This document discusses the links between climate change, disaster risk, and hunger. It argues that while increasing food availability is important, access to food and protection are also critical to ensure food security for vulnerable populations under climate change. The document presents evidence from Ethiopia of the MERET program, which integrates natural resource management, community development, and social protection to improve both availability and access to food while increasing resilience to climate-related shocks for over 600,000 people. It concludes that future climate adaptation strategies must take a twin-track approach of both enhancing production and expanding protection for vulnerable groups.
9. 3. RESPONDING TO THE CHALLENGE Food security strategies and approaches to food security under climate change scenarios call for: A) increased food availability and B) improved access to food and enhanced protection from climate change & disasters
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Notas del editor
Climate change will increase the risk of hunger and malnutrition on an unprecedented scale within the next decades. Unless urgent action is taken, it will not be possible to ensure the food security of a growing world population under a changing climate. But action is required on several fronts. Increasing agricultural production is one part of the response – but not enough.
CC is hitting hardest those who are most vulnerable to risk and least responsible for CC
How is climate change going to affect availability of and access to food? Food production and availability Increased weather- and climate related shocks and stresses are likely to significantly reduce production levels in developing countries. But increases in production in the developed countries due to positive impacts of climate change are projected to balance out production deficits on a global level. - Technically, even under climate change enough food can be produced in 2050 to feed the world. - We know that we need to significantly increase production and productivity to meet the demand of a growing population. How this can be done is one question. - But it is not the same question as how to ensure food security under climate change. For this, we need to look at how climate change is affecting access to food.
Production shortfalls and insufficient purchasing power will mean poor households must increasingly choose between distress sales of productive assets and disinvestment in human assets, e.g. consuming less nutritious food or removing children from school. Either choice contributes to a downward spiral of decreasing resilience and adaptive capacity.
All this, without considering multiplying effects resulting from interactions with other drivers of food insecurity…
In view of its projected impact on both availability and access, any sustainable approach to food security under climate change conditions must encompass two complementary objectives: increasing production and food availability, while enhancing access and protection for the most vulnerable people and communities from disasters. There is a clear imperative to invest on enhancing and adapting agricultural production systems. But the poorest people are usually not the target of innovation, and do not have access to the required assets, inputs, and technologies. There is a significant risk that those with the fewest assets and capacities, who often live in the most marginal and disaster prone areas and who are most exposed to the risk of hunger and food insecurity, will benefit least from availability gains.
- Social protection and safety nets protect lives and livelihoods, either from falling into chronic poverty or within emergency situations. Most social protection interventions serve multiple objectives. E.g., programmes like the distribution of micronutrient supplements for mothers and young children, school meals and emergency aid (cash, vouchers, food assistance) in response to disasters avoid asset depletion and enable people to invest in productive assets – and in adaptation.
Food assistance is provided for up to 3 months each year to enable food insecure households to participate in soil and water conservation activities designed together with the community. Communities are required to take land out of food production and prevent livestock from free-grazing, for which they are compensated with cash and food. After conservation measures have improved soil productivity and water recharge capacity, the community can begin income generating activities and intensification of land productivity.
As an innovative complement to the PSNP, the Government of Ethiopia, in collaboration with WFP and the World Bank, has developed an innovative risk management framework which aims at offsetting the potential for damaging weather or climate-related disasters. This includes risk transfer tool called LEAP. In case of a drought or flood, LEAP component can trigger additional financial resources from a contingency fund in the initial stages of the drought or flood – up to 4 months sooner than traditional crisis aid – based on a weather index. This temporary scale-up allows the PSNP to respond to climatic hazards in a flexible and timely manner, making it sustainable in view of increasingly frequent and unpredictable extreme weather events.