Climate Change and Hunger

Human actions have created a world in which it is becoming ever more difficult to adequately and sustainably feed and nourish the human population. A 150-year run of rapid economic growth and a consequent rise in greenhouse gas emissions have pushed average global temperatures to 1°C above preindustrial levels. Experts agree that with the current rate of emissions, the increase in average global temperatures will likely reach 1.5°C between 2030 and 2052. Climate models project higher average temperatures in most land and ocean regions, hot extremes in the majority of inhabited regions, and heavy precipitation and ever-greater probability of drought in some areas (IPCC 2018a).

These changes will increasingly affect human systems—including food systems—across the world on a large scale. In South Asia and Africa South of the Sahara—regions currently with high concentrations of poverty and hunger—agriculture is highly dependent on rainfall and susceptible to even small changes in temperature. Large populations (up to 80 percent of rural households in some countries) depend on agriculture for their livelihoods, and it is the regions in which these populations reside that are most at risk of climate change–induced hunger and food insecurity.

For the world’s hungry and undernourished people, climate change is an increasingly relevant threat multiplier. Almost 822 million people remain undernourished, and 149 million children are stunted because of undernutrition (FAO et al. 2019). In addition, more than 2 billion people suffer from deficiencies of one or more micronutrients (von Grebmer et al. 2014). Previously on the decline, the number of hungry people has been rising since 2015, a shift that the Food and Agriculture Organization has attributed to persistent instability in conflict-ridden regions, economic slowdowns in more peaceful regions, and adverse climate events (FAO 2018b). For example, the El Niño weather event of 2015–2016—which was exacerbated by higher sea surface temperatures, among other factors—led to widespread food insecurity and hunger in multiple countries. Since the early 1990s, the number of extreme weather–related disasters has doubled, affecting the productivity of major crops and causing food price hikes and income losses (FAO et al. 2018). These disasters have had a disproportionate negative impact on people living in poverty and their access to food.

One of the major blind spots in climate change decision making has been the framing of climate change as a biophysical challenge— that is, one driven by carbon emissions privileges, carbon sequestration capacity, and emissions reduction—rather than as an outcome of consumption, economic growth, and societal choices (Pelling, O’Brien, and Matyas 2014). In reality, the risks posed by climate change are the result of a range of underlying causes driven by societal values and behaviors, including production and consumption patterns, and human population. Only in recent years have discussions about climate change been reframed to focus on human lifestyles and consumption choices, equity of responsibility, associated impacts, and climate justice. This shift is a necessary step toward building societal consensus for the sweeping changes needed in current economic, consumption, and value systems, especially in high-income countries, to avoid the resulting catastrophic outcomes, including worsening hunger and undernutrition, of a significantly warmer world in the near future.

Human-caused factors, including the global food system, are raising average global temperatures by 0.2°C per decade (IPCC 2018a). Extreme weather events, such as storms, fires, floods, and droughts, have increased in frequency and intensity. Globally, the average sea level has risen by 16–21 centimeters since 1900 (IPCC 2014). All of these manifestations of climate change have direct and indirect negative impacts on food security and hunger through changes in food production and availability, access, quality, utilization, and stability of food systems.

Impacts on food production

Food production is likely to fall in response to higher temperatures, water scarcity, greater CO2 concentrations in the atmosphere, and extreme events such as heat waves, droughts, and floods. Already, yields of major food crops such as maize and wheat are declining owing to extreme events, epidemics of plant diseases, and declining water resources. In semi-arid regions, 80 percent or more of year-to-year variation in cereal production can be attributed to climate variability (FAO et al. 2018). In Africa, the relationship between production and various aspects of climate, such as rainfall patterns or temperature, is much more complex, showing high regional variation and demanding location-specific adaptation measures.

Sea-level rise poses a particular risk to food security on small islands, in low-lying coastal areas, and in river deltas. Not only are large populations exposed, but given the high productivity of deltas, such as the Mekong Delta, which accounts for 50 percent of Viet Nam’s national rice production, any change in production patterns would have a substantial impact on food availability and the national economy (Gommes et al. 1998). Rice, a staple crop consumed by half the world’s population, is highly sensitive to minor changes in temperature and water salinity, making yields extremely susceptible to climate impacts in important growing regions such as the Mekong Delta (FAO 2018b). Data are lacking on how climate change affects other nutritionally important crops such as millet, lentils, fruits, and vegetables. Furthermore, the aggregate national impacts on production do not reflect the range of impacts at the subnational and local levels that result from variations in climate conditions and production systems.

