Climate change threatens to reverse the progress made so far in the fight against hunger and malnutrition. According to the assessment made by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), climate change augments and intensifies risks to food security for the most vulnerable countries and populations. The key risks that are identified have direct consequences for food security. These are
- Loss of rural livelihoods and income
- Loss of marine and coastal ecosystems, and livelihoods
- Loss of terrestrial and inland water ecosystems, and livelihoods
- Food insecurity and breakdown of food systems
The earliest and the more impacted are the most vulnerable countries and populations, including in arid and semi-arid areas, landlocked countries and small island developing states. Climate change is also argued to have broader impacts through effects on trade flows, food markets and price stability and could introduce new risks for human health. Therefore, greatly expanded efforts to respond to climate change are needed to safeguard the capacity of food systems.. GFI stresses identifying context-based non-stereotyping and non-traditional empowering livelihood options (i.e., finding ways towards sustainable agriculture and food-making process) for the affected population, capacity building of the populations on disaster preparedness, and providing skill development training to increase resilience.