The climate crisis is severely endangering
human well-being. While the climate security nexus is omnipresent in
national security strategies and on international institutions’ agendas, political responses remain
insufficient and are often problematic. Among other issues, related policies often struggle with
siloization or a
focus on symptoms instead of root causes.
Nearly one in 11 people in the world and one in five people in Africa go hungry every day, a crisis primarily driven by chronic inequality, climate change, conflict and economic instability. At the current pace, hunger and extreme poverty rates show little sign of drastically receding by 2030.
Pakistan’s once-thriving trout fish farming industry, a vital source of livelihood for communities in the country’s mountainous northern region, is now on the verge of collapse due to the devastating impacts of climate change.
Over the past few years, climate shocks have become more frequent and have devastated economies and agriculture systems, exacerbating widespread malnutrition and hunger. It has become increasingly apparent that the utilization of sustainable agriculture practices and disaster risk management systems are crucial to fulfill growing needs as natural resources continue to dwindle.
In June 2024, 26-year-old Zainab Abdul noticed her two-year-old daughter growing pale, losing weight, and battling diarrhea. She wasn’t surprised. Since jihadist-linked bandits had forced them out of their village in Kadadaba, Zamfara State, in northwestern Nigeria, her family had been living in a refugee camp with limited access to food.
On January 15, 2025, the long-awaited ceasefire proposal between Israel and Hamas was approved, bringing the first bout of relief for the people of the Gaza Strip after 15 months of conflict. This has allowed for the exchange of prisoners and hostages between the two nations as well as a greater flow of humanitarian aid to be directed to Gaza. Although this only accounts for the first phase out of the three phase plan, it is uncertain if Israel will continue to uphold the negotiations of a truce after the first phase is completed.
Corporate-dominated food systems are responsible for widespread but still spreading malnutrition and ill health. Poor diets worsen non-communicable diseases (NCDs), now costing over eight trillion dollars yearly!
The use of fertilizers has been introduced in society to enrich soil and supply high-grade harvests for centuries. As time went on, humans have managed to develop new ways to reform this operation, and as such, have formed a lessened health risk fertilizer called “biosolids”.
Neglected indigenous crops, rich in nutrition and resilient to climate change, are key to tackling global hunger only if governments invest in research and development (R&D) to tap the potential of such innovations.
More than 150 Nobel and World Food Prize Laureates are calling for investment in
moonshot technologies to realize the potential of innovative solutions such as these hardy crops, warning that without swift action, there is a "food insecure, unstable world.”
This year has been a landmark one for climate and environment policy. Starting with the UN’s COP16 biodiversity talks in October, followed by the COP29 climate talks in November, and closing with the desertification COP16 in December, few years have offered such critical moments back-to-back.
The days are short with bitterly cold rain in Bucharest, the capital of Romania, the largest Balkan country located south of the Ukraine. Over the border, temperatures in Kyiv will plummet to a daily average of zero in December as the Ukraine war grinds on.
The flow of the
igarapé always dropped for three months every year, but now it has been dry for two years in a row, complains Maria Aparecida dos Anjos, looking at the trickle of water that when flooded reaches the stilts of her wooden house, 50 metres away and on a slope of more than 10 metres high.
Biological diversity is on the decline worldwide, and current approaches to address its loss have been piecemeal and ineffective in tackling the crisis facing nature—this is despite estimates that over half of global GDP (USD 58 trillion of economic activity in 2023) is generated in sectors that are moderately to highly dependent on nature, a new report by the Intergovernmental Platform on Biodiversity and Ecosystem Services (IPBES) finds.
From increased pests and diseases to lower crop yields and extreme weather events, the adverse impacts of climate change on agriculture in Africa cannot be overstated.
Frustrations over the pace of climate action and the size of the finance target agreed in Baku are valid from the perspective of low-income countries, especially Small-Island Developing States (SIDS). It is also important to recognize that there has been real progress in some countries at the agri-food-nutrition-climate-water-nature-livelihoods intersection, and this seems to be particularly the case in some countries in the Alliance of Champions for Food Systems Transformation (ACF).
They look like attempts to copy the moon’s surface, in some cases, as craters multiply in the grasslands. But they are actually micro-dams,
barraginhas in Portuguese, which have spread in Brazil as a successful way to store water and prevent soil erosion in rural areas.
The Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) launched its newest report on the Right to Food Guidelines on December 10, which focuses on that focused on the urgency of food security as well as the measures that will be taken by the organization to eradicate hunger and malnutrition in the coming decade.
When Susan Chinyengetere started to focus on farming in her home village in south-eastern Zimbabwe, she wondered if she could earn a living and raise her children.
With climate catastrophes ravaging the country, her hesitation on rain-fed agriculture worsened. But two years later, the 32-year-old mother of two from Mafaure village in Masvingo, about 295 km from the capital Harare, is now a champion in farming.
While many delegates at the 16th meeting of the Conference of the Parties to the UN Convention to Combat Desertification (UNCCD COP16) hope that this could be the convention’s own Paris moment—referring to the historic Paris agreement inked by UNFCCC signatories—however, this hedges heavily on the UN parties’ seriousness to combat drought, desertification and land degradation.
On the dusty plains of Shamva District in Zimbabwe, Wilfred Mudavanhu's maize field defies drought.>
With the El Niño-induced drought gripping several countries in Southern Africa, Mudavanhu’s maize crop is flourishing, thanks to an innovative farming method that helps keep moisture in the soil and promotes soil health.
Despite uneven economic recovery since the pandemic, poverty, inequality, and food insecurity continue to worsen, including in the Asia-Pacific region, which used to fare better than the rest of the Global South.