A new IFPRI report
examines climate change’s effect on global nutrition, and how mitigation and
adaptation strategies throughout the food system can help.
Researchers from the
International Food Policy Research Institute (IFPRI) have published an
extensive report highlighting the effects of climate change on agriculture and
global nutrition. The report, Climate Change and Variability: What are the
Risks for Nutrition, Diets, and Food Systems?, compiles evidence-based research
to provide a detailed look at food security, agriculture, and food systems in
relation to climate change. The authors also examine future projections in
these areas, seeking to acknowledge the complexity and importance of those
relationships as both global population and global temperatures rise.
The report frames the
food system as both a victim and a driver of climate change: while climate
change negatively affects agriculture and the ability to feed the world, the
food system intensifies climate change by significantly contributing to global
greenhouse gas emissions (GHGs).
In an introductory post,
the reports’ authors urge more research and action, calling the task of
ensuring adequate global nutrition for all “the challenge of our lifetime.” The
authors cite research projecting that at current rates of climate change, “it
is likely that global food production will decline by two percent every decade
until at least 2050, just as the world’s population is expected to reach 9.7
billion people.”
Persistent drought and
other changes in weather patterns are already resulting in famine for millions
of vulnerable people.
A 2016 report modeled
the effects of this climate change on global health, estimating “excess
mortality attributable to agriculturally mediated changes in dietary and
weight-related risk factors,” and predicted half a million agricultural
climate-related deaths in this time period.
The IFPRI authors state
that nutritional status, ultimately leading to morbidity and mortality, “can be
exacerbated by the effects of climate change at all stages of the food value chain.”
Featuring seven focal
areas through a food system lens, the report brings together research on each
piece of the food value chain and anticipated challenges posed by climate
change. The authors suggests both climate change mitigation and adaptation
strategies using a nutrition-sensitive approach that is also climate-aware.
The food system lens
begins with agricultural input—elements like seeds, agricultural extension
services, fertilizer use, soil quality, irrigation—and the importance of understanding
how crop productivity and nutritional value can be simultaneously maximized.
Next, food production and food storage are considered, stressing that
increasing global temperatures and changing precipitation patterns cause
changes in what food is grown, where it is grown, how it is stored, and whether
it is nutritionally valuable and safe from pathogens.
Citing research by Colin
Khoury and colleagues at the U.N. Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO), the
report asserts “food supplies are becoming increasingly homogeneous and
dependent on a couple of truly ‘global crops.’” According to Khoury, “reliance
worldwide on these crops heightens interdependence among countries in their
food supplies, plant genetic resources, and nutritional priorities.”
Experts like Khoury say
homogenization of crops grown reduces biological diversity, making crops more
susceptible to climate events and pests, and reduces dietary diversity by
limiting the variety of foods available to consumers. Dietary diversity is
commonly associated with nutritional status, in particular with adequate
consumption of micronutrients.
By decreasing crop
variety or negatively affecting nutrient content of foods, climate change also
has implications for food processing. The report explains increased need for
food processing to fortify foods for populations with decreasing access to
adequate nutrients, and to help ensure nutrient quality or stability nutritious
foods if food storage and transport are challenged by climate change.
Among other distribution
challenges, the report cites that rising temperatures will increase need for
more refrigerated storage and transport, therefore increasing food system GHGs.
The IFPRI authors also
address rising animal-source food consumption, citing World Resources Institute
(WRI) research on the importance of animal-source protein in vulnerable
populations’ food supplies, while urging that “those eating more [animal-source
food] than is nutritionally necessary decrease their consumption.”
The final component of
the food system lens is consumption and utilization of food, which involves
consumer knowledge and food preparation skills. Utilization also depends on
general health and absence of disease that affects nutrient absorption or
increases nutritional needs.
Reduced food access will
most affect consumption, the report says, because “climate change is expected
to increase [food] prices as well as price volatility due to decreased
production and increased loss.” The IFPRI authors cite evidence for the
negative effect of food price increases on increased micronutrient deficiencies
and other forms of undernutrition.
Reduced food access also
increases incidence of obesity and noncommunicable diseases, the report says,
referencing findings that “increasing food prices may lower the nutritional
quality of dietary intakes, exacerbate obesity, and amplify health
inequalities.”
As climate change
decreases agricultural productivity and access, the authors argue, it will
intensify inequity: the rural poor will be least equipped to adapt. The IFPRI
report concludes that a food system that is both climate- and
nutrition-sensitive is necessary to be sure nutrition is a key consideration in
the development of climate change mitigation and adaptation strategies.
According to the
authors, the strategies encompassed in the nutrition-sensitive and
climate-aware food value chain must both “maximize nutrition entering the food
value chain” and “minimize nutrition exiting the value chain.”
The report includes many
recommendations, such as an adoption of agricultural practices that “maintain
necessary levels of nutritious food production while minimizing the
environmental effects of agriculture.” In addition, the report recommends
working to enhance food storage and processing to address food safety concerns
and maintain nutritional value of foods, arguing that, in addition to
decreasing undernutrition, this could reduce food waste in low- and
middle-income countries.
Other recommendations
include improved infrastructure and transportation for improving smallholder
farmer access to markets, and the creation and dissemination of public health
campaigns for promoting the need for sustainability considerations in dietary
guidelines. Prior research has recommended public health campaigns for
mitigating the negative health effects of climate change.
For safeguarding
vulnerable populations from climate change, the report suggests social services
“to protect the most vulnerable from long-term stresses and short- term shocks
that threaten food security.” It also emphasizes the importance of addressing
and decreasing disease in these populations for increased utilization and
absorption of nutrients consumed, as well as the importance of dietary
diversity.
The authors also
emphasize a need for improved early warning systems for detecting both slowly
shifting patterns of rainfall or temperature and for extreme weather events.
IFPRI published this report in the days before
the Trump administration announced that the United States will back out of the
2016 Paris Climate Agreement. The report’s authors suggest that collaboration
and cooperation between the private sector, NGOs, and governments is key to
improving nutrition using climate-conscious methods to “[protect] the health of
people and the planet.”
