 Good afternoon and welcome to the next press conference of EGU 23, which is the annual meeting of the European Geosciences Union. I'm Jillian D'Souza. I'm your host and I'm EGU's media and communications officer. So I would just like to introduce our speakers in a minute or two, but I just want to say that this year we had 17,000 abstracts, EGU's meeting, and we've chosen some really exciting and unique studies to present as part of our press conferences. Each press conference will have time for speakers to make their presentation, which you will do consecutively, and then we will do a common question and answer round towards the end for the last 10 to 15 minutes. For those of you joining virtually, I ask that you mute your mics throughout the press conference, and then we will come to you for your questions at the end. I'm now going to go ahead and introduce our speakers so that we have faster transitions. This press conference is titled, What can chocolate, cereal and water say about food security and sustainability? Our speakers today are Rene Orth from the Department of Biogeochemical Integration, Max Planck Institute for Biogeochemistry, Germany. We have Sophia Carrudanuto from the University of Victoria, Social Sciences, Geography Canada. And our virtual speaker who's joining us online is Valentina Meriu from the Euro Mediterranean Centre on Climate Changes and Department of Agriculture, Italy. So welcome everyone and thank you again for joining us today. We will now begin by listening to Rene, followed by Sophia and then Valentina. So over to you speakers. Yeah, thanks a lot for the introduction. Good afternoon everyone. My name is Rene Orth. I work at the Max Planck Institute for biogeochemistry in Germany. And together with my team, our research is about the water limitation of global ecosystems. So this is illustrated here what basically we're looking at on the left hand side, you can see an ecosystem that is energy limited means that it's too cold for the vegetation to grow and to do for the synthesis there. On the right hand side, you can see an ecosystem that has too little water. The soil is too dry. So the ecosystem is water limited. And to give my main message already at the beginning. In the future, we're going to see more water limitation of global ecosystems and less energy limitation of global ecosystems with a changing climate. How can we quantify this ecosystem water limitation for this purpose we have developed an index the so called ecosystem limitation index and that's the only equation that I'm going to show here. What we do there is basically we compute a difference of two correlations we correlate vegetation functioning on the one hand with energy availability. And on the other hand with water availability and then we compute the difference of those two correlations. Now if we do this with 15 year or so time series for all grid cells across Europe. Then we can derive such a map where we use evapotranspiration as a proxy for vegetation functioning we use temperature as a proxy for energy availability and we use soil moisture as a proxy for water availability. As you can see we get positive correlation differences indicating energy limitation in the center and the north of the continent. And we get predominantly negative correlations indicate indicating water limitation for most of the time in the south of the continent. And then for illustration and to basically show that the index works. If we apply this index to climate projections, we can also make a statement about future ecosystem water limitation. That's what we did in this other study. We looked at projections from global climate models to see how the ecosystem water limitation will evolve globally in the future and over the course of the century. Each line in this plot is one global climate model, and here we compute a global average ecosystem water limitation. Now you can see all the individual lines go up, which means that each and every model projects an increase of the ecosystem water limitation, meaning more global ecosystem water limitation. So this is a very steady and robust signal that we see there. And the point I want to make here is that this signal is actually different from a traditional index, the aridity index so traditionally dryness used to be studied with mostly atmospheric meteorological variables. So in the aridity index, for example, you use radiation and precipitation, and you can see the signal is actually different in the aridity index. There's no trend for the first half of this century and then only a week and insignificant trend for the second half. So it's clearly different from our results for the ecosystem limitation index, which illustrates that ecosystem dryness is different from atmospheric dryness. And when studying dryness, we cannot only focus on what happens with the atmosphere with meteorological climate conditions, but we also have to take into account how ecosystems respond to that. The last piece I want to show you from this study is that we looked for each region for each grid cell, if there's a change in the regime so if it would transition from mostly energy limited conditions to mostly water limited conditions. And we do find that for all the colored grid cells here. So this is in the high northern latitudes where you can see that basically the water limited regime is propagating northwards. You can see the time of the transition indicated with the