Food Fight: Climate Change, Food Crises & Regional Insecurity

Global demand for food by 2050 is likely to be 50% higher than today. Over that time, the impacts of climate change on the capacity to feed the global population — projected to increase 20% over three decades — will have a profound negative impact on human and global security.

In 2021, Chatham House, Britain’s eminent international affairs think tank, warned that the world “is dangerously off track to meet the Paris Agreement goals”, the risks are compounding, and “without immediate action the impacts will be devastating in the coming decades”, especially for food security. The think tank’s report, Climate change risk assessment 2021, concluded that:

• Impacts likely to be locked in for the period 2040–2050 unless emissions rapidly decline include a global average 30% drop in crop yields by 2050;
• The average proportion of global cropland affected by severe drought will likely rise to 32% a year (where severe drought is defined as greater than 50% yield reductions);
• By 2040, almost 700 million people a year are likely to be exposed to droughts of at least six months’ duration, nearly double the global historic annual average.
• Cascading climate impacts will “drive political instability and greater national insecurity, fuelling regional and international conflict”.

Such a cascading climate–security crisis initiated by chronic water shortages, crop failures and diminishing yields, and amplified by more extreme climate events and supply-chain dislocations, is likely to emerge globally, including across vulnerable nations and regions in the Asia–Pacific.

There will be big consequences for Australia’s economic and human security, both because Australia’s own food growing systems will be disrupted, and because food insecurity in the region will drive political instability, conflict, and people displacement in ways that will significantly impact on Australia and the security of its people.