Francesco Saretto holds a B.Sc. in Environmental Engineering and a double M.Sc. in Environmental Engineering (with a specialization in Climate Change) from Politecnico di Torino and KTH Royal Institute of Technology, Stockholm. He wrote his master’s thesis in the framework of RethinkAction. The research took place from August 2023 til January 2024. Now, Francesco works as a research fellow at the Politecnico di Torino. He is currently contributing to the development of an early flood warning system for a region in the northeast of Burkina Faso.
Climate Media Factory (CMF): Congratulations to your thesis “Assessment of Climate Change Impact on Rainfed Barley Production in the Mediterranean Basin. The Almeria province case study.”, and the follow-up paper “Impacts of Climate Change and Adaptation Strategies for Rainfed Barley Production in the Almería Province, Spain.”
Your thesis was carried out within the framework of the European project RethinkAction. In what way is your research related to the RethinkAction project? What is the story behind and who was involved?
The research that me and the team from FC.ID have carried out for my Master’s Thesis focuses on the Almería Province, the Mediterranean Case Study of the RethinkAction project. We studied the effects of climate change on the production of barley in the area using the FAO’s Crop Model AquaCrop: one of the tools defined within the Rethink Action framework. Our study served the project’s objectives by providing a first operationalization of the AquaCrop model that could also be used in other study areas. Also, we produced the first crop’s yield projections: giving an outline of how the future might look like.
For my master’s thesis, I strongly wanted to work on the effects of Climate Change on agriculture, and as soon as I found out about the RethinkAction project, I got in touch with the project partners asking for the chance to work with them. I was lucky to get a positive reply from both CARTIF and from FC.ID in Lisbon. I then decided to work FC.ID because of their focus on AquaCrop. In Lisbon, I worked under the supervision of Professor Tiago Capela Lourenço, who has been an incredible support and help throughout the research, from the first selection of the research question to the publication of the paper. I also worked side by side with Ricardo Encarnaçao Coelho and Bishwajit Roy, who gave me continuous feedback and support to develop the thesis and solve the technical issues that often arose with the AquaCrop model. At the same time, I was also supervised by KTH’s Professor Luigia Brandimarte, guiding my research from Stockholm. Finally, for the paper that we published, I also worked with RethinkAction’s partners Alfredo Reder (CMCC), Giusy Fedele (CMCC), and Robert Oakes (UNU-EHS). Rob also hosted me in Almería for the first face-to-face stakeholder workshop in February.
CMF: The Mediterranean region, where Almería is located, is a climate change hotspot. Why did you choose this region? Could you tell us something about the region and summarize the Climate Change projections for Almería Province?
I chose this region because, being from Italy, I feel a strong connection to the Mediterranean region. Also, I wanted to study how agriculture can develop under some of the driest conditions in Europe. To learn and possibly transfer the knowledge to my home country, which is experiencing drier conditions each year.
The province of Almería is peculiar because even though it is one of the driest in Europe, a large share of its economy comes from agriculture. Particularly, from greenhouse-based horticulture from the southern part (e.g. El Ejido). The climate projections for the region are clear: the temperatures will increase, and the already scarce precipitations will become even scarcer. This will result in drier conditions in the future.
CMF: Why is agriculture particularly affected? And what kind of agriculture does your thesis focus on?
The new environmental conditions will of course impact local agriculture primarily by increasing the water stress on plants. The impact will be on both greenhouse and open-air agriculture, but the latter will clearly be most affected. The thesis focuses on barley: the most important open-air grown crop in the province. This crop is mainly grown in the northern part of the province, where there is no greenhouse agriculture.
CMF: What were your main research questions?
We focused on five research questions covering methodology, climate change impact and climate change adaptation strategies:
- How well-suited is the standard AquaCrop barley crop parametrization to model multi-year trends in rainfed barley production in the Almería province?
- What are the projected trends of rainfed barley yield change at mid-century (2041- 2070), and end-century (2071-2100), under SSP1-2.6, SSP2-4.5, and SSP5-8.5 scenarios?
- When using irrigation as an adaptation strategy, what will be the irrigation demand for barley in the analyzed scenarios and how will this affect yields?
- How will the application of mulches affect irrigation needs and yields?
- How will changing the sowing date impact rainfed barley yields?
CMF: What kind of models and scenarios did you use? What are SSP-based scenarios? Could you explain it as simple as possible for a non-scientific reader?
Our research used the crop model developed by FAO called AquaCrop. This model is particularly interesting because it requires relatively few inputs and can manage different levels of accuracy of such input data. Also, it is particularly suitable for conditions of water stress: perfect for the Almería province. The input data was retrieved from open-access databases often developed at European scale. From these, we extracted the information for our study area.
Particularly interesting is the climate change data that we used. This was provided by RethinkAction’s partner CMCC and was based on three reference Shared Socioeconomic Pathway (SSP) scenarios: SSP1-2.6, SSP2-4.5, and SSP5-8.5. These scenarios are interesting because they pair the “climate change intensity” at the end of the century quantified by the last two numbers: 2.6, 4.5 and 8.5 (these numbers indicate the radiative forcing at the end of the century, roughly, how much heat our atmosphere traps because of increasing greenhouse gas concentration), with 5 different socioeconomic patterns that could lead at those climate change intensity levels.
Each one of these socioeconomic patterns has a different degree of climate action and a different focus for development: 1 being the more “climate friendly” and 5 being the more oriented towards economic growth.
CMF: What were your main findings? And how will someone benefit from your results beside the scientific community?
Our analysis shows that losses in barley yield in the province of Almería could reach -44.8% at mid-century and -55% at the end of the century. The main factor determining this change appeared to be soil water content: preserving it might be the single most important action to reduce crop losses and adapt to climate change. Our scenarios also indicated that with reasonable irrigation (around 3% of Almería’s superficial water resources), yields could also improve in the future.
We designed this study to retrieve results that can help local stakeholders and policy makers to design long term strategies for climate change adaptation. Irrigation is the perfect example: even though it would require only a minimal share of Almería’s water resources, in an aridity-prone region such as this one, every decision counts and the water management strategy will be defined by the local administration.
CMF: Given this experience do you want to continue in this field?
This experience has greatly inspired me to continue in this field and to pursue a career in research. This decision came both from the great experience that I had within the research team in Lisbon and from the amazing feeling of developing science that can help drive decisions in the real world, affecting people and communities. In these crucial years for our fight to climate change the scientific community has to open up and communicate with local stakeholders as much as possible to drive change. And that is what I want to do with my future work.
CMF: Does your experience make you confident that we can adapt to climate change?
My experience makes me optimistic about our knowledge and technical ability on how to adapt to climate change. Each day more and better science is produced on this topic, and there is no doubt that we already have significant knowledge on what should be done. What concerns me are the fundings that are designated to it, but also the uneven access to climate change adaptation strategies and technologies that exists between the Global North and Global South. It is important that our governments and administrations develop far-sighted climate change adaptation strategies that also include technological and knowledge transfer to countries in the Global South: climate change is a global challenge, and local strategies will be effective only within a global overarching adaptation strategy.
CMF: Thank you for the interview and good luck for your future work!