Executive summary
Not only are disaster events increasing in frequency and intensity, but their impact is expected to worsen, as a warming planet comes to terms with the challenges of an uncertain risk landscape in the context of finite biological and ecological resources. According to the International Disaster Database (EM-DAT) of the Centre for Research on the Epidemiology of Disasters (CRED), disaster events have increased from 100 per year in the 1970s to around 400 events per year worldwide in the past 20 years.
FAO is launching this new flagship report, The Impact of Disasters on Agriculture and Food Security, as part of its ongoing commitment to promote a more inclusive, resilient and sustainable future for agriculture. Building on three prior publications by FAO on this topic, this report aims at organizing and disseminating available knowledge on the impact of disasters on agriculture with a view to promote evidence-based investment in disaster risk reduction.
Disaster risk is composed of a complex interplay between the physical environment (both natural and built), and society (such as behaviour, function, organization and development). Disaster risk is determined probabilistically as a function of hazard, exposure, vulnerability and capacity, while a disaster refers to a serious disruption of the functioning of a community or a society at any scale due to hazardous events interacting with conditions of exposure, vulnerability and capacity, leading to one or more of the following: human, material, economic and environmental losses and impacts.
Agriculture is predominantly affected by meteorological and hydrological hazards, geohazards, environmental hazards and biological hazards, although societal hazards such as armed conflict, and technological and chemical hazards also pose potential threats. The amount of loss and damage produced by a disaster depends on the speed and spatial scale at which a hazard interacts with vulnerability and pre-existing risks, along with the amount of exposed assets or livelihoods.
The impact of disasters is also influenced by the systemic and interconnected nature of today’s risk landscape. When hazards manifest, they can have cascading impacts, affecting multiple systems and sectors within and across boundaries. Underlying disaster risk drivers include climate change, poverty and inequality, population growth, health emergencies caused by pandemics, practices such as unsustainable land use and management, armed conflicts and environmental degradation.
IMPACT OF EXTREME EVENTS ON AGRICULTURE
Multifaceted impacts of disasters on agriculture
Agriculture around the world is increasingly at risk of being disrupted due to multiple hazards and threats such as flooding, water scarcity, drought, declining agricultural yields and fisheries resources, loss of biological diversities and environmental degradation. Variations in water supply and extreme temperatures are two of the biggest factors that directly and indirectly impact agricultural production. Floods and heavy precipitation can have both positive and negative impacts on agricultural systems and productivity. Agricultural drought emerges from a combination of rainfall deficits (meteorological drought), soil water deficits, and reduced ground water or water storage levels needed for irrigation (hydrological drought). Extreme temperature events also have negative consequences for agricultural production. In the livestock subsector, heat stress can affect the mortality, liveweight gain, milk yield and fertility of an animal.
There is evidence to show that current warming trends around the globe are already having an impact on agriculture. A recent study found that the severity of heatwave and drought impacts on crop production roughly tripled from 2.2 percent between 1964 and 1990, to 7.3 percent between 1991 and 2015. Disasters also affect livelihoods, food security and nutrition. They cause rural unemployment, a decline in income for farmers and agricultural workers, and reduce the availability of food in local markets.
In extreme cases, disasters result in the displacement and outward migration of rural populations. Pakistan’s southern province of Sindh is an illustrative example of how the combination of slow and sudden onset hazards triggered displacement, negatively impacting food systems and increasing food insecurity.
As shown in BOX 3, women are often the most adversely affected by disasters. Resource and structural constraints are the main drivers of gender disparities in disasters. Women face obstacles accessing the information and resources needed to adequately prepare for, respond to and recover from a disaster – including access to early warning systems and safe shelters, as well as access to social and financial protection schemes and alternative employment.
Towards an assessment of global agricultural losses
Understanding the extent and degree to which these weather anomalies and extreme events affect agriculture is the first step to developing disaster risk reduction and climate adaptation strategies. Although several databases record disaster impacts, losses occurring in agriculture and its subsectors are currently not comprehensively assessed or reported as part of total economic losses in existing global, multihazard disaster databases. Missing data and a lack of consistency across existing databases are known limitations of international repositories maintained by EM-DAT, DesInventar, the World Bank, the International Federation of Red Cross and Red Crescent Societies (IFRC), databases maintained by global reinsurance groups, as well as national level databases.
