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A developing food crisis and potential refugee movements

Nature Sustainability volume 1, pages 380–382 (2018)Cite this article

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At least 30 million people in three African countries and Yemen are experiencing severe food insecurity. To rapidly scale-up international aid, we should acknowledge the systemic risk implied in food insecurity by looking at, for example, potential international refugee movement.

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Acknowledgements

M.J.P. gratefully acknowledges fellowship support from the Columbia University Center for Climate and Life. M.K. acknowledges financial support from the Emil Aaltonen Foundation funded project ‘eat-less-water’, and the Academy of Finland SRC project ‘Winland’. Thanks to L. P. Nissen and T. Hoffine for their insights.

Author information

Authors and Affiliations

  1. Center for Climate Systems Research, Columbia University, New York, NY, USA

    Michael J. Puma & Yoshihide Wada

  2. Center for Climate and Life, Columbia University, Palisades, NY, USA

    Michael J. Puma

  3. NASA Goddard Institute for Space Studies, New York, NY, USA

    Michael J. Puma

  4. Korea International Volunteer Organization, Seoul, Republic of Korea

    So Young Chon

  5. Frontier Research Institute for Interdisciplinary Sciences, Tohoku University, Sendai, Japan

    Kaoru Kakinuma

  6. Water and Development Research Group, Aalto University, Espoo, Finland

    Matti Kummu

  7. School of International Development, University of East Anglia, Norwich, UK

    Raya Muttarak

  8. International Institute for Applied Systems Analysis, Laxenburg, Austria

    Raya Muttarak & Yoshihide Wada

  9. Lamont-Doherty Earth Observatory, Columbia University, Palisades, NY, USA

    Richard Seager

  10. Department of Physical Geography, Faculty of Geosciences, Utrecht University, Utrecht, The Netherlands

    Yoshihide Wada

Authors
  1. Michael J. Puma
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  3. Kaoru Kakinuma
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  4. Matti Kummu
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  5. Raya Muttarak
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  7. Yoshihide Wada
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Contributions

M.J.P. designed the research, compiled the food security and asylum-seeker data and estimated the refugee movements and associated food requirement. The paper was written together with contributions from all authors.

Corresponding author

Correspondence to Michael J. Puma.

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Puma, M.J., Chon, S.Y., Kakinuma, K. et al. A developing food crisis and potential refugee movements. Nat Sustain 1, 380–382 (2018). https://doi.org/10.1038/s41893-018-0123-z

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