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Food security under climate change

Nature Climate Change volume 6, pages 10–13 (2016)Cite this article

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Using food prices to assess climate change impacts on food security is misleading. Differential impacts on income require a broader measure of household well-being, such as changes in absolute poverty.

The implications of climate change for food security have recently received attention within the IPCC, culminating in an Expert Meeting in Dublin, Ireland (May 2015), to discuss assessment options. During the meeting, the need for new “metrics for measuring food security across local and regional contexts” was clearly identified. Up to this point, the focus has mainly been on food production (availability) and price1. This historical focus of the literature on production impacts typically leads global change researchers to equate higher food prices with diminished food security2,3. However, this linkage was challenged in Dublin as being misleading at best, and altogether wrong in some cases. The food price metric wholly ignores the impact of climate change and agricultural prices on household incomes. Yet household food consumption depends critically on both prices and income. If climate change raises incomes for some households, this could dampen, or even reverse, changes in food consumption, despite rising prices.

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Figure 1: Distribution of absolute poverty, by earnings stratum ($1 per day for surveys predating 2000, and $1.25 per day thereafter).

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Acknowledgements

The author acknowledges research assistance from German A. Marquez Alcala, and comments on an earlier draft by Noah Diffenbaugh, Wally Falcon, Derek Headey, Kayenat Kabir, David Lobell, Will Martin, Michael Mastrandrea and Alexander Popp. Funding for climate impacts work was received under DOE Grant No. DE-SC005171.

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  1. Thomas W. Hertel is in the Department of Agricultural Economics and Purdue Climate Change Research Center, 647 Krannert Building, Purdue University, West Lafayette, Indiana 47907, USA,

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Correspondence to Thomas W. Hertel.

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Hertel, T. Food security under climate change. Nature Clim Change 6, 10–13 (2016). https://doi.org/10.1038/nclimate2834

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