Climate Effects on Food Security: An Overview

There are roughly 1 billion food insecure people in the world today, each having this status because food is unavailable to them, because it is unaffordable, or because they are too unhealthy to make use of it – or some combination of the three. Assessing the potential effects of climate change on food security requires understanding the underlying determinants of these three aspects of food security – availability, access, and utilization – and how climate change might affect each. This chapter explores these aspects and determinants of food security, summarizing the basic mechanisms by which climate change might impact the lives of the global food insecure.