Institute:

UNU-EHS

Photo: UN-EHS Photo

Photo: UN-EHS Photo

Photo: UN-EHS Photo

Photo: UN-EHS Photo

The Where the Rain Falls project aims to increase understanding of the complexities of changes in rainfall patterns and how they affect food security and human migration. Through our research and risk reduction and adaptation efforts, we will provide better knowledge, recommendations and practical solutions to improve the lives of vulnerable communities in developing countries around the world.

Where the Rain Falls is a three-year programme of research, adaptation activities, advocacy and education on changing weather patterns, hunger and human mobility. Changing weather patterns are already causing weather extremes, including droughts and flooding, leading to food insecurity and displacement of people. Yet, these changing weather patterns, which include less predictable seasons and increasingly erratic rainfall, are some of the most important but least understood impacts of environmental change. While erratic weather has long presented serious challenges to people dependent on natural resources for their livelihoods, increasing variability due to climate change is making farming, pastoralism and even artisanal fishing more difficult and precarious.

Climate change is exacerbating risks such as heat stress, insufficient or too much rain at crucial moments in the plant cycle, pests and diseases. These worsened impacts interact with a range of escalating and existing stresses on rural livelihoods—like land pressure, soil erosion, deforestation and depleted water resources.

These risks have a cumulative impact on food security can be devastating and is already affecting human mobility in new ways. CARE International and the UN University’s Institute for Environment and Human Security, with support from the AXA Group and the John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation, have recently launched a new partnership to enhance the capacity of governments, civil society and the private sector to better understand and effectively address the relationship between changing weather patterns, food security and human mobility in some of the world’s most vulnerable countries and communities.

http://wheretherainfalls.org/