Climate change and nutrition security: message to the UNFCCC negociators

This policy brief highlights how climate change further exacerbates the already unacceptably high levels of hunger and under-nutrition and proposes policy directions to address the nutrition impact of climate change for consideration by the 16th Conference of the Parties to the UNFCCC. For example, it calls for nutrition security to be explicitly addressed in climate resilient development, national adaptation and disaster risk reduction plans in low and middle income countries (LMIC). It recommends a combination of nutrition-sensitive adaptation and mitigation measures, including nutrition-sensitive disaster risk reduction strategies and risk management practices, as well as nutrition-smart investments, increased policy coherence, and institutional and cross-sectoral collaboration to address the threats to food and nutrition security from climate change.

The policy brief will be presented at COP16 during two events: (i) at the Agriculture & Rural Development Day on 4th December; and (ii) at the WHO/WFP side event taking place on 6th December. It results from exchanges among members of the UNSCN ad hoc Nutrition and Climate Change eGroup, which was created in 2010 with the aims of: (i) bringing a nutrition lens into climate change issues and (ii) increasing the participation of interested sectors, facilitating information exchange and supporting nutrition-focused climate-related policies and strategies.