Keywords

Introduction

The world is not in the right direction in the global call to end hunger, achieve food security and improved nutrition, and promote sustainable agriculture (SDGs 1 and 2) by 2030. Climate change disproportionately affects the most vulnerable rural communities and is one of the most significant obstacles in this path. Agriculture has been subjected to increased extreme events, such as extended periods of drought and erratic temperatures. Those events harm agricultural production systems; drive land use changes; damage infrastructure; boost the risks of pests and diseases; disrupt pollination, flowering, and fruiting processes; and increase soil erosion and degradation (Lengnick, 2022). The combined negative impacts of climate change in food systems (FSs) further exacerbate rural populations’ poverty and food and nutrition insecurity.

In this context, Food Nutrition Security (FNS) is an integrated approach combining two underlying concepts: food security and nutrition security.Footnote 1 While food production and consumption are key drivers of climate change, undernutrition undermines climate resilience – the extent to which social or ecological systems can maintain, recover, and improve their integrity and functionality when subject to disturbanceFootnote 2 – and the coping strategies of vulnerable populations. In this context, IFAD has set the target that at least 50% of all new projects should be nutrition-sensitiveFootnote 3 (IFAD, 2019).

Resilient food systems (FSs) lie at the heart of the nutrition-climate nexus. The food we eat, how it is produced, and the journey from farm to plate determine how FSs affect human and planetary health. Climate variability and extremes are key drivers behind the worsening of global food insecurity and malnutrition, which are also exacerbated by other crises, such as the COVID-19 pandemic, the economic slowdown, and the inflationary impacts of the conflict in Ukraine.Footnote 4

Latin America and the Caribbean (LAC), although expected to account for 25% of global agricultural and fisheries exports by 2028 (OECD/FAO, 2019), has the highest cost of an adequate diet in the world (FAO et al., 2022). In the region, Brazil is the largest food exporter and, yet, had over 33 million people suffering from hunger in 2022 (Vigna, 2022). Therefore, LAC is no exception to the greater world tendency: hunger, food insecurity, child overweight, and adult obesity are all worsening. (FAO et al., 2023).

Regionalism can either contribute to the worsening of this scenario or act positively in fighting it. While the liberalization of commerce can, on the one hand, provide cheaper and better products to the final costumer, it can also deepen the social and economic asymmetries between developed and developing countries, in a context which the first offer manufactured products, while the second provide commodities and suffers with the deterioration of terms of trade. The higher demand for commodities in developing countries can increase the pressure for deforestation and climate change in their territories, reinforcing the very problematic trend of violence related to land, biodiversity loss, desertification, change in rain patterns, worse working conditions, pollution, etc. In a national – and regional – economic perspective, this pattern also results in macroeconomic vulnerability to external shocks and the oscillations on commodities prices.

In this context, regional cooperation between LAC countries can provide policy coordination and investment in the diversification of the production patters, developing technologies and value chains with higher value-added but that, first and foremost, is compatible with a sustainable future. On the other hand, the cooperation between CELAC countries and the European Union has the potential to promote commercial trends that support sustainable development, sharing technology and financing the green transition in those countries. This movement should be cautious guaranteeing that European countries are not using LAC to export their harmful modes of production, such as chemicals, pollution, or the pursue for cheaper resources, including land and labor, an inherently neocolonial pattern that can be reproduced through regionalism and economic cooperation.

Given this broader scenario, this chapter proposes the right to adequate food, guided by a human rights-based approach (HRBA) to development (Cornwall & Nyamu-Musembi, 2004),Footnote 5 to be placed at the center of strategies to mitigate and adapt to the impacts of climate change in regional contexts. It also advocates for a transformative adaptation of agriculture in response to the current effects of climate change, analyzing transformative pathways and possible solutions for building climate-resilient FSs in LAC.

