Podcast: Download the keynote audio podcast from this event by right-clicking here and choosing ‘Save link as’.
About the Speech: Climate change poses a major threat to agriculture and food security in the developing world. In this address to the IIEA, Professor Gordon Conway, warned that progress made in the last two decades to combat hunger and poverty in Africa will be irrelevant if action is not taken on climate change. Professor Conway drew on a new report from the Montpellier Panel, The Farms of Change: African Smallholders Responding to an Uncertain Climate Future. The report makes the case for immediate investment to help African smallholders adapt to and mitigate climate change, noting that this will be vital in order to avoid food shortages, increased migration and exacerbated poverty. This event was part of the IIEA and RDS series of lectures on climate-smart agriculture, which is supported by a number of public and private sector companies and organisations.
About the Speaker: Sir Gordon Conway is Director of Agriculture for Impact and a Professor of International Development at Imperial College, London. He is also Chair of the Montpellier Panel, a group of African and European experts from the fields of agriculture, trade, ecology and global development working to enable better European government support of agricultural development and food security priorities in sub-Saharan Africa. Previously Professor Conway was Chief Scientific Adviser to the Department for International Development from 2005 to 2009. He was also President of The Rockefeller Foundation and Vice-Chancellor of the University of Sussex.
