Climate risks and economic limits
“This research shows that, yet again, it’s the poorest countries with the least responsibility for climate change which will suffer its worst effects,” said Ritu Bharadwaj, IIED’s director of climate resilience, finance and loss and damage. “But crucially this work also provides tools for understanding the possible impacts and potential solutions in detail. Climate change is likely to worsen food security at least in the short term no matter what we do, but catastrophic declines in availability or nutritional value are not inevitable.”
Even wealthier nations are not insulated from the effects of climate-driven disruptions to farming, imports and supply chains. Among G7 countries, none rank in the top five globally (data for Japan was not available), and all are projected to see declines in food security under warming scenarios. The United States is expected to see one of the largest drops, while the United Kingdom is projected to experience comparatively smaller declines.
China, with a baseline score of 7.62, is also projected to see its food security fall to 7.06 under a 2°C warming scenario.
“Food supply problems in poorer countries will have knock-on implications for richer ones. For example, because of highly inter-dependent supply chains, climate instability in one major crop-producing region can create volatility elsewhere in the system,” said Bharadwaj.
One of the index’s most significant findings concerns the limits of economic growth as a buffer against climate disruption. Each additional $1,000 per capita of gross domestic products (GDP) translates, on average, to roughly 0.2 additional points on the food security scale.
However, this improvement was uneven across the four pillars, with much weaker gains in the sustainability of food systems. This suggests that while economic growth can improve access to food, it does not necessarily make food systems resilient to repeated climate shocks.
