Columbia International Affairs Online: Policy Briefs

CIAO DATE: 04/2014

Hot and Hungry: How to stop climate change derailing the fight against hunger

Anna Ratcliff

March 2014

Oxfam Publishing

Abstract

Climate change threatens to put back the fight to eradicate hunger by decades – and our global food system is unprepared to cope with the challenge. New evidence from the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change is likely to show that the impact of climate change on global hunger will hit harder and sooner than previously thought. In this briefing, Oxfam analyses ten key factors that influence a country’s ability to feed its people in a warming world, including the quality of weather monitoring systems, social safety nets, agricultural research and adaptation finance. Across all ten areas Oxfam has found a serious gap between what is happening and what is needed to protect our food systems. And that it is the world’s poorest and most food insecure countries that are generally the least prepared for and most susceptible to harmful climate change.