Dear colleagues, Please join us in the online discussion on “The future of food Security and climate Change in Viet Nam, Malawi and Zambia: scenarios, outlooks and challenges in the next 30 years”. The discussion aims at exploring the current, foreseeable and likely relationships between climate change adaptation, climate change mitigation and food security in the three countries and has been set up by FAO’s Economics and Policy Innovations for Climate-Smart Agriculture (EPIC) programme in collaboration with the CGIAR programme on Climate Change, and Agriculture and Food Security (CCAFS) and with support from the European Commission. FAO’s EPIC programme works with governments, research centres, universities, farmer’s unions, civil society and other institutional partners to support countries transitioning to Climate-Smart Agriculture (CSA) by using sound economic and policy analysis. It is a programme of work started in 2012 aimed at identifying and implementing climate-smart agricultural policies, analyzing impacts, effects, costs and benefits as well as incentives and barriers to the adoption of climate-smart agricultural practices. The ultimate objective of the programme is to support developing and in-transition countries to formulate agricultural investment proposals to increase resilience to climate change and promote CSA. EPIC is working in Malawi, Viet Nam and Zambia to secure the necessary policy, technical and financial conditions that enable them to sustainably increase agricultural productivity and incomes, build resilience and the capacity of agricultural and food systems to adapt to climate change, and seek opportunities to reduce and remove GHGs to meet their national food security and development goals. In 2013 the programme carried out, in collaboration with CCAFS, a series of participatory scenario building workshops in each of the three countries. The workshops, which were attended by more than one hundred practitioners, academics and policy makers, looked at the relationships between climate change and food security and identified some of the most pressing drivers that will likely affect food security in the next 30 years (see reports for Viet Nam, Zambia and Malawi). A follow-up series of scenario workshops is being planned to take place in May 2014 to validate earlier formulated scenarios and their quantification as well as to stress-test investment proposals drafted. The scenarios have been developed to explore diverse futures for Malawi, Zambia and Vietnam, each of which poses different challenges and opportunities for development and agricultural policies. Therefore, the scenarios are a tool to help think of the implications of policies and investments and improve strategic planning through the questions they can be used to ask. This online discussion aims at continuing the work initiated at the first round of workshops and to engage in a constructive dialogue everyone interested in climate change and food security with a specific interest and competence on Malawi, Zambia and/or Viet Nam. The outcomes will feed into the preparation of the second round of workshops which will be held as follows: 8-9 May 2014 in Malawi, 8-10 May 2014 in Viet Nam, 20-21 May 2014 in Zambia. The main questions proposed are: 1. What do you think are the main drivers of and obstacles to development for Malawi / Viet Nam / Zambia in the next 30 years? (see the list of drivers and obstacles in each country) 2. Keeping in mind that each scenario represents an extreme future, how plausible do you think the scenarios for Malawi/Viet Nam/Zambia are? What would you like to add/change in each scenario to make it more plausible from your perspective? 3. What solutions would support the drivers of the best scenario and help overcome obstacles encountered on the way? How about overcoming the challenges of the worst scenarios? 4. What are the key first steps needed to get a change process in motion, and who needs to be involved? Please go to the page dedicated to the country of your interest to see the scenarios and to respond to the questions. The online consultations are open to everyone interested in the subject for three weeks, until Wednesday, 9 April 2014. To participate and for additional information on this initiative please visit: www.fao.org/fsnforum and www.fao.org/climatechange/epic; or contact us at: fsn-moderator@fao.org Please feel free to circulate the invitation within your professional networks or to suggest us people you think would be interested in taking part in online consultation. We look forward to receiving you comments, suggestions and inputs! Your EPIC Team | 
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