Attachments
Background
The evaluation of WFP’s 2017 climate change policy and 2011 disaster risk reduction and management policy recommended that WFP update the climate change policy to reflect evolving international circumstances and the cross-cutting nature of climate change in WFP’s operations and to incorporate lessons learned from the policy’s implementation to date.
Global context
The climate crisis is a humanitarian crisis
Climate change is a threat multiplier for food-insecure populations. It intensifies resource scarcity and worsens the existing social, economic and environmental factors that underpin hunger and malnutrition. Since WFP’s first climate change policy was endorsed in 2017, the wide-ranging impacts of climate change have surprised even the scientific community.2 It is now clear that these impacts will continue to stretch a humanitarian system that is already struggling to keep pace with current humanitarian needs.
Between 2010 and 2020, 83 percent of all disasters caused by natural hazards were linked to climate extremes – especially floods, storms, droughts and extreme heat. Together these disasters affected 1.7 billion people, killing 410,000. In 2022, 70 percent of refugees and asylum seekers fled from highly cli-mate-vulnerable countries. In 2023 climate extremes drove 72 million people into crisis or emergency levels of hunger 5 and triggered over 20 million new internal displacements.
Growing stress on water resources and shifting weather patterns are compounding people’s vulnerability in many hazard-prone locations.
Climate change is shifting the patterns of humanitarian crises as some hazards, such as extreme heat, become more common and others, such as tropical storms, intensify and behave less predictably.
These shocks deepen social and economic inequality and reinforce social norms and structural barriers that already limit the capacity of women and girls, children and young people, persons with disabilities and other disproportionally affected groups to manage risk and adapt to changing conditions. One example in this regard is the projection that climate change could trigger the abrupt end of schooling for 12.5 million girls.
Food insecurity and malnutrition are highest where the adverse impacts of climate change intersect with other drivers of hunger such as conflicts, structural poverty and economic inequality. In 2023, the 14 countries with the highest climate risk were also affected by conflict or fragility. Of these, 13 also had humanitarian response plans.
This compound nature of many humanitarian crises makes it increasingly challenging to implement climate action and access climate financing in high-risk contexts.
Food systems contribute to and are impacted by climate change. Faced with growing losses and damages in the food and agriculture sector, governments are facing challenges in accelerating climate change adaptation and disaster risk reduction in the systems that produce food and bring it to people’s tables.
With food systems accounting for 21–37 percent of anthropogenic greenhouse gas emissions,9 many countries are looking for coordinated international support and partnerships to de-carbonize and diversify food systems, increase the resilience and resource efficiency of value chains, and ensure that the food and nutrition needs of vulnerable communities can be met as the climate is changing.