Currently there are two sets of methodologies that are used to collect information on disaster losses in agriculture. The first forms part of post disaster needs assessment (PDNA) surveys, while the second was developed by FAO in coordination with the United Nations Office for Disaster Risk Reduction (UNDRR) to measure indicator C2 of the Sendai Framework Monitor for Disaster Risk Reduction.
Data from PDNAs undertaken from 2007 to 2022 shows that agricultural losses made up an average of 23 percent of the total impact of disasters across all sectors, and that over 65 percent of losses caused by droughts were experienced in the agriculture sector. In disaster events caused by floods, storms, cyclones and volcanic activity, around 20 percent of losses are experienced in the agriculture, thus underscoring the disproportionately high impact of droughts in the sector. Among the subsectors, crops and livestock account for the most losses, but fisheries and aquaculture and forestry may not have received enough attention in these evaluations.
Data from the Sendai Framework for Disaster Risk Reduction 2015–2030 subindicator C2 – which corresponds to direct agricultural losses attributed to disasters – was reported by 82 countries out of the 195, with 38 countries reporting subsectoral data. Total agricultural losses from disasters reported in the Sendai Framework Monitor amount to an average of USD 13 billion per year, mostly from floods (16 percent), fire and wildfire (13 percent) and drought (12 percent). Figures from both PDNAs and the C2 indicator are likely to be significant underestimations, given the limitations and delays of data reporting.
Measurement and evidence on crops and livestock
Data on loss and damage is not being systematically collected. As a means of addressing this gap, data from EM-DAT and FAOSTAT was used to provide a first ever quantification of the impact of disasters on agricultural production at a global scale, focused on crops and livestock. National average productivity reductions by items are compared to a counterfactual scenario in which disaster events did not occur.
Global aggregated losses for the 1991–2021 period amounts to USD 3.8 trillion, corresponding to about USD 123 billion per year. This value is equivalent to 5 percent of global agricultural GDP, and nearly 300 million tonnes of accumulated losses per year, or the real GDP of Brazil in year 2022. Compared to the early 1990s, while overall losses have increased only moderately, they have become more widespread in terms of the countries and products that they affect. The frequency and covariate nature of the extreme events that generate losses in crops and livestock around the world appear to be increasing.
Losses display increasing trends for major agricultural product groups. Losses in cereals amounted to an average of 69 million tonnes per year in the last three decades, corresponding to the entire cereal production of France in 2021, followed by fruits and vegetables and sugar crops, both of which approached an average of 40 million tonnes per year. For fruits and vegetables, losses correspond to the entire production of fruits and vegetables in Japan and Viet Nam in 2021. Meats, dairy products and eggs show an average estimated loss of 16 million tonnes per year – corresponding to the whole production of these products in Mexico and India in 2021.
Global losses mask significant variability across regions, subregions and country groups. Asia experiences by far the largest share of total economic losses, almost equal to losses experienced in Africa, Europe and the Americas put together. However, losses in Asia only account for 4 percent of the agricultural GDP (value added), while in Africa they correspond to nearly 8 percent of the agricultural GDP. In absolute terms, losses are higher in high-income countries, lower-middle-income countries and upper-middle-income countries, but low-income countries (LICs) and SIDS suffered the highest share of losses in agricultural value added. Compared to the estimated counterfactual production, losses appear to be particularly significant in several parts of Africa, primarily eastern, northern and western Africa, and in Micronesia and the Caribbean.
An attribution of losses to specific hazard types cannot be determined with the estimated crop and livestock data, mainly due to the difficulty of disaggregating impacts for multiple disasters occurring in the same year. Results from a mixed effects regression model show that at the global level, extreme temperatures and droughts are the hazards that inflict the largest impact per event, followed by floods, storms and wildfires.
Global losses in crops and livestock are converted to corresponding energy and nine micronutrient values lost for human consumption. Agricultural products lost due to disasters are matched to appropriate nutrient values in the global nutrient conversion table, which provides equivalent nutritional values for major food commodities. It is important to emphasize that the focus is on the availability of nutrients and energy, and not on changes in consumption patterns due to disasters. The estimated losses amount to approximately 147 kilocalories (kcal) per person per day over the past 31 years. To put this into perspective, it is equivalent to the daily dietary requirements of approximately 400 million men or 500 million women. Compared to daily dietary requirements, nutrient losses appear to be particularly prominent for iron, phosphorus, magnesium and thiamine. At a regional level, the estimated nutritional losses linked to production lost due to disasters are around 31 percent in Asia and the Americas, 24 percent in Europe, 11 percent in Africa and 3 percent in Oceania.
