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Risk of increased food insecurity under stringent global climate change mitigation policy

Nature Climate Change volume 8, pages 699–703 (2018)Cite this article

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Abstract

Food insecurity can be directly exacerbated by climate change due to crop-production-related impacts of warmer and drier conditions that are expected in important agricultural regions1,2,3. However, efforts to mitigate climate change through comprehensive, economy-wide GHG emissions reductions may also negatively affect food security, due to indirect impacts on prices and supplies of key agricultural commodities4,5,6. Here we conduct a multiple model assessment on the combined effects of climate change and climate mitigation efforts on agricultural commodity prices, dietary energy availability and the population at risk of hunger. A robust finding is that by 2050, stringent climate mitigation policy, if implemented evenly across all sectors and regions, would have a greater negative impact on global hunger and food consumption than the direct impacts of climate change. The negative impacts would be most prevalent in vulnerable, low-income regions such as sub-Saharan Africa and South Asia, where food security problems are already acute.

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Fig. 1: Effects of climate change and emissions mitigation efforts on food security.
Fig. 2: Effects of land-based mitigation on food security indicators by 2050 under ambitious climate mitigation scenarios (RCP2.6) with residual climate change impacts for three SSPs.
Fig. 3: Regional effects of climate change and emissions mitigation.

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Acknowledgements

T.H., S.F., K.T. and J.T. acknowledge support from the Environment Research and Technology Development Fund 2-1702 of the Environmental Restoration and Conservation Agency of Japan and the JSPS Overseas Research Fellowships. P.H., H.V. A.T. and H.v.M. acknowledge support from the European Union’s Horizon 2020 research and innovation programme (EU H2020) under grant agreement no. 633692 (SUSFANS project). B.L.B. acknowledges support from the EU H2020 under grant agreement no. 689150 (SIM4NEXUS project). K.W., T.B.S. and D.M.D. acknowledge support from the CGIAR Research Programs on Policies, Institutions, and Markets (PIM) and on Climate Change, Agriculture and Food Security (CCAFS). This study has been partly funded by the Joint Research Centre of the European Commission (AGCLIM50 Project).

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Center for Social and Environmental Systems Research, National Institute for Environmental Studies (NIES), Tsukuba, Japan

    Tomoko Hasegawa, Shinichiro Fujimori, Kiyoshi Takahashi & Jun’ya Takakura

  2. International Institute for Applied System Analysis (IIASA), Laxenburg, Austria

    Tomoko Hasegawa, Shinichiro Fujimori, Petr Havlík & Hugo Valin

  3. Department of Environmental Engineering, Graduate School of Engineering, Kyoto University, Nishikyo-ku, Japan

    Shinichiro Fujimori

  4. Potsdam Institute for Climate Impact Research (PIK), Potsdam, Germany

    Benjamin Leon Bodirsky & Hermann Lotze-Campen

  5. PBL Netherlands Environmental Assessment Agency, The Hague, The Netherlands

    Jonathan C. Doelman, Elke Stehfest & Willem-Jan van Zeist

  6. European Commission, Joint Research Centre, Seville, Spain

    Thomas Fellmann & Ignacio Pérez Domínguez

  7. Joint Global Change Research Institute, Pacific Northwest National Laboratory, College Park, MD, USA

    Page Kyle

  8. Wageningen Economic Research, Wageningen University and Research, The Hague, Netherlands

    Jason F. L. Koopman, Andrzej Tabeau & Hans van Meijl

  9. Humboldt-Universität zu Berlin, Berlin, Germany

    Hermann Lotze-Campen

  10. International Food Policy Research Institute (IFPRI), Washington, DC, USA

    Daniel Mason-D’Croz, Timothy B. Sulser & Keith Wiebe

  11. Commonwealth Scientific and Industrial Research Organisation (CSIRO), St Lucia, Queensland, Australia

    Daniel Mason-D’Croz

  12. E-Konzal Co. Ltd, Osaka, Japan

    Yuki Ochi

  13. Institute for Food and Resource Economics, University of Bonn, Bonn, Germany

    Peter Witzke

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  1. Tomoko Hasegawa
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Contributions

T.H. coordinated the conception and writing of the paper, performed the scenario analysis and created the figures. T.H., S.F. and Y.O. created the hunger estimation tool for the multiple models. T.H., S.F, P.H. and H.V. designed the research, led the writing of the paper and designed the scenario settings, which were developed and contributed by H.L.C., I.P.D. and H.v.M., with notable contributions from T.H., S.F., K.T., J.T. (AIM/CGE), P.H., H.V. (GLOBIOM), T.F., I.P.D., P.W. (CAPRI), P.K. (GCAM), J.C.D., E.S., W.J.v.Z. (IMAGE), D.M.D, T.B.S, K.W. (IMPACT), J.K., A.T., H.v.M. (MAGNET), B.L.B. and H.L.C. (MAgPIE). All authors provided feedback and contributed to writing the paper.

Corresponding author

Correspondence to Tomoko Hasegawa.

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Hasegawa, T., Fujimori, S., Havlík, P. et al. Risk of increased food insecurity under stringent global climate change mitigation policy. Nature Clim Change 8, 699–703 (2018). https://doi.org/10.1038/s41558-018-0230-x

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