Given that projected impacts vary across crops, regions, and adaptation scenarios, farmers will need to apply location-specific adaptation measures. For example, model projections by the Agricultural Model Intercomparison and Improvement Project (AgMIP), an international collaboration to improve agricultural modeling, show yield reductions in all study locations in the maize-growing regions of Kenya. Although 50–70 percent of farms are vulnerable to the impacts of climate change, the exact impact varies widely between regions, and adaptation potentials differ (AgMIP n.d.).

Climate change will also increasingly affect water resources for food production as it alters the rates of precipitation and evaporation as well as groundwater levels. At present, 1.8 billion people—just under one-quarter of the world population—live in water-stressed areas, and this number is expected to grow to about half of the world population by 2030 (IPCC 2014).

Climate-related disasters, namely droughts, floods, and storms, account for 80 percent of all internationally reported disasters. Over the period 2011–2016, large parts of the world were affected by severe droughts, leading to crisis-level food insecurity for 124 million people in 51 countries (FAO 2018b). As a result of the El Niño event of 2015–2016, which was exacerbated by climate variability, the dry corridor of El Salvador, Guatemala, and Honduras experienced one of the worst droughts in the past 10 years, affecting 50–90 percent of the crop harvest (FAO 2016). The longer a drought lasts, the more difficult it is for people to cope with its impacts. Recurrent extreme events, such as the cycle of floods and cyclones that hit Pakistan over the period 2007–2010, had a devastating effect on the agricultural sector, with cumulative losses estimated at four times the government investment in the sector over the period 2008–2011 (FAO 2015). To cope with these disasters, people may, generally speaking, reduce their food consumption, consume lower-quality food, sell their assets, change their livelihoods, migrate, or pursue several of these strategies at once. Whatever they decide, each has its own links to hunger and food insecurity (von Grebmer et al. 2018). Climate impacts particularly affect women, who are often responsible not only for producing food but also for managing and distributing it within families and communities.

In addition, climate change exacerbates tensions, especially in vulnerable and food-insecure regions. Climate crises and armed conflict create a double vulnerability for communities, which are pushed beyond their ability to cope (ICRC 2019b). The combined impact of conflict and climate change destroys livelihoods, drives displacement, widens economic and gender inequalities, and undermines long-term recovery and sustainable development. Addressing the multidimensional impacts of conflict on food security requires a genuinely integrated approach to prevention. Such an approach must prioritize investment in innovative agricultural development, adequately consider the natural environment, and reinforce community resilience to complex shocks while supporting community-level systems to manage resources equitably and sustainably (Concern Worldwide 2018).

Impacts on food access

Weather anomalies and climate change, particularly extreme events, can affect food prices and consequently food access. The poorest households—rural net food buyers and the urban poor—are the most exposed to food price spikes, with the urban poor spending up to 75 percent of their total expenditure on food. Given the high degree of cross-connectedness between global food systems, more frequent and extreme events in one region have the potential to disrupt the entire global food system. While many key production areas experienced climate-driven impacts on yields, food price spikes have been accentuated by a combination of national policy responses. In this volatile and uncertain situation, low-income countries are understandably deeply concerned about their food security and their capacity to adapt to climate change, especially given that low-income countries and vulnerable people cannot easily absorb or adjust to sudden shocks.

Impacts on nutrition

Climate variability and extremes can also affect nutrition and food safety in several ways. In some low-income and marginal areas, patterns of food consumption are highly seasonal, with people’s food security and nutrition being adversely affected during the lean season before the harvest. Climate change may reduce production and thus reduce food availability even further. Alternatively, it may extend the lean season, thus exacerbating the negative effects on people’s nutrition.

In addition, climate change can worsen the nutritional value of the food that is cultivated. Recent studies show that higher CO2 concentrations reduce the protein, zinc, and iron content of crops. As a result, by 2050 an estimated additional 175 million people could be deficient in zinc and an additional 122 million people could experience protein deficiencies. These impacts will be felt most keenly by people living in poverty, who depend heavily on plant sources for their nutrition. Poor people in Africa, the Middle East, and South and Southeast Asia are most at risk from the combination of these deficiencies and poor public health systems that may be unable to cope with the impacts (Smith and Myers 2018).

Climate change will also affect other crops and food sources that are essential for good nutrition and food security. In terms of food crops, much of the information on climate change impacts covers only the four major staple crops—wheat, rice, maize, and soybeans— even though a range of other crops are essential for nutrition and food security. It is already clear, however, that changes in agricultural production, pasturelands, temperature, and water will affect animal production. FAO studies show that droughts are the most damaging climate-related disaster, with the livestock sector accounting for the second-highest amount of losses (36 percent) after crops (49 percent of all reported losses). These livestock losses have a direct impact on food availability and access (FAO 2018b). Fish, another important source of food and nutrition for large populations, are similarly highly vulnerable to temperature changes and climate extremes.