Given the imperative of constructing climate-resilient FSs, considering its key challenges and best practices, this chapter presents some experiences of the International Fund for Agricultural Development (IFAD),Footnote 6 both a specialized agency of the United Nations (UN) and an International Financial Institution (IFI). IFAD seeks to transform rural economies and FSs by making them more inclusive, productive, resilient, and sustainable, investing in the millions of rural people who are most at risk of being left behind: in poverty, small-scale food producers, women, youth, persons with disabilities, and other vulnerable groups living in rural areas (home of ¾ of the world’s population in poverty) (UNDESA, 2021). IFAD is the only specialized global development organization exclusively focused on and dedicated to transforming agriculture, rural economies, and FSs, reaching the remotest rural areas (IFAD, 2023). It advocates for a comprehensive and participatory approach to strengthening food and nutrition security and, therefore, targets structural causes, such as socioenvironmental conditions, access to drinking water, and breastfeeding.

The chapter emphasizes the imperative to accelerate and scale up actions for transforming food systems (FSs)Footnote 7 toward resilience in response to climate change. It also highlights pathways to build climate resilience based on existing global policy platforms and solutions and best practices being implemented in LAC. To illustrate those points, we discuss IFAD’s Pro-Semiarid Project in Bahia (PSA), Brazil, the organization’s best-ranked project in LAC and the world’s second-best. The chapter is divided into six parts. Beyond this introduction, section two discusses the nutrition-climate change nexus, presenting the key concepts of food security (FS) and climate resilience. Section three debates the role of international organizations and the urge to increase synergies and reduce organizational silos among different institutions and initiatives. Section four presents key pathways to building climate-resilient FSs, considering global and local spheres. Section five takes the key points discussed in the previous ones to analyze PSA. Finally, section six presents a conclusion with the main topics raised throughout the text, mainly the centrality of the nutrition-climate change nexus and the impossibility of dealing with one without properly also targeting the other.

The Nutrition-Climate Change Nexus: Defining Sustainable Food Systems and Climate Resilience

Over halfway through the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development term, the global community is still far from reaching its 17 goals (SDGs). As a pathway to achieve them, nutrition security and climate change are now seen as deeply connected, as climate change is both a result of the existing FSs and, on the other way around, climate change outcomes also drive change in FSs (Bakker et al., 2021).

According to IPCC (2021), “climate resilience” refers to the capacity to avoid poverty in the face of climate-related shocks or climate extremes, often referred to as extreme weather, extreme weather events, or extreme climate events. Another related concept is “climate stresses,” understood as persistent occurrences of lower-intensity climate hazards (i.e., low-intensity/high-frequency damaging phenomena), such as soil erosion, salinization of soils, and groundwater, a shift of river runoff patterns, migration of species, or a rise in sea level (IFAD, 2015).

Food systems consist of a set of interlinked actors of food products that offer value-added activities in “the production, aggregation, processing, distribution, consumption, and disposal (loss or waste)” (Von Braun et al., 2021), coming from “agriculture (including livestock), forestry, fisheries, and food industries, and the broader economic, societal, and natural environments in which they are embedded” (Von Braun et al., 2021). They exist at different levels, from local to global, including their actors’ values and cultures. FSs can change – and are expected to change, both for planned (i.e., 2030 agenda) and unplanned reasons (climate shocks) – and change can come either from external causes (e.g., conflicts) or internal ones (i.e., increased productivity due to innovations).

Along the same lines, sustainable FSs are the ones that contribute both to food and nutrition security “in such a way that economic, social, cultural, and environmental bases to generate FNS for future generations are safeguarded” (Von Braun et al., 2021). However, sustainable FSs do not necessarily guarantee good nutrition, as contexts of sanitation, infectious diseases, hygiene, access to clean drinking water, adequate child care, and access to nutritious food are also essential. Furthermore, the definition of sustainable FSs is not fixed, as it reflects a relative change in comparison with a previous scenario and, thus, presents a horizon and parameters to guide political action (Von Braun et al., 2021).

Climate change directly affects all forms of malnutrition, particularly undernutrition, not only because it reduces food availability in low- and middle-income countries (LMICs) but also because increased CO2 levels reduce iron, zinc, and protein levels in staple crops, decreasing the nutritional value of crops such as wheat, rice, potatoes, soy, and peas. In contrast, nutrient-rich foods are frequently susceptible to water constraints. Furthermore, higher temperatures might cause a reduction in the soil’s decomposition of organic matter, which results in lower fertility and reduced water-retaining capacity of the soil, aggravating desertification processes (Bakker et al., 2021: 22–23; Soares et al., 2019).

