By: Anna Douglas Piper
Global food insecurity has surged since 2022, and the problem is not going away. Around 345 million people are impacted across 82 different countries.
Chad is the third hungriest country in the world, and it is only getting worse.
From flooding, to drought, to wildfires, climate change directly impacts food security. Geographical features drastically change, crop yields fail, and production levels decrease. The consequences are not limited to agricultural zones themselves. Agricultural chains are intricately connected, so effects in one region can lead to consequences that ripple across the entire market. In fact, in 2021, rising food commodity prices overall were a main driver of approximately 30 million people in low-income countries facing increased food insecurity.
As climate change continues to impact food production, the most at risk continue to suffer. 17% of Chad faces food shortages, and in 2024, the Government declared a “food security and nutrition emergency.”
Out of the hundreds of millions of people who face high levels of acute food insecurity, the United Nations estimates that “over two thirds…are there because of climate and conflict.”
António Guterres, Secretary-General of the United Nations stressed that climate and conflict were the main causes of acute food insecurity for around 174 million people in 2022. “A global food crisis is creating a hellscape of hunger and heartache for many of the world’s poorest people.”
Food insecurity exacerbates conflict, driving regional instability and threatening the entire world order. Hunger, especially driven by climate change, is a risk to international security. Beth Bechdol, Deputy Director-General, Food and Agriculture Organization, agrees, arguing that “there is no food security without peace, and no peace without food security.”
The U.S. has direct interests in maintaining global order and peace, and therefore direct interests in promoting the stability of Chad. This can be done by mitigating the impacts of climate change on food security in the region.
Questions remain over what is to be done. Some argue for sustainable agricultural practices, like effective water usage, drought-resistant crops, and policies to manage demand for certain products. Others point more to the harm of the global food system itself, noting that the industry is responsible for around a third of greenhouse gas emissions–second only to the energy sector. Food harvesting, storage, and transportation, can all be improved, in a multitude of ways. Additionally, many call for the increased usage of climate-smart technology, like precision watering and early-warning systems. Whatever solutions are implemented, it is important to consider the context of Chad itself in order to successfully mitigate the issue.
According to Simon Stiell, Executive Secretary of the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change, “1 in 10 people on Earth already suffers from chronic hunger — a reality that will worsen with accelerating climate change. In the not-too-distant future, there could be huge supply shocks, and if heating continues, food production will decline across many countries.”
To increase food security and avoid conflicts, he called for increased investment in adaptation, resilience and clean energy, declaring that “done right, climate action can help build peace.”
“It is in places like [Chad] where violence and weather shocks drive hunger,” stresses The World Food Programme. “More than one third of the families living in Chad are worried about the same thing right now: ‘when will we eat the next meal?’”
