Climate change Rising water scarcity and increased desertification Food crisis, caused by the rapid escalation of food prices Other environmental trends that have worsened more rapidly than anticipated (especially land degradation) A succession of disasters.

The UN World Food Programme (WFP) assists vulnerable people and communities, governments, regional institutions, and other partners in fighting climate change-related hunger and malnutrition. By contributing knowledge, sophisticated tools and large-scale innovative programmes in disaster risk reduction and social protection, WFP is protecting lives and livelihoods from climate-related hazards and enabling resilience building, pro-poor adaptation and climate-resilient, sustainable development. To support its partners as well as to leverage and strengthen its internal capacities in responding to the challenge climate change poses on fighting hunger, WFP has established a Climate Change and Disaster Risk Reduction Office in 2009.
Further reading:
Parry, M. et al 2009: Climate Change and Hunger. Responding to the Challenge. Published by WFP.
http://documents.wfp.org/stellent/groups/public/documents/newsroom/wfp212536.pdf

WFP?s Climate Change and Disaster Risk Reduction Office, in collaboration with the organizations country offices, is strengthening tools and approaches that enhance governments? and partners? capacities in addressing climate related food security risks. WFP?s core capacities and activities in this area are:
1. Responding to climate related hunger crises and disasters: Delivering effective humanitarian relief and recovery assistance and support to countries and people impacted by increasing climate hazards such as floods, droughts and storms, as well as man-made disasters such as conflicts driven or exacerbated by climate change and increasing competition over scarce resources;
2. Disaster risk reduction and emergency preparedness: Supporting governments, regional organizations, national institutions, partners, and vulnerable people and communities to anticipate and prepare for climate related hazards by leveraging WFP?s experience, capacities, tools and systems in food security and vulnerability analysis and mapping, emergency preparedness and response, early warning, disaster risk reduction, food technology, logistics, and information and communications technology;
3. Community-based adaptation: Supporting national plans and efforts to enhance vulnerable people?s food security by protecting their livelihoods and building their resilience to climate shocks through a set of diversified and context specific interventions, including income generation, economic diversification, and asset creation activities; environmental conservation, land management and rural development initiatives; and water harvesting projects, risk management, climate-proof infrastructure development;
4. Social protection and safety nets: Reinforcing the ability of national institutions to establish effective food security social protection and resource transfer mechanisms and programmes in support to vulnerable and climate affected people and communities, including through safety nets, employment generation schemes, mother and child health care and nutrition programmes, school feeding programmes, and weather-indexed insurance schemes, among others;
5. Mitigation: Leveraging WFP?s broad experience in the supporting reforestation and afforestation programmes in fragile ecosystems when these interventions are linked to food security objectives and aligned with national efforts to reduce
emissions and mitigate climate risks, for example, support and promote the use of innovative energy saving technologies (i.e. fuel efficient stoves).
6. Advocacy and public policy: Advocating on behalf of the countries and people most vulnerable to the hunger and nutrition impact of climate change, and supporting the development of global and national policies, programmes and initiatives that will protect, support and empower the poorest and most vulnerable segments of society in light of the new risks that changing climate poses to their food security, lives and livelihoods.

Yes. Climate change will hit the poor and food insecure, especially women and children, the hardest. Many of the nearly one billion food insecure people depend on small scale agriculture as their major source of food and income. They often survive on less than a dollar a day and spend up to 70 percent of their income on food. They cannot afford to risk experimenting with new agricultural methods, learn new skills or invest in assets that would increase their resilience. Poverty traps them in a downward spiral of eroding resilience to shocks and stresses. As a result, in the absence of insurance or other protection mechanisms, every drought or flood leads to a further deprivation and decumulation of assets.
The prospect of more unpredictable and extreme weather events, coupled with high dependency on climate-sensitive natural resources and low coping and adaptive capacity, makes poor rural communities in developing countries highly vulnerable. More abrupt and unpredictable changes in agricultural production, coupled with generally lower yields in developing countries, as a result of climate change will lead to greater price volatility and higher food prices. Price increases of the most important crops are likely to range from 25 to 150% by 2060.1 Lower production in agriculture based economies also leads to declining income opportunities and purchasing power, further limiting poor people?s ability to invest in human, financial and physical assets that constitute adaptive capacity. Food security thus multiplies existing vulnerabilities, including poverty, marginalization, poor health and malnutrition. All these factors combined mean that climate change could increase the incidence of hunger by some 10 to 20% by 2050. Calorie availability in 2050 will likely decline relative to 2000 levels throughout the developing world, and the numbers of malnourished children could rise by about 24 million, or by more than a fifth.2

