Agricultural Pathways and Scenarios for Regional Integrated Assessment of Climate Change Impact, Vulnerability and Adaptation.

The global change research community has recognized that new pathway and scenario concepts are needed to implement impact and vulnerability assessment that is logically consistent across local, regional and global scales (Moss et al. Science 2010). For global climate models, Representative Concentration Pathways (RCPs) have been developed; for impact and vulnerability assessment, new socio-economic pathway and scenario concepts have also been developed (Kriegler et al. 2012; van Vuuren et al. 2012, Global Env Change), with leadership from the Integrated Assessment Modeling Consortium (IAMC). One of the goals of these new developments is for them to be linked to sector-specific and regional pathways and scenarios. A major effort in this direction is the development of global and regional Representative Agricultural Pathways (RAPs), with leadership from the Agricultural Model Inter-comparison and Improvement Project (AgMIP). This poster will provide an overview of the RAPs concept and methods for their development within the integrated assessment framework developed by AgMIP and then illustrate their development and use by the AgMIP Regional Research Teams in Sub-Saharan Africa and South Asia.

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