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

Food insecurity can be directly exacerbated by climate change due to crop production-related impacts of warmer and drier conditions expected in important agricultural regions. However, efforts to mitigate climate change through comprehensive, economy-wide greenhouse gas emission 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.

HASEGAWA Tomoko;  FUJIMORI Shinichiro;  HAVLIK Petr;  VALIN Hugo;  BODIRSKY Benjamin L.;  DOELMAN Jonathan;  FELLMANN Thomas;  KYLE Page;  KOOPMAN Jason F. L.;  LOTZE-CAMPEN Hermann;  MASON-D'CROZ Daniel;  OCHI Yuki;  PEREZ DOMINGUEZ Ignacio;  STEHFEST Elke;  SULSER Timothy B.;  TABEAU Andrzej;  TAKAHASHI Kiyoshi;  TAKAKURA Jun'Ya;  VAN MEIJL Hans;  VAN ZEIST Willem-Jan;  WIEBE Keith D.;  WITZKE Heinz Peter; 

2018-08-03

NATURE PUBLISHING GROUP

JRC110841

1758-678X,   

https://publications.jrc.ec.europa.eu/repository/handle/JRC110841,   

10.1038/s41558-018-0230-x,