Climate Change and Hunger

Global Hunger Index (GHI) report for 2019 focuses on climate change posing as an ever-increasing threat to people around the world - especially in terms of hunger. In her lead essay for the GHI 2019, Rupa Mukherji details the threats posed by climate change to food security and how to address them.

While millions of people in over 70 countries continue to suffer from hunger, the global food system is coming under increasing pressure from global warming and extreme weather conditions. Food production is in direct competition with new, space-intensive climate protection measures.

The Global Hunger Index (GHI), as most of you know, is a peer-reviewed annual report that is jointly published by Concern Worldwide and Welthungerhilfe is designed to comprehensively measure and track hunger at the global, regional and country levels.

The aim: to trigger action to reduce hunger around the world.

This year, the lead essay for the GHI 2019 has been written by Rupa Mukerji, who serves on the scientific steering committee of the Program of research on Climate Change Vulnerability, Impacts and Adaptation (PROVIA), and is a member of the partner advisory committee of the Global Framework for Climate Services. In addition, she has contributed to the work of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change on vulnerability, impact and adaptation as lead author of its 5th and 6th assessment reports.

Rupa, Senior Advisor for Climate Change Adaptation and Member of the Management Board of the Swiss development organization Helvetas, reiterates that climate change is a threat multiplier for hungry and undernourished people.

There is a direct impact on food production and availability, access, quality, utilization, and stability of food systems, making countries with high levels of hunger more vulnerable. This futher leads to four key inequalities: unequal responsibility, disparate intergenerational impacts, disproportional impact on poorer people in the Global South, and different capacity to adapt to climate change and its implications.

Climate change and conflict together destroy livelihoods, drive displacement, widen inequalities, and undermine sustainable development. Read the complete details about this pressing issue in the GHI 2019 report on Climate Change and Hunger.