Miller Magazine Issue: 152 August 2022

60 COVER STORY MILLER / AUGUST 2022 Climate change will increasingly put pressure on food pro- duction and access, especially in vulnerable regions, under- mining food security and nutrition. Increases in frequency, intensity and severity of droughts, floods and heatwaves, and continued sea level rise will increase risks to food security in vulnerable regions from moderate to high between 1.5°C and 2°C global warming level, with no or low levels of adap- tation. At 2°C or higher global warming level in the mid-term, food security risks due to climate change will be more se- vere, leading to malnutrition and micro-nutrient deficiencies, concentrated in Sub-Saharan Africa, South Asia, Central and South America and Small Islands. Global warming will pro- gressively weaken soil health and ecosystem services such as pollination, increase pressure from pests and diseases, and reduce marine animal biomass, undermining food pro- ductivity in many regions on land and in the ocean. At 3°C or higher global warming level in the long term, areas exposed to climate-related hazards will expand substantially com- pared with 2°C or lower global warming level, exacerbating regional disparity in food security risks. In the scenarios the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) assessed, limiting warming to around 1.5°C requires global greenhouse gas emissions to peak before 2025 at the latest, and be reduced by 43% by 2030; at the same time, methane would also need to be reduced by about a third. Even if we do this, it is almost inevitable that we will temporarily exceed this temperature threshold but could re- turn to below it by the end of the century. “It’s now or never, if we want to limit global warming to 1.5°C,” said IPCC Working Group III Co-Chair Jim Skea. “With- out immediate and deep emissions reductions across all sec- tors, it will be impossible.” The global temperature will stabilize when carbon dioxide emissions reach net zero. For 1.5°C, this means achieving net zero carbon dioxide emissions globally in the early 2050s; for 2°C, it is in the early 2070s. This assessment shows that lim- iting warming to around 2°C still requires global greenhouse gas emissions to peak before 2025 at the latest, and be re- duced by a quarter by 2030. Looking forward, modeling scenarios, created by re- searchers at the International Food Policy Research Insti- tute (IFPRI) together with other CGIAR colleagues, indicate that rising temperatures will negatively impact agricultural yields, driving up prices and resulting in increased hunger, especially in Africa. The goal of ending hunger will remain elusive even by 2050, especially considering the addi- tional impacts of extreme weather events, local shocks, and global crises, such as COVID-19 and the current war in Ukraine, that will push many more people into poverty and hunger. Thus, beyond its direct impacts on production, climate change will create cascading effects on livelihoods and sustainability through interconnections among eco- nomic, environmental, social, and political spheres. Agriculture is one of the most exposed sectors to climate change, both over the short-term, as extreme weather events increase in frequency and severity, and the long- term, due to broader shifts in climatic patterns including temperature and precipitation. Notably, these adverse ef- fects not only impact farmers whose livelihoods depend on crop yields, but also the complex network of actors who then depend on those agricultural products for food securi- ty or as inputs to other economic activities. In a globalizing world, much of the food we eat – as well as the feed and