Climate change, food system resilience and the need for social protection strategies that protect the next generation
By guest contributors Helen Walls, Silvia Pastorino, Busiso Moyo and Donald Bundy
The impact of climate change on food security is emerging as one of the most important indirect effects of climate on individual, household and community health and wellbeing. The food system, whilst contributing to greenhouse gas emissions and environmental degradation, is at particular risk of climate change impacts . These impacts, coupled with degrading of economic, health and social systems (both climate- and non-climate related), and compounded by external shocks such as conflict and pandemics, will exacerbate challenges with food accessibility and affordability, and lead to increased food and nutrition insecurity. Social protection strategies, supporting individual, household and community resilience, are now urgent for the poor and marginalized, mainly women and children, who are both at greatest risk of food insecurity and contribute least to climate change.
Already, more than three billion people are unable to afford a healthy diet, 45 million children under the age of five are wasted, 149 million stunted, and 39 million overweight. These outcomes will likely worsen with children being particularly vulnerable to the effects of climate shocks. According to UNICEF’s Children’s Climate Risk Index (CCRI), one billion children live in countries at extremely high-risk for the impacts of climate change. Increasing numbers of people cannot realise their human right to food: recognised in the 1948 Universal Declaration of Human Rights, enshrined in the 1966 International Covenant on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights (ICESCR), and protected in regional treaties and national constitutions. Ultimately, it is government political economy which has the power to mitigate the impacts and shocks, and to support food and nutrition security, together with holding violators of the right to food accountable.
To address these concerns, strategies are needed that: support the transition to more sustainable foods systems; improve the resilience of individuals, households and communities through social protection measures; and address these issues amongst the poor and marginalised and particularly, in children. Food systems scholars have outlined a range of multi-sectoral actions that would contribute to the much-needed ‘food system transformation’, including in a recent report of the IPCC (1), and that prioritize climate change adaptation in particular food systems, for example of Africa. A growing government-led component of these strategies is sustainable national School Meals programs, which also help realize the right to food. The School Meal Coalition (SMC) of now 97 countries emerged from the UN Food Systems Summit in 2021 in the aftermath of COVID-19 impacts on school closures, to ensure every child has access to a healthy, nutritious meal in school by 2030.
Investment in school meals is increasingly adopted by governments to ensure equal access to well-being and education and provide a catalyst for food-systems transformation. Today, school meals programs are the world’s most extensive safety net and amongst the largest public food systems, reaching 418 million children daily. Because governments hold the policy levers, changes can be made at scale and have far reaching impacts on children, communities and planetary health as highlighted in a report presented at COP28 by the Research Consortium for School Health and Nutrition, the evidence gathering initiative of SMC.
The School Meals approach is emerging as an important government-led component of policy and programmatic change, contributing to the transition to more sustainable food systems. For example, by linking school menus to nutrient-rich, climate-resilient, culturally-relevant crops, and by adopting procurement strategies that source food from agroecological and regenerative approaches to production that also promote the livelihoods of local farmers and communities. As a social-protection mechanism it can help alleviate financial pressures on individuals and households, and support the affordability of food and other essentials. In South Africa, where Schools Meals have formed part of the state’s social safety net programme since 1994, right to food defenders have further successfully argued that the rights to education and nutrition are interdependent.
School meals programmes directly address the needs and rights of school-aged children and shape the dietary preferences of the next generation. By targeting children, and the expectations of their parents, these popular, government-led programmes also help communities find a new balance between personal responsibility and the urgent need for stronger public support.
About the authors:
Helen Walls is an Associate Professor of Global Health and Food Systems at the London School of Hygiene & Tropical Medicine with a research focus on food and alcohol systems, particularly their political economy and interaction with wider policy and system change including related to migration and population mobility, and the climate crisis. She has worked in public health in New Zealand regionally and with the Ministry of Health, and consulted with a range of global health organisations. She is a co-author of the new edition of Making Health Policy for the Open University Press, published in 2023. She tweets @helenwalls.
Silvia Pastorino is a Research Fellow in Nutrition, Sustainability and Health at the London School of Hygiene & Tropical Medicine. Her research focuses on sustainable diets and food systems and their impact on health and the environment, with a particular focus on school settings and children. In 2023 she led development of a White Paper on Planet Friendly School Meals for the Research Consortium for School Health & Nutrition. She has more than 15 years of experience in public health nutrition and epidemiology, and has worked at University College London (UCL), Cambridge University and the World Cancer Research Fund UK.
Busiso Moyo is an activist and scholar based at the London School of Tropical & Hygiene Medicine. His research interests shine light on three important areas: inequality and right to food struggles in South Africa; the geographies of hunger and politics of malnutrition; and the geopolitics of food and agriculture. The latter examines the global political economy of food, which in turn illuminates the persistence of imperialism and neo-colonialism in contemporary world politics. He tweets @busiso_helard.
Donald Bundy is Professor of Epidemiology and Development at the London School of Hygiene & Tropical Medicine. He is Director of the Research Consortium for School Health and Nutrition and Advisor to the UN World Food Programme, leading a global research effort to provide evidence-based guidance to the 95+ member states of the School Meals Coalition on strengthening national school meals programmes. Previously, he was Senior Advisor to the Global Health Team of the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation; Lead Education & Health Specialist to the World Bank’s Africa Region and Human Development policy unit; and Deputy Director of the Epidemiology Centre, University of Oxford.
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