Risk of increased food insecurity under stringent global climate change mitigation policy

Hasegawa, T., Fujimori, S. ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0001-7897-1796, Havlík, P. ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0001-5551-5085, Valin, H. ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0002-0618-773X, Bodirsky, B.L., Doelman, J.C., Fellmann, T., Kyle, P., Koopman, J.F.L., Lotze-Campen, H., Mason-D’Croz, D., Ochi, Y., Pérez Domínguez, I., Stehfest, E., Sulser, T.B., Tabeau, A., Takahashi, K., Takakura, J., van Meijl, H., van Zeist, W.-J., et al. (2018). Risk of increased food insecurity under stringent global climate change mitigation policy. Nature Climate Change 8 (8) 699-703. 10.1038/s41558-018-0230-x.

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Abstract

Food insecurity can be directly exacerbated by climate change due to crop­ production-related impacts of warmer and drier conditions that are expected in important agricultural regions. However, efforts to mitigate climate change through comprehensive, economy-wide GHG emissions reductions may also negatively affect food security, due to indirect impacts on prices and supplies of key agricultural commodities. Here we conduct a multiple model assessment on the combined effects of climate change and climate mitigation efforts on agricultural commodity prices, dietary energy availability and the population at risk of hunger. A robust finding is that by 2050, stringent climate mitigation policy, if implemented evenly across all sectors and regions, would have a greater negative impact on global hunger and food consumption than the direct impacts of climate change. The negative impacts would be most prevalent in vulnerable, low-income regions such as sub­ Saharan Africa and South Asia, where food security problems are already acute.

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