Giving Compass' Take:

· According to the UN, climate change has become a leading cause of the rise in world hunger. With increasing temperatures and unpredictable extreme weather, producing food has become more difficult and even impossible in some areas, leaving whole communities malnourished and in poor health.

· How can donors make a difference on this front? Can anything be done to reduce the effects of climate change on food supply?  

· Read more about the rise of world hunger and the connection between climate change and world hunger. 

Global hunger has increased again, and it’s not for the reason you might think.

Extreme weather is responsible for wiping out food sources malnourished people rely on, the United Nations warned in a report released recently.

One in nine people around the world are malnourished, according to research published in the UN’s “State of Food Security and Nutrition in the World” annual report. That’s a total of 821 million people who were malnourished in 2017, versus 815 million in 2016, according to the BBC. The increase, which occured over the past three years, reached global poverty numbers unseen in a decade. The UN’s goal to end hunger by 2030 now faces a real challenge.

“What is alarming about this analysis is that climate variability and climate extremes now are contributing to the rise in hunger,” Cindy Holleman, an economist and editor of the report, said to the Guardian. “Not just emergency levels of hunger, but chronic hunger.”

Droughts and floods caused by climate shock were noted as the key factors driving malnutrition in 2017. Conflict and economic downturns also play a part, according to the Guardian.

Read the full article about world hunger by Erica Sanchez and Leah Rodriguez at Global Citizen.