Famine, hunger, food prices and climate change

Abstract

For over 30 years researchers have warned that climate change will affect global food security. This chapter, after reviewing evidence, concludes that these concerns are valid, via means such as increased heat, drought, fooding and other alterations in rainfall patterns and intensity. However, many other factors are, to date (and probably for the near future), far more important than climate change in the causation of current food insecurity and high global food prices; these include the rising cost of energy and an entrenched system of global inequality, sustained by the neoliberalism inherent in the Sustainable Development Goals. In some especially vulnerable areas (e.g. the Horn of Africa and Madagascar) climate change is probably, already, an important co-factor for existing famine. As climate change intensifes, its impact on food security and famine is likely to increase, especially if the price of energy remains high, or rises further, which also seems likely. Show more