Different impacts in different subsectors: fisheries and aquaculture and forestry
For the subsectors of fisheries and aquaculture and forestry, a lack of data does not allow for assessments similar to those conducted for crops and livestock. Insights on disasters impacts in these two subsectors are therefore gathered from existing literature and documented evidence obtained from the analysis of specific cases.
Forests are extremely vulnerable to the impacts of disasters and climate change but also play a key role in risk reduction and mitigation. The two most significant hazards that affect forestry are wildfire and insect infestations. Most hazards affecting the forestry sector are driven by meteorological factors, long-term climate variability and human influence, including land-use change, land management practices and introduction of invasive species. However, in the 2020 edition of the Global Forest Resources Assessment (FRA), only 58 countries, representing 38 percent of the global forest area, currently monitor the degradation of forests arising from logging, burning, disease or insect infestation. Obstacles to gathering data on forest impacts include inconsistent approaches to assessing losses and damages, insufficient application of appropriate methodologies, and a lack of comprehensive coverage across the full spectrum of impacts.
Driven by a rising population density in the wildland–urban interface, wildfires are increasingly damaging the environment, wildlife, human health and infrastructure. Every year, about 340 million–370 million hectares (ha) of the Earth’s surface are burnt by wildfire, and 25 million ha of forest land were burnt in 2021 alone. According to recent Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) findings, hotter, drier and windier weather is becoming more frequent in some regions and will continue to increase if countries do not meet and exceed their Paris Agreement commitments. Wildfire data for Africa is notably higher than that of other continents, accounting for roughly 70 percent of all global wildland fires. This is followed by 21 percent in Australia and South America. At the same time, 59 percent of all fires in 2002–2019 occurred in least developed countries, suggesting an association between fire risk, lower income and resource management contexts. Tackling the underlying causes of fires using risk reduction actions can help avoid considerable loss and damage.
Forest damage by invasive species can be economically catastrophic, but determining the thresholds beyond which a tolerable presence of pests transitions into an infestation poses a significant challenge. Current reporting of pest and disease damage is based on land area of damage, volume of tree mortality, or economic impacts — there is no harmonized system for reporting impacts. Overall, data on insect pest and disease outbreaks is limited, especially in developing countries. In high-income countries, reported losses are significant and some studies conclude that the net value of economic impacts associated with pests in New Zealand would be NZD 3.8 billion to NZD 20.3 billion when projected to 2070. Damage by invasive species is estimated to cost the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland’s economy more than USD 2.2 billion per year.
Assessing the impact of disasters on forests requires a diverse range of data and indicators, including measurement of direct impacts on productive assets, the consequences on wood production, and the implementation of standardized methodologies for assessing impacts on ecosystem services. An important aspect of assessing timber losses after large-scale disasters in the forestry sector is that a significant portion of damaged timber can usually be salvaged. The number of trees destroyed after a disaster does not automatically result in a drop in timber production. Rather, an increase in timber sales is observed in the immediate aftermath of the event as more timber is put on the market than usual.
FAO has been promoting a specific methodology for data collection and for calculating losses and damages to improve and standardize the estimation of forestry losses from disasters. It offers an assessment of forest resources that differentiates between the value of mature merchantable timber stands (stumpage) and timber stands that have not yet reached their rotation ages at the time of damage.
Wild capture and aquaculture fisheries are vulnerable to multiple sudden and slow onset disasters, including storms, tsunamis, floods, droughts, heatwaves, ocean warming, acidification, deoxygenation, disruption to precipitation and freshwater availability, and salt intrusion in coastal areas. A key ecosystem risk driver for capture fisheries is the increasing intensity and frequency of marine heatwaves, which threaten marine biodiversity and ecosystems, make extreme weather more likely, and negatively impact fisheries and aquaculture. In aquaculture, short-term impacts can include losses of production and infrastructure, increased risks of diseases, parasites and harmful algal blooms (HABs).
Extreme events and climate change directly affect the distribution, abundance and health of wild fish, and the viability of aquaculture processes and stocks. Climate change, variability and extreme weather events are compounding threats to the sustainability of capture fisheries and aquaculture development in marine and freshwater environments. At the same time, the rapid restoration of capture fisheries activities after a disaster can provide nutritious food and employment and can expedite a community’s return to normal economic activity.
