Achieving Universal Food Security in an Adversely Changing Climate

Context

Climate has shaped the current global distribution and productivity of crops and livestock. From the dawn of the Neolithic Revolution, farmers have selected crop types and livestock breeds to meet their consumption preferences and market demands within the constraints of climate, soil, landscape, and water resources. As population pressures and market opportunities have increased, farming has inevitably extended into areas that are beyond the limits of adaptation for species or varieties, often degrading natural resources, sometimes with disastrous consequences.

As we move from the Holocene to the more volatile Anthropocene, agriculture and the world’s food systems face increasing disruptions.^[1] Today, climate change is a central challenge to sustaining agricultural productivity and achieving a food-secure world.^[2] Among the physical effects are increased temperatures; changes in precipitation patterns; melting of glaciers with impacts on river systems; extreme weather events; sea level rise and increased salinity and flooding. These changes redefine the adaptation and productivity of our food systems.

Agriculture is also a significant contributor to climate change through its greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions. Land clearing and degradation are the main food-related causes of carbon dioxide emissions. Methane is generated from anaerobic decomposition of carbon compounds under flooded conditions (mainly from rice cultivation, dams, and reservoirs) in addition to enteric fermentation by ruminants. Nitrous oxide is emitted mainly through excessive fertilizer applications and manure deposition. Using the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) terminology, Agriculture, Forestry, and Other Land Use (AFOLU) activities contribute about 23 percent of total net GHG emissions.^[3]

In 2018 food systems contributed about one-third of global anthropogenic GHG emissions.^[4] Of those emissions, 20 percent came from land-use change associated mainly with the conversion of natural ecosystems to agriculture. On-farm production activities, including on-farm energy use, contributed 44 percent of GHG emissions from the food system. The remaining 36 percent came from pre- and post-production activities, including food transport and waste disposal. These numbers provide insights into how the food system could potentially contribute to climate change mitigation efforts.

The 1996 Rome Declaration on World Food Security defined food security as existing "when all people, at all times, have physical and economic access to sufficient, safe and nutritious food to meet their dietary needs and food preferences for an active and healthy life."^[5] This concept of universal food security^[6] reflects a broader aspiration to meet the food requirements of everyone while conserving the environment: "healthy diets for all, from sustainable food systems."^[7] 

Notwithstanding increases in agricultural productivity and a sharp reduction in the proportion of undernourished people over the past 50 years, universal food security remains elusive. Current estimates show that about 735 million people – 9 percent of the world population – are undernourished; around 2.4 billion people are moderately or severely food insecure; and 3.1 billion people cannot afford a healthy diet.^[8] These numbers establish a baseline for measuring progress toward a food-secure world in times of climate change.

Transformation Strategy with Implications for Climate Action

Achieving universal food security will require a comprehensive investment strategy that sustainably increases food supply, enhances distribution and access, reduces food losses and waste, and improves nutrition for all, while addressing and mitigating an adversely changing climate. Taking an evidence-based, pragmatic, SDG-aligned approach, I have concluded the need for a five-pronged investment strategy – the Big Five portfolio – that spans the objectives to increase food availability, access, utilization, and stability (Figure 1).

Figure 1. The Big Five investment strategy for achieving universal food security in an adversely changing climate. Adapted from Denning (2023).

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Sustainable intensification

The objective of sustainable intensification is to increase food availability while reducing agriculture’s environmental footprint. Even with shifts to plant-based diets and reduced food waste, relying on existing production systems to meet the demands of 10 billion people by 2050 is implausible and risky. Production increases in some locations will need to offset the production declines in others due to land degradation, climate impacts, and other factors. We need to consider sustainable intensification as a portfolio of actions, applied contextually in different food system settings.^[9]

Market infrastructure

Food availability must be coupled with food access. Physical infrastructure investment – in roads, electrification, and information technology – is key in connecting producers to consumers. However, the design of infrastructure investments must now incorporate features that improve adaptation to climate change while also being assessed for its implications on GHG emissions.

Postharvest stewardship

One-third of all food produced is lost or wasted due to poor practices in harvesting, storage, and transportation, and as market and consumer waste.^[10] This represents lost opportunities to improve profits for farmers and reduce the cost of food to consumers. Additionally, it embodies wasted resources that were used to produce the unconsumed food and the environmental costs of associated deforestation, biodiversity loss, and GHG emissions. Food storage capacity is essential to offset shortages following disruptive climate events.

Healthy diets

Dietary change is necessary for improving both human health and environmental sustainability.^[11] Reducing global consumption of meat and dairy from ruminants will ultimately reduce pressure to clear land and reduce enteric fermentation with their implications for GHG emissions. However, policies that deter animal production must be nuanced and localized to recognize the impacts on livelihoods and the value of nutrient-dense animal products for the world’s undernourished people.

