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	Nature is everybody’s business by Intergovernmental Platform on Biodiversity Dr. David Obura, Intergovernmental Platform on Biodiversity and Ecosystem Services   * In 2023, global public and private finance flows with directly negative impacts on nature, were estimated at $7.3 trillion, of which private finance accounted for $4.9 trillion, with public spending on environmentally harmful subsidies of about $2.4 trillion.   * Less than 1% of publicly reporting companies mention their impacts on biodiversity in their reports.   Every business depends on biodiversity, and every business impacts biodiversity. The growth of the global economy has been at the cost of immense biodiversity loss, which now poses a critical and pervasive systemic risk to the economy, financial stability and human wellbeing. This is a central finding of a landmark new report published today by the Intergovernmental Platform on Biodiversity and Ecosystem Services (IPBES).   Even companies that might seem far-removed from nature or that do not see themselves as nature-based rely, directly or indirectly, on material inputs, regulation of environmental conditions. Yet, businesses often bear little or no financial cost for their negative impacts on the environmental conditions we all depend on for life. Businesses are central to halting and reversing biodiversity loss.   The IPBES Business and Biodiversity Assessment report finds that the current conditions in which businesses operate are not compatible with achieving a just and sustainable future, and that these conditions also perpetuate systemic risks.   Businesses often face inadequate or perverse incentives, barriers that hinder efforts to reverse nature’s decline, an institutional environment with insufficient support, enforcement and compliance, as well as significant gaps in data and knowledge. These combine with business models that result in ever-increasing material consumption and an emphasis on reporting quarterly earnings, whilst contributing to the degradation of nature around the world.   The Report makes the point that fundamental change is possible and necessary to create an enabling environment to align what is profitable for business with what is beneficial for biodiversity and people.   “This Report draws on thousands of sources, bringing together years of research and practice into a single integrated framework that shows both the risks of nature loss to business, and the opportunities for business to help reverse this,” said Matt Jones (UK), one of three Co-chairs of the Assessment.   “This is a pivotal moment for businesses and financial institutions, as well as Governments and civil society, to cut through the confusion of countless methods and metrics, and to use the clarity and coherence offered by the Report to take meaningful steps towards transformative change. Businesses and other key actors can either lead the way towards a more sustainable global economy or ultimately risk extinction…both of species in nature, but potentially also their own.”   Business-as-usual incentives are driving nature’s decline and do not support the transformative change necessary to halt and reverse biodiversity loss.   For example, large subsidies that drive losses of biodiversity are directed to business activities with the support of lobbying by businesses and trade associations.   In 2023, global public and private finance flows with directly negative impacts on nature, were estimated at $7.3 trillion, of which private finance accounted for $4.9 trillion, with public spending on environmentally harmful subsidies of about $2.4 trillion.   In contrast, $220 billion in public and private finance flows were directed in 2023 to activities contributing to the conservation and restoration of biodiversity, representing just 3% of the public funds and incentives that encourage harmful business behaviour or prevent behaviour beneficial to biodiversity.   “The loss of biodiversity is among the most serious threats to business”, said Prof. Stephen Polasky (USA), Co-chair of the Assessment. “Yet the twisted reality is that it often seems more profitable to businesses to degrade biodiversity than to protect it. Business as usual may once have seemed profitable in the short term, but impacts across multiple businesses can have cumulative effects, aggregating to global impacts, which can cross ecological tipping points.   The Report shows that business as usual is not inevitable – with the right policies, as well as financial and cultural shifts, what is good for nature is also what is best for profitability. To get there, the Report offers tools for choosing more effective measurements and analysis.”   The Report finds that a wide range of methods, knowledge and data exist for measuring business impacts and dependencies, which can already inform decisions and action. Yet less than 1% of publicly reporting companies mention their impacts on biodiversity in their reports.   The Report makes it clear that all businesses, including financial institutions, have a responsibility to address their impacts and dependencies. The authors point out in their report the many actions that businesses can take now that benefit business and biodiversity.   “Better engagement with nature is not optional for business – it is a necessity”, said Prof. Rueda. “This is vital for their bottom line, long-term prosperity and the transformative change needed for a more just and sustainable future. To avoid greenwashing though, it is essential that businesses have transparent and credible strategies, which clearly demonstrate their actions and how they contribute to biodiversity outcomes and that they publicly disclose their impacts and dependencies as well as their lobbying activities”.   The Report explores both actions that can be taken by businesses themselves and ‘signalling’ actions that can publicly influence and inspire action by others.   Another central message of the Report is that businesses cannot, by themselves, deliver the scale of change needed to halt and reverse biodiversity loss. Collaboration, collective and individual actions are essential to create an enabling environment where businesses contribute to a just and sustainable future.   Five specific components are identified as central to such an enabling environment: policy, legal and regulatory frameworks; economic and financial systems; social values, norms and culture; technology and data; and capacity and knowledge. The Report provides more than 100 specific examples of concrete actions that can be taken, across each of these five components, by businesses, governments, financial actors and civil society.   “Better stewardship of biodiversity is central to managing risk across the whole of the economy and throughout societies – it’s not some distant environmental issue, but a core challenge now in every boardroom and cabinet-room,” said Prof. Polasky.   “We need to move beyond the fallacy of a binary choice between governments and decision-makers being either pro-environment or pro-business. All business depends on nature, so actions that conserve and sustainably use nature can also be those that help businesses thrive in the long-term.   One of the innovations of this Report is that it provides a template for accelerating collaboration and collective actions at all levels among and by governments, financial actors, other actors including civil society, Indigenous Peoples and local communities, consumers, NGOs, international organisations, and academia in addition to the action needed by businesses and financial institutions themselves.”   Speaking about the significance of the Business and Biodiversity Report, Dr. David Obura, Chair of IPBES said: “This IPBES Assessment Report was delivered with urgency, as a vital contribution to efforts by businesses, governments, financial actors and the whole of society to meet the goals and targets of the Global Biodiversity Framework, the Sustainable Development Goals and the Paris Agreement on Climate Change".   "It relates very directly to Target 15 of the Global Biodiversity Framework, which focuses on businesses, but ultimately to all our shared global goals because businesses are at the centre of how our economies, and large parts of our society, depend on and impact nature”.   "Nature is everybody’s business and the conservation, restoration and sustainable use of biodiversity is central to business sustainability and success".   http://www.ipbes.net/business-impact http://www.ipbes.net/node/97532 http://ipbes.canto.de/v/IPBES12Media/ http://webtv.un.org/en/asset/k1y/k1yl72cx8w http://www.lse.ac.uk/granthaminstitute/news/time-to-align-economic-practice-with-ecological-reality-the-critical-need-to-include-nature-in-macroeconomic-models/ http://www.ipsnews.net/2026/02/a-business-necessity-align-with-nature-or-risk-collapse-ipbes-report-warns/ http://www.who.int/news-room/fact-sheets/detail/biodiversity http://royalsociety.org/news-resources/projects/biodiversity/ http://www.lse.ac.uk/granthaminstitute/news/governments-must-protect-nature-or-pay-a-higher-price-for-borrowing-study-finds/   # Biodiversity is the natural world around us, and the variety of all of the different kinds of organisms - the plants, animals, insects and microorganisms that live on our planet. Every one of these live and work together in ecosystems to maintain and support life on earth, and exist in delicate balance. Biodiversity is one of the most precious and important things we have.   Without biological diversity, our entire support system for human, as well as animal life, would collapse. We rely on nature to provide us with food and clean water, for medicines, to prevent flooding and other extreme weather effects. So much is provided by the natural ecosystems around us – they’re truly vital to life on earth. Because biodiversity is so crucial to our future survival, its loss is a crisis on a global scale.   * July 2026   World falling short on 22 of 23 nature targets for 2030, says draft UN report - Carbon Brief   The global goal to halt and reverse nature loss by 2030 “will not be achieved” unless action by countries “accelerates rapidly”, says a draft UN report.   Countries are falling short on 22 of the 23 targets for 2030 they set under the Kunming-Montreal Global Biodiversity Framework (GBF), the “Paris Agreement for nature”.   That is according to a draft version of a global report prepared by the UN Convention on Biological Diversity (CBD), published on 26 July.   The report identifies “distinct gaps in progress”, relating to ambition and implementation, with countries are not taking sufficient action to achieve their targets. Progress is “particularly lagging” for addressing the “indirect drivers of biodiversity loss”, such as harmful business practices and government subsidies promoting them.   