HABs occur when algae – simple photosynthetic organisms that live in the sea and freshwater – grow out of control, producing toxic or harmful effects on people, fish, shellfish, marine mammals and birds. In March 2021, for instance, South Africa’s west coast experienced a 500 tonne “walk out” of west coast rock lobster. Similarly, in needs assessment reports for three typhoons that hit the Philippines in the last five years – Typhoon Kammuri (Tisoy), 2019, Typhoon Goni, 2020, Typhoon Rai (Odette), 2021 – the necessity to better highlight the impacts on the fishing and aquaculture communities is well reflected, including sector specific needs and priorities. One more telling example is that of the Hunga Tonga–Hunga Ha’apai (HT–HH) undersea volcano in Tonga, which erupted on 15 January 2022. The initial disaster assessment report produced in February 2022 by the Ministry of Fisheries in Tonga focused on damage to fisheries assets covering small-scale, tuna and snapper vessels, and their engines and gear. The total estimated damage in the fisheries and aquaculture subsector was USD 4.6 million.
DISASTER RISK DRIVERS AND CASCADING IMPACTS
Risk is omnipresent, and it is growing at a rate that is outstripping our efforts to reduce it. Global risks like climate change, environmental degradation and biodiversity loss are existential in nature and contribute to increasing disaster risk. Beyond the direct impact of disasters, indirect, cascading impacts are also significant, even at the global level. Addressing risk does not just require an assessment of the direct impacts of disasters, but also an understanding of how the impacts of disasters cascade within and across sectors and over geographic areas, the way in which elements of affected systems interact with each other during a hazard event, and the systemic factors driving risks. Part 3 of the report highlights climate change, the impacts of biological hazards – the COVID-19 pandemic and the African swine fever (ASF) epidemic – and the role of armed conflicts in driving disaster risk and causing substantial damage and loss in agriculture and agrifood systems.
Linking climate change to agricultural production loss
Climate change is contributing to a rise in hazard incidence, leading to increased vulnerability and exposure and diminishing the coping capacity of individuals and systems. Attribution science, defined as evaluating and communicating linkages associated with climate change, offers an entry point for estimating the effect of climate change on crop yields and the degree to which agricultural production is being influenced by extreme and slow onset events. The analysis evaluates how climate change affects yield levels by comparing observed records with estimated counterfactual and factual yield distributions for soy yields in Argentina, wheat yields in Kazakhstan and Morocco, and maize yields in South Africa. An important caveat concerning the results is that there is a significant degree of uncertainty involved in the estimation of such attributions, and although no uncertainty quantification was attempted for this assessment, all results should be treated as approximations.
In Argentina, the model shows that observed variations in high and low temperatures, rainfall intensity and drought explain the higher share of the recorded soy yield variations in the highest-producing provinces of the country. Results suggest that climate change increased average yields during the period of 2000–2019 by less than 0.1 t/ha, amounting to about 3 percent of the average observed yield during that period. Results also indicate that yield anomalies in Argentina that are as low or lower than those in 2018 may have become about half as likely due to climate change, subject to uncertainty. Note, however, that the yield model only captures some of the recorded yield anomaly.
In Kazakhstan, results show that a substantial share of recorded wheat yield variations in the highest-producing oblasta can be explained by variations in growing degree days,b temperature variability, cold, precipitation variability and drought. In this case, climate change decreased average yields during the period of 2000–2019 by about 0.1 t/ha, which is more than 10 percent of the average observed yield during that period.
The model shows that a significant portion of the recorded wheat yield variability in the highest-producing regions of Morocco can be explained by fluctuations in temperature variability, high temperatures, drought and high precipitation. It suggests that climate change decreased average yields during the period of 2000–2019 by less than 0.1 t/ha and amounted to about 2 percent of the average observed yield during that period.
For South Africa, the model shows that a large share of the recorded maize yield variations in the highest-producing provinces can be explained by variations in growing degree days, temperature variability, cold, drought and high precipitation. Climate change has had a statistically significant adverse effect on maize yields in South Africa. The model suggests that climate change decreased average yields during the period of 2000–2019 by more than 0.2 t/ha, amounting to more than 5 percent of the average observed yield during that period, and that the negative impact of climate change was even stronger in the lowest-yielding years. Collectively, the results suggest that climate change could already be worsening agricultural losses, underscoring the significance of investing in measures aimed at mitigating losses and damages.