Social protection

When people are unable to provide for themselves due to conflict, natural disasters, poor health, or extreme poverty, society must protect and support the most vulnerable through social protection. With the increasing frequency of climate-driven disasters, social protection must be strengthened. Practical investments include food and cash transfers, school meal programs, and food voucher programs explicitly designed to encourage climate adaptation and mitigation actions.

While efforts are being made in each of these Big Five investment areas, they are often undertaken by passionate and committed individuals working within disciplinary and institutional silos. By taking a more holistic approach, investing in the Big Five portfolio can be transformational. This will require institutional innovation and capacity building, including the development of a new cadre of practitioner-leaders who are equipped, motivated, and supported to act.

Implementation

Transforming food systems to be productive, healthy, and sustainable requires a whole-of-society approach. Three broad groupings of institutions serve as essential agents of transformation.

Public sector: Governments, intergovernmental organizations, and Multilateral Development Banks, have a critical role in safeguarding the interests of stakeholders with limited or no voice, including future generations. That is most important for climate change mitigation where the future costs of inaction are not being met by current food system actors. The public sector also provides essential public goods such as infrastructure and research.

Private sector: Private-sector-led innovation can support climate adaptation, by aligning the incentives of food producers and consumers with those of profit-seeking businesses. But the private sector will only invest in mitigation innovations where there are complementary public-sector interventions or clear reputation and market-share benefits that businesses can secure.

Third sector: Third-sector organizations can play a crucial role in promoting, piloting, and modelling climate action, especially in the absence or limited role of government institutions. Farmers’ organizations play an important role in advancing farming household livelihoods through collective action in accessing information, inputs, finance, and markets. They also advance the interests of producers through public and political advocacy.

Institutions from these three sectors can drive policy change and investment decisions that support positive climate action. However, institutions are made up of individuals. Ultimately, behavioral change, whether independently or collectively, is crucial to transform food systems to be more productive, sustainable, and resilient in an adversely changing climate through the following actions:

• Making buying and consumption decisions that shape private-sector policies and investment decisions that favor climate action;
• Supporting political parties who commit to climate action;
• Volunteering with and giving financial support to third-sector organizations focused on sustainable food system transformation;
• Seeking education on climate action needs and opportunities; and
• Choosing careers that directly further the agenda for action.

Transforming food systems to achieve food security in an adversely changing climate requires collective action across the Big Five investment areas. Those actions must come from coherent and synergistic policies and actions from the public, private, and third sectors, at three levels of engagement:

International: The contribution of the food system to GHG emissions, its vulnerability to climate change, and its globalization demand greater attention at the international and regional levels. The UNFCCC Secretariat (UN Climate Change) supports the global response to climate change, emphasizing food system transformation.

National: Parties to the Paris Agreement were required to make formal commitments, known as nationally determined contributions (NDCs), to indicate a country’s contribution to global mitigation efforts and domestic adaptation initiatives. A 2019 FAO review of NDCs found that 96 percent of the 194 countries that had submitted NDCs included agriculture, land use, and forestry in their mitigation or adaptation contributions.^[12]

Local: While local initiatives on climate action can provide direct benefits and demonstrate the potential for broader impact, these investments often fail to deliver on their promise for wider impact. Actions aimed at improving adaptation – in contrast to advancing mitigation – are more likely to resonate with local stakeholders who stand to benefit from better adapted food systems.

Successful transformation of food systems to advance climate action inevitably involves decisions by numerous individuals, acting on behalf of their households, communities, governments, firms, and other organizations. This brings us to the final question: Who will make those critical decisions and take actions that will lead to positive climate outcomes toward the achievement of universal food security?

The Trigger for Creative Climate Action: Enlightenment of Leaders

Achieving universal food security in an adversely changing climate is within our reach. The Big Five investment portfolio builds on decades of evidence and experience. In addition, there are important cross-cutting investment areas, including education, gender and women’s empowerment, public health services, clean water and sanitation, good governance, and ending civil conflict. Action in each of these complementary areas will enhance outcomes across our Big Five.

Reflecting on past successes and failures, education is the single most important driver of positive change in food systems transformation to meet the challenge of climate change. A well-informed, reflective practitioner-leader can ignite the food systems transformation needed in the public, private, and third sectors, as well as the public at large.

