International Workshop "Ensuring Food Security under Climate Crisis"

This workshop investigated current debates, research gaps, and possible policy interventions for ensuring food security under climate crisis.

The communiqué issued at the World Food Summit in 1996 defines food security as follows: ‘Food security exists when all people, at all times, have physical and economic access to sufficient, safe and nutritious food that meets their dietary needs and food preferences for an active and healthy life’. 

Food security and insecurity are affected by various factors. The impact of COVID-19 and the Ukrainian War are recent examples that caused significant impacts on food security. In this workshop, we focused on climate change as one crucial factor calling for food system transformation. As the recent IPCC AR6 WG2 report highlights, climate change affects different aspects of the global food system, adding to other types of risks and threats to the food system. For example, climate change may alter the land suitable for food production, or disasters may cause crop failures or supply chain disruptions.

Furthermore, climate change response measures also affect the food system. For example, solar panels are considered land-intensive, and the installation of large solar panels is expected to put pressure on land available for agriculture. Scholars also find that climate change particularly affects vulnerable groups, exacerbating inequities in food access.

Response measures to climatic stresses may further exacerbate vulnerabilities. However, as the impacts of climate security are diverse and there are wide-ranging policy areas in which climate change response measures operate, the systemic analysis of the implications of climate change impacts and responses for food security is still missing. The collaborative project implemented by the Institute for Global Environmental Strategies and the Institute for Future Initiatives, The University of Tokyo, will unpack this dynamic intersection. This workshop was dedicated to mapping the field, sorting out the research gaps, and identifying promising ways forward so that we can ask the right questions to investigate this issue in the coming years.