For communities across the Global South, the impacts of climate change are not abstract projections but concrete realities that threaten their land and food security. The final installment of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change’s (IPCC) assessment points to grim consequences should the world fail to meet the 1.5 degrees C target for warming—and even a 1.5 degree pathway would leave nearly 1 billion people experiencing increased risk of drought. The recent World Food Day on October 16 held grim significance for the millions already experiencing climate-related food insecurity.

 

The devastating effects of the war in Ukraine—one of the world’s leading exporters of wheat, corn, and food oils—have had a ripple effect on food prices around the world, with especially pernicious price spikes felt in African countries where households already invest a disproportionate amount of their budgets on food.

The longest drought in recorded history has pushed millions of people in the Horn of Africa into severe food insecurity, malnutrition, and famine, further exacerbated by war in Sudan.

The COVID-19 pandemic posed a virtually unprecedented disruption to food supply chains, serving to erase years of hard-earned progress on food security. The UN recently reported the prevalence of food insecurity is still far above pre-pandemic levels, with 29.6 percent of the global population experiencing food insecurity in 2022, compared to 25.3 percent in 2019.

These crises are gas on a fire for a global food system reeling from the worsening effects of climate change. Increased temperatures, variable rainfall patterns leading to both drought and flooding, and the ensuing geographic spread of crop pests and diseases associated with climate change pose considerable challenges to agricultural production. With as many as 783 million people hungry globally in 2022, adverse climatic conditions are exacerbating the food crisis. To make matters worse, the communities weakened by food insecurity—the majority of whom already live in poverty—are often the most vulnerable to climate change due to their reliance on rain-fed farming methods. This is a perpetual cycle of instability.

It is a cruel reality that low- and middle-income countries, who bear little historic responsibility for the current climatic conditions, are the ones primarily confronted with its consequences. The establishment of a Loss and Damage Fund at last year’s COP27 was a milestone in the debate over climate finance. Wealthier nations must now commit to funding such a mechanism to support adaptation and recovery in climate-affected countries.

But communities in these countries can’t wait for funding pledges to be fulfilled, much less, for global mitigation efforts to take hold. Adapting food systems to the new climatic reality is an urgent challenge that farmers are facing right now.

With the right conditions and incentives, smallholder farmers—who bear a heavy burden of climate risks—can adopt climate-smart practices to bolster crop productivity, sustain livelihoods, and lessen food insecurity. Investing in irrigation technologies, building terraces, intercropping, adopting agroforestry, and fallowing land, for example, can offer resilience to drought and changing temperatures. Such sustainable practices contribute to long-term soil health while boosting food yields and diversity, and ultimately enhancing household nutrition.

Read the full article about land rights for farmers by Chris Jochnick at Global Washington.