in the last entry, food insecurity (induced by climate change) is likely to increase in certain countries and would act as a threat multiplier. The outlook for improve governance and household resilience is low. Most of the countries in Africa are not likely to meet their MDG goals which strongly effects household resilience (MDG 2013). The CPI 2013 as shown in fig 4 also gives a bleak image of good governance; many of the countries are perceived to be highly corrupted in 2013. When government budget goes disappears public investments are likely to suffer. That could contribute to reduction in resilience since early warning system for wild fires or plans to improve water supply cannot be implemented. This could suggest if future projections are taken into account by Busby et al, the levels of vulnerability could be even higher.  Although it might not be true, I think here is a strong case that current countries with poor governance will likely to experience societal disorder. Cooch (2013; Ted video below) also make an interest case study which highlights the problem of corruption about Equatorial Guinea and how its vast oil wealth have not led to elevation of poverty despite (the ted video would give more insight into corruption).   

The above have showed countries that have low levels of resilience, induced by a whole range of factors which was captured within the modelling. In turn, the maps can be indicators of where future societal disorder would rise because these countries lacks economic, social and governmental ability to compact the direct and indirect effect of climate change.

Methods of prevention and increase adaptability to off-set societal disorder

It’s not all doom and gloom and that there are a wide availability of literature that talks about how to increase adoptability of agriculture to future climate change. As pointed out last week that Africa remains predominately a rain-fed agriculture system. Currently within season rainfall variability is already causing concerns, and in the future it is predicted to be more likely (Cooper et al 2008). Below we can see that IPCC prediction for rainfall is highly uncertain in that these modelling cannot give a definitive answer as to rainfall in general will decrease or increase. So can farmers cope with these future changes especially those in the arid regions?

Human-side approach to future decrease in crop yield

Farmers have their own methods, but Cooper et al are sceptical at their future effectiveness because they mainly perform the task of “risk spreading”. For example, to cope with drier environments, pastoralist would hold a larger number, with anticipation that a number of them will die and still be able to make a profit. However, this tends to lead to overgrazing and overstocking. Not only does this have a negative impact on the environment, it also doesn’t improve resilience and could led to future societal disorder in these farming communities in Africa. Which also contribute to the wider security concern in Africa (Will go more indepth in the next post) (Cooper et al 2008).

Cooper et al (2008) largely comes from a humanistic approach and relays heavily on investment. They believe that the best way to enhance adoptability is to increase a community’s livelihood assets. To do this, there much be “investment into crop tolerance to drought, improving water productivity, integrated management of land and water”. An example from India where income from agriculture fell from 88 to 47% due to a drier climate over a 25 year period. They adopted by diversifying their livelihood strategies by increase their income through non-farming activities. This may not be applicable in Africa since some places are very rural, but can be used in most cases. This result from India is that there current income is greater than from just farming. This means they are actually better off. The downside is that this approach depends largely on investment and local politics. These could be problematic in some places and I have reservations for it.

An environmental approach to compliment increase in livelihood assets- through local knowledge

This is an alternative approach to Cooper et al (2008)’s approach to improve livelihood assets. To some extent, this relays less on the socially controversial GM approach (as cooper et al proposed). GM crops have been widely debated and the positives of GM crops has been discussed in-depth in this blog entry. Knox et al (2013) found that there is a consensus that there is a lack of evidence for the negative impact of GM crops adaptation. Therefore GM crops can be use inline with agroforestry.

Ofori et al (2014) has recommended that the increase domestication of high-value trees species in the agricultural landscape in Africa. Similar to the progress made by Coffee, Coca, Rubber around the world. However, they suggest that it should be a bottom-up approach to minimise the environmental impact we seen from the damages seen in Rubber etc.

The benefit of agroforestry is immense. It will contribute to the overall improvement and resilience of Africa farmers in rural settings. The upward trend in population will led to future demand for resources and tree domestication would satisfy this demand. The results have been seen in Central Africa, where the bottom-up approach to domestication has resulted in improvement in incomes, diets and rural business development. In most cases, the has been adopted alongside of other farming activities which reduces vulnerability by spreading risk and generating higher incomes which has increased wellbeing (Ofori et al 2014)

An example would be the domestication of Allanblackia tree found in wild in the humid forest of central, east and west Africa. Referring to last post, these places coincides with future reduction in crop yield, the seeds of the tree has significant future potential in the global food market (>100,000 tones annually). Again, this could increase the income of farmers and bring greater resilience to climate change. (Ofori et al 2014)

