Climate and Earth System Dynamics Group Noah Diffenbaugh

Transnational Climate Risks

 

Present-day (2018) and climate-projected trade communities for maize (indicating how countries concentrate their trade into groups and may do so differently with climate change). Major global producers are represented by country names (for 2018; FAOSTAT 2021). Countries in grey fall out of communities since either (i) their trade data are below the breakpoint, (ii) they are not represented in the FAO or ISIMIP data or (iii) their trade role is solely as an intermediary (they export what they import) and is therefore not a point of origin or final destination. (J. Hedlund, H. Carlsen, S. Croft, et al. Impacts of climate change on global food trade networks, Environ. Res. Lett., 17 (12) (2022), 124040.)

Johanna Hedlund’s research investigates patterns of transnational climate risks, referring to climate change impacts in one location resulting in disruptions across national borders. Her current research focuses on the impacts of extreme weather events, specifically heat, drought and precipitation on global food supply chains, triggering cascading effects on food security.

Overall, there has been a lack of a comprehensive and global-scale understanding of the level of risk that extreme weather events may yield on food supply chains under various climate scenarios. Still, extreme weather events do not only pose physical threats to food production and infrastructure, but also create transnational socioeconomic risks. These include the potential for food shortages and market price shocks that ripple across borders. Johanna’s research aims to enhance the tracking of these risks, often by combining climate modelling and network methods, and increase knowledge about the distributional effects of climate change that makes adaptation a collective responsibility.

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