color here. But also in the tropics we can see some colored grid cells, meaning that also there we have an emergence of a water limited regime, mostly in the Amazon region where this propagates inwards the Amazon rainforest, but also a hint of that in in the west of Africa. A region about which we're going to hear more in a second to summarize. So we, we can see from global climate model simulations that the ecosystem water limitation globally will increase with climate change, while at the same time, the energy limitation of ecosystems will decrease with the course of global warming. This is consistent with results based on observations for past time periods so using satellite observations from recent decades. We also find that global vegetation is increasingly sensitive to water availability. Now to finish, what implications does this have. I think this underlines that climate change is more than just temperature climate change also concerns the water cycle. So in this case evapotranspiration runoff water resources, and it also concerns ecosystems, meaning vegetation productivity and consequently crop yields. And because this is an interconnected and complex system, in turn, the water cycle changes again feedback to climate change, for example, by having reduced evaporative cooling during droughts and heatwaves which makes these events more intense. And likewise, also changes in ecosystem feedback to climate change, for example, if vegetation on land can take up less anthropogenic CO2 emissions because it's for example stressed by drought. And thereby what climate change affects all of us through different pathways. And I stop here and thank you for your attention. Thank you very much, Jenny. We will now hear from our next speaker, Sophia, over to you. Great. Thank you. Today I'm presenting the results of a recently published. I'll just wait for it recently published paper in the journal, World Development. And here you see my co author, Marshall Adams in the field, collecting data and Ghana. So, we study how farmer incomes cocoa farmer incomes are related to sustainability issues, specifically how cocoa is causing deforestation and some of the last remaining biodiversity hotspots in today's tropical rainforest. So there's widespread agreement that cocoa farmers need to have more income for their product, but perspectives very significantly on how to pay farmers more for their cocoa beans without causing even more deforestation. So the governments of Cody war and Ghana recently introduced the so called living income differential where these countries demand that more is paid $400 more per ton is paid for their cocoa. And now researchers are speculating whether this living income differential will be effective or whether it will have adverse consequences on sustainability efforts. So here you see the typical cocoa farmer. And cocoa production is very difficult to mechanize. So it's a highly, here you see the cocoa tree on the right. So highly sensitive tropical tree crop that requires constant attention and manual labor so it, the tree is quite susceptible to pests and disease. So the typical cocoa farmer has trees that are cocoa trees that are generally planted nearby their household and the farms do not get much bigger than three to five hectares. So it's, it's not the large plantations that we're used to for other tropical commodities. In the second photo you see a cocoa farmer laying out his beans under the sun to dry. And unlike some origins in Central and South America where we know those origins have a little higher quality cocoa. We see that cocos in Africa have very minimal equipment. So, for these critical stages of the value chain post harvesting. So the cocoa farmer using a plastic tarp to dry his beans. So the next time you're eating a Kit Kat, or Nutella spreading Nutella on your toast in the morning you can see these, you can keep these images in your mind and know that the. This is the beginning of the conventional chocolate supply chain, where the, the cheap or conventional chocolate products generally never show origin. Right. The next time you see a Snickers bar or something in the store where it doesn't indicate where that cocoa is coming from. You can be fairly certain that at least part of that came from coachy var. Or Ghana. So coachy var produces almost half of the world's cocoa in Ghana is a close second. And here we see that the majority of producers living there are making less than the world. Poverty benchmark. So much needs to be done. There's large consensus that much needs to be done to improve farmer livelihood. And we know that sustainability issues very often have their underlying cause in poverty. So poverty is often a root cause of issues such as deforestation so here we see how much force has been lost in Ghana. Just since 2001. And what's quite surprising is that in the last few years, the deforestation rate rate has been some of the highest in the world actually even though there's not that much force remaining. So, from the perspective of West African governments coachy var and Ghana have joined forces to demand this living income differential as a way to address sustainability issues in the sector such as deforestation. And so, in this study, we look at this living income differential and given the market share of these two countries. They're demanding more for their, their product and we hope that they can maintain their market