Enhancing Food Security in an Era of Global Climate Change

The nexus of climate change, agriculture and food security is one of the quintessential challenges of sustainable development. Rapid growth in many of the world's populations and economies is increasing the demand for food, energy, fiber, water and land for housing. But efforts to meet these and other essential human needs are transforming the global environment and driving dangerous changes in the world's climate. Many of these changes are in turn increasing the vulnerability of society-especially the poor-to disruption, and are undermining the food and livelihood security of billions of people. Policy responses that mitigate some of these challenges may exacerbate others, as illustrated by the repercussions of recent efforts to support biofuel production.

Despite the complex interdependence among these various dimensions of the sustainability challenge, most initiatives to address them remain centered in their own silos: the global climate negotiations, different world summits for food and water, the separate task forces of the UN Millennium Project. Much good work is being done through such focused initiatives. But they may also leave untapped much potential for synergies and complementarities across issues.

A welcome exception to the common segregation of sustainability issues is the set of initiatives that has begun to focus on the challenges arising from the interactions among agriculture, development and climate change. Several large scale meetings of the communities dealing with climate change, agriculture and poverty alleviation in the spring of 2010 provided an overview of challenges facing leaders grappling with their interactions, and of the state of knowledge and know-how available to address those challenges. These meetings, while inclusive, comprehensive, and public, had to walk carefully around some of the politics, interests and diplomatic niceties latent in the intersection of climate, agriculture and development issues. The challenge remains of bringing such delicate but fundamental considerations into serious discussions of what needs to be done, and by whom.