Effective implementation of past programs to improve food security has relied on talented and motivated people. By strategically introducing informed and motivated practitioner-leaders into enough key organizations, we can transition our food systems toward universal food security. A global cadre of informed leaders is urgently needed to inspire, direct, and mobilize human endeavor toward this goal. That leadership will be required at all levels, from the highest echelons of the United Nations to the frontline workers who directly engage with food producers and consumers.

Universities can play a critical role in triggering climate-smart food systems transformations by enlightening leaders acting in the broader interests of current and future generations. Unfortunately, these institutions have been often overlooked by their own governments and the international community in advancing sustainable development, including food security. Some blame lies with the universities themselves for not incentivizing interdisciplinary work or connecting their research and teaching with real-world problems. Yet universities are the source of future practitioner-leaders who will shape policies and investment decisions over the coming decades. Columbia University has recognized this explicitly in adopting a Fourth Purpose "to help bring deep knowledge to the world we serve, and, in so doing, enhance the vectors of university research, teaching, service and impact."^[13] Targeting today’s millennials and post-millennials is highly strategic for achieving universal food security and net zero emissions by 2050.

Investing in the education and development of practitioner-leaders will lead to better decisions by individuals, acting on their own and with others through institutions in the interests of society. Those individuals and institutions will influence the actions and outcomes from the Big Five food system investment areas. Their actions will drive food systems transformation and lead to our ultimate goal: universal food security in an adversely changing climate.

 

Glenn Denning is Professor of Professional Practice and founding Director of the Master of Public Administration in Development Practice at Columbia University’s School of International and Public Affairs. He previously held senior management and research positions at the International Rice Research Institute, the World Agroforestry Centre, and the Earth Institute. Denning has advised governments and international organizations on agriculture, food security, and sustainable development. This paper draws extensively on his new book, Universal Food Security: How to End Hunger While Protecting the Planet. An earlier version of the paper appeared as an essay contribution to the Report of the Independent Task Force on Creative Climate Action (2023).

 

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[1] McMichael, Anthony. Climate Change and the Health of Nations: Famines, Fevers, and the Fate of Populations. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2017.

[2] IPCC, Climate Change and Land: An IPCC Special Report on Climate Change, Desertification, Land Degradation, Sustainable Land Management, Food Security, and Greenhouse Gas Fluxes in Terrestrial Ecosystems, ed. P. R. Shukla et al. (Geneva: IPCC, 2019), Summary for Policymakers, https://www.ipcc.ch/srccl/chapter/summary-for-policymakers/

[3] Ibid. 

[4] Francesco N. Tubiello et al., "Greenhouse Gas Emissions from Food Systems: Building the Evidence Base," Environmental Research Letters 16, no. 6 (2021): 065007.

[5] "Rome Declaration on World Food Security," World Food Summit, November 13–17, 1996, http://www.fao.org/3/w3613e/w3613e00.htm

[6] Food security is recognized as a human right in the Universal Declaration of Human Rights (1948) and elaborated in the International Covenant on Economic, Social, and Cultural Rights (1966).

[7] Denning, Glenn (2023) Universal Food Security: How to End Hunger While Protecting the Planet. Columbia University Press, ix.

[8] FAO, IFAD, UNICEF, WFP and WHO (2023). The State of Food Security and Nutrition in the World 2023. Urbanization, agrifood systems transformation and healthy diets across the rural–urban continuum. Rome, FAO. https://doi.org/10.4060/cc3017en.

[9] Denning, Glenn (2023) Sustainable intensification in aggregate: Phase 2 of Kofi Annan’s uniquely African green revolution. Future Development Blog. April 27, 2023. Brookings Institution.

[10] FAO (2019) The State of Food and Agriculture 2019. Moving forward on food loss and waste reduction. Rome, FAO. https://openknowledge.fao.org/server/api/core/bitstreams/11f9288f-dc78-4171-8d02-92235b8d7dc7/content

[11] EAT–Lancet Commission. Healthy Diets from Sustainable Food Systems, Summary Report of the EAT–Lancet Commission. Oslo: EAT, 2019. https://eatforum.org/content/uploads/2019/07/EAT-Lancet_Commission_Summary_Report.pdf.

[12] Crumpler, K., A. Meybeck, S. Federici, M. Salvatore, B. Damen, S. Dasgupta, J. Wolf, and M. Bernoux. Assessing the Role of Agriculture and Land Use in Nationally Determined Contributions. Environment and Natural Resources Management Working Paper no. 76. Rome: FAO, 2019.

[13] Columbia University, "Fourth Purpose Task Force Report: On Directed Action," Memorandum to President Lee C. Bollinger, December 15, 2020. https://president.columbia.edu/sites/default/files/content/Additional/Fourth%20Purpose%20Task%20Force%20Report.pdf.