Climate change could put back the fight against hunger by decades but our global food system is woefully unprepared to cope with the challenge, said Oxfam today. The warning comes as governments gather in Japan to agree a major new scientific report, which is expected to show that the impacts of climate change on food will be far more serious and will hit much sooner than previously thought.
Oxfam's briefing paper, 'Hot and Hungry: How to stop climate change derailing the fight against hunger' analyses ten key factors that will have an increasingly important influence on countries' ability to feed their people in a warming world. Across all ten areas, Oxfam found serious gaps between what governments are doing and what they need to do to protect our food systems. The results also show that while many countries - both rich and poor - are unprepared for the impact of climate change on food security, it is the world's poorest and most food insecure among them that are least prepared and most at risk.
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