Finally, erratic rainfall and higher temperatures affect the quality and safety of food. Higher rainfall intensity leads mold to grow on field crops, with some strains producing toxins, such as aflatoxins, that can lead to stunting among children (Lombard 2014). Inadequate post-harvest management practices as the result of changing growing conditions lead not only to loss of food in terms of quantity but to a degradation in quality, including its nutritional value.

Impacts on the food value chain

A changing climate may worsen food losses in a global food system in which massive amounts of food are already lost or wasted. In low- and middle-income countries, about one-third of the food that farmers produce is lost between the field and the market, and in high-income countries a similar percentage of food is wasted at various points from the market to the table (FAO 2011). Given that the current food system contributes 21–37 percent of total net anthropogenic emissions (IPCC 2019), these losses exacerbate climate change without contributing to improved food security or nutrition (IPCC 2018b). In fact, besides being a huge burden on scarce environmental resources, food losses of this magnitude are a factor in the persistence of food insecurity. Climate change and weather extremes can exacerbate this situation in low- and middle-income countries: crops that endure drought in the field and high humidity during storage—an increasingly common pattern owing to changing rainfall patterns—are more vulnerable to pests and fungal infections, leading to losses in both food quantity and quality.

Current actions are inadequate for the scale of the threat that climate change poses to food security. The international mechanism for confronting this challenge is the Paris Agreement, which was negotiated in 2015 and opened for signature in 2016. So far, 185 countries have signed the agreement (UNFCCC 2019), which sets a goal of limiting warming to well below 2°C. At the heart of the Paris Agreement are countries’ own pledges to reduce greenhouse gas emissions, known as nationally determined contributions (NDCs). Unfortunately, current mitigation actions as defined in countries’ NDCs are collectively expected to result in a warming of 3–4°C over preindustrial averages by 2100 (IPCC 2018b). This is a massive overshoot of both the 1.5°C and 2°C targets and will lead to substantial impacts on food and nutrition security. To bridge the gap, countries have agreed to a system of five-year cycles for reporting, assessing progress, and setting new, more ambitious NDCs.

It is clear that more ambitious actions are required in order to reduce the risks of climate change (mitigation) and to cope with its impacts (adaptation) on food and nutrition security. It is worth noting that climate change raises the challenge of four key inequities:

1. the degree of responsibility for causing climate change

2. the intergenerational impacts of climate change

3. the impacts of climate change on poorer people in the Global South

4. the ability and capacity to deal with climate change impacts

All of these inequities play out at the interface of climate change and food security, posing ethical and existential challenges. The areas and populations most affected by climate change have contributed the least to the factors that lead to climate change and potentially have the least capacity to deal with its impacts (see Box 3.1 on countries’ vulnerability and readiness). The consumption patterns of the current generation in middle- and high-income countries place the food security of future generations at risk, restricting the options and choices available to them. By delaying action and limiting the scale of that action, we reduce the “safe space” for future generations (Raworth 2012).

Small or incremental changes will not deliver the scale or pace of change needed to remain within the 2°C warming threshold as defined by the Paris Agreement. Transformation—a fundamental change in the attributes of human and natural systems—is now recognized as central to climate-resilient development pathways that address the goals of Agenda 2030, particularly the Sustainable Development Goal 2 of Zero Hunger, and the Paris Agreement. These pathways must include actions for mitigation, adaptation, and sustainable development. More broadly, they demand a profound and deliberate shift toward sustainability, facilitated by changes in individual and collective values and behaviors and a fairer balance of political, cultural, and institutional power in society (IPCC 2018b). Frequently in such efforts, concerns about equity are sidelined through an assumption that a growing economy, for example, creates opportunities for all. History shows, however, that pathways that are positive for a majority of people still have significant impacts and impose considerable costs, especially for people who are marginalized and vulnerable (Hickel 2019).

Recognizing that the global food system plays a central role in such a pathway, the EAT-Lancet Commission calls for a radical transformation to be implemented (Willett et al. 2019). It rightly postulates that without large-scale action, we risk missing both the goals of Agenda 2030 and the Paris Agreement. While it is a laudable first attempt to set universal scientific targets for the food system, including for food waste reduction, the targets cannot be universally applied as there are major differences in global food consumption patterns. Northern Americans, for instance, consume 6.5 times the recommended amount of red meat, whereas South Asians consume only half the recommended quantity. Dietary recommendations thus cannot be globally imposed but must be differentiated and locally adapted.

