This book, which contains 13 separately authored chapters, has been developed from the ADAPT Project, focusing on the development of regional adaptation strategies to climate change and climate variability for water, food and the environment in river basins across the world. Chapter 1 describes a generic methodology for river basins (called the Adaptation Methodology for River Basins, AMR). Chapter 2 discusses the use of climate change scenarios as provided by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change and, more specifically, how these scenarios can be used for regional studies. Chapters 3 and 4 describe in more detail the possible consequences of climate change and climate variability for food security and environmental quality. The application of the generic AMR methodology to 7 basin case studies in contrasting geographical areas of the world is presented in Chapters 5-11: Syr Darya (Kyrgyzstan, Uzbekistan, Tajikistan and Kazakhstan), Zayandeh (Iran), Rhine (Germany, Netherlands and France), Mekong (Yunnan (China), Myanmar, Laos, Thailand, Cambodia and Vietnam), Volta (Ghana), Walawe (Sri Lanka), and Sacramento (California, USA), respectively. Chapter 12 integrates the findings of the basin studies and compares these findings with global trends in climate change related to food security. Finally, Chapter 13 gives a summary of the experiences encountered during the ADAPT project, and provides key findings that should be addressed in new regional adaptation studies. This book will be of interest to researchers in climatology, geography, ecology, agriculture, environmental studies and related disciplines. | Gift

By 2030, it is estimated that the world population will be 8.3 billion people, increasing the pression in energy, water, food, land use and mineral extraction, especially in the developing world. These estimates indicate the immediate need to adopt interventions that can minimize these impacts. There is a lot of talk about sustainability, but it is still rare to make the results of integrated evaluations available on various topics. When considering the integrated Nexus Food-Water-Energy (F-W-E) assessment, this fact is even more challenging. Considering the importance of the agricultural sector in Brazil and the existence of areas in different stages of degradation, it becomes strategic for interventions that can generate socio-economic and environmental benefits and positive impacts to the tripod F-W-E. Thus, the present proposal will be based on the Ribeirão das Lajes dam (RJ), a core area for the water supply of the second largest city in Brazil - Rio de Janeiro. A methodological approach able to generate an integrated assessment tool to evaluate the impact of agriculture practices in the Nexus F - W - E will be presented. We used secondary official dada as the main input for this tool. One of the reasons is to make it accessible for different stakeholders and decision makers. It can help to get better decisions regarding land use intervention - which may be technical or political.

In recent years, the global economies have been faced with steeply rising prices. The members of World Bank and the United Nations including WFP (World Food Program) appeal to the world for necessary food emergency aid programs so that people in poverty might be prevented from being troubled by food shortages. Developed countries, such as Japan, the EU and the United States, comply with the world demand. One of the causes of the steeply rising price of food are the money inflow into the commodity futures market from the oil market and the investment market for housing at the United States. The changing food demand of BRICs, in which Brazil, Russia, India and China are involved, and emerging economies is the biggest factor of steep rising price of food. This will bring the structural change into the world food market. The fourth report of IPCC (Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change) indicates the possibility of drought, temporary flooding, water shortage and transition of suitable land on agricultural production in the future. Agricultural production is not only carried through under these global environmental problems but also the effects of agricultural production on the global environment have to be minimized. The aim of this paper is to consider the possibility of attaining the sustainable agricultural production, which may minimize the influence of agricultural production on the global environment and which may keep pace with changing food demand and population increase by reviewing present studies, especially those focusing on biofuels and water issues. The sustainability science perspective is appropriated in order to consider the shape of sustainable agricultural production.