4.5 Article

Impacts of land use, population, and climate change on global food security

Journal

FOOD AND ENERGY SECURITY
Volume 10, Issue 1, Pages -

Publisher

WILEY
DOI: 10.1002/fes3.261

Keywords

FEEDME model; food security; undernourishment

Funding

  1. Belmont Forum/FACCE-JPI DEVIL project [NE/M021327/1]
  2. Biotechnology and Biological Sciences Research Council (BBSRC) EastBio Studentship [BB/M010996/1]
  3. Global Challenges Research Fund Trade, Development and the Environment Hub project [ES/S008160/1]
  4. ESRC [ES/S008160/1] Funding Source: UKRI

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Research indicates that future global food security will be significantly impacted by factors such as climate change, population growth, and changes in land use. Population growth appears to be the primary driver of changes in undernourishment prevalence, highlighting the importance of strategies to mitigate the consequences of projected population growth. Ensuring severe future food insecurity is avoided will require actions such as improving maternal health care, increasing equality of access to food at the national level, closing the yield gap, and changes in trade patterns.
In recent years, global hunger has begun to rise, returning to levels from a decade ago. Climate change is a key driver behind these recent rises and is one of the leading causes of severe food crises. When coupled with population growth and land use change, future climate variability is predicted to have profound impacts on global food security. We examine future global impacts of climate variability, population, and land use change on food security to 2050, using the modeling framework FEEDME (Food Estimation and Export for Diet and Malnutrition Evaluation). The model uses national food balance sheets (FBS) to determine mean per capita calories, hence incorporating an assumption that minimum dietary energy requirements (MDER) remain constant. To account for climate variability, we use two Representative Concentration Pathway (RCP) scenarios from the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), alongside three Shared Socio-economic Pathway (SSP) scenarios incorporating land use and population change within the model. Our results indicate that SSP scenarios have a larger impact on future food insecurity, in particular because of projected changes in population. Countries with a projected decrease in population growth had higher food security, while those with a projected rapid population growth tended to experience the worst impacts on food security. Although climate change scenarios had an effect on future crop yields, population growth appeared to be the dominant driver of change in undernourishment prevalence. Therefore, strategies to mitigate the consequences of projected population growth, including improved maternal health care, increasing equality of access to food at the national level, closing the yield gap, and changes in trade patterns, are essential to ensuring severe future food insecurity is avoided.

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