A new Food Security Index by the International Institute for Environment and Development gives ministers and officials the granular data they need to identify weaknesses in their systems of food supply, making them fit to withstand increasingly unpredictable and extreme weather. At a global scale, the Index reveals a deeply divided and unfair distribution of food insecurity: lower-income countries tend to score much lower than the wealthiest, and the gap only widens when the predicted effects of climate change are factored in.
In the foreword to the first analytical report accompanying the new Index, Renato Domith Godinho, Director of the Global Alliance Support Mechanism, highlights its close alignment with the landmark Belem Declaration on Hunger, Poverty and Human-Centered Climate Action. The Declaration explicitly recognises that addressing the unequal distribution of climate impacts requires a fundamental shift in the approach to climate action.
“Expanding social protection, investing in resilient food systems and ensuring that vulnerable countries have access to adequate finance and technical support will be critical to safeguarding food security in a warming and increasingly unstable world. Scaling up evidence-based and ambitious programmes like these is more essential than ever,” he stated.
Photo: FAO/Hashim Azizi