Exploring different food security futures, what might be in store for the poor?

SSP scenarios developed by the IPCC to explore different futures (Kriegler et al. 2012; O’Neill et al. 2012) are often used in explorative studies. These scenarios, however, are geared towards climate change analysis. Stakeholders participating in the FoodSecure project (www.foodsecure.eu) felt that these SSP scenarios do not adequately account for aspects relevant to food and nutrition security (van Dijk et al., 2014). To address these concerns four scenarios focussing on food security developments up to 2050 are developed in the FoodSecure project. These scenarios coincide with quantification of the SSP scenarios where possible, while diverging where needed to capture developments deemed critical for analysing food and nutrition security.