Recurring Storms: Food Insecurity, Political Instability, and Conflict
Publisher: Center for Strategic & International Studies
Author(s): Emmy Simmons
Date: 2017
Topics: Governance, Renewable Resources
Countries: Afghanistan, Nigeria, Syrian Arab Republic
Changes in global weather patterns are now projected to have potentially devastating impacts on agriculture in the coming years and decades. The rising “double burden” of malnutrition already threatens to dampen global progress toward better health. Demographic change—a bulging population of youth in Africa and rapid urbanization—is creating opportunities for an economic growth spurt that will affect food demand and organized protests when food security is endangered. Food safety issues, economic and social inequities, and food price volatility are seen as persistent disrupters of food systems and food security. Outbreaks of civil unrest and violent conflict have deprived millions of reliable access to food and challenged their physical security and social cohesion. Whether these threats will combine to drive repeats of 2007/08’s “perfect storm” of food insecurity in the future is unknown. But it is predicted that, singly or together, they already pose critical risks—likely to erupt in “recurring storms”—somewhere around the globe.