From Food Production to Food Security - Global Environmental ...

Institute for Meteorology and Hydrology (CIMH)); social and natural scientists from national researchinstitutions (e.g. universities and national laboratories); policy-makers from regional agencies (e.g. theCaribbean Community Secretariat (CARICOM), Inter-American Institute for Cooperation onAgriculture (IICA)); policy-makers from national agencies (e.g. Ministries of Agriculture);international agencies (e.g. FAO, UNEP); and was facilitated by the GECAFS scenarios group. Anumber of key steps were involved:1. Identifying key regional GEC and policy issues, based on an initial stakeholder consultationworkshop involving regional scientists and policy-makers.2. Drafting a set of four prototype regional scenarios (Global Caribbean, Caribbean Order fromStrength, Caribbean TechnoGarden and Caribbean Adapting Mosaic) in a first regional workshop,which were then elaborated upon in a follow-up writing exercise by regional authors. These werebased on the broad rationale, assumptions and outcomes of the MA scenarios exercise, butallowing for regional deviation where needed.3. Describing developments per scenario for key aspects of the food system, the focus of a follow-upregional workshop involving most of the first regional workshop participants.4. Systematically assessing food system developments per scenario, and presenting outputsgraphically as part of a second regional workshop. This involved describing the maindevelopments per scenario for each Food Security element, systematically assessing eachdevelopment per scenario for each food security element, and finally plotting each assessment(see Figure 1).The scenario exercise delivered a number of related outputs: it integrated (i) improved holisticunderstanding of food systems (axes on graphs) with (ii) vulnerability (change of position along axes)with (iii) policy interpretation of future conditions (comparing four graphs) with (iv) adaptationinsights at the regional level for improving overall food security (where to concentrate effort onenlarging the polygon areas of each graph).Figure 1 Indicative food security diagrams for four Caribbean scenarios (GECAFS, 2006b)96