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	World enters 'Era of Global Water Bankruptcy' by Kaveh Madani Director, UN Institute for Water, Environment and Health   Amid chronic groundwater depletion, water overallocation, land and soil degradation, deforestation, and pollution, all compounded by global heating, a new UN report has declared the dawn of an era of global water bankruptcy, calling on world leaders to facilitate “honest, science-based adaptation to a new reality.”   “Global Water Bankruptcy: Living Beyond Our Hydrological Means in the Post-Crisis Era,” argues that the familiar terms “water stressed” and “water crisis” fail to reflect today’s reality in many places: a post-crisis condition marked by irreversible losses of natural water capital and an inability to bounce back to historic baselines.   “This report tells an uncomfortable truth: many regions are living beyond their hydrological means, and many critical water systems are already bankrupt,” says lead author Kaveh Madani, Director of the UN University’s Institute for Water, Environment and Health (UNU-INWEH).'   Expressed in financial terms, the report says many societies have not only overspent their annual renewable water “income” from rivers, soils, and snowpack, they have depleted long-term “savings” in aquifers, glaciers, wetlands, and other natural reservoirs.   This has resulted in a growing list of compacted aquifers, subsided land in deltas and coastal cities, vanished lakes and wetlands, and irreversibly lost biodiversity.   The UNU report formally defines water bankruptcy as: persistent over-withdrawal from surface and groundwater relative to renewable inflows and safe levels of depletion; and the resulting irreversible or prohibitively costly loss of water-related natural capital.   By contrast:“Water stress” reflects high pressure that remains reversible. “Water crisis” describes acute shocks that can be overcome.   The report is issued prior to the 2026 UN Water Conference, to be co-hosted by the United Arab Emirates and Senegal 2-4 Dec. in the UAE.   While not every basin and country is water-bankrupt, Madani says, “enough critical systems around the world have crossed these thresholds. These systems are interconnected through trade, migration, climate feedbacks, and geopolitical dependencies, so the global risk landscape is now fundamentally altered.”   Madani underlines the following four essential points:   Water cannot be protected if we allow the hydrological cycle, the climate, and the underlying natural capital that produces water to be interrupted or damaged. The world has an important and still largely untapped strategic opportunity to act.   Water is an issue that crosses traditional political boundaries. It belongs to north and south, and to left and right. For that reason, it can serve as a bridge to create trust and unity between and within nations. In the fragmented world we live in, water can become a powerful focus for cooperation and for aligning national security with international priorities.   Investment in water is also investment in mitigating climate change, biodiversity loss, and desertification. Water should not be treated only as a downstream sector affected by other environmental crises. On the contrary, targeted investment in water can address the immediate concerns of communities and nations while also advancing the objectives of the Rio Conventions (climate, biodiversity, desertification).   A renewed global emphasis on water could help reaccelerate stalled negotiations and potentially re-energize halted international processes. A practical and cooperative focus on water offers a way to connect urgent local needs with long-term global goals.   Hotspots   In the Middle East and North Africa region, high water stress, climate vulnerability, low agricultural productivity, energy-intensive desalination, and sand and dust storms intersect with complex political economies;   In parts of South Asia, groundwater-dependent agriculture and urbanization have produced chronic declines in water tables and local subsidence; and In the American Southwest, the Colorado River and its reservoirs have become symbols of over-promised water.   Drawing on global datasets and recent scientific evidence, the report presents a stark statistical overview of trends, the overwhelming majority caused by humans:   50%: Large lakes worldwide that have lost water since the early 1990s (with 25% of humanity directly dependent on those lakes). 50%: Global domestic water now derived from groundwater. 40%+: Irrigation water drawn from aquifers being steadily drained. 70%: Major aquifers showing long-term decline.   410 million hectares: Area of natural wetlands – almost equal in size to the entire European Union – erased in the past five decades. 