Elsewhere, the draft says that countries have “reported gaps in the scale and timely provision” of “financial resources, capacity-building and development, technical and scientific cooperation, access to and transfer of technology, and knowledge sharing”.   It adds: “These barriers can result in uneven capacities and cause specific technical and financial constraints for all parties, but particularly for developing-country parties. It is likely these constraints are even more pressing for least developed countries and small island developing states.”   Progress is “insufficient” on target 18, which calls on countries to identify subsidies and other incentives that are harmful for biodiversity by 2025, says the GBF report.   Target 7 of the GBF focuses on tackling pollution from pesticides, chemicals, plastic and other sources. It calls for countries to reduce pollution risks and negative impacts “from all sources” to “levels that are not harmful” to biodiversity and ecosystems by 2030.   The draft report finds that there is insufficient progress on 60% of national targets categorised as being highly aligned with target 7. Only one-third of these national targets (35%) are on track to be achieved by 2030. Progress on raising biodiversity finance has been “insufficient”, according to the report..   http://www.carbonbrief.org/world-falling-short-on-22-of-23-nature-targets-for-2030-says-draft-un-report http://www.carbonbrief.org/analysis-84-of-nations-miss-deadline-to-identify-nature-harming-subsidies-by-2025 http://www.cbd.int/article/2026-07-27-nairobi-meetings http://docs.un.org/en/A/HRC/61/36 http://www.lse.ac.uk/granthaminstitute/news/over-1-trillion-of-annual-gdp-in-europe-china-and-usa-depends-on-rainfall-linked-to-forest-ecosystems-that-are-too-big-to-fail-report-finds/ http://unu.edu/inweh/collection/global-water-bankruptcy   Dec. 2024   IPBES: Tackle Together Five Interlinked Global Crises in Biodiversity, Water, Food, Health and Climate Change.   Environmental, social and economic crises – such as biodiversity loss, water and food insecurity, health risks and climate change – are all interconnected. They interact, cascade and compound each other in ways that make separate efforts to address them ineffective and counterproductive.   Underlines the landmark new report launched by the Intergovernmental Platform on Biodiversity and Ecosystem Services (IPBES). The Assessment Report on the Interlinkages among Biodiversity, Water, Food and Health – known as the Nexus Report - offers decision-makers around the world the most ambitious scientific assessment ever undertaken of these complex interconnections and explores more than five dozen specific response options to maximize co-benefits across five ‘nexus elements’: biodiversity, water, food, health and climate change.   The report is the product of three years of work by 165 leading international experts from 57 countries from all regions of the world. It finds that existing actions to address these challenges fail to tackle the complexity of interlinked problems and result in inconsistent governance.   “We have to move decisions and actions beyond single-issue silos to better manage, govern and improve the impact of actions in one nexus element on other elements,” said Prof. Paula Harrison (United Kingdom), co-chair of the Assessment with Prof. Pamela McElwee (USA).   “Take for example the health challenge of schistosomiasis (also known as bilharzia) – a parasitic disease that can cause life-long ill health and which affects more than 200 million people worldwide – especially in Africa.   Treated only as a health challenge – usually through medication – the problem often recurs as people are reinfected. An innovative project in rural Senegal took a different approach – reducing water pollution and removing invasive water plants to reduce the habitat for the snails that host the parasitic worms that carry the disease – resulting in a 32% reduction in infections in children, improved access to freshwater and new revenue for the local communities.”   “The best way to bridge single issue silos is through integrated and adaptive decision-making. ‘Nexus approaches’ offer policies and actions that are more coherent and coordinated – moving us towards the transformative change needed to meet our development and sustainability goals,” said Prof. McElwee.   The report states that biodiversity – the richness and variety of all life on Earth – is declining at every level from global to local, and across every region. These ongoing declines in nature, largely as a result of human activity, including climate change, have direct and dire impacts on food security and nutrition, water quality and availability, health and wellbeing outcomes, resilience to climate change and almost all of nature’s other contributions to people.   Building on previous IPBES reports, in particular the 2022 Values Assessment Report and the 2019 Global Assessment Report, which identified the most important direct drivers of biodiversity loss, including land- and sea-use change, unsustainable exploitation, invasive alien species and pollution, the Nexus Report further underscores how indirect socioeconomic drivers, such as increasing waste, overconsumption and population growth, intensify the direct drivers – worsening impacts on all parts of the nexus. The majority of 12 assessed indicators across these indirect drivers – such as GDP, population levels and overall food supply, have all increased or accelerated since 2001.   “Efforts of Governments and other stakeholders have often failed to take into account indirect drivers and their impact on interactions between nexus elements because they remain fragmented, with many institutions working in isolation – often resulting in conflicting objectives, inefficiencies and negative incentives, leading to unintended consequences,” said Prof. Harrison.   The report highlights that more than half of global gross domestic product – more than $50 trillion of annual economic activity around the world – is moderately to highly dependent on nature. “But current decision-making has prioritized short-term financial returns while ignoring costs to nature, and failed to hold actors to account for negative economic pressures on the natural world. It is estimated that the unaccounted-for costs of current approaches to economic activity – reflecting impacts on biodiversity, water, health and climate change, including from food production – are at least $10-25 trillion per year,” said Prof. McElwee.   The existence of such unaccounted-for costs, alongside direct public subsidies to economic activities that have negative impacts on biodiversity (approximately $1.7 trillion per year), enhances private financial incentives to invest in economic activities that cause direct damage to nature (approximately $5.3 trillion per year), in spite of growing evidence of biophysical risks to economic progress and financial stability.   Delaying the action needed to meet policy goals will also increase the costs of delivering it. Delayed action on biodiversity goals, for example, could as much as double costs – also increasing the probability of irreplaceable losses such as species extinctions. Delayed action on climate change adds at least $500 billion per year in additional costs for meeting policy targets.   “Another key message from the report is that the increasingly negative effects of intertwined global crises have very unequal impacts, disproportionately affecting some more than others,” said Prof. Harrison.   More than half of the world’s population is living in areas experiencing the highest impacts from declines in biodiversity, water availability and quality and food security, and increases in health risks and negative effects of climate change. These burdens especially affect developing countries, including small island developing states, Indigenous Peoples and local communities, as well as those in vulnerable situations in higher-income countries. 41% of people live in areas that saw extremely strong declines in biodiversity between 2000 and 2010, 9% in areas that have experienced very high health burdens and 5% in areas with high levels of malnutrition.   Some efforts – such as research and innovation, education and environmental regulations – have been partially successful in improving trends across nexus elements, but the report finds these are unlikely to succeed without addressing interlinkages more fully and tackling indirect drivers like trade and consumption. Decision-making that is more inclusive, with a particular focus on equity, can help ensure those most affected are included in solutions, in addition to larger economic and financial reforms.   If current “business as usual” trends in direct and indirect drivers of change continue, the outcomes will be extremely poor for biodiversity, water quality and human health – with worsening climate change and increasing challenges to meet global policy goals.   A focus on trying to maximize the outcomes for only one part of the nexus in isolation will likely result in negative outcomes for the other nexus elements.   For example, a ‘food first’ approach prioritizes food production with positive benefits on nutritional health, arising from unsustainable intensification of production and increased per capita consumption. This has negative impacts on biodiversity, water and climate change.   An exclusive focus on climate change can result in negative outcomes for biodiversity and food, reflecting competition for land. Weak environmental regulation, made worse by delays, results in worsening impacts for biodiversity, food, human health and climate change.   “Future scenarios do exist that have positive outcomes for people and nature by providing co- benefits across the nexus elements,” said Prof Harrison. “The future scenarios with the widest nexus benefits are those with actions that focus on sustainable production and consumption in combination with conserving and restoring ecosystems, reducing pollution, and mitigating and adapting to climate change.”   http://www.ipbes.net/nexus/media-release http://www.pik-potsdam.de/en/news/latest-news/ipbes-nexus-report-integrated-solutions-to-address-interconnected-global-crises http://www.carbonbrief.org/ipbes-nexus-report-five-takeaways-for-biodiversity-food-water-health-and-climate/ http://www.iied.org/new-biodiversity-reports-wake-call-for-action http://www.ipbes.net/media_release/Values_Assessment_Published http://www.ipbes.net/transformative-change/media-release http://www.ids.ac.uk/news/new-global-report-on-transformative-change-for-biodiversity/ http://www.ipsnews.net/2024/12/transformative-change-will-save-a-planet-in-peril-ipbes/ http://sfcs.fao.org/cfs/cfs-hlpe/insights/news-insights/news-detail/new-hlpe-fsn-note--tackling-climate-change--biodiversity-loss-and-land-degradation-through-the-right-to-food/en Visit the related web page
