Extreme heat making global food insecurity worse as costs continue to soar: report
Global News
"Climate change is increasingly undermining global food security, exacerbating the effects of the COVID-19, geopolitical, energy, and cost-of-living crises," the report found.
Extreme heat was a factor in tens of millions of people reporting moderate to severe food insecurity in 2020, adding to the strain of skyrocketing food prices and multiple global crises, a new report has found.
The publication, The 2022 report of the Lancet Countdown on health and climate change: health at the mercy of fossil fuels, was published Tuesday. It explored the impact the world’s continued reliance on fossil fuels is having on global health — and painted a dire picture of the direction the world is headed in.
“Climate change is increasingly undermining global food security, exacerbating the effects of the COVID-19, geopolitical, energy, and cost-of-living crises,” the report found.
Relative to what was reported annually between 1981 and 2010, extreme heat was associated with 98 million more people reporting moderate to severe food insecurity in 2020 in the 103 countries analyzed, according to the report.
That’s because increasingly extreme weather, a reality driven in large part by the world’s changing climate, “worsens the stability of global food systems,” the authors explained.
Extreme heat compounds on a number of other issues that have impacted food security in recent years.
The report found that in 2020, amid the COVID-19 pandemic, 161 million more people faced hunger than in 2019. In 2022, the situation is believed to have “worsened,” with Russia’s invasion of Ukraine and affordability issues weighing on people worldwide.
“Impacts on international agricultural production and supply chains (are) threatening to result in 13 million additional people facing undernutrition in 2022,” the report warned.
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