According to the United Nations’ annual food security report 2018, World hunger has risen for a third consecutive year. Climate Change is among the leading causes of rising global hunger. 60 million people are facing a food crisis but the public has not heard about it. The 2015/16 ‘super El Niño’, combined with climate change, brought severe droughts and flooding to people in the Horn of Africa, Southern Africa, Central America, Asia, the Caribbean and the Pacific.  31.1m people are currently food insecure in the Horn of Africa.

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Relationship between climate change and hunger:

• Agriculture is one of the industries most exposed and vulnerable to climate change.
• Crops and livestock are extremely sensitive to temperature and precipitation.
• A late spring frost can be devastating, and a heat wave during the flowering stage can result in sharply reduced yields.
• With climate change, people face shortage of water and food, resulting in increased competition to access these basic necessities. This increases the chances of the intensification of existing conflicts and also creates new ones.
• In the Democratic Republic of Congo, shifts in the timing and patterns of rainfall have led to lower food production and greater competition on arable land, increasing ethnic tensions and conflicts in the country. Such conflicts affect the poor the most, and further lead to an increase in poverty and displacement, pushing people into a vicious trap.
• Frequent floods and droughts caused by climate change lead to food shortages and rise in food prices. This causes ­hunger and malnutrition, the effects of which are felt most strongly by the poor.
• Floods and droughts brought on by climate change threaten food production and supply. As a result, the price of food increases, and access becomes more and more limited, putting many at higher risk of hunger.
• Rising sea levels, extreme weather events and prolonged drought force millions of people to move away from home every year in search of food, water and jobs.
• Gradual changes brought on by deforestation, overgrazing and drought slowly transform pastures to dust, destroy crops and kill livestock, effectively challenging the livelihoods of millions of farmers
• Meat consumption alone accounts for an estimated 22 percent of global water use, and this need will increase in a hotter world.
• Even seemingly disparate factors like international trade are affected by climate change, with serious ramifications for food security

India’s risk profile due to climate change:

• India ranks fifth globally for the losses it has experienced due to climate change
• Around 800 million people in the country live in villages and depend on agriculture and natural resources for their livelihoods. With at least 50% of the farmlands in the country being rain-fed, changes in the pattern of the monsoons will affect their livelihoods the most.
• There has been a recorded decline in monsoon rainfall levels since 1950. And it is suspected that 2°C rise in world’s temperature will make India’s monsoon even more unpredictable. Change in Monsoon could flood certain states in India, while some other states may witness frequent droughts.
• Climate change will make the existing problems of poverty, malnutrition, and farmer suicides worse.
• Due to climate change, 15% of India’s groundwater resources are damaged, and falling water table is suspected to deal a severe blow in progress of agriculture.
• Rising sea-level and surges of storm would also impact agriculture, degrade groundwater quality, increasing the risk of contamination in water, and giving rise to diarrhoea and cholera.
• Also rising carbon dioxide levels due to global warming is suspected to shrink down the amount of protein in crops like rice and wheat, which are primary food source for majority of the population in the drought leaving populations at risk of malnutrition, low immunity and raising the risk of diseases affecting the population severely.
• There will be manifold increase in the severe heatwave frequency and affecting the crops, food delivery system etc.

Way forward:

• Curbing food loss, improving nutrition and promoting sustainable production systems must be prioritized.
• Food-producing nations will need creative policies and new technologies to meet these challenges successfully.
• The efforts should include reforestation which would reduce the impact of extreme events fuelled by warming of the surrounding oceans and neighbouring lands.
• To limit global warming, countries will have to change policies in sectors like land, energy, industry, buildings, transport, and urban development.
• Limiting global warming to 1.5 degree compared with 2 degree would reduce challenging impacts on ecosystems, human health and well-being, making it easier to achieve the United Nations Sustainable Development Goals.
• When historical knowledge no longer works, farmers must rely on other sources of information, such as meteorologists, agronomists and other scientists, as well as the development of new sustainable technologies.
• Public funding for agricultural research and development must be increased and the developed countries must transfer the technology to the developing and low-income nations.
• Precision agriculture can leverage computers, global positioning systems, geographic information systems and sensors to provide the data necessary to give each tiny parcel of land on a field exactly the inputs it needs.
• And a resurgent interest in the use of the time-honoured technology of cover crops may mitigate climate change impacts.
• Nanotechnologies can also help improve how fertilizers and pesticides are released. By putting chemical inputs into tiny capsules or in gels, it is possible to control when and how these inputs are released to make them more effective, and at the same time reduce chemical emissions and runoff.

Conclusion:

In short, agriculture is the “Goldilocks industry” — the weather should not be too hot or too cold, and rainfall must be “just right.” Producing enough food for everyone in the world depends heavily on climate. This means that it will be impossible to curb hunger without preparing for and adapting to climate change. People must wield their social power to encourage mitigation of climate change and promote investments in technologies for adaptation. We need everyone at the table contributing to a food-secure future.