The challenge is enormous: Governments must deliver better results in ensuring food security ? already a monumental task ? under more difficult conditions. Climate
1 International Food Policy Research Institute (IFPRI), Food Policy Report 21: Climate Change: Impact on Agriculture and Costs of Adaptation, 2009
2 ibid.
change requires that we go beyond business as usual in the approach to food insecurity and poverty reduction. Efforts to adapt agriculture in order to increase local production and productivity levels in developing countries are critical in enhancing food security under climate change. But they must be complemented by measures that protect the most vulnerable more effectively against climate disasters and approaches that enable food insecure communities to build resilience and escape from poverty and hunger. This includes social protection and safety nets, which can be a powerful instrument to effectively link immediate protection against climate change impacts with efforts to build resilience and adaptive capacities among those who need it most.
Climate change and recurring climate disasters require a stronger focus on prevention and preparedness as well as increased efforts to better link humanitarian and developmental interventions. These emerging challenges also require innovative, ?climate-smart? approaches to protecting people and development gains from climate relate food insecurity. With more people at risk of climate related disasters, social protection must become more efficient and effective at moving people into productive livelihoods. WFP supports a number of innovative approaches, such as weather risk management frameworks that combine insurance and safety net approaches. Together with the existing experience within the organization and its partners in building resilience they form a platform for moving beyond pilots towards scaling up and replicating efforts to end hunger in times of climate change.

WFP?s main entry points to the Green Economy are (i) sustainable agriculture and (ii) energy (renewable energy and energy efficiency) required for food consumption. Poverty reduction and other possible social impacts, such as food security, are not only considered in the design of agricultural and energy related WFP interventions that enhance environmental sustainability; they are their main objective.
SUSTAINABLE AGRICULTURE:
WFP is supporting governments in enabling food insecure communities to apply community-based watershed management in an increasing number of countries, including Ethiopia, Rwanda and Haiti. The natural resource and livelihood impacts of community-based watershed management address the intertwined problems of land degradation, biodiversity loss, declines in agricultural productivity, food insecurity and climate change. The same practices also sequester carbon, contributing to climate change mitigation. The conservation and development activities include: soil and water conservation in farmlands, reforestation and development of community woodlots, area closure and management of degraded communal lands, and water harvesting at household and community levels. Communities where watershed management has been implemented have restored environmental services and conserved biodiversity and indigenous knowledge, leading to significant improvements in agricultural production, household food security and livelihoods.
Example: MERET ? from land rehabilitation to income generation
Ethiopia?s MERET (?Managing Environmental Resources to Enable Transitions to more sustainable livelihoods?) project, implemented through the Ministry of Agriculture?s Natural Resource Department?s extension system and supported by WFP, enables food-insecure communities to manage their natural resources effectively, in order to increase their resilience to weather-related shocks. Food assistance is provided for up to three months each year to enable food-insecure households to participate in labour-intensive soil and water conservation activities. Extension agents control the quality of the work before households receive food.
As sustainable land management requires community ownership and leadership, the MERET approach includes capacity building for a community selected management committee, to ensure that the community works together and manages together. Communities work with extension agents to identify their priorities, select and plan activities, and manage natural resources. Community plans for rehabilitating their
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micro watersheds consider environmental, social and economic needs. The approach includes empowerment for disadvantaged groups such as poor women and elderly-headed households so that they can benefit from assistance, and support to women?s participation in planning, implementation and decision-making on issues affecting their livelihoods.
As MERET requires communities to take marginal lands out of cultivation and prevent livestock from grazing freely in protected areas, food remains a preferred form of assistance to compensate for the reduction in household food access during environmental rehabilitation. Once conservation measures have improved soil productivity and water recharge, the community can begin income-generating activities such as horticulture, forage harvesting, fruit tree production, and bee-keeping. As incomes improve, WFP phases out food assistance but continues to support MERET?s outreach to communities through funds for additional extension activities, incentives for innovation, and training on income-generating activities.
The impact of influencing a system rather than just a community can be seen in the Tigray region where the Natural Resource Department applied lessons from MERET to the entire region. For the past 20 years, about 80 percent of cultivated land in Tigray has been treated with soil and water conservation measures. This amounts to about 960,000 ha, of which 300,000 ha is under livelihood improving biological measures such as fruit trees, fodder shrubs and grasses. Overall, nearly 40 percent of Tigray?s land mass is treated, protected or reforested.
In 2005 FAO undertook a cost-benefit analysis on behalf of WFP to assess the investment returns on MERET activities for beneficiaries. The study analyzed soil composition, water capture, the production of woody biomass, and crop and horticultural productivity after conservation treatment implemented through MERET. It found that economic and financial rates of return averaged more than 12 percent for the main activities implemented through the programme ? a remarkable achievement for drought-stricken areas.
ENERGY:
As a member of the UN Foundation-led Global Alliance for Clean Cookstoves, WFP is addressing the cooking needs of women and schools in some of the most difficult places, such as Haiti and Darfur. SAFE programming is underway in North Darfur, Sudan, and in Karamoja, Uganda ? with plans to expand to other parts of the country. Activities have been launched in Haiti and Sri Lanka, and will start in the Democratic Republic of Congo, Ethiopia and Kenya by the end of 2011.
The SAFE activities often build on traditional WFP field operations such as food for work, food for training and school meals, with a view to strengthening food security. In Kabkabiya, a remote area in North Darfur where the erosion of the natural resources is particularly bleak, WFP is supporting the production of briquettes made out of organic waste for cooking. Garbage collection and briquette-making involves hundreds of women. WFP beneficiaries are working closely with staff to improve the design of the briquette-making machines, and to select the most effective
accompanying stove. The production of mud stoves is being supported in combination with food-for-work activities, such as gardening and tree planting.
With training in the construction of stoves in Karamoja, Uganda, women report a reduced need to collect firewood and that faster cooking time has allowed them to pursue other activities. Local youth groups trained in the construction of the stoves are now producing and selling stoves in local markets. In combination with the dissemination of stoves, WFP is implementing community projects in the cultivation of crops (staples and vegetables), tree-planting (for wood and fruits) and rainwater harvesting.
In Ethiopia, WFP will support the distribution of up to 200,000 subsidized fuel efficient stoves in rural areas over the next five years. 199,000 locally produced stoves will be distributed to households that are participating in the MERET programme. In addition, 1000 stoves will be distributed among schools through WFP?s school feeding programme. It is expected that carbon revenues will be used to recover subsidies and to cover programme costs.

