This paper was prepared for Stanford University’s Global Food Policy and Food Security Symposium Series, hosted by the Center on Food Security and the Environment, and supported by the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation.

Food policy makers are increasingly faced with the question of how to adapt to climate change. The increased attention on climate adaptation is partly related to the fact that greenhouse gas emissions and climate change show little sign of slowing, partly because of prospects for large sums of money devoted to adaptation, and partly because of well publicized recent weather events that have affected agricultural regions and rattled global food markets. A common and reasonable reaction from the food policy and agricultural community has been to argue that climate variations have always been a challenge to agriculture, and that climate change just makes addressing these variations more important. A logical conclusion from this perspective is to emphasize activities that help build resilience to unpredictable weather events, as well as to focus on the types of weather variables that exhibit a lot of year-to-year variability and cause the bulk of farmers’ concerns in current climate.

However reasonable as a starting point, this perspective is misguided and risks taking a challenging problem and making it even harder. Anthropogenic global warming (AGW) is fundamentally different from the natural variations driven by internal dynamics in the climate system. Indeed, predicting the course of climate change is less like predicting the weather next week than it is like predicting that summer will be warmer than winter. Progress in climate science has shown that the most indelible hallmarks of AGW will be increased occurrence and severity of high temperature and heavy rainfall extremes in all regions, and increased frequency and severity of drought in sub-tropical regions. Changes in the timing and amount of seasonal rainfall also appear likely in some regions, but at a much smaller pace relative to natural variability. In all of these cases, predictions from climate science are most robust at broader spatial scales, with considerable uncertainty in predicting changes for any single country.

Meanwhile, progress in crop science has shown that most crops show fairly rapid declines in productivity as temperatures rise above critical thresholds, with as much as 10 percent yield loss for +1°C of warming in some locations. Both sub-Saharan Africa and South Asia appear particularly prone to productivity losses from climate change, in part because major staples in these regions are often already grown well above their optimum temperature.

Approaches to climate adaptation should recognize these realities, and should not equate anticipating climate changes with the considerably harder task of predicting next year’s weather. Predicting and building resilience to climate variability still remain important goals for agricultural development, but adaptation efforts should balance these activities with those focused more on the specific threats presented by climate change. Heat tolerant crop varieties and strategies to deal with heavy rainfall provide two examples of important needs. Similarly, balance is needed between the local-scale efforts that attract most of adaptation investment currently, and regional and global networks to develop needed technologies. Given the greater certainty of climate changes at broader scales, as well as the positive track record of international networks for crop breeding, investments in these global systems are very likely to deliver substantial adaptation benefits. Finally, given the downward pressures that climate change will exert on smallholder farm productivity in sub-Saharan Africa, and the critical role productivity gains play in catalyzing an escape from poverty, speeding the pace of investment in African agriculture can also be viewed as a good bet for climate adaptation.

The legacy of the late North Korean leader Kim Il Sung's decision in the early 1990s to pursue a strategic partnership with the United States has run its course. In its place, the focus of Pyongyang's policies has decisively shifted to Beijing. However wary the North Koreans may be of their neighbor, the fact is that from Pyongyang's viewpoint, the Chinese have delivered and the United States did not.

Any shards remaining from the North's previous, decades-long effort to normalize ties with the U.S. were swept away by current leader Kim Jong Il's trip in May to China, his third in barely a year. Based on our discussions with Chinese officials, we believe that during that visit, Pyongyang and Beijing came to an understanding that, in preparation for planned, major domestic political events in 2012, both sides require sustained political stability, a convergence of interests that provides the opportunity for expanding bilateral relations beyond anything enjoyed in the past. The North is building toward a "prosperous and powerful" nation in celebration of the Kim Il Sung centenary in April; the Chinese are looking toward their 18th Party Congress scheduled for late next year. In both cases, it was apparently decided, stability on the Korean peninsula would serve economic programs and the succession of a new generation of leaders.

In the arrangements — formal and informal — that emerged from Kim Jong Il's discussions with his hosts, Pyongyang agreed not to "make trouble" (as the Chinese described it to us) in the short term, presumably meaning no deliberate military provocations, no third nuclear test and no launch of another ballistic missile. Beyond that, the talks ended in a compromise that neither side found entirely satisfactory. Kim came away with less aid and a smaller Chinese commitment of support than he had sought, though Pyongyang typically asks for more than it can get.

The North did, however, receive increased access to both Chinese capital and technology in spite ofUnited Nations and other foreign sanctions. Kim also obtained, through the establishment of joint economic zones with China along the Yalu River, a locale to test adjustments necessary to economic development, adjustments that would fall short of what Beijing considers genuine economic reform. Chinese President Hu Jintao, we were told, had to settle for Kim's promise to cause less trouble but without a North Korean commitment to serious steps toward denuclearization.

We believe that this pivot toward Beijing is no routine oscillation in North Korean policy. The drive to normalize relations with the U.S. from 1991 to 2009 had been real, sustained and rooted in Kim Il Sung's deep concern about the regime's future in the aftermath of the collapse of the Soviet Union. Perhaps there was no better demonstration of the North's approach in those years than the situation on Oct. 25, 2000 — the 50th anniversary of the entry of the Chinese People's Volunteers into theKorean War. Who was in Pyongyang on that date meeting Kim Jong Il? The Chinese defense minister? No, he was cooling his heels while Kim met with the U.S. secretary of State. That was no accident of scheduling on Pyongyang's part; it would not happen again today.

If the paradigm shift is real, we expect the North in the near to medium term to make far less overt trouble. Less tension on the Korean peninsula? What could be wrong with that? Nothing, as long as it is understood that such tranquillity will also provide a veil for the North's continuing pursuit of nuclear weapons and increasingly sophisticated delivery systems. With the onset of stability and growing Chinese-North Korean cooperation, Pyongyang may well calculate that the outside world's focus on the North Korean nuclear program will become diffuse. Indeed, the North Koreans have long assumed that given enough time, the world would resign itself to their nuclear weapons, as happened with India and Pakistan.

To help things along, it isn't out of the question that Pyongyang might even agree to some U.S. efforts to contain the nuclear program through a series of what Washington calls "pre-steps." The North has repeatedly expressed willingness to consider discussion of its uranium enrichment program and moratoriums on missile and nuclear tests. As unilateral actions, these would have short-term benefits by further stabilizing the situation to provide additional room for discussions. But in the absence of long, serious negotiations between the two sides, they will turn out to be no more meaningful than the ill-considered agreements of the now moribund six-party talks.

All of which brings us back to the deepening North Korean-Chinese ties, and the downgrading in Pyongyang's calculations of relations with the United States. There was considerable momentum behind the North's strategy for engaging the U.S. in past negotiations. That is no longer the case, with consequences we have only started to feel.