Presentation at the 5th Global Science Conference on Climate-Smart Agriculture. Title: What is the future of diets? Speaker: Keith Wiebe

1. What is the future
of diets?
How will they affect climate change?
How will they be affected by climate change?
Keith Wiebe
International Food Policy Research Institute
with Nicola Cenacchi, Shahnila Islam, Adam Komarek, and Tim
Sulser (IFPRI), and Daniel Mason-D’Croz (CSIRO)

2. Climate change and diets in context

3. Carbon
footprints
30-Sep-2019

4. The share of expenditures on food
declines as incomes rise
High in poor
countries today
Will decline in poor
countries in the future
Source: Mason-D’Croz, Cenacchi, Dunston, Sulser, Wiebe et al. (IFPRI, in progress)

5. The share of calories from staple foods
declines as incomes rise
High in poor
countries today
Will decline in poor
countries in the future
Source: Mason-D’Croz, Cenacchi, Dunston, Sulser, Wiebe et al. (IFPRI, in progress)

6. Climate change
impacts
vary widely
Percent change in key
output indicators under
climate change relative to
the NoCC reference in 2050,
across all major crop groups
and all world regions
Source: Mason-D’Croz, Cenacchi, Dunston, Sulser, Wiebe et al. (IFPRI, in progress)

7. Source: Mason-D’Croz, Cenacchi, Dunston, Sulser, Wiebe et al. (IFPRI, in progress)
Socioeconomic drivers outweigh
climate change impacts on diets to 2050
Calories per capita
per day

8. Many other important links between
climate change and diets
• Health (EAT-Lancet Commission 2018, Guyatt et al. 2019)
• Planetary boundaries (Springmann et al. 2018)
• CC mitigation and food security (Hasegawa et al. 2018)
• CC and nutrients (Nelson et al. 2018, Beach et al. 2019)
• Drivers of diet change (Eker et al. 2019)
• Alternative proteins (?)

9. Conclusions
• Climate change affects diets through multiple pathways
• crop yields and food availability
• temperature and precipitation effects (generally negative)
• CO2 effects (generally positive)
• nutrient quality (generally negative)
• food prices and access (generally adverse)
• Diet change to mid-century will be driven more by
socioeconomic factors than by climate change
• Impacts will vary by commodity, region, and income level
• Policy and investment choices today can offset the impacts
of climate change, but care is needed to minimize trade-offs

10. Thank you