Another aggravating factor is the restricted variety of food that our FSs rely on. Approximately 75% of the planet’s food production is focused on 12 plants and 5 animal species, making our FSs highly susceptible to supply shocks. Those shocks can have multiple factors, including extreme weather and climate-related events, such as heat waves, drought, floods, and strong winds, or even the climate-related spread of pests and diseases into new geographical regions (Bakker et al. 2021).

According to Bakker et al. (2021: 10) “food production and consumption have major impacts on environment-related sustainable development goals (SDGs 6, 7, 9, 12, 13, 14, and 15).” Humanity has reached increased food production, mostly due to agricultural intensification practices and innovations. However, our population is growing fast, with an expected increase of 33% in 30 years (Soares et al., 2019: 2). By 2050, humanity will need an increase of 60% in agricultural production, considering that the world’s population might have reached 9.7 billion (Ruiz et al., 2020).

The increase in agricultural productivity in the past decades did not reflect greater nutrition patterns. Access to sufficient, safe, and nutritious food that meets dietary needs and preferences is conditioned to the price and affordability of diets. Considering different types of diets (energy-sufficient, nutrient-adequate, and healthy diets), the global average cost that meets daily energy needs is estimated to be USD 0.79 per day, whereas meeting all essential nutrient requirements is approximately USD 2.33, and healthy diet median global costs of USD 3.75 a day, much higher than the poverty line of USD 1.90. Thus, healthy diets are much more expensive than the daily food expenditures of most people in the Global South. In LAC, healthy diets are unaffordable for over 20% of the population, and education and individual behavior change are insufficient to solve nutrition security issues. To make sure its goals are achieved, prices should drop, and increased local production and harvesting should be achieved (Herforth et al., 2020: xi-xii).

Malnutrition also causes deep social and economic costs. Child undernutrition is responsible for some African countries to lose up to one-sixth of their annual GDP. Child stunting compromises both physical and cognitive capabilities, and undernutrition is known to reduce a nation’s economic growth by at least 8% due to cognitive, productive, or reduced schooling losses. FNS issues also increase the costs of nutrition-related illnesses, raising comorbidities, and multiple forms of climate-related and nutritional health risks, considering both communicable (parasitic, viral, and bacterial diseases) and noncommunicable diseases (diabetes, cardiovascular, respiratory, etc.) (Bakker et al., 2021: 11).

Global amounts of government’s financing of food and agriculture have reached nearly USD 630 billion per year. Nonetheless, those investments are not being adequately directed to sustainable and resilient agri-food systems, as a large amount of those is responsible for distorting market prices, jeopardizing small-scale producers and Indigenous Peoples, and yet not delivering healthy diets. Cereals have been highly subsidized by food-importing countries, favoring the production of those and making pulses, seeds, fruits, and vegetables less profitable. Policies like this have improved calorie intake but have disfavored improved nutrition and health outcomes, mainly among vulnerable populations (FAO et al., 2022).

Meeting the growing demand for food supplies while eradicating hunger and undernutrition might be one of the humanities’ greatest challenges in the twenty-first century, and those goals will definitely not be achieved if our policies do not keep an approach that takes climate change, sustainability, and climate resilience into consideration. Agriculture is responsible for about 20% of human greenhouse gas emissions (GHGs), with meat and dairy products being the ones with the highest carbon footprint; however, those are responsible for a great amount of vulnerable populations’ nutrient intake. Land use change, mostly driven by agriculture, is responsible for 15 to 17% of emissions. Furthermore, not only CO2 emissions (from deforestation, food processing, transportation, etc.) are worrisome. Flooded rice fields and livestock are highly responsible for methane (CH4) emissions, while organic and inorganic nitrogen fertilizers release nitrous oxide (N2O) into the atmosphere. Beyond GHGs, food production also relies on excessive use of water and farmland and is responsible for biodiversity loss, having a very large amount of systemic impacts (Bakker et al., 2021: 22–23).

