Tracking the impact of climate change on food insecurity

Developing a bespoke indicator for the Lancet Countdown on Health and Climate Change

Climate change, manifested through increasing frequency of heatwaves and droughts is already negatively affecting food and nutrition security through multiple transmission channels including impacts of heat stress and droughts on crop yields, on agricultural labour and therefore crop production and agricultural income, on non-agricultural labour and non-agricultural income, on health and the ability to earn enough to afford food, on food prices and therefore the affordability of food, and on food supply chains and therefore the variety of food. 

Elizabeth Robinson and Shouro Dasgupta have designed and developed a bespoke “Food Insecurity” indicator for the Lancet Countdown. This indicator tracks the association between change in the share of the population reporting moderate or severe food insecurity due to changes in heatwave days and drought months from a 1981-2010 baseline, as indicative of adaptation gaps in the context of access to food and in turn on nutritional health.