Could effective mitigation and adaptation to climate change actually reduce food insecurity?

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Food insecurity and climate change vulnerability index: Present day climate

In her guest contribution to the Sahel and West Africa Club blog, Kirsty Lewis of the UK Met Office Hadley Centre explores the relationship between climate change and food insecurity in developing and least developed countries.  The author argues that failure to adapt to and mitigate climate change will drastically increase food insecurity; however, successful adaptation and mitigation efforts could actually reduce vulnerability over time.

These projections are based on the result of five years of joint research undertaken by the UK Met Office Hadley Centre and the World Food Programme, accessible on a new interactive website.  The website allows users to create different scenarios that demonstrate how climate change could affect vulnerability to food insecurity as far as the 2080s.  What do the results of this research mean for West Africa? What are the region’s priorities for lessening vulnerability to food insecurity in the face of climate change?  

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For more info on our work: http://www.oecd.org/swac/