By Patricia Parera and John Conger
On December 1, the Center for Climate and Security (CCS) held a policy briefing with the bipartisan House Climate Solutions Caucus, to discuss the recent report, Feeding Resilience, which explores the nexus of climate change, food insecurity and national security and presents policy recommendations for the United States for addressing those issues.
The presenters highlighted the direct link between food insecurity, conflict and national security. This built from a recent World Food Program USA report which found that “approximately 95 percent of [the 53] peer-reviewed studies examined…were able to establish an empirical link between food insecurity and instability.” Not only does food insecurity lead to instability and conflict—potentially across entire regions—but political instability or conflict, in turn, leads to food insecurity: a cycle with implications for U.S. interests across the globe. Crises such as Russia’s termination of the Black Sea Grain Initiative, the war between Israel and Hamas, and India’s ban on rice exports, threaten to increase global hunger and malnutrition, while climate change continues to produce extremes in temperature and precipitation, stressing food systems and accelerating the trend toward food insecurity and instability.
A key point in the briefing was the importance of agricultural research and development (R&D) for domestic and global security, and how addressing and incorporating the actionable recommendations of the Feeding Resilience report into US policy will be of utmost importance to address the above challenges. Among other things, the report calls for increased investment in data-driven policies to help farmers both at home and abroad increase productivity, adapt to changing climate conditions, and reduce rising input costs to feed a growing global population more efficiently. The report emphasizes the adoption of a holistic, agricultural systems transformation approach, for example by introducing drought-resistant seeds to increase yields based on relevant market assessments. The report also introduces the concept of “social sustainability,” by engaging for the long haul, deepening relationships, and building trust among stakeholders.
The briefing and the report emphasize the need to invest in both climate adaptation and emissions-reduction measures within the agriculture sector. R&D is an important long-term solution, but there are stresses today that are likely to manifest as instability, conflict, and intensifying waves of climate refugees—in the near term and, increasingly, in the years to come.
As stated during the briefing, it is in the national interest of the United States to increase resources for advanced agricultural R&D, as well as to incorporate the recommendations suggested in the Feeding Resilience report to promote global food security and climate adaptation and resilience at home and abroad. This will mean not only addressing the most immediate climate, food and national security threats, but also long-term challenges related to the interconnected needs of maintaining the sustainable productivity of U.S. agriculture, cutting the sector’s carbon footprint in line with climate goals, and guaranteeing national security.
Read the Feeding Resilience report here.