Pandemic and epidemic: the COVID-19 pandemic and African swine fever (ASF)
This subsection presents and analyses the impacts of the recent COVID-19 pandemic and ASF epidemic on agriculture and food security. An initial assessment from the FAO Data In Emergency (DIEM) surveys shows that the COVID-19 pandemic disrupted food systems through labour shortages, impeding seasonal labour movements particularly for labour-intensive production systems. A cross-country analysis conducted in 11 food-insecure nations revealed that the pandemic inflicted a shock on food security and livelihoods comparable to those induced by conflicts or natural hazard induced disasters. Livestock and cash crop producers were among the most severely affected, reporting difficulties in accessing inputs, selling their products, accessing pastures due to movement restrictions and accessing international markets. Additional assessments of pandemic-related lockdowns in various countries confirmed a contraction in the supply of agricultural inputs labour shortages and reduced delivery of veterinary services.
Disruptions in transport and logistics for agricultural products led to a decrease in farm-gate prices. Meanwhile, retail prices increased, affecting farmers’ incomes as the cost of living rose. Planted areas were more likely to decrease for cereal and vegetable crops compared to fruit or cash crops. This is particularly true for cash crops, as they are grown primarily for their commercial value rather than for personal consumption by the grower. When the COVID-19 pandemic restrictions were implemented during the main planting season, there was an unambiguous reduction in the area planted. Restrictions on people gathering translated into farmers reporting less or much less area planted, which increases from around 22 percent without gathering restrictions to roughly 50 percent if the gathering restrictions were very stringent. Likewise, gathering restrictions are associated with a 56 percent likelihood of farmers reporting an increase in harvest, compared to places that were not under these restrictions during harvest time. The likelihood of farmers reporting difficulty in accessing agricultural inputs also increased significantly.
In the category of transboundary animal diseases, the ASF outbreak had catastrophic impacts. Since January 2020, ASF has been reported in 35 countries across five continents, with consequences most evident in Asia. Between the first ASF outbreak in China on 3 August 2018, and 1 July 2022, a total of 218 outbreaks were reported to the World Animal Health Information System of the World Organization of Animal Health (WOAH). The culling of 1.2 million pigs as of 2019 led to heavy economic losses. By the end of 2019, the inability to meet the national demand for pork became evident as average pig and pork prices skyrocketed to 161 and 141 percent higher than pre-ASF levels, respectively.
Using findings from the OutCosT tool, it can be estimated that the cost of the ASF outbreaks in Lao Cai province, Vietnam in 2019 was USD 8.6 million. In the Philippines, ten provinces were affected by ASF in 2019, but by the end of 2020 it had affected 32 provinces. The approximate cost of the ASF outbreaks in 2020 in the Philippines was between USD 194 million and USD 507 million.
The impact of armed conflict on agriculture
Active armed conflicts – comprising situations of civil unrest, regime change, interstate conflicts and civil war – are at their highest level since the Second World War. While the risk of armed conflict is outside the scope of the Sendai Framework for Disaster Risk Reduction 2015–2030, the interplay between conflict and disaster risk is an area that requires further examination, including its relation to damage and loss. The number of national, regional, and sectoral disaster risk reduction strategies and plans that include societal hazards is increasing. Examples include the Central African Republic’s draft National Strategy, Iraq’s National Disaster Risk Reduction Strategy and Afghanistan’s National Strategy on Disaster Risk Reduction.
Conflicts can increase the vulnerability of a society to disasters as infrastructure is destroyed, poverty increases, and long-term investments in disaster risk reduction are no longer considered important or cannot be funded. Unsustainable agricultural practices that lead to increased disaster risk may be driven by disruption and/or loss of livelihoods due to armed conflict. Given that armed conflicts also limit access to land, spur populations to move, and disrupt access to health care and social protection systems, we need to be cognizant of their wider damage and loss implications. Also, the duration of an ongoing conflict can be extended by disaster events, including when they drive resource scarcity.
Highlighting the importance of contextual and local-level differences on how disasters can influence conflict dynamics, a comprehensive study on Africa and Asia found that local drought increased the likelihood of sustained violence for agriculturally dependent groups, as well as politically excluded groups in very poor countries. The broader geopolitical context influences the operation of agrifood systems, as this often affects how armed conflict is shaped at the local level, as well as through more macrolevel impacts on trade flows because of the interconnectivity of global trade. Agrifood systems that are repeatedly put under stress by conflict tend to become unpredictable.
