Climate Change and Food Security in the Pacific Islands

Abstract

Climate change poses diverse risks to the food security of individuals and communities in small Pacific Island states and offers a challenge to human rights. Climate change is likely to emphasize contemporary environmental trends and problems, ranging from land degradation, deforestation and the loss of biodiversity, to coastal erosion and the pollution of lagoons. Climate change will adversely affect food systems in the region, including the supply of food from both agriculture and fisheries, the ability of countries to import food through reduction in incomes and damage to infrastructure for food distribution, and the ability of households to purchase and utilize food. If tourism is also affected by climate change national and household incomes are likely to decline, fisheries may be first affected because of climatic impacts on coral reefs and sea temperatures and the mobility of marine species. Reduced agricultural production may be both long-term and short-term outcomes of particular climatic shocks, especially cyclones, with threats most likely to follow particular events rather than the outcome of mean changes in temperature or sea level. Coral atolls, and the atoll states of Kiribati, Tuvalu and the Marshall Islands, are most at risk. Cyclones are likely to become more frequent and reduce the ability of food systems to recover. In multiple ways, climate change puts at risk the very basic and universal need for people in Pacific SIDS to have access to sufficient, safe and nutritious food at all times.

An earlier version of this chapter was published as ‘Dangerous climate change in the Pacific islands: Food security and food production’ in Regional Environmental Change (2011), 11, 229–237. Used with permission from Springer Nature Customer Service Centre GmbH.