share, despite having a flat out $400 more per ton paid across the board for all cocoa farmers regardless of how that cocoa has been produced. So this sparked the question for us to analyze. How is the living income differential going to affect sustainability issues, specifically deforestation. And we look at international stakeholders as well as stakeholders in Ghana and we see that internationally sustainability is seen through the lens of deforestation. Whereas in Ghana sustainability is seen through the lens of poverty, where Ghanaian stakeholders in the cocoa sector say that nothing can be done to address deforestation unless we can increase farmer incomes. Whereas many stakeholders in the international sphere will say, if we increase farmer incomes that will very likely increase deforestation. So you can see it's a very contentious policy issue. And there's diverging opinions on whether the living income differential is viable specifically how the market will respond. And we do know that global cocoa prices is a supply and demand issue right so right now, there's more supply than than demand is needed so we've gone and coach you are continue to be unable to constrain supply. It's going to be very difficult to push the needle on cocoa pricing. In terms of sustainability the differential does not have any conditionalities so farmers will receive more should be receiving more for their product regardless of whether that farm has caused deforestation or not. So that's where a lot of the contention derives itself from with regards to whether this will have a negative impact on sustainability issues. So I encourage you to read the paper. Here's, here's the citation, and thank you very much for your attention I look forward to any questions. Thank you Sophia, and now we will move on to our last speaker. Valentina, I can see that you already have your video on so that's great. I share my screen. Yes, please. Over to you. Please let me know if you see my presentation in full screen. Yeah, thank you. And good afternoon from Sardinia everyone. Thank you again for the invitation and I'm going to show you our study on climate risk assessment for cereal and livestock sectors in Mediterranean areas. So, as we know climate change is already affecting food security and food production worldwide, and the projections indicate an increase in the reduction sorry in the suitable areas for major crops and livestock, and 10% by mid-century and over 30% by the end of the century under the high emission scenario SP 5.5 and cities of cascading impacts are respected on food prices, labor capacity, household incomes and access to food and also climate change impacts the nutritional quality of food was in serious treat on the nutrient status of million people. Another important issue is the availability of water resources and the increased the expected increased competition among sector for the use of water resources are made up as the Mediterranean basin Mediterranean is indeed considered a not spot of climate change. In a recent study we made to assess the impacts of climate change on serial productivity in Italy we observe a reduction in crop productivity, particularly evident for mice that can reach over 40% by the end of the century, especially in southern regions of Italy. These impacts together with the projection of increasing global population calls for a huge urgent need to implement adaptation actions to increase the resilience of agricultural sector and to achieve the sustainable development goals. In the process of adaptation planning we need to follow several steps, regardless of the scale of the analysis from national to local scale and one of the key steps in this process is the assessment of risk and vulnerabilities because only the knowledge of the actual and projected risk and vulnerabilities allows to define the most appropriate adaptation options to be implemented. And this information is pivotal to inform policymaker and so to support the decision making process. I'm going to show you on a risk assessment carried out at the regional level to support the Sardinian government in the development of the regional adaptation strategy to climate change for Sardinia region. The strategies was developed in accordance with the sustainable development goals and the strategy received the awards as the best project in Italy in 2019. Sardinia is located at the center of the Mediterranean basin and includes one of the world's five blue zones with a high number of centenarians, maybe due to the genetics or the lifestyle or diet and food we actually don't know yet but maybe a combination of all these aspects. Anyway, the agriculture plays a key role in for Sardinia, not only from economic point of view but also from environmental and social point of view. From the extensive, the cultivation of extensive crops like cereals and in particular on the wheat, we produce typical and traditional foods, bread and pasta, and also from the livestock that is mainly based on on sheep breeding, we produce typical sheep cheese. So, to perform the risk assessment for cereal and livestock sectors, we apply the impact chain approach following the IPCC framework to assess the different components of risk, so the asard, the exposure and the vulnerability including the sensitivity and adaptive capacity. So, we define the two impact chains for cereals and livestock, we define all the indicators to describe the exposure, asard