30%+: Global glacier mass lost in several locations since 1970, with entire low- and mid-latitude mountain ranges expected to lose functional glaciers altogether within decades.   Dozens: Major rivers that now fail to reach the sea for parts of the year. 50+ years: How long many river basins and aquifers have been overdrawing their accounts. 100 million hectares: Cropland damaged by salinization alone   And the human consequences:   75%: Humanity in countries classified as water-insecure or critically water-insecure. 2 billion: People living on sinking ground. 25 cm: Annual drop being experienced by some cities. 4 billion: People facing severe water scarcity at least one month every year.   170 million hectares: Irrigated cropland under high or very high water stress – equivalent to the areas of France, Spain, Germany, and Italy combined. US$5.1 trillion: Annual value of lost wetland ecosystem services.   3 billion: People living in areas where total water storage is declining or unstable, with 50%+ of global food produced in those same stressed regions. 1.8 billion: People living under drought conditions in 2022–2023. 2.2 billion: People who lack safely managed drinking water, while 3.5 billion lack safely managed sanitation.   Says Madani: “Millions of farmers are trying to grow more food from shrinking, polluted, or disappearing water sources. Without rapid transitions toward water-smart agriculture, water bankruptcy will spread rapidly.”   "As with global climate change or pandemics, a declaration of global water bankruptcy does not imply uniform impact everywhere, but that enough systems across regions and income levels have become insolvent and crossed irreversible thresholds to constitute a planetary-scale condition".   “Water bankruptcy is also global because its consequences travel,” Madani explains. “Agriculture accounts for the vast majority of freshwater use, and food systems are tightly interconnected through trade and prices. When water scarcity undermines farming in one region, the effects ripple through global markets, political stability, and food security elsewhere. This makes water bankruptcy not a series of isolated local crises, but a shared global risk that demands a new type of response: Bankruptcy management, not crisis management.”   The report underlines that water bankruptcy is not merely a hydrological problem, but a justice issue with deep social and political implications requiring attention at the highest levels of government and multilateral cooperation. The burdens fall disproportionately on smallholder farmers, Indigenous Peoples, low-income urban residents, women and youth while the benefits of overuse often accrued to more powerful actors.   “Water bankruptcy is becoming a driver of fragility, displacement, and conflict,” says UN Under-Secretary-General Tshilidzi Marwala, Rector of UNU. “Managing it fairly – ensuring that vulnerable communities are protected and that unavoidable losses are shared equitably – is now central to maintaining peace, stability, and social cohesion.”   “Bankruptcy management requires honesty, courage, and political will,” Madani adds. “We cannot rebuild vanished glaciers or reinflate acutely compacted aquifers. But we can prevent further loss of our remaining natural capital, and redesign institutions to live within new hydrological limits.”   “Despite its warnings, the report is not a statement of hopelessness,” adds Madani. “It is a call for honesty, realism, and transformation. Declaring bankruptcy is not about giving up, it is about starting fresh. By acknowledging the reality of water bankruptcy, we can finally make the hard choices that will protect people, economies, and ecosystems. The longer we delay, the deeper the deficit grows.”   Report in brief:   This report declares that the world has already entered the era of Global Water Bankruptcy. The condition is not a distant threat but a present reality. Many human water systems are now in a post-crisis failure state where past baselines can no longer be restored.   Global Water Bankruptcy is defined as a persistent post-crisis state of failure. In this state, long-term water use and pollution have exceeded renewable inflows and safe depletion limits. Key parts of the water system can no longer realistically be brought back to previous levels of supply and ecosystem function.   Terms such as water stress and water crisis are no longer sufficient descriptions of the world’s new water realities. Many rivers, lakes, aquifers, wetlands, and glaciers have been pushed beyond tipping points and cannot bounce back to past baselines. The language of temporary crisis is no longer accurate in many regions.   The global water cycle has moved beyond its safe planetary boundary. Together with climate, biodiversity, and land systems, freshwater has been pushed outside its safe operating space.   The report concludes that the world is living beyond its hydrological means.   