wheat crop

Evaluating the inequality of global food security under climate change

About

Climate change is expected to fundamentally alter the natural and economic systems that govern our globally-integrated community. We must think critically about these expected changes—and their ripple effects—to ensure the future resiliency of humankind. While more is known about climate change impacts on food production, very little research is focused on understanding the way climate change will affect food access in the communities that need it most. We investigated how climate change will alter food markets and trade, finding that it will likely become increasingly difficult for some communities to access sufficient food resources.

Approach

The El Niño-Southern Oscillation (commonly referred to as simply “El Niño”) is a naturally-occurring global climatic phenomenon that increases temperatures across the tropics, providing a reference point for how climate change could potentially affect environmental factors like weather patterns and temperature in the long term. We used more than five decades of food production and trade data to examine the consequences of El Niño on food security. 

Key Findings

Our findings suggest that climate change impacts on global food trade could cause a significantly larger inequality in food security, with the largest losses concentrated in Africa. Our insights on the future distribution of food insecurity hotspots indicate that climate change adaptation strategies should emphasize food policies and aid targeted at specific hotspots to dramatically reduce inequality in global food insecurity.

Partners

This project was a collaboration with Dr. Jonathan Dingel & Dr. Solomon Hsiang at The National Bureau of Economic Research. This project was supported in part by the University of Chicago Research Computing Center and the James S. Kemper Foundation Faculty Research Fund at the University of Chicago Booth School of Business.