	The past 11 years have been the 11 warmest on record by WMO, Copernicus Climate Change Service   The World Meteorological Organization (WMO) has confirmed that 2025 was one of the three warmest years on record, continuing the streak of extraordinary global temperatures.   The past 11 years have been the 11 warmest on record, and ocean heating continues unabated.   The global average surface temperature was 1.44 °C above the 1850-1900 average, according to WMO’s consolidated analysis of eight datasets.   Two of these datasets ranked 2025 as the second warmest year in the 176-year record, and the other six ranked it as the third warmest year.   The past three years, 2023-2025, are the three warmest years in all eight datasets. The consolidated three-year average 2023-2025 temperature is 1.48 °C (with a margin of uncertainty of ± 0.13 °C) above the pre-industrial era. The past eleven years, 2015-2025, are the eleven warmest years in all eight datasets.   “The year 2025 started and ended with a cooling La Nina and yet it was still one of the warmest years on record globally because of the accumulation of heat-trapping greenhouse gases in our atmosphere. High land and ocean temperatures helped fuel extreme weather – heatwaves, heavy rainfall and intense tropical cyclones, underlining the vital need for early warning systems,” said WMO Secretary-General Celeste Saulo.   The World Meteorological Organization added that the high temperatures on land and sea last year helped to fuel extreme weather, including heatwaves, heavy rainfall and deadly tropical cyclones.   A separate study published in Advances in Atmospheric Sciences said that ocean temperatures were also among the highest on record in 2025, reflecting the long-term accumulation of heat within the climate system. About 90% of excess heat from global warming is stored in the ocean, making ocean heat a critical indicator of climate change.   The European Union’s Copernicus climate agency published a report based on data from climate-monitoring organizations, including NASA and the World Meteorological Organization. Based on weather readings from global satellites and weather stations, the report found that, for the first time in recorded history, global temperatures over a three-year period have exceeded the critical threshold of 1.5°C above preindustrial levels.   At current rates of heating, the report found, the Earth could surpass the Paris Climate Accord’s target of 1.5°C on a long-term basis by 2030, more than a decade sooner than scientists’ projection when nations negotiated the pledge to reduce emissions back in 2015.   “Atmospheric data from 2025 paints a clear picture: Human activity remains the dominant driver of the exceptional temperatures we are observing,” said Laurence Rouil, the director of Copernicus’ Atmosphere Monitoring Service. “Atmospheric greenhouse gases have steadily increased over the last 10 years.”   Scientists have urged nations to take swift action in the hope of avoiding the 1.5°C tipping point. Carlo Buontempo, the director of Copernicus, said following Wednesday’s report that “we are bound to pass it. The choice we now have is how to best manage the inevitable overshoot and its consequences on societies and natural systems.”   “Extreme weather isn’t rare anymore—it’s driving up food prices, water shortages, and upending daily life across the globe,” said Savio Carvalho, the director for campaigns and networks for the climate activist group 350. “Governments know fossil fuels are the cause of climate breakdown, yet they keep stalling on the transition to renewable energy systems. We don’t have the luxury of wasting time or taking side paths, we are running out of time.”   http://wmo.int/news/media-centre/wmo-confirms-2025-was-one-of-warmest-years-record http://climate.copernicus.eu/global-climate-highlights-2025 http://climate.copernicus.eu/rapid-approach-15degc-global-warming-threshold-paris-agreement http://news.un.org/en/story/2026/01/1166758 http://www.cell.com/one-earth/fulltext/S2590-3322(25)00391-4 http://350.org/press-release/fossil-fuel-phaseout-urgent-as-1-5c-target-likely-to-be-passed-by-2030/ http://www.ipcc.ch/sr15/ http://www.worldweatherattribution.org/unequal-evidence-and-impacts-limits-to-adaptation-extreme-weather-in-2025/   Extreme heat pushes agrifood systems to the brink. (WMO/FAO)   The frequency, intensity and duration of extreme heat events have risen sharply over the past half century, and the risks to agrifood systems and ecosystems are set to soar in the future, according to “Extreme heat and agriculture,” a new report from the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations (FAO) and the World Meteorological Organization (WMO).   “This work highlights how extreme heat is a major risk multiplier, exerting mounting pressure on crops, livestock, fisheries and forests, and on the communities and economies that depend upon them.” says the FAO.   “Extreme heat is increasingly defining the conditions under which agrifood systems operate,” said WMO Secretary-General Celeste Saulo. “More than simply an isolated climatic hazard, it acts as a compounding risk factor that magnifies existing weaknesses across agricultural systems” she said.   Extreme heat is threatening the world’s food systems, with livestock experiencing stress and crop yields falling, putting the livelihoods of more than a billion people in peril.   Food supply in some areas is being “pushed to the brink” by increasingly common and severe heatwaves, on land and at sea.   Farmers will find it increasingly difficult to work safely for as many as 250 days of the year in already hot regions including much of India and south Asia, tropical sub-Saharan Africa and swathes of Central and South America.   