"25 million children could be malnourished due to climate change"

Climate change causes an estimated 400,000 deaths every year, mainly due to hunger and communicable diseases that affect above all children and trap poor households in food insecurity and poverty.

We call on the climate treaty negotiators this week to put the fight against hunger and the commitment to eradicate hunger between now and 2030 - at the heart of the Paris agreement.

We are calling for:

- A commitment to ambitious plans to reduce greenhouse gas emissions as well as investment policies in renewable energies. The combined effects of national commitments will keep global warming on the world’s surface below +1.5 C in 2100
- Farming methods that respect the environment and human rights
- A recognition that climate change has the most severe impact on the poorest people, who are the least responsible and the least able to adapt. It is necessary to boost public finances to help vulnerable people adapt to climate change
- The fight for food security for all to be a common objective in the Paris agreement.

How does climate change threaten food and nutrition security? 

Since the 1990s, the number of catastrophes linked to climate change has more than doubled, affecting more than 95 million people in 2013. As well as causing more frequent and intense flooding and droughts, climate change makes land and water more scarce and difficult to access, and increases in agricultural productivity even harder to achieve.

Every decade, the main crops that we live on such as wheat, rice and corn could be reduced by two per cent, according to the International Panel of Experts on Climate Change (IPCC). This will mean less access to food and a reduction in its quality, which in turn will increase the risk of hunger and the breakdown of food systems.