The combination of the global financial downturn and high food prices has resulted in a dramatic increase in the total number of people worldwide who suffer from undernutrition. For the first time ever, the number of hungry people in the world has passed the one billion mark. 19 million of these are children at risk of life-threatening severe acute malnutrition. Changes in climate are further aggravating the problem of undernutrition. 

Climate change increases the incidence and severity of extreme weather events and magnifies the risks of disasters throughout the world, affecting rural and urban livelihoods and accelerating the displacement of vulnerable populations. It poses a major threat to the availability and accessibility of food and puts millions of people at risk of increased exposure to water stress and disease. It also impacts on the workload of women, influencing their ability to care for their children.

“Climate change hits the poorest hardest, especially young children. It progressively erodes families’ capacity to withstand shocks and puts more pressure on their traditional coping methods,” says Jean Michel Grand, Executive Director, Action Against Hunger. “Many families who are already struggling to feed their children simply do not have the means to cope with the additional effects of climate change, putting them and their children at increased risk of malnutrition.”

Action Against Hunger, in collaboration with other members of The United Nations Standing Committee on Nutrition, is urging all governments, along with United Nations Organisations, donors, non-governmental organisations, academic institutions and civil society organisations to:

(1) Join forces in advocating for greater political commitment, resource allocation and accountability to counter the harmful effects of climate change on the achievement of the 1st, 4th and 5th Millennium Development Goals, which concern extreme poverty and hunger, maternal health and child mortality.

(2) Ensure that negotiations on climate change adaptation in the frame of the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change aim at protecting and promoting nutrition through appropriate support to livelihoods, agriculture, health, water and natural resource management.

(3) Develop a knowledge base to inform future programming on climate change and nutrition. Priority should be given to understanding and documenting the impacts of climate change on nutrition in representative eco-systems; setting up a comprehensive nutrition surveillance system; identifying, validating and costing the set of interventions required to protect nutrition from climate-related hazards and climate change, and capitalising on lessons learnt through experience. 

(4) Scale up interventions that successfully reduce the impacts of climate change on nutrition and enable people adapt by increasing community resilience to climate change, thereby protecting people at risk of undernutrition and promoting healthy nutrition and sustainable diets.

(5) Ensure that climate change mitigation actions will not undermine the ability of poor people to feed themselves and access adequate public health, noting that all countries need to contribute to take action on this mitigation.

(6) Prioritise action for countries that are the most affected by undernutrition and climate change, targeting the most vulnerable people in these countries, particularly pregnant and nursing women and infants.