Philip is a Visiting Researcher in the School of Earth and Environment at the University of Leeds.

His work focuses on the vulnerability and adaptation of Ghana’s food production systems to climate variability and change.

Climate change not only poses one of the greatest threats to humankind in the 21st century but also will have a disproportionately large effect on agriculture. This research investigates how Ghana’s food production system is vulnerable to climate variability and change and explore policy options to reduce this vulnerability. The overall aim of the research is to explore the socioeconomic, institutional and biophysical factors that contribute to vulnerability to climate change amongst a range of types of farming communities in Ghana. The research is critical because the agriculture sector is not only the backbone of Ghana’s economy, contributing to about 44% of its GDP, but is extremely sensitive to climate change. Data on the exact extent of vulnerability of Ghana’s agriculture to climate change are lacking, however, and this gap hampers developing effective policy to reduce the impacts of climate change. For instance, little is known about how farmers in Ghana adapt to changing climatic conditions. As such, it is unclear from a policy perspective how to best enhance the country’s adaptive capacity. By characterising food production systems, this study seeks to provide a theoretical understanding of food systems vulnerability that will help guide more general discussions of the sorts of food production systems that should be better able to adapt to future climate changes.