Hence, there has been increasing interest in identifying climate change mitigation and adaptation measures offering nutrition co-benefits (and vice versa), seeking transformation towards climate-smartFootnote 8 and nutrition-sensitiveFootnote 9 FSs, considering that climate change increases hunger, undernutrition, and poverty. For this, studies have been looking at different areas of the FSs, including matters such as the food supply chain, food environment,Footnote 10 and consumer behavior and diets (Bakker et al., 2021). Therefore, healthier diets can be seen as FSs outcomes, as nutrition and dietary patterns are determined by and determining FSs.

The Role of International Organizations: Fostering Synergies for Nutrition Security in Latin America and the Caribbean

Among the greatest challenges to achieving SDGs 1 and 2, there is the lack of integrated approaches and difficulty in achieving greater synergies between the various projects being implemented by diverse groups and institutions. The UN Rome-based agencies (RBAs), Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations (FAO), IFAD, and the World Food Programme (WFP), are central to the organization’s development, humanitarian and resilience assistance to the thematic areas of food, agriculture, and transformative rural development. For achieving SDG 2, enhanced synergies among the RBAs are crucial, as they share the common vision of ending hunger, malnutrition, and promoting sustainable agriculture and rural transformation (WFP, 2023).

The agenda is urgent. In 2021, 3.1 billion people could not afford a healthy dietFootnote 11 (including 80% of the population in Africa). Globally, stunting among children under 5 years old decreased from 26.2% in 2012 to 22% in 2020; however, Africa remains the highest at 30.9%, followed by Asia at 21.2% (FAO et al., 2022). An estimated 30% of the world’s population faces micronutrient deficiency, and some 676 million are obese. Projections are that nearly 670 million people will be facing hunger in 2030. Several factors have contributed to this situation, including quality of diets; gender inequality; food availability, affordability, and accessibility; global nutrition financing; and climate change. Regarding climate change and its increasing impacts on FNS, approximately 80% of global cropland and 60% of global food output is a result of rainfed agricultural production, which can be dramatically affected by changes in water availability or transformations of the water cycle and rainfall patterns (FAO, 2017).

Regionally, LAC faces considerable challenges in eradicating hunger and malnutrition in all its forms. Despite the progress made in the region to reduce child undernutrition in the past decades, hunger and food insecurity have risen since 2014, reaching their highest levels during the COVID-19 pandemic. The increase in the proportion of people experiencing hunger during the pandemic was more significant in the region than at the global level. Between 2019 and 2021, the regional prevalence of hunger increased by 28%, compared to a global increase of 23% (FAO et al., 2023). In 2021, food insecurity affected 40% of the people in LAC (about 267 million people), compared to a global prevalence of 29.3%. Currently, the region has the highest cost of an adequate diet compared to the rest of the world,Footnote 12 increasing the vulnerability to malnutrition in all its forms and to noncommunicable diseases (NCD).

This situation disproportionately affects those living in the most vulnerable situations being particularly risky for rural people, women, children (especially girls), Indigenous Peoples, Afro-descendants, and traditional communities. Climate change can strongly increase the already existing heavy workload of women, which generates negative impacts on child care and raises the risk of undernutrition (Bakker et al., 2021: 12). There is also a clear gender gap in food insecurity in the world, with an aggravation tendency since the COVID-19 pandemic. In 2021, while 27.6% of men in the world had some degree of food insecurity, for women, this number reached 31.9%, 1% higher than the previous year (FAO et al., 2022: xvii).

In LAC, the nutrition crisis worsens, while adverse weather conditions cause harvests to fail, resulting in hunger, malnutrition, and loss of livelihoods (Lengnick, 2022). Stress to water systems and sanitation threatens the quantity and quality of water available for irrigation and human use. Additional climate change impacts in FSs are yet to come. In LAC, the average temperature is increasing and will continue to grow faster than the global average (IPCC, 2021), which makes it imperative that different sectors are involved in conceiving, testing, implementing, and improving climate change mitigation and adaptation measures with nutrition co-benefits. The current regional FSs are associated with significant environmental externalities as agricultural activities drive land use changes that cause biodiversity loss and environmental degradation. In this context, deep transformations in FSs are required to ensure sustainability.