Bayala et al (2014) looks more in-depth into agroforestry parklands and looks at the relationship between trees and crop in more depth. Soil carbon is a major limiting factor in semi arid areas where it has negative impact on crop growth and productivity. Beyala et al (2014) found that trees in agroforestry parkland systems have a “direct positive contribution to soil carbon content”, this means this would be important in encouraging this method of adaptation in semi-arid areas. There has been uncertainty in the idea about trees and its contribution to soil fertility and Sanou et al (2012,) have claimed that they actually compete with crops. At the same time, Bayala et al 2008 have shown that a root of trees and crops actually coincide and competes with each other. However, with the right kind of crops and tree combination, Bayala et al (2014) points out positive effect on soil fertility was observed.

This approach utilities local knowledge and with the correct implementation method (bottom-up) the negative environmental effect seen with other agroforestry like Coca or rubber can be mitigated. At the same time, it has a positive impact for farmers livelihood assets which increase their adoptability to future climate change. Coupled with the positive impact agroforestry on the nutrition cycle and food security, it could mitigate future food crisis as shown in the last entry and represent and compliments Cooper et al’s approach. 

Africa and water; disorder in the form of food insecurity

 Precipitation changes due to Climate change

Fig 2 Source: 

Fig 1 Source: IPCCAR4 2007 Fig 11.1 

(2080-2099 relative to 1980-1990)

The IPCC 2007 report suggested that climate change will lead warming of between 3-4C over this this century. However, the effects of climate change in terms of precipitation are predicted to differ across Africa as shown in Fig 2, which suggest there will be wetter futures in the humid tropics and drier futures in semiarid regions. It must be noted that significant variability exist in the modelling and is displayed more so for the Sahel region where the observation of rainfall in the past few decades doesn't correlate with the results from the modelling for the present and future level of rainfall (Hulme et al 2001)

 Intensification of precipitation

Fig 3 Allen et al (2010) 

Allan and Soden (2008) suggest that there will be fewer low and medium intensity precipitation events and more extreme events of very heavy precipitation. They point out that the effect of atmospheric warming on the increases of extreme rainfall is underpredicted when models are compared to observation.  In order words, they predict there will be larger variability in precipitation in the future.

Allen et al (2010) (fig 3) showed that current changes in the tropical precipitation regime are inline with future projections – there have been more heavy precipitation (shown by >70 percentile) and  less light precipitation (shown by <60 percentile) (fig 3). This is a course for concern as below will demonstrate.  

Effects of change in precipitation on crop yield

Fig 5: Top A, Bottom B Source(Challinor et al 2006).

Drawing from examples in India figure 5A and 5B. It shows explicitly show how increase variability in rainfall reduces crop yield. In both figures, the total rainfall is around 390mm, with 5A at 394mm and 5B at 389mm. However, the level of rainfall in 5A is more spread out with less variability and in 5B the contrary is true. There yield is 1369kg/Ha and 901 kg/ha respectively (Challinor et al 2006). Cooper et al (2008) found similar results in Kenya, where maize productivity deceased due to higher within season variability of rainfall. Additionally, very intense rainfall, hail and drought would also damage crops and reduces yields, which could become more common as our climate changes with more variability and more extreme weather events (Requejo et al 2011).

Effects of changes in precipitation on water scarcity

Fig 4 source: Showing the number of people living in watershed with an increasing water stress by region in 2055, with different amounts of global temperature change relative to 1961-1990. Changes in temperature and rainfall derived from HadCM3 

What would this mean in terms of water stress/scarcity under a background of projected population growth in Africa (and around the world) and in some cases falling precipitation? Currently, 62.1% of Africa’s population still live in rural area and with an urban growth rate of nearly 4% per year (UNEP). Since urban population consume more water it is really a concern for the future, and perhaps a source of conflict.  

Fig 4 shows the projected number of people under water stress using different climate scenario. These are worrying projections, showing the number affected could reach from just 40 to 350 million. They also show varying degrees of impact between regions. Interestingly, the increase in the number of people under water stress in Central Africa only starts to increase steeply after a 1 degree increase (Arnell 2006)

Rise of disorder: Case study of 2007-08 riots 

Map 1 Source: Source Berazneva and Lee 2011

90% of staple food production will continue to come from rain-fed farming systems, the effects of a more variable rainfall regime will be a major concern for the future Cooper et al (2008). The 5th IPCC plenary session in Geneva to “[b]y 2020, in some countries, yields from rain-fed agriculture could be reduced by up to 50%, as a consequence of climate variability and change”. A report by World Food Programme places emphasized on the role of price hikes as a contributor to societal disorder within countries. Although the linkages between food insecurity and interstate conflict are thought with uncertainties  (Brinkman and Hendrix 2011). . Drawing from the 2007-2008 riots, we could understand how future increases in food prices (via decreased food yield due to climate change) could lead to wide spread societal disorder in Africa.

