This report sets out the risks to food security in the Middle East and North Africa (MENA) from climate change, and how these vulnerabilities interact with other key trends and sources of risk, including population growth, urbanisation, and conflict.
Focused on the year 2030, this report contributes to a better understanding of how these trends and risks may affect achievement of the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) and Zero Hunger in the MENA region. It highlights some particularly vulnerable groups, and also options for reducing climate risks to food security. Most studies in the region have focused on climate risks to food production. By contrast, this report emphasises the importance of climate risks to other aspects of food security, particularly people’s ability to purchase the food that leads to a safe and healthy diet.
MENA is highly vulnerable to climate change. By 2030, people’s food security will be affected by more frequent, longer, and more intense heat extremes and droughts. Beyond 2030, food security will be increasingly affected by changes in long term climate change trends: higher temperatures, precipitation changes, and sea level rise.
Climate change is certainly happening, yet uncertainties remain over the direction and magnitude of some changes. Some trends are clear. Higher frequencies of more intense heat waves and higher average temperatures will be felt across the region. More frequent and more intense droughts are expected to become the “new normal” in parts of the region, notably the Maghreb. Other trends are less clear. Although higher temperatures imply greater aridity, precipitation may increase or decrease in different parts of the region. Few assessments of climate change – such as those of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change – consider the Middle East and North Africa as a whole. This makes it considerably more dif cult to understand climate change from a regional perspective.
Climate extremes and climate change will act as a risk multiplier for food insecurity in MENA. However, the main drivers of food insecurity to 2030 will be population growth, urbanisation, and economic changes. Economic change will drive employment and income and people’s ability to purchase food.
This resonates with the SDG’s and the post-2015 development agenda which recognizes that ending hunger and achieving food security is dependent on a range of factors that often lay outside of traditional food security concerns. Rapid urbanisation will change patterns of what food people eat, and how and where they get it. Population growth will increase demands on supply chains, infrastructure, and public services. Understanding how climate change and extremes intersect with these drivers of vulnerability and food insecurity will be crucial for making food systems more climate resilient and better able to meet changing needs.
Climate variability is already a critical factor in determining the livelihoods of many poor and vulnerable people in MENA. By 2030, the farming activities of food producers, particularly in remote and marginal environments dependent on rain-fed agriculture, will be impacted by climate change and extremes.
Measures to help them cope with drought, to increase farming productivity, and to diversify away from farming will be key to improving their resilience and food security.
For non-producers, food security is more closely linked to employment, developments in global markets, the national economy, and how well governments and food systems respond to shocks such as global food price volatility. Heat extremes are likely to contribute to concerns over food safety, particularly in conjunction with increased competition over water.
Poor consumers in rapidly growing urban areas are likely to be most vulnerable due to income insecurity and poor access to safety nets and basic services. Ensuring their food security will require broad pro- poor development efforts including management of climate risk in the economy and employment, the design of social safety nets, the maintenance of strategic food reserves, and improvements in food storage and supply systems.
Increasingly integrated systems of food storage, distribution and retail in the region are likely to offer signi cant opportunities for managing climate risk. Adequate cold storage and refrigeration of food during heat extremes and managing risks at bottlenecks in exposed storage and transport infrastructure could all reduce vulnerabilities to the food security of large numbers of people.
Climate change will likely have discernible impact on food security by 2030. However, this should not divert attention from fundamental food security and development objectives. Instead, mainstreaming climate risk management into food systems can help address underlying vulnerabilities, weaknesses, and risks from other sources. More attention is needed on how climate change and variability will affect the access, stability and utilisation dimensions of food security. These are less well understood than climate risks to food availability, but likely to be at least as important to ensure food security in the region.
Climate change presents risks to the whole food system, from production, through distribution to consumption. These risks also need to be understood in the broader regional context of human and economic development.
Adapting to climate shocks and stresses on food security will require investment, mainstreaming climate risk management and strengthening resilience throughout the food system. This will include adaptation of food production, improving water and energy security, macroeconomic management and reform of food subsidy systems, and reducing risks in food processing, storage, distribution, retail and consumption.
Food security of households is interdependent with many other domains, ranging from income and employment to access to basic services and markets. Strengthening food security and reducing climate risks therefore requires integration and coordination across sectors and across stakeholders.
Investments in resilience and managing climate risks to food security can also address existing and underlying vulnerabilities and weaknesses in food systems and governance. By seizing the imperative to adapt, the problem of climate change can be turned into an opportunity to reform and strengthen food systems and food security. The ndings and timeline of this report, focused on the year 2030, reinforces the need for urgent action and the importance of achieving the SDGs.