Climate change and food insecurity in the world

Abstract

Food shortages have formed part of humanity’s difficulties throughout history, just as has the struggle to put an end to them. Indeed, even now the problem of hunger is very common in many countries as well as in the most disadvantaged social strata almost everywhere. In this context, a new player, climate change, has appeared which may come to be a decisive factor in an unprecedented humanitarian crisis. In fact, the bulk of available evidence suggests that the most serious way in which climate change will be expressed will be as a food crisis.

In response to this challenge, different reactions may be observed. First, there is denial allied with  autocratic political systems that hinder any solution. Second, there are answers in environmental format but, taking an idealistic approach, they propose sterile and obstructive paths for the solutions that are needed. The right answer is given by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), which speaks about the need to recover spaces for a biodiverse nature and to compensate the losses of agricultural productivity with more intensive and at the same time sustainable systems to ensure food security. It states that this should be done by switching over to sustainable healthy diets, reducing food losses and waste, and undertaking a commitment to the sustainable intensification that the United Nations Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) has been recommending for years. In the author’s opinion, sustainable intensification must be based on promoting agroecology, bolstering it by technology and irrigation while enhancing accuracy and efficiency and reducing or preventing the causes before they occur.