Assessments of the impact of armed conflicts on agriculture include calculations of damage and destruction of equipment and infrastructure, and loss of productive assets such as livestock. However, other impacts on agriculture have longer-term consequences, including forced displacement and the availability of agricultural labour. Tools and guidance have been developed for adapting PDNAs to complex operating environments, including where armed conflict manifests. The guidance provides information on ensuring that post-disaster activities and response operations do not exacerbate conflict dynamics.
Recurrent drought, food insecurity and subsequent risk of famine have become a devastating and increasingly unsustainable cycle in Somalia in recent decades. Between the 2011 famine and the extensive drought experienced in 2016–2017, it was estimated that roughly USD 4.5 billion was expended on emergency responses aimed at saving lives. In 2017, a multisectoral damage and loss assessment conducted under the overall coordination of the United Nations Development Programme (UNDP) indicated that damage and loss in agriculture amounted to a combined total of just under USD 2 billion.
Soon after the initial uprisings in 2011, the Syrian Arab Republic was plunged into a complex set of conflicts. Five years into the crisis, FAO conducted a comprehensive damage and loss assessment. The results indicated that during the first five years of the crisis, total damage in the agricultural sector amounted to USD 16 billion. This was equivalent to one third of the Syrian Arab Republic’s GDP in 2016. The largest dollar impact was in terms of losses (USD 9.21 billion), although in this case the level of damages was USD 6.83 billion.
The impact of the war in Ukraine was assessed between September and October 2022 in 22 oblasts. It showed damage and loss of the war experienced by rural households, livestock keepers, and fishers and aquaculture producers to be nearly USD 2.3 billion. On average, 25 percent of the rural population stopped or reduced agricultural production, although along the contact line more than 38 percent of respondents report stopping agricultural production. The overall effects on the aquaculture and fisheries sector in Ukraine for the first eight months of the war in 2022 accounted for damages of USD 4.97 million, and losses (changes in financial flows) of USD 16.6 million, which is 63 percent of the total annual output of the Ukrainian aquaculture sector (USD 34 million).
DISASTER RISK REDUCTION SOLUTIONS IN AGRICULTURE
This part of the report complements the previous three by focusing on the viability of investments in enhanced proactive disaster risk reduction good practices in agrifood systems and in anticipatory action to increase the resilience of livelihoods to disasters. The actions to reduce the potential impacts of disasters and underlying risks are thus analysed in terms of their benefit vis-à-vis the cost of their implementation. Several examples are offered of analysis of the benefits associated with disaster risk reduction practices and anticipatory action that can serve as blueprints for the comparative assessment of scalable investments.
Benefits from farm-level disaster risk reduction good practices
Farmers, particularly smallholders farming under rain-fed conditions, are the most vulnerable stakeholders in the agrifood systems and thus tend to bear the brunt of disaster impacts. There are multiple pathways for farmers, policy makers, and development and humanitarian actors to reduce the vulnerability of smallholders. Among those are preventative farm-level disaster risk reduction good practices and technologies. These technical solutions are scalable and tested under both hazard and non-hazard scenarios, and thus proven to help avoid or reduce agricultural production losses caused by natural or biological hazards.
For instance, in Uganda, to reduce the impact of increasing dry spells, the cultivation of high-yield and drought-tolerant banana varieties was combined with soil and water conservation practices such as mulching, trenches and the use of organic compost. The study demonstrated that in farms impacted by dry spells, the implementation of the good practice package resulted in cumulative net benefits per acre over 11 years that were approximately ten times greater than those achieved through existing local practices. The benefit–cost ratio (BCR)of good practices was 2.15, as compared to 1.16 for the existing local practices.
In the highlands of the Plurinational State of Bolivia, to reduce mortality of the llama camelids from frost, snow, heavy rains and hailstorms, good practices were experimented, entailing the building of semi-roofed livestock shelters (corralónes) and the deployment of veterinary pharmacies. The benefit–cost ratio of these practices resulted in 17 percent higher cumulative net benefits than that of the previous local practices over 11 years. The simulation analysis also showed that if the good practices were systematically scaled up, camelid mortality could become 12 times lower than under the previous practices.