It is important to highlight that if humanity does not develop resilient FSs, it will be increasingly difficult to produce food in adequate amounts and quality in the following decades. In that regard, several solutions are being proposed, including conservation farming practices to enhance soil organic carbon, diversified agroecological backyards, biofortification, and Agroforestry Systems, which generate multiple benefits for nutrition, food security, and the environment through increasing crop productivity and land carbon sinks (Frank et al., 2017).

There are critical steps to make sure the progress that has already been made in reducing all forms of malnutrition is not lost, such as (i) breaking down organizational silos (separated initiatives of action) for an increased synergy among different actors in initiatives on food and agriculture, urban design, and land use; (ii) increased data collection and analysis, including monitoring and evaluation (M&E) improvement; (iii) increased financing for climate-resilient FS and nutrition from diverse sectors, including private partners; (iv) focusing on healthy diets to improve nutrition all over the world; and (v) developing better and more ambitious targets and goals (Bakker et al., 2021). This discussion will be further developed in the following sections.

Key Pathways for Climate-Resilient Food Systems

In 2021, the Food Systems Summit emphasized the need for systems-level change. Seeking to raise awareness on how transforming our FSs can support the achievement of the SDGs, global leaders backed promoting holistic and inclusive food systems-based approaches to poverty alleviation, nutrition, resilient and reliable agricultural production, resource conservation, and climate change mitigation and adaptation. The Summit established five Action Tracks (AT)Footnote 13 intended to highlight essential pathways to transform FSs and reach the 2030 Agenda objectives.Footnote 14 Together, the ATs explore how key levers of change – human rights, innovation, finance, gender equality, and women’s empowerment – can be mobilized to meet the Summit’s objectives. Each lever of change can bring about significant progress on both FSs transformation and achieving all 17 Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs).

In LAC, regional agreements have been set regarding the challenges and opportunities for building more inclusive, sustainable, and resilient FSs to support the goals set in the United Nations Food Systems Summit 2021. Sixteen LAC countries have joined 12 different coalitions, and 14 countries presented roadmaps at the Summit.

Taking inspiration from the Food System Summits’ levers of change, we propose five key points of regional action to promote more climate-resilient FSs:

  1. (i)

    Multi-stakeholder partnerships and intersectoral approach: Multisectoral alliances with academia, public, private, and third-sector institutions can strengthen the project’s design, implementation, and M&E, thus, maximizing results on both climate resilience and food security and nutrition, as well as development effectiveness.

  2. (ii)

    Nutrition-sensitive and climate-resilient value chains: The value chain approach has traditionally focused on increasing economic returns for producers, even when working with small-holder farmers, but they also offer opportunities to ensure diverse, nutritious, and safe foods are accessible to everyone. Thus, it is necessary to repurpose resources to prioritize food consumers and incentivize sustainable production, supply, and consumption of nutritious foods to make healthy diets more affordable. Interventions prioritizing the adaptation needs of small-scale producers and micro-, small-, and medium-sized enterprises (MSMEs) along food supply chains can also help to ensure the affordability of healthy diets while bolstering the resilience and inclusiveness of agri-food systems. Innovative governance mechanisms give a real voice and influence to poor rural people, including small-scale producers.

  3. (iii)

    Finance gaps: There is a global need to close the financial gap for climate-resilient food systems. Today, an extra USD 39–50 billion is annually needed to meet both nutrition-specific and nutrition-sensitive needs until 2030 (Global Nutrition Report, 2021). Small-scale producers remain underserved by global climate finance. They bear the devastating consequences of changing climate, degraded soils, food insecurity, and irregular migration. So far, only about 1.7% of the money invested globally in climate finance reaches small-scale producers, and it mostly goes to mitigation objectives compared to adaptation. Possible solutions for this could be as follows:

    • Proactively increasing the number of climate finance projects integrating nutrition and improving monitoring and evaluation (M&E).

    • Exploring opportunities to mobilize foundations and private sector resources to help frame commitments from the private sector to support small to medium enterprises (SMEs).

