Feeding a growing world population, likely to reach 9 billion by 2050, poses an unprecedented challenge to human ingenuity. How to satisfy the demand for food by the some 8 billion people who will live in the developing world is a particularly pressing food security question. Even in the best of circumstances, sustainably satisfying the increased demand for crops and livestock by these people will be an enormous challenge. The negative consequences of climate change on food production make meeting these food requirements even more daunting. The 2010 floods in Pakistan and excessive heat and drought in Russia offer just glimpses of global food security’s troubled future.
On December 1, IFPRI shed light on how to solve this urgent challenge with the release of its latest research on food security and climate change. This research expands on IFPRI’s cutting-edge climate modeling expertise to address the climate change threat in the context of larger food security challenges and includes the launch of the new Food Security CASE Maps visualization tool. This new tool will help provide the most comprehensive analysis to date on the scope of the climate change – food security relationship.