In Pakistan, DRR good practices were tested on wheat, cotton, rice, sugar cane, and vegetable and oilseed crops, including okra and sunflower during the two main cropping seasons, namely the dry (kharif) season and the wet (rabi) season in districts of the Punjab and Sindh provinces, which are highly vulnerable to climate change and among the most vulnerable districts within the Indus Basin. Cost–benefit analyses were conducted over six seasons. Results indicate that every USD 1 invested in this good practice package will generate USD 8.18 and USD 6.78 in benefits under non-hazard and hazard conditions, respectively.
In the Philippines, green super rice (GSR) cultivation in the Bicol region was tested over three successive seasons (the 2015 dry and wet seasons, the 2016 dry season). Results showed clear economic benefits, along with an increased agricultural productivity when adopting the multistress tolerant crop variety compared to the local varieties under both hazard and non-hazard conditions. The benefit–cost ratio of adopting GSR varieties was higher than that of cultivating local varieties in both the wet and dry seasons.
To realize the full potential of the proactive risk reduction measures such as those analysed here, they must be broadly scaled up and replicated. Accordingly, this calls for actions to address challenges and barriers faced by farmers in adopting such measures, including policies that support their uptake. The integration of disaster risk reduction measures and social protection programmes can also offer important opportunities.
Return on investment of anticipatory action interventions
Anticipatory action is defined as acting ahead of predicted hazards to prevent or reduce acute humanitarian impacts before they fully unfold. The window of opportunity for anticipatory action is between an early warning trigger and the moment of impact of the hazard. A trigger system is developed and dedicated funds are pre-allocated to be quickly released when pre-agreed thresholds are reached. The trigger system is developed based on relevant forecasts (for instance, rainfall, temperature, soil moisture, vegetation condition and others in the case of climate-related hazards), along with seasonal observations and vulnerability information.
Anticipatory action is a proven cost-effective measure for mitigating the impact of disasters with significant resilience dividends. By delivering support before a crisis has occurred, efficient and timely anticipatory action can curb food insecurity, reduce humanitarian needs and ease pressure on strained humanitarian resources. Triggered by context specific early warning systems, anticipatory actions are short-term interventions that aim at protecting DRR and resilience gains from the immediate impact of forecast shocks. Results of the BCR for anticipatory action for the ten interventions analysed in this section are mostly positive, ranging from 0.46 to 7.1.
Anticipatory actions to protect livestock ahead of forecast hazards have proven particularly effective in reducing animal mortality, maintaining animal body condition and productivity, as well as the reproductive capacity of herds. Positive results were also recorded for anticipatory action interventions centred on crops. Depending on the context, these may include stress-tolerant seeds, early harvesting, plant protection from hazard-induced pests and diseases, short-cycle crop seeds and small irrigation equipment, among other interventions.
Anecdotal evidence suggests that anticipatory action interventions can also reduce existing risk, protecting livelihoods well past the effects of the initial hazard. Training conducted during anticipatory action interventions provides an opportunity to raise awareness and build skills for disaster risk reduction. Also, effective early warning systems can lead to timely interventions, and further incorporating anticipatory action within disaster risk reduction policies, plans and financial frameworks, as well as within humanitarian and development frameworks, will allow countries to strengthen resilience and reduce disaster risks.
Combining preventative control and anticipatory action – the case of desert locusts in the Horn of Africa
The desert locust upsurge that occurred in the greater Horn of Africa in 2020 and 2021 was one of the most severe crises of its kind ever recorded in the region. It was an unprecedented threat to food security and livelihoods, with the potential to cause widespread suffering, displacement and conflict. Based on previous experience of implementing the desert locust control operation in 2020–2021, a new living methodology was developed to calculate the return on investment of FAO’s risk-informed intervention. Reports from the field provided details about the nature of the control operation (air and ground) as well as the ratio of hoppers to swarms. The timely and accurate early warning and forecasting information provided by FAO’s Desert Locust Information Service (DLIS) throughout the upsurge allowed the risk-informed strategies to be deployed. As a result, the 2.3 million ha affected area were treated in the Horn of Africa and Yemen. The commercial value of the overall averted cereal and milk losses was estimated at USD 1.77 billion. At scale and risk-informed desert locust control interventions provide a return on investment of 1:15. This means that every USD 1 invested in the intervention averted an estimated USD 15 of losses in the greater Horn of Africa. These collective efforts by FAO and partners averted 4.5 million tonnes of crop losses, saved 900 million litres of milk production and secured food for nearly 42 million people.