During the 2007-2008 food protest and riots occurred in 48 countries  (Brinkman and Hendrix 2011, BBC 2008,Berazneva and Lee 2011). In Africa, riots occurred in at least 14 countries. As Map 1 shows, not all places incurred societal disorder which highlights the complexity of the contributing factors of food riots and I only explained the environmental factor in detail in the context of Africa (there are many other factors but the topic is too large to cover in my blog).As Nelson et al (2009) points out, climate change will lead to increasing food prices and price volatility for staple crops like rice, wheat, maize and soybeans. So which countries will be most vulnerable to societal disorder in the future? Looking at the 2007-08 riots, Berazneva and Lee (2011) findings showed those countries with higher levels of human poverty and less political freedom are more prone to rioting. Additionally, countries with cities over 1 million people are estimated to be 24-25x greater to experience riots. This was the case for 11/13 countries that experienced rioting. This is a worrying statistic since urbanization is increasing dramatically in Africa, coupled with increasing water stress in most places in Africa, this would certainly contribute to the ‘risk factors’ of food rioting/revolution.  

The future of crop yield and potential for rise of disorder  

Fig 6 Source

Could more rioting occur in Africa in the future?  Calzadilla et al (2013) results showed that under climate change, production of agriculture products in the Sub-Saharan Africa increase (Wheat, Oil seeds) and all the other decreases (fig4). More importantly, it indicates increases in domestic food price, from 3% to more than 7% (fig4).This could recreate the food rioting episode from 2007-08. However, it is important to note that the effects of price increase will not be homogeneous across Sub-Saharan Africa (Brinkman and Hendrix 2011).  Exploring the effects of future agriculture yield from a world perspective, we could see that from Wheeler and Braun (2013)(Map 2) their projections for 2050’s decrease in crop productivity coincides with regions that have problems with hunger as shown in map 3, measured by the global hunger index. Their study also showed that yields of major crops grown in Africa and South Asia will decline by 8% by 2050. Wheat and Maize are expected to decline by 17% and 5% respective in Africa. While in Asia maize and sorghum is expected to decline by 16% and 11% respectively.  Although there are limitations with modelling, Knox et al (2012) have high confidence that the data for the above crop productivity are significant and robust! These crop yield decreases coupled with rising prices could lead to more episode of food rioting seen in 2007-08 and even

Map 3 Source

Map 2 Source 

One of the main limitation of Wheeler and Braun (2013) paper is that there modelling doesn't account for changes in the productivity of grazing land and hence the effects of cattle. Since meat is vital for both food supply and some economies, it could further reveal how increase meat prices could affect for both LDC and more importantly MDC. Would increases in meat prices cause similar effects as seen with increases in stable crops? Could it fuel more rioting and contribute to revolutionary riots?

More importantly, looking at Map 2 the Middle East is also vulnerable to decreased crop yields. Currently, they are using their wealth from natural resources to import  and subsidies many of their staple food productions. This could be a future source of societal disorder when their resources run out and they couldn't support their subsidization of their agricultural economy (Brinkman and Hendrix 2011). Much similar to Japan’s scraping of their agricultural subsidies for their rice farming (FT 2013). In the future more dire consequences would occur in the Middle East.

My opinion 

What I presented above is the mechanism between decreased crop yield (via climate change) and the rise of food rioting in the future. Drawing from current riots I showed the factors that contributed to the vulnerability of rioting.Coupled with model simulation of future crop yield decrease, and hence the rise of prices (via the mechanism of supple and demand). I believe I presented a strong case that some countries in Africa WILL be vulnerable in the next 50 years, whiles other countries in Africa and Middle East with natural resource wealth are likely to be able to combat higher food prices via welfare benefits, keeping their citizen happy. This won't be sustainable and it is only a short term method of prevention. Coupled with the overwheling fact that Africa still heavily relys on rain-fed agricultural systems, the picture for Africa is even more bleak.