How climate action can make a difference
Today, the UN World Food Programme's live Hunger Map aggregates 957 million people across 93 countries who do not have enough to eat. The Global Humanitarian Outlook projects 239 million people in need of life-saving humanitarian action and protection this year.
Of the factors driving global hunger, climate is the one that can best be predicted using science. Our technical abilities to monitor and forecast weather-related hazards have never been as good as today. There is no ethically justified reason to keep treating climate disasters as inevitable and ‘natural’ surprises. As countries are re-grouping to think about ways in which the COVID-19 crisis can be used as a springboard to build more resilient societies, climate foresight and preventive planning need to be part of the equation.
Many countries have started to recognize the global climate emergency as a humanitarian issue. Climate change fuels conflict and economic risks, while compounding the effects of disease outbreaks. Like COVID-19, it is highly globalized and dynamic, and cannot be contained by one country, one institution or one academic discipline. It requires countries and organizations to work together to identify and implement solutions. Some of these solutions are emerging from new angles and directions, for example as part of a new global dialogue about food systems. WFP’s involvement includes anchoring the Resilience Action Track of the 2021 Food Systems Summit to discuss game-changing approaches for the transformation of imperiled and unsustainable food systems.
Read the full commentary piece on medium.com.