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Linkages between sustainable agriculture and natural resource management and food security:
Agriculture influences a wide range of issues critical to sustainable development. The conventional method of sustaining or increasing crop yields, both in the developed regions and the developing ones, involves the use of pesticides, herbicides and fertilizer - all of which in the short term can be very effective. The inevitable result, however, is to lessen the natural fertility of the soil, and so make farmers ever more dependent on expensive fertilizers. Meanwhile, the potential to increase arable land is limited by water scarcity and desertification.
Land degradation and over-exploitation of natural resources due to population pressure and poverty are widely spread and ever-increasing in developing countries. Soil erosion, caused by erratic and intense rainfall, increasing under climate change, further exacerbates land degradation and increase the risk of production failures and food insecurity among smallholders in developing countries. This in turn further increases their vulnerability to climate change. The interlinked problems of land degradation, biodiversity loss and climate change are therefore among the greatest challenges to many developing countries? efforts in poverty reduction, food security and sustainable development.
A recent study of the UNEP-led Green Economy Initiative (GEI) has reiterated that transforming the conventional agriculture sector to more environmentally sustainable. ?green? systems of production offers numerous opportunities and benefits: Competitive economic returns, the supply of essential and life-supporting ecosystem services, decent jobs and livelihood, a smaller ecological footprint, increased
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resilience to climate change, and enhanced food security. Developing countries are especially poised to take advantage of the benefits of sustainable agriculture.
Linkages between energy efficiency and renewable energies and food security:
Energy consumption will rise worldwide over the next decades, and indeed should rise in order to meet the MDGs. Currently, 2.5 billion people must depend on biomass (essentially wood and animal dung) for cooking. Some 2 billion people depend almost entirely on wood for cooking and heating. A billion of these are meeting their requirements by cutting wood faster than it is being replaced. Individual needs for fire wood are between 0.6 kg and 2.8 kg per person per day. Multiplying even a 1.0 kg average by 2 billion demonstrates that people consume an estimated 730 million metric tons of wood per year ? 10 percent of all wood harvested in the world?s forests.
More efficient and renewable energy technologies therefore have a direct impact on the environment and the natural resources that rural livelihoods depend on for food security: If used correctly and consistently, fuel-efficient stoves can lead to a 50 percent reduction of firewood needed for cooking. This also has a significant impact on local incomes: Poor families typically spend 20-40% of their incomes to buy wood or charcoal. Saving wood hence allows them to invest a larger share of their income in productive asset building activities. Conserving the natural resource base prevents soil erosion, increases the productivity of agricultural livelihoods and reduces exposure to climate related extreme weather events such as droughts and floods. There is hence a highly positive relationship between energy efficiency and food security.
More efficient and renewable energy technologies can also make a significant contribution to improving living standards and health. The harm done when households in developing regions use coal, firewood and dung for cooking, lighting and heat is significant: indoor air pollution kills 1.6m people a year, half of them children under the age of five and the rest women (who do most of the cooking and are therefore the most exposed).