Mitigation measures and impacts on food security

Efforts to remain within the “safe space” for society must include mitigation actions—that is, measures to reduce or prevent the emission of greenhouse gases or to enhance the absorption of those already emitted in order to limit the magnitude of future warming. Agriculture and forestry play an important role in mitigation, as photosynthesis can be used to convert atmospheric CO2 into carbohydrates and oxygen.

Mitigation measures can offer synergies with efforts to improve agricultural production. Sustainable agricultural practices can enhance soil quality, thereby increasing productivity and other ecosystem services, such as regulating water quality. By improving land and fertilizer management, applying biochar (charcoal produced from plant matter and stored in the soil as a means of removing CO2 from the atmosphere), breeding for deeper root systems, managing manure more effectively, adopting improved feeding practices for animals, and applying better grazing land management, farmers can both sequester CO2 and enhance productivity. From a technical point of view, agroforestry offers huge mitigation potential.

To achieve the goal of limiting global warming to 1.5°C, mitigation strategies need to be deployed rapidly, which potentially raises negative trade-offs with development goals and food security. For example, the large-scale deployment of intensive bioenergy plantations, including monocultures, could help sequester carbon and replace fossil fuels. At the same time, however, they could replace natural forests and subsistence farmlands, reduce biodiversity, threaten food and water security, endanger local livelihoods, and intensify social conflict (Brondizio et al. 2019). In addition to relying on natural ecosystems for food, more than 2 billion people rely on wood fuel to meet their primary energy needs, 4 billion people rely primarily on natural medicines for health care, and up to 70 percent of drugs globally contain natural or synthetic products inspired by nature (Brondizio et al. 2019). Changes in access to these resources would disproportionately affect women, who rely more on common pool resources.

All climate models that place us on the path to achieving the Paris Agreement goals assume large-scale deployment of these types of bioenergy with carbon capture and storage measures. Land governance will play a key role in ensuring that the most vulnerable are not further marginalized through such mitigation strategies.

The promise and the limits of adaptation

Adaptation measures are those that help to manage both the adverse impacts of climate change and the opportunities that may arise from a changing climate. Sustainable agricultural practices, such as agroecological processes and multifunctional landscape planning, can fulfill multiple objectives, including food security and biodiversity protection. Such practices need to be context specific and based on the knowledge of indigenous and local practitioners, scientists, consumers, and private sector value chain actors who are willing to transform supply chains. Still, trade-offs may arise between adaptation, development, and mitigation that are difficult for local communities to anticipate and manage.

Defining adaptation pathways is one of the most serious challenges. Because adaptation actions are context specific, the necessary actions are often outside the current experiences of the actors involved. Carrying out these actions requires supportive policies and measures from actors at multiple levels, all of whom must share the same vision and have the right incentives in place. Adaptation strategies also require redistributive measures, such as providing access to affordable and nutritious food or renewable energy to those who are likely to be adversely impacted by the adaptation measures. Adaptation pathways are thus challenging to communicate, plan, finance, implement, and monitor.

A wide variety of adaptation actions are underway around the world. They range from autonomous adaptation, where human and natural systems continually adjust to the actual climate and its effects; to incremental adaptation, where changes are made within a system but do not affect its essence and integrity; to transformational adaptation, which seeks to change the fundamental attributes of a socioecological system in anticipation of climate change and its impacts. Sometimes, usually as an unintended consequence, there is also maladaptation—that is, actions intended to reduce risk that may inadvertently lead to an increased risk of adverse climate-related outcomes, including through increased greenhouse gas emissions, more vulnerability to climate change, or diminished welfare, whether now or in the future (Antwi-Agyei et al. 2018).

Future food and nutrition security will depend on adapting to rapid biological evolution created by human-induced changes. With changing temperatures and precipitation rates, plant and animal diseases are spreading into new biomes. Given that it can take 20 years to breed plant and animal species that can adapt to these conditions, these investments need to be made now so that they are in place by 2040. However, because scenarios of future climate change and its interaction with plant and animal life still contain uncertainties, and because most of the earliest and most severe impacts are felt in regions marked by subsistence farming, the private sector has invested little in this type of research and plant and animal breeding. New types of partnerships need to be forged to accelerate investments in relevant R&D.

Along these lines, some initiatives focus on bringing together indigenous and community knowledge and external scientific expertise to create new knowledge and practices (see Box 3.2). These are important because adaptive capacity needs to be created close to where the impact of climate change is being felt. They also valorize the knowledge of women, who are often the managers of agrobiodiversity and the holders of traditional knowledge. Overall, enhancing communities’ ability to adapt to climate change or manage climate change risks requires addressing pertinent locally identified vulnerabilities, involving stakeholders, and ensuring that adaptation initiatives are compatible with existing decision-making processes.