It is worth recalling also that the upsurge in desert locusts was not the only disaster affecting the Horn of Africa in 2020–2021. Farmers in the Horn of Africa were already suffering from other disasters such as floods, droughts and storms, along with the COVID-19 related restrictions that limited access to agricultural inputs and decreased planted areas. Without the preventative control of a desert locust upsurge, the maize and sorghum production in 2020 and 2021 might have been even lower. This has also called for a multihazard disaster risk reduction approach to ensure that the interventions implemented on the ground address the interconnected nature of disaster risks and their cascading impacts.
The overall lesson learned is that risk-informed action in the case of the locust upsurge has limited considerably the potential negative impact of the shock on agrifood systems and the associated livelihoods. It resulted in reduced damage to crops and rangelands, reduced pesticide sprays that have negative impacts on human health and the environment, and lowered financial costs.
CONCLUSIONS
The need for improved data and information on the impacts of disasters in agriculture is the first key theme running across all sections of the report. Investment in enhanced data monitoring, reporting, and collection methodologies and tools is an essential first step in building national capacities to understand and reduce disaster risks in agriculture and wider agrifood systems. This report has advanced the knowledge base by providing the first ever global estimate of the impact of disasters on crops and livestock production.
Sector-specific approaches for assessing vulnerability, evaluating impacts and reducing risks are essential. Even in subsectors with better information access, there is a need to develop standardized tools for measuring the impact of disasters to assess loss and damage, build capacity at various levels, support coordination mechanisms for prevention and response, and scale up these loss estimations to a national or global scale. In particular, the forestry and fisheries subsectors suffer from a lack of comprehensive information on their production, assets, activities and livelihoods, and are frequently overlooked in post-disaster impact evaluations and needs assessments. Emerging technologies and advances in remote sensing applications offer new avenues towards improving information on disaster impacts in agriculture. At a policy level, promoting and strengthening data reporting for the Sendai Framework C2 indicator on direct economic losses in agriculture, corresponding to indicator 1.5.2 of the United Nations Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs), will also provide a systematic and comprehensive database for disaster losses in agriculture.
A second key conclusion of this report is the need to develop and mainstream multisectoral and multihazard disaster risk reduction approaches into policy and decision making. Disaster impacts are worsened by multiple drivers and overlapping crises that produce cascading and compounding effects and worsen the exposure and vulnerability of people, ecosystems and economies. As described in this report, factors such as climate change, the COVID-19 pandemic, the African swine fever epidemic and armed conflicts, all result in the amplification of disaster risk and impacts in agrifood systems. In the case of climate change, the use of attribution science methodologies provides new information on the degree to which climate change is exacerbating losses in agriculture.
Effective strategies for reducing disaster and climate risk must adopt a holistic, systemwide view of the different drivers and impact pathways that produce losses in agrifood systems. This is particularly relevant in countries that have a large number of vulnerable people or communities, have less developed capacities or resources to prepare for or respond to disasters, or where fluctuations in agricultural production can easily threaten food security. Gaining a better understanding of the benefits of disaster risk reduction actions in the agriculture sector and across agrifood systems is of utmost importance. It is crucial to establish a strong evidence base for interventions and measures that can be expanded and promoted on a larger scale.
The third main conclusion of the report is the need for investments in resilience that provide benefits in reducing disaster risk in agrifood systems and improve agricultural production and livelihoods. Context and location specific farm-level disaster risk reduction good practices are cost effective solutions that enhance the resilience of livelihoods and agrifood systems against natural and biological hazards. The case studies presented in this part demonstrate that not only do good practices reduce disaster risks, but they also display significant additional benefits. This calls for urgent action to foster the adoption of available innovations, promoting the generation of more scalable risk management solutions, and enhancing early warning and anticipatory actions.
Though not yet comprehensive, the available evidence suggests a set of actions that can be undertaken to improve disaster impact assessments and to step up disaster risk reduction policies. National, sectoral and local disaster risk reduction strategies are a cornerstone for achieving inclusive and resilient agrifood systems, and the United Nations system can be an important collaborator in mainstreaming disaster risk reduction in national and sectoral policies, programmes and funding mechanisms. However, there is a need to expand the knowledge base of studies that can guide evidence-based policies and decision making to promote resilience in agriculture and agrifood systems at large. This is a fundamental first step for successful integration of multihazard disaster risk reduction into agricultural policies and extension services, as well as national and local disaster risk reduction strategies.
