Editing IPCC:AR6/SRCCL/Chapter-5 (section)

=== 5.2.5 Climate change impacts on food stability ===

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Food stability is related to people’s ability to access and use food in a steady way, so that there are not intervening periods of hunger. Increasing extreme events associated with climate change can disrupt food stability (see Section 5.8.1 for assessment of food price spikes).

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==== 5.2.5.1 Impacts of extreme events ====

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FAO et al. (2018) <sup>[[#fn:r449|449]]</sup> conducted an analysis of the prevalence of undernourishment (PoU) and found that in 2017, the average of the PoU was 15.4% for all countries exposed to climate extremes (Supplementary Material Figure SM5.2). At the same time, the PoU was 20% for countries that additionally show high vulnerability of agriculture production/yields to climate variability, or 22.4% for countries with high PoU vulnerability to severe drought. When there is both high vulnerability of agriculture production/yields and high PoU sensitivity to severe drought, the PoU is 9.8 points higher (25.2%). These vulnerabilities were found to be higher when countries had a high dependence on agriculture as measured by the number of people employed in the sector. Bangkok experienced severe flooding in 2011–2012 with large-scale disruption of the national food supply chains since they were centrally organised in the capital city (Allen et al. 2017 <sup>[[#fn:r450|450]]</sup> ).

The IPCC projects that frequency, duration, and intensity of some extreme events will increase in the coming decades (IPCC 2018a <sup>[[#fn:r451|451]]</sup> , 2012 <sup>[[#fn:r452|452]]</sup> ). To test these effects on food security, Tigchelaar et al. (2018) <sup>[[#fn:r453|453]]</sup> showed rising instability in global grain trade and international grain prices, affecting especially the about 800 million people living in extreme poverty who are most vulnerable to food price spikes (Section 5.8.1). They used global datasets of maize production and climate variability combined with future temperature projections to quantify how yield variability will change in the world’s major maize-producing and exporting countries under 2°C and 4°C of global warming.

Tesfaye et al. (2017) <sup>[[#fn:r454|454]]</sup> projected that the extent of heat-stressed areas in South Asia could increase by up to 12% in 2030 and 21% in 2050 relative to the baseline (1950–2000). Another recent study found that drier regions are projected to dry earlier, more severely and to a greater extent than humid regions, with the population of Sub-Saharan Africa most vulnerable (Lickley and Solomon 2018 <sup>[[#fn:r455|455]]</sup> ).

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==== 5.2.5.2 Food aid ====

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Food aid plays an important role in providing food security and saving lives after climate disasters. In 2015, 14.5 million people were assisted through disaster-risk reduction, climate change and/ or resilience building activities (WFP 2018 <sup>[[#fn:r456|456]]</sup> ). However, there is no agreement on how to better use emergency food aid, since it can come with unintended consequences for individuals, groups, regions, and countries (Barrett 2006 <sup>[[#fn:r457|457]]</sup> ). These may include negative dependency of food recipients (Lentz et al. 2005 <sup>[[#fn:r458|458]]</sup> ) or price increases, among others.

Some authors state that tied food aid provided as ‘in kind’ by the donor country hampers local food production (Clay 2006 <sup>[[#fn:r459|459]]</sup> ), although others found no evidence of this (Ferrière and Suwa-Eisenmann 2015 <sup>[[#fn:r460|460]]</sup> ). Untied cash aid can be used to buy food locally or in neighbouring countries, which is cheaper and can contribute to improving the livelihoods of local farmers (Clay 2006 <sup>[[#fn:r461|461]]</sup> ).

Ahlgren et al. (2014) <sup>[[#fn:r462|462]]</sup> found that food aid dependence of Marshall Islands due to climate change impacts can result in poor health outcomes due to the poor nutritional quality of food aid, which may result in future increases of chronic diseases. In this regard, Mary et al. (2018) <sup>[[#fn:r463|463]]</sup> showed that nutrition-sensitive aid can reduce the prevalence of undernourishment.

In summary, based on AR5 and SR15 assessments that the likelihood of extreme weather events will increase, (e.g., increases in heatwaves, droughts, inland flooding, and coastal flooding due to rising sea levels, depending on region) in both frequency and magnitude, decreases in food stability and thus increases in food insecurity will likely rise as well ( ''medium evidence, high agreement'' ).

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