    • Pursuing, in partnership with governments, the feasibility of nutrition-focused development impact bonds to deliver outcomes for nutrition.

  4. (iv)

    Gender equality and women’s empowerment (GEWE): Women, during their reproductive age (15–49 years), bear a disproportionate burden of malnutrition, and they are also often the most vulnerable to climate change impacts (Tantoh et al., 2022). Lessons emerging from UN agencies indicate that improving individual women and girls’ nutrition without addressing the discriminatory gender norms and unequal power imbalances that contribute to gender inequality and malnutrition is insufficient and many times more harmful (FAO et al., 2022).

  5. (v)

    Social behavior change communication (SBCC) is a successful and strategic regional approach being scaled up by multiple institutions, including IFAD. SBCC interventions include increasing consumer demand for healthy diets, particularly in rural areas, through information, education, and awareness. Behavior change is needed all along the food chain. Achieving necessary behavioral changes to improve nutrition is only possible with a dedicated theory of change that covers many dimensions, such as education, consumer awareness, and market incentives to facilitate nutritional change. Among the existing examples, there are successful programs on school health and nutrition to increase consumer education and outreach efforts, such as PNAE in Brazil. SBCC is also fundamental for changing knowledge, behavior, and practices regarding climate change. This approach could emphasize the climate-nutrition nexus.

Case Study: IFAD’s Pro-Semiarid Project in Bahia, Brazil

Recent projects coordinated by IFAD have presented key insights into promoting FSs that are resilient, sustainable, healthy, and nutrition-sensitive. Among those, it is worth mentioning the following: (a) strategic alliances and multisector cooperation to improve climate resilience and nutrition; (b) adequate targeting of populations in greatest vulnerability; (c) integration of resilient agricultural practices with social infrastructure; (d) rescue of traditional knowledge and species to increase dietary diversity; and (e) leadership, autonomy, and empowerment of women and girls. To illustrate those understandings and deepen their discussion, this section presents the case study of the Rural Sustainable Development Project in the Semiarid Region of Bahia (Pro-Semiarid – PSA).Footnote 15

The PSA aims to reduce poverty in rural areas of the Brazilian state of Bahia by increasing production, creating agricultural and nonagricultural work opportunities, and developing human and social capital. It seeks to strengthen the capacities of individuals, communities, and economic organizations in rural areas to support the development of sustainable productive activities and their insertion into value chains and markets. It operates in 32 municipalities with high incidences of poverty and vulnerability in the semiarid area of northern Bahia State, giving priority to women, youth, indigenous peoples, and traditional communities.

PSA interventions were centered on building resilient FSs, having strong co-benefits for climate and nutrition. It is currently the second most well-rated IFAD project in the world and the first best evaluated in LAC because it was able to foster the food system’s resilience using a bottom-up, community-based, nutrition-sensitive, and gender-inclusive approach, implementing actions to reduce the community’s vulnerability to the impacts of climate change while contributing to building resilient livelihood systems and FNS co-benefits.

PSA’s subprojects are organized in rural territories composed of contiguous or nearby communities represented by an organization, usually constituted of four communities. The territorial investment plans were built on a diagnosis of the territory’s environmental, social, and productive needs, strengths, and weaknesses. These territorial plans acted as master plans to guide the project’s collective and individual investments. This very effective methodology ensured participation, precise targeting, and demand-driven investments and that territories with a large proportion of rural people in poverty and food insecurity were systematically reached.

The project’s targeting strategy allowed for serving the communities most vulnerable both to climate change and malnutrition. Regarding food security, from 2016 to 2021, the project’s interventions generated important positive results: the percentage of families in a food security situation increased by 10.95% (from 69.35% to 76.96%), severe food insecurity was reduced by 84.21%, and moderate insecurity was reduced by 31.89%. Regarding nutrition, the impact evaluation (IE) indicated that a higher proportion of families in the treatment group (TG) consume food from agroecological gardens compared to the control group (CG), suggesting a greater intake of diversified, safe, healthy, and nutritious food. In the TG, there was also an 11% increase in the number of families that always have a diversified diet, compared to a 4% decrease in the CG between 2016 and 2021.

