Climate change is a threat multiplier for hunger, destroying livelihoods, driving displacement, widening social inequalities, and undermining sustainable development. This piece is adapted from Rupa Mukerji’s essay, “Climate Change and Hunger,” published as part of the 2019 Global Hunger Index (co-produced by Concern and Welthungerhilfe).
Since the early 1990s, the number of extreme weather-related disasters has doubled. Harvests have decreased, and food prices have risen as a result. The climate crisis is fueling the hunger crisis, and with our food systems more global than ever, we all stand to lose.
Sadly, this is not a trend that appears to be going away any time soon. Looking ahead, climate models predict higher average temperatures around the world and hotter extremes, rising sea levels in coastal areas and more frequent droughts in other areas. The Horn of Africa is currently experiencing its worst drought in 40 years. While climate change can be a difficult topic to fully understand, the human impacts are clear and very tangible: Millions of people go to bed hungry every night as a result of global warming. Here are four ways that climate change and hunger go hand-in-hand — and why we should all be concerned.
1. CLIMATE CHANGE IMPACTS AGRICULTURE AND FOOD PRODUCTION
Higher temperatures, water scarcity, droughts, floods, and greater CO2 concentrations in the atmosphere affect staple crops around the world. Corn and wheat production has declined in recent years due to extreme weather events, plant diseases, and a global water crisis.
According to the Food and Agriculture Organization, 80% of the causes behind an unpredictable harvest for cereal crops in areas like Africa’s Sahel come down to climate variability. In other areas like Bangladesh and Vietnam, rising sea levels pose a different threat to food security. There, coastal farmlands are often flooded by saltwater, which kills off rice crops. With half of Vietnam’s national rice production centered in the Mekong Delta (roughly the size of Maryland), even a minor flood can have major implications.
While the causes of these issues are fairly consistent, the solutions are not. This means that, with the effects of climate change already apparent in areas like the Horn of Africa and Southeast Asia, we need to find unique methods to mitigate disasters when they strike, and develop bespoke ways to reduce the impacts of hazards on the lives and livelihoods of these areas in the future.
2. CLIMATE CHANGE LIMITS ACCESS TO FOOD
If climate change reduces the amount of food produced, then it makes sense that it also reduces the amount of food people can access. This simple instance of supply-and-demand, however, has big impacts. If one part of the food system is interrupted due to a climate event (big or small), that can lead to inflation. We’ve seen this happen over the last two years after international trade was suspended due to COVID-19. These price spikes leave the poorest families most vulnerable; one study shows that people living in urban areas under the poverty line spend up to 75% of their budget on food alone.
Many of the world’s hungriest countries rely on agriculture as their main industry, which means that families eat seasonally in keeping with what their harvests (and their neighbors’ harvests) bring in. In the times before harvest known as “hungry seasons,” when the previous supply of food has been used up and the next crops are not quite ready to pick, families often skip one or more meals per day. In many areas, climate change has prolonged these hungry seasons.
Click here to check this resources: Climate Change and Nepal’s food insecurity