One important resource for future adaptation is the in situ conservation of agricultural biodiversity. In most major terrestrial biomes, the average abundance of native species has fallen by at least 20 percent (Brondizio et al. 2019). Wild relatives of crops, mammals, and birds are important for long-term food security, and reductions in the diversity of cultivated crops, their wild relatives, and domesticated breeds will mean that agroecosystems are less resilient against future climate change, pests, and pathogens. Local efforts, including those by indigenous peoples and local communities, have formed the backbone of conservation efforts so far, and these need to be enhanced and supported.

While adaptation is critical, there are limits in terms of both current knowledge systems and the availability of feasible alternatives. In the low-latitude regions of the world—primarily home to the low-income countries—even slight warming will reduce yields. While production systems can adapt to smaller changes in average global temperatures, many of the current systems would no longer be able to adapt to temperature increases of 3°C or more. This will differentially affect low-income countries and the poor within them, who lack resources and alternative livelihood options.

Finally, climate change does present opportunities and the possibility of adapting to and reaping benefits. These include longer growing periods, access to new lands in the Northern Hemisphere for food production, increased yield potentials, and access to new transportation routes and energy resources in the Arctic Circle. The rights to exploit these potentials are already being hotly contested between countries in the region, and these potential opportunities to seize resources are acting as serious impediments to climate action.

Leadership, ambition, and pathways for societal change

Individuals engage in adaptation and mitigation actions if they feel they have the capacity to effect change. Ambitious leadership plays an important role in showing that an alternative future is possible and that there are indeed pathways to achieving the goals of sustainable development while remaining within planetary boundaries. The EATLancet study was an important step in this direction, although its recommendations do need to be adapted to local contexts and cultural practices. The burden of changing practices must not be borne by those who currently have limited capacities and who have historically used few global resources, including in terms of their carbon budget.

Solidarity and safety nets

Several regions of the world, such as the small island nations, are already experiencing the impacts of climate change and related risks to food security. Global solidarity with these and other frontline communities that are the most climate vulnerable must be fostered and safety net programs designed. Climate finance must be increased and flow to climate-vulnerable people and regions on a significant scale and in a predictable manner. Adaptation must receive the same importance in financing as mitigation. Diverting development assistance toward climate finance erodes the basis for sustainable development and risks compromising food and nutrition security as well as adaptive capacities. Mitigation and adaptation measures must be combined with safety net policies that protect the most vulnerable, particularly women and children, from the adverse impacts of these measures, including hunger and food insecurity.

Governance and capacity building

Adaptation and mitigation actions need to be negotiated, coordinated, and implemented at multiple levels. For example, a country’s nationally determined contributions toward global mitigation objectives can compromise food security at the local level. Actors at all levels need to be able to negotiate and define common priorities and protective measures to ensure that marginalized people do not bear the burden of national mitigation commitments to a globally set goal.

Good governance, participatory planning, and downward accountability are essential elements that will help people and institutions negotiate and define measures that are fair and sustainable. Essential to this will be a shift from existing project-based short-term funding to programmatic, long-term investments for adaptation that are clearly aligned and integrated with national budgets. As many countries at the front line of climate impacts are also fragile states, the challenge of creating the necessary policy frameworks and building the capacity to implement them is enormous. It demands enhanced collaboration between global and national civil society, the private sector, governments, and communities on a massive scale. Institutions and system actors need to be strengthened to avoid scenarios of mass distress and forced migration. By providing support for broad-based and gender-balanced local leaders, it may be possible to implement adaptation and mitigation actions on a large scale.

Climate change is affecting the global food system in ways that increase the threats to those who currently already suffer from hunger and undernutrition. In this context, ending hunger and undernutrition demands large-scale action that seeks to address the inequities raised by climate change while staying within planetary boundaries. It requires ambitious leadership showing that an alternative future, including adaptation and mitigation actions on a broad scale, is possible.

Global solidarity with the most climate-vulnerable communities and countries must be fostered, and high-income countries must take responsibility for mitigating causes and supporting low- and middle- income countries in adapting to these changes. Both mitigation and adaptation measures need to be combined with safety net policies that protect the most vulnerable people from hunger, food insecurity, and other adverse impacts of these measures. Furthermore, good governance, capacity building, participatory planning, and downward accountability are essential to help people and institutions negotiate and define measures that are fair and sustainable. Achieving these goals will require a radical transformation that enables changes in both individual and collective behaviors and values and a fairer balance of political, cultural, and institutional power in society for the benefit of the food security and nutrition of all people.