Billions of people are living with chronic water insecurity. Around 2.2 billion people still lack safely managed drinking water, 3.5 billion lack safely managed sanitation, and nearly 4 billion face severe water scarcity for at least one month each year. Almost three-quarters of the world’s population live in countries classified as water insecure or critically water insecure.   Surface waters and wetlands are shrinking on a massive scale. More than half of the world’s large lakes have lost water since the early 1990s, affecting about one-quarter of the global population that relies on them directly.   Over the last five decades, humanity has lost roughly 410 million hectares of natural wetlands, almost the land area of the European Union. Groundwater depletion and land subsidence show that hidden reserves are being exhausted.   Around 70 percent of the world’s major aquifers show long-term declines. Land subsidence linked to groundwater over-pumping now affects more than 6 million square kilometers, almost 5 percent of the global land area, and nearly 2 billion people.   This permanently reduces storage and increases flood risk in many cities, deltas, and coastal zones.   Water quality degradation further reduces usable water and accelerates bankruptcy. Growing loads of untreated wastewater, agricultural runoff, industrial pollution, and salinization are degrading rivers, lakes, and aquifers.   Even where volumes appear sufficient on paper, the fraction of water that is safe for drinking, irrigation, and ecosystems continues to shrink.   The cryosphere is melting, eroding a critical long-term water buffer. The world, in multiple locations, already lost more than 30 percent of its glacier mass since 1970. Some mountain ranges risk losing functional glaciers within decades, undermining water security for hundreds of millions of people who depend on rivers fed by glacier and snowmelt.   Farmers and food systems sit at the very heart of Global Water Bankruptcy. Roughly 70 percent of global freshwater withdrawals are used for agriculture, much of it in the Global South.   Groundwater provides about 50 percent of domestic water use and over 40 percent of irrigation water worldwide. Both drinking water and food production now depend heavily on aquifers that are being depleted faster than they can realistically recharge.   Global food production is increasingly exposed to water decline and degradation. About 3 billion people and more than half of global food production are concentrated in areas where total water storage is already declining or unstable.   More than 170 million hectares of irrigated cropland, about the combined land area of France, Spain, Germany, and Italy, are under high or very high water stress.   Salinization has degraded roughly 82 million hectares of rainfed cropland and 24 million hectares of irrigated cropland, eroding yields in key global breadbaskets.   Drought impacts are becoming steadily more human-made and extremely costly. The report identifies a growing pattern of anthropogenic drought, meaning water deficits caused by overuse and degradation rather than natural variability alone. These impacts already cost around US$307 billion per year, more than the annual GDP of almost three-quarters of United Nations Member States.   Global Water Bankruptcy is also a justice, security, and political economy challenge. Without a deliberate commitment to equity, the costs of adjustment will fall disproportionately on farmers, rural communities, Indigenous Peoples, informal urban residents, women, youth, and other vulnerable groups. This imbalance increases the risk of social unrest and conflict in many regions.   Governments need to urgently shift from crisis management to bankruptcy management. The report calls for an end to short-term emergency thinking. Instead, it urges strategies that prevent further irreversible damage, reduce and reallocate demand, transform water-intensive sectors, tackle illegal withdrawals and pollution, and ensure just transitions for people whose livelihoods must change.   The current global water agenda is no longer fit for the Anthropocene. A narrow focus on drinking water, sanitation, and small efficiency gains will not be sufficient to resolve escalating water risks. In fact, that limited approach will increasingly compromise progress on climate action, biodiversity protection, land management, food security, and peace..   http://unu.edu/inweh/news/world-enters-era-of-global-water-bankruptcy http://unu.edu/inweh/collection/global-water-bankruptcy http://unu.edu/inweh/news/water-quality-mirror-and-magnifier-of-structural-inequalities-and-social-injustice http://unu.edu/inweh/news/environmental-cost-of-AIs-Enrgy-use-carbon-water-and-land-footprints 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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