The agroecological perspective guiding PSA ensures communities adapt to and mitigate climate change and also guarantees sustainable FSs that produce nutritious, healthy, diversified, and safe food, improving the nutritional benefits of the partner population. Such an approach aims to build local communities’ capacities, knowledge, and social capital and jointly develop solutions appropriate to the local context and reflect the interests and objectives of project participants. In addition, the significant investment in capacity-building of agricultural technicians and farmers in agroecological practices through the agroecology and coexistence with the semiarid region study groups (NEACS) and the use of tools and methodologies (Agro-ecosystems Sustainability Indicators, ISA; Agroecological Transition Indicators; and Method of Economic-Ecological Analysis of Agro-Ecosystems, LUME) allowed the Project Management Unit (PMU) to monitor progress and identify gaps in both project activities and agro-ecosystems in the transition to agroecological and resilient FSs.

Although PSA supported building climate-resilient FSs through its agroecological approach and its lessons are taken into consideration in the design, implementation, monitoring, and evaluation (M&E) of new IFAD projects, there are still key challenges. At design, PSA was not classified as nutrition-sensitive nor climate finance, as it did not include particular strategies for both themes or any specific nutrition and climate indicators.Footnote 16 The Project Management Unit (PMU) did not have a specialist in nutrition.

The selected case study offers a glimpse of how development actors are trying to improve nutrition co-benefits as they work to increase FSs’ climate resilience. In addition to climate and nutrition synergies, the case identifies synergies with gender and environmental sustainability goals. As discussed, smallholder farming practices are becoming increasingly challenging in the context of changing climate, often making woman’s already heavy workload even heavier, which can further increase women’s needs for a nutritious diet, which may not always be easy in many cultural contexts. This can also reduce women’s time for caring activities, including preparing healthy meals. The nexus between climate change, nutrition, and gender is, therefore, a key one. Also, evidence- and knowledge-based project design, implementation, and M&E approaches are also crucial to delivering multiple co-benefits, which have been observed in PSA so far.

Conclusion

Nutrition has been increasingly seen as a structuring issue of the 2030 Agenda, not only concerning hunger or nutrition insecurity eradication but also regarding nations’ economic development and climate change mitigation and adaptation. Climate change is a result of the existing FSs, as agriculture is responsible for 20% of GHGs, but it also impacts FSs – considering that it reduces food availability and its nutritional value. This perception is being reflected in UN agencies focused on food, agriculture, and transformative rural development, such as IFAD.

Regionalism and the trade pattern it promotes can either contribute to fight this scenario or to its worsening. In this context, the concept of food systems (FSs) is key. It encompasses all actors and their interlinked value-adding activities involved in the food chains, including production, aggregation, processing, distribution, consumption, and disposal of food products. Enhanced synergies among the various actors involved in rural development are needed, and the reduction of organizational silos at the regional level is essential to make sure that the most vulnerable are properly targeted and that transformation toward more climate-resilient FSs is possible. In a macro-perspective, it is important that economic and commercial relationships among LAC countries and the European Union does not follow a neocolonial pattern, in which the developing countries are trapped in offering commodities, pushing their resources to the limit under a strictly extractive perspective, while importing technological products, and, in a context of climate change, also pollution, carbon, and other harmful substances that are not allowed anymore in European countries.

Although humanity has achieved increased agricultural productivity, healthy diets are still unaffordable to a great part of the Global South and to 20% of the population in LAC. Education and individual behavior change must be added up with active measures to reduce food prices, including sustainable and climate-resilient local production and financing. IFAD’s project in Bahia (Brazil) illustrates possible pathways, showing the relevance of a holistic approach that empowers vulnerable populations, increasing their capacity for production, their awareness of issues related to climate change and nutrition security, and their digital inclusion and improved commercial partnerships.

Therefore, the right to adequate food needs to be placed at the center of strategies to mitigate and adapt to the impacts of climate change and fight against hunger and poverty. The nutrition-climate nexus increasingly structures global climate action. Thus, nutrition-sensitive climate finance and improved cross-sectoral collaboration are proposed means to address climate change impacts and FNS.