A/Prof. John F Mccarthy1
1ANU, Canberra, Australia
Climate change poses a major threat to the livelihoods and food security of many people in rural Indonesia, especially those dependent on agriculture, fisheries or living on the forest fringe. Yet, as impacts are nestled among a range of complex factors that are highly contextual, the effect of climate change on food security will be complex and variable. While existing studies tend to focus on the impact of biophysical change on livelihoods, this paper applies an approach that analyses how climate related impacts are mediated through socio- political structures and processes. Drawing on available studies of climate related vulnerability, food security and adaptation in Indonesia that suggest that climate change compounds existing forms of nutritional and livelihood insecurity, the paper discusses emergent understandings of how biological processes, meteorological forces and socio-economic processes work together to produce vulnerability. Based on an analysis of contexts where drivers of vulnerability are relatively well understood and where studies of adaptation strategies have already been undertaken, the paper develops an analysis of probable vulnerability/adaptation pathways.
Biography
John McCarthy works on questions of governance, institutions and rural development with a focus on forestry, agriculture, food security and land use. At present he has an Australian Research Council funded project regarding social protection and food security in rural Indonesia. He was previously a Research Fellow at the Asia Research Centre, Murdoch University, Western Australia and Leiden University in the Netherlands. He has carried out various assignments with agencies including AusAID (now DFAT), ACIAR, the World Bank, and the Centre for International Forestry Research (CIFOR). John is Associate Professor at the ANU Crawford School
He is the editor of two recent books:
Land & Development in Indonesia: Searching for the People’s Sovereignty, ISEAS, Singapore.
The Oil Palm Complex: Smallholders, Agribusiness and the State in Indonesia and Malaysia, NUS, Singapore.