and vulnerability, and we collected all the data and analyze the indicators and classify all these indicators into five classes of increasing level of criticality. And the results were presented at regional and municipal scale to inform policymaker at different administrative level. Here I reported as an example the results we obtained for the cereal sector. And finally, for this analysis we integrated the impact chain method with the output obtained for from more complex models, we applied crop simulation models at a grid scale to obtain simulations of crop phenology and the field of three main cereals, durung wheat, common wheat and maize, and our simulation show reductions in up to 11% in crop yield for durung wheat and over 20% for common wheat and maize. The two maps reported here show the results already averaged for the three cereal species, and the majority of the municipalities are classified in a high class of criticality in class four. And then the period of the analysis, the short, medium period 2021-2050, and we consider it to different emission scenarios, medium emission and high emission. Together with the expected impacts, we have to take a look at the potential, the level of the response capacity of the system, and we analyze several socio-economic indicators. For example, the level of education, the GDP per capita, the percentage of areas equipped for irrigation, the distribution of high efficient irrigation systems, etc. We can analyze all these indicators, singularly, and also combine in the global adaptive capacity index. This kind of information allows the identification of the areas with greatest risk, and also the most critical aspects for which to focus the adaptation efforts. And we know there is a rapidly narrowing window of opportunity to achieve the climate resilient development. So, every decision we take today really matters. Just to conclude, some take-home messages from this study, the climate risk that we carried out for Sardinia for the short, medium period is higher for cereal sector than for livestock, and among cereals during wheat is less climate sensitive than common wheat and maize. We observed a high level of criticality for the adaptive capacity of the system, highlighting the need for urgent action. And the tool that we apply, the impact chain approach, is suitable for a rapid risk assessment, so it's useful to support the adaptation policies. And one of the main limiting factor is, unfortunately, at least for our case study area, the availability of high resolution up to date and open access data. And, however, when it's possible, it's better to improve the analysis using output from more complex and process-based models. And for example, the crop simulation models, but also the water balance models, for example, can allow us to answer also to what if questions. And also to test, for example, changes in crop management as potential adaptation and mitigation strategies to climate change. As next steps, we would like to extend the analysis to assess also the risk for other crops that compose the food basket for of Mediterranean diets. Thank you for your attention. Thank you very much, Valentina. And now we will move to the next part of our press conference, which is the question and answer round. So I open the floor to questions from journalists. If you would like to chat as well informally or do a formal interview with our speakers, later feel free to write to me and we will try to help you out. So any questions from our journalists in the room or online? Okay, we have a question coming in. Could you maybe repeat the question for us in English as well so that it's accessible to everyone. Thank you. Thank you. Like for her to understand is she be seeing sich auf mittlere Niederschläge oder auf auf Veränderungen. So the question was if there is a difference in average precipitation between islands in the Mediterranean Sea like Sardinia, or islands in the North Atlantic Ocean like Ireland or the British Isles. I think the, if we compare the British Isles and Sardinia, then the British Isles will probably receive more precipitation than Sardinia. At the same time precipitation is not the whole story. Because this is only the water input we also need to think about what water is lost by evaporation, if we want to obtain the water that's available for our ecosystems and in terms of evaporation. There's more evaporation in Sardinia compared to the British Isles. So actually both is pointing in the same direction. If we think about the British Isles, then we would have more water input and less evaporation, whereas in the Mediterranean is less water input and more evaporation. So the amount of available water will be less on Sardinia. Thank you. Do you have a follow up question that you want to ask, or is it okay? Yes, we can also talk in German afterwards. Okay. And do we have any other questions coming in? Doesn't seem to be any questions from the chat either. So with that we are ready to conclude this press conference. Thank you everyone for joining us. Thank you Valentina as well for your time. We really appreciated it. And like I said, if you would like to speak to any of our presenters today, then feel free to reach out to us later. Thank you everyone once again, and we have two more press conferences which are happening tomorrow, the last two of E223. So be sure to check those out as well. Thank you everyone and wish you a good day.