Livestock are already experiencing an increase in mortality rates, as heat stress begins for common species at about 25C. Extreme heat reduces yields from dairy cows and cuts the fat and protein content of milk. Pigs and chickens are unable to sweat and, as temperatures rise, face digestive tract breakdowns, organ failure and cardiovascular shock.   Yields begin to decline at temperatures above 30C for most agricultural crops, with damage including weakened cell walls and the production of toxins. The yields of maize in some areas have declined by about 10%. Wheat has fallen by nearly as much, and is projected to decline further as temperatures rise to more than 1.5C above preindustrial levels. Ocean heatwaves are also killing fish, as heat reduces the level of dissolved oxygen in the water, leading to mass decline in populations..   http://wmo.int/news/media-centre/extreme-heat-pushes-agrifood-systems-brink http://openknowledge.fao.org/items/f635e477-b37a-46f8-bc10-34d56cec6332 http://www.theguardian.com/world/2026/apr/22/world-food-systems-extreme-heat-farming-un-report http://iopscience.iop.org/article/10.1088/1748-9326/ade45f http://eciu.net/media/press-releases/2025/uk-us-ethiopia-see-food-price-shocks-from-climate-extremes-raising-concerns-for-child-health http://insideclimatenews.org/news/21072025/weather-extremes-driving-up-food-prices/ http://www.theguardian.com/business/2025/jul/21/rising-food-prices-driven-by-climate-crisis-threaten-worlds-poorest-report-finds http://www.lse.ac.uk/granthaminstitute/news/why-engaging-with-food-insecurity-in-the-context-of-climate-change-is-increasingly-important/ http://knowledge.unicef.org/child-nutrition-and-development/resource/impact-climate-change-maternal-and-child-nutrition-global-evidence-review   Mar. 2026   Food security in a warming world - Institute for Environment and Development (IIED)   Climate change is steadily weakening the foundations of food security: reducing food availability, making food less accessible, worsening malnutrition and diminishing the effectiveness of food use. And as shocks repeat, it turns short-term stress into long-term fragility.   These pressures are felt most severely in countries and communities with the least capacity to cope. Yet, many measures used in food security analysis capture only part of the picture and some indices do not cover the countries most at risk.   To address this gap, we constructed a new Food Security Index for 162 countries, which assesses performance across four distinct pillars: availability, access, utilisation and sustainability.   Most governments now accept climate change will likely cause significant disruption to food supplies, and that in many places it is already leading to failed harvests or lower crop yields. The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) science tells us the impacts on health, and on food and water security, are already showing.   This new IIED Food Security Index offers more granular data to identify weaknesses in systems of food supply, offering policy makers more options to help withstand increasingly unpredictable and extreme weather.   The index incorporates data from a large number of sources and, allows users to examine that data as it relates to four ‘pillars’ of food security.   These are the availability, meaning existence, of adequate food; the accessibility of that food to households, for example, whether it’s affordable; its nutritional value and whether people are healthy enough to absorb those nutrients (‘utilisation’); and the sustainability, or resilience, of food systems.   Ritu Bharadwaj, the researcher behind this work, said: “Unpacking all four pillars is important because climate shocks rarely affect food security through only one channel. They tend to hit several aspects across these pillars at once, and the dominant constraint can differ between countries.   “For example, a heatwave might damage crops close to harvest time, creating an immediate pressure on availability. If instead that extreme heat prevents a family’s breadwinner from working, their lower income means they’re less able to access food even if it’s otherwise available.”   At a global scale the index reveals a deeply divided and unfair distribution of food insecurity: lower-income countries tend to score much lower than the wealthiest, and the gap only widens when the predicted effects of climate change are factored in.   Analysis shows a strong link between higher historic greenhouse gas emissions and improved food security, while entire regions that have contributed much less to global temperature rise languish towards the bottom of the rankings.   Vulnerability to the effects of climate change is correlated with both lower historic emissions and lower food security scores, a glaring injustice.   “Climate change is rapidly becoming one of the most powerful drivers of hunger and food insecurity across the world, particularly in countries where poverty, fragility, and limited fiscal space already constrain resilience,” said Renato Domith Godinho, director of the Global Alliance Against Hunger and Poverty Support Mechanism.   “This report provides important new evidence on food security outcomes… exploring how climate impacts are likely to deepen existing inequalities in food systems, with the most severe consequences seen in the most vulnerable countries.”   “In fragile and conflict-affected countries, climate change is already reshaping the realities of food security,” said Abdihakim Ainte, director of food security and climate change in the Somalia government.   “In Somalia, repeated droughts and floods are disrupting agricultural production, pastoral livelihoods and local markets, pushing vulnerable communities closer to crisis with each successive shock. When climate impacts intersect with fragility, limited fiscal space and ongoing humanitarian pressures, the risks to food security become far more severe.   “This report provides valuable new evidence on how climate change could further intensify these pressures across countries… it highlights how rising temperatures and increasing climate variability are likely to deepen existing inequalities in food systems. For countries facing fragility, strengthening food security is inseparable from strengthening resilience.”   IIED research shows investing in social protection schemes designed to pay out as soon as possible after disaster strikes can save countries billions, compared to scrambling together emergency responses afterwards. In some cases social protection schemes can also be used to create infrastructure that will lessen the impact of later climate shocks.   Support costs money, but climate-related pressures on food security is greatest on countries that often have little room for manoeuvre in fiscal terms. This means that secure, predictable finance will be important, so nations can avoid taking out new loans reactively and storing up debt interest repayment problems for later.   http://www.iied.org/any-country-truly-food-secure-climate-change-era http://www.iied.org/pathways-for-global-food-security-warming-climate http://www.iied.org/collection/iied-food-security-index http://www.iied.org/22705iied   July 2025   Climate extremes, food price spikes, and their wider societal risks - Environmental Research Letters   Extreme weather has stoked food price rises around the world in recent years, with low income earners bearing most of the economic pain and health impacts, according to new research.   The research links last year’s surges in the price of potatoes in the UK, cabbages in South Korea, onions in India, and cocoa in Ghana to weather extremes that “exceeded all historical precedent prior to 2020”.   Such price jumps not only affect local food security and health, particularly for the poorest in society, but have knock-on effects around the world.   The report 'Climate extremes, food price spikes, and their wider societal risks', published in the journal Environmental Research Letters includes contributions from the UK’s Energy & Climate Intelligence Unit (ECIU), the European Central Bank (ECB), the Food Foundation, the Barcelona Supercomputing Center and Potsdam Institute for Climate Impact Research.   The study investigated examples across 18 countries between 2022 and 2024 where price spikes were associated with heat, drought and heavy precipitation.   “We can see that there’s a broad global context for this happening in recent years that extends all the way from East Asia through Europe and also to North America,” said Maximillian Kotz, a post-doctoral fellow at the Barcelona Supercomputing Center and the lead author of the study. “Our paper is a call to action for us to consider these wider effects of food price increases in response to climate change for our societies.”   Climate extremes, food price spikes, and their wider societal risks   2024 was the hottest year on record, with global temperatures exceeding 1.5 °C above preindustrial climate conditions for the first time and records broken across large parts of Earth’s surface. Among the widespread impacts of exceptional heat, rising food prices are beginning to play a prominent role in public perception, now the second most frequently cited impact of climate change experienced globally, following only extreme heat itself.   Recent econometric analysis confirms that abnormally high temperatures directly cause higher food prices, as impacts on agricultural production translate into supply shortages and food price inflation.   Amongst the examples we identify, recent spikes in the price of food were often associated with heat, drought and heavy precipitation conditions that were so extreme as to completely exceed all historical precedent prior to 2020.   For example, heatwaves across East Asia during 2024 led to unprecedented monthly temperatures across virtually all of South Korea and Japan, as well as large parts of China and India. Government statistics indicate that these events lead to substantial increases in the price of Korean cabbage (70% higher in September 2024 compared to September 2023), Japanese rice (48% higher in September 2024 compared to September 2023), and overall vegetable prices in China (30% increase between June and August).   Far from being confined to Asia, prominent impacts were also seen across advanced Western economies. With California accounting for over 40% of US vegetable production, unprecedented drought across California and Arizona in 2022 contributed to an 80% year-on-year increase in US vegetable producer prices by November 2022. With Spain producing over 40% of global olive oil, unprecedented droughts in Southern Europe across 2022/23 drove year-on-year price increases of 50% across the EU by January 2024, on top of price increases in the previous year.   As well as effects in domestic markets, recent climate extremes also raised global market prices of important food commodities. For example, Ghana and the Ivory Coast produce nearly 60% of global cocoa. Unprecedented monthly temperatures across the majority of both countries in February 2024, on top of a prolonged drought in the prior year, led to increases in global market prices of cocoa of around 300% by April 2024 compared to the previous year. Similar effects were observed for coffee following heatwaves and drought in Vietnam and Brazil in 2024.   Such effects in international markets bring challenges for suppliers and potential price rises for consumers in countries far from the region directly affected by weather extremes.   These climate-driven food price spikes can aggravate risks across a range of sectors of society. First, rising food prices have direct implications for food security, particularly for low-income households.   This can result in (a) households spending the same but buying less (either going hungry or depending on sources of charity); (b) spending the same but buying cheaper options (typically cutting out nutritious foods like fruits and vegetables which are more expensive sources of calories) (c) spending an even higher proportion of their income on food (with knock on effects on other areas of essential expenditure). These effects can be strongly regressive given the substantial disparities in the share of income spent on food by low- and high-income households.   For example, in the USA the lowest income quintile spends approximately 33% of income on food compared to 8% in the highest income quintile. The fact that larger price increases occur in hotter and typically poorer countries will further amplify these effects.   Second, food price increases exacerbate risks for public health. When price increases shift consumer spending towards cheaper, often less nutritious options, or when climate extremes directly affect the prices of nutritious foods such as fresh fruit and vegetables, this can have knock-on consequences for the quality of diets.   With diet-related diseases responsible for more deaths than any other risks,climate-induced price increases could thereby exacerbate a range of health outcomes from malnutrition and associated co-morbidities (particularly among children whose nutritional needs are higher), to a range of chronic diet-related conditions including coronary heart disease, type 2 diabetes and many cancers.   Combined with the growing body of evidence connecting food insecurity and poor diets with mental health outcomes, this implies strong risks for the health sector and necessary public spending from climate-induced food price increases.   Third, recent evidence indicates that heat impacts on food prices also raise headline inflation. Central bank mandates for price stability may become increasingly challenging to deliver if more frequent extreme weather events make food prices less stable domestically and in global markets.   This is particularly a risk for developing economies, where the weight of food prices in headline inflation is much greater. These challenges may be magnified if persistent temperature increases cause a sustained upward pressure on inflation, or inflation volatility results in lower credibility and a de-anchoring of inflation expectations.   Moreover, raising interest rates to dampen inflationary effects risks exacerbating any reduction in economic growth that may also be caused by the extreme event.   Fourth, food price inflation associated with climate-extremes may come to bear increasing political relevance. Anecdotal evidence from across history often cites food price increases as a precursor to political unrest and social upheaval (from the French and Russian revolutions of the 18th and 20th centuries, to the 2008/09 food crisis and 2011 Arab Spring).   Such links are substantiated further by evidence showing a robust relationship between food prices and social unrest at monthly time-scales. Moreover, high rates of inflation can directly alter election outcomes in modern democracies.   For example, high inflation reduced support for incumbent Democrats in the 2024 US election, and boosted support for extremist, anti-system and populist parties in elections held in advanced economies since 1948. These effects can be particularly strong when inflation affects real wages, as is the case with food prices.   Maximilian Kotz: “What we found is very strong evidence that abnormally high temperatures drive increases in the price of food and overall inflation,” he said, “and that therefore, under future climate change with heat intensifying, we’re going to be expecting to see more and more of these kinds of increases in consumer price indexes, broadly.”   “These effects are going to continue to become worse in the future. Until we get to net zero emissions extreme weather will only get worse, but it’s already damaging crops and pushing up the price of food all over the world.   http://iopscience.iop.org/article/10.1088/1748-9326/ade45f http://eciu.net/media/press-releases/2025/uk-us-ethiopia-see-food-price-shocks-from-climate-extremes-raising-concerns-for-child-health http://insideclimatenews.org/news/21072025/weather-extremes-driving-up-food-prices/ http://www.theguardian.com/business/2025/jul/21/rising-food-prices-driven-by-climate-crisis-threaten-worlds-poorest-report-finds http://www.lse.ac.uk/granthaminstitute/news/why-engaging-with-food-insecurity-in-the-context-of-